Image and anthropology in motion: topics and challenges from the expanded view of Arnd Schneider

Abstract

The fruitful relationship between anthropology and art, as well as the early experimentation with moving images, have contributed to the expansion of methodological practice and production of anthropological knowledge over decades. This article proposes to unravel some of these contributions, from a reflexive critical dialogue, using the latest book by anthropologist Arnd Schneider (2021) Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image. First, three especially productive areas are addressed to advance reflection and experimentation in anthropological practice: the materiality of the image and its mediation in the production and dissemination of meanings; the possibilities offered by experimental cinematographic techniques as anthropological analytical devices; the construction of time/space in cinematographic and ethnographic production as a way of interpreting events and giving them reality. Secondly, based on the significant overlap between experimental cinema and ethnography proposed by Schneider, some topics and audiovisual works that make visible challenges for anthropological research are selected and discussed. Among them, the relationship between anthropological representation processes, aesthetics and epistemological intention. Linked to this is the challenge of confronting the illusion of reality that anthropological research itself generates to reflexively explore diverse forms of narrative recording and composition proposed from audiovisual experimentation. Finally, some advances in the processes of decolonization of representational practices are discussed, as well as the agency of the objects produced and their projection as devices of mediation and social transformation.