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Encounters with the Urban Night
3rd International Residency Conference, Estonia 2022
Encounters with the Urban Night: multisensory ethnographies of shadow and alterity
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Call for Submissions
Encounters with the Urban Night: multisensory ethnographies of shadow and alterity
We would like to invite you to be part of VRN 2022!
The Visual Research Network, in association with the Estonian National Museum, will hold the 3rd edition of the VRN residency and conference in Tartu, Estonia from June 12th to June 19th, 2022. This year’s theme of Urban Night invites researchers and creative practitioners to engage with the alternative dimensions of the urban as encountered in their research, fieldwork or artistic productions, where the notion of an urban night is explored within the broadest framing of cultural, social, behavioural and sensorial phenomena.
The Estonian National Museum in Tartu will host both the residency (June 12th–17th) and conference (June 18th–19th), where attendees will be joined by film-maker and ethnographer Jeff Silva in the role of primary residency facilitator, and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Tallinn, Carlo Cubero, as keynote speaker, respectively. A salient feature of the event is the plan for work produced by participants in the residency to be exhibited and discussed at the conference.
This event also anticipates a future exhibition on the diverse meanings of the Estonian urban night currently slated for 2024, which will coincide with Tartu assuming the mantle of EU Capital of Culture. The possibility also exists for the work produced in the VRN residency or presented in the conference to become part of this 2024 exhibition. For more information on the hosts and organisers of the residency and conference, please see below the sections “The Museum” and “The Network”.
***The VRN would like to reassure potential applicants that while conditions in Estonia remain entirely stable at the time of writing, being mindful of Tartu’s location, our members are closely monitoring the situation in Russia and Ukraine. We are constantly liaising with the Estonian National Museum in order to anticipate the need for any security measures, such as the ultimate relocation of the event should we be faced with a problematic scenario in the coming months. The VRN is committed to a realistic and adaptive approach that takes participants’ safety as its first priority.***
With pandemic–related restrictions being lifted around the world, the VRN invites researchers and practitioners to Tartu just before summer solstice and the shortest night of the year, to study the urban night in a moment of resurgence. For the conference, the VRN is looking for films of all lengths and research paper abstracts that tie together themes of alterity, identity and sensoriality within the context of the nocturnal, especially those that deal with elements of the urban night. Meanwhile, participants in the residency will be aiming to produce original work that revolves around the same themes of alterity, identity and sensoriality, but specifically in the context of Tartu’s urban night.
Evoking the form and portfolio of the dual–faced Roman God Janus, the binary of night and day speaks to divisions of diurnal and nocturnal identities, transitions between identities in general, thresholds and tipping points, the human in relation to the astronomical, the passing of years and seasons, the continuous or discrete perception of existence, and the beginnings of or emergence from conflict, pleasure, silence etc. All these and other associations may be thought of as fitting avenues of experimentation during the residency, and fitting themes for existing work submitted to the conference.
This event will seek to showcase new perspectives and approaches that visual/sensory practitioners, researchers and current PhD students are currently employing in their work and/or seeking to explore in new contexts. The format of a residency/conference creates an ideal environment to explore various approaches to both theory and practice, with each shaping and influencing the other through a cycle of action and reflection.
To enrich participants’ experience, the VRN advocates for visual, sonic, experimental, multisensory and cross-disciplinary knowledge. The encounters that the residency and conference promise represent an opportunity for anthropologists, sensory research practitioners and artists to broaden their horizons toward new methodologies and sensibilities through a shared, collaborative learning experience. We welcome submissions from applicants for either or both the residency and conference.
We would like to invite you to be part of VRN 2022!
The Visual Research Network, in association with the Estonian National Museum, will hold the 3rd edition of the VRN residency and conference in Tartu, Estonia from June 12th to June 19th, 2022. This year’s theme of Urban Night invites researchers and creative practitioners to engage with the alternative dimensions of the urban as encountered in their research, fieldwork or artistic productions, where the notion of an urban night is explored within the broadest framing of cultural, social, behavioural and sensorial phenomena.
The Estonian National Museum in Tartu will host both the residency (June 12th–17th) and conference (June 18th–19th), where attendees will be joined by film-maker and ethnographer Jeff Silva in the role of primary residency facilitator, and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Tallinn, Carlo Cubero, as keynote speaker, respectively. A salient feature of the event is the plan for work produced by participants in the residency to be exhibited and discussed at the conference.
This event also anticipates a future exhibition on the diverse meanings of the Estonian urban night currently slated for 2024, which will coincide with Tartu assuming the mantle of EU Capital of Culture. The possibility also exists for the work produced in the VRN residency or presented in the conference to become part of this 2024 exhibition. For more information on the hosts and organisers of the residency and conference, please see below the sections “The Museum” and “The Network”.
***The VRN would like to reassure potential applicants that while conditions in Estonia remain entirely stable at the time of writing, being mindful of Tartu’s location, our members are closely monitoring the situation in Russia and Ukraine. We are constantly liaising with the Estonian National Museum in order to anticipate the need for any security measures, such as the ultimate relocation of the event should we be faced with a problematic scenario in the coming months. The VRN is committed to a realistic and adaptive approach that takes participants’ safety as its first priority.***
With pandemic–related restrictions being lifted around the world, the VRN invites researchers and practitioners to Tartu just before summer solstice and the shortest night of the year, to study the urban night in a moment of resurgence. For the conference, the VRN is looking for films of all lengths and research paper abstracts that tie together themes of alterity, identity and sensoriality within the context of the nocturnal, especially those that deal with elements of the urban night. Meanwhile, participants in the residency will be aiming to produce original work that revolves around the same themes of alterity, identity and sensoriality, but specifically in the context of Tartu’s urban night.
Evoking the form and portfolio of the dual–faced Roman God Janus, the binary of night and day speaks to divisions of diurnal and nocturnal identities, transitions between identities in general, thresholds and tipping points, the human in relation to the astronomical, the passing of years and seasons, the continuous or discrete perception of existence, and the beginnings of or emergence from conflict, pleasure, silence etc. All these and other associations may be thought of as fitting avenues of experimentation during the residency, and fitting themes for existing work submitted to the conference.
This event will seek to showcase new perspectives and approaches that visual/sensory practitioners, researchers and current PhD students are currently employing in their work and/or seeking to explore in new contexts. The format of a residency/conference creates an ideal environment to explore various approaches to both theory and practice, with each shaping and influencing the other through a cycle of action and reflection.
To enrich participants’ experience, the VRN advocates for visual, sonic, experimental, multisensory and cross-disciplinary knowledge. The encounters that the residency and conference promise represent an opportunity for anthropologists, sensory research practitioners and artists to broaden their horizons toward new methodologies and sensibilities through a shared, collaborative learning experience. We welcome submissions from applicants for either or both the residency and conference.
The Network
Founded in 2018 by a group of doctoral students at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology in Manchester, the Visual Research Network (VRN) is at fast-growing association of anthropologists, film-makers and artists whose membership spans five continents. The network has been pleased to host distinguished contributors to the field of Visual Anthropology, Laurent Van Lancker, Andrew Irving and Catarina Alves Costa as keynote speakers over the two previous iterations of the conference.
The first labour of the network was the organisation of the 2018 VRN Residency and Conference in which a diverse range of participants from all over the world, along with a number of special guest facilitators, dedicated one week to collaborative workshops and debates followed by a conference held jointly at the University of Manchester and the Manchester Metropolitan University in England, the theme being “Creative Image: Ways of Seeing, Representing and Reshaping Reality”. The event was repeated in September 2019, with the residency functioning as a social lab for participants’ works-in-progress, and a call for submissions on the subject of “Pushing the Boundaries of Aesthetics and the Human in Visual Representation”. During 2020 and 2021, the VRN produced “Sixteen Times”, a collective film devised as an improvised chain of ethnographic vignettes made by sixteen VRN members from all over the world.
The first labour of the network was the organisation of the 2018 VRN Residency and Conference in which a diverse range of participants from all over the world, along with a number of special guest facilitators, dedicated one week to collaborative workshops and debates followed by a conference held jointly at the University of Manchester and the Manchester Metropolitan University in England, the theme being “Creative Image: Ways of Seeing, Representing and Reshaping Reality”. The event was repeated in September 2019, with the residency functioning as a social lab for participants’ works-in-progress, and a call for submissions on the subject of “Pushing the Boundaries of Aesthetics and the Human in Visual Representation”. During 2020 and 2021, the VRN produced “Sixteen Times”, a collective film devised as an improvised chain of ethnographic vignettes made by sixteen VRN members from all over the world.
Estonian National Museum
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The Estonian National Museum, which has produced anthropological documentary films and research footage since the 1960s, is a centre for essentially ethnological but increasingly multidisciplinary research, a mediator of diverse ideas and values that mixes traditional methods with innovative approaches in scientific research as well as exhibition-making. The residency and conference are planned in close connection with the ENM and they have kindly made a contribution of filming equipment, an editing suite, screening rooms and other facilities to be used throughout the event.
Find out more at: https://www.erm.ee/en
Find out more at: https://www.erm.ee/en
The Residency
12/06 to 17/06/2022
12 Participants (+ VRN team and guests)
As stated, the residency will take as its theme the intersection of urban night, alterity and identity, and participants will be tasked with heading into the city to seek out the diverse shades of selfhood and sensorial expression which are brought forth after dark, while the residency space will serve as the hub for creative exchanges, engaged media explorations and shared imagining. The protagonists of the work produced may be the city’s inhabitants, or they may be the environment, architecture or collective life of the city itself, with social and sensory investigations encouraged alike.
The VRN invites visual/sensory anthropologists, practitioners, artists, researchers, and current PhD students to submit proposals for new work, extensions of existing work or potential research directions that explore the various sensory and interpretive dimensions of the urban night with an eye to exploring multimodal methodologies. While proposals are not required to flesh out a detailed solo project or show substantial knowledge of the setting of Tartu, they should demonstrate the intent to engage with both the residency’s collaborative context and the nocturnal environment of the city in a manner befitting the specification. They should also aim to outline a clear and original approach and a theoretical or empirical reaction to the residency theme which the participant hopes to contribute.
Rather than merely serving as a base for the preparation of individual work, the residency looks to its guests to ignite dialogue and exchange; to challenge each other, deconstruct narratives and push the boundaries of their creative process and methodology. As such, for the core production phase of the residency (June 13th–16th), participants will be combined into four groups of three and tasked with conducting investigation and media production together. These groups will be determined at the moment of selection by the VRN selection committee, and communication within groups and among all participants and organisers will be initiated remotely in advance of the residency. This is so as to leave the most time available for collective interaction, production and experimentation as possible during the residency, and requires of applicants a practical and collaborative pliancy that will also be looked for in the submitted proposals.
An important element of this collaborative spirit will be the willingness to work across disciplines and across media familiarities, while it should be noted that regarding selection, priority will be given to applicants who possess the technical means to contribute to the preparation of the produced work for exhibition, as well as to production itself. Selected participants will be encouraged to continue regular communication with their group members so as to advance their ideas as much as possible before meeting in Tartu, while at the same time leaving room for adaptation and reaction to the research site and the ideas presented by other attendees. Of course, the implicit obligation to conduct research and recording during dusk, night and dawn presents an interesting challenge, and successful applicants can expect further creative restrictions to be imposed during the residency as a means of encouraging new approaches and testing assumptions about methodology.
We are delighted to announce that among those attending the residency will be filmmaker and ethnographer Jeff Silva, who will take on the role of mentor and primary facilitator during the four days of production. Between the participants, organisers and facilitators, the VRN residency offers the an opportunity to encounter many different backgrounds, life experiences, and geographic provenances, as well as the satisfaction of seeing the work produced from that unique constellation of collaborators exhibited or screened at the conference in Tartu’s Estonian National Museum, mere days after its production.
Sessions will take place in the World Film wing of the Estonian National Museum. The organisation will provide meals and shared accommodation for participants at the residency. The residency will run from the 13th to the 16th of June with arrival and orientation on the 12th, and setup for the conference taking place on the 17th.
To apply for a place in the residency, please fill out the submission form below providing :
1. a description developing the following points:
• your vision of the topic of urban night
• your past or current research, work or experience on the topic, if any
• empirical, conceptual and/or methodological ideas including multimodal tools that you would be interested to experiment with or develop further during the residency
• your motivation for taking part in the residency
2. a portfolio/link to existing work
The submission deadline for the residency is April 14th, 2022 (now closed).
You can find more information and get in touch at: visualresearchnet@gmail.com
More information to be confirmed soon! Keep checking our website or join our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/VRNconference/
12 Participants (+ VRN team and guests)
As stated, the residency will take as its theme the intersection of urban night, alterity and identity, and participants will be tasked with heading into the city to seek out the diverse shades of selfhood and sensorial expression which are brought forth after dark, while the residency space will serve as the hub for creative exchanges, engaged media explorations and shared imagining. The protagonists of the work produced may be the city’s inhabitants, or they may be the environment, architecture or collective life of the city itself, with social and sensory investigations encouraged alike.
The VRN invites visual/sensory anthropologists, practitioners, artists, researchers, and current PhD students to submit proposals for new work, extensions of existing work or potential research directions that explore the various sensory and interpretive dimensions of the urban night with an eye to exploring multimodal methodologies. While proposals are not required to flesh out a detailed solo project or show substantial knowledge of the setting of Tartu, they should demonstrate the intent to engage with both the residency’s collaborative context and the nocturnal environment of the city in a manner befitting the specification. They should also aim to outline a clear and original approach and a theoretical or empirical reaction to the residency theme which the participant hopes to contribute.
Rather than merely serving as a base for the preparation of individual work, the residency looks to its guests to ignite dialogue and exchange; to challenge each other, deconstruct narratives and push the boundaries of their creative process and methodology. As such, for the core production phase of the residency (June 13th–16th), participants will be combined into four groups of three and tasked with conducting investigation and media production together. These groups will be determined at the moment of selection by the VRN selection committee, and communication within groups and among all participants and organisers will be initiated remotely in advance of the residency. This is so as to leave the most time available for collective interaction, production and experimentation as possible during the residency, and requires of applicants a practical and collaborative pliancy that will also be looked for in the submitted proposals.
An important element of this collaborative spirit will be the willingness to work across disciplines and across media familiarities, while it should be noted that regarding selection, priority will be given to applicants who possess the technical means to contribute to the preparation of the produced work for exhibition, as well as to production itself. Selected participants will be encouraged to continue regular communication with their group members so as to advance their ideas as much as possible before meeting in Tartu, while at the same time leaving room for adaptation and reaction to the research site and the ideas presented by other attendees. Of course, the implicit obligation to conduct research and recording during dusk, night and dawn presents an interesting challenge, and successful applicants can expect further creative restrictions to be imposed during the residency as a means of encouraging new approaches and testing assumptions about methodology.
We are delighted to announce that among those attending the residency will be filmmaker and ethnographer Jeff Silva, who will take on the role of mentor and primary facilitator during the four days of production. Between the participants, organisers and facilitators, the VRN residency offers the an opportunity to encounter many different backgrounds, life experiences, and geographic provenances, as well as the satisfaction of seeing the work produced from that unique constellation of collaborators exhibited or screened at the conference in Tartu’s Estonian National Museum, mere days after its production.
Sessions will take place in the World Film wing of the Estonian National Museum. The organisation will provide meals and shared accommodation for participants at the residency. The residency will run from the 13th to the 16th of June with arrival and orientation on the 12th, and setup for the conference taking place on the 17th.
To apply for a place in the residency, please fill out the submission form below providing :
1. a description developing the following points:
• your vision of the topic of urban night
• your past or current research, work or experience on the topic, if any
• empirical, conceptual and/or methodological ideas including multimodal tools that you would be interested to experiment with or develop further during the residency
• your motivation for taking part in the residency
2. a portfolio/link to existing work
The submission deadline for the residency is April 14th, 2022 (now closed).
You can find more information and get in touch at: visualresearchnet@gmail.com
More information to be confirmed soon! Keep checking our website or join our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/VRNconference/
The Conference
18/06 and 19/06/2022
The two-day conference, hosted by the Estonian National Museum and open to the public, will widen participation with a call for abstracts and films of all lengths. The conference is organised around a combined schedule of panels and screenings, and in order to promote a richer crop of submissions and stimulate more diverse discussions, the VRN are asking that applications to the conference engage with the themes of alterity, identity, transformation and sensoriality in the context of the nocturnal. We are especially, but not exclusively, interested in proposals that address these topics in relation to the urban night. As such, the conference will expand upon the residency theme by exploring further the many ways of encountering, perceiving, representing and reformulating the alterity and threshold-crossing character of the dark hours, as well as the special identity-giving forces and phenomenological elements of alterity within the urban environment, as conceived by an array of researchers and creative practitioners.
We invite paper and audio-visual contributions, which address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
• perceptions, experiences and regulations of urban night throughout history
• cultural and sensorial representations, memories, imaginings, and visions of the city at night
• the different activities – dance, music, leisure, culture, work – and related sensorial aspects occurring at night
• the nocturnal transgressions, moral dimensions and prejudices of cities at night
• expressions of selfhood and subjectivity that emerge after dark
• cultural meanings, manifestations and manipulations of light and dark
• the night employed as metaphor for dualistic alterity, or the night as an actual domain of alterity or personal/cultural transformation
• nocturnal socio-spatial encounters and understandings between beings both human and non-human
• nocturnal futures in the anthropocene
• the cycle of night and day, the cycle of seasons, the lunar cycle and other astronomical phenomena and their relation to human behaviour, alterity or identity
• further binaries or transformations, such as rural/urban, past/future, barbarism/civilisation, youth/adulthood
It gives us great pleasure to announce that the conference’s keynote presentation will be delivered by the ethnographic filmmaker Carlo Cubero, who currently teaches as an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Tallinn. The final ingredient of the conference will of course be the discussions with the residency participants and the exhibition of the work they will have produced in the days leading up to the conference.
The conference will take place at the Estonian National Museum on the 18th and 19th of June 2022 and is open to submissions from international researchers, visual/sensory practitioners and anyone that undertakes creative research as part of their studies. The combined event promises to be an incredibly rich experience for all participants, and the partnership of the Visual Research Network and the Estonian National Museum is excited to welcome sponsorship and applications as of the 10th of March 2022.
The submission deadline for the conference is now April 30th, 2022 (it has been extended).
Apply now by filling the form below.
You can find more information and get in touch at: visualresearchnet@gmail.com
Programme and Registration
Please register your attendance on: https://www.erm.ee/et/konverents-kohtumised-oise-linnaga
Day 1
Day 2
Click here to download the full programme.
Keynote Speakers
Carlo Cubero holds a PhD in Social Anthropology using Visual Media from the University of Manchester, where he specialised in the contemporary Caribbean and Visual Anthropology. He is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tallinn University where he lectures and coordinates the Audiovisual Ethnography track in Social Anthropology.
A strand of his research has focused on developing audiovisual methods for anthropological research. He currently serves in the curating team of the Riga Pasaules Film Festival, an annual documentary film festival held in Riga. Another strand of his research concerns itself with the complexities of Caribbean island life in a para-colonial and global context. His book Caribbean Island Movements: Culebra's Trans-insularities (Rowman and Littlefield 2017) makes a case for the concept of "transinsularism" as a means to engage productively with the contradictions that characterise Caribbean island identities. The book describes transinsular relationships within the context of anti-military grassroots activism, tourism and development policies, maritime geography, and music.
Jeff Silva is an American filmmaker, artist and anthropologist whose works have been exhibited at festivals, and museums, including: Visions du Réel, MoMA's Documentary Fortnight, The Viennale, BAFICI, Valdivia, Flahertiana, Open City Documentary Festival, and RAI among others. Titles include Balkan Rhapsodies: 78 Measures of War (2008), Ivan and Ivana (2011), Linefork (2016), From the Land (2018), The Order of Things (2022). From 2006-2010, Silva developed sensory ethnography methods and curriculum with Lucien Castaing-Taylor at the inception of Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL). He is currently in charge of the documentary cinema research branch at La fabrique des expérimentation ethnographique (CNRS/EHESS) in Marseille, France.
Apply Now
Application deadline: All applications are now closed.
Successful applications notification: 05/05/2022.
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