ABOUT SECOND FIELD
Second Field is a cross-disciplinary research platform founded by Sara Jordenö and A. Horning. Our collaboration began in 2011 through an ethnographic research project led by Horning Ruf in New York City. We found that our different backgrounds in qualitative research and nonfiction film brought different methods and perspectives to the research and fieldwork itself.
The name Second Field refers to the space that opens when research and fieldwork move beyond the discipline in which they began. For Horning Ruf, that second field is art and visual practice. For Jordenö, it is social science research. The name also echoes anthropologist Marilyn Strathern’s idea of ethnographic writing as a “second field,” where material produced through fieldwork is encountered again under different conditions.
For us, that encounter can happen through a film, installation, publication, or performance. These forms create experiences for different publics and allow the research to be approached again from other positions.
Our early collaboration focused on sex markets and informal economies in New York. Since 2016, our work has increasingly focused on migration, asylum governance, civil society, and the networks that form around people moving through these systems. Much of the current research is longitudinal, returning to people and networks as political and social conditions change. We are currently preparing our fifth and sixth research studies, both focused on migration, shifting border regimes, and resistance networks.
While Second Field is primarily a collaboration between Jordenö and Horning Ruf, individual projects also bring in other researchers, artists, performers, and practitioners. We invite collaborators whose methods or knowledge can extend the questions a project is asking.
SARA JORDENÖ
Artist · Nonfiction Filmmaker · Researcher
Sara Jordenö is an award-winning Swedish-born, U.S.-based filmmaker, artist, and writer whose work over more than two decades has shaped conversations around documentary form, collaboration, identity, and the ethics of representation.
Jordenö directed the critically acclaimed feature documentary KIKI, co-written with Twiggy Pucci Garçon. The film premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and in Panorama at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for Best Documentary and Essay Film. KIKI was distributed theatrically by IFC Films in the United States and Folkets Bio in Sweden, released across seven territories, and nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award. The film continues to circulate internationally as a work on collaboration, authorship, and LGBTQ+ community representation.
Her filmography includes the mid-length works Diamond People and Civil Society. Jordenö’s films and installations have been presented at international festivals and institutions including the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Her practice also extends into qualitative research, experimental film, installation, public art, writing, and long-term collaborative projects.
SARA JORDENÖ PROJECT ARCHIVE →
A. HORNING, PhD
Criminologist · Qualitative Researcher
Amber Horning, Ph.D., is a criminologist and Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Their research explores hidden and illicit social worlds, with a particular focus on commercial sex, human trafficking, drug markets, and criminal exploitation. Much of their work examines relationships within underground economies and the often-blurred boundaries between victimization, offending, coercion, and agency. They are committed to public criminology and to bringing research beyond academic audiences through collaborative and publicly engaged work. Their research has been published across criminology and interdisciplinary journals and supported by the National Institute of Justice and other public and private funders.