Nadine Wanono, trained as Visual Anthropologist by the late Jean Rouch, who was her PhD director, was also Visiting Fellow from the National Film School. she has a research tenure position at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) at the Institut des Mondes africains, CNRS-Paris1. She conducted her fieldwork among the Dogon people in Mali, where she produced several films, which were selected in numerous ethnographic film festivals and broadcast on Arte. As Visiting Associate Professor at UCSB, she started research on the role and impact of digital technologies in visual anthropology.
She conducted her research following three dynamics:
Seminars and Manifestation
In 2011, to promote new forms of expression in social sciences and to encourage creation as a method and means of investigating reality, she initiated an encounter (Digital Anthropologies) in collaboration with Le Cube, digital art centre,. In 2016, as member of the Labex HASTEC (History and Anthropology of Knowledge Technologies and Beliefs) she pursued her research on Techniques Of (Making) Believe and the construction of belief, its manifestation and its propagation. She focused on the technical objects, the machine-tools (magic lanterns, cameras, computers, programs, robots, etc.) conceived to give credit to beliefs, demonstrate them, and transform them into knowledge. She received a funding from the Labex to organise the manifestation Digital Anthropologies at Point Ephemere in Paris and for two years scholars, artists, enginers were invited to share their experiences, as improvisations, screenings or workshops. With Côme Ledésert (PhD), they initiated a collaboration with the Senselab, Laboratory for Tought in Motion, in order to encourage new forms of expression to share knowledge and to invite the audience to fully participate in the event. In 2019, the manifestation AN#7 was organised in Berlin at Ausland as a Summer School, funded by UFA (French-German University), Leuphana University, Senselab, IMAf.
Publishing activities
In 2013, she became chief editor of Anthrovision, online journal dedicated to visual anthropology and visual culture. She co-edited several books : Creation and Transmission in Visual Anthropology, Journal des anthropologues, n°130-131, 2012, Anthropology and Digital Technologies, Anthrovision,n°2.1, 2014, Seeing digital technologies from the margins, Journal des anthropologues, n°142-143, 2015 and Techniques To Believe, Archives des Sciences sociales et des Religions, n°187, 2019.
Teaching activities
University of California Santa Barbara and Freie Universität: History of Visual Anthropology and its Evolution, Media Anthropology, Digital technologies, From the Frame to the Flow: introduction to experimental forms of representation of our data.
In parallel, she focused on soundscapes and conceived three prototypes:
- In Lijiang, China, during a workshop organised during the IUAES (2006)
- At La Trappe, Monastery in France, Conception of a Sound Exploration of the Prayer, from Heterotopia (Foucault) to Audiotopia( Kuhn) ( Musée du Quai Branly, 2014, Ottawa CASCA/IUAES 2017)
- Voices from the archives, questions the different ways a creative practice transmits contentious cultural heritage by establishing a vital dialogue with the population directly concerned and affected by the colonial history. (Lisbon, First International Workshop of the #Colleex Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation, an EASA network, 2017, and at Oslo during the conference Global Traces : Art Practice, Ethnography, Contested Heritage, 2019)
Key fields: Africa, West Africa, Possession and Rituals, Digital Technologies, Techniques and Beliefs, Women Identity, Experimental Approach.