Archivio di Etnografia 1-2/2014

Contents

MAKING IMAGES OF AFRICA

Lorenzo Ferrarini Intersubjectivity and Collaboration: A Conversation with Steven Feld

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Essays

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Richard Werbner Empathy and Sympathy: Reflexivity in Christian Charismatic Filmmaking

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Lorenzo Ferrarini, Nicola Scaldaferri Filming as Exploring: Researching the Musical Practice of the Sambla Xilophone through Documentary Film

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Stefano Allovio The Polysemy of Visual Representations: The Mangbetu of the Congo between Colonialism and Ethnography

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Cecilia Pennacini The Visual Anthropology Archive: Images of Africa in Italian Collections

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Ivan Bargna Filming Food Cultural Practices in Cameroon: An Artistic and Ethnographic Work

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Review Article by Massimiliano Minelli The Wandering Orixรกs: Spirit Possession and Genealogies of Afro-Atlantic Religions

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Lorenzo Ferrarini Introduction

The Authors

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Introduction

1 Despite the focus on images of the title I consider visual anthropology an unfortunate label that misrepresents the role of sound in ethnographic filmmaking and marginalises the anthropology of sound.

Despite alternative labels surfacing from time to time, visual anthropology is the one that has the longest history. Much of what follows, then can also be applied to sonic representations and their use in anthropology (see Scaldaferri 2015: 347).

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Archivio di Etnografia • n.s., a. IX, n. 1-2 • 2014 • 7-14

This English language special issue of Archivio di Etnografia gathers contributions dedicated to the making of images of the African continent. Anthropologists and filmmakers reflect on their own productions or analyse archives of images dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Among the topics touched on are methodological issues, reflexivity, ethics, the political implications of representing others, and the possibilities opened by collaboration.

The title of this issue, in its simplicity, contains an important clue to the approach adopted transversally in all the articles. Making images,1 as opposed to taking, shooting or recording, highlights an attention to the process and the constructed character of audiovisual representation. The inspiration for this title comes, perhaps surprisingly, from legendary landscape photographer Ansel Adams, who is often quoted as having said “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” Adams, who is famous for his majestic large format photographs of the American West and for the development of the zone system, demonstrated an anthropological sensibility when he added “To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’” Not only then did he seek to draw attention to the authorial process of creating an image, but he demonstrated awareness of the complex processes of reception that surround the production and subsequent life of a photographic representation. An awareness that sounds very much in tune with contemporary anthropological takes on landscape as cultural process (Hirsch, O’Hanlon 1995; Ingold 2000).

At a fundamental level then, the authors of the articles in this issue refuse to treat images and the sounds that sometimes accompany them as mere documents, reproductions of a reality that speak independently of the context of their making.

This means, as practising visual anthropologists, questioning every step in the mak-

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ing of an audiovisual ethnography, from the technical and technological choices to the relationship between the making of a film and the broader research it derives from (Ferrarini and Scaldaferri, Bargna). It also means not stopping after the editing is complete but considering the reception of the film as a topic of research in itself (Werbner), or analysing the historical context of production of a photographic collection (Allovio, Pennacini). This might include the dynamics behind the financing of a film and the struggles over its social lives between the authors and the organisation who commissioned it (Bargna).

As remarked by David MacDougall (1978: 422), the meaning of an ethnographic film is the product of a negotiation between the three components of a triangle made of the subjects, the filmmaker and the audience. Such a conception implies an openness of meaning that affords multiple levels of analysis of diverse social interactions revolving around the production and fruition of photographs, films and sound recordings. This attention to everything that surrounds the image-artefact places visual anthropologists in the double role of image-makers and analysts of (sometimes, reflexively, their own) audiovisual media. This duality is reflected in the meeting under the label of visual anthropology of those who use images and sounds as a research method and those who study audiovisual cultural productions.

The texts that form this issue offer examples of both ways of doing visual anthropology, being concerned with the phase of production of an ethnographic film (Ferrarini and Scaldaferri, Bargna), its reception after completion (Werbner), or with the ethnographic use of images that were produced in very different times and contexts (Allovio, Pennacini). Some of the contributors use audiovisual media as an integral part of their research methods, but in general we all advocate a role for images and sounds in anthropology that can work in parallel with text and not simply as an illustration. We look at audiovisual ethnographies as means to convey a knowledge beyond text, one that only partially overlaps with more traditional written ethnographies. As underlined by MacDougall’s films, sound recordings and photographs bear an indexical trace of moments of encounter between their subjects and their maker, they are characterised by the irreducible individuality of that unique moment – unlike the often generalising retrospection of writing. Importantly, these media preserve something of the sensory dimension of the ethnographic encounter, they act on the viewer “as hyperawareness, shock, and pleasure” (MacDougall 2006: 58). With all the diversity of approaches represented in the articles presented here, the authors feel the need for works like this special issue to bring a contribution to anthropology in general, rather than being addressed to the specialised practitioners of a subdiscipline.

All articles in this issue deal with issues of knowledge, starting from Werbner’s focus on the transmission of emotions through the filmic medium, passing by Ferrarini and Scaldaferri’s reflection on the way making a film can give rise to new research questions or Bargna’s advocacy of film as a form of knowledge rather than a means for communicating it, to end with Allovio’s and Pennacini’s analyses on

contexts of production and meanings some hundred years after the images were made.

Another theme that cuts across many of the texts gathered here is that of doing research in audiovisual media as a form of interaction. The obvious ancestor and precursor in this sense is Jean Rouch, who in more than a hundred films shot in West Africa developed a conception of the camera as a catalyst, able to provoke certain situations (Henley 2009: Chapter 8) and as a bridge to communicate and share knowledge with his subjects through feedback screenings. This approach inspired Ferrarini and Scaldaferri in the making of a documentary film on the Sambla xylophone and influences Werbner’s work on the reception of his own films, filming the reactions of viewers around the world. But interaction often implies different levels of agency and different roles, which is where ethics come in the foreground. I am particularly pleased to have Richard Werbner’s discussion of the way his attempts to make a film that would provide a balanced portrait of the deceased archbishop Hallelujah encountered the opposition of part of the relatives. Who can give consent for whom, and when we have to stop our enquiry if faced with disagreements inside an extended family? It is valuable to have an ethnographer reflect honestly on the issues that arise when things go wrong, something that happens more often than one would think by looking at most fieldwork accounts.

The shadow of the colonial era obviously haunts Africanist anthropology, and considering the production of images coming from one of the toughest colonial regimes – that of the King of Belgium over the Congo – reveals radically different forms of interaction between image-makers and subjects. The careful mise-enscène, the stiff poses mindful of anthropometric photography and the tiny human figures placed to give a sense of proportion in the huge landscapes, all point to the simultaneous submission of those same bodies, newly constituted colonial subjects. Another aspect that is evidenced by the essays by Allovio and by Pennacini is the early folklorisation of the performative aspects of these African cultures.

Ritual performances become abstracted from their context to become images to be consumed in Europe, and the photographic medium the instrument of a stiffening that for many of these performances just about preceded their disappearance.

These photographs carry an omen of death, as Barthes famously wrote in Camera Lucida (1980).

Another important characteristic of audiovisual media is that they afford a degree of sharing that academic writing simply cannot achieve. Whether for ethical or more strictly research-related reasons, ethnographic filmmakers have held screenings with their subjects and listened with interest to their feedback, at least since the pioneering example of Jean Rouch (see 2003: 157; he was in turn inspired

by Robert Flaherty’s methods, see Ruby 2000). Werbner stands in this tradition and extends it with films on the reception of his films among foreign audiences, using screening sessions as ways of testing his success at eliciting empathy.

Since ethnographies in images and sounds are in principle more accessible to

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our subjects, they open up many possibilities for collaborative work. While, broadly speaking, most ethical ethnographies require a degree of collaboration, here I refer to situations in which the subjects have an active and determining influence on the shape of the final work. Ferrarini and Scaldaferri detail the sometimes surprising finds that were made possible by involving their subjects as collaborators in making a documentary film with methods beyond the observational. They write about ethnography as a contact zone, in which role boundaries at times get blurred and the researchers take up the roles that habitually are of their subjects, while the latter become almost co-researchers.

Bargna touches on collaboration in a yet different acceptation, in this case the complementary efforts of an anthropologist and an artist. His example seems to promise a dialogue between two fields that are often treated as radically separate and sometimes opposed, but which on the other hand share more elements than it would be expected. His work with artist Paola Anziché continues the explorations into the mutual enrichment of art and anthropology as advocated, among others,

by Schneider and Wright (2006; 2010).

Things were obviously different during the colonial era, when photographic subjects were actually subjugated subjects. We are by now familiar with a number of contributions on the relationships between making images of the Other and ruling them, from anthropometric to aerial photography. Also because of this wellestablished body of literature it is interesting to go, with Allovio, behind the scenes of the earliest moving images of Mangbetu dances. He asks us to consider the possibility that the set up and arranged performances might be revealing of Mangbetu ways of representing power, following an agenda that would run with and in part intersect with that of the image-makers sent by the colonial administration.

Allovio’s examples are mindful of the case of Jean Audema, postcard photographer in the French Congo at the turn of the twentieth century. Unlike those of many of his contemporaries, Audema’s images “stand out for the sense they give of a personal involvement with the subjects” (MacDougall 2006: 205), showing the first move towards a collaborative making of the portraits. If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that anthropology allows to cast a detailed gaze on the production of images, which does not treat them simply as the product of their times but as the outcome of an encounter, always hierarchical but also often collaborative.

Most of the themes I have highlighted so far in the articles gathered in this issue – reflexivity, sensoriality, participation and collaboration – are present in the work of Steven Feld. It was then very appropriate to start off with an interview with the father of the anthropology of sound, who reflects on his lesser known beginnings as a filmmaking visual anthropologist. Although his name is often mentioned in relation to his work in Papua New Guinea (especially 1982, now in its third edition), as a student of Colin Turnbull he had started his graduate studies with the idea of conducting fieldwork on a group of Pygmies, and had even spent a semester in France with Simha Arom and Jean Rouch, in preparation. More recently, and precisely from 2000, he took up making documentaries again, many of which in

the last decade he made in Ghana. Much of the interview is about these later works, but especially in connection with themes already foregrounded in Feld’s research in PNG. Dialogue and collaboration with the subjects have an especially long trajectory in Feld’s work, whose latest film JC Abbey, Ghana’s Puppeteer is to come out in 2016. This documentary is authored collectively with his collaborators in Accra and represents an extension of his experiments with the possibilities afforded by the intersection of technological mediation and collaborative methodologies.

Richard Werbner reflects on his films about Christian faith-healers and charismatics in Botswana, which now amount to eight, and on the relationship between experience and its representation – and hence its communication to others. He uses methods that remind us of Chinese boxes – faith healers filmed watching themselves in a film, audiences commenting on other audiences’ reactions – to engage empathy cross-culturally. As he argued elsewhere (see Conclusion in Werbner 2011) film and text can complement each other without being in opposition nor in a relationship of subordination, especially when the film is in part about the invisible. They can each make their own arguments, but crucially here film allows Werbner to use what he calls elicitation by co-viewing, to get closer to the experience of the two components, with the filmmaker, of the reflexive triangle inside which the meaning of the film is generated: the subjects and the film-goers. Werbner discusses more of his films and it appears more and more clearly how different audiences in different contexts draw different conclusions, including some that are beyond the intentions of the filmmaker. The article presented here equally considers successful and unsuccessful cases of elicitation of empathy and, crucially, it reflects on the ethical consequences of these attempts at communicating experience. Even considering all the dangers of this enterprise, Werbner concludes, filmmaking (in combination with text) is one of the most promising tools to understand the relational and intersubjective generation of empathy and sympathy.

Another case for ethnographic film as an instrument capable of accessing specific layers of knowledge and forms of reality is made by Ferrarini and Scaldaferri.

Their contribution describes the making of a documentary film, currently in postproduction, about the xylophone music of the Sambla people of Burkina Faso. The authors argue for participation and collaboration as two main methodological points that can contribute to make of an ethnographic film a way of doing research, rather than a representation of the outcomes of the latter. While there is an established tradition in this sense that is associated with observational cinema (see Henley 2004), Ferrarini and Scaldaferri use examples from their own fieldwork to show how using the camera to provoke certain situations and taking advantage of digital technologies to establish a dialogue with the subjects on the footage recorded granted unpredicted insights into the world of the Sambla musicians. While these considerations are in part instrumental, or directed at making effective use of the time available to make a film, there are important ethical implications that derive from forms of collaborative filmmaking and involvement of the subjects in the

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research. The article also makes a contribution to the ethnography of the region, touching on fluid identities, kinship and ethnic affiliation in Western Burkina Faso.

Stefano Allovio, who did research among the Mangbetu of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for over twenty years, looks at the images – drawings, moving and still images – made of this people during the colonial period. The question he asks is an important one, namely what can be made of these images if their makers were so compromised – intentionally or simply because of the context in which they operated – by the colonial oppression of African peoples? Can these images still say something about the Mangbetu, or are they by now simply documents of the way travellers, ethnologists and colonial administrators constructed the exotic Other that they were tasked with civilising and exploiting? Allovio answers in a more nuanced way than the many post-modern deconstructionist critics who dismissed the value of the photographs and film reels on the basis of the racist and colonialist frame of mind of their makers. The intersection of those images with the specificities of Mangbetu notions of power and the historical conditions of their production give rise to new meanings, as evident in the case of the solo dances of the chiefs. In other words, images of the Mangbetu are polysemic and are received differently according to different contexts, from the offices of colonial administrators to contemporary anthropologists and passing by art galleries.

Even though the history of Italy’s African colonialism was significantly shorter and more limited than it was for Britain, France, Belgium or Germany, at the turn of the twentieth century a number of Italian missionaries and explorers were active in Africa. For example, Italian museums still hold in their collections a wealth of artefacts and documents brought back by travellers like Vittorio Sella or Guido Piacenza from the Belgian colony of the Congo. In her article Cecilia Pennacini explores these photographic archives to provide us with a context of production, to enable us to approach through the images the values and ideas projected onto the African landscape and peoples by the European explorers. Images of nature and of local customs were equally favourite subjects of these photographers who were not unaware of the international debate on the conditions of the local population that was already at the time starting to emerge. Even in the relative scarcity of written testimonies, these images provide precious historical knowledge not just on the customs of their subjects or the ideology of their makers, but on the encounter that brought them together.

Ivan Bargna is co-author, with artist Paola Anziché, of the documentary Il faut donner à manger aux gens. Food Cultural Practices in Cameroon. The duo completed the film as part of a project connected to the universal exhibition of Expo Milan 2015, and Bargna reflects in his article on a number of issue connected to the circumstances of production of this work. First, he describes the involvement of the funders and the negotiation of his authorship faced with the expectations of the commissioning institution. There is then the issue of the divides to be successfully bridged between his agenda as an ethnographer and that of his artist collabo-

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rator. Finally, the technical process of making the film is approached as a way of creating anthropological knowledge and meanings that vary with the different contexts of consumption of the film. The focus on the politics of the film goes hand in hand with the main focus of the film, which is the politics of food consumption in Cameroon and their relationships with the aesthetic experience of food. The idea of involving an artist came for Bargna from the need to address this aesthetic – read: sensory – dimension, so the film is in this article treated as a contact zone in which different sensibilities complement and enrich each other.

Barthes Roland 1980 Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Hill & Wang.

Feld Steven 1982 Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Henley Paul 2004 Putting Film to Work: Observational Cinema as Practical Ethnography, in Sarah Pink, László Kürti, Ana Isabel Afonso (eds.), Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography, London: Routledge, pp. 109-130.

2009 The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema, Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press.

Hirsch Eric, O’Hanlon Michael (eds.)

1995 The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ingold Tim 2000 The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, London: Routledge.

MacDougall David 1978 Ethnographic Film: Failure and Promise, in «Annual Review of Anthropology», 7, pp. 405-425.

2006 The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses, Princeton (NJ)Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Rouch Jean 2003 Ciné-Ethnography, trans. and ed. by Steven Feld, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ruby Jay 2000 The Aggie Must Come First: Robert Flaherty’s Place in Ethnographic Film History, in Id., Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film & Anthropology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 67-94.

Scaldaferri Nicola 2015 Audiovisual Ethnography: New Paths for Research and Representation in Ethnomusicology, in Gianmario Borio (ed.), Musical Listening in the Age of Technological Reproduction, Farnham (UK): Ashgate, pp. 373-392.

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Bibliography

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â– Introduction

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Schneider Arnd, Wright Christopher (eds.)

2006 Contemporary Art and Anthropology, Oxford: Berg.

2010 Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Ethnographic Practice, OxfordNew York: Berg.

Werbner Richard 2011 Holy Hustlers, Schism, and Prophecy: Apostolic Reformation in Botswana, Pap/ DVD edition, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Abstracts

This conversation reviews themes in the career of anthropologist and filmmaker Steven Feld, from his early work in Papua New Guinea to the latest experiences in Ghana. While Feld is best known for his work in sound, the text looks at his career in ethnographic filmmaking which is as old as the interest in sound recording. Feld retraces his early influences and describes how they shaped his approach to filmmaking. Themes touched on include the role of technology, collaboration, dialogue and reflexivity, to concentrate in particular on his latest films made in Accra, Ghana.

Questa intervista passa in rassegna alcuni temi nella carriera dell’antropologo e cineasta Steven Feld, dai suoi primi lavori in Papua Nuova Guinea alle recenti esperienze in Ghana. Anche se Feld è meglio conosciuto per i suoi lavori nel campo del suono, il testo si concentra sulla sua carriera nel documentario etnografico, che è iniziata contemporaneamente all’interesse per la registrazione del suono. Feld traccia le sue ispirazioni da studente, e descrive come abbiano plasmato il suo approccio al film. Tra i temi toccati il ruolo della tecnologia, la collaborazione, il dialogo e la riflessività, concentrandosi in particolare sui suoi ultimi film realizzati ad Accra, Ghana.

Richard Werbner Empathy and Sympathy: Reflexivity in Christian Charismatic Filmmaking This article is centred on the concept of reflexivity as approached through empathy and sympathy, looking at five of the author’s films on Christian faith-healers and charismatics in Botswana. The text asks what kind of dialogue can take place between the three fundamental components of a reflexive triangle constituted by the subjects, the filmmaker and the filmgoers. The author recounts successful and unsuccessful experiences of eliciting empathy in the filmgoers and subjects through feedback screenings of his films on charismatic Christianity, also touching on the standards for ethical production and the limits of informed consent. A case is made for elicitation screening as a methodology that can allow ethnographic film a role into furthering our understanding of intersubjectivity, sympathy and empathy.

Questo articolo si concentra sul concetto di riflessività attraverso empatia e simpatia, analizzando cinque film dell’autore sul cristianesimo carismatico e i guaritori in

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Lorenzo Ferrarini, Steven Feld Intersubjectivity and Collaboration: A Conversation with Steven Feld

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Botswana. Il testo chiede che sorta di dialogo possa avere luogo fra i tre fondamentali componenti di un triangolo riflessivo composto dai soggetti, il cineasta e gli spettatori.

L’autore racconta di esperimenti più o meno riusciti nel sollecitare empatia negli spettatori attraverso proiezioni dei suoi film sui cristiani carismatici, toccando anche l’argomento degli standard etici per la produzione dei documentari e per il consenso informato. Si propone la proiezione e discussione come un metodo che permette al film etnografico di portare avanti la comprensione dell’intersoggettività, dell’empatia e della simpatia.

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Lorenzo Ferrarini, Nicola Scaldaferri Filming as Exploring: Researching the Musical Practice of the Sambla Xilophone through Documentary Film

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This text is a reflection on the production of the film The Sambla Baan, a documentary on the musical traditions of the Sambla people of Burkina Faso. The authors focus on the ways in which the act of making a film can constitute a form of ethnographic research in itself, as opposed to the mere representation of the results of a previous research. The role of the filmmakers as catalyst and the dialogue that can be established on the basis of rushes and recordings are used as examples of methodologies apt at illuminating new research directions. The methodological reflection is supplemented by findings on the musical practices of the families of Sambla musicians in the village of Karankasso.

Questo testo è una riflessione sul processo di realizzazione del film The Sambla Baan, un documentario sulle tradizioni musicali dei Sambla del Burkina Faso. Gli autori si concentrano sui modi in cui l’atto di realizzare un film può costituire una forma di ricerca in sé, contrapposta alla semplice rappresentazione dei risultati di una precedente ricerca. Il ruolo di catalizzatore del cineasta e il dialogo basato sulla visione delle riprese sono portati a esempio di una metodologia adatta a evidenziare nuovi spunti di ricerca. La riflessione metodologica è supportata da un’etnografia delle pratiche musicali delle famiglie di musicisti nel villaggio di Karankasso.

Stefano Allovio The Polysemy of Visual Representations: The Mangbetu of the Congo between Colonialism and Ethnography In the courts of the Congolese Mangbetu chiefs, dancing was considered an expression of power and skill (nakira). Starting with the reports of late-19th century travellers, we have an abundance of documents (including drawings, photographs, footage) showing the chiefs in a solo dance in front of wives, dignitaries and soldiers. During the Belgian colonial period, chiefs kept performing for the visits of explorers, travellers and administrators. Solo dances express the new colonial order and disciplines of the body in a context of colonial propaganda and commodification of folklore. The text follows the transformations of a performance to underline the complexity of local meanings and the nuances deriving from the various contexts, in order to avoid the simplifications of a generic post-colonial critique.

Nelle corti dei capi mangbetu (Congo nord-orientale) la danza era considerata un’espressione di potere e di abilità (nakira). A partire dai resoconti dei viaggiatori di fine Ottocento, sono molte le testimonianze anche visive (disegni, foto, filmati) che ritrag-

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gono i capi in un assolo di danza davanti a un pubblico composto da mogli, dignitari e soldati. Durante la colonizzazione belga, i capi continuarono ad esibirsi in occasione delle visite di esploratori, viaggiatori e amministratori. L’assolo di danza esprime i mutamenti coloniali e le nuove logiche di disciplinamento dei corpi in un contesto di propaganda e di patrimonializzazione delle forme folkloriche a uso della colonia. L’articolo segue le trasformazioni di un gesto, rileva la complessità dei significati indigeni e coglie le sfumature che emergono dai differenti contesti di esecuzione al fine di non semplificare l’analisi in una generica quanto ovvia critica post-coloniale.

Italy preserves a wide number of collections of photographic and cinematographic images realized in Africa by explorers, travellers, missionaries, soldiers and colonial administrators. These documents were realized not only in the Italian colonial territories but also in other contexts, for instance the Congo. It is an abundant and poorly studied heritage, whose safeguard is nowadays endangered. The article takes into consideration the theoretical and methodological challenges connected with the use of visual sources by Africanist historiography and anthropology. It then focuses on the images realized by two travellers from Biella, Vittorio Sella and Guido Piacenza, who produced an important documentation of their journeys in Central and East Africa at the beginning of the Twenty Century. The comparison of these documents suggests the mostly unexplored opportunities offered by Italian visual archives.

L’Italia conserva numerose collezioni di immagini fotografiche e cinematografiche realizzate in Africa da espoloratori, viaggiatori, missionari, militari e amministratori coloniali. Questi documenti non si limitano ai territori coloniali italiani ma sono abbondanti anche in riferimento ad altre realtà, come ad esempio il Congo. Si tratta di un patrimonio ingente e poco studiato, la cui stessa salvaguardia risulta in alcuni casi a rischio.

L’articolo analizza le sfide teoriche e metodologiche relative all’utilizzo delle fonti visive nella storiografia e nell’antropologia africanistiche, per poi prendere in considerazione le immagini realizzate da due viaggiatori biellesi, Vittorio Sella e Guido Piacenza, i quali produssero un’importante documentazione dei viaggi da loro effettuati in Africa centrale ed orientale nei primi anni del Novecento. La comparazione di questi documenti lascia trasparire le opportunità in gran parte inesplorate offerte dagli archivi visivi italiani.

Ivan Bargna Filming Food Cultural Practices in Cameroon: An Artistic and Ethnographic Work Food practices in Cameroon raise the question of the relationships between tradition and modernity, the local and the global. They show how deeply food and culture are embedded in politics, in the multiple power relationships that are scattered throughout everyday life, both in the rural areas of the Grassfields and in the urban space of Douala. These topics are the subject of the film Il faut donner à manger aux gens. Food Cultural Practices in Cameroon made by artist Paola Anziché and anthropologist Ivan Bargna in 2015. This article examines the process of making the film. The author analyses his collaboration with the artist on the background of the event of Expo Milan 2015, which

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Cecilia Pennacini The Visual Anthropology Archive: Images of Africa in Italian Collections

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provided the occasion for this video. Artistic practice and anthropological knowledge (positioning in the field, use of the camera, editing, and distribution of work) are seen in their relationships with the communication constraints related to the event. In this way, the ethnographic field is extended from Cameroon to Milan, while the film is treated as an object always in the making, a distributed form of existence, disseminated in time and space.

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L’esame delle pratiche alimentari in Camerun pone la questione delle relazioni fra tradizione e modernità, del locale e del globale, mostrando quanto profondamente cibo e cultura sono incorporati nella politica, nelle relazioni di potere molteplici che sono disseminate nella vita quotidiana, sia nelle aree rurali dei Grasfields che nello spazio urbano di Douala. Queste questioni cotituiscono il soggetto del film Il faut donner à manger aux gens. Pratiche culturali dell’alimentazione in Camerun realizzato dall’artista Paola Anziché e dall’antropologo Ivan Bargna nel 2015. L’articolo esamina il processo di costruzione del film. L’autore analizza la sua collaborazione con l’artista sullo sfondo dell’evento di Expo Milano 2015, che ha fornito l’occasione per la produzione di queso video: la pratica artistica. Così facendo, estende il campo etnografico dal Camerun a Milano, mentre il film viene trattato come un oggetto sempre in corso di farsi, come una forma distribuita di esistenza, disseminata nel tempo e nello spazio.

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Massimiliano Minelli The Wandering Orixás: Spirit Possession and Genealogies of Afro-Atlantic Religions This article reviews some recent anthropological reinterpretations of spirit possession in Afro-Atlantic religions, trying to investigate various issues of becoming “possessed,” becoming a “person,” and becoming a “spirit.” First, it starts with some critical comments on the modern concept of person through the lens of spirit possession, in particular the strict division between material and spiritual aspects of human agency. Second, it follows some critical interpretations of “possession,” which focus mainly on the movement and location of the actors involved. Third, it tries to reflect on ethnographies concerning the dissociative states of consciousness, based on insider accounts of experts and practitioners of spirit possession. In conclusion, it engages with the Deleuzian concept of becoming and its methodological implications for the positioning of the ethnographer and his/her practices in the field of spirit possession.

L’articolo propone una lettura di alcune recenti interpretazioni antropologiche della possessione spiritica nelle religioni Afro-Atlantiche, considerando vari aspetti del diventare “posseduto”, “persona”, “spirito”. In primo luogo, sono esposte alcune osservazioni critiche sul concetto moderno di persona, se osservato attraverso la lente della possessione spiritica, focalizzando in particolare la rigida divisione tra aspetti materiali e spirituali dell’agency. In secondo luogo, sono ricostruite alcune interpretazioni critiche della “possessione” che tengono conto soprattutto dei movimenti e della dislocazione degli attori coinvolti. In terzo luogo, sono prese in considerazione alcune etnografie riguardanti gli stati dissociativi, costruite attraverso testimonianze e resoconti di esperti e professionisti della possessione spiritica. Nella conclusione sono considerate le implicazioni metodologiche della crisi e della trasformazione (attraverso il concetto deleuziano di divenire) per quanto riguarda sia il posizionamento dell’etnografo sia le sue pratiche di ricerca nel campo della possessione.

The Authors

Stefano Allovio (stefano.allovio@unimi.it) teaches Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Milan. He has conducted research in Burundi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the Western Italian Alps. His works on the Mangbetu include: La foresta di alleanze (1999) and Culture e congiunture. Saggi di etnografia e storia mangbetu (2006).

Stefano Allovio (stefano.allovio@unimi.it) insegna Antropologia culturale e Antropologia sociale presso l’Università di Milano Statale. Ha svolto ricerche in Burundi, nella Repubblica democratica del Congo e nelle Alpi occidentali. Fra i lavori dedicati ai gruppi mangbetu si segnalano: La foresta di alleanze (1999) e Culture e congiunture. Saggi di etnografia e storia mangbetu (2006).

Ivan Bargna (ivan.bargna@unimib.it) is Associate Professor of Aesthetic Anthropology at the University of Milan Bicocca and Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Bocconi University. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the MUDEC - Museum of Cultures in Milan. Since 2001, he has been carrying out his ethnographic research in Cameroon’s Grassfields, where he studies arts, visual culture, and food practices. Among his topics, are the relationships between anthropological ethnography and artistic practices.

He is the author of a number of publications including African Art (Milan 1998; St. Léger Vauban 1998; New York and London 2000; Madrid 2000) and Africa (Milan 2007; Berlin 2008; Los Angeles 2009).

Ivan Bargna (ivan.bargna@unimib.it) è professore associato di Antropologia estetica all’Università di Milano Bicocca e professore di Antropologia culturale all’Università Bocconi. È membro del comitato scientifico del MUDEC - Museo delle Culture di Milano. Dal 2001 ha condotto le sue ricerche etnografiche nei Grassfields camerunesi dove studia le produzioni artistiche, la cultura visuale e le pratiche alimentari. Fra i suoi argomenti di studio, le relazioni fra etnografia antropologica e pratiche artistiche. È autore di numerose pubblicazioni fra cui Arte africana (Milano 1998; St. Léger Vauban 1998; New York e Londra 2000; Madrid 2000) e Africa (Milano 2007; Berlino 2008; Los Angeles 2009).

Steven Feld (feld@unm.edu) is an anthropologist, filmmaker, sound artist, and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of New Mexico. From 1976 he began a research project in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. Results include the monograph Sound and Sentiment (2012 [1982]). From this work he also produced audio

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projects including the CD Voices of the Rainforest (1991). Key theoretical themes developed in this work are the anthropology of sound; acoustemology; dialogic writing, recording, and filmmaking. His most recent project concerns jazz in West Africa, published in the ten CD, four DVD, and book set Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra (2012). His work has been supported and honored by MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships as well as book and film prizes.

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Steven Feld (feld@unm.edu) è un antropologo, cineasta, sound artist, e Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus alla University of New Mexico. Dal 1976 ha lavorato nella foresta pluviale della Nuova Guinea. Tra i risultati la monografia Sound and Sentiment (2012 [1982]). Da questo lavoro ha anche prodotto pubblicazioni sonore come il CD Voices of the Rainforest (1991). Tra i temi principali del suo lavoro l’antropologia del suono; acustemologia; scrittura, registrazione e film dialogici. Il suo progetto più recente tratta di jazz in Africa occidentale, pubblicato nel set Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra (2012), costituito di 10 CD, 4 DVD e un libro. Il suo lavoro è stato supportato e riconosciuto dalle MacArthur e Guggenheim fellowships, oltre che da premi internazionali.

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Lorenzo Ferrarini (lorenzo.ferrarini@manchester.ac.uk) is Lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester, where he teaches Ethnographic Documentary at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. Before moving to Britain he studied anthropology and ethnomusicology in Italy, where he collaborates with the LEAV - Ethnomusicology and Visual Anthropology Laboratory at the University of Milan. He has done fieldwork research on Egyptian migrants in Italy and donso hunters in Burkina Faso. He is author of the documentary Kalanda – The Knowledge of the Bush (2014).

Lorenzo Ferrarini (lorenzo.ferrarini@manchester.ac.uk) è lecturer in antropologia visuale alla University of Manchester, dove insegna documentario etnografico al Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. Prima di trasferirsi in Gran Bretagna ha studiato antropologia ed etnomusicologia in Italia, dove collabora con il Laboratorio di Etnomusicologia e Antropologia Visuale (LEAV). Ha portato a termine due ricerche sul campo tra i migranti egiziani a Milano e tra i cacciatori donso in Burkina Faso. È autore del documentario Kalanda – The Knowledge of the Bush (2014).

Massimiliano Minelli (massimiliano.minelli@unipg.it) PhD, is Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Perugia, where he teaches Methodologies of Ethnographic Research and Medical Anthropology and Ethnopsychiatry. His main research interests are focused on the relationship between cultural processes, forms of mental disorder and public strategies for community mental health. He also deals with social networks, community resources and social capital in public health. On these issues he has conducted ethnographic research for several years in Italy and in Brazil. Among his publications: Santi, demoni, giocatori. Una etnografia delle pratiche di salute mentale (2011); Memorie e possessione. Saggi etnografici (2007); Capitale sociale e salute (in D. Cozzi, a cura di, Le parole della antropologia medica, 2012).

Massimiliano Minelli (massimiliano.minelli@unipg.it) dottore di ricerca in “Metodologie della ricerca etnoantropologica”, è ricercatore confermato presso l’Università di Perugia dove insegna Antropologia medica ed etnopsichiatria e Metodologia della ricerca etnografica.

I suoi principali interessi riguardano il rapporto fra dinamiche culturali, forme di disturbo

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Cecilia Pennacini (cecilia.pennacini@unito.it) teaches Ethnology and Visual Anthropology in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Torino. Since 1988 she carried out research in the African Great Lakes region (specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda) on topics related to visual, symbolic and religious anthropology and to the study of cultural heritage. Since 2004 she has been the director of the Italian Ethnological Mission in Equatorial Africa (Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs). She has published various scientific articles and volumes, and among them Kubandwa. La possessione spiritica nell’Africa dei Grandi Laghi (2012), Filmare le culture. Un’introduzione all’antropologia visiva (2005). She has realized numerous ethnographic documentaries; the most recent one is Kampala Babel (Archivio Nazionale Cinematografico della Resi-stenza with the support of Piemonte Doc Film Fund, 2008).

Cecilia Pennacini (cecilia.pennacini@unito.it) insegna Etnologia e Antropologia visiva presso il Dipartimento Culture, Politica e Società dell’Università di Torino. Dal 1988 svolge ricerche nella regione africana dei Grandi Laghi (in particolare nella Repubblica democratica del Congo, in Burundi, in Tanzania e in Uganda) su temi relativi all’antropologia visiva, simbolica e religiosa e allo studio del patrimonio culturale. Dal 2004 dirige la Missione etnologica italiana in Africa equatoriale (Ministero degli Affari Esteri). Ha pubblicato numerosi articoli scientifici e volumi, tra cui Kubandwa. La possessione spiritica nell’Africa dei Grandi Laghi (riedizione, 2012), Filmare le culture. Un’introduzione all’antropologia visiva (2005), e ha realizzato diversi documentari etnografici tra cui Kampala Babel (Archivio nazionale cinematografico della Resistenza con il sostegno di Piemonte Doc Film Fund, 2008).

Nicola Scaldaferri (nicola.scaldaferri@unimi.it) is Associate Professor in Ethnomusicology at the University of Milan, where he directs the LEAV - Ethnomusicology and Visual Anthropology Laboratory. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard University and a visiting professorship at the Linguistics Department of the University of Saint Petersburg, he has done research in Italy, Albania, Kosovo and Ghana. Among his works are Musica nel laboratorio elettroacustico (1997), Nel paese dei cupa cupa. Suoni e immagini della tradizione lucana (in collaboration with photographer Stefano Vaja, 2005); the edited books Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe (2011, with Eckehard Pistrick and Gretel Schwörer) and I suoni dell’albero. Il maggio di San Giuliano ad Accettura (2012, with Steven Feld).

Nicola Scaldaferri (nicola.scaldaferri@unimi.it) è professore associato di Etnomusicologia all’Università di Milano dove dirige il Laboratorio di Etnomusicologia e Antropologia Visuale (LEAV). Borsista Fulbright presso la Harvard University e Visiting Professor del Dipartimento di Linguistica Generale dell’Università di San Pietroburgo, ha svolto ricerche sul campo in Italia, Albania, Kosovo, Ghana. Tra i suoi lavori: Musica nel laboratorio

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psichico e azioni collettive nel campo della salute mentale. Si occupa inoltre di reti sociali, risorse comunitarie e capitale sociale nelle politiche pubbliche di salute. Su questi temi svolge attività di ricerca da alcuni anni in Italia e in Brasile. Tra le sue pubblicazioni: Santi, demoni, giocatori. Una etnografia delle pratiche di salute mentale (Argo, 2011); Memorie e possessione. Saggi etnografici (2007); Capitale sociale e salute (in D. Cozzi, a cura di, Le parole della antropologia medica, 2012).

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elettroacustico (1997), Nel paese dei cupa cupa. Suoni e immagini della tradizione lucana (in collaborazione col fotografo Stefano Vaja, 2005); la curatela dei volumi Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe (2011, con Eckehard Pistrick e Gretel Schwörer) e I suoni dell’albero. Il maggio di San Giuliano ad Accettura (2012, con Steven Feld).

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Richard Werbner (richard.werbner@manchester.ac.uk) is Professor Emeritus in African Anthropology at the University of Manchester. A Manchester graduate (PhD, 1968), he began long-term southern African fieldwork in 1960, first among Kalanga and later among Tswapong in rural and urban Botswana. He is the author of many books, including Land Reform in the Making: Tradition, Public Policy and Ideology in Botswana (1982), Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana (2004), Tears of the Dead: The Social Biography of an African Family (1991) and Divination’s Grasp: African Encounters with the Almost Said (2016). His eight films include Counterpoint Botswana (2011) and Holy Hustlers (2009), which accompanies his book Holy Hustlers, Schism, and Prophecy. Apostolic Reformation in Botswana (2011).

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Richard Werbner (richard.werbner@manchester.ac.uk) è Professor Emeritus in African Anthropology alla University of Manchester. Ha ricevuto il suo PhD a Manchester nel 1968, e ha lavorato dal 1960 in Africa meridionale, prima tra i Kalanga e più tardi tra gli Tswapong del Botswana. È autore di numerosi libri, tra cui Land Reform in the Making: Tradition, Public Policy and Ideology in Botswana (1982), Reasonable Radicals and Citizenship in Botswana (2004), Tears of the Dead: The Social Biography of an African Family (1991) e Divination’s Grasp: African Encounters with the Almost Said (2016). I suoi otto film includono Counterpoint Botswana (2011) e Holy Hustlers (2009), che accompagna il libro Holy Hustlers, Schism, and Prophecy. Apostolic Reformation in Botswana (2011).