In this blog post, our student  Prof. Dr. Zehra Yigit offers a vivid account of how a module assignment within our program develops into an exhibition work.

In Module 4, we were confronted not only with classical documentary methods but also with the rapid circulation of the digital world, social media activism, and the distinctive ways these platforms produce knowledge. The central concern was not simply to produce, but to understand—through an audience studies perspective—how viewers decode and experience these complex visual codes.

As someone with a background in film studies, I approached these discussions while also thinking through anthropology. Questions such as what the frame makes visible and what it excludes, how editing structures time and causality, or how sound directs the viewer’s perception are familiar within cinema. However, through this module and the previous ones I had taken, I came to recognise that the same tools (camera and sound) function in anthropological fieldwork not merely as recording devices, but as instruments of intervention that determine what counts as “data.” This awareness led me to question the ethical legitimacy of the camera the moment it enters the field. If cinematic language carries political force and the camera is in fact an instrument of intervention, what kinds of ethical risks emerge when ethnographic practices are conducted without full command of this language? When the camera enters the field, does it always occupy a legitimate position?

These questions became more acute for me through the ethnographic works we engaged with throughout Module 4. In particular, sensory ethnography—central to contemporary anthropological debates—deliberately narrows the distance between representation and experience, inviting the viewer into an intense bodily encounter. At this point, I shifted my focus to the following question: Where, then, is the viewer positioned within this encounter?

This line of inquiry, combined with the interviews I conducted with participants via Zoom, formed the foundation of my media ethnography report, the final project of Module 4. The “uneasy proximity” and the sense of bodily disgust expressed by participants revealed something crucial to me: anthropological knowledge can be produced not only through representation, but also through the viewer’s bodily responses.

One of the most compelling examples through which these questions took shape was Caniba. As one of the films produced by the Harvard Sensory Lab, Caniba situates the viewer not within an explanatory framework but within an unsettling proximity; it collapses the distance between the viewer and the perpetrator while simultaneously suspending the ethical reference points that might otherwise guide interpretation. This left me with a series of questions: How ethical is it to be placed in such close proximity to the perpetrator? To what extent can the consent of such a subject be considered valid? And perhaps more fundamentally: as a viewer, am I obliged to sustain this encounter?

The ethical void I experienced while watching Caniba, along with the film’s suspension of reference points, brought me to a critical juncture. Rather than analysing the film from a distance, as a critic might, I turned instead to understanding where the viewer stands, bodily, within this disturbing moment of “encounter.”

In this shift in direction, Anja Dreschke’s sensory and experience-oriented approach to media ethnography became my guide. Thomas John, in turn, reminded me that the anthropological field is sustained through the dynamic and reciprocal relationships established with participants. These insights informed my Zoom interviews with participants. During these interviews, some participants watched the film in its entirety; others paused; and some stopped watching altogether. Yet more significant than this distinction was the shared experience: the sense of inevitability produced by the close-up, the feeling of being confined within the space of the room, the forced proximity to the perpetrator, and the bodily reactions of disgust, nausea, and unease. The absence of the victim within the representation almost entirely suspended the possibility of empathy, placing the viewer in an even more ethically ambiguous position. What initially appeared to be incomplete data—these interruptions—came to occupy the centre of the study. A viewer’s decision to stop watching was no longer a methodological limitation, but an ethical threshold. The viewing experience thus became legible not through continuity, but through moments of rupture.

This shift in direction took shape through the idea of an “affective atlas,” which Thomas John proposed during our discussions. What I had at hand was not merely interview notes, but emotions, bodily responses, interruptions, and ethical objections. This fragmented material evolved, alongside the written analysis, into an atlas and nine accompanying visual works. In this process, I became not only a collector of data, but also a mediator who transformed and reconfigured viewers’ responses. At the same time, this was an intense and demanding process of transformation. I approached the interpretation of the participants’ interviews with great care, attending not only to their words but also to their bodily expressions and, at times, to the silences in between. The possibility of misrepresentation was one of the most delicate tensions throughout the process.

This research, which interrogates the limits of the viewer and the question of ethical consent, ultimately evolved into an installation presented at the Durham Anthropology Postgraduate Conference Exhibition; in this way, the viewer was invited to reconsider their own position, this time within the space of an exhibition. Withdrawal Index approaches moments of interruption and abandonment in the viewing process not as technical shortcomings, but as affective and ethical thresholds; Erasure, in turn, considers the absence of the victim within representation as an active problem that shapes the viewer’s anger, discomfort, and refusal.

The exhibition process itself developed in direct relation to the conceptual framework of the project. Due to visa constraints, my inability to be physically present at the exhibition led to the works being presented on a single screen, in a looped format that did not require the artist’s intervention. Although this initially appeared as a practical limitation, it ultimately reinforced the project’s central concern with mediated experience and distance. The viewer was left to construct their own encounter independently of the artist’s presence. The care shown by the organising team was also noteworthy; the sharing of photographs and video documentation of the installation provided a thoughtful and supportive approach that enabled remote participation.

Looking back, this project was not only an analysis of Caniba, but also a process of understanding how the boundaries between film theory, visual anthropology, and ethics intersect in practice. The question that emerged in Module 4 gradually found its method, form, and exhibition outcome. For me, the most significant realisation was that the image is not merely a recorded material, but a field of inquiry that produces questions, draws boundaries, and at times even transforms the viewer’s withdrawal into data.