Video essay

Archiving Silences

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Archiving Silences (2025) (10:37 min)

Authors: Živa Caf, Špela Ledinek Lozej, and Nataša Rogelja Caf

Camera and photos: Špela Ledinek Lozej and Živa Caf

Script: Nataša Rogelja Caf

Editing: Živa Caf

Archiving Silences is a video adaptation of a textual essay discussing a walking seminar in Istria, a border region in the North Adriatic characterized by population movements, displacements, border changes, and specific environmental conditions. It uses video, audio, and photographic material from the ethnographic fieldwork to create a parallel story, an ethnographic film that supports, relates to, discusses, and interplays with the fieldwork material and the essay itself. The focus is on reflections of historical silences in the border regions such as Istria and how to think, approach, document and communicate them in a video form.

Walking seminar was realised within two projects: Route Biographies (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Infrastructure Soundscapes (UCL, London, UK).

Authors

  • Natasa Rogelja Caf

    Nataša Rogelja Caf completed her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology. Since 2011 she has been working as a research fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her work focuses on mobility studies, new forms of nomadism, women's work migrations, experimental ethnographic methodology, experimental ethnographic writing, and creative non-fiction. Her latest book FootNotes. Ethnographic Essays with Methodological Reflections on Walking and Writing (2023) is coauthored with Špela Ledinek Lozej with whom she has walked and written for more than 25 years. Her publications include several anthropological monographs and articles, ethnographic photo-documentary exhibitions, lectures, children's books, and novels as well as travel reportages for newspapers.

  • Spela Ledinek Lozej

    Špela Ledinek Lozej holds a PhD in ethnology and has been working at the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) since 2000. She is dedicated to the study of heritage and heritage processes, architecture, dwelling culture and the Alpine economy. Since 2019, she has led the multidisciplinary research program Heritage on the Margins (see Heriscope) and teaches at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU. Since childhood, walking has been a major part of her life, but for the last quarter of the century, her longer walks tended to include various interlocutors, and more recently also researchers.

  • Ziva Caf

    Živa Caf is a second-year Cultural Studies student at the University of Ljubljana. She is an amateur photographer, AV documentary filmmaker, and editor of short films. As a student, she works at the Slovenian Cinematheque and at ZRC SAZU. At ZRC SAZU, she is working on the production of ethnographic films within the project Route Biographies.
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