Markus Schindlbeck studied ethnology, geography and history at the University of Basel. After completing his doctorate in 1978 he worked at the Museum für Völkerkunde Basel, led a second field trip to Papua New Guinea between 1979 and 1981 and was an assistant at the ethnological seminar at the University of Basel in 1983. From 1984 he was co-worker at the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, with numerous lectureships at the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau, Göttingen and the Free University Berlin. In 1986 he undertook further field trips to Micronesia and in 1993 he undertook a collecting trip to New Zealand. Since 2000, he has been director of the Australia and Oceania collection at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, and since 2009 has been director of the department of visual anthropology at the same museum. Markus Schindlbeck has curated several exhibitions on photography, ethnology and art in the South Seas.

Ulrike Folie studied ethnology, sociology and psychology in Munich and is currently working on her doctorate. As part of her studies she produced various video works and took part in the creation of the film "Outside Indonesia." At the Institut für Ethnologie in Munich she worked as a tutor in the methodology of ethnological field research. From 2010 to 2013 she worked on the project "Wilhelm von Humboldts Schriften zur Sprachwissenschaft" at the Berlin Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaft where she contributed to the publication of papers on the Austronesian languages.

Commissioned by the Humboldt Lab Dahlem she collated and catalogued the films in the archive for visual anthropology in the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin for the project "Sichten" (Sighting).