ReCNTR

Deborah A. Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr. | Experimental Ethnographies
2023-11-30 16:00 - 19:00 (Europe/Amsterdam) | 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.

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/

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.

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)

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

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 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.

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.

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’.

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.

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

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’

Synthetic Vision / Images of Power Conference | 27-28 June | Framer Framed (Amsterdam)
2024-06-27 15:00 - 2024-06-28 19:00 | 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

Household Robots : Training Datasets & the Politics of Categories| Film Screening + Q&A | 26 November 2024 | 15:15 | Leiden University
2024-11-26 15:15 - 17:00 | P.J. Veth 1.01, Nonnensteeg 3, Leiden, Leiden, 2311 VJ, Netherlands
Join us for a screening of a selection of short films by designer and researcher Simone Niquille, of Amsterdam-based technoflesh Studio. The screening will be followed by a Q&A & discussion moderated by Dr. Rodrigo Ochigame.

Model Homes

Household robots rely on computer vision to navigate their environment, but a camera does not know what it is looking at. In order to recognise and understand the spaces and objects it encounters, a robot’s vision technology needs to learn about its future home. To this end, large datasets of 3D files are assembled into model homes, which ultimately are unable to represent the complexity of life itself. This gap between models of reality and the lived experience is referred to by scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski as ‘the map is not the territory’. If the map is not the territory, are the datasets the home? This talk speaks of the absurd and precarious state of the training datasets of home robots, using them as a way of entering a wider discussion about cohabitation with technology and an obsession of sorting the world into categories.

The following films will be screened:

Homeschool (2019) 13min

Sorting Song (2021) 7min

Beauty & The Beep (2024) 15min

Simone C Niquille is a designer and researcher. Through her studio technoflesh, she produces films and writing that explore computation as the new optics. Her work examines vision technologies, the images they generate and the worlds they construct – from computer vision and 3D animation to computational photography and synthetic training datasets. Her work advocates for non-binary technology and against the use of machine learning as a tool to validate and instrumentalize assumptions and reduce reality.

Dr. Rodrigo Ochigame is an assistant professor affiliated to Leiden University’s Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. Their work investigates atypical models of computational rationality, including nonclassical logics originating from Brazil, nonbinary Turing machines developed in India, and information science frameworks emerging from Cuba.

Inas Halabi| Open Studio Residency | 12 December 2024 | 19:00 | 1646 Den Haag
2024-12-04 19:00 - 21:00 | 1646, Boekhorststraat 125, The Hague, 2512 CN, Netherlands
We are delighted to invite you to join us for the final event of artist-researcher Inas Halabi’s residency. The two-month residency was a collaboration between ReCNTR and 1646. During this final event Inas will share aspects from her ongoing research and work for her film The Right of Return.

Inas’ research focuses on the erasure of the remains of demolished Palestinian villages, that have now been turned into Israeli national parks or nature reserves. She explores how the planting of pine trees serves as another means of confiscating land and preventing the return of the original inhabitants, and the invisible violence that continues to occur in each location as the foreign trees grow. During the event, Inas will be presenting elements from this current film project and recent research, including sound recordings from the locations of demolished Palestinian villages that have now been turned into Israeli national parks or nature reserves.

Image credit: Inas Halabi

Climate Confessional: how can we talk differently about the climate crisis? | 29 January 2025 | 17:00 | Rijksmuseum Boerhaave (Leiden)
2025-01-29 17:00 - 19:30 | Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Lange St. Agnietenstraat 10, Leiden, 2312 WC, Netherlands
In collaboration with Pathways to Sustainability at Utrecht University, ReCNTR would like to announce this public event as part of our upcoming Lorentz Center workshop Unlocking the Imagination: Art-Science for Radical Transformation.

The event will feature a lecture and Q&A followed by drinks.

Lorentz Lecture: Climate Confessional

In this lecture we will look at The Climate Confessional, an interactive performance that invites participants to reflect on their role in narratives about the climate crisis. Originally presented at two climate change conferences in 2023, this intervention reimagines the space of a confessional booth as a site for shared contemplation about major societal challenges we face. Join us for a conversation between the creators of the Climate Confessional and several artists and scientists who have experienced it.

This event is part of a week-long Lorentz workshops Art-Science for Radical Transformation, which brings together diverse artists, humanities scholars, and social scientists to reimagine the joint role of art and science to collectively respond to the climate crisis.

About the Speaker/Team

Ekaterina Volkova is an artist and interactive media designer exploring critical making as a response to large-scale political issues. Together with Julien Thomas, she created The Climate Confessional. They have been working with the Dutch national climate delegation since early 2024 to explore dramaturgies of international climate negotiations. Their work looks into the scripts, spaces, and processes that produce (dis)agreement, and seeks strategies for alternative climate futures.

Costs: free with a museum ticket or student card/Museumcard or you can purchase a museum ticket at the museum desk.

Tickets and further details

Image credit: Ekaterina Volkova

ReCNTR Graduate Student Remix | 10 April 2025 | 14:00 | Living Lab 1B.01 Leiden
2025-04-10 14:00 - 16:00 | Living Lab 1B.01, Pieter de la Court Building, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333AK, Netherlands
We would like to invite graduate students (resMA, MA and PhD), thinkers, tinkerers, and anyone curious about exploring new ways of engaging with research to join us for a unique, playful re-interpretation of the traditional social mixer. This event is all about creative collaboration and multimodality. Bring one artefact from your research—whether its an idea, an image, a text, or something else—and re-mix it in collaboration with fellow participants. Don’t worry if you’re new to multimodal approaches—this event is designed to give you a hands-on taste of how different perspectives and methods can come together and enrich your work.
You will also have the chance to meet the ReCNTR team, learn about our exciting initiatives, and become part of the growing network of researchers, artists, and thinks in Leiden. Whether you’re experienced with multimodal research or just curious to try something new, this event offers a welcoming space to connect, explore, and experiment with ideas.
We can only accommodate a limited number of participants (max 12) therefore, we encourage you to express your interest by emailing us at recntr@fsw.leidenuniv.nl by no later than April 2nd. Participation is on a first-come, first served basis.

After the two-hour session, we’ll head to Stadscafè Van der Werff for drinks, where you can continue the conversation and build lasting connections. Come for the creativity, stay for the multimodal fun!

In the Making #12: On Algorithmic Cultures: Prediction, Simulation, and the Incalculable Model| 22 May 2025|19:00|West, Den Haag
2025-05-22 19:00 - 21:00 | West Den Haag, Lange Voorhout 102,, Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, 2514 EJ, Netherlands
We are delighted to be part of this session of the public series In the Making, a joint collaboration between The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) of Leiden University and Art Institute West Den Haag. This session will be presented by Femke Herregraven, and include Dr. Marleen Stikker and ReCNTR’s own Dr. Francesco Ragazzi as discussants.

Prediction, Simulation, and the Incalculable Model
Through a series of recent works, this talk explores the modelling and financialization of the future. It reflects on how, rather than rejecting technology, technological tools can be repurposed to experiment with image making when perception collapses, to escape the categorisation of the model, and how to speak when language no longer suffices. How can the entanglement of language, code, matter, and predictive structures become a new protocol for image and art making? Underpinning this talk is the question of artistic research method and what a method means within a state of vertigo and disorientation.

About the Presenter
Femke Herregraven’s work explores the effects of abstract value systems on landscapes, ecosystems, historiography, and daily life. Her research into the interaction between financial markets, risks, and the physical world forms the foundation for her iterative sculptures, drawings, films, and hybrid installations. Over the past decade, she has focused on financial, geological, and climatological self-organizing systems that both shape and disrupt daily life. A recurring theme in her work is the financialization of the future as crisis, which she examines through catastrophe bonds as a set of potential distributions of risk and catastrophe. Her work employs textual, computational, and gestural languages to reflect on how these contemporary future models shape the experience of reality and the very ground on which it stands. Herregraven is an alumnus of the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam (2017-2018), and obtained the Creator Doctus title at the Sandberg Institute in 2024. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Prix de Rome, awarded the Evens Arts Prize 2023 and the Theodora Niemeijer Prize in 2025.

Discussants:
Dr. Marleen Stikker is founder and executive director of Waag Futurelab in Amsterdam. Waag Futurelab reinforces critical reflection on technology, develops technological and social design skills, and encourages social innovation. Marleen leads the trans-disciplinary team of designers, artists and scientists, utilising Public Research and Key Enabling Methodologies to empower people to participate in the collective design of open, fair and inclusive futures. Marleen founded ‘De Digitale Stad’ (The Digital City) in 1993, the first virtual community introducing free public access to the Internet in Amsterdam. In 2021 she was appointed professor of practice by HvA, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Dr. Francesco Ragazzi is associate professor in International Relations at Leiden University (Netherlands) and co-director of ReCNTR. Francesco has directed and produced several documentary films. In his current collective research project SECURITY VISION Francesco explores, through quantitative, qualitative, film and coding methods, the security uses of computer vision in areas such as biometric surveillance, social media content moderation and border control.

Register for a free ticket here

Image Credit: Femke Herregraven, exhibition at Radius (Delft, 2025)

Talk + Gaming Workshop: Zoo as a Future Heritage|28 May 2025|14:00|Leiden University
2025-05-28 14:00 - 16:30 | Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden, 2333 AK, Netherlands
SIMMR (Student Initiative for Multimodal Methods in Research) is delighted to announce its first student-led event: a book talk/presentation by designer Terezie Štindlova, followed by a participatory gaming workshop by artist-researcher Yun-Pei Hsuing.

Event Description:
This combined talk and gaming workshop explores participatory art designed to engage the public in reimagining zoos for a better future. Zoos, as cultural and political constructs, have complex origins rooted in imperialism and power, and their heritage narratives are often shaped by anthropomorphic and human-centred top-down decisions. By diving into participatory modes of conducting design research, this lecture-workshop seeks to incorporate speculative thinking into communal acts of creation for reimagining zoos and their cultural heritage as constitutive of human-animal relations.
In the first part, invited artist and designer Terezie Śtindlova will provide a firsthand introduction to her captivating book, Zoo Index, which examines the (un)relevance of zoos and how they shape our gaze towards nonhuman animals, to ourselves and one another. Following her presentation, artist-researcher Yun-Pei Hsuing will lead a board-game workshop to develop design research methods where participants will explore alternative and speculative futures for zoos through various gameplay strategies.

Timetable:
14:00 – 15:00: Lecture by Terezie Štindlová: The Making of Zoo Index: An Introduction
15:00 – 15:15: Break (Tea and snacks)
15:15 – 16:30: Gaming Workshop by Yun-Pei Hsuing

Location:
Johan Huizinga Building, Room 0.11 (Journalism Lab), Leiden University (Doelensteeg 16. Leiden)

About the Artists:
Terezie Štindlová is a designer, one half of a non-workaholic studio Day Shift Office, a concrete office chair maker and a founder of the ZOO Index project. Her research dives into the (un)necessity of zoos in contemporary society in connection with current office culture, shedding light on the power dynamics of labour and control exerted through (human) design. She graduated from Werkplaats Typografie in 2023 and is currently based in Amsterdam.
Born in 1985 and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, Yun-Pei Hsiung is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in Design Products. His practice focuses on creating tools and participatory workshops, using social sculpture to inspire collective action. His work frequently engages with themes of public space, social housing, neo-capitalism, and Taiwan’s geopolitical landscape. Additionally, Yun-Pei utilises drawing as a medium for self-expression, exploring and expressing his queer Asian identity.

Installation: How to Un(name) a Tree | Artist Talk + Panel Discussion + Walking Tour | 6 June 2025 | 15:15 | Hortus Botanicus, Leiden
2025-06-06 15:15 - 16:00 | Hortus Botanicus, Leiden, Rapenburg 73, Leiden, Leiden, 2311 WJ, Netherlands
SIMMR (Student Initiative for Multimodal Methods in Research) is excited to announce the second student-led event this semester, organised by MA student/researcher Xinrong Hu: the launch of artist Adong Zheng’s site-specific installation How to Un(name) a Tree, followed by an artist talk, panel discussion with curator Augustina Cai and walking tour by Xinrong Hu. Visitors are warmly invited to participate in this afternoon of shared dialogue, critical reflection, and collective (un)learning across artistic, scientific, and cultural perspectives.

Event Description:

Artist Andong Zheng’s long-term project How to (Un) Name a Tree investigates the contested identities of three morphologically similar pine species: Pinus taiwanensis (Taiwan red pine), Pinus luchuensis (Ryukyu pine) and Pinus hwangshanensis (Huangshan pine), the last of which is native to Anhui, China, Zheng’s own place of origin. In 2024, he encountered a Huangshan pine sapling growing in the “Chinese Garden” of the Leiden Botanical Garden. As a foreign species confronted with a different institutional and cultural audience, the work takes on a new “face”. The botanical garden, as a historical symbol of scientific modernity and imperial knowledge systems, becomes both the site and subject of intervention.
Thus, as a gesture of orientation and disruption, Zheng is developing a site-specific viewing installation around the Huangshan pine sapling. Visitors are invited to reflect on the tree’s taxonomic displacement and iconographic significance and its cultural, environmental, and geographical entanglements. Within this framework, the garden becomes a stage where global scientific knowledge and localised, indigenous understandings collide. The installation challenges epistemic universalism by unsettling the neutrality of Latin taxonomy and revealing its ideological foundations. Furthermore, by inviting viewers to engage in the embodied act of seeing, it further questions whether “unlearning” dominant systems is itself sufficient, or whether it risks reproducing new hierarchies under the guise of correction.

Location:
Orangery, Hortus Botanicus. Rapenburg 73, Leiden.

Bios:

HU Xinrong is currently an MA student in Art and Culture at Leiden University. As a writer and former editor at The Art Newspaper China, her practice focuses on questioning the narrative and representational relationship between text and visual art, as well as exploring alternative ways of engaging with art beyond institutional frameworks. Her writings have been published in ArtReview, LEAP, Ocula, and other publications.

Andong Zheng (b. 1992, Hefei, China) lives and works in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He received his MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2019 and is continuing his studies in Photography & Society at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. Working primarily with lens-based media, Zheng seeks to open up new ways of knowing that traverse rationality. He often starts from small traces such as a shadow, a marginal detail in an archive, or an unusual flower. These elements become points of departure for unraveling broader systems. Trained in engineering, he learned to focus on micro details within rigid causal frameworks, but this very training led him to question the larger structures they sustain. His work has been exhibited at numerous international institutions and galleries, including Centre régional de la photographie Hauts-De-France (France), the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts at Brown University (USA), Times Museum (China), Ames Yavuz (Singapore), and ClampArt (USA). He was shortlisted for the 9th Huayu Youth Award (2021) and the 10th Jimei x Arles Discovery Award (2024). His work has also been featured in publications such as The Routledge Companion to Photography, Representation and Social Justice, British Journal of Photography, and Chinese Photography.

Augustina Cai is an independent curator and researcher, based in Den Haag(NL) and Wuhan(CN). She holds degrees in both Global and Comparative Philosophy and Art History from Leiden University. After pursuing a Mathematics degree at Wuhan University, she transitioned to work as an assistant curator for numerous contemporary photography and art exhibitions. She also worked at the Institute for Provocation (IFP), an alternative art space in Beijing that specialises in artist residencies and public programs for the community. She co-initiated Decolonial Being Network(DBN), aiming to reveal the coloniality of contemporary beings within everyday life, to imagine a decolonial future. Her other curatorial interests include: 1) The concept and activities of play as an alternative way of being, liberating us from the trap of rationality, arbitrariness, and enslavement; 2) alternative medical culture and its implications on different modes of perceiving and understanding human/nonhuman bodies.

My Want of You Partakes of Me| Film Screening + Discussion | 20 June 2025 | 18:45| Filmhuis Den Haag
2025-06-20 18:45 - 20:45 | Filmhuis, Spui 191, Den Haag, 2511 BN, Netherlands
We are delighted to host a screening of this film by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner in conjunction with Filmhuis Den Haag. The screening will be followed by a discussion and Q&A moderated by filmmaker and researcher Bo Wang.

My Want of You Partakes of Me
(2024) 54 mins – by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner

The film interrogates digestion as the fundamental condition for being in the world, a process of physiological, psychological, spiritual, literary and political dimensions. Multiple storylines trace the poetics of incorporation as a matter of metamorphosis and decay, the philosophy of matter and imperial conquest, industrialisation and annihilation, poetry and parenting, love and citation.

The film was awarded the Jury Special Mention New: Vision Competition, CPH:DOX.

About the filmmaker

Dr. Sasha Litvintseva is a London-based artist, filmmaker, and writer whose work since 2018 has been shaped by her ongoing collaboration with Beny Wagner. Her films have screened internationally at major festivals including Berlinale, Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, RIDM Montreal, Punto de Vista, and Edinburgh International Film Festival, among many others.

Her work has also been showcased at prominent art institutions such as Tate Modern, ICA London, Museum of the Moving Image (NY), Seoul Mediacity Biennale, and Mumok Vienna. She has been the subject of retrospectives at venues like Courtisane Festival, UnionDocs NY, and e-flux Screening Room.

Sasha’s films have received numerous international awards, including the Sylvestre Award at IndieLisboa and Best Short Documentary at the Guanajuato Film Festival, and have been longlisted for an Academy Award. Her work is distributed by Square Eyes and the Criterion Channel, and has been featured in Cahiers du Cinéma, Sight & Sound, Frieze, and Filmmaker Magazine.

She holds a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art and a PhD from Goldsmiths. Currently a senior lecturer in film at Queen Mary University of London, she was awarded the 2024 Philip Leverhulme Prize. Sasha is the author of Geological Filmmaking (2022) and co-author of All Thoughts Fly: Monster, Taxonomy, Film (2021), with writing also appearing in e-flux and Environmental Humanities.

Discussant
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, and Best Doc Short at Sharjah Film Platform. 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.

Purchase your tickets here

Image Credit: Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner My Want of You Partakes of Me (2024)

Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body + Slet 1998| 5 February 2026 | 19:30 | Netherlands Film Academy Amsterdam
2026-02-05 19:30 - 22:00 | Amsterdamse Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten, Markenplein 1, Amsterdam, 1011 MV, Netherlands
ReCNTR and the Master of Film at the Netherlands Film Academy are happy to present a double screening of Marta Popivoda’s work, followed by a Q&A with film critic Neil Young.
YUGOSLAVIA, HOW IDEOLOGY MOVED OUR COLLECTIVE BODY
2013, 62 min, Serbia / France / Germany
Synopsis. The ﬁlm explores how ideology performs itself in public space through mass performances. The author collected and analyzed ﬁlm and video footage from the period of Yugoslavia (1945 – 2000), focusing on state performances (youth work actions, May Day parades, celebrations of the Youth Day, etc.) as well as counter-demonstrations (’68, student and civic demonstrations in the ‘90s, 5th October revolution, etc.). Going back through the images, the film traces how communist ideology was gradually exhausted through the changing relations between the people, ideology, and the state.
Directors statement. This research-based essay film offers a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into several democratic nation-states. Experience of the dissolution of the state, and today’s “wild” capitalist reestablishment of the class system in Serbia, are my reasons for going back through the media images and tracing the way one social system changed by performing itself in public space. (Marta Popivoda)
SLET 1988
2025, 22 min, Germany / France / Serbia
Synopsis. In Slet 1988, dancer Sonja Vukićević (74) moves through socialist-modernist spaces, her body is an archive of the last mass performance in Yugoslavia. Her gestures echo past rhythms and present realities, intertwining with a 1988 teenage girl’s diary to reveal the shift from socialist collectivism to rising individualism while a new national collective body is creeping in and will soon shape the future of the country.

Marta Popivoda
Marta POPIVODA (1982, Serbia) is a Berlin-based filmmaker, video-artist and researcher. Her work explores tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a focus on antifascist and feminist potentialities of the Yugoslav socialist project. She cherishes collective practice in art-making and research, and for several years has been part of the TkH (Walking Theory) collective. Popivoda’s first feature documentary, Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, premiered at the 63rd Berlinale and was later screened at many international film festivals. The film is part of the permanent collection of MoMA New York, and it’s featured in What Is Contemporary Art?, MoMA’s online course about contemporary art from 1980 to the present. Her work has also featured in major art galleries, such as Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, M HKA Antwerp and Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana Popivoda received the prestigious Berlin Art Prize for the visual arts by Akademie der Künste Berlin and Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artist. Her new feature documentary Landscapes of Resistance will premiere in the Tiger Competition of the IFFR 2021.
Neil Young
Neil Young is a film-critic and curator/programmer based mainly in Sunderland (UK) and Vienna. His reviews and festival reports appear regularly in The Hollywood Reporter, Sight & Sound, Tribune (London), MUBI Notebook and other international outlets. Formerly director of the Bradford International Film Festival (2011-15), he works as a consultant advising several European film-festivals including the Viennale.

Choreographies of Power and Counter-Power: The Socialist Body in Yugoslavia, a conversation with filmmaker Marta Popivoda | 6 February 2026 | 15:00-17:00 | Leiden
2026-02-06 15:15 - 17:00 | Herta Mohr Building, Witte Singel 27a, Leiden, 2311 BX, Netherlands
Following the screening of Marta Popivoda’s films, Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body and Slet 1998 on Thursday 5th February evening at the Netherlands Film Academy (Amsterdam), we invite you to join us the next day for an afternoon of conversation and collective thinking.
This talk and conversation is dedicated to sharing and discussing Marta Popivoda’s earlier and more recent research, with a particular emphasis on her long-term engagement with the political life of bodies in socialist Yugoslavia and its aftermath. The talk will focus on “Choreographies of Power and Counter-Power: The Socialist Body in Yugoslavia,” taking the films as a starting point to reflect on how ideology was staged in public space through mass performances, youth work actions, and state celebrations, as well as how these forms were later mirrored and challenged in protests and counter-mobilisations.
Speaker
Marta POPIVODA (1982, Serbia) is a Berlin-based filmmaker, video-artist and researcher. Her work explores tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a focus on antifascist and feminist potentialities of the Yugoslav socialist project. She cherishes collective practice in art-making and research, and for several years has been part of the TkH (Walking Theory) collective. Popivoda’s first feature documentary, Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, premiered at the 63rd Berlinale and was later screened at many international film festivals. The film is part of the permanent collection of MoMA New York, and it’s featured in What Is Contemporary Art?, MoMA’s online course about contemporary art from 1980 to the present. Her work has also featured in major art galleries, such as Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, M HKA Antwerp and Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana Popivoda received the prestigious Berlin Art Prize for the visual arts by Akademie der Künste Berlin and Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artist. Her new feature documentary Landscapes of Resistance will premiere in the Tiger Competition of the IFFR 2021.
