ENTANGLED RESTITUTIONS: ON THE ROLE OF CONTEMPORARY FILMS
Arnd Schneider
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
12.05. | 6:30pm
Votiv Kino, Gr. Saal | TICKETS (Free Entry)
This year’s keynote lecture is inspired by the recent debate on the restitution of museum objects, particularly those from Western ethnographic collections, and expands on the question “Can Film Restitute?” raised by Arnd Schneider in his book Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image (Routledge, 2021). Building on historical films critical of the status of non-Western art objects in Western colonial museums (e.g., Alain Resnais and Chris Marker’s Les Statues meurent aussi / Statues also die, France, 1953, 30 min.), the talk will review a number of recent film works that problematise the current status of art objects, including calls for their return and documentation.
In contrast with mainstream documentaries and feature films, here the focus will be on moving image works by artists and filmmakers who work with experimental formats such as animation, split screen, installations, multi-channel video and performance. Among the works discussed in this keynote are How to Steal a Canoe, dir. Amanda Strong, Canada, 2016, 4 mins, The Return of the Axum Obelisk, dir. Theo Eshetu, Ethiopia / Great Britain, 2009, 27 mins, Legacy of Silence, dir. Janine Prins, Netherlands, 2017, 8 mins, Restolen, dir. Leone Contini, Italy, 2017, 14 mins, and Cook’s New Clothes: First Procession for Tupaia, dir. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, Great Britain, 2018, 12 mins.
Finally, Schneider goes on to discuss restitution in a figurative sense (e.g. the case of an early 20th century Swedish-Argentine archaeologist in The Noise of Time, dir. Ruben Guzman, Argentina, 2022, 64 mins) and discuss some experimental works, where the ‘return’ is that of a haunted spiritual fiction, or indeed the foreboding of a future restitution when full rights remain as yet unfulfilled (e.g. We are unarmed, Cyrill Lachauer, Germany/USA, 2020, 2 mins).
Keynote held in English.
Keynote lecture will be live streamed on FACEBOOK.
Biography
ARND SCHNEIDER is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, and was formerly Reader in Anthropology at the University of East London and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg. He writes on contemporary art and anthropology, migration, and film. He was a co-organizer of the international conference “Fieldworks: Dialogues between Art and Anthropology” (Tate Modern, 2003). Among his numerous publications are: Expanded Visions: A New Anthropology of the Moving Image. Routledge 2021; Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina. Palgrave 2006; (as editor) Alternative Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters. Bloomsbury 2017; as co-editor with Caterina Pasqualino: Experimental film and Anthropology, Bloomsbury,2014; and with Chris Wright: Contemporary Art and Anthropology. Berg 2006;Between Art and Anthropology. Berg 2010 and Anthropology and Art Practice. Bloomsbury 2013. Between 2016 and 2019 Arnd Schneider was a principal investigator (PI) in TRACES (Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts: From Intervention to Co-production) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme – his edited book from this research isArt, Anthropology and Contested Heritage,Bloomsbury 2019.
