Bio:
Xena is a multispecies audio-visual anthropologist whose work delves into entangled ecologies—the relationships weaving together humans, non-humans, cultures, and environments. Her curiosity took root in the Forest of Dean, where she was raised amid a landscape rich with place-based identities. This upbringing sparked her fascination with how places shape people and how people, in turn, craft the stories of those places. She pursued an MA in social anthropology and an MA in visual anthropology to build a toolkit for understanding and expressing these dimensions of human experience. 

Xena believes in the radical potential for ethnographic media to capture the emotional and sensory dimensions of multispecies connections, revealing their significance in the mundane and everyday. Her approach underscores the urgent need to share alternative narratives of coexistence, challenging the anthropocentric tales that threaten the planet’s climate.

Context:
Xena got in touch with the collective after submitting her work for the festival open call.