Stemming from a research trip to Iqaluit and Pangnirtung (two Inuit communities in Arctic Canada) and later a work period in the Berlin Ethnological Museum in Dahlem, Rebecca Sakoun and Florian Göttke examin in their video-essay the 46 artifacts haphazardly collected by Franz Boas during his first expedition. Their basic image material are photographs of the ethnographic objects: hunting and sledding gear, Inuit clothing, broken archeological items, but also many games and models commissioned by Boas, which attest to the imaginative and translation capacities of their makers. Sakoun and Göttke treat these photographs as material for re-working and collaging, which dislodges the objects from their museum context and constructs a visual narrative that explores issues of materiality, absence and presence, visibility and transparency. A voiceover-narration reflects on Boas's burgeoning anthropological impulses, his relationship with his Inuit informants, his approach to "objective" image-making and re-enactment, and the nature of the collected objects, as well as Sakoun and Göttke’s own roles as recorders, readers, and makers of images in a cross-cultural encounter.