Over the past decade scholars in the humanities and social sciences have increasingly been pressed to demonstrate the manner in which their research is “useful” to society while simultaneously, funding for their research has been more tightly tied to bibliometric measurements that prioritize high-brow scholarship geared towards publish results in “leading” international peer-review journals. In many ways these are two demands that seem to point in rather different directions – oriented to very different goals and outcomes for the research in question. This paper works to develop an understanding of how the challenge of moving in two directions at once can be approached.

In order to do this it develops the notion of multi-targeted ethnography, inspired by George Marcus’s notion of multi-sited ethnography, but with a different focus. Where Marcus’ multi-sited ethnography constitutes an accumulative mode for acquiring research materials, information and inspiration, multi-targeted ethnography, as we develop the concept, is highly distributive in its orientation to the dissemination of potential results and outcomes of the ethnographic endeavor. In addition to developing the concept of multi-targeted ethnography, the paper provides several concrete examples of how multi-targeted ethnographies can be assembled to meet the joint challenges of social engagement and academic advancement.

The presentation will discuss a collaboration between The Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm and Robert Willim in 2014. The aim was to raise new ideas on museum imaginaries and representation. The result was the audiovisual performance Possible Worlds by Willim. Material from the museum was combined with sound and images collected on trips to different parts of the world. The result became a play with temporalities, place and performativity.

In the performance recordings from early ethnographic expeditions are enmeshed with material from entirely different contexts. Mundane everyday things collide with devotional objects, with undefined landscapes and actions as well as the non-place sounds from electronic circuits. The material is mixed through live improvisation during a 30 minute performance.

Possible Worlds is an attempt to explore notions of ethnographic surrealism and the interplay between evocation of worlds and situated performance. The notion of surrealism is here used in an expanded sense, and draws on James Clifford’s (1981) statement about ethnographic surrealism as a utopian construct and a statement at once about past and future possibilities for cultural analysis.