Students taking ANTH 408: Sensory Ethnography have spent a semester working with the Critical Media Lab to explore the themes of sustainability, consumerism, and preservation via video and sound by making their own short films.
Founded in 2021, the Critical Media Lab is housed within the Department of Anthropology and is part of Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E), a transdisciplinary research initiative tackling the climate crisis and environmental issues. L4E aims to breech the divide between nature and culture, and students in Professor Lisa Stevenson’s class are producing work in this same spirit.
In Sensory Ethnography, students are exposed to various short and feature length films and complete short media assignments that help them approach their subject with different perspectives, culminating in a final project, a short film between 5 to 10 minutes long.
Skills Acquired in the Critical Media Lab
Students were able to use cameras and sound equipment for their assignments thanks to the support from Teaching and Learning Services. The University Teaching Labs Working Group provides funding for teaching lab projects such as the ones undertaken at the Critical Media Lab. Film and audio equipment were crucial tools required for students to complete the course and learn the fundamentals of sound recording and editing as well as basic camera techniques.
The Critical Media Lab supported students in ANTH 408 with practical workshops in video, film and sound, as well as screenings and artists talks, all of which were essential resources for students to produce their own films. To learn more about the Critical Media Lab, read an interview (in French) with Philippe Léonard, associate director of the Critical Media Lab in Le délit.
Amélie Labelle-Laing, a U3 student in International Development with a minor in Management took her first anthropology class as a complementary course and soon identified a way of learning that she could apply across various disciplines.
“This project gave me … a glimpse into what creating a film is like,” says Amelie. “In the context of the classroom and McGill more broadly, being able to get your hands on professional gear, learn technical skills and meet this small community of people with similar interests on campus is something I’ll always be grateful for.”
Amélie’s film, Borrowing Views, explores the work of artist Kinya Ishikawa and his prized possession, his garden; a “dream-like” space with various trinkets,
pottery and pieces adorning his garden, a commentary on consumerism. In her film, Amélie aims to demonstrate the artists’s desire and success in giving everything purpose, beauty, and ultimately, a second life.
“I hope this video can motivate some discussions on positionality and agency in the context of the climate crisis, as well as creativity, aesthetics and the creation of space,” Amélie says.
Diving Deeper into Ethnographic Film
Anna Henry, a U3 joint honours student in Anthropology and Environment, has taken several courses on ethnographic films and their methodologies during her time at McGill and was eager to delve deeper into the field of ethnographic filmmaking when she registered for ANTH 408.
Combining both anthropology and environment exposed Anna to the environmental crisis we are facing, and the role humans play in exacerbating it.
“Speaking with various people about how they were affected by environmental destruction also made me reflect on the ways in which we tend to imagine the environmental crisis,” says Anna.
In her film, Dreaming the Environmental Crisis, Anna explores the climate crisis through dreams. After reading Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, a work that explores how the German dictatorship deeply affected people’s dreams, Anna was inspired by the impressive work of dream documentation Beradt undertook in her book and decided to explore how the environmental crisis might be reflected in people’s dreams.
“I was particularly interested in seeing how a highly intimate space such as dreams can bear collective emotions linked with a political and social issue,” says Anna. “I hope this project can explore an alternative narrative to the Anthropocene and spark discussions about the ways in which we imagine the environmental crisis. Dreams are often considered as a highly individual space… I hope to show that we can also reclaim dreams as a politically charged collective space and use them as a tool to create new ways of connecting with each other and to further explore potential solutions to the environmental crisis.”
Environmental Inspiration
Being aware of one’s surroundings and environment is an important habit for anthropologists. Indeed, anthropology’s method, as Professor Stevenson describes it, is a way of being attentive to the world around us.
“[It] emphasizes the possibility that there are also things we can only learn by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, feeling and doing,” says Professor Stevenson. “Anthropologists are trained to pay attention to the moments in life that escape our standing narratives about how things are.”
This sentiment can be seen first-hand in Eloise Lu’s film. Eloise, a U3 student majoring in Art History and minoring in World Cinemas and Psychology, who is interested in Montreal’s unique architecture, wanted to use her film to explore the history behind buildings, as well as the reasons why residents choose specific colours and styles for their doors.
Her film title is inspired by the Mandarin phrase Mén Miàn; Mén refers to door, and Miàn stands for face. For Eloise, this combination of words is intriguing and simultaneously reveals that the door is, to some extent, a reflection of the residents’ attitude towards life.
“Architecture is a key component of cultural heritage, and preserving historic buildings and structures is essential for preserving cultural heritage and the collective memory of a society,” says Eloise. “We should take a closer look at them, and stay with them, touch them, and feel them.”
Showing students how to “see” the world they inhabit in various ways is a central component of ANTH 408. “Non-verbal sound and visual images participate differently in the economy of thought,” says Professor Stevenson. “When we are trying to break out of a fixed way of perceiving the world, sometimes it is not more words that are necessary, but instead a ‘devastating’ image—one that shakes up our firmly held paradigms and makes us think and feel differently about the world and its inhabitants.”
To learn more about Anthropology for the Ecozoic at McGill, click here.