Part of the Public Program of Sensing the Ways: On Touch, Story, Movement, and Song
Friday, 4 and 17 April 2025 / Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Lange Nieuwstraat 7, 3512 PA Utrecht
What possibilities do artistic and documentary practices, as well as contemporary philosophical thought, offer for the regeneration of land-based knowledges and spiritual relationality in the present?
Join us for Camera Dialogues, a study program by Kristiina Koskentola and special guests that explores this question through screenings and dialogues.
As part of the lineage of Kristiina’s recent collaborative works, the program delves into processes of knowledge production, polyvocal subjectivity, and the agency of multiple co-actors—both human and non-human—shaping artistic and filmic imaginations. It further invites discussion on the ethics of collaboration and recording, as well as the politics of visuality.
Camera Dialogues unfolds in two parts, with the first study session taking place on April 4 and the second on April 17.
The study sessions are conceived as a space to reconsider collaborative audiovisual practices that move beyond extractive or objectifying lenses, where community members—such as storytellers and shamans—as well as other non-human entities, are not merely subjects of research but active co-creators. Each session includes a screening and presentation, followed by a Q&A and space for discussion. The program concludes with a communal dinner.
Camera Dialogue #1 with Stephan Dudeck & Kristiina Koskentola
Friday, 4 April, 13:30–18:30 / Casco HQ
13:30–15:00 Walk-in and exhibition visit
15:00–17:00 Study Session
17:15–18:30 Screening of Before the Snow (2007) by Christian Vagt and Stephan Dudeck, followed by Q&A
18:30–19:30 Communal dinner
During this first session, anthropologist Stephan Dudeck joins artist Kristiina Koskentola in conversation to discuss collaborative audiovisual practices, drawing from their respective works. Afterwards, there is a screening of Before the Snow (2007) by Christian Vagt and Stephan.
Study Session
In conversation with each other, Stephan shares his collaboration with the Khanty and Nenets people in Siberia, reflecting on his engagement with them and his work in documenting the Khanty bear ceremony. What role can documentary practices play in unearthing and reclaiming seemingly lost forms of Indigenous knowledge and spiritual practices for the benefit of these communities?
Kristiina, in turn, shares insights into her ongoing collaboration with Manchu shamanic composer Han Xiaohan, including their long-term explorations of the intersecting material and spiritual ecologies that connect territories divided by nation-states—specifically the Finnish-Russian border, Karelia, Lake Saimaa, and the Manchuria region along the Amur River, a natural boundary between China’s northeast and Russia’s far east. How can visual and sonic explorations help account for and renew systems of belief and ritual practices suppressed under various political formations as well as religious agendas?
Screening
As part of the session, participants are invited to a screening of Before the Snow (2007, 27′ 25″), a documentary by photographer and filmmaker Christian Vagt and co-created with Stephan Dudeck. Filmed near the oil fields of Western Siberia, the film captures the storytelling traditions of the Khanty and Nenets communities. It weaves together folklore and personal experiences shared by reindeer breeders Josif Kechimov and Yuri Vella, and linguist Agrafena Pesikova. These stories, deeply embedded in Indigenous cultural practices, act as tools for confronting fear, evil, and harm. Before the Snow offers a poignant portrayal of the Khanty and Nenets’ spiritual and cultural resistance to the encroachment of Western values and the exploitation of their lands.
RSVP via info@casco.art
Camera Dialogue #2 with Gu Tao, Kristiina Koskentola, and Rick Dolphijn
Thursday, 17 April, 13:30–18:30 / Casco HQ
13:30–15:00 Walk-in and exhibition visit
15:00–15:30 Introduction to the film by Gu Tao
15:30–16:50 Screening of Opaque God by Gu Tao
17:15–18:30 Study Session with Rick Dolphijn and Kristiina Koskentola followed by Q&A
18:30–19:30 Communal dinner and discussion
The second session features Manchu documentary filmmaker Gu Tao (joining online), who introduces his film Opaque God, followed by a screening. A discussion and reflection follow with philosopher Rick Dolphijn and Kristiina.
Screening
Opaque God explores profound spiritual and cultural themes, probing the boundaries between divinity and human understanding. It follows Guan Kouni, the last shaman of the Oroqen people, as she strives to preserve her ancient religious traditions. On the 1st or 15th day of the lunar calendar, Guan Kouni performs customary rituals, offering tributes to the spirit tablet and worshipping the gods in traditional ways. However, her role as a shaman was disrupted by government policies enacted after the “liberation.” Paradoxically, these same authorities later permitted her to hold a rare ceremony to pass on her shamanic identity. Despite her hopes of finding a successor to continue this sacred tradition, she faces a significant challenge: the younger generation’s diminishing belief in the gods. The Oroqen are a Tungusic people, with the largest population living in northeast China. The main belief system of the nomadic Oroqen was shamanic. In the early 1950s, the Oroqen had to leave their traditional lifestyle deep in the forests and move to settlements by order of the government.
Study Session
After the screening, philosopher Rick Dolphijn and artist Kristiina Koskentola engage in a dialogue on the philosophy of land (and hence the cosmos), on humanisms and the more-than-human worlds, embodiment, the earthliness of us, and the importance of rethinking Western philosophical paradigms alongside many other traditions of thought. They explore how shamanic and Indigenous knowledge systems challenge dualistic worldviews, offering holistic perspectives on existence, spirituality, and ecological interconnectedness.
RSVP via info@casco.art
Biographies of the contributors
Stephan Dudeck is an anthropologist who has worked closely with Siberian Indigenous communities since 1993, conducting long-term fieldwork with reindeer herding communities. His research, spanning over 20 years, intersects social science and activism, focusing on Indigenous struggles for land rights, self-determination, and the preservation of cultural heritage amidst state and oil industry pressures. Having developed deep, lasting relationships with Indigenous partners, his work has expanded from studies on self-representation and resilience in Western Siberia’s oil provinces to oral history and cultural heritage preservation. He is currently a research fellow in Arctic Studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia, and has held positions at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland.
Gu Tao is a Manchu documentary filmmaker born in 1970 in Inner Mongolia, China, at the base of the Great Khingan Mountains. When he was a child, his father was an ethnographer and photographer, and focused his time and energy documenting the nomadic tribes in the mountains near their home. In 2005 Gu began following in his father’s footsteps, traveling back to the mountains of his hometown to make a documentary about its original residents, the Ewenki people. Gu Tao’s focus, however, was different from his father’s, as he saw a way of life that had been severely limited by governmental intrusion and environmental destruction, since the 1970’s when his father was doing his filming. He has chosen to focus his films on dying traditions and ways of life, and how marginalized groups are adapting to the modern world. Gu’s internationally acclaimed, award winning documentaries have been screened at film festivals in China and around the globe including Rotterdam, Yamagata, Singapore, London, and more.
Rick Dolphijn is a writer, educator, and curator, serving as an associate professor at Media and Culture Studies, Humanities, Utrecht University. He published widely on continental philosophy (Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres) and the contemporary arts. He studies posthumanism, new materialism, material culture (food studies), and ecology. His books include Foodscapes (Eburon/University of Chicago Press 2004), New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (Open Humanities Press 2012, with Iris van der Tuin). His academic work has appeared in journals like Continental Philosophy Review, Angelaki, Rhizomes, Collapse, and Deleuze Studies. Together with Rosi Braidotti he edited three books: This Deleuzian Century: Art, Activism, Life (Brill/Rodopi 2014/5), Philosophy after Nature (2017), and Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism (2022). He was the sole editor of Michel Serres and the Crises of the Contemporary (Bloomsbury Academic 2019/20). His monography, The Philosophy of Matter: a Meditation, appeared with Bloomsbury Academic in 2021, and was published as a trade book in Dutch (Filosofie van de Materie, Noordboek) in 2022.
