Radiophrenia screening: Expedition Content

Expedition Content
Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati
2020, DCP, 78 minutes

In 1961, filmmaker Robert Gardner organized the Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea (current day West Papua). Funded by the Dutch colonial government and private donations, and consisting of several of the wealthiest members of American society wielding 16mm film cameras, still photographic cameras, reel-to-reel tape recorders, and a microphone, the expedition settled for five months in the Baliem Valley, among the Hubula (also known as Dani) people. It resulted in Gardner's highly influential film Dead Birds, two books of photographs, Peter Matthiessen's book Under the Mountain Wall, and two ethnographic monographs. Michael Rockefeller, a fourth-generation member of the Rockefeller (Standard Oil) family, was tasked with taking pictures and recording sound in and around the Hubula world.

Expedition Content is an augmented sound work for cinema, composed from the archive's 37 hours of tape which document the strange encounter between the expedition and the Hubula people. The piece reflects on intertwined and complex historical moments in the development of approaches to multimodal anthropology, in the lives of the Hubula and of Michael, and in the ongoing history of colonialism in West Papua. It upends the power dynamics between anthropologist and subject, between image and sound, and turns the whole ethnographic project on its head.

All ticket revenue will go to support non-profit organisations in West Papua, Teach for Papua and the video collective West Papua Updates.