Building spaces

Original title Building spaces

What does research feel like? How does the place where knowledge is created shape the knowledge itself? And what knowledges remain neglected because we cannot transform them into written words? “Building spaces” follows four social scientists through their academic lives, making spaces and practices visible, tangible, and audible that have remained unnoticed until now. Creating knowledge is much less the genius achievement of individuals than a social and sensory practice. In this sense, the film explores sensory spaces of research. It is about mediating an experience: research, whether artistic or academic, is always a search, an emotional balancing act, a material labour. The film puts into practice what it shows. It is the artistic exploration of a world that everyone knows and yet no one has ever considered worthy of focusing on. Not all knowledges can be found in books, some must be learned through experience and discovered through filming.

Author/s Elaine Goldberg

Elaine Goldberg is a researcher and ethnographic filmmaker, currently at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. She has a background in theatre studies from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, performing arts from the Université Rennes 2 (France), and science and technology studies from the University of Vienna, where she has worked as a research assistant in Technosciences, Materiality and Digital Cultures. Her research focuses on the exploration of epistemic practices and spaces through audiovisual methods, continually questioning the interplay between media and world-building practices.

Research Elaine Goldberg
Photography Elaine Goldberg, Sebastian Stopfer

Editing Elaine Goldberg, Lea Tama Springer