Castaing-Taylor and Paravel work together as anthropologists, artists, and filmmakers at Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, an experimental platform that deals with human sciences issues by means of creative audiovisual approaches rather than in the written form the field generally favors. The starting point of Ah Humanity! is the Fukushima catastrophe. The images were shot on a telephone pointed through a hand-held telescope. An ambiguous mix of feelings, both closeness and distance, results from the combination of these two devices, which are designed to optimize humans’ grasp of their environment.This effect is amplified by the multidimensional audio work of Ernst Karel. The folly of mankind, seen through the ill-adapted magnifying glass of technology.
L. Castaing-Taylor *1966, Liverpool
V. Paravel *1971, Neuchâtel, live and work between Paris and Cambridge
E. Karel *1970, USA, lives and works in Cambridge
