Practices of Regard: Images, Memories, Words

A workshop exploring imagemaking and writing as practices of care and acknowledgment.

Drawing on her work in animated documentary and first-person narrative storytelling, visual anthropologist and poet Darcy Alexandra invites us to explore imagemaking and writing as practices of regard. Engaging with photographs from our archives, Darcy leads us through a series of writing experiments for attending to what images hold, what they ask, and what threads they reveal. From this foundation, we will pay attention to the senses, feelings, and textures that shape how we engage with and interpret our research — what we notice, what moves us, and what lingers. This workshop is about slowing down, looking carefully, and following what emerges.

Event language: English (with close-captions for online participants).

Darcy Alexandra (she/her) is a visual anthropologist, filmmaker, and poet, whose scholarship thinks affectively through form. Engaging with animated documentary, filmic portraiture, and first-person narrative storytelling, her research turns toward what is chronic, foreclosed, and difficult to document. Her film The Woman You Look For, co-directed with animation artist Michaela Müller, traces dispossession through closed adoption using paint-on-glass animation. Waters Otherwise is a landscape ethnography examining ecological practices of care in the Sonoran Desert borderlands through moving image and poetry. She names this approach practices of regard: speculative, multimodal responses to chronic conditions of violence and unknowability. Alexandra is a visiting lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.

Image credits: Documentary stills from “Waters Otherwise” (Alexandra) and “The Woman You Look For” (Alexandra & Müller).

Please register only for on-site participation if you are sure you can attend. Due to the small space, on-site participation is limited to 20 seats.

On-Site event info:

Open doors:
The venue will be open 30 minutes ahead. Please make sure to arrive at least 10 minutes early, as the workshop starts on time due to the hybrid format.

Venue address:
DOCK
Klybeckstrasse 29, 4005 Basel, Switzerland

Accessibility:
Please note that DOCK is only partly accessible by wheelchair: The toilets are not wheelchair-accessible, and there are no parking spots at the venue. We apologize for this exclusion and will make sure to do better in the future.

This event is part of the Engaging Publics hybrid workshop series exploring community-based research from facilitation, process-documentation, engaged writing, and more.

All workshops are free and open to all. Registrations will open a month ahead.

Except the on-site-only workshop in November, all events can be accessed online via Zoom or on site at DOCK cultural space in Basel, Switzerland.

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June 20, 2026 | 3:30–6:30 pm CEST | Workshop | online and at DOCK Basel
Practices of Regard: Images, Memories, Words
with Darcy Alexandra (she/her), Visual Anthropologist, Filmmaker & Poet

Sep 5, 2026 | 3:30–6:30 pm CEST | Workshop | online and at DOCK Basel
Public Fictions: Methods for (World)Building Different Futures
with Ann Mbuti (she/her), Independent Writer

Sep 19, 2026 | 3:30–6:30 pm CEST | Workshop | online and at DOCK Basel
Working with the Archive: Reflecting on Collective Research
With Hybrid Project Space, Interdisciplinary Collective

Oct 17, 2026 | 3:30–6:30 pm CEST | Workshop | online and at DOCK Basel
Letters I Never Sent: Yearning in Science Fiction
With Sherida Kuffour(she/her), Art Director, Design Educator & Publisher

Oct 31, 2026 | 3:30–6:30 pm CET | Workshop | online and at DOCK Basel
The Language of Art: Celebrating Connection Through Doing Art
With Habib Afsar (he/none), Expressive Arts Practitioner, Relational Artist & Public Health Physician

Nov 07, 2026 | 3:30–6:30 pm CET | Workshop | on-site only at DOCK Basel
Co-Producing Publics: Questioning, Performative Acts, and Temporary Interventions
With Circuit Sessions Collective
and Eva Chen (she/her) Scenographer & Art Educator

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