Sensing Reality Beyond Words: A Retrospective of the Sensory Ethnography Lab

Lucien Castaing-Taylor: 'It is also, to be sure, the realm of the nonverbal and the nondiscursive, or, in Foucault's neo-Kantian terms, the "seeable" (though why privilege sight? Why not simply sensible) but "un-sayable." The cinema, video, and sound, all have a particular purchase on the experiential that differs quite fundamentally from that of our written representations, particularly in their deployment, as Vivian Sobchack emphasized, of acts of moving, hearing, and seeing as at once the originary structures of embodied existence and the mediating structures of discourse.'

— Excerpted from Scott MacDonald, 'Conversations on the Avant-Doc: Scott MacDonald Interviews', Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Vol. 54, No. 2, Fall 2013

Before Leviathan (2012) captivated audiences worldwide, the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University had already been paving the way for innovations in ethnography and documentary filmmaking for many years.

The lab originated in a sensory ethnography course developed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor in 2006. However, SEL has never operated under a rigid manifesto; rather, it functions more as an open, interdisciplinary creative experiment. Under the banner of Harvard University — a stronghold of ethnographic research — the lab combines aesthetic inquiry with practice. Moving away from narrative traditions that rely heavily on language and text, SEL foregrounds the specific capacities of audiovisual media, inviting viewers to sense and engage with experiences drawn from diverse field sites.

Driven by an 'attention to the many dimensions of the world, both animate and inanimate, that may only with difficulty, if at all, be rendered with words', SEL works share several recurring formal strategies: the avoidance of expository voice-over; minimal use of informational intertitles; a predominantly observational camera language; the frequent use of synchronous sound, with little or no non-diegetic music.

Taken purely as aesthetic choices, these strategies may not appear particularly novel to contemporary documentary audiences. The 'expository' tradition — built on voice-over, interviews and intertitles — has long been challenged and reworked across film history. What, then, does it mean for a documentary film festival in 2026 to revisit SEL's works, and to frame this retrospective around Castaing-Taylor's notion of the 'sensible but un-sayable'? It may be understood as a response to the contemporary media landscape.

The enduring force of SEL's practice lies not in a rejection of language, but in its rigorous engagement with the cinematic medium and its tools. Through an intensive exploration of image-making technologies, alongside sound design that actively shapes perception rather than subordinating itself to the image, these filmmakers return to the medium itself. They probe what the camera is, what sound can do, and how the organisation of image and sound reconfigures perception. Cinema here does not simply represent a given reality; it becomes a sensory conduit into it, allowing us to encounter forms of lived experience that resist articulation in language. When the body, situated within the auditorium, registers the perceptual force of audiovisual organisation, it not only reshapes our understanding of the world, but also prompts a renewed reflection on the nature of the medium itself.

Exploring Image-making Machines

The collaborative works of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel perhaps best demonstrate SEL's intensive exploration of the cinematic apparatus. In Leviathan, the GoPro cameras attached to the hull, plunging into the sea and cast among fish not only co-create a spectacle with the environmental sounds, but also bring forth a fundamental proposition from the birth of cinema: how imaging technology guides us to perceive the world anew.

In De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022), miniature cameras slice through the surface of reality like scalpels, transforming medical imaging from evidentiary tools into sensory shocks and rendering the invisible within the human body visible. Meanwhile, sound serves as the mechanism connecting two realities — internal and external. The issues of overwork and management dilemmas repeatedly surfacing in the medical staff's conversations expose another unseen reality: the structural oppression of the workplace.

Coexistence of Humans and the Environment

The intervention of machinery does not mean creators must maintain an icy distance from their subjects. In SEL's works, we still witness filmmakers entering the field and building genuine, long-term relationships with their subjects.

In Sweetgrass (2009), a subject's exhaustion-fuelled swearing and the candid moment mentioning 'Lucien fell asleep' are authentic instances that could only be captured after spending extended periods of time together with the camera rolling. The lenses and recording equipment immersed within the flock also dissolve the binary between shepherd and sheep, and between living beings and the environment.

In Foreign Parts (2010), the film deliberately refrains from introducing characters and local contexts. Instead, audiences gradually get to know this marginalised, soon-to-be-demolished community alongside the cinematographer. Our understanding of the place and its people is not forced by the filmmakers' interpretations but naturally shaped by the environment. When the filmmakers step into the frame, the relationship between observer and observed is made visible.

The formal structure of Manakamana (2013) fuses an understanding of the medium's characteristics with anthropologists' profound knowledge of their collaborators and environment. The duration of the cable car ride corresponds exactly to the running time of a roll of 16mm film. As these two mechanical apparatuses operate in sync, the materiality of cinema and the temporality of the pilgrimage interpenetrate. Co-director Stephanie Spray, who has conducted long-term research in Nepal, also reflects on the power dynamics of language and the gaze in her short film Untitled (2010) by deliberately forgoing subtitles and voiceovers.

Subverting Power Dynamics

SEL's other works also exhibit a critical reflection on the power structures inherent in visual representation. The Labyrinth (2018) centres Indigenous oral histories, juxtaposing them with images of cultural colonisation. The A-Team (2021) relies on the dissonance between images and memories to confront past awkwardness and inequality. Similarly, Partition (2025), directed by a former SEL member and screening in this year's 'Palestine and Its Archiveless Archive' programme, repurposes colonial footage and reorchestrates history through sound. None of these works treat images as neutral representations; instead, they expose the viewing positions and power relations behind the lens. In the fissures between sound and image, history and reality are perceived and understood anew.

Sound as the Narrative Subject

In SEL's works, sound is never merely a supplement to the image; it is an independent entity capable of reconstructing space and experience.

Dead Birds (1963) is a Harvard ethnographic classic, yet the representation of its subjects has sparked intense controversy. Expedition Content (2020) utilises audio recordings from that very expedition to remove the visual gaze, rearrange the material and allow the previously excluded voices of the subjects to be heard — functioning as both an act of inheritance and a gesture of critique. Single Stream (2014), on the other hand, films cold machinery as a colossal living entity that breathes to its own rhythm, blurring the binary boundaries between human and object, life and environment, and showcasing sound's ability to sculpt space.

El Mar la Mar (2017) constructs the sensory space of the borderlands with sound, questioning the binary oppositions of land, nation and identity. By carving out a new path for political engagement through sensory perception, it resonates with even greater force when viewed against the backdrop of today's American society.

All the aforementioned works, regardless of their varying forms, point to the fact that the audiovisual medium is not just a tool for comprehending information; it can also guide us to perceive the world as if for the first time.

In relevant readings of SEL, the term 'negative capability' appears repeatedly. In Chinese, it is sometimes translated as 'passive sensibility', while some writers vividly render it as 'the ability to be useless'. This seemingly paradoxical phrase stems from the poet John Keats, who believed that a poet should be 'capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason'. SEL's works do not pursue an exhaustive understanding of facts but rather attend to the 'sensible but un-sayable' sensory experience, which might be seen as a continuation of this 19th-century poet's ideal.

This 'ability to be useless' might seem exceptionally crucial today. In our current era of disorder and chaos, where facts are hard to discern and rationality seems to be failing, audiovisual media is ubiquitous, yet it mostly serves merely as a vehicle for information and specific stances. The specific kind of 'uselessness' inherent in documentaries (and indeed, all works of art) is precisely what is needed in this moment. Images and sounds cannot provide definitive solutions or absolute truths to our predicaments; however, amidst the uncertainty and chaos, through an embodied empathy with the conditions of both animate and inanimate beings, they can bring us just a little closer to mutual understanding.

Translated by Vincent Po