Seminar: Ethnography in Motion: Audiovisual Encounters Across Film, Installation, and Performance
Ethnography in Motion: Audiovisual Encounters Across Film, Installation, and Performance
23rd of January 2026 – 2 pm to 5 pm, at the French Center for Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa
by Dr. Itsushi Kawase (National Museum of Ethnology, Japan)
Seminar open to all
About Dr. Itsushi Kawase:
Dr. Itsushi Kawase is a Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan. His work spans ethnographic filmmaking, poetry, fiction, performance, and exhibition, exploring experimental and engaged approaches to anthropology. He has directed a number of ethnographic films, including Azmari – The Fest of Voices (2023), When Spirits Ride Their Horses (2012), and Room 11, Ethiopia Hotel (2007). His writing and films have received numerous awards. He has taught as an invited lecturer at the University of Hamburg, the University of Bremen, SoundImageCulture (SIC), Addis Ababa University, Mekelle University, Shandong University, among others. In 2019, he founded and has since co-edited the online multimodal journal TRAJECTORIA.
Abstract’s presentation:
This presentation looks back on my long engagement with ethnographic filmmaking and audiovisual practice, shaped through fieldwork in northern Ethiopia and among Ethiopian immigrant communities in Japan. Through selected film excerpts, as well as audiovisual installations and performances created for museum spaces, I trace the creative paths, hesitations, and ethical tensions that have accompanied my works over time. I have worked alongside diverse topics: hereditary singer-poets and Zar spirit mediums, children navigating street micro-commerce, and people living diasporic lives between places. Through these encounters, the boundary between observer and observed gradually loosens, extending as well to those who receive, experience, and respond to the works themselves. Whether behind the camera, within an installation space, or in the midst of performance, I am not a distant recorder but a participant shaping and being shaped by the social and sensory field that audiovisual media bring into being. Moving across film, installation, and performance, my practice foregrounds lived encounters, improvisation, and shared experience rather than visual evidence alone. I conclude by suggesting that ethnographic images come fully alive through circulation, exhibition, and collective viewing, when they begin to speak not only of what is seen, but of what is lived, felt, and remembered.
French Center for Ethiopian Studies’ location:
The French Center for Ethiopian Studies is located in the Jan Meda neighborhood (Arada sub city, Kebele 11/12, house no. 1907), between Menelik Hospital and Sidist Kilo (50m before the entrance of Jan Meda)
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Secrétaire Scientifique (16 janvier 2026). Seminar: Ethnography in Motion: Audiovisual Encounters Across Film, Installation, and Performance. UN ŒIL SUR LA CORNE / AN EYE ON THE HORN. Consulté le 15 février 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15ifv




