Walking, Seeing, Hearing Infrastructure

In May 2024, a band of anthropologists, geographers and political scientists, accompanied by an artist and a photographer, set out to walk, see and listen to the infrastructure of the northern Adriatic. We will be presenting photographic and audiovisual material from the walk, as well as hold a panel discussion on walking+writing as a methodology to explore infrastructure, particularly its (in)visibility and embeddedness into densely layered landscapes such as the Istrian peninsula. An informal drinks reception will follow the event.

Speakers:

Nataša Rogelja Caf is a researcher at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) in Ljubljana. Her work focuses on mobility studies, lifestyle migration, experimental ethnographic methodology, and creative non-fiction. Currently, she leads a project Route Biographies. Walking and writing as methods for researching border regions at ZRC SAZU. Her latest book FootNotes: Ethnographic Essays with Methodological Reflections on Walking and Writing (2023) is co-authored with Špela Ledinek Lozej with whom she walked and wrote for over 20 years. Her publications include anthropological monographs and articles, (virtual) exhibitions, essays, literary travelogues, children's books, and novels. 

Martina Bofulin is a permanent research associate at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and an expert on migration and mobility between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Europe. She has done extensive fieldwork research in China, Serbia, and Slovenia focusing on material and immaterial movements among these locations and has published on China’s diaspora policies, Chinese migrant transnationalism, and inclusion of Chinese migrants.

Manca Bajec is a researcher and artist whose work is situated in the realm of socio-politics, and is currently based at Goldsmiths University of London. As an artist, writer and researcher, her interdisciplinary work concerns and observes the constructions of national histories, memories and politics. Her practice is inspired by her work as a scenographer and curator and often interacts with a variety of fields of study, interweaving many mediums and engaging her subject through an appropriated form of theatricality. 

Igor Rogelja is an Associate Professor in Global Politics, working mostly on international infrastructure and Chinese politics. He is interested in the politics of space and is involved in several research projects examining the effects of Chinese infrastructural investments in the so-called ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. He is currently working on bringing insights from the anthropology of infrastructure into global politics to better conceptualize how large infrastructural projects interact with political and physical space. He has published on the role of materials such as coal or concrete in shaping international politics, particularly within a multi-scalar perspective that rethinks statist explanations in favour of more nuanced work.

The event is organsied with financial support of the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) in the framework of the project Route Biographies: walking and writing as methods for researching border regions (J6-4611).