Welcome to the inaugural post of “CASCA Presents”, the newest initiative of the Canadian Anthropology Society!
In a curated and multi-modal way, “CASCA Presents” promotes members’ scholarship, advocacy, and activism: CASCA’s membership exemplifies the very best of Canadian anthropology. Our community is richly and diversely populated by scholars, practitioners, artists, and activists, whose work speaks to the power of anthropology – in its broadest formulation – to ask and answer questions of vital importance.
Over the months to come, “CASCA Presents” will spotlight and celebrate the contributions of members working within and beyond Canada.
In this post, Lindsay Bell shares her collaboration with artist-photographer Jesse Colin Jackson in the Northwest Territories.
From a static vantage point atop a seventeen-story tower overlooking the Hay River, Bell and Jackson’s “Mackenzie Place” project captured millions of still images over the course of 5 years. Ethnographically, these depict the social and seasonal changes that mark community life and characterize its ebbs and flows. Launched first as an installation in 2023, their project employs a multi-channel time-lapse film which brings the Canadian north to life as “heterogeneous, complex and unfolding”. Innovatively and actionably, their project challenges assumptions of the Canadian Arctic as either “a place of extreme fragility or boundless opportunity.”
Bell’s post reflects evocatively on their process and goals. It asks vital questions about the nature of ethnographic production and representation and emphasizes the logistical challenges that impinge on our craft. Bell also issues a call to contemporary anthropological associations, and academia in general, to better support work which moves beyond anthropology’s traditional limits.
Our thanks to Lindsay Bell and Jesse Colin Jackson for sharing their work with us!
CASCA members of all backgrounds and professional statuses and affiliations are warmly invited to share their scholarly, engaged, and professional updates and news for profiling by “CASCA Presents.” French and English-language contributions may include recent publications among a wide number of other outputs, such as member-involved or -hosted podcast episodes and member-led or -involved interviews (such as for article, special issue, book, or research promotion), lectures, invited talks, and even debates, seminars, and workshops. So, please, share your creativity with us.
Submission proposals should be emailed to CASCA’s Executive Coordinator, Anastasiia Mykolenko (membership@anthropologica.ca).