CAPI TACO
research & storytelling
multidisciplinarity and collaborations
I work with different media across platforms, have extensive experience with teaching and public speaking, and have published and shared my work in top-tier scientific journals, such as American Ethnologist, Vibrant and Focaal, in book form, through photographic exhibitions, and on social media. My projects have received funding from numerous sources, including The Norwegian Research Council, The Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association, The Meltzer Fund, and The Fritt Ord Foundation. Since 2018, I have collaborated with documentary filmmaker Siri Bråtveit on a film project that documents the journey of my doctoral research and sailing projects.
ethnographic research
From the favelas in Rio de Janeiro to the sea-ice of the Arctic, I meet people from diverse walks of life to explore how different worldviews and philosophies shape human behavior. In my first research project, I followed police officers at the Pacifying Police Units that were established across different favela communities prior to the Rio Olympics. Since 2014, I have studied, photographed and written about police-resident relations. I have been particularly interested in understanding the convergence of religious and political dynamics in the field of policing.
In 2018 I started a new research project, where I explored what the mountains mean to people who pursue lifestyles centred on outdoor sports and activities. In particular, I delved into Norwegian outdoor culture as well as the global history of mountaineering and alpinism. I did most of my research in the Arctic community of Svalbard, and in the Patagonian mountain village of El Chaltén, and found that the spiritual dimensions of our relationship to nature are often overlooked in environmental management and policy development.
Currently, I’m sailing across the oceans carrying out an independent research and a documentary project that zooms in on spiritual and existential concerns. Letting the sea be my teacher and guide, I am approaching this project as open-ended and public project, using different approaches to visual storytelling to share my journey, thoughts, and impressions.
projects
If you’re interested in collaborating, supporting, or simply following along, I invite you to connect with me.
Wisdom of the Sea
For my project Wisdom of the Sea: Lessons for the Future I am sailing across the ocean, tracing a route shaped by currents, winds, and human stories. Along the way, I engage with spiritual practitioners, everyday philosophers, and coastal communities, exploring how different cosmologies shape the way we understand the world—and how knowledge itself moves across the sea. This journey is both an ethnographic inquiry and a creative documentary project. It is not just about mapping spiritual traditions, but about listening—to the voices I encounter and to the voice of the sea. Thus, it approaches the ocean not merely as a backdrop, but as a participant in the unfolding of thought, a shifting medium with an agency of its own, connecting ideas and experiences across continents and generations. What happens when philosophy is shaped by movement, by currents, by the unpredictability of the open water? What are the commonalities and differences across different knowledge traditions that are bound together by the ocean? What lessons can the sea teach humanity in the critical junctures of the 21st century? The project is a continuation of the questions and insights that have emerged from my previous projects, but relies heavily on experience and visual storytelling as method and medium.
Mountains of Modernity
My doctoral research project Mountains of Modernity: Romantic Pursuits of Happiness in the Anthropocene examines the evolving relationship between modernity and the mountains in the West, focusing on how romantic pursuits of happiness and the good life are articulated through a multiplicity of outdoor practices, cultural values, ecological ethics, and socio-political dynamics.Through multi-sited ethnography in Svalbard, Southern Patagonia, and Norway, it analyses the global expansion of state and market dynamics to natural areas, including wilderness landscapes, and how the dynamics of consumption and prohibition are transforming the relationships between the subjects of this research and the mountain landscapes of the Anthropocene. Engaging diverse outdoor communities, from trekking enthusiasts to mountain guides and alpinists, the study highlights how the ongoing shift toward commercialized and bureaucratized engagements with nature might challenge existential, spiritual, and culturally valued ways of life. In 2024, I was awarded a writers grant from The Fritt Ord Foundation to publish parts of my findings in book form. The project has also been funded by The Norwegian Research Council, The Meltzer Fund, and Svalbards Environmental Fund.
Policing the Favelas
My award-winning research on and engagement with Brazilian policing spans more than a decade and has resulted in numerous academic publications, including the book Policing the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: Cosmologies of War and the Far-Right (2024). This work offers a unique look into the world of policing and the frontline of Brazil’s war on drugs. Since the return of democracy in 1985, Rio's police forces have waged war against armed drug gangs based in the city’s favelas, casting the people who live in these communities as internal enemies. In preparation for the Olympics in 2016, the police sought to ‘pacify’ the favelas and their populations through the establishment of Pacifying Police Units in many of the city’s favela communities. In my fieldwork, I followed officers across the institutional hierarchy in their daily activities, on patrol, and during training. Through ethnography, my analysis offers a critical perspective on militarized policing and 21st century forms of authoritarianism. I have continued to research policing in Brazil through the comparative and interdisciplinary project Algorithmic Governance and Cultures of Policing (AGOPOL) funded by The Norwegian Research Council (2021-2024) and as a grant recipient from The Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association (2019).
© 2025 Capi Taco