Fieldnotes 1

Duration: 3 minutes and 17 seconds

Filmmakers’ Note:

Papernest Media (PN) is an interdisciplinary multimedia project. The name Papernest is inspired by the nests Oaxacan paper wasps construct to house their colonies. We conceive of our website as a metaphorical “home” for media, ideas, and research exploring human-insect interactions and insect commodification, mostly in Oaxaca, Mexico. Our website, and the edited sequence featured here, experiment with the dual and iterative processes of ethnographic research and documentary filmmaking. We use multimodal approaches to generate questions about anthropological phenomena and also to address those questions. We suggest that multimedia shifts the directionality of anthropological investigation by expanding the purview of the questions asked and diversifying who asks them.

Filmmaker Bios:

Anne E. Pfister, PhD, is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Florida, where she teaches medical and cultural anthropology. She currently investigates human-insect interactions from an anthropological and humanistic approach. She is directing and co-producing Nocheztli: La Grana Cochinilla, an ethnographic film on the contemporary status of cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) in Oaxaca, Mexico. She also uses visual methods with deaf youth and their families in Mexico City, Mexico.

Susie Mabry earned a B.A. in International Studies with a minor in Political Science from the University of North Florida (UNF). Her work centers on investigative research and visual storytelling, with a developing specialization in multimedia journalism that examines the intersection of policy and media. Her first documentary film investigates a controversial vessel speed law designed to protect the world’s most endangered whale species. As Papernest co-founder, she contributes to video production, filmmaking, and web design for Papernest. She is co-producing and editing Nocheztli with Dr Pfister after conducting fieldwork together in Oaxaca.

Alexandria Kledzik is a graduate of UNF with a B.A. in Sociology and minors in Digital Humanities and Film Studies. With her background in the intersection of qualitative research and media production, she aims to document interactions between human and nonhuman spaces in ambiguous and contested contexts. Her work examines how these social and ecological entanglements unfold through everyday practices, as demonstrated by her first project, which explores communities in Jacksonville, Florida, engaging with fungi through education, collaboration, and sustainable food systems.

Banner Image Credits: Still from Anne E. Pfister’s, Alexandria Kledzik’s, & Susie Mabry’s film