Book Review

Expanded visions: A new anthropology of the moving image

Abstract

In Expanded visions: A new anthropology of the moving image, Arnd Schneider draws on a wide range of time-based media commonly used in contemporary art but not often used in anthropology to propose a new anthropology of the moving image. Schneider takes his cue from Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded cinema (1970), which opened up new debates in experimental film and the then-emerging moving image media. Schneider argues that, owing to current developments in moving image practices, an expanded anthropology of vision is now required. Therefore, this book is situated in what Schneider refers to as a ‘third space’ (1), which is opened up by new moving image practices currently used in contemporary art and experimental film. The author argues that by thinking with experimental approaches to art and film, visual anthropologists and ethnographers can incorporate innovative techniques to overcome the realist-naturalist paradigm that still tends to dominate anthropological research and representation.