2024 Grantees:
Grantee: Ioana Popescu
Project title: The Lost Archive (working title)
Project Medium: short film (5-10 mins)
Description: The premise of the film is an incident that happened in my family years ago, namely losing a significant proportion of the family photo albums and video archives. This short film wants to represent a dialogue between me and my parents before they became parents. I think this will be the narrative core of the film and it will focus on characterizing and trying to understand my father and my mother from before they got engulfed in their identities as parents. Secondly, the film tries to capture the political radicalization that insinuated itself in the life of my family and its consequences.
Grantee: Eva Trapeznicova
Project title: 'No Traces in the Desert'
Project Medium: short film (5-10 mins) / Awarded a Festival/Exhibition Promotion Grant
Description: A short documentary about female sufi community in Vienna, narrated by their master Fawzia, exploring the topics of love, femininity and interconnectedness.
Grantee: Maria Sakkoula
Project title: Tending to the Scars - Moments of recuperation after an unsuccessful protest movement (Working title)
Project Medium: digital film
Description: This short film aims to explore the space of a city after the end of a social movement that did not achieve its goals. It will be complimentary to my thesis project dealing with the same topic, focusing on the city of Hong Kong, where I spent a year during the 2019 protest movement. I will be using material I collected back then (when I had no training in filmmaking), and merging it with footage I will collect during my fieldwork this April. My thesis project begins with the examination of physical scars in the urban fabric of Hong Kong (uprooted pavements, missing rails etc), and moves on to abstract the idea of scarring, thinking about how the perception of urban space has changed since the movement. I hope that this short film will be a visual representation of the same ideas.
Grantee: Ji (Benjamin) Qing
Project title: Bodymind Perturbation (Provisional title)
Project Medium: short film (5-10 mins)
Description: In this experimental short film project, I aim to capture the historical and contemporary intersections of China’s spiritual practices and social transition in the post-socialist context (since 1978). Departing from the traditional religious connotations of "spirituality", I use this term in a contemporary lifestyle sense, referring to a series of practices that promote fitness, healthy living, and holistic well-being. By interweaving visual archives of the Qigong (气功) fever in the 1980s, images of the politicized healing organization Falungong (法轮功), my visual ethnographic data, artist performances directed by me, and other elements, this project will explore the convergence of mysticism and post-socialist political economy as embodied in individuals' body-mind, healing practices, and broader cultural landscapes.
Grantee: Magda Kopanska
Project title: Temporality and home in a participatory photography project. The everyday environment of seasonal Polish workers in Iceland.
Project Medium: photo essay (Participatory photography project and publication)
Description: This participatory photography project is linked to my ethnographic fieldwork which I will conduct among Polish seasonal workers in Iceland. I aim to engage digital photography according to methodology of visual and sensory ethnography principles of Sarah Pink (Sarah Pink et al. Making homes: Ethnography and design, 2020). Project objective is to collaboratively work with my informants and produce photographs that will provide insight into their everyday environment which is marked by the temporality of a stay abroad. This collection of photographs depicting objects and settings pointed out by my informants will be displayed in the form of an exhibition and publication as the final effect of our work.
Grantee: Yoline Bourdon
Project title: Frenchness, Rap Culture and Performances of the Self in the Banlieue of Marseille
Project Medium: medium length film
Description: A medium length film that puts into perspective the visual language of national media discourses on Frenchness with banlieues rap video clips and social media content in which banlieues youths (re-)present themselves. The format of the film plays with the aesthetics of these different medias, to question the place of the banlieue in contemporary France and the notion of Frenchness. The camera follows one of the social media content creators in the banlieues, and reveals the "backstage" and the process of banlieue social media content creation. The camera has a central role in the film in revealing how participants interact with it on all sides of the medium. This "mise-en-abyme" speaks to broader tensions between France and its neglected peripheries.
Grantee: Isaac Waanzi Mbugo
Project title: The Money that Purchase Kinship: Making and Re-making of Cultures
Project Medium: visual and audio
Description: Objects forged out of iron played different roles in many African communities. Among the Azande of South Sudan, iron was an essential medium for marriages, thus forming new kinship. While the colonial rule and administration introduced monetized trade and a money economy, replacing iron in marriages, the Zande term for iron—mara lived on and continued to be used for paper money. This project attempts to visualize vernacular terms of money in everyday use, and the cultural history perceptions that influence the border concept of money economy in regions that have suffered decades of civil war, extensive displacement, and urbanization. By using the concept of bridewealth as an entrance point, I aim to visualize how people talk and negotiate between the cultural and economic notions of money. I will use a video camera as an ethnographic tool to record interviews and the process and practices of bridewealth payment in the urban towns of Yambio and Nzara.
Grantee: Bilal Hisam
Project title: Academia as Continuation of Activism: Exiled Egyptian Intellectual in Istanbul (working title)
Project Medium: documentary film
Description: The concept of my film is to examine the memories and emotional aspects of Egyptian young intellectuals in exile. I aim to illustrate how academia represents a continuation of their former activism. Firstly, I am going to interview 5 social sciences students who were activists during the Arab Spring and its aftermath. I will ask them questions related to their current experience in academia. Besides, I am going to ask them about the memories of their activism back in Egypt. Then comes the second element, I would ask them to share photos and videos they took or for themselves. The photos and videos can be in events like a protest, or an object like a tear gas. Lastly, I plan to take photos and film in different places in Istanbul once I arrive, especially, the places where Egyptians usually spend time.
Grantee: Marharyta Tokarieva
Project title: De-Occupied Cities at War: Spatial relations and practices in Bucha and Irpin
Project Medium: film
Description: It's a collaborative research film that aim to reveal changes in spatial relations and practices in de-occupied city at war. I'm going to give a camera as well as filming by myself while spending time together with a chosen group of people (it could teenage friends and their walks through city or a family members and their changed practices in a city). The film will combine my footage and footage created by people when I'm not near. This approach help to reflect on ones changes in perception and interaction with public space.
2023 Grantees:
Grantee: Bower Claire
Project title: Promoting Fatherhood and Men’s Care Work globally
Project Medium: advocacy videos for social media
Description: This grant will enable me to produce the main visual work for my thesis. In collaboration with two not-for-profit organisations, I will create short videos for the global MenCare campaign. The project will involve producing advocacy videos for social media which explore the importance of men’s involvement in care work and the care economy. These videos will be used to promote the State of the World’s Fathers report which will be released in July 2023. The project is of high social relevance given that men’s involvement in care work and care giving is necessary for gender equality. The videos will aim to promote positive fatherhood which is a key action towards securing women’s and children’s rights and for preventing gender-based violence.
Grantee: Purtell Joseph
Project title: "A City for People"
Project Medium: Film
Description: This is a film about ecological politics and the potentials and pitfalls of translating a vision for low-carbon cities into practice, seen through the peculiar situation of Graz, where we an unusually city government trying to implement a vision for sustainable urban life. In Graz, the Communist and Green parties are working together to expand public transportation and get cars off the streets. "A city for people" will focus on the process of removing cars from one particular street, Zinzendorfgasse, as a way to explore the practical challenges and potential opportunities of change as an unlikely city government tries to show a community what they have to gain in a transition to ecological living.
Grantee: Rammohan Viswesh
Project title: The 'Provincial' City: Excavated Pasts and the Effervescent Present in Madras
Project Medium: Interactive documentary
Description: An interactive documentary which makes use of multiple visual forms including documentary photography, archival photographs, videography, soundscapes and urban photography. This visual and historical anthropology project seeks to invite the audience in the reimagining of the construction of the city. The audience through the documentary would be able to experience the various spatial, aural and temporal aspects which have coalesced to create the city as we know it. Participants while placing themselves within the geographical scope of the city, will be able to traverse through space and time and get a glimpse of how the city has come to be and the various negotiations and contradictions that have left an imprint on it. Apart from a flaneur’s view of the city, the project also seeks to make the participant assume various roles in the city through which the city can then be viewed differently. Through this project, the larger aim is to make use of visual methods in the pedagogical understanding and training of historical anthropology, colonialism and the urban. The grant will be utilized to subscribe for the software to create the interactive documentary.
Grantee: De Figueiredo Beatriz
Project title: Bodies in Solidarity: Exploring Migrant Struggles through Embodiment
Project Medium: Photography and Video
Description: The visual work I propose consists of a temporary public exhibition in Vienna that explores migrant struggles in Naples through the angle of embodiment, visually complementing my MA thesis on the same topic. In a nutshell, the exhibit asks how marginalization is felt in the flesh and how it informs migrant political engagements. What is at stake is an exercise of visual and public anthropology that aims to center on migrant experience and migrant struggles, a topic that is often invisibilized in Europe despite migrant populations being a structural feature of contemporary European societies.The exhibition will be comprised of visual work that spans categories: documentary photography that details the inner workings of a social movement for migrant rights, and short videos on migrant's biographies.
Grantee: Barakat Mahmoud
Project title:
Project Medium: Interactive documentary
Grantee: Dzhamanbaeva, Nellya
Project title:
Project Medium: Interactive documentary
2022 Grantees:
Grantee: Spearneac-Wolfer Paul
Project title: Questioning the local: Creating a counter-archive of migrant experience in the Viennese agricultural industry
Project Medium: Dialogical Photography / Multimedial Exhibition
Description: In the Simmeringer Haide, Vienna, around thirty traditional-familial businesses conduct year-long greenhouse-based production, rendering the site a major producer of local and organic vegetables for Austria. Yet, from a labor union perspective, this confined greenhouse complex is a troubled rather than idyllic place of local food production, as workers live isolated near greenhouses that count as private property, and official inspections are seldom. So far, my research indicates an estimated number of 250 – 300 employed workers, solely from Romania, and the prevalence of malpractices of several forms (housing conditions, wages).
The following visual project aims to counter the invisibilization of Romanians in the agricultural industry. Through dialogic collaboration with workers, I want to develop audio-visual registers which trace their physical movements and surroundings, motivations, and biographies, in which the Simmeringer Haide is often only one period within a life-long endeavor of transnational laboring. Eventually, the project aims to create a multimodal “counter-archive” of migrant labor history as intrinsic to the otherwise cherished agricultural industry in Vienna.
Grantee: Thomas Isabel
Project title: Those Complex Blues: Music and the Heritage of Anti-Establishmentism
Project Medium: Documentary film, public conversation and pop-up exhibition
Description: A short documentary film highlighting the similarities and contradictions between industrial heritage and popular music heritage in the post-industrial region of the South Wales Valleys UK. While the culture of the area is typically associated with brass bands and male voice choirs, the reality shows a strong history of rock and blues music. In the pub gigs music scene, bands perform covers of pop, rock and blues ‘classics’ from the area alongside songs from elsewhere, especially the US, and often with lyrics conveying anti-establishment messages. By doing so, they become part of the local cultural history of this particular political and social attitude, which may itself be a form of Welsh working-class heritage. I intend to use the audiovisual medium to engage with communities and open up critical discussion on what heritage might mean for different people in a modern, globalized Wales. Additionally, I plan to create a community-centric event in South Wales (likely Pontypridd) which involves the dissemination of my research on industrial heritage and popular music heritage in the post-industrial region of the South Wales Valleys UK. This will involve a pop-up exhibition, screening of my documentary film, public discussion and musical performance. I intend to use the audiovisual medium to engage with communities and open up critical discussion on what heritage might mean for different people in a modern, globalized Wales.
Grantee: Toncu Maria
Project title: Dacia. Some visual narratives for negotiating the collective memory of communist cars
Project Medium: A temporary public exhibition
Description: A temporary public exhibition in Vienna that includes documentary photography, archival photographs, and objects of material culture from communism. This visual and public anthropology exercise employs the audience in the collective remembrance of socialist cars. The audience would be able to recall the cars and participate in the negotiation of their memory. Portraits of car aficionados in nowadays Romania and the object of their affection would be exhibited along with archival photographs, engaging the audience in an exercise of dissipating temporalities, accessing personal histories, and figuring out the car’s economy of affect.
2021 Grantees:
Grantee: Basler Derek
Project title: The Architectural Layering of History Among the Urban Decay in a Provincial City in Northern Albania
Project Medium: An interactive website utilizing photography/film/audio
Description: Having lived in the northern Albanian city of Shkodër for the past two months conducting research for my master’s thesis, I have found it striking both the quantity and historical diversity of the abandoned and structurally deteriorating buildings throughout the city. As my preliminary ethnographic research has shown, these various structures point to the paradigmatic shifts that have occurred throughout Albania, beginning with national independence in 1912, to the rise of the totalitarian communist regime after the Second World War, into the turbulent democratic transformation of the 1990s. I propose, through an interactive website that combines photography, film, audio, and text, to examine how this abandoned and deteriorating architecture expresses both the literal and figurative fragmenting of history, to draw from Benjamin, and connects to the reckoning of a traumatic past that is continually taking place in contemporary Albania.
Grantee: Raehme Sophie
Project title: MitOhneTakt/WithOrWithoutBeat Part II - CoronaBeats 2020: Transformations, Revelations and Resetting
Project Medium: Documentary Film - audiovisual Smartphone contributions
Description: The transnational documentary film project "MitOhneTakt" (MOT) (WithOrWithoutBeat) consists of 2 parts and focuses on the pandemic and how it changed people's life. The project explores what unites and divides generations in times of the Coronavirus Pandemic 2020. In doing so, the films explore existential crises, challenges, and potentials for transformation and growth that are being negotiated differently by individuals worldwide due to the health crisis. The second part focuses on the changes in rhythm and beat in everyday life of nurses, a chemist, students, and parents around the world in different countries such as Vietnam, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Italy, Ireland, China, and Ruanda. Moreover, it centers on the positive parts or possibilities of the pandemic for personal transformations. Covering these themes topics such as friendship, closeness and distance, the inability to move freely, and suicide and temporary employment are displayed.
Grantee: Trudelle Tiphaine
Project title: Pieds-noirs: From Perpetrators to Victims
Project Medium: Documentary film
Description: A short interview-driven documentary related to my thesis ethnographic fieldwork. The project will focus on the former French-Algerian community who left Algeria after the Algerian War. Members of this community are commonly called “pieds-noirs” (“black-feet”). 90% of the settler colonial population was in fact forcefully repatriated to metropolitan France after the war, and the vast majority suffered an intense culture shock, becoming strangers in their own land. I therefore would like to investigate this further, especially as there seems to be a strong intergenerational trauma. Pieds-noirs now mainly live across France, but the majority settled in the Paris area and in the South of France. I am therefore planning on conducting fieldwork there. To enrich my research, I am also in touch with scholars who worked on the Algerian War of Independence and its aftermath.