The audio-visual commission of the Swiss Anthropological Association (SAA) is organizing a summer school for students from the universities of Neuchâtel (UNINE), Bern (UNIBE), Zürich (UZH) and Lausanne (UNIL). The workshop will take place from 12 to 17 September 2022 in St-Blaise on the shores of Lac de Neuchâtel. This week of training will give a group of 15 master's or third-year bachelor's students the opportunity to deepen through practice the methodological, aesthetic, and narrative questions raised by using the camera in ethnographic research. By choosing to place the summer school under the title “Beyond Observational Cinema” (MacDougall 1998), the organizers set two main focuses. On the one hand, we will look at the legacy of observational cinema as a privileged mode of research in social sciences. On the other hand, we will try to take a step back from the representational paradigm and examine recent creative experiments that attempt to account invisible social and cultural processes, whether with sensory cinema (Sensory Ethnography Lab), filmic essays (Claudio Pazienza and Matthijs van de Port) or with the invention of creative methodologies (Iris Zaki, Baptiste Aubert, Emmanuel Grimaud).
The workshop will be practice-oriented. Participants will work in small groups to make a short film on the theme of “People and Things”. The week and the different workshops will be supervised by Dr. Laura Coppens from the University of Bern and Baptiste Aubert from the University of Neuchâtel, with the support of the members of the audio-visual commission and external contributors. In order to prepare the week, a first compulsory meeting is planned on Thursday 08 June 2022, 4pm at the Institute of Ethnology of the University of Neuchâtel.
To apply, please send us a short application letter by 31 March 2022, in which you should indicate your past experiences with visual anthropology as well as your technical knowledge in photography, video, sound recording or editing.
Date: 12 to 17 September 2022
Place: St-Blaise (NE)
Number of participants: 15
Application deadline: 31 March. Please address your application to baptiste.aubert(at)unine.ch and to laura.coppens(at)anthro.unibe.ch. Application letters can be written in English, French or German. Announcement of participants at the end of April.
Pre-requisites: For Master or 3rd year Bachelor students of the universities of Neuchâtel (UNINE), Bern (UNIBE), Zürich (UNIZH), Lausanne (UNIL). Students with a theoretical and/or practical background in visual anthropology will be preferred.
Costs: The fee of CHF 300.- covers the costs of the summer school (accommodation, meals and materials). Transport is at the expense of the participants.
Insurance: For reasons of lending audio-visual material, participants must be covered by a civil liability insurance.