RAI Film Seminar: Anarchival Materiality in Archives

Kate Hennessy and Trudi Lynn Smith were recently invited to presented their research-creation work in film, video,ย  and photography in a Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) Film Seminar. We hope to share the recording of the session soon.

Video stills, ‘Residue: Proximal Interactions” by Trudi Lynn Smith and Kate Hennessy, 2017.

RAI Film Seminar, April 29th 2022
๐—”๐—ป๐—ฎ๐—ฟ๐—ฐ๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜ƒ๐—ฎ๐—น ๐— ๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ๐—ฟ๐—ถ๐—ฎ๐—น๐—ถ๐˜๐˜† ๐—ถ๐—ป ๐—”๐—ฟ๐—ฐ๐—ต๐—ถ๐˜ƒ๐—ฒ๐˜€
Speakers:
๐——๐—ฟ ๐—ž๐—ฎ๐˜๐—ฒ ๐—›๐—ฒ๐—ป๐—ป๐—ฒ๐˜€๐˜€๐˜† (Simon Fraser University)
๐——๐—ฟ ๐—ง๐—ฟ๐˜‚๐—ฑ๐—ถ ๐—Ÿ๐˜†๐—ป๐—ป ๐—ฆ๐—บ๐—ถ๐˜๐—ต (University of Victoria)
In this talk, we present a series of video and photography-based research-creation artworks that have emerged through our collaborative exploration of anarchival materiality in archives. This work acknowledges and visualizes the agency of anarchival materiality, where the order and structure of human-made film archives and other fugitive collections are displaced by the lively anarchy of the materials themselves. Classification systems, spatial organization, and human responsibilities and actions are all fundamentally reshaped and determined by the uncooperative residents of archives, which vibrantly signal the transformative organic passing of time, unstable regimes of value and authority, and the collusion of natural processes in undermining the human desire for stability and persistence. From our explorations remediating degraded magenta film stock, to improvisational video work with photographic negatives, to documentation of fugitive paleontology collections and their stewards in northern British Columbia, Canada, we position our art-led practice as oriented towards an anthropology of the multimodal that is engaged with the materiality of ethnographic research, acknowledges the fugitivity of analog and digital collections, and includes speculative research-creation practices to communicate anthropological knowledge and theory.
๐—•๐—ถ๐—ผ๐—ด๐—ฟ๐—ฎ๐—ฝ๐—ต๐—ถ๐—ฒ๐˜€:
Kate Hennessy and Trudi Lynn Smith are anthropologists and practising artists that have worked together as curators and collaborators since 2009 as a part of Ethnographic Terminalia, an international curatorial collective exhibiting and creating works at the intersection of art and anthropology. Hennessy is an associate professor at Simon Fraser Universityโ€™s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, where she leads the Making Culture Lab, an interdisciplinary research and production studio. Smith is an adjunct assistant professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Together they explore cultural practices of media, museums, and archives in the context of technoscience. Their art practice in video, photography, and text has engaged with entropy in diverse collections and the environmental, social, and political impacts of new digital memory infrastructures. Hennessy and Smith highlight collaboration and friendship as central to their work.