Organising complexities: the potential of multi-screen video-installations for ethnographic practice and representation

Abstract

This article explores a new configuration of contemporary video art and anthropology by introducing three recent multi-screen video installations (Solid Sea 01: The Ghost Ship by Multiplicity, Sahara Chronicles by Ursula Biemann and A Tale of Two Islands by Steffen Köhn) that are all concerned with the transnational movement of people. It discusses how such installation art might propose new possibilities for the organisation of ethnographic material in terms of multiperspectivity. As they offer a bifocal take on contemporary migration, evoking both a sensual proximity to the experience of migrant subjects and revealing the complexity of transnational connections, these artworks address some of the discipline's most urgent concerns. The article's main interest, however, is to analyse how the works involve the spectator in ways that are inaccessible to written ethnography. These works demand us to position ourselves not only physically in relation to the screens, but also intellectually and empathetically towards the social issues at stake. Their political significance might thus lie not only in their discursive content, but also in the mode of activated spectatorship they stipulate.