MISSION STATEMENT

The UCL Multimedia Anthropology Lab (UCL MAL) is a research network aimed at
developing innovative methods for anthropological practice. In a digital world where
new technologies offer new ways to gather data and present research, UCL MAL
experiments with media such as sound, film, VR/360 video, graphic novels, drawing,
sculpture, and installations to theorise how they can contribute towards alternative
forms of anthropological thinking. If anthropology is to remain relevant today we must
develop new forms of practice which can dialogue with more diverse audiences,
collaborate with colleagues across disciplines, and disrupt existing models of thought.
 
UCL MAL draws on two theoretical movements that have been developed in dialogue
with UCL Anthropology: Material Culture studies and the Ontological Turn. Material
Culture studies has shown us that knowledge - both anthropological knowledge, and
the knowledge of the people we study - emerges through relations to or with the
material world, and the materials through which it is transmitted shape the ways in which
it is received. This has led us to question the materiality of anthropological practice, and
think through the relationship between our discipline’s materials and its concepts. The
Ontological Turn has drawn our attention to the importance of cultural - or ontological -
translation, where ethnographic engagements with the concepts of others allow us to
re-shape the anthropological concepts with which we began. While this approach has
led to important new models for anthropological enquiry, these models remain
presented through text, restricting the ways in which our thought may be subverted and
challenged by the thought of the other.
 
We propose to further these theoretical movements by experimenting with a
multimedia approach to anthropological research, broadening the language through
which translation can take place. In doing so, we explore experiences of alterity that are
not reducible to text, and open space for concepts that cannot be expressed in writing.
We argue that these material translations of others’ worlds allow us to further the
decolonising work that the ontological turn has begun. Our aims at UCL MAL are
therefore threefold: firstly, by exploring non-textual forms of communicating academic
research, we seek to facilitate new methods of public engagement, ensuring that
anthropological research can bring benefit to wider and more diverse audiences;
secondly, in doing so, we aim to encourage greater interdisciplinary dialogue, fostering
collaborative platforms to address the urgent questions of our times; finally, by
broadening the legitimate language of academic discourse beyond text, we widen the
scope of those able to participate, and the ideas that can be expressed, leaving room
for “other anthropologies” to co-produce the conceptual diversity required for an
anthropology of tomorrow.