Arjang Omrani

Arjang Omrani am an anthropologist–filmmaker and ​​currently working on his postdoc research project “Weaving memories” which problematizes the systematic marginalization and exploitation of weavers in the regime of production and trade of the (Persian) handmade carpets at the department of Psychology and Educational sciences at the University of Ghent, Belgium.

As an anthropologist, Dr. Omrani is engaged in the critical exploration of social phenomena. He considers multimodality – the medium of film as a prominent example – an essential element in the path toward democratizing knowledge and as an ethico-political framework. This offers a ground for a creative application of anthropology that tends to be inclusive – both for the people whom it works with and the wider public in general.

These focus points have been, both as theoretical and practical endeavors, elaborated in his Ph.D. dissertation titled: “Mediating anthropological knowledge: explorations into shared anthropology”. Expanding on the principles of ‘”Shared Anthropology”, as an “attitude” rather than a method of fieldwork, he understands anthropological work as collaborative, and political, with the aspiration of “critical public pedagogy” which is materialized and shaped through the medium of multimodal art.

In a diverse and interdisciplinary environment, Dr. Omrani approaches multimodal anthropology by experimenting within the boundaries of the audio-visual and the more-than-textual forms and through multimodal and participatory processes of research and publications.

The recent pandemic has been a chaotic stage on which the magnitude of the gap between the language of science and the public shines out. It has reminded us, more than ever, of the urgency to improve this condition, especially in the current media-saturated and post-truth landscape in which scientific knowledge has been instrumentalized for ideo-politico-economic purposes. No magic recipe or any overnight solution is existing to close this gap; rather, socio-political determination for a progressive and critical public pedagogy is necessary. This implies the necessity of not only enhancing the general level of comprehension of scientific subjects but also demanding that science recollect the mundane and existential language of everyday life. One can also argue that the latter plays a fundamental role in the former getting in shape.

This project tends to explore and manifest this conundrum through the participatory video-making methodology of visual and media anthropology in collaboration with a number of Montpellier’s residents. The aim is to investigate and reflect upon how the traces of crisis are sensed and experienced in their lives. What are their perceptions, understandings, and interpretations of circumstances? And how could they make sense and relate to the crisis through the way it has been addressed by science?