Anatomy of an encounter

In collaboration with Mattijs van de Port and Damianos Zisimou.

The project Anatomy of an Encounter was driven by the idea that we should not take for granted that we already know what ‘encounters’ are. What does ‘meeting’ another person — with a different cultural or disciplinary background — mean? How much of an encounter is in all actuality a ‘finding one another’? How much of ‘being in touch’ is depending on the work of the imagination — fed by assumptions, existing cultural frames, stereotypes, fantasies about the other?

Encounters are at the heart of every ethnographic project: anthropologists no longer claim to be speaking about the other (define the other in his/her otherness; know the other). They study what occurs between themselves and others when they meet.

This project was part of the European Erasmus+ ENCOUNTERS project, in which an international group of multidisciplinary researchers develop critical methodologies at the intersection between the practices of ethnography, arts, and pedagogy.

Read the full article and watch the video on Arts Cabinet.