ReCNTR

Synthetic Vision / Images of Power Conference | 27-28 June | Framer Framed (Amsterdam)
2024-06-27 15:00 - 2024-06-28 19:00 (Europe/Amsterdam) | Framer Framed, Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71, Amsterdam, 1093 KS, Netherlands
We are thrilled to invite you to the conference Synthetic Vision / Images of Power – Truth, Evidence, Labour & Knowledge in the Age of AI which explores the transformations induced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the interplay of power, knowledge, and images.
Presenters will focus in particular on the unprecedented possibilities of these systems to generate synthetic vision, that is, the ability to “see” algorithmically, and synthetic image generation, or the ability to create new images through prompts. These transformations affect three key dimensions of the image. Firstly, in what we term image-truth, we are interested in the truth-value of images within contexts such as authentication, or recognition, in domains such as facial, emotion and crowd recognition. But it also concerns the generation of synthetic images to mimic reality in large datasets necessary to train other algorithms. In our second exploration, we focus on image-evidence, specifically addressing the capacity to recognize or generate images for evidentiary purposes. This dimension holds relevance in the realms of journalism, with considerations surrounding information, propaganda, and the identification of ‘fake news,’ as well as within the legal sphere, encompassing both the utilization of images as judicial evidence and their role in event reconstruction. Third, we are interested in the figure of image-labour, i.e., computer vision as a result of a visible and often invisible labour on the image, of programmers, annotators and operators.

Programme

Day one: Thursday 27 June 2024

15:00 Introduction (Francesco Ragazzi)

15:30 Opening Talk: Terror Element (Anna Engelhardt & Mark Cinkevich)

16:00 – 18:30 Mapping Synthetic Vision

16:00 Mapping as a critical method for Security Vision (Francesco Ragazzi)

16:20 Documenting and Visualizing Unknowns and Uncertains in Security Vision (Francesco Luzzana, Erica Gargaglione)

16:40 Synthetic Battlefield in the Time of Dynamic Maps (Svitlana Matviyenko)

17:00 Cutting through algorithmic violence (Rocco Bellanova)

17:20 Discussion (chair: Donatella Della Ratta)

DAY TWO | Friday 28 June 2024

9:30 – 12:00 Synthetic Images in Conflict

09:30 Tracklets: the synthetic present of movement tracking (Ruben van de Ven)

09:50 From AI to paper: de-materializing and re-materializing evidence (Kevin B Lee)

10:10 Synthetic Realism: Exploring the Aesthetics and Politics of Generative AI in a time of widespread violence (Donatella Della Ratta)

10:30 AI in Gaza: Image-evidence, digital suspicion, colonial history (Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca Stein)

10:50 Discussion (chair: Francesco Ragazzi)

Afternoon

13:00 – 15:30 Strategies of Resistance

13:00 AI to Subvert and Expose Evidence (Paolo Cirio)

13:20 Synthetic Vision for Subversion (Jonathan Luke Austin & Maevia Griffiths)

13:40 Image-Life (Shintaro Miyazaki)

14:00 Mobile Lies: A Kinopolitics of Emotion Datasets (Cyan Bae)

14:20 Discussion (chair: Rocco Bellanova)

16:00 – 18:30 Strategies of Resistance II

16:00 A Tale of Two Data Centers (Marloes de Valk)

16:20 Permacomputing in the arts (Aymeric Mansoux)

16:40 Algorithmic accountability (Evaline Schot)

17:00 Social media: Catalysts or obstacles to war crimes investigations? (Maria Mingo)

17:20 Discussion (chair: Rebecca Stein)

18:30 -18:45 Concluding remarks (Donatella Della Ratta)

Scientific Coordination

Francesco Ragazzi Donatella Della Ratta Rocco Bellanova Rebecca Stein

YAL and JUL Science Meets Art Exposition | 11 June 2024 | 15:00-18:00 | Lipsius, Leiden University (Leiden)
2024-06-11 15:00 - 18:00 | Lipsius Building, Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, 2311 BD, Netherlands
Join ReCNTR for the final event of the Young Academy Leiden (YAL) and Jong Universiteit Leiden (JUL)’s Spring of Art and Science!

Program:

15:00-16:00: Plenary session: featured creators/researchers discuss their pieces

16:00-18:00: Exposition: time to explore the exhibits

18:00 onward: Informal drinks (off program)

Event Description

As part of their ongoing Seasons of Interdisciplinarity, YAL and JUL’s Spring of Art and Science explores intersections between academic inquiry and artistic production. In collaboration with LIACS Mediatechnology and ReCNTR, this exhibition aims to highlight works that employ multimodal approaches which challenge conventional notions of knowledge production and artist expression.

The exhibition provides an opportunity to explore examples of multimodality in practice and a chance to interact with artists and researchers at Leiden university working at this intersection.

More information can be found here.

The event will feature the work of two of ReCNTR’s Directors, Mark Westmoreland and Cristiana Strava.

Mark Westmoreland: Broken Ground: Expanding Landscapes

A photo-essay that recounts a collaborative research project in northern Ghana that uses kite aerial photography to introduce new environmental perspectives. Eschewing the technocentric use of drones, the Broken Ground team adopted a more participatory and playful method for creating aerial perspectives that emphasizes community engagement. This shared process fosters generative ways of understanding the complicated relationship between the wounded history of particular places and the aspirations made possible by transforming the material world into resources.

Cristiana Strava: Ori Mi Pe – Good Fortune

A 12 minute video about a women’s weaving cooperative in Nigeria produced as part of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab between 2007-2009. The video offers an experimental and critical response to histories of ethnographic filmmaking and tries to deconstruct the colonialist, paternalist gaze of earlier representations of ‘exotic others’.

The event is free but registration is required due to limited space. Please register here.

Image Credit: Mark Westmoreland from Photo essay ‘Broken Ground: Expanding Landscapes’

Obscuro Barroco Film Screening+ Q&A | 7 June 2024 | 19:30 | Netherlands Film Academy (Amsterdam)
2024-06-07 19:30 - 21:30 | Netherlands Film Academy, Markenplein 1,, Amsterdam, 1011 MV, Netherlands
Join us for a screening of Evangelia Kranioti’s film Obscuro Barroco, for our first collaboration with the Netherlands Film Academy Master in Film! The film will be introduced by art-filmmaker and PhD student Cyan Bae in the context of Evangelia’s body of work. After the screening, there will be an extended Q&A that will locate Obscuro Barroco in relation to Evangelia’s other films, led by Cyan Bae and Diana Toucedo.

Obscuro Barroco is an audiovisual project on the dizzying heights of gender in a land of extremes, a photographic series and a two-channel video installation (Ecstasy Must Be Forgotten, 31’). The project as a whole explores the many facets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at a time when carnival and political struggles are converging. Since its immemorial origins, the carnival has been a moment of metamorphosis, when evil spells are countered against a background of inversion and social upheaval. Following the path of iconic transgender activist Luana Muniz (1961-2017), Obscuro Barroco addresses body politics, post-colonialism and identity issues, while questioning the desire for transformation of the body, both intimate and social.

Cyan Bae (filmmaker and PhD student at Leiden University) will be introducing the film in the context of Evangelia’s body of work. Together with Diana Toucedo (filmmaker and core team member of the Master of film), they will have a conversation with Evangelia about her process and methods of work, locating Obscuro Barroco in relation to Evangelia’s other films. The conversation will center the themes of identity, gender and queerness that resonate throughout Evangelia’s body of work, including her latest film, “The Rites of Spring”.

Evangelia Kranioti is a Greek-born award winning visual artist and director based in Paris and working with film, photography and installation. She studied law (National University of Athens) and piano (National Conservatory of Athens), as well as visual arts (École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris) and cinema (Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Atelier Scénario La Fémis). In 2016 she received two Hellenic Film Academy Iris awards (Best Directorial Debut & Best Documentary) for her debut documentary feature Exotica, Erotica, Etc. (73’, 2015). The film premiered at the Berlinale Forum and screened in various international festivals (IDFA, BFI London, Göteborg IFF, Karlovy Vary IFF, Sarajevo IFF etc) receiving numerous awards (Emerging International Filmmaker Award at Toronto Hot Docs, Audience award at Films de Femmes Créteil etc). In 2019, her solo show The Living, the Dead and Those at Sea at Les Rencontres d’Arles, was awarded with the Madame Figaro Women in Motion Prize. More recently, Evangelia Kranioti was a resident fellow at the Villa Médicis, Académie de France à Rome (2021-22) and an invited artist at the 75th anniversary edition of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (2023

Conversations in and on the Activation of Archives | 7 June 2024 | 10am -17pm | Netherlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam)
2024-06-07 10:00 - 17:00 | Nederlands Fotomuseum, Statendam 1 (Las Palmas), Wilhelminapier,, Rotterdam, 3072 AR, Netherlands
Join us for a series of conversations as part of a symposium presented by The Networked Audience @ MA Photography & Society // Royal Academy of Art, in collaboration with Nederlands Fotomusem and ReCNTR. These conversations will take place within the exhibition ‘I wish there was color, I wish there was sound’, which displays long term collaborative archive activations initiated by Andrea Stultiens.

With the emergence of digitisation, the entanglement between photography as a contemporary mode of picture production and archives as entities in which photographs are kept has gained prominence in both artistic practices and academic discourses. Digital reproduction of photographs affords modes of distribution in which connections are easily both made and lost while networking audiences in formal and informal ways. Meanwhile practitioners, researchers and audiences are guided by a wide and sometimes wild range of ethical, ideological and economic concerns.

During this symposium, the consequences of these developments and concerns will be discussed through a series of conversations between individuals whose rich spectrum of experiences and expertise result from their diverse artistic and/or academic practices, including ReCNTR’s Acting Director Mark Westmoreland.

The symposium is free to attend but registration is required due to limited available space and seats. Please register Here.

About the Exhibition:
Paul Julien (1901 – 2001) embarked on numerous journeys to Africa between 1932 and 1962, a period marked by European colonization and missionary activities. During his travels, he gathered scientific data from local communities, employing methods rooted in colonial practices. Julien published four photo books and hosted a popular radio program discussing his African experiences. Upon his passing, his photographic collection was entrusted to the Nederlands Fotomuseum. Artist and researcher Andrea Stultiens has since critically examined Julien’s work, particularly its portrayal of Africa, within the exhibition ‘I wish there was colour, I wish there was sound’. Collaborating with African stakeholders, Stultiens presents alternative perspectives on Julien’s images, contextualizing them within contemporary discourse and employing diverse techniques like re-photography and collective making. The exhibition, divided into five sections focusing on different regions, invites visitors to engage with the photographs, acknowledging their aesthetic appeal alongside their complex historical and cultural implications.

ReCNTR Summer Drinks| 22 May 2024 | 17:30 | Pakhuis Leiden
2024-05-22 17:30 - 19:00 | Pakhuis Leiden, Doelensteeg 8,, Leiden, 2311 VL
Event Description
We would like to extend an invite to join us for summer drinks with our team outdoors at the Pakhuis Leiden. Join us for drinks and light snacks in the courtyard. Share your thoughts about ReCNTR’s work, get to know us (if you don’t already) and hear about the work we have been doing and plan on doing at ReCNTR this year.

The event will take place after the screening of Bo Wang’s short film ‘An Asian Ghost Story’.

An Asian Ghost Story Film Screening+ Q&A | 22 May 2024 | 16:15 | P.J. Veth Building (Leiden)
2024-05-22 16:15 - 17:30 | P.J. Veth 1.01, Nonnensteeg 3, Leiden, Leiden, 2311 VJ, Netherlands
Event Description
We are delighted to host a screening of this award-winning short film by artist, filmmaker and researcher Bo Wang. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Bo, followed by Summer Drinks at Pakhuis Leiden. The screening concludes the day’s events of of our annual Advisory Board meeting.

Since premiering last year, the hybrid artist documentary An Asian Ghost Story (2023, 37 min) has been on a festival run picking up awards at CPH:DOX, DOK Leipzig, Festival Entrevues Belfort, Sharjah Film Platform, Arkipel, Image Forum Festival, Curtocircuito International Film Festival, Brive Film Festival, and a special mention for the inaugural e-flux Film Award. The film explores the haunting memories of Asia’s late 20th-century modernisation, focusing on the 1965 “Communist Hair Ban” by the United States. Acting as a gateway between Mao’s China and the Western market, Hong Kong facilitated the trade. However, the 1965 U.S. embargo on “Asiatic hair” aimed to disrupt currency flow to Communist China, leading to a shift in the wig industry reshaping East Asia’s light industry landscape. In the films, wigs, crucial for post-war Asian economy, particularly in Hong Kong’s export-oriented industrialization during the 1960s, begin to embody the imperial past. Through tales of movement, diaspora and migration, the project delves into Hong Kong’s role as a transient space mediating and filtering the interaction between different spheres, and the relationship between US imperialism and East Asia during the Cold War era.

Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher based in Amsterdam, as well as a member of ReCNTR’s Advisory board. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at the MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Garage Museum, CPH:DOX, IFFR, Visions du Réel, LUX, Open City Documentary Festival, Courtisane, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Sonic Acts, Eye Filmmuseum, Sesc_Videobrasil, Sharjah Film Platform, among others. He is a recipient of major international awards, including New:Vision at CPH:DOX, Golden Dove at DOKLeipzig, O.F.F. Prize at Sesc_Videobrasil, Best Doc Short at Sharjah Film Platform, etc. He received a fellowship from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2013, and was an artist-in-residency at the ACC-Rijksakademie from 2017 to 2018, as well as at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2016. He is a PhD candidate at ASCA, University of Amsterdam.

Ethnographic Listening: Talk with Ernst Karel & Andrew Littlejohn
2024-04-23 19:15 - 20:45 | EYE Film Museum, IJpromenade 1,, Amsterdam, 1031 KT, Netherlands
Event Description

Anthropological documentary experts Andrew Littlejohn and Ernst Karel discuss their area of expertise and the role of sound in ethnographic film. Later in the evening, there’s a chance to see Expedition Content, Karel’s critical look at the anthropologist and his subject.

Following this exchange of thoughts, Karel’s film Expedition Content (2020, with Veronika Kusumaryati) will screen: a critical look at the ethnographic classic Dead Birds (1963), about the Dani people of Papua, western New Guinea. The latter film was directed by Robert Gardner, head of Harvard University’s Film Study Center. Dead Birds screens in Eye on 12 March. Expedition Content explores the dynamics between anthropologists and their subjects, as well as the relationship between sound and imagination. The screen remains almost entirely dark; we hear a montage of audio recordings made by Michael Rockefeller, a member of Gardner’s expedition to study the Dani people in 1961 who disappeared without trace. A separate ticket is required for Expedition Content.

This event is presented in collaboration with the EYE Film Museum.

Biographies

Ernst Karel is a musician, anthropologist, phonographer and former manager of SEL, the Sensory Ethnography Lab (Harvard University) set up by Lucien Castaing-Taylor. The latter now features, together with Véréna Paravel, in the exhibition in Eye.

Andrew Littlejohn (Leiden University and SEL alumnus) will talk to Karel via live stream about the phenomenon of ‘sonic ethnography’: the study of peoples by means of audio recordings. Littlejohn is an associate professor affiliated to Leiden University’s Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Leviathan and the Entangled Lives of Species: Screening and Introduction by Mark Westmoreland
2024-03-26 19:15 - 20:45 | EYE Film Museum, IJpromenade 1,, Amsterdam, 1031 KT, Netherlands
ReCNTR x Eye
During their Paravel & Castaing-Taylor: Cosmic Realism exhibition (20 January – 20 May 2024), Eye Filmmuseum is collaborating with ReCNTR on a number of talks and screenings that are taking place as part of the exhibition’s accompanying programme.
Eye Filmmuseum is the Dutch national museum for film. Their exhibition showcases the works of Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, pioneering filmmakers who are reinventing the relationship between anthropology and cinema with their formally innovative nonfiction filmmaking. Paravel and Castaing-Taylor are closely associated with Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, which was founded by Castaing-Taylor in 2006.
Over the coming months, ReCNTR, in various capacities, will be involved in the accompanying programme of this landmark exhibition.
Event Description
This screening of Leviathan (2012) by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor will be preceded by an introductory lecture that situates the film’s impact within the traditions of anthropology and cinema.
‘Spectacular’ is an understatement for what Castaing-Taylor and Paravel achieved with their impression of life on a fishing boat setting out across the North Atlantic Ocean to fish in the exact location where Melville’s crazed captain Ahab pursued the white whale Moby Dick. The anthropologically trained pair of artists attached a dozen small GoPro cameras to both boat and crew. From the resulting hours of footage, the makers edited together an impression in raw poetry of life onboard a fishing vessel, showing the crew, the fish, the gulls and the waves all from an equal perspective. The film premièred at the Locarno film festival in 2012, winning the international film critics’ FIPRESCI Prize ahead of a glorious run through countless festivals.
Mark Westmoreland will give an expanded introduction (20′) to the film as an experimental post-humanist study of commercial fishing in the North Sea. Without a central character, discernible dialogue, or narrative motivation, the film resists offering the viewer an anchored point of view. Instead, unmoored and discombobulated, the viewer is drawn into an uneasy and entangled state among a range of human and nonhuman entities. By offering viewers a visceral perspective of an alienating world of extractive consumption, the film creates an unresolvable tension between experimental abstraction and ethnographic humanism.
Presented in collaboration with ReCNTR, Leiden University.
Mark Westmoreland, co-director of ReCNTR, is an anthropologist at Leiden University. He served as co-editor of Visual Anthropology Review before co-founding the Writing with Light magazine for anthropological photo essays. His research tries to ‘make sense’ of political violence by exploring sites where embodied practices and media aesthetics interface. He is currently developing a collaborative research agenda dedicated to attending to broken landscapes.
Ticket prices: Standard (€12.50), Student (€10), Cineville (free)
Tickets and further details

Ethnographic Landscapes: Talk with J.P. Sniadecki & Cristiana Strava
2024-03-12 19:15 - 20:45 | EYE Film Museum, IJpromenade 1,, Amsterdam, 1031 KT, Netherlands
Tickets and further details
ReCNTR x Eye
During their Paravel & Castaing-Taylor: Cosmic Realism exhibition (20 January – 20 May 2024), Eye Filmmuseum is collaborating with ReCNTR on a number of talks and screenings that are taking place as part of the exhibition’s accompanying programme.
Eye Filmmuseum is the Dutch national museum for film. Their exhibition showcases the works of Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, pioneering filmmakers who are reinventing the relationship between anthropology and cinema with their formally innovative nonfiction filmmaking. Paravel and Castaing-Taylor are closely associated with Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, which was founded by Castaing-Taylor in 2006.
Over the coming months, ReCNTR, in various capacities, will be involved in the accompanying programme of this landmark exhibition.
Event Description
As part of Eye Filmmuseum’s regular strand Eye on Art, ReCNTR is co-presenting the talk “Ethnographic Landscapes” by J.P. Sniadecki, which will be followed by a conversation moderated by ReCNTR co-director Cristiana Strava.
In a talk that will include film and audio extracts, Sniadecki and Strava’s conversation will touch on the subject of landscapes, visual excavation, and material inscriptions. Discussing both El Mar la Mar (co-directed with Joshua Bonnetta, 2017) and Foreign Parts (co-directed with Véréna Paravel, 2010), both of which will also screen at Eye Filmmuseum on 12 March, Sniadecki and Strava will explore collaboration, the relations between stories and images, and the materiality of different media from analogue, to digital, and audio documentation.
J.P. Sniadecki will be visiting the Netherlands to take part in the first meeting of the ReCNTR Lab, the multimodal research workshop ReCNTR is organising with a KIEM grant, as our invited external researcher. The closed workshop will take place on 13-15 March.
J.P. Sniadecki is a filmmaker, anthropologist, and professor of documentary media at Northwestern University in Chicago. His films, which include Demolition / Chaiqian (2008), Foreign Parts (with Verena Paravel, 2010), People’s Park (with Libbie Cohn, 2012), Yumen (with Huang Xiang and Xu Ruotao, 2013), The Iron Ministry (2014) and El Mar la Mar (with Joshua Bonetta, 2017), have won many awards at festivals around the world. His work has been featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennale, the 2014 Shanghai Biennale, the UCCA in Beijing, The MoMA, The Guggenheim, The Museum of Natural History in New York, and a special section of BIFF 2012. He is an alumnus of Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL).
Cristiana Strava, co-director of ReCNTR, is an anthropologist at Leiden University trained at Harvard University and SOAS. She has a broad interest in urban spaces, economic inequality, and the politics of planning and development regimes, and has experience living and carrying out research in North and West Africa.
Ticket prices: Standard (€12.50), Student (€10), Cineville (free)
Tickets and further details

Workshop-lecture with former transmediale director Kristoffer Gansing
2024-02-26 13:30 - 16:00 | Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK), Prinsessegracht 4, Den Haag, 2514 AN, Netherlands
Event Description

In a workshop-lecture Kristoffer Gansing will present his research on media technology and multimodal practices to students of KABK and Leiden University. He will talk about his experiences as director of transmediale and enter into a conversation with students on the shifting techno-aesthetics of moving images as infrastructure for film as research. He will show contemporary artistic practices that seek to challenge such extractive infrastructures and that build alternatives.

Please note: on 25 February 2024, Kristoffer Gansing will also be giving a presentation as part of ‘In the Making #3.’ For those interested in attending, click here for more information.

Biography

Dr. Kristoffer Gansing is a media researcher and curator whose current work is on small-scale practices, the techno-aesthetics of infrastructure in audiovisual network culture and artistic research. He was artistic director (2011-2020) of the transmediale festival in Berlin and professor of artistic research at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2020-23). He is currently Visiting Professor at Winchester School of Art. With Linda H. Ritasdatter he recently initiated the ongoing project ‘A Video Store after the End of the World’ and his most recent publication is ‘Homegrown, Outsourced, Organized – Network-based Arts and the Techno-aesthetics of Infrastructure’ (2023).

Coordinates

26 February 2024 | 13:30 – 16:00

Location: KABK Auditorium

Address: Prinsessegracht 4 2514 AN The Hague.

Photo Credit: Adam Berry (transmediale, CC BY-SA 4.0)

In the Making #3: Talk with Kristoffer Gansing on Artistic Research and the Techno-aesthetics of Infrastructure
2024-02-25 14:00 - 18:00 | West Den Haag, Lange Voorhout 102,, Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, 2514 EJ, Netherlands
ReCNTR x ACPA
For the third session of their new public series In the Making, The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and the art institute West Den Haag, in collaboration with ReCNTR are pleased to announce a talk with Kristoffer Gansing on artistic research practices and the techno-aesthetics of infrastructure.
About the ‘In the Making’ sessions:
Artistic production has always expressed the forms in which we know, explore, and sense the world we live in. The current practice of research in the arts consciously assumes this exploration. In the past decades, the focus on research in the domain of the arts has grown – as well as its role in universities and other research contexts – expressing its engagement with the realities of the world at large. In the Making will address how artists conduct their research. Guest artist-researchers and artist-researchers from Leiden University will present their projects, approaches to research, methods, and results. Each session will address questions inherent to these projects. In the Making aims to deepen a perspective that conceives of artistic practice not as the sole product of individual visionaries but as a collective endeavor embedded in society. It addresses the role of art in the construction of the present and the creation of possible futures.
Event Description
In this session on media technology, multimodal practices, and transversal methods in the production of knowledge, Kristoffer Gansing will present his research on the shifting techno-aesthetics of moving images as infrastructure for research and what this means for artistic research. The presentation will explore the thesis of a ‘Cinema of Extractions’, where moving image technology is not seen as primarily a vehicle for film as cinema, but as a continuously evolving technological and aesthetic infrastructure for film as research. The presentation aims to rewire how we see and artistically respond to the film medium’s connection to research in a way that speaks to our contemporary moment of images as part of networks of data extraction, analysis, and optimisation. It will discuss contemporary artistic practices that seek to challenge such extractive infrastructures and that build alternatives.
Kristoffer Gansing will enter into a dialogue with Francesco Ragazzi.
Biographies
Kristoffer Gansing is a media researcher and curator whose current work is on small-scale practices, the techno-aesthetics of infrastructure in audiovisual network culture, and artistic research. He was the artistic director (2011-2020) of the transmediale festival in Berlin and professor of artistic research at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (2020-23). He is currently a Visiting Professor at Winchester School of Art. With Linda H. Ritasdatter he recently initiated the ongoing project ‘A Video Store after the End of the World’ and his most recent publication is ‘Homegrown, Outsourced, Organized – Network-based Arts and the Techno-aesthetics of Infrastructure’ (2023).
Francesco Ragazzi is a director of ReCNTR, an interdisciplinary research center focused on promoting multimodal and audiovisual research methods in social science and the humanities.

Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr. | Lunch with the Laureates
2023-12-01 11:15 - 13:00 | Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333AK, Netherlands
ReCNTR invites students and staff for lunch with Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr., this year’s Gerbrands Laureates to discuss how multimodal research practices help universities engage the public.

Come have lunch with the laureates! ReCNTR hosts this lunch with Thomas and Jackson to share their insights from directing The Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. In the last five years, Thomas and Jackson have built a robust program that supports students, staff, and visiting scholars across eight of Penn’s twelve faculties. Central to CEE’s mission are renewed ways for the university to face its public. By advancing an expansive understanding of experimental and multimodal research, CEE offers an exemplary model for building multimodal infrastructures that can lead civic engagement through pedagogical initiatives. More: https://www.recntr.nl/2023/11/deborah-a-thomas-and-john-l-jackson-jr-lunch-with-the-laureates-1-december-1115-1300-pieter-de-la-court-0b-13-leiden-university-rsvp-required/

Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr. | Experimental Ethnographies
2023-11-30 16:00 - 19:00 | Wijnhaven Building, Turfmarkt 99, The Hague, 2511 DP, Netherlands
Join ReCNTR for a double program with films by Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr, this year’s Gerbrands Laureates who will be in attendance to share three films and discuss their ideas of experimental ethnography.

Call for proposals: Training School Archival Memories: Image, Sequence, Knowledge | 8-9 June | Leiden
2023-06-08 - 2023-06-09 | Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333 AK, Netherlands
This two-day multimodal photo essay workshop will bring together a maximum of 10 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are using photography as an integral part of their research practice. Drawing on theories and methods from the field of anthropology, visual studies, and geography, as well as from other fields of artistic, practice-based research and documentary image-making, this workshop and training school will equip participants with the skills needed to finalize photo essay projects. The workshop engages with the themes of memory, history and experience and draws from photography, its histories, and its potential as a tool for disseminating knowledge and producing more sensorial ways of engaging with these themes.

Call for Proposals Due: 20 March 2023.
Send your full proposal to tracts@st-andrews.ac.uk see details on our website:

Call for Proposals: Training School Archival Memories: Image, Sequence, Knowledge | 8-9 June | Leiden

Talks by Sabine Groenewegen & Riar Rizaldi : Gender, Colonialism, Ecology
2023-05-11 15:00 - 17:00 | KITLV, Reuvensplaats 2, Leiden, 2311 BE, Netherlands
The event features two talks, by artists Sabine Groenewegen and Riar Rizaldi in which they will discuss their current research on questions of gender, colonialism and econology. Read more here: https://www.recntr.nl/2023/04/talks-by-sabine-groenewegen-riar-rizaldi-gender-colonialism-ecology-with-kitlv-11-may-2023-1500-1700-leiden-register-to-join/

ReCNTR X Glued & Screwed Film Screening: Sabine Groenewegen & Riar Rizaldi
2023-05-10 20:45 - 22:45 | Filmhuis, Spui 191, Den Haag, 2511 BN, Netherlands
We are delighted to team up with Glued & Screwed for this screening of Odyssey (2018, 71min) by Sabine Groenewegen and Tellurian Drama (2020, 26min) by Riar Rizaldi! The program approaches the question of race and colonialism through the prism of the materiality of radio and video transmission. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the artists and will conclude with the opportunity to catch up with the artists around a drink. Read more here : https://www.recntr.nl/2023/04/recntr-x-glued-screwed-film-screening-sabine-groenewegen-riar-rizaldi-10-may-2023-2045-filmhuis-the-hague/

Talk: Forensic Landscapes of State Terror, Civil War, and Cartel Violence in Latin America: Transmediality as a Method for Critical Scholarship | 19 April 2023 | 15:00-17:00 | The Hague
2023-04-19 15:00 - 17:00 | Schouwburgstraat Building, Schouwburgstraat 2, The Hague, 2511 VA, Netherlands
This lecture will articulate the idea of transmedia practice as a mode of critical inquiry. To do so, Pablo will reflect on his role as artistic director of Forensic Landscapes, an immersive web documentary that explores forensic resistance in Latin America, created along with researcher and filmmaker Anne Huffschmid. Combining elements such as 360º landscapes, essay films, animations, soundscapes and texts, the aesthetic and narrative strategies were implemented not merely to illustrate but expand their research questions. Evoking forensic procedures of body identification and skeletal reconstruction, the lecture will deploy a reflexive archaeology of the project, presenting the design process as a way of generating new insights on the topics of investigation.

Using this example as the main terrain of interrogation, Pablo will take the opportunity to question the logocentric paradigm operating in academic institutions, sharing the belief that transmedia practice can nurture research cultures across the arts, humanities and social sciences. How can we introduce a transmedia approach to the production of knowledge at universities and research centers? What are the main challenges to build such an open, transdisciplinary framework within these institutional contexts? The lecture is open not only to scholars already engaging in transmedia / multi-modal methods, but all scholars in social sciences and humanities interested in the potential of these methods. Details on the presenter, respondent and registration: https://www.recntr.nl/wp-admin/post.php?post=1087&action=edit The room number is: A2.04 in the Schouwburgstraat Building of Leiden University

Talk by Jumana Emil Abboud: Untangling divinations in water | 29 March 2023 | 13:00-15:00 | The Hague [Register to join]
2023-03-29 13:00 - 15:00 | Schouwburgstraat Building, Schouwburgstraat 2, The Hague, 2511 VA, Netherlands
Based between Jerusalem and London, artist Jumana Emil Abboud draws on Palestinian folklore, magic, mythologies, and supernatural elements as a political and imaginary framework to re-appropriate and reinterpret dispossessed landscapes and histories. Her internationally exhibited practice ranges from drawing and video to performance and painting. By placing a strong emphasis on community-driven and participatory aspects, she offers a poetic and collective method of worldbuilding, as well as a means to counter the decades-long erasure of space and memory in Palestine. (Nat Muller)

When and where:
29 March 2023 | 13:00 – 15:00
Room A2.02 | Schouwburgstraat Building | Leiden University
Schouwburgstraat 2, 2511 VA The Hague

Register here : https://www.recntr.nl/2023/03/talk-by-jumana-emil-abboud-untangling-divinations-in-water-29-march-2023-1300-1500-the-hague-register-to-join/

ReCNTR, ArteEast & LIMA present: A Grain of Sand in the Mountain’s Belly | 28 March 2023 | 20:00 | LAB111, Amsterdam
2023-03-28 20:00 - 22:00 | Lab 111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam, 1054 PD, Netherlands
We are delighted to team up once again with LIMA, and this time with ArteEast, for this screening curated by Nat Muller! The programme features several works by Jumana Emil Abboud who is our special guest for the week.
When and where
Date & Time: Tuesday 28 March 2023 | 20:00
Location: LAB 111, Amsterdam (LAB2)
Price: 7,50 euros | students 5,00 euros | Cineville
Get your tickets here
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the artists. The evening will conclude with the opportunity to catch up at LAB111’s cafe in attendance of the curators and the artists.
More on the event: https://www.recntr.nl/2023/03/recntr-arteeast-lima-present-a-grain-of-sand-in-the-mountains-belly-28-march-2023-2000-lab111-amsterdam/

Talk by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner: My Want of You Partakes of Me| Room A2.01 | Schouwburgstraat Building
2022-11-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Schouwburgstraat Building, Schouwburgstraat 2, The Hague, 2511 VA, Netherlands
In this presentation Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner will discuss their current work in progress My Want of You Partakes of Me, which explores the complexity of incorporation as a physical, perceptual and psychological foundation of being. Drawing on western scientific frameworks, science fiction, colonial histories, poetry and myth, the film weaves together a constantly shapeshifting and open-ended tapestry of attempts to understand how organisms broadly, and human animals more specifically, are both continuous with and separate from their surroundings.

When and where:
24 November 2022 | 18:00 – 20:00
Room A2.01 | Schouwburgstraat Building | Leiden University
Schouwburgstraat 2, 2511 VA The Hague

ReCNTR & LIMA Present: Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner| LAB111, Amsterdam (LAB2)
2022-11-23 20:00 - 23:30 | Lab 111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam, 1054 PD, Netherlands
We are delighted to team up with the new filmclub Canal++ and LIMA for the screening of Constant by Beny Wagner and Sasha Litvintseva next to works from the LIMA collection! The selected screenings will reflect on the theme of (the standardisation of) measurement.

When and where

Date & Time: Wednesday, 23 November 2022 | 20:00
Location: LAB111, Amsterdam (LAB2)
Price: 7,50 euros | students 5,00 euros | Cineville
Get your tickets here

Workshop by Hagit Keysar & Ariel Caine: Spatial Testimonies, Spatial Photography: Aerial imagery and photogrammetry in spaces of conflict and colonisation| Room B3.01| Schouwburgstraat building
2022-10-21 09:00 - 17:00 | Schouwburgstraat Building, Schouwburgstraat 2, The Hague, 2511 VA, Netherlands
New forms of computational 3D imaging have given rise to a new photographic condition — one in which the flat image is replaced by an omni-directional spatial data constellation, and in which viewing is defined by immersive navigation. Fusing survey and perspectival imaging, optical media has gradually developed to incorporate a multiplicity of images and sources, that are both perspectival and projective, communal, situated and multiple. While primarily developed by states, military and industry, permeating and restructuring them from the inside, it simultaneously opens new spaces for civic-led counter practices.

In this daylong hands-on workshop we will experiment with principles of photogrammetric 3D scanning and its intersections with cartographic workflows.

When and Where
20 October 2022, from 17:30 to 19:30
LIPSIUS building | Room 003
Cleveringaplaats 1, 2311 BD Leiden

Talk by Ariel Caine & Hagit Keysar: Spatial Testimonies, Spatial Photography: Aerial imagery and photogrammetry in spaces of conflict and colonisation| Room 003| LIPSIUS building
2022-10-20 17:30 - 19:30 | Lipsius Building, Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, 2311 BD, Netherlands
In this talk we look into the volatile space of Jerusalem through the prism of the geofence. To begin with, we investigate this new invisible technology of aerial and terrestrial control and continue by contrasting it with tactical forms of resistance, balloon/kite photography, that subvert its technological, epistemological, and ontological standing.

When and Where
20 October 2022, from 17:30 to 19:30
LIPSIUS building | Room 003
Cleveringaplaats 1, 2311 BD Leiden

Workshop: Multimodal futures(?)| Room 5A37 | Pieter de la Court building
2022-10-06 15:30 - 17:00 | Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333AK, Netherlands
After a one and a half day workshop the final roundtable comes back to the initial question: “How do multiple forms of engagements with border and migration control regimes imagine and make a difference on the matters they critically engage with?”. With multimodal interventions, we refer to research engaging with creative audio-visual utterances, which span across the broader spectrum of media genres and formats including e.g. installations, documentary, film, podcasts, soundscapes, memes, graphic novels, mapping exercises, creative storytelling. Multimodal interventions may have the potential to make a difference in practice, including in the living conditions of migrants, as well as conceptual reflections on such collaborative initiatives. We reflect on a diversity of approaches with regards to the purposes and ambitions of interventions, but also with regards to their methodologies and formats. The roundtable will be kicked off with a couple of inspiring examples to help us envision the many possible and desirable multimodal futures that can inspire how we engage with matters of migration, borders & technology.

When and where:
Thursday October 6, 2022
15:30- 17:00
Room 5A37, University of Leiden, Pieter de la Court building, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden

Work-in-progress Workshop: Photo Edition| Room 212A| Wijnhaven building
2022-09-23 09:00 - 12:00 | Wijnhaven Building, Turfmarkt 99, The Hague, 2511 DP, Netherlands
Although the most ubiquitous form of visual representation, photography has played a marginal role in social research projects and has been rarely elevated above the status of illustration in scholarly outputs. Despite the anxiety produced by stringent privacy laws and the habituated thoughtlessness common to everyday imaging habits, an increasing number of researchers recognize photography’s versatile and accessible qualities for enacting powerful visual narratives. Since efforts to establish rigorous peer review standards in this domain remain limited, ReCNTR will dedicate its next Works-in-Progress session to focus on research projects that foreground photography. Three ReCNTR members — Nadia Sonneveld, Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela, and Mark Westmoreland — will present works in different stages of development in order to get critical input and facilitate bringing the work to fruition. Discussion may range from shooting practices and ethical rapport to narrative structure and page design. In an effort to cultivate stronger connections with photographic practices in the Netherlands, ReCNTR has invited Donald Weber, Sybren Kuiper, and Andrea Stultiens as respondents. The session is open to the public.

When and where

23 September 2022, from 09:00 to 12:00
Leiden University
Wijnhaven building | Room 212A
Turfmarkt 99, The Hague

Talk by Nathaniel Brunt: The Country Without a Post Office / Archiving Photographic Histories of Armed Conflict | Room 312 a/b | Wijnhaven building
2022-06-30 15:00 - 17:00 | Wijnhaven Building, Turfmarkt 99, The Hague, 2511 DP, Netherlands
For nearly a decade, Nathaniel Brunt, has examined the history, sociocultural impact, and human cost of the insurgency in India’s Kashmir Valley. During this presentation Brunt will show the organic development of his work in the field and the unique way his project blends archival practice, documentary photography, and cultural historical research. The lecture will draw specific attention to his work #shaheed (2014-2017) which explores the recent re-emergence and evolution of the insurgency in the region, the lives of the young men fighting in it, and the broader changing nature of the photographic representation of war in the early 21st century.

When and where
30 June 2022, from 15:00 to 17:00
Wijnhaven building | Room 312 a/b
Turfmarkt 99 The Hague

Work-in-progress Workshop | Room 5A37 | Pieter de la Court building
2022-06-16 13:00 - 17:00 | Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333AK, Netherlands
Join us for the centre’s first Work-in-progress workshop. Presenters will discuss a developing project with a “making” component. Participants will be invited to provide feedback after each presentation.

Programme:

13:00 – 13:05 Welcome
13:05- 14:15 Aiwen Yin and Myriam Vandenbroucke
14:20 – 15:35 Nile A Davies
15:40 – 17:00 Federico De Musso and Cristina Grasseni

When and where
16 June 2022, from 13:00 to 17:00
Pieter de la Court building | Room 5A37
Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden

Talk by Neal White: The Deep Field / Art and the Ecological Imaginary| Room 348| Wijnhaven building
2022-05-13 15:00 - 17:00 | Wijnhaven Building, Turfmarkt 99, The Hague, 2511 DP, Netherlands
Neal White is an artist and researcher. His talk will address artistic and academic research in relation to ecology as shaped by scientific framing of knowledge of environmental issues. The talk will highlight an artistic project he is leading in collaboration with artist Tina O’Connell at Amstelpark, Amsterdam, supported by Mondriaan Funds and zone2source. Framed by his work with the Deep Field Project, a research initiative that involves a range of graduate researchers using concepts from the environmental humanities, engaging with methodological innovation, and experimental fieldwork, White reflects on the power relationships that shape interdisciplinary and epistemic/environmental encounters and the critical role of artistic researchers in shaping knowledge futures.

When and where
13 May 2022, from 15:00 to 17:00
Wijnhaven building | Room 348
Turfmarkt 99 The Hague

Talk by Aymeric Mansoux: Shadow IT / The Politics of Digital Tools in Research and Teaching | Room 1.23 | Lipsius Building
2022-04-21 15:00 - 17:00 | Lipsius Building, Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden, 2311 BD, Netherlands
During this presentation, and the following discussion, we will question whether or not we can talk about other ways of knowing, teaching and researching in the digital realm without questioning the very tools that form such a realm. We will discuss if shadow IT can help us think through this conundrum. The Experimental Publishing master (XPUB), a master in art and design at the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, will be used as an example of how shadow IT can be used to rethink practice-led research and teaching.

When and where
Lipsius Building, Room 1.23
Cleveringaplaats 1, 2311 BD Leiden

Making Workshop by Elizabeth Chin : Displacing the Ethnographic Eye | Room 1B53 | Leiden
2022-03-25 09:00 - 17:00 | Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333AK, Netherlands
Removing the camera from the eye and using such strategies as time-lapse and motion sensing, this workshop focuses on how visual documentation can become material that illuminates fieldwork in unexpected ways.  All you need is a smartphone and room to download an app or two, a sense of fun and a willingness to experiment and possibly look silly in public.

We will first experiment with apps that offer options for capturing visual images (still and moving).  Then, out in public we will gather documentation.  Finally, we will review, process, and reflect upon that documentation and what it might tell us and how we might make use of it.

Time
The workshop will take place on Friday 25th March, from 9:00 to 17:00

Place
Pieter de la Court Building
Leiden University
Room 1B53
Wassenaarseweg 52,
2333 AK Leiden
