Alternative Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters 9781474231251, 9781474231244, 9781474231282, 9781474231275

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Alternative Art and Anthropology

ii

Alternative Art and Anthropology Global Encounters

EDITED BY ARND SCHNEIDER

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Selection and Editorial Material: Arnd Schneider, 2017 © Individual Chapters: Their Authors, 2017 Arnd Schneider has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-474-23125-1 978-1-474-23124-4 978-1-474-23127-5 978-1-474-23126-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Cover image © Diego Bertorelli, Flujo (Flux), 2013 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents List of Figures  vii Acknowledgments  xi Contributors  xiii

1 Alternatives: World ontologies and dialogues between contemporary

arts and anthropologies  Arnd Schneider  1 2 Anthropology as practice: Artists of Africa and the ethnographic field in contemporary art  Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi  27 3 African art in the global contemporary: Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi in conversation with Arnd Schneider  47 4 What is art anthropology?  Shinichi Nakazawa  53 5 Art anthropology: Shinichi Nakazawa in conversation with Arnd Schneider  65 6 Flowers’ life: Notes and reflections on an art-anthropology exhibition  Tomoko Niwa and Tadashi Yanai  75 7 Theories in images: Tadashi Yanai in conversation with Arnd Schneider  89 8 Anthropological studies of urban art districts: The thinking behind the exploration of Dashanzi Art District  Lili Fang  95 9 Dobrak! Taking matters into their own hands  Adeline Ooi  117 10 Turning targets in Indonesia and beyond: Mella Jaarsma and Adeline Ooi in conversation with Arnd Schneider  133 11 Art and anthropology: Portrait of the object as Filipino  Almira Astudillo Gilles  139 12 In the presence of Filipino art and objects: Almira Astudillo Gilles in conversation with Arnd Schneider  155

vi Contents

13 Tigers and splashes: An action-oriented art and art education exchange

between Bhutan and Switzerland  Annemarie Bucher, Sonam Choki, Dominique Lämmli  163 14 Remains and gains: A conversation between Sonam Choki, Dominique Lämmli, and Annemarie Bucher on expectations, challenges, benefits, and learning processes  Annemarie Bucher, Sonam Choki, and Dominique Lämmli  183 15 Ethnography, ’pataphysics, copying  X. Andrade  189 16 Inscription and desinscripción: X. Andrade in conversation with Arnd Schneider  209 17 Conversación de Campo (Field Conversation)  Rosario Carmona, Catalina Matthey, Maria Rosario Montero, and Paula Salas  217 Index  235

List of Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 5.1 5.2

Rodrigo Petrella, Kwot-Kwot or Kôkô catfish ritual mask, Kriny community, Pará State, Brazil, October 2010 3 Rodrigo Petrella, Yanomami man, Catrimani community, Roraima State, Brazil, October 2009 5 Rometti Costales, Roca | Azul | Jacinto | Marino | Errante, 2013 6 Rometti Costales, The Curtain of Magical Anarchism, 2013 7 Rometti Costales, The Flag of Magical Anarchism, 2013 8 Jochen Gerz, Trans-Sib. Prospect, 1977 9 Jochen Gerz, Trans-Sib. Prospect, 1977 10 Postcommodity, Do you remember when? 2012 19 a, b, c. Nomusa Makhubu, Old Gaol He-Stories, 2004 31 Nomusa Makhubu, Umasifanisane II (Comparison II) 33 Amina Menia, Enclosed, 2013 35 Amina Menia, A Peculiar Family Album (still shot), 2012 36 Emeka Ogboh, Monday Morning in Lagos, from Lagos Soundscapes, 2012 38 Emeka Ogboh, Lagos Bus Park (Ojuelegba), from Lagos Soundscapes, 2013 39 Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Space, Time, History, from Lighted Walls, 2005 41 Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Regeneration, from Lighted Walls, 2005 42 Marcus Coates, Rice Ritual, Toge, Japan, 2006 69 Marcus Coates, Rice Ritual, Toge, Japan, 2006 70

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List of Figures

6.1

Mao family’s yaodong, traditional cave-house of the region, in the village of Sanwa (Shanbei, China) 85 6.2 Mr. Mao’s daughter-in-law (Yang Tingting) prepares for the Chinese New Year 85 6.3 Feng Shanyun, Paper-cutting is now paid in foreign currencies, 2012 86 6.4 A prodigious paper-cut work by Gao Fenglian 86 6.5 6.6 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5

“Window-flowers” (chuanghua) of ordinary small size 87 Moving images of funeral rites projected in a fragmented way 87 A square in 798 with the old 718 Joint Factory 96 A gallery in 798 97 An old factory in 798 98 The largest gallery, “Ullens,” in 798 100 Coffee shops in 798 105 Works of art in 798 Street 107 The abandoned factory transformed into a gallery 112 Ade Darmawan and Nuraini Juliastuti, “The trajectory of what we have always thought as the afterlife of events and things,” 2013 121 Iswanto Hartono and Aryo Danusiri, “Kitmir,” 2013 123 Aryo Danusiri, “The observance” (study for “Kitmir”), 2013 124 Restu Ratnaningtyas, “Merantai / Chaining #1,” 2013 126 Julia Sarisetiati and Budi Mulia, “Sharing Strategies of Uncertainty,” 2013 128 Leonardiansyah Allenda, “The New Sun (Matter of Knowing),” 2013 130 Leonardiansyah Allenda, “Untitled,” 2013 131 Study of Erehwon collaborative painting, rendered by Jason Jacobe Moss (Philippines) 141 Finished collaborative work, “Art in Plenty” 143 Study of Field Museum collaborative painting, rendered by Chicagobased Filipino-American artists by Elisa Racelis Boughner 144 Elisa Racelis Boughner (U.S.A.), “Revealed” 147 Emmanuel Robles Garibay (Philippines), “Ilaw” (Light) 148



List of Figures

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11.6 Finished collaborative work, “Deconstructing Filipino” 149 13.1 Collaborative mural in Kabesa, Campus of Choki Traditional Art

School. Details with crane 164 13.2 Collaborative mural in Kabesa, Campus of Choki Traditional Art School. Details with tiger and four friends 174 13.3 Collaborative mural in Kabesa, Campus of Choki Traditional Art 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4

School. Details with tourists 174 The first layer of the mural represents a traditional Bhutanese landscape 175 The second layer adds an abstract color pattern with loosely poured paint from the top of the wall 176 The third layer covers the first two layers with blotted paint 176 The fourth and last layer consists of figurative and narrative inserts 177 Full Dollar’s original incarnation as a pop-up gallery in downtown Guayaquil, 2004 193 “The Foremost Dramatic Problems of the Contemporary World: The Cultural Management Series” 195 “The Foremost Dramatic Probelms of the Contemporary World: The Contemporary Art Series” 196 The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art: “Damián’s Real Cebiches, Best in Cown!,” 2009–15 199 The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art: “Betty Bon Military Academy,” 2009–15 200 The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art at York Boulevard, Highland Park, Los Angeles, 2011–13 203 Rosario Montero, Copia Conflictiva (Conflicted Copy), from the series “No Way Out,” 2011 218 Paula Salas, Conversación de Campo, “Study of my habitus” 221 Catalina Matthey, Conversación de Campo, “Another on Hall” 223 Conversación de Campo, “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next block”) 228

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List of Figures

17.5 Conversación de Campo, “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next

block”) 229 17.6 Conversación de Campo, “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next block”) 230 17.7 Paula Salas, Conversación de Campo, “A page of the field diary” 232

Acknowledgments T

his book would not have been possible without the creative spirit and help of many people. I would like to thank all contributors, and was really impressed by the imaginative and often visionary ways in which they engaged the themes of this volume. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive suggestions. Particular thanks go to Louise Butler and Jennifer Schmidt, my editors at Bloomsbury, for seeing this book through to final publication. I also thank Magnus Godvik Ekeland for compiling the index. I am extremely grateful to all the institutions and individuals who have helped me with my research and made visual and written materials available, often waiving or reducing fees for copyright permission. In particular, I thank Diego Bertorelli (Montevideo) for his wonderfully inspiring Flujo (2013) as a cover image, and Rimer Cardillo (New Paltz, NY) for putting me in touch with Diego. I would also like to thank colleagues, hosts, and audiences to whom I have presented my ideas over the last few years: Tom Simmons (Norwich University College of the Arts), Kerstin Mey (University of Creative Arts, London), Riccardo Putti (University of Siena), Christoffer Danielsson, Julia Lee Hong, and Therese Veier (Oslo Academy of the Arts), Corinne Geering (University of Bern), Annemarie Bucher and Dominique Lämmli (Zürich University of the Arts), Tamara Nikolic Djeric (Ethnographic Museum of Istria, Rovinj, Croatia), Katya García-Antón and Antonio Cataldo (OCA, Oslo), Caterina Pasqualino and Véronique Benei (CNRS, Paris), Johanna Hautala and Oliver Ibert (Leibniz Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning [IRS], Berlin – Erkner), Mónica Di Natale (Instituto Superior de Formación de Docente, Saladillo, Argentina), Vito Lattanzi (Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome), Janne Vibaek Pasqualino and Rosario Perricone (Museo delle Marionette Antonino Pasqualino, Palermo), Alex Flynn (Durham University), Jonas Tinius (Cambridge University), Anne Mette Jørgensen (National Museum, Copenhagen), Almira Astudillo Gilles and John Terrell (Field Museum, Chicago), Klaus Schönberger (University of Klagenfurt), Karin Schneider (Academy of the Arts, Vienna / University of the Arts, Zürich), Barbara Göbel (Ibero-American Institute, Berlin, and Excellence Cluster “Image Knowledge Design,” Humboldt University, Berlin), Elena Yalouri (Panteion University, Athens) and Elpida Rikou (Athens School of Fine Arts), Catarina Alves Costa, Sónia Vespeira de Almeida, Joana Almeida, and Rodrigo Lacerda (Universidade de Nova Lisboa), Shinichi Nakazawa (Meiji University, Tokyo), Tadashi Yanai (Tokyo University), Mayumi Tsuruoka (Tama Art University, Tokyo).

xii Acknowledgments

A note on illustrations and copyrighted material Every reasonable effort has been made to trace and acknowledge the ownership of copyrighted material (including illustrations) included in this book. Any errors that may have occurred are inadvertent and will be corrected in subsequent editions, provided notification is sent to the editor.

Contributors X. Andrade, Ph.D. in Anthropology, The New School for Social Research, New York, is a professor of Visual Anthropology at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. In 2008, he founded the first M.A. program in Visual Anthropology in Latin America at FLACSO-Ecuador, serving as its Chair through 2012. He has published on contemporary art, drug trafficking in Ecuador and New York, the privatization of public space in Guayaquil, masculinity, and disability issues. His artistic practices—an extension of ethnographic questions—are catalyzed through Full Dollar, Inc., a mockinstitution that traffics in contemporary art circuits since 2004. As its Chairman-for-Life, Andrade has been an artist-in-residence in 2012 for the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California; in 2006 for Teor/ética in San José, Costa Rica; and, in 2004 for Localismos in México, DF. He has participated in both solo and collective shows in Ecuador, México, Costa Rica, Perú, Colombia, France, and the U.S.A. Reviews of his work appeared in Arte/Contexto, latinart.com, riorevuelto.com, TADA, Optical Sound, post[s], and Replicante. Annemarie Bucher is an art and landscape historian, curator, lecturer, and researcher. Currently she is a senior lecturer at Zurich University of the Arts and co-runs together with Dominique Lämmli the independent research platform FOA-FLUX (www.foa-flux.net). Her research focusses on art in global contexts, inter- and transculturality, cultural landscape, and collaboration. She is the author of several books and articles on art, cultural theory, landscape, and theory. Rosario Carmona (Conversación de Campo, CDC) is a Chilean painter and anthropologist based in Bonn and studying for a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Bonn University. She has exhibited in Chile and internationally. Like an anthropologist, she works around indigenous rights and analyzing public policies aimed at indigenous people living in urban context, and has made collaborative research among indigenous people in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, exploring the relation between culture and politics. She is a member of a group for ethnic studies in Chile and coordinated the project and book “Rukas Mapuche en Santiago,” a visual cartography of the pre-hispanic Mapuche buildings constructed in contemporary urban contexts. Sonam Choki is the principal of Choki Traditional Arts School in Thimphu, Bhutan. The school was founded by her father in 1999 and offers economically disadvantaged children from across Bhutan the possibility of studying traditional arts at master level

xiv Contributors

(www.chokischool.com). Since 2010 she has run collaborative exchange projects with FOA-FLUX in Zurich. Almira Astudillo Gilles was born and raised in the Philippines. A research associate in Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the National Museum of the Philippines, she holds a Ph.D. in Social Science, an M.A. in Comparative Political Systems, and an M.A. in Labor Relations from Michigan State University. She has published in many literary genres and received the Philippine Presidential Award for her writing in 2012. Her first novel, The Fire Beneath: Tales of Gold (San Francisco: Carayan Press, 2012) was inspired by the discovery of the largest collection of gold artifacts in the Philippines and was a finalist for the Chicago Book of the Year Award. Her most recent projects include “Art and Anthropology: Portrait of the Object as Filipino,” an artistic exchange between the Philippines and Chicago, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a science book for young readers called Hotspot, Cool Country: Biodiversity in the Philippines (Manila: Anvil Press, Inc. 2016). Currently, she is involved in organizing mural projects depicting Filipino American history, and is a trustee of the American Museum of Philippine Art Foundation, Inc. in California. Mella Jaarsma was born in the Netherlands in 1960. She studied visual art at Minerva Academy, Groningen (1978–84), after which she left the Netherlands to study at the Art Institute of Jakarta (1984) and at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta (1985–6). She has lived and worked in Indonesia ever since. Together with Nindityo Adipurnomo she has received several awards: the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Award, New York, U.S.A. (2006); the Academic Art Award #2, Jogya Gallery / Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta (2008); the Yogyakarta Biennale Art Award, Yogyakarta (2010); and the “Adikarya Senirupa” Visual Art Award by the Ministry of Creative Industry and Tourism, Indonesia. Her work has been presented widely in exhibitions in Indonesia as well as in international art events including: Yokohama Triennale (2005); “Accidentally Fashion” (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; “Re-Addressing Identities” (2009), Katonah Museum, New York; “GSK Contemporary—Aware: Art Fashion Identity” (2010), Royal Academy of Arts, London; Singapore Biennale (2011), Singapore Art Museum; “Suspended Histories” (2013), Van Loon Museum, Amsterdam; “Siasat,” Jakarta Biennale, Museum of Ceramics and Fine Arts; “The Roving Eye” (2014), Arter, Istanbul; Sydney Biennale 20th (2016), etc. Mella Jaarsma has become known for her complex costumes and installations. Her works are bodily modifications of the social space between the layers of skin, clothing, sartorial inhibition, and housing / architecture. Fang Lili obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Art History, Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, post-doctor of Institute of Sociology and Anthropology, Peking University, visiting scholar of University of Kentucky, Senior Guest Researcher of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University. She now serves as director,

Contributors

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doctoral supervisor, and researcher at the Art Anthropology Institute, Chinese National Academy of Arts, and is also President of the China Art and Anthropology Society, member of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee of Experts, and member of Beijing Municipal People’s Congress. She has published more than ten books, among them Heritage: Practice and Experience, History of Chinese Ceramics, Art and Anthropology, as well as over a hundred papers, among them “The Decrease of Cultural Ecology: How to Practice Modernism in a Vulgar Place.” Dominique Lämmli is a painter and philosopher. She holds a professorship in drawing / painting at Zurich University of the Arts and co-runs, together with Annemarie Bucher, the research platform FOA-FLUX, an independent organization focusing on art in global contexts. The research is practice-based, practice-led, applied, and metatheoretical. For her art see www.dominiquelaemmli.ch, research on www.foa-flux.net. Recent articles include “Artists’ Working Reality” in Him Lo, Dominique Lämmli (eds), Activating Possibilities—Connecting People: Art and Social Transformations (Zurich/ Hong Kong, 2016). Catalina Matthey (Conversación de Campo, CDC) is an anthropologist. She obtained a master’s degree in Visual Arts at the University of Chile and a master’s degree in Social Anthropology at the University Iberoamericana-Mexico City (UIA). From 2011, she has worked as a professor in the Department of Art at UIA, and since 2016 collaborates with the project “Casa Meneses” through courses of art with youth from the social risk communities of Santa Fé. Her works have been exhibited in Mexico and Chile in various museums and art galleries, and she has also collaborated in magazines and catalogs specializing in the field of visual arts. Currently, her work focusses on the construction of the category of disease in a prison institution with psychiatric functions. Rosario Montero (Conversación de Campo, CDC) is a photo-based artist with a B.A. in Visual Arts (PUC, Chile), a M.F.A. (U.CH, Chile) and M.Sc. Digital Anthropology (UCL, London). She had her first solo exhibition in Santiago, Chile (2004, 2015) and London, U.K. (2015). In 2006 she published her first photography book, Parallel Views. In 2010 her work was part of the selection of contemporary Chilean photographers for 02/CNCA. Recently she has been part of C Photo edition, “New Latin Look,” curated by Martin Parr. She has participated in several collective exhibitions in Chile, China, Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, and the U.K. In 2010 and 2014 she won grants from FONDART (Chilean art fund). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the Cultural Studies Department, Goldsmiths, London. Shinichi Nakazawa, born in 1950 in Yamanashi, Japan, earned his B.A. and M.A. in anthropology and religious studies at the University of Tokyo, Department of Religious Studies, Faculty of Letters, and completed his graduate studies at the University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology. He was the founding director of

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the Institute of Art Anthropology at Tama Art University, Tokyo, and is now a Professor and Director of the Institut pour la Science Sauvage at Meiji University, Tokyo. Shinichi Nakazawa is a renowned theorist and anthropologist who has developed innovative ways of thinking across various academic disciplines, from religious studies, philosophy, and art to science. The author of nearly forty works, an avid reader of French philosophical and anthropological literature (he is among the Japanese translators of Lévi-Strauss), Nakazawa today occupies a unique position in the Japanese intellectual scene. Due to the quality of his writing, his works have become available to a wide audience, also influencing many artists. He has thus been led to publish works with, among others, the musicians Ryūichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono, as well as the novelist Eimi Yamada. Works includes Mozart in Tibet (Tibetto no Motsuaruto, awarded the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), A Baroque Thinker in the Forest (Mori no Barokku, awarded the Yomiuri Prize for Literature), The East-North of Philosophy (Tetsugaku no Tohoku, awarded the Saito Ryokuu Award), Philosophia Japonica (awarded the Ito Sei Prize for Literature), Cahiers Sauvages (5 volumes, awarded the Kobayashi Hideo Prize for Vol. V: Anthropology of Symmetry), The Capital in Green (Midori no Shihonron), The King of the Spirits (Seirei no Ou), Earth Diver (awarded the Kuwahara Takeo Academic Award), Hunting and Basketwork: Anthropology of Symmetry II (Shuryo to Amikago). Tomoko Niwa is a project assistant professor at the National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) in Japan.  Based on anthropological fieldwork in Shanbei, China and in the Pacific coast of Tohoku region affected by the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and the nuclear accident, she explores self-expression and creativity of the local people through their folk arts, drawings, and audiovisual works. She co-curated the exhibition “Window Flowers: Chinese Paper Cutting in Huangtu Plateau” in Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and in Seikatsu Kobo in Setagaya, Tokyo, and co-wrote the book of the same name with Nabo Shimonaka (including a summary in English) (ExPlantae, 2013). Niwa is currently researching the personal documentary films by the survivors in the areas affected by the 2011 disaster. Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is an artist, art historian, and curator of African art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Emory University, Atlanta, United States. His recent curatorial projects include “Eric Van Hove: The Craft of Art” (2016), “Inventory: New Works and Conversations around African Art” (2016), and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (2015). He has contributed book chapters to edited volumes and articles to academic journals and art magazines including African Arts, World Art, Studio, Critical Interventions, Nka, and Kunstforum International. He is co-editor of New Spaces for Negotiating Art (and) Histories in Africa (2015), a book on independent art spaces in Africa. He was Adjunct Professor of Art History at Dartmouth College in the 2014/15 academic session and Guest Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Bayreuth in the summer of 2016.

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Adeline Ooi holds a B.A. (Hons) Fine Art from Central St. Martins and was a recipient of the Asian Public Intellectuals Fellowship by Nippon Foundation in 2002/3. Specializing in Asian art, she has a strong background in curating and writing and has worked extensively on exhibitions in Japan, Korea, Australia, and across Southeast Asia. Adeline co-founded RogueArt in 2009, a cultural agency based in Malaysia, where her clients included artists, galleries, institutions, and both corporate and private collections. She was appointed Director Asia of Art Basel in January 2015. Paula Salas (Conversación de Campo, CDC) is a visual artist. She obtained an M.A. in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam and a B.A. in Fine Arts at the Catholic University of Chile (PUC), where she also completed an academic certificate in Cinema Aesthetic. In her practice she explores the ways in which local communities construct their cultural identity. She uses tools from disciplines such as cartography, anthropology, ethnographic portraiture, and colonial archives to work in a site-specific mode. Her aim is to expose and discuss cultural beliefs ruling the life of the local societies that she gets involved with. From 2006 she has been showing her work in solo and collective exhibitions in Chile and internationally. Since 2011 she has participated in the art collectives Field Conversation and Border Agency. Arnd Schneider (editor) is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, and was formerly Reader in Anthropology at the University of East London and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg. He writes on contemporary art and anthropology, migration, and film. He was a co-organizer of the international conference “Fieldworks: Dialogues between Art and Anthropology” (Tate Modern, 2003). His main publications include Futures Lost: Nostalgia and Identity among Italian Immigrants in Argentina (Peter Lang, 2000) and Appropriation as Practice: Art and Identity in Argentina (Palgrave, 2006). He co-edited (with Christopher Wright) Contemporary Art and Anthropology (Berg, 2006), Between Art and Anthropology (Berg, 2010), and Anthropology and Art Practice (Bloomsbury, 2013). Experimental Film and Anthropology (co-edited with Caterina Pasqualino) was published by Bloomsbury in 2014. In 2016–19 he is a partner of TRACES (Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts: From Intervention to Co-production) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. Tadashi Yanai is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tokyo. He has done ethnographic fieldwork in Peru, Chile, Spain, and in / around Fukushima, and has written on anthropology, philosophy, and cinema. Through these writings, generally crosscutting genres, he has conceived an idea of “anthropology of images”—a book with this title is forthcoming in Japanese. He has also written extensively on Jean Rouch’s films (Ciné-Anthropology: Toward a New Anthropological Practice, Serica Shobo, 2014, in Japanese), certainly one of the forerunners of the idea.

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1 Alternatives: World ontologies and dialogues between contemporary arts and anthropologies Arnd Schneider

T

his book is as much about other art as it is about other anthropologies. By bringing together a majority of contributors with backgrounds from outside Euro-America (and its extensions, such as Australia and New Zealand), its aims are to broaden substantially the debate between contemporary art and anthropology, building upon and going beyond what has been, up until very recently, largely a metropolitan conversation.1 This is not to say that some contributors with other backgrounds, and based in different geographic positions from metropolitan centers, were not included in previous attempts.2 But the vantage point was entirely different, as the assumption had been—rightly or wrongly—that notions of contemporary art and anthropology, even in their variety (but not necessarily cultural or regional differences), were broadly shared in the respective disciplinary arenas, and dialogues thus were traversed by just two participating fields. The focus in this volume is decidedly distinct, in that it brings other traditions of contemporary art and anthropology to the fore and puts them center stage, relying primarily on notions of difference and alterity, and demonstrating the great variation of concepts and approaches proposed elsewhere, or in the felicitous expression of Gerardo Mosquera, “from here.”3 In some ways, this argument might seem to resemble an older debate about whether the category of art is universal, or culturally specific; or indeed to revisit the more recent discussion on art and globalization, abundantly covered in art critical, art historical, and cultural studies writing.4 Here, however, the focus stays on art and anthropology, and no solution to the presumed

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ALTERNATIVE ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

universal / particular divide is proposed in relation to “contemporary art” and “anthropology,” other than to present and discuss the great range of variation found in the projects in this volume, and to decenter centrally held notions of the two fields. Therefore, a principal theme of the book is the communication of difference across culturally refracted boundaries of disciplines. Like the stick figures peopling the two rolls of paper in Diego Bertorelli’s artwork “Flujo” (the cover image for this book), there is constant flux between opposites in the play of alterity. The stick figures, of course, are all different from each other, and so are the two rolls of paper between and around which they move. While difference is important and has to be acknowledged, it also folds back onto itself in a perpetual movement—in Bertorelli’s artwork almost resembling the symbol of infinity, ∞. One way of writing about these new exchanges between art and anthropology on a global scale is to get a feel for the type of movement of the parts in these multiple assemblages of communications, to sense the new qualities and characteristics this unprecedented traffic among art and anthropology involves. Thus difference often is not absolute, can be transgressed and overcome, and indeed made into something new—through translation and interpretation, for example. Anthropology is perhaps the academic discipline that occupies itself with the Other and alterity, certainly empirically in contradistinction to philosophy—but also theoretically, an interest it shares with philosophy. Discussion of otherness goes through the history of anthropology (for instance, cultural relativism in American cultural anthropology, the rationality debate in British social anthropology, or the assumption of a universal, binary logic of the mind in French structuralism). However, it is the recent turn, or revival, of what has been called ontology, where, based on Amerindian and other non-Western cultures, fundamental differences of knowledge acquisition and representation are proposed between Western modes and certain other forms of thought. For instance, Philippe Descola has proposed a fourfold scheme of ontologies (that consists of principles of identification and modes of relation) to understand human cultures, i.e., animism, naturalism, totemism, and analogism (these, in turn, are subdivided into exchange, predation and the gift, and production, protection and transmission).5 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, on the other hand, has suggested that the “perspectivism” of Amerindian societies is diametrically opposed to Western multiculturalism (more on this below).6 Moreover, a proliferation of post-human agency research in anthropology (and beyond) has thoroughly questioned, if not decentered, the idea of an anthro-centric episteme in the Western sense, coupled also with a sense of urgency in view of the global, planetary challenges facing us and which is taken up by some protagonists of the debate—such as in Bruno Latour’s engagement with and extension of Gaia theory, originally proposed by James Lovelock.7 Perhaps too easily, this might be called a new “animism”8—but the catchword is out there, and has been used to some effect also in the art world intervening into these refreshed theoretical debates (of what had been a staple term in anthropology), such as in the Animism show curated by Anselm Franke.9 Other ontologies, then, have also entered contemporary art in various ways where a number of artists have engaged directly with alterity and epistemes different from

Alternatives

FIGURE 1.1  Rodrigo Petrella, Kwot-Kwot or Kôkô (both spellings are valid according to the Kayapó) catfish ritual mask, Kriny community, Pará State, Brazil, October 2010. Color print with mineral pigment on cotton paper. Courtesy of the artist.

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the West’s. An example of how radical alterity can be communicated, and even “translated,” without losing its distinctiveness is the work of photographer Rodrigo Petrella. Petrella originally made a career in fashion photography and since the early 2000s has repeatedly, and for prolonged periods, visited indigenous communities in his native Brazil. Petrella is particularly drawn to the Amerindian peoples of the Amazonian rainforest, and attracted by their body art (especially facial and body painting), feather work, and ritual performance. At first sight, he brings an uncanny familiarity with the human face and body to the job, learned and refined during his earlier career as a fashion photographer. Accusations of astheticizing and beautifying to the point of exoticism might be the quick and indeed unfair judgment his images could provoke. A second reading, however, reveals something very different. Petrella never invades the otherness of his subjects, but he goes as far as possibly only a former fashion photographer can to make visibly palpable and translate this otherness for the viewer. Facial and body paintings are, of course, similar to a mask, and constitute an existential play with alterity for its wearer (who, for instance, is now shaman, embodying animal spirits, and so forth). As philosopher and art critic Ticio Escobar suggests in his catalog essay, such a person: becomes someone else in order to recover himself through the disruption of time and the circumvention of alterity. When he goes back to being himself, he is inevitably marked by this difference and split by the dual role that he has had to play in the ritual. […] Thus, Petrella’s approach requires adjusting the desire of the gaze through a system of circumventing and diverting, tilting and distancing. […] The event can only be glimpsed through poetic representation, which conceals in order to reveal; it can only be tackled using strategies that manipulate the distance between absence and presence; using the necessary deviations to face that which can never be shown in full. In the appearance, in the image, the costume [and, by extension, the mask, or body paint, A.S.] has its own truth. A truth that cannot fully reveal itself, as it also has its other side; it depends in part, on its concealment.10 It is this concealment—the essence of alterity one might say—that Petrella does not violate, but makes visibly manifest, and investigates through his photos (such as the Yanomamö man, silently staring at us, with the eyes’ line just above the photographer or the beholder). Importantly, Petrella’s photography is based on some ethnographic immersion with the Yanomamö, and other indigenous groups of Brazil, consisting of extended fieldtrips, often invited by indigenous communities. El Perspectivista (2013) by Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, on the other hand, comes from a completely different route to ethnography or rather meta-ethnography, as I shall explain in a moment. The work is a direct reference to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s well-known contribution to the ontology debate in anthropology. In short, Viveiros de Castro turns cultural relativism on its head by suggesting that Amerindian cosmologies can be understood to be based on multinaturalism, where different

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FIGURE 1.2  Rodrigo Petrella, Yanomami man, Catrimani community, Roraima State, Brazil, October 2009. B&W print with mineral pigment on cotton paper. Courtesy of the artist.

beings, that is human, animal, or spirit, appear to each other in different disguises (or “natures”) but share one human culture. This implies, Viveiros de Castro argues further, that animals are people who see themselves as persons; the particular form in which they appear to humans or others, depending on the perspective, is but a mere envelope or clothing, which hides an internal human form. This means, to give an example, that jaguars, parrots, or whatever other animal or plant species, also have kinship forms, are organized in moeities, go on war expeditions, and so forth.11 Rometti and Costales have lived and traveled in Latin America for six years. Yet their work cannot be called ethnographic in any conventional sense, rather it amounts to a kind of meta-ethnography. There are almost no references to specific places, peoples,

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FIGURE 1.3  Rometti Costales, Roca | Azul | Jacinto | Marino | Errante, 2013. Concrete tiles, two volcanic stones (300x200cm). Courtesy of the artists and Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris. Photo © Aurélien Mole.

or individuals, and when there are, they remain at an extremely generic level. Instead Rometti and Costales carry out an exercise in perspectivist constructivism, or conceptualism for that matter.12 For instance, “Roca | Azul | Jacinto | Marino | Errante” (2013) is based on the fictional narrative of an exchange between an expatriated anarchist in the Bolivian lowlands and an Amerindian community. Art historian and critic Katya García-Antón writes: the artists create a portrait of Azul Jacinto Marino, an imagined shaman, poet and anarchist. This comprises two volcanic rocks placed on concrete tiles, composing a Necker Cube pattern—a 3D optical illusion of a shape permanently oscillating between perspectives—traced in a deep blue. The rocks, therefore, exist within a framework of simultaneously oscillating perspectives.13 As Rometti and Costales explain further, it is precisely this multi-perspectival portrait which is at the heart of the optical illusion: The color, the rocks and the optical illusion draw a portrait which functions as an introduction to Azul Jacinto Marino. Azul Jacinto Marino can refer, in Spanish, to different shades of blue (azul—blue, jacinto—hyacinth blue—marino—navy blue) as

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well as first names (Azul is used in Mexico as feminine or masculine first name). It/ she/he plays on this ambiguity, and acts as a catalyst of ideas which constitute the notion of Anarquismo Mágico.14 The theme, or rather speculative narrative of an anarchist exile transplanted within an Amerindian community is then replayed also in “The Flag of Magical Anarchism” (2013) and “The Curtain of Magical Anarchism” (2013). Again Katya García-Antón writes: Both flag and curtain were handmade by the artists from black and red Amazonian huayruro seeds, whose psychotropic qualities conferred the works with a magicalpolitical status. Nailed to the wall, the flag was made from seeds beaded into a triangle echoing the anarchist emblem. The full-length curtain, meanwhile, was threaded on rope so that its front was carmine red, leaving the back black.15 In the following statement the artists outline how they have been inspired by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: We use Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s writings (and specifically, his book Cannibal Metaphysics [see note 6, A.S.]) and concepts as guidelines to think and work on forms that take objects, natural phenomena, chance, as possible agents of

FIGURE 1.4  Rometti Costales, The Curtain of Magical Anarchism, 2013. Huayruro seeds, linen rope (285x245cm). Courtesy CNAP Collection, France. Photo © Aurélien Mole.

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FIGURE 1.5  Rometti Costales, The Flag of Magical Anarchism, 2013. Huayruro seeds, copper wire (44x30cm). Courtesy Kadist Art Foundation, Paris. Photo © Aurélien Mole.

regulation of the final outcome. As in the double sided slide projection called “The inconstancy of savage stones / The savagery of inconstant stones,” where a series of volcanic rocks are portrayed on a day where light was shifting constantly, where the chemicals of the development affected the chromatic tonalities and where the projectors decide, thanks to a slight divergence in the projection time, the aleatory combinations of superimposed portraits of those rocks, creating a third form which never repeats. Or in the case of Azul Jacinto Marino, an entity we work on / with since some years, which works as a fiction-platform to congregate different inputs, most of them coming from the same readings. It is a very large and irregular territory on which indigenous philosophy, anarchy, intersubjectivity of humans and non-humans cross each other each time we decide to use it for the development of our work. We would say that these concepts begin to be intrinsic to the way we think of work itself, and hence to life in general. At least we hope so.16 Importantly, with Costales and Rometti’s approach anthropological theory is reworked and becomes operative in the construction of artworks, not in the mise-en-scène of fieldwork (or theatre of ethnographic operations), but in materialized form in the artists’ studio (which turns into a laboratory), and eventually in the gallery exhibition space and the art world. The artists are acutely aware of the para-ethnographic potential of their approach,17 which they call “a speculation about what might have happened during the

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encounter of an anarchist […] with a native, semi-nomad community of the Amazon […] not a narration of such encounter, rather it is a conceptual possibility created by the collision of these differences.”18 Arguably, this procedure is not unlike ethnographic conceptualism proposed by Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov19—with the crucial difference, however, that here not a constructive intervention into the ethnographic field is sought, but rather a meta-reflection (helped by perspectivism) on experience, travel, perhaps even ethnography—an inverse phenomenology, one might say, which however remains abstract and invisible like the base of a sunken or buried pyramid of which we only see the top. Taken to its extreme conclusion such a procedure would indeed turn into a negative phenomenology20 reminiscent of Jochen Gerz’s installation “The Trans-Sib. Prospect” at documenta 6 in 1977 that consisted of a journey spent in a shuttered compartment (windows closed) on the TransSiberian Railway for 16 days and 16 nights. He took along 16 slates on which he rested his feet. All evidence of the journey had to be burned subsequently [diaries, for example, A.S.], meaning his footprints on the slates were the sole surviving evidence. The audience’s uncertainty as to whether the journey ever took place was part of his concept.21

FIGURE 1.6  Jochen Gerz, The Trans-Sib. Prospect, 1977. Installation view, documenta 6, Kassel. The installation is, since 1997, on view at Museum Wiesbaden. © Jochen Gerz, BONO 2016. Photo © G. Nemeczek, Frankfurt.

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FIGURE 1.7  Jochen Gerz, The Trans-Sib. Prospect, 1977. Installation view, documenta 6, Kassel. © Jochen Gerz, BONO 2016. Photo © G. Nemeczek, Frankfurt.

The basic issues of how to capture experience, the truth value and status of testimony, and the act of representation not only lie at the heart of this artwork, but are a perennial preoccupation for the social sciences (and other narrative and representational practices which include some kind of “documentation”). In the case of anthropology the standard assumption that the presence of the anthropologist (in co-presence with his/her subjects) vouches somehow for “having been there” is now a much questioned and debated notion. There has been exhaustive discussion not only on the verification and construction of “data,” but even on the factual presence itself of the anthropologist and his/her interlocutors—Carlos Castaneda’s tales of his encounters with Don Juan being the most notorious case in point. It is to these basic issues that Jochen Gerz’s work speaks and thereby also points to what arguably is a constant in human communication; put otherwise, that we cannot be sure about the empirical base of a story told; it is ultimately constructed, just as in a broader sense research and our accounts from fieldwork are. In its radicality, Gerz certainly puts this epistemological doubt (common also to many contemporary anthropological, and indeed “documentary” and “ethnographic” art practices) at the center of his work. Taken to its existential extreme (of perceptual non-engagement with the world) it would indeed turn into a negative phenomenology—even if this might not have been intended originally. In any case, “The Trans-Sib. Prospect” serves as a reminder of the uncertainty in our apprehension of the world, and the construction of knowledge.

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Thus it can also be read as foreshadowing some of the issues, of cultural refraction or perspectivism, to be encountered in the later work El Perspectivista by Julia Rometti and Victor Costales.

Translation, the contemporary and uneven hermeneutics: Transcending alterity Alterity in its radical conclusion ultimately implies the irreducible, and something is to be said about the reduction or condensation of meaning of the artwork in this respect which differentiates it from verbal or written discourse. The artwork, or certain artworks, in their compactness or material reduction therefore defy discursive meaning, or interpretation with words.22 However, this irreducible part is neither merely residual, nor necessarily the semantic core, yet it can be socially productive in exchanges on and with the artwork, not unlike in certain religious practices in Cuba where the powder is power for practitioners of Ifá and Santería and yet defies descriptive and analytic vocabulary for further translation.23

Translation However, I suggest that there are also ways to go beyond alterity, in order “to counter the impasse of the incomensurable” (an expression of literary scholar Christopher Prendergast)24—in other words, to transcend radical alterity itself. These consist principally in the possibility of communication, especially translation. In this context Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins, and Olivier Krischer, the editors of the recent volume Asia Through Art and Anthropology, stress the importance of acts of translation, and “seek to highlight connections between modes of cultural expression that are typically isolated, in research from one another—such as linguistic, oral, visual, material and performative practices”.25 In fact, their argument that only a selective fraction (selected by the West, that is) of Asian scholarly work ever gets translated could be further broadened to include those parts of the world “where oral and visual traditions”26 dominate. Said otherwise, it is the ignorance of other traditions of thought and theorizing that continues to support the hegemony of central, metropolitan notions. The issue, of course, is not entirely new, and encounters and dis-encounters between “Western” and “Eastern” philosophies are a case in point, not least acknowledged by Western philosophers themselves—indeed prominently by Martin Heidegger, who in 1955 wrote that it was the limitations of now all-pervasive and universal “Europeanization” which would not allow language to fully grasp the meanings of Japanese philosophical concepts.27 It is with such a broader scope in mind that this book seeks to redress imbalances in the global discourse about art and anthropology—to counter its “globalcentrism,” to use

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the apposite term by the late Fernando Coronil, who coined it to refer to the Western proliferation of market capitalism in the age of globalization.28 As Johannes Fabian has long pointed out, the representation of non-contemporariness of non-Western cultures denied their coevalness.29 This is still true in the present when spaces of knowledge production are not synchronized, and maybe they should not, for a kind of “friction” to operate—the reason for this asynchronicity being that, globally speaking, historical trajectories are only partly shared, having been shortcut by, and yet also resulting from, Europe’s expansionary moment since the fifteenth century (i.e., Fabian’s argument). The Australian-based Thai artist Phaptawan Suswannakudt recalls: A viewer approached me and said, “Your paintings are exquisite; they are all beautiful, but you have to tell me the story—without one, I don’t quite know what are you talking about.” The question left me stumbling for an answer. If the language I used failed to deliver, was I to appropriate another that talked to others even though it did not talk to me? How would a universal language work when the spaces in which we dwell are not synchronized?30

The contemporary It is also in this context of a withheld coevalness that the question of the “contemporary” in art must be posited, both in a temporal and a spatial sense (as various scholars have pointed out). How “contemporary” (i.e., contemporaneous with others) then is Western art when seen from the vantage point of others? Or, how “contemporary” is the art produced elsewhere? Is, perhaps, “contemporary art” nothing else but a Western form, historically contingent, and belonging to a specific time (or specific time periods)? By contrast, a radical contemporary would apply to art produced here and now, anywhere. And yet “contemporary art” and “contemporary” are historically and culturally contingent. This is for the reason that time itself (or rather times), as historical, social, and cultural experience and construct, is highly fractured and fragmented despite a presumed objective unity. The philosopher Peter Osborne speaks of a distinctive conceptual grammar of con-temporaneity, a coming together of not simply “in” time, but of times: we do not just live or exist together “in time” with our contemporaries—as if time itself is indifferent to this existing together—but rather the present is increasingly characterized by a coming together of different but equally “present” temporalities or “times,” a temporal unity in disjunction, or a disjunctive unity of present times.31 Correspondingly, art historian Terry Smith puts the following attributes to the present situation: The coexistence of distinct temporalities, of different ways of being in relation to

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time, experienced in the midst of a growing sense that many kinds of time are running out, is the […] deepest sense of the contemporary: what it is to be with time, to be contemporary.32 Similarly, Aihwa Ong, in a review of Chinese contemporary art, writes of the “non-European reconfiguration of the global” and that “the future recedes because it is no longer forecast by a sole historical horizon”.33 How such historical horizons have changed within a few decades of state-induced “liberal” market changes in contemporary China, and what this meant for the altered expectations and functions of Beijing’s 798 art district, is put into sharp relief in the chapter in this volume by Fang Lili, one of China’s foremost anthropologists of art, who coordinates a large research group of graduate students tracking and analysing these changes.34 Thus the contemporary is now both ubiquitous and historically and culturally refracted and contingent. The conditions of the “Global Contemporary,” of contemporary temporalities in the plural, are precisely the opportunities and possibilities, or affordances and potentials, from which an ethnographically inflected art of our times can be developed, as the contributions to the present volume testify. It is such ethnographically inflected art, perhaps more than any other, that provides a diagnostic representation of these conditions, and ultimately points to ways to transcend them (in this, it is arguably similar to the projects of global anthropologies). What then are the specific conditions of our contemporary, when we think of the encounter between art and anthropology? Terry Smith makes a strong suggestion that the “hegemonic grip of globalization as a world phenomenon” might have been broken, and that globalization cannot be substituted for modernity or postmodernity.35 Arguably, to paraphrase Smith, globalization, then, has become just one set among others, and we need to assess other contending forces.36 Rather than there being just one force of globalization which shapes also contemporary art, Smith sees now a “contemporaneousness of different kinds of contemporary art, each of which, has an ‘aesthetic’”.37 He speaks for a present condition (conditions) of a “multi-scalar layering of worlds,” characterized by the “intensified experience of adjacency of difference,” and an “increased awareness of cotemporality.”38

More translation Certainly, one possibility of moving between these different cotemporalities is travel; the other is translation—in anthropological practices of fieldwork / ethnography and analysis / writing these two modes arguably collapse, with all their implied complexities of negotiation of understanding and representation. In fact, as anthropologists working on translation of both written and oral texts, and more broadly of “translation” between cultures, have pointed out, anthropology itself could be considered part of a wider science of translation. However, as Tullio Maranhão highlights, such a science hides more than it reveals; there remains always that which cannot be

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translated.39 Indeed, the Western tradition saw that which cannot be translated as the opaque residue of non-Western irrationality. In the present, and after moves towards a radicalized notion of difference (following Derrida), it is precisely in these radically different ontologies that alterity must be acknowledged.40 The alternatives are border thinking and border epistemologies, especially for postcolonial subjects who delink themselves from the hegemony of Western thought—a project eloquently argued by Walter Mignolo.41 This returns us to one specific and historically contingent “contemporary”—that is modernity itself, thought of as a historical longue dureée of colonialism, and thus stretching all the way from the age of exploration to the twentieth century (with its more narrowly defined high modernity in the arts and literature) to which the “contributions of non-Europeans,” in the words of Olufemi Taiwo,42 was vital. So, if, as we have seen, alterity remains incomplete, it opens the possibility to translation which itself remains unfinished—indeed available to further translation, and which contains parts (not just residues) that cannot be translated further. It is at the interstices of difference in translation that a similarly incomplete understanding of the Other operates which remains incomplete in its substance, or content, but also incomplete in its mutuality of the partners involved. Such thinking becomes even active, indeed productive, in the political sphere. Think of the recent theorizing around the “commons” (which returns us to our idea of the contemporary as a moment of crisis)—the idea that our resources on the planet (air, water, land, habitats, energy etc.) belong to everybody, are common goods, and cannot be exploited for particular interests (and by extension sanctioned by private property rights), be it by individuals, multinational corporations, or states. However, struggles to retain and regain control over the commons, which are multiple and happen the world over, can also be fought on the grounds of difference, or that which is not common, indeed uncommon, as anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena has shown for ecological struggles in the Peruvian Andes. There, Quechua-speaking indigenous highland people actually include mountain spirits, or “earth beings,” into their argument, and attribute agency independent from humans to them. This, of course, does make the negotiations between actors of the state, NGOs, and indigenous people more complex, in regard to land and water rights and development projects.43 This is to say that we have to acknowledge difference and respect for the other. While the challenges we are facing on a planetary scale are truly global, we must also acknowledge the contemporaneity of difference, in fact struggles on “uncommon grounds”—involving alliances between different actors, and different world views or ontologies.

Uneven hermeneutics Anthropology is arguably the discipline which has contributed most to the understanding of such differences, with its signature method of fieldwork often involving

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deep and prolonged immersion on the ground (which is not necessarily one defined space or temporality). And it is here that we can think of a crossover with the contemporary arts, both conceptually and methodologically, which use ethnography as their approach. If the uncommon(s) are perhaps the territories on either side of bridges that cannot be crossed, a translation, or meeting of sorts, which recognizes difference (respect for each Other) might still be possible halfway on such bridges. After all, the German übersetzen (to translate) has a second, separate meaning of crossing a river by ferry. Perhaps it requires something that I have called uneven hermeneutics,44 a way of “understanding” and learning from the Other that does not occupy its semantic territory. Hermeneutics, as is well known, is the science of interpretation. In the wake of philosophers and sociologists, such as Dilthey, Weber, Gadamer, Ricoeur, it was famously introduced to anthropology by Clifford Geertz, and influenced the subsequent “Writing Culture” critique. Uneven hermeneutics, which I advocate here, reappropriates anthropological hermeneutics and puts it to use for contemporary times, without colonizing the thought of the Other. I have worked with the notion of uneven hermeneutics in the context of collaborative art projects in Argentina, where we had to negotiate different notions of understanding at the festival of a local patron saint, but also differences in educational background and notions of anthropology between the researchers and the anthropologist. From the late 1960s through to the 1980s, anthropology saw the surge of interpretive anthropology—primarily connected to Geertz, and later critically reworked in the “Writing Culture” critique. What soon became clear from these and subsequent critiques was that there can be no return to a unified subject, perhaps still presumed in early interpretive anthropology, but that this subject (of enquiry, of anthropological analysis, and as anthropologist) has to be clearly conceived of as different, in terms of cultural, social, economic, and gender backgrounds. Translation is also important for another reason, because, as translation scholars have pointed out, the translating subject looks into a kind of mirror through the translation, and ultimately recognizes itself. For the global traffic between art and anthropology (or rather arts and anthropologies), this means that interpretive subjects learn about others, and other methodologies, genres, practices, and cultural traditions, by recognizing first “domestic values” (i.e., their own)—in other words, those parts which are intelligible and relate to the identity of the self. However, in a second step, translation practice can also be highly subversive, challenging the domestic canons of self-recognition.45 While these critical procedures might pertain in the first instance to literary or social science translations, they are also good for thinking about the global traffic between art and anthropology. For academic anthropology, this means precisely to open up both to “other” anthropologies (and anthropologies of art) and to contemporary arts on a global scale. Significantly, the translation business between anthropology and art cannot easily presume an equivalence of concepts (and their meanings) across disciplinary and cultural divides. As translation scholar and anthropologist Joshua Price suggests: “Rather than fixing the definitions, translating a social scientific concept would rework the earlier concept, superimpose itself.”46

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A good example of incomplete translation—leaving fluidity of meaning in play as it were, and considering all art traditions as “contemporary”—is the collaborative project between Annemarie Bucher, Sonam Choki, and Dominique Lämmli featured in the chapter and interview in this volume. Collaboration, including the joint painting of a mural, between the partners in Switzerland and Bhutan was possible, despite and because of the different notions of art held by the participants. Dialogues and collaborations became veritable exercises in translation and remained necessarily incomplete. A yet different range of translations is offered by X. Andrade (in the chapter and interview in this volume) whose Full Dollar project had Ecuadorian sign painters appropriate the works of famous contemporary artists and then transpose, but not repeat, the same methodology in the different context of sign painters in suburban Los Angeles. Key to X. Andrade’s concern is the notion of ’pataphysics—an idiosyncratic theory and practice, involving situationist principles and institutional parody.47 Therefore, the projects featured in this book thoroughly serve to decenter any unified, or indeed universal—or to quote again Fernando Coronil, globalcentric—discourse about “contemporary art and anthropology.”48 For instance, Shinichi Nakazawa, among Japan’s most important contemporary cultural theorists, philosophers, and anthropologists, with his notion of “art anthropology” expounded in his chapter and interview in this volume, makes a proposition for a radically different encounter between art and anthropology, combining and elaborating elements of French structuralism, Buddhism, and twentieth-century Japanese philosophy. While this programme might seem unfamiliar and strange to scholars trained in Euro-American traditions of social and cultural anthropology, it needs to be engaged with and acknowledged, indeed translated “incompletely,” for a proper dialogue to exist on a global scale. On the other hand, there is Tadashi Yanai, a visual anthropologist based at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tokyo, where he heads a research group of Ph.D. students working on art, performance, and visual culture. In this volume he is featured in a joint chapter with Tomoko Niwa, his doctoral student and exhibition curator, working on the tradition of cutting paper flowers in China. Yanai started his studies in a moment of cultural ferment in the 1980s, which included the anthropologist-semiotician Maso Yamaguchi, the novelist Kenzaburo Oe, the composer Takemitsu, as well as anthropologist Shinichi Nakazawa. In the interview in this volume Yanai explains how he combines influences from Japanese philosophy and linguistics (on notions of “placeness,” for example) with Western authors and filmmakers, such as Gilles Deleuze and Jean Rouch, to develop his own approach of “theories in images” and to reach a deeper understanding of material from fieldwork among the Shipibo-Conibo in Peru and the Mapuche in Chile. Dialogue is intended to be of a broader kind not just between two, but multiple, partners and moving in many directions—a supposition also clearly evidenced by Almira Gilles’s project featured in this volume, which brought together contemporary painters from the Philippines and Filipino-American painters and artists to create a joint mural at the Field Museum in Chicago. The crucial point is that in this, as in other

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projects, the mutual understanding of partners remains partial, and collaboration can even be conflictive, but despite and because of this, artistic work in this incomplete translation process of different techniques, educational backgrounds, and notions of art is generated—against the background of the dialogical form. Thus the frame for this incomplete encounter, despite and because of the incompleteness of translation, stays that of dialogue.

Dialogues: Figures to think with Dialogue takes four like a diagonal Amelia Rosselli, from The Angels Exit, 1966–7349 At first, the lines from Amelia Rosselli’s poem seem to be enigmatic, since we commonly think of a diagonal as connecting just two points at opposite ends that are not connected themselves, i.e., graphically represented as /. However, when one crosses, or intersects, diagonals in a square , or in another polygon, one obtains four or more segments. When the crossed diagonals , or alternating diagonals (for example, in a zigzag pattern, ) are then further extended they open to an infinity of connections, and in any direction (such as in crosshatch or chevron patterns). They are also good figures to think with about a further developing field of art and anthropology interchanges, which is now completely reconfiguring—no longer consisting of a simple exchange between two, but multiple partners and disciplinary traditions or temporalities, multidirectional and across different parts of the globe, with traditions and notions of art and anthropology different from those in the West. Certainly, we can contemplate here by analogy also the much-rehearsed metaphor of the rhizome employed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to think of communication among multiple networks of contacts.50 Yet I prefer to start from the at once simpler and more hermetic notion of the diagonal in Rosselli’s poem which can also propagate indefinitely into multiple dialogues (as I have shown by geometric analogy above). Arguably, one such “diagonal” of multidirectional dialogues comes to the foreground in the work (featured in their chapter in this volume) of Conversación de Campo (Field Conversation), the collaborative network of four Chilean artists and anthropologists: Rosario Carmona, Catalina Matthey, Rosario Montero, and Paula Salas working in Chile, Mexico, Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. “From here,” in such networks or chequered patterns, of course applies as much to global, decentered art practices as it does to anthropological traditions practiced off center. A number of publications have challenged the hegemony of American, British, and French writings of the history of anthropology in the twentieth century. They

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have convincingly argued that anthropological knowledge is being produced as much outside hegemonic Western circuits. While this argument initially was developed specifically in relation to other marginal European and global traditions of academic anthropology,51 it can be extended to anthropological knowledge production globally, including “reverse” anthropology from different ontological viewpoints.52 In the arts, “reverse anthropology” arguably was powerfully employed as a trenchant postcolonial critique by Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña when he stated: We are pushing you to the margins. We are making your culture exotic and unfamiliar. We are adopting a fictional center and speaking as if we were there. We are adopting “Spanglish,” so to speak, as the official language. We are abolishing the U.S./Mexican border, conceptually, and we are creating a new kind of art in which we are observing you. In a sense we are doing reverse anthropology.53 Similarly, Raminder Kaur and Parul Dave-Mukherji, the editors of the 2014 volume Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World, suggest “Throwing back the gaze,” a conceptual expression which they develop from Michel Foucault’s take on the painterly gaze embodied in Diego Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” (The Maids of Honour, 1656),54 but which they here apply to the gaze from outside the established temporalities and locations of Euro-American anthropology and art discourse. This is comparable to Mosquera’s notion “From here” (see above) which in turn also has long roots in the cultural traffic between the West and the areas it originally colonized, and figures strongly in discourses of reverse appropriation that claim their own forms of cultural production, such as in the various genuine forms of global modernisms, epitomized by indigenist movements in Latin America, the “anthropophagic” movement in literature and the arts of Brazil, the Negritude movement in French colonial Africa, Caribbean cultural theory, and more generally tricontinental exchanges in the late colonial and early postcolonial period in the decades after the Second World War. While some components and equations of power in tricontinentalism have changed, with India and China, for example, having become global and even imperial players, current critical assessments, for instance by Akin Adesokan and Tarek Elhaik,55 make tricontinental thinking productive again as contemporary alternatives to Western epistemologies. Comparable alternative epistemologies come to the fore also in indigenous global thinking, and Mark Watson provides an excellent example and reflexive discussion of how such a space beyond metropolitan notions of the global and the nation state is being sought and constituted in trans-indigenous contemporary art production.56 For the 2012 Sydney Biennale the Phoenix (U.S.A.)-based indigenous art collective Postcommodity collaborated with Aboriginal musicians in Sydney to produce the work Do you remember when? This consisted in cutting open the concrete floor of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, putting the cut-out concrete slab on a pedestal, and playing music produced by the collaborating Aboriginal musicians from a loudspeaker hung over the hole left in the concrete floor, through which the bare earth underneath is now visible.

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FIGURE 1.8  Postcommodity, Do you remember when? 2012. Site-specific intervention and mixed media installation (cut concrete, exposed earth, light, sound). Installation view, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 18th Biennale of Sydney. Photo © Postcommodity. As Watson outlines, the work is at once an incisive critique of the colonial and postcolonial situation of indigenous people and their different relation to communal practices and notions of land (ownership) contrasting with the settler societies (and their buildings) occupying the ground above this land—yet the land had still been there and was now laid open for everyone to see, and at least symbolically, reappropriated by the indigenous peoples collaborating in this installation. The important point here is that unlike in the many exhibitions which include indigenous artists (starting arguably with Magiciens de la Terre, 1989 curated by Jean-Hubert Martin), or are inspired broadly by an indigenous agenda (as a number of predecessor Sydney Biennales), here the curating team included the Sisksika First Nation Gerald McMaster from Canada (working with Dutch curator Catherine de Zegher). Moreover, in the specific work Do you remember when? indigenous artists were collaborating beyond conventional models of either periphery / center, West / Non-West, or nation-state / indigenous group, or other binaries, to explore a trans-indigenous space of art practice, building implicitly on trans-indigenous political collaborations, both hemispherically and globally.57 Such reverse curating—paralleling in some ways reverse anthropology mentioned above—then is crucial for the issue of the circulation, recognition of authorship, and translation of transcultural art practices. Equally important, however, are issues of time and depth in curatorial work. Consider, for instance, a now well-rehearsed stereotype of the curator as slick, fast-moving organizer and assembler of exhibitions, an avid collector of appointments

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and meetings and rapid commissioner of artworks, who moves in and out of projects, always on to the next.58 Such “fast” curating is really symptomatic of different “cultures of curating”; by contrast, the “slow,” long-durational approaches advocated by Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty make time the main issue: here, we find curators who commit, together with the artists, long term to projects, sites, and communities59—a way of working, Christopher Wright and I suggested, that comes close to notions of shared and collaborative anthropologies.60 However, the “different cultures,” as O’Neill has also argued, can also come to mean different cultural vantage points in a globalized art world.61 This is where positions that not only come from the outside, or from the margins, but are different altogether in their ontological position, contest the hegemony of a globalcentric international art world. Examples of this, featured in chapters and interviews in this volume, are to be found in the work of Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, a U.S.-based Nigerian curator and artist exploring a range of work by contemporary African artists, including his own, across a range of media and installation modes, and in light of the ethnographic turn in the arts and new global art histories and curation practices; Adeline Ooi and Mella Jaarsma, a curating partnership between a Malaysian curator and writer and Yogyakarta- based Dutch curator and artist, whose exhibition Dobrak! involved both artists and anthropologists in Indonesia; the curating and ethnographic efforts of Tomoko Niwa in Tokyo and China, and Almira Gilles, a U.S.-based Filipino writer, community activist, and initiator of research initiatives, who brought together Filipino and Filipino-American artists to paint murals in Quezon City and Chicago. Curating has its root meaning in Latin cura (n.) / curare (v.) “heal” (to heal, to care, to look after, to groom; curate = one who has the care of souls). Tarek Elhaik has made a strong argument to understand curating (in its extended therapeutic sense) as a more general theoretical concept and practice in the mediation of difference in image work, or art writ large. The basic understanding is that both the artwork and the society it speaks of are ill and in need of curation. The image (artwork), itself diagnostic of an incurable situation, can only be therapeutically treated, in a work of mourning which remains an open and unfinished process.62 Elhaik’s aim to go beyond the “clinical, ethical and practical etymological register evoked by the word curation”63 can also be used to rethink curation practices in the museum context, where another encounter between art and anthropology is taking place, involving intervention by both artists and sources communities. Thought of as a “creative repair work,” it could become a “curatorial diagnostic care”64 where both artworks, or art objects (in the museum context), and the curational practice itself are in need of care in an ongoing and open process. Over recent decades, ethnographic and other museums have also developed new practices of curation which aim to involve source communities collaboratively. Elhaik’s innovative way of thinking certainly bears the potential to provide theoretical stimulus and dialogical exchange with ethnographic (and other) museum curators, such as John Terrell at the Field Museum, Chicago, who have been experimenting with new notions of co-curation, extending “stewardship to original producers and users of archaeological and ethnographic materials”65—one outcome of this being Almira Gilles’s project with Filipino and Filipino-American artists featured in this volume.

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Where does this finally leave anthropology, and especially “hegemonic” anthropology, as practiced in the West? Film maker and visual anthropologist par excellence Jean Rouch a good while ago coined the notion of “shared anthropology” (anthropologie partagée). For Rouch this meant collaborating with the subjects of his research during the shoot, as well as after the production of the film, especially in screening sessions which would provide feedback and ideas for new films.66 Kiven Strohm has provided a potent argument that the diagnosis and acknowledgment of “asymmetries in class and privilege” of the research subjects in relation to the anthropologist does not imply that their demands to equality in this relationship should not be taken seriously; to the contrary these should form the basis for any ethics of collaboration.67 One sign of equality is the right to demand different viewpoints, including those which are radically different ontologically. It thus requires, I contend, an uneven hermeneutics, which refrains from any totalitarian or leveling form of interpretation and understanding, but has to be negotiated in a mutual, and yet uneven (but not unequal), process of collaboration. A refreshed look at and with global art practices at the crossroads between art and anthropology through the lens of uneven hermeneutics might also, if not solve, then certainly recalibrate some of the issues raised in recent attempts to refine the epistemological implications of this encounter. For instance, Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, taking stock of more than two decades of art anthropology encounters, want to overcome the entrenched disciplinary confines of “‘non-traditional’ forms (for example, film, exhibitions, photo-essay, soundscape) to be taken seriously”.68 It is precisely to such concerns that the work of El Perspectivista, discussed earlier, by Rometti and Costales speaks in its dialogue with perspectivism which has to be taken seriously—yes—as anthropology and by anthropologists. Theory production is already in the works in question. Moreover, the ethnographic form is itself a theoretical statement, and any conversation between artists and anthropologists is ill served by ascribing an interest in, or a prerogative of, ethnography to some but not to others. Uneven hermeneutics and a renewed, critical appraisal of cultural difference and agency could then become an avenue of epistemological practice both for working with artists globally and for understanding disciplinary transgressions on a global scale (but not from a globalcentric vantage point). Global exchanges between different contemporary arts and anthropologies could also be thought of as a kind of gift exchange, of delayed returns within incomplete encounters, the gift here used as metaphor and conceptual tool to understand both artistic production and art / anthropology traffic, as proposed recently by Roger Sansi.69 Yet this conceptual tool, or lever, would have to be complemented by a renewed emphasis on alterity, beyond simple binaries of self / other to yield full epistemological and practical potential—uneven hermeneutics might yet have to account, here too, for understanding and working with the nuances, repetitions, and mistranslations in such dialogic exchanges between contemporary arts and anthropologies.

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Notes 1 Recent exceptions by anthropologists include Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins, and Olivier Krischer (eds), Asia Through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) and Raminder Kaur and Parul Dave-Mukherji (eds), Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); for a selection of art historical and art critical writing see note 4. 2 Speaking only for the three volumes I co-edited with Christopher Wright, and without unnecessarily reifying otherness, Contemporary Art and Anthropology (Oxford: Berg, 2006) included contributing authors who would arguably define themselves in distinction to “white” Euro-America, Australia, and New Zealand: Fernando Calzadilla, Rimer Cardillo, Dave Lewis, and César Paternosto; Between Art and Anthropology (Oxford: Berg, 2010): Mohini Chandra, Tatsuo Inagaki, and Rosanna Raymond; and Anthropology and Art Practice (London: Bloomsbury, 2013): Juan Orrantia and Raul Ortega Ayala. 3 Gerardo Mosquera, “Walking with the Devil: Art, Culture and Internationalization,” in Helmut Anheier and Yudhistithir Raj Isar (eds), Cultural Expression, Creativity and Innovation (London: Sage, 2010), p. 53. 4 See, for example, James Elkins, What is Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art: World Currents, the seven-volume series of the Art Institute seminar (also edited and co-edited by James Elkins), especially vol. 3 Is Art History Global? (New York: Routledge, 2007); also James Elkins, Zhivka Vliavicharska, and Alice Kim (eds), Art and Globalization (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011); Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg (eds), The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets and Museums (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009); Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (eds), The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press); Okwui Enwezor (ed. with Mélanie Bouteloup, Abdellah Karroum, Émilie Renard, Claire Stabler), Intense Proximity: An Anthology of the Near and the Far (Paris: Palais de Tokyo, 2012). The journal Third Text, founded by Rasheed Areen, has been an important initiator of discourse in this field for several decades. 5 Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 122, 333–4. 6 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Cannibal Metaphysics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). 7 Bruno Latour, Face à Gaïa: Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique (Paris: La Découverte, 2015). An English language version is online as Bruno Latour’s Gifford Lecture Series in Edinburgh, “Facing Gaia: A new enquiry into Natural Religion” at http://www.ed.ac.uk/humanities-soc-sci/news-events/lectures/gifford-lectures/ archive/series-2012-2013/bruno-latour (accessed 15 April 2016). 8

For a salutary review of old and new approaches, see Rane Willerslev, “Taking Animism Seriously, but Perhaps Not Too Seriously?” Religion and Society, 4 (1) (2013): 41–57.

9 Anselm Franke (ed.), Animism Volume 1. Anselm Franke (Berlin / New York: Sternberg Press, 2010). 10 Ticio Escobar, “The Other Lights,” in Rodrigo Petrella, A Luz da Floresta & o Arco da Destruição (Santo André, São Paulo: Ipsis Gráfica e Editora, 2014), unnumbered.

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11 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4 (3) (1998): 469–88. 12 The allusion is to Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikow’s “ethnographic conceptualism” (see further note 19 below). 13 Katya García-Anton, “Julia Rometti & Victor Costales,” Frieze, 157 (September 2013). Quoted from gallery website http://jousse-entreprise.com/en/contemporary-art/artist/ rometti-costales/ (accessed 20 April 2016). 14 Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, caption notes, courtesy of the artists. 15 Katya García-Anton, “Julia Rometti & Victor Costales,” Frieze, 157 (September 2013). Quoted from gallery website http://jousse-entreprise.com/en/contemporary-art/artist/ rometti-costales/ (accessed 20 April 2016). 16 Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, personal communication (25/04/2016). 17 Douglas R. Holmes and George Marcus, “Para-Ethnography,” The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. Lisa M. Given (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008), pp. 596–7. 18 Julia Rometti and Victor Costales, caption notes, courtesy of the artists. 19 Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikow, “Ethnographic Conceptualism: An Introduction,” Laboratorium 5 (2) (2013): 5–18. “Ethnographic conceptualism refers to anthropology as a method of conceptual art but also, conversely, to the use of conceptual art as an anthropological research tool. Ethnographic conceptualism is ethnography conducted as conceptual art” (p. 5). 20 In philosophy negative phenomenology, as an extreme form of experience as passivity (for instance, of suffering), has been associated with Maurice Blanchot: see Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster (Nebraska University Press, 1995); also Gerald L. Bruns, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 21 http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/transsib-prospekt/ (accessed 30 April 2016). A full statement of the artwork’s rationale was included as a text on display in the original installation. 22 I am grateful to Rafael Schacter for making me initially think about this point. 23 Martin Holbraad, “The Power of Powder: Multiplicity and Motion in the Divinatory Cosmology of Cuban Ifá (or Mana Again),” in Amiria Henare, Martin Holbraad, and Sari Wastell (eds), Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (London: Routledge, 2007). 24 Christopher Prendergast, “Pirouette on a Sixpence” (review of Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon), London Review of Books, 37 (17) (September 10, 2015): 35–7, p. 36. 25 Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins, and Olivier Krischer, “Introduction: Images of Asia Across Borders,” in Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins, and Olivier Krischer (eds), Asia Through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 11 26 Ibid. 27 Martin Heidegger, “A Dialogue on Language,” On the Way to Language (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 15. 28 Fernando Coronil, “Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism. Speculations on Capitalism’s Nature,” Public Culture, 12 (2) (2000): 351–74, pp. 354, 370.

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29 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 30 Phaptawan Suswannakudt, “Catching the Moment, One Step at a Time,” in Raminder Kaur and Parul Dave-Mukherji (eds), Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 98–9. 31 Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London: Verso, 2013), p. 17, italics in original. 32 Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 3–4, italics in original. 33 Aihwa Ong, “‘What Marco Polo Forgot’: Contemporary Chinese Art Reconfigures the Global,” Current Anthropology, 53 (4) (2012): 471–94 (including comment section), pp. 483, 472. 34 On 798 see also the ethnography by Marc Abélès, Pékin 798 (Paris: Stock, 2011). 35 Terry Smith, “Contemporary Art: World Currents in Transition Beyond Globalization,” in Hans Belting, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (eds), The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), p. 186. 36 Ibid., p. 187. 37 Ibid., p. 188, my italics. 38 Ibid., p. 188, my italics. 39 Tullio Maranhão, “Introduction,” in Tullio Maranhão and Bernhard Streck (eds), Translation and Ethnography: The Anthropological Challenge of Intercultural Understanding (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2003), pp. xi, xv. 40 Ibid., p. xvi. 41 See Walter Mignolo and Freya Schiwy, “Transcultulturation and the Colonial Difference: Double Translation,” in Maranhão and Streck (eds), Translation and Ethnography, p. 15; also Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, Colonization (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995) and Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 42 Olufemi Taiwo, “‘The love of freedom brought us here’: An Introduction to Modern African Political Philosophy,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 109 (2) (Spring 2010): 391–410, p. 395. 43 Marisol de la Cadena, “Uncommoning Nature,” e-flux journal SUPERCOMMUNITY May–August 2015, pp. 1–8 (http://supercommunity-pdf.e-flux.com/pdf/ supercommunity/article_1313.pdf [accessed 20 May 2016]); Marisol de la Cadena, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), esp. Ch. 2. 44 Arnd Schneider, “Contested Grounds: Reflecting on Collaborations with Artists in Corrientes, Argentina,” Critical Arts, 27 (5) (2013): 511–30; Arnd Schneider, “Towards a New Hermeneutics of Art and Anthropology Collaborations,” in Samuli Schielke and Daniela Swarowsky (eds), Still in Search of Europe? Art and Research in Collaboration (Heijningen, Netherlands: Jap Sam Books, 2013), repr. in Ethnoscripts, 17 (1) (2015): 23–30. 45 Lawrence Venuti, “Translation and the Formation of Cultural Identities,” Current Issues in Language and Society, 1 (3) (1994): 201–17, p. 211.

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46 Joshua Price, “Translating Social Science: Good Versus Bad Utopianism”, Target, 20 (2) (2008): 348–64, p. 355. 47 The reference is to Situationism in art, literature, and philosophy, promoted by philosopher Guy Debord, among others. 48 Coronil, “Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism.” 49 Amelia Rosselli, “The Angels Exit,” in Luigi Ballerini, Beppe Cavatorta, Elena Coda, and Paul Vangelisti (eds), The Promised Land: Italian Poetry After 1975 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1999), p. 417. 50 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 1999), pp. 6–7. 51 See, for example, Aleksandar Bošković (ed.), Other People’s Anthropologies: Ethnographic Practice on the Margins (New York: Berghahn, 2008). 52 See, for example, Stuart Kirsch, Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Marcio Goldmann, “Introduction to Post-Social Anthropology, Networks, Multiplicities, and Symmetrizations,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2 (1) (2012): 421–33. 53 Scott T. Cummings, “Guillermo Gómez-Peña: True Confessions of a Techno-Aztec Performance Artist,” American Theatre (November 1994): 50–1, p. 51. 54 Raminder Kaur and Parul-Dave Mukherji, “Introduction,” in Raminder Kaur and Parul Dave-Mukherji (eds), Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 5; Michel Foucault, Order of Things (London: Routledge, 2002 [1970]), p. 5. 55 Akin Adesokan, Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), pp. 41–3; Tarek Elhaik, “The Incurable Image: Curation and Repetition on a Tri-Continental Scene,” in Iain Chambers, Alessandra de Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello, Mariangela Orabona, and Michaela Quadaro (eds), The Postcolonial Museum: The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 56 Mark Watson, “‘Centring the Indigenous’: Postcommodity’s Transindigenous Relational Art,” Third Text, 29 (3) (2015): 141–54. 57 Ibid., pp. 141, 142, 144. 58 Hans Ulrich Obrist, in some ways epitiomizing this style of curating, has eloquently written on this; see his Ways of Curating (New York: Faber and Faber, 2014); see also Hal Foster’s review article “Exhibitionists” in the London Review of Books, 37 (11) (4 June 2015): 13–14. 59 Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty, “Introduction,” in Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty (eds), Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2009). 60 Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright, “Ways of Working,” in Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds), Anthropology and Practice (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 7. 61 Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), esp. Ch. 2. 62 Tarek Elhaik, The Incurable-Image: Curating Post-Mexican Film and Media Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 4, 12, 23.

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63 Elhaik, “The Incurable Image: Curation and Repetition on a Tri-Continental Scene,” p. 164. 64 Elhaik, The Incurable-Image: Curating Post-Mexican Film and Media Arts, pp. 10, 64. Elhaik’s argument is more complex than presented here, and while it sounds pessimistic, is not intended to be so. He is very clear about the ultimately liberating and optimistic potential of curation, and inspired by Deleuze—in Elhaik’s words, “by joyfully seeking to re-assemble and re-actualise those imperceptible potentialities crushed by dominant and indifferent agencies of symbolisation”. Elhaik, “The Incurable Image: Curation and Repetition on a Tri-Continental Scene,” p. 172. 65 Almira Gilles, Ch. 11 this volume; see also Marielle Shaw, “Looking for 10,000 Kwentos: Field Museum Seeks Help in Uncovering Filipino History,” Arts and Entertainment, Chicagoist (16 March 2014) http://chicagoist.com/2014/03/16/looking_ for_1000_words-_field_museu.php (accessed 14 May 2016). 66 Jean Rouch, “The Camera and Man,” in Paul Hockings (ed.), Principles of Visual Anthropology, 2nd edn (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995), p. 98, and “Our Totemic Ancestors and Crazed Masters,” in ibid., p. 224. See also the chapter “Shared Anthropology” in Paul Henley, The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 67 Kiven Strohm, “When Anthropology Meets Contemporary Art: Notes for a Politics of Collaboration,” Collaborative Anthropologies, 5 (2012): 98–124, p. 100. 68 Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, “The Ethnographic Turn—and After: A Critical Approach Towards the Realignement of Art and Anthropology,” Social Anthropology, 23 (4) (2015): 418–34, p. 419. 69 Roger Sansi, Art, Anthropology, and the Gift (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

2 Anthropology as practice: Artists of Africa and the ethnographic field in contemporary art1 Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi

Introduction

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ince the 1990s the understanding of contemporary art has taken on a broader implication. It now encompasses artistic practices and art worlds beyond Western Europe and North America in what is now called global contemporary. Quite unlike the past, artists of Africa have begun to attract considerable mainstream visibility and interest in the last twenty-odd years as this new vision of global contemporary takes shape and becomes entrenched. Yet it is instructive that as much as they are increasingly recognized, it is highly unlikely that artists from Africa would become the bastion of measuring the state of contemporary art.2 It is usually their Western contemporaries and the Euro-American cultural experience that are the gold standard of contemporary global culture.3 One area to critically engage with this argument is in the realm of participatory, research-based, or ethnographic modes in contemporary artistic practice—the subject of this volume.4 Do works of artists from Africa reflect these critical forms of practice? If so, are they duly recognized by the movers and shakers of the international mainstream? Bearing the above questions in mind, I begin this discussion by returning to Hal Foster’s The Artist as Ethnographer.5 Foster called on artists to transform institutionalized forms of cultural production and the various channels of reception and consumption of art work by constituting practices with true social impact. This groundbreaking text, which presented the basis of new ethics in representational practice, has been parsed by artists and anthropologists alike.6 Foster’s essay, published in 1995, coincided with a crucial art historical moment. The international art world (a

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default term for the art world’s metropolitan venues in Western Europe and the U.S.) began to acknowledge the necessity of geopolitical and spatial inclusivity.7 Art historians have described the new “artworld” reality which emerged roughly in the mid-1990s as a new phase of contemporary art. This phase is underscored by the impact of globalization and neoliberal capitalism on forms of art production, circulation, and consumption.8 Foster, arguably, was clearly aware of this unfolding development and thus criticized what he felt was the entrenched “West-centrism” in ethnographic practice in contemporary art. Challenging artists who deploy ethnographic modes in their practice to shift from assumptions that the cultural other is an outsider, perhaps the oppressed postcolonial, Foster enjoined them to seek alterity from within their own cultures, and to replace “alterity” with the “relational.”9 Yet a close reading of The Artist as Ethnographer reveals some pertinent tensions. Though richly and well argued, his position appears, perhaps unwittingly, to reinscribe the West as the “Self” and the non-Western as the ethnographic “other,” in what can be faulted as a traditional anthropological approach.10 For as art critic Frances Malcom suggests, “Foster identifies the ethnographic other as the modern day focus of the artist’s solidarity in the face of dominant culture.”11 We can look at his exhortation of artists to side with the proletariat (à la Walter Benjamin’s “Author as Producer”)12 as the basis of devising a radical or alternative practice. By channeling Benjamin’s “proletariat-class,” Foster invariably casts the populations that often constitute the subject of anthropological gaze as the “new proletariat-class.”13 Alternatively, George Marcus suggests that Foster’s site of subversive ethnographic fieldwork, the context of radical artistic practice and political transformation is no longer the marginal spaces and enclaves of alterity outlined by traditional anthropology. It is instead a “field of immanence defined by the operation of a globalizing multinational capitalism in which older geopolitical models of center and periphery would no longer hold.”14 This particular claim needs further explication. In the groundbreaking Empire, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt address how contemporary globalization masks new form of the capitalist system’s expansion to deflect attention from entrenched Western hegemony.15 The subtext of Negri and Hardt’s argument is that contemporary globalization absorbs the cultural experiences of non-Western peoples to present a semblance of cultural democracy, yet without troubling the foundation of Western hegemony.16 Foster’s position can be summarized therefore as: a) by being engaged in ethnographic mode of practice, that is to say, drawing upon the cultural and social experiences, or the histories of the so-called ethnographic other, the artist is able to offer a critique of the institution—in this case, a normative West-centric international mainstream; or b), the West remains the dominant culture around which new modes of representation should revolve. It is important to consider this view against the grain of Foster’s claim that with globalization there is no longer a pure cultural outsider.17 Thrown into this cauldron is the likelihood that Foster’s artist-ethnographer is a privileged one (which is the more problematic given that art world mobility comes



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with relative economic comfort, but that is not the major issue here), most likely of European or North American origins or based in the Western hemisphere. Therefore, while Foster’s artist-subject is, arguably, a Euro-American artist or an artist based in the West, we are left to grapple with the universality of his arguments. Although several artists of African origin based in or outside Africa may or may not be aware of the ethnographic discourse in contemporary art, many of them draw upon anthropological methodologies in very complex ways. I explore the artistic practice of Nomusa Makhubu, Amina Menia, Emeka Ogboh, and myself in this chapter to draw attention to the prevalence of ethnographic approaches in contemporary African art. In using the term “contemporary African art,” I am well aware of the challenges this poses, as it circumscribes the multiple temporalities, ideologies, attitudes, social and political experiences, and histories which shape or inform artistic practices in the fiftyfour countries that comprise Africa as well as in the diaspora. Photographer Makhubu conducts artistic research in South Africa and Nigeria. She has explored South Africa’s colonial history as it relates to the invention of ethnic types and racial identity, using her indexed image as a vehicle. In Nigeria, she has focused on the burgeoning Nigerian film industry, popularly called Nollywood, and its impact on the African social imagination. Multimedia artist Menia examines Algerian models of urban modernity, using an aesthetic vocabulary that draws upon public monuments, architecture, the archive, and history, and drawing upon her personal experience. Sound artist Ogboh has done extensive work on Lagos, mapping the city through its immersive, eclectic, and rich soundscapes, focusing attention on public spaces with massive human traffic such as bus parks. His initial point of departure was his own personal experience as a young struggling artist trying to make sense of Lagos as a commercial center. As an installation artist, the author has addressed Africa’s colonial past and postcolonial present. In the context of several international art workshops and residencies around Africa, I have worked subjectively with social experiences tied to the different locations, such as Lagos/Enugu (Nigeria), Lusaka (Zambia), Cape Town (South Africa), Nairobi (Kenya), Dakar (Senegal), and Alexandria (Egypt). The four artists discussed in this essay engage with contemporary personal and public memory tied to place as well as collective history. They demonstrate reflexive experiments and fieldwork processes in their practices and thus draw our attention to the fact that the ethnographic turn in contemporary art is not restricted to certain contexts or geographies. As I will argue, though these African-born artists work within an ethnographic space of familiarity, they “generate new strategies, forms and norms of practice to encounter the more complex, parallel and fragmented worlds that many fieldwork projects must negotiate.”18 Due to space limitation, I will limit myself to one or two examples of each artist’s work in the succeeding paragraphs.

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In the ethnographic field Nomusa Makhubu was born in Vereeniging in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. She holds a Ph.D. in art history and visual culture which she teaches at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and maintains a robust artistic practice. As a Fine Art student at Rhodes University, Grahamstown in 2004, she began to work with historical photographs and developed a technique of inserting or stamping her presence unto them. It was a strategy of destabilizing assumptions about photographic truths and insisting on the more complex narrative surrounding the indexed image. As documents of history, old photographs can produce new meanings when deconstructed and recontextualized. Makhubu uses performed photography (a strategy in which she combines her indexed image and appropriated archival or canonical images) to disrupt, question, or revise normative historical narratives. Her earliest experiment in this vein is the series Old Gaol He-Stories (Fig. 2.1, 2004), in which she explored historical memories of an old execution site, built in 1823 by early British colonial settlers, close to her university in Grahamstown. Makhubu visited the site severally, wherein she placed her body on the ground of the old gaol in the context of performance and documented the process. The resulting images of her lying in-situ were subsequently merged with colonial photographs of executions at the site in the series. The textured surface (as well as the old indexed images which feel like apparitions) haunts the present, and provides a sharp contrast to Makhubu’s body in the foreground. She refers to her indexed image as the stand-in for all the victims who were judicially executed at the site, particularly women. Given the circulation of such old colonial images in the public domain, Makhubu’s interest is on the persistence of historical memory and the role it plays in the present. Although now a tourist site in a post-Apartheid South Africa with hostels for backpackers, a drinking spot, and a space for dramatic performance and leisure, this old site of horror encapsulates a fraught memory of South Africa’s colonial past. Makhubu describes this historical return as post-memory.19 It is a kind of collective-self excoriation (mediated via the personal) by acknowledging and engaging with historical past in order to gain a profound understanding of the way entrenched repressive structures shape or condition systems of representations and knowledge production. She states: By simply appearing in the image, do I form part of the old systems of meaning-making? There is, arguably, the implication that the persisting memory of colonialism and apartheid keeps young Africans in a “culture prison” in which they are constantly faced with images of colonialism as well as apartheid and have an obligation to remember or acknowledge these histories. Post-memory is sometimes posed as a responsibility.20 One work that presents her intellectual curiosity with a deep measure of clarity is the affective Self-Portrait, a series of thirteen photographs printed on archival paper,



Anthropology as practice

FIGURE 2.1  a, b, c. Nomusa Makhubu, Old Gaol He-Stories, 2004. Hand-processed photographs. Courtesy of the artist.

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which she produced between 2007 and 2013. Inspired by her personal reflection on the instability of ethnicity as the framework for cultural identity and social identification, Makhubu broadened her intellectual and creative inquiry to consider the scientific language of ethnography, advanced specifically in colonial photography, which continues to shape ethnic and social imaginaries in postcolonial Africa. Self-Portrait was originally conceived as part of a body of work entitled Pre-Served in which Makhubu examined representations of women from eastern and southern Africa in colonial photography that dates from 1870 to 1920. In her late teenage years, Makhubu’s father traveled to Swaziland in search of an uncle and found an entire village of Makhubus. It was at that point she realized that her family was Swazi and not Zulu as she had imagined all along. Having been born and raised in the industrial southern parts of Gauteng, in the Vaal Triangle, a socio-linguistically mixed community, she spoke Zulu and Sotho, but was not familiar with Swazi traditions. She had always thought her family was Zulu. She became interested in the fiction of ethnic identity and cultural identification, her self-discovery serving as an initial reference point. In the beginning Makhubu turned her attention to the family album. The images were appealing and did not suggest anything about ethnicity. She soon turned her attention to the library, immersing herself in anthropology books. Page after page was filled with difficult photographs by colonial photographers, historians, and anthropologists who actively invented ethnic types and constructed tribal identities.21 The photographic language employed was steeped in scientific racism used to justify colonialism, which prevailed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.22 An aspect that stood out immediately for Makhubu was the role of language. Being addressed as a Swazi had more to do with speaking the language than any homogenous Swazi identity. She realized that among the cultures called Swazi there were perceptible differences in traditions. Colonialism was very effective in rallying people around commonly held languages and in fostering violent tribalism that has continued to plague the continent. In recent memory it has resulted in the Rwandan genocide, and civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, and Central African Republic, to mention a few of these hotspots across Africa. She began to interrogate the role of colonial photography in fabricating and legitimating ethnic identities. The Self-Portrait series emerged out of a necessity to come to terms with the enduring legacy of colonial ethnography. Deploying the language of performed photography that she had come up with in her first project, Old Gaol, she posed as the various “African ethnicities” she had uncovered in colonial-era photographs. The idea was either for her image to stand in for indexed historical subjects, as was the case in the Old Gaol series, or to merge her presence with that of the photographed subject as a way of bringing the past and the present into collision as a strategy of revisiting history. This historical revisionism also involved retitling the recuperated photographs in African languages. For example, she retitled an ethnic-type photograph “A Chokwe Woman” in Zulu. This was to subvert what she identified as the protocol of colonial-era ethnography, to construct socio-linguistic groups as autonomous cultures. Embedded in this protocol was the scientific gaze of colonial photography that effectively stripped



Anthropology as practice

FIGURE 2.2  Nomusa Makhubu, Umasifanisane II (Comparison II), from Self-Portrait series. Digital print on litho paper. Courtesy of the artist.

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the colonized subject of personhood and turned the individual into an ethnic type. As it has been variously argued, colonialism was crucial to the entrenchment of anthropology as an academic discipline and photography was an effective tool that bridged the two.23 For Makhubu, it is important to question the “contextual truthfulness” and the underlying hegemony that accompanied colonial photography.24 In several of the repurposed images which bear new Zulu titles and English subtitles, the protocol of colonial photography is very much apparent. Inhlamvu Yamehlo (The Gaze) and Umqela Nombhaco (Beautification Scar) convey how African bodies were reduced to specimens, phenotypes, or infantilized. In Omama Bencelisa (Mothers Breastfeeding), Umasifanisane I (Comparison I) and Umasifanisane II (Comparison II) (Fig. 2.2), the viewer encounters how African subjects were consigned to nature. The historical subjects are placed against backgrounds of flora and fauna to suggest their natural environment. Colonial photography also reproduced African bodies as social documents about the “native” in the throes of social, political, and economic changes, as seen in Mfundo, Impahla neBhayibheli (Education, Apparel, and the Bible) and Goduka (Going/Migrant Laborers). In all the images in the series, Makhubu’s transparent image hovers poignantly like an apparition, allowing indexed historical subjects to seep into the temporal while she recedes into the past.25 Makhubu’s notion of postmemory is understood as a process of transferring “cultural trauma,” as she put it, from older generations to younger through imaginative leaps and creative re-narration. Post-memory is thus the prism through which she interrogates historical events and seeks out how they continue to implicate the present. *** Amina Menia was born in Algiers, Algeria’s capital city, in the 1970s decade when political nationalism was at its reverent height during the regime of President Houari Boumediene.26 Trained at École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Algiers, Menia majored in interior design, which was a default choice as it was her only option because of the institution’s rigid curriculum based on traditional French art academy. From the onset, Menia was fascinated by Algiers as a place of fraught memory and was drawn to concrete structures, public spaces, and images that monumentalize (à la Pierre Nora) or serve as vectors of Algeria’s historical experiences.27 Menia has focused on how Algeria’s complex history is reflected in the everyday, etched on public monuments and in the hearts of the population. Her early works consisted of urban installations that reflected her training as a designer and her interest in architecture. The language of architecture is crucial to how Menia processes space and time, and engages with government policies of urban regeneration, social engineering, and transformation. Architecture is also a prism that allows her to consider power relations captured or reflected in the built environment to which Algeria’s history is a compelling backdrop. Algeria’s past is laden with colonial violence and anti-colonial pushback. It is marked by war traumas which feed postcolonial anxiety and fear of the unknown, and at the same time nourish contemporary Algerian nationalism. Menia’s architectural



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installations take the form of scaffolds, adjustable props which she refers to as alphabets, and table-boxes with photographs of the built space. Following several setbacks from the authorities in the attempt to set up her work in public spaces in Algiers in order to engage the city directly, Menia turned her attention to public archives and to creating her own archive of memory of public places. The initial focus was photography, which allowed her to circumvent the lack of cooperation from the authorities and to restitute public spaces, via their photographs (both archival and those taken by the artist), in a gallery or museum context. One work in this regard is the ongoing installation Chrysanthemums (Chrysanthèmes, 2009–present). The work, whose title is an ironical take on a common expression connected with funeral rituals (a political expression created by President René Coty and made famous by General De Gaulle), came about when Menia traveled to the north coast of Algeria to explore public sites with political memories. As an installation, it comprises photographs of commemorative stelae and monuments dedicated to martyrs who laid down their lives in service to Algeria, particularly during the war of independence. At the core of her research-based practice is the interest to document public monuments and to reflect on the ambiguity that surrounds them. One example is the effect of the passage of time on public monuments, what they reveal about changes in political ideologies, and how these changes are received in the court of public opinion. Given that some of the monuments she documented in places such as Baïnem, Blida, Sidi Maarouf, Tessala, and Ziama are in various stages of use, neglect, or outright

FIGURE 2.3  Amina Menia, Enclosed, 2013. Mixed media, variable installation. Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Andy Stagg and The Mosaic Rooms, London.

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vandalization, she was mostly interested in how their abject conditions affect the memories attached or associated with them. Menia’s special interest in national monuments resulted from being both fascinated and frustrated by the logic of their creation, mainly to commemorate a slice of the country’s past that is tied to anti-colonial struggle.28 In returning to these public commissions, she is interested in a more complex Algerian past that is a composite of the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial histories, and how the past impacts the present. In this way, she is able to provide a deeper contextualization of the meaning of the monuments, what they embody as well as what is occluded in their narratives, thus shifting attention from the celebratory and the commemorative. Two particular works that reflect this position in a compelling fashion are Enclosed (Fig. 2.3, 2013) and A Peculiar Family Album (Fig. 2.4, 2012). Both also highlight her proclivity for narratives and in engaging the past through an autobiographical lens. Created for the Becoming Independent exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in January 2013, and shown subsequently at the 11th iteration of the Sharjah Biennale in a revised and expanded version in March 2013, Enclosed engages the history of the very important Monument to the Dead (Le Pavois) in central Algiers. The public art was commissioned by French authorities and created in 1928 by renowned PolishFrench sculptor Paul Landowski to commemorate both French and Arab soldiers who lost their lives during World War I. The monument however was viewed as a memorial to French colonialism. In the late 1970s, the pioneering Algerian modernist M’hamed Issiakhem was commissioned by the Mayor of Algiers to remake the monument to reflect the new postcolonial reality. As someone who was cognizant of history, Issiakhem decided against destroying or removing the old monument. Instead he created an outer shell, a sort of sarcophagus for Landowski’s monument. A few months before the fiftieth anniversary of Algeria’s independence, cracks began to appear on the monument’s outer shell created by Issiakhem, revealing Landowski’s original sculpture.

FIGURE 2.4  Amina Menia, A Peculiar Family Album (still shot), 2012. Video. Video stills courtesy of the artist.



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Taking the “see-through” cracks as a metaphor for fissures and disruptions in Algeria’s history, Menia created Enclosed as a reflection on the making of modern Algeria, and as a metaphor of the unfinished, untold story between Algeria and France, to commemorate the country’s golden jubilee in 2012. The immersive installation consists of archival photographs, documents, postcards, coins, bank notes, stamps, and the drawing plans of both Landowski and Issiakhem, installed in table-like light boxes and on the wall. It also includes video interviews and archival film footage. As a third-generation artist, Menia considers her intervention as a dialogue between Landowski and Issiakhem. But more significantly, she considers the weight of public opinion—that is to say, the contemporary politics of meaning making—as a critical third layer that enriches this very important public monument. Additionally, Menia adds some “auto-fictional details” to her work. They come as voice-overs in her documentary films in which she draws upon her own or others’ social experiences and blends them with historical facts in meaningful ways. This strategy is particularly effective in A Peculiar Family Album. Menia is the voice-over narrator in this compelling quasi-documentary that addresses the legacy of urbanism and early postcolonial modernity in Algiers. The film came about serendipitously when she was conducting artistic research in Marseille, France, a city that is viewed as Algiers’ sister city. Menia examined the two cities comparatively to underscore a particular vision of colonial urbanity, of which Marseille was supposed to be the model and Algiers the experimental site. As she states, the film is not really about the historical connection between Marseille and Algiers, or France and Algeria. Instead it examines the unsuccessful attempt to foist a model of urban modernity that was for all intent and purpose French on Algiers.29 Menia’s voice in the documentary locates her as an Algerine, a local, within the contemporary and historical fabric of Algiers, and Algeria by extension. *** After completing his art training in graphic design at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 2001, Emeka Ogboh was drawn to the possibilities offered by the burgeoning world of the internet in Nigeria at that time. He began to teach himself computer programming and web design, reading voraciously on the subject, and exploring opensource software and programs. This knowledge would become useful when he turned his attention to sound and video art subsequently. In this early post-Nsukka period, between 2001 and 2007, he was mostly interested in digital and web-based art. It was also in this period that he moved to Lagos in search of economic and creative opportunities. As an artist, he was initially drawn to Lagos as a microcosm of Nigeria’s more than 250 ethnic groups and as a numbing compendium of the country’s variegated cultural experiences. Given his status then as a young college graduate seeking means of livelihood, Ogboh’s initial focus was heavily weighted towards socio-economic conditions. The idea, which he articulated together with a collaborator as “Lagos Marketplace

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Dynamics”, was to examine how the city’s network of markets (large, medium, and small) dictates the psychology of Lagos as a neoliberal space. It was an attempt to comprehend the city through its hotspots of commerce and, by also looking at the city’s history, to understand its contemporary conditions. The popular phrase “no one comes to Lagos to count its numerous bridges” mirrors the urgency that characterizes the city as a place of hustle, and this dictated Ogboh’s initial focus. In 2008, Ogboh began to explore in greater detail Lagos’s urban fabric—often described as organized chaos that however dances to its own internal logic—but through the city’s acoustic character. He would visit public spaces that convey sonic experiences on mass scales, recording soundscapes with binaural microphones and digital recorders.30 The vibrancy of Lagos, as Ogboh submits, has less to do with its intense visualscapes and more to do with its immersive aural landscapes that define the city’s metropolitan energy.31 The city’s “audio cues” (his term): the cries of itinerant hawkers selling products ranging from snacks (such as “gala,” the popular beef sausage) and illicit gin to home entertainment; bus conductors screaming the various bus routes at the top of their voices; impatient and non-stop blaring of car and bus horns in traffic hold-ups; the itinerant cobbler’s or tailor’s synchronized beats using a piece of metal or wood against a wooden tool box to announce his presence on side streets; laughter and chatter in marketplaces; rumbling power generators; church and mosque programs belting from loudspeakers; contemporary Nigerian hip hop music playing at bus parks—all become syncopated compositions in Ogboh’s studio. These audible cues are very important in navigating the conundrum of neighborhoods, inner cities, and central business districts (see Fig. 2.5). Ogboh’s initial focal points were the bus stations and markets as nodes of exchange, communication, transition, and

FIGURE 2.5  Emeka Ogboh, Monday Morning in Lagos, from Lagos Soundscapes, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.



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FIGURE 2.6  Emeka Ogboh, Lagos Bus Park (Ojuelegba), from Lagos Soundscapes, 2013. Courtesy of the artist. enterprise for the city’s teeming population of roughly twenty million (see Fig. 2.6). These public spaces help to map the city for him, delimiting the sociological, the economical, and the humanistic. Ogboh has also focused critical attention on the familiar avatars of Lagos in popular imagination as visual signifiers that also drive its soundscapes, such as the ubiquitous yellow commercial kombi buses, popularly called danfo. The typical danfo is a VW transporter bus, painted in cadmium yellow with two black stripes. Ogboh addresses the bus as a mobile public space filled with audible cues that articulate the city acoustically. It is a “non-place,” a term coined by anthropologist Marc Augé, between domestic spaces (private homes) and places of business (offices, markets, etc.), ferrying an unending flow of commuters to one destination after another.32 In the danfo, bus conductors scream out bus routes, and there is social interaction among passengers trading the latest city gossip, itinerant preachers of the gospel sermonizing, hawkers selling all manner of items, etc. For the price of a regular bus fare, one is thoroughly immersed in discussions ranging from finance, sex, politics, religion, and health to local and international news. Above the din, the driver is playing a medley of vernacular music, local and foreign hip hop songs at high volume. The conductor is chanting out the various bus stops, which Ogboh refers to as verbal maps, for embarking and disembarking passengers. This scenario presents the danfo bus as a space of encounter and exchange between transiting passengers, driver and conductor, and also as a vector that condenses and transmits the multiple dimensions of Lagos experience through its human signs. Ogboh organizes audio recordings of these daily events as Lagos Soundscapes. Until recently, he minimally tampered with his field recording in his studio, maintaining for the most part the integrity of the soundscapes.33 Collected in the

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context of field work in which he inserts himself as a participant-observer, the soundscapes can be considered archival. The most important reason is that they reflect the changes in the urban fabric of Lagos in the last few years through Ogboh’s own interests in economics, shaped by his personal experiences. Lagos’s acoustic presence began to transform or disappear under the weight of urban renewal and infrastructural revitalization which started during the administration of Bola Tinubu, the governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007, and reached a certain apogee under the current administration of Babatunde Fashola. A major casualty of these developmental strides is the bus parks. Ogboh has tracked this process of transformation at bus parks in Oshodi, Obalende, and Ojuelegba, the main transportation hubs in the city which also serve as a crucial aspect of the city’s informal economy. *** Between 2001 and 2007, I worked mostly as an itinerant artist from my base in Nigeria.34 My works were produced mainly in the context of international artist residencies and workshops around Africa and elsewhere, because I could not afford a studio. Although I no longer maintain primary residence in Africa,35 my integrated practice as a visual artist, art historian, and curator continues to address Africa’s historical experiences and contemporary conditions from two principal frames of reference: the sobering realism of Afro-pessimism, and the upbeat idealism of Afropolitanism. In the twenty-first century, Africa remains a sensitive conundrum. It has been described as both a geographical and an intense intellectual space, and continues to engage the attention of people interested in its frames of reference. These frames, arguably, oscillate between Afro-pessimism, a term popularized by curator and art historian Okwui Enwezor, and the more recent discourse of Afropolitanism. Afro-pessimism invites a haunted vision of the “Dark Continent,” a colonial-inspired descriptive term for Africa. Underpinning such vision is the conflicting image of a childlike and helpless Africa on the one hand, and a fearsome place on the other. Unfortunately, this vision of Africa reflects the ways in which the continent is mediated by the international media, as a place riven with pathologies such as civil wars, genocide, insurgence (Boko Haram, Shebab Islamists, etc.), AIDS, poverty, hunger, and endemic corruption. Unlike Afro-pessimism, Afropolitanism suggests the triumph of human agency. It gestures to a desired self-articulation and about reframing the conversation about Africa by Africans on their own terms. When the writer Taiye Selasi (formerly known as Tuakli-Wosornu) came up with the catchy term Afropolitanism, it was to articulate a form of social identification for Africans who, as she claims, are at home in the world—the kind of African who is not overwhelmed by the Afro-pessimist mindset. In this fraught social category, Selasi alludes to a confident and worldly African, either born or raised abroad, or with a worldview colored by international and transnational exposures. Selasi’s Afropolitan insists on reinventing the African narrative by shifting



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the conversation from that of victimhood to self-affirmation. Neither Afro-pessimism nor Afropolitanism fully capture Africa’s dense temporality and striking complexity. But by looking at Afro-pessimism as a mirror reflection of Afropolitanism and vice versa, one despairing and the other aspirational (as Selasi imagines the concept), one is able to address Africa in very useful and critical way. In 2005, I produced a body of work that considered the two concepts in equal and productive measures. Entitled Space, Time, and History, the body of installations, produced during an artist residency in Nairobi, Kenya, was a contemplative attempt to engage the value of historical returns in situating the present, an interest shared by Makhubu and Menia (explored in this chapter), and Ogboh, to a certain degree. Yet, whereas Makhubu, Menia, and Ogboh, for the most part, are preoccupied with South Africa, Algeria, and Nigeria as spaces or contexts of familiarity, I have taken on Africa as my context of familiarity, examining its colonial past and precolonial present in a broad sense. As I was emplaced in Nairobi at that time, I drew upon its built environment as visual and conceptual references, inspired by the modern architecture that I saw around the city of Nairobi as well as the several conversations I had with local artists at the GoDown Art Center in the industrial section of the city. Cement walls are left without the smooth finish, leaving the building blocks exposed. The rough surface of the unvarnished mortar walls spoke to me a lot about Africa’s checkered history, its precarious contemporary state which at times reinforces some of the pathologies stamped on the continent by the international media.

FIGURE 2.7  Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Space, Time, History, from Lighted Walls, 2005. Multi-media installation, variable. Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Justus Kyalo.

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My main installation work entitled Lighted Wall (Fig. 2.7, 2005) was conceived in this regard. Composed of several building blocks fabricated with steel armature and encased in wire mesh, each block had a light bulb placed inside and wired to connect with the rest. The blocks were then put together in the manner of actual modern building practices in Kenya. The finished work was an uneven wall of lighted bulbs, regulated from low intensity at the base to high intensity at the top, intended to indicate precarity and ephemerality. I also created two totemic pillars made of the same materials as the Lighted Wall to go with it, inspired by reinforced concrete pillars that support walls or entry gates around Nairobi. In some of the blocks that composed the pillars, I replaced the light bulbs with short texts printed on several 3x3-inch squares of plexi-glass. The texts were extracts from colonial literature and The Short Century exhibition’s catalog, the curator Okwui Enwezor’s magnum opus.36 In the rest of the blocks, I substituted the bulbs with curios and African sculptures (produced for the tourist market) purchased at the Maasai market in central Nairobi. With the totemic pillars, I wanted to address the intersection of Africa’s colonial history, the reception and meaning of Africa via its material cultures. I tried to create a balance with one of the installations entitled Regeneration (Fig. 2.8, 2005). This consisted of similar lighted blocks arranged in the manner of a flower bed. In the middle, I placed several live plants to convey notions of hope and rebirth, and to shift the conversation away slightly from Afro-pessimism. The light bulbs, deployed severally in the installations, served simultaneously as metaphor of hope and ephemerality. When

FIGURE 2.8  Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Regeneration, from Lighted Walls, 2005. Multi-media installation (44 x 41 x 57 inches). Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Justus Kyalo.



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the composite work was installed in the GoDown Center art gallery, it conveyed the sense of a ruin, a desolate city but with some specks of hope. In this way, the installation captured the state of things in Africa, reflecting measured Afro-pessimism and Afropolitanism, and grounding my practice within a context of proximity.

Conclusion In his essay “Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking the Contemporary” Nikos Papastergiadis notes that what drives contemporary artistic practice is a coda that is “defined by a desire to be in the contemporary … the recognition of the dual right of artists to maintain an active presence in a local context and participate in transnational dialogues.”37 Framing an understanding of this coda as contexts and spaces of familiarity, I have addressed the subjective responses of these contemporary artists to extant social experiences, postcolonial conditions, and historical memory in Africa, but which intersect with global art practices elsewhere. Despite arguments of neoliberal sameness and cultural reflexivity as markers of our globalized world, the specificity of quotidian realities is as disparate as are our individualities, spatial locations, and frames of experience. To paraphrase Hans Belting, the nature of what is increasingly referred to as global contemporary is one that allows artists to be globally connected while reflecting the peculiarities of their immediate locations, specific cultural experiences, histories, and material conditions.38 The creative practice of the artists addressed in this essay emerges from a familiar space: their individual countries of birth, and Africa in a general sense. It follows, as several scholars have suggested, that the (artist)-ethnographer embeds himself/ herself in a familiar, quasi-familiar, or entirely alien sociocultural context but which requires some form of critical distance from the subject of interest.39 It is the attempt to recuperate “authentic” social experience—or as George Marcus terms it, “realist expression and critical forms”—that drives the ethnographic proclivities of Makhubu, Menia, Ogboh, and the author.40 Their anthropological modes of practice involve a strategy of self-inquiry that allows them to engage with particular cultural experiences in close proximity and simultaneously, from a sophisticated intellectual distance. As artists with flourishing international careers, they blur the distinction of cultural insider and outsider, local and global, in new and invigorating ways.

Notes 1

I thank Arnd Schneider for his invitation to participate in this interesting project and for his rich and insightful comments on the first draft of this chapter.

2

There has been an increased focus on contemporary African art in the last few years. It has been variously described as the next big thing, a sort of gold rush, with art speculators hedging their bets in a manner that recalls a similar focus on Chinese art

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3

For example, one considers the academic discourses of indigenous, alternative, and parallel modernisms, though losing steam but still ongoing, which focus on non-Western contexts in relation to Western modernism, seen as the standardbearer of art modernism.

4

For example, Paul Basu and Sharon Macdonald’s introduction to Exhibition Experiments treats a good number of artists working in the ethnographic mode, none of whom is African. Paul Basu and Sharon Macdonald, “Introduction: Experiments in Exhibition, Ethnography, Art and Science,” Exhibition Experiments (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 1–24. Two notable exceptions though are the focus on the work of Angolan artist António Ole in the introduction to Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Ethnographic Practice, edited by Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (New York and Oxford: Berg, 2010), and a journal article by anthropologist/artist Jade Gibson on Thupelo Artists’ Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa: N. Jade Gibson, “The ‘Great Walk and More’: Thupelo Artists’ Workshop 2010: Performing Community through the Visual Arts in Cape Town, South Africa,” Anthrovision, 1 (1) (2013): 1–31.

5

Hall Foster, “The Artist as Ethnographer,” in The Return of the Real: The Avantgarde at the End of History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 171–203. The article was first published in the anthology The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology (1995), edited by anthropologists George Marcus and Fred Myers.

6

See for instance, Marija Krstić, “Mind the Gap: The Use of Artistic Methods in Anthropological Research, A Critical Reading of Marcus,” Etnoloska Tribina, 34 (41) (2011): 69–85; Kris Rutten, An van Dienderen, and Ronald Soetaert, “Revisiting the Ethnographic Turn in Contemporary Art [part 1],” Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 27 (5) (2013): 459–73; DOI:10.1080/02560046.2013.855513 (accessed 1 March 15); Shelley Butler, “Ethnographic Terminalia: Field, Studio, Lab,” Museum and Curatorial Studies Review, 1 (1) (Summer 2013), http://www. macs-review.org/ (accessed 1 May 2015).

7

Charlotte Bydler provides a robust examination of the post-1990 international art world, addressing it as an “integrated global machine.” See Charlotte Bydler, The Global Artworld Inc.: On the Globalization of Contemporary Art (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2004).

8

See for example Alexander Alberro, “Periodising Contemporary Art,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 9 (1/2), (2008/9): 66–73; Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art? (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

9

Foster, op. cit.

10 See for example Johannes Fabian, “Presence and Representation: The Other and Anthropological Writing,” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 753–72; David Ross Fryer, The Intervention of the Other: Ethical Subjectivity in Levinas and Lacan (New York: Other Press, 2008). 11 Malcom’s observation is in regard to the socially engaged practice of Mexican Gabriel Orozco. Though born in Mexico, a country situated in the Western hemisphere but hovering in the margins, Orozco has made a name for himself in the Western mainstream by working with subjective social experiences from spaces located in the margins. Frances Malcom, “November 2010, Gabriel Orozco @



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Centre Pompidou,” http://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/2010-gabriel-orozco-centrepompidou/2147 (accessed 1 May 2015). 12 Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock (London and New York: Verso, 1998, first published 1966). Cited in Foster, ibid. 13 At the risk of generalization, it goes without question that the principal site of anthropological research is mostly outside of the so-called Global North. See Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 14 George E. Marcus, “Affinities: Fieldwork in Anthropology Today and the Ethnographic in Artwork,” in Schneider and Wright, Between Art and Anthropology, pp. 85–7. 15 Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000). 16 Indeed Foster treated this subject of cooptation earlier on in his treatise on modernism. Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1985), pp. 196–208. 17 Foster, op. cit, p. 178. 18 Marcus, op. cit. 19 Nomusa Makhubu’s artist statement on the Self-Portrait project, sent electronically to the author on 27 August 2014. 20 Ibid. 21 See Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Leroy Vail, “Ethnicity in Southern African History,” in Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History and Representation, edited by Roy Richard Grinker, Stephen C. Lubkemann, and Christopher B. Steiner (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 95–108. 22 Elizabeth Edwards, Anthropology and Photography (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 1992); Paul S. Landau and Deborah Kaspin (eds), Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 23 Peter Pels, “The Anthropology of Colonialism: Culture, History, and the Emergence of Western Governmentality,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 26 (1997): 163–83. 24 Caroline Hancock and Nomusa Makhubu, “A Disturbing Memory: An Interview with Nomusa Makhubu,” Contemporary And. http://www.contemporaryand.com/blog/ magazines/disturbing-memory-an-interview-with-nomusa-makhubu/ (accessed 1 May 2015). 25 The archival images were previously published in a compendium by Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart entitled Surviving the Lens: Photographic Studies of South and East African People, 1870–1920 (2001). 26 Houari Boumediene’s Revolutionary Council established a series of socialist interventions to drive state-led industrialization. Boumediene’s government also organized the historic First Pan-African Festival in 1969, which was a very significant context in forging cultural unity between Africa and its diaspora. 27 See Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 28 Author’s electronic correspondence with artist, 3 March 2015.

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29 Ibid. 30 Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, “The Sound Artist Emeka Ogboh in Conversation with Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi,” Contemporary And. http://www.contemporaryand. com/blog/magazines/lagos-soundscapes-have-a-strong-impact-on-the-imaginationthey-cannot-be-ignored/ (accessed 1 May 2015). 31 Author’s Skype interview with artist, 17 January 2015. 32 The writer and artist Massa Lemu employed the term to describe Ogboh’s work. See Lemu, “Danfo, Molue and the Afropolitan Experience in Emeka Ogboh’s Soundscapes,” Art and Education (2012). http://www.artandeducation.net/author/ massa_lemu/ (accessed 1 May 2015). 33 Currently, Ogboh treats his sound recordings as raw materials with which he creates different bodies of work. For example, he has worked with composers to arrange Lagos soundscapes as music compositions. He has also diversified his artistic practice to include photography, objects, video, and film. 34 In the fall of 2007, I left for the United States to begin a Ph.D. in Art History at Emory University, Atlanta, which I completed in 2013. 35 I currently live in the upper valley area of New England, U.S.A., and work as a curator of African art at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art while maintaining my studio practice. 36 Okwui Enwezor, The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994 (Munich and New York: Prestel, 2001). 37 Nikos Papastergiadis, “Spatial Aesthetics: Rethinking the Contemporary,” in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity, Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor, and Nancy Condee (eds) (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 363–4. 38 Hans Belting, “Contemporary Art as Global Art: A Critical Estimate,” The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets, and Museums, Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg (eds) (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009), pp. 38–71. 39 Arnd Schneider, “Three Modes of Experimentation with Art and Ethnography,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (1) (March 2008): 171–94. 40 See for example Anthony Downey, “An Ethics of Engagement: Collaborative Art Practices and the Return of the Ethnographer,” Third Text, 23 (5) (September 2009): 593–603.

3 African art in the global contemporary: UgochukwuSmooth C. Nzewi in conversation with Arnd Schneider1 Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and Arnd Schneider

AS  How does your artistic practice inform your work as a curator (at the Hood Museum, and in other locations)? USCN  The visual experience is very key to how I conceptualize an exhibition in addition to civic and didactic aspects. At the Hood Museum, which is a teaching museum, we place a lot of emphasis on experiential learning, and this involves up-close interaction with the art object. As a curator, I see my role as that of a mediator of that which preoccupies the artist. Being an artist myself, I appreciate the artist’s quest to create new contexts of engagement with our understanding of material and transcendental reality. I am mindful of the sentiments, work processes, and challenges that shape the art object. In other words, I am interested in that state of mind that births an artwork; the intellectual, psychic, and psychological space of the artist (both living and dead), from whence the artwork emerges. I pay attention to the nuances at play in a work that may or may not be easy to discern and which depends on how visually astute or conceptually articulate the artist-maker is. AS  What particular challenges arise when you work from a metropolitan institution (i.e., the Hood Museum), curating exhibitions of contemporary African art? USCN  One continues to grapple with the best approach in addressing entrenched preconceived notions and received ideas of Africa, or ingrained understanding of what

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contemporary African art should look like. It is important to foreground that, historically, the arts of Africa have been mediated largely using an ethnographic lens in Western institutions as sacrosanct manifestations of cultural experience that cannot be universalized in Western institutions. This what the mostly white audience is familiar with. Speaking specifically about African art of the historical canon, the tendency of most progressive museum exhibits in the last few decades is to critique the idea of the Western eye as a hegemonic apparatus without actually dismantling the epistemology that gave rise to and reinforces it. For instance, exhibitions such as Baule: African Art, Western Eyes curated by Susan Vogel at the defunct Museum for African Art, New York, in 1997, tackled the notion of the Western eye, addressing its historiography. Yet one would argue that such attempts at demystification come with an implicit value that ends up reinforcing that eye. That more recent exhibitions, such as Kongo: Power and Majesty at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (September 18, 2015–January 3, 2016), reference the Western eye as a focal interpretive tool despite all the arguments about a globalized art world, speaks to the preeminence of the Western eye as the cultural arbiter. Ultimately, the fact is the epistemology that gave rise to that “eye” in the first place continues to shape museum practice. With the new emphasis on global contemporary, contemporary African art contends with a different variation of the Western eye. My task, therefore, is to meaningfully engage the consciousness and epistemic background with which the Western audience approaches the arts of Africa from my position in a metropolitan institution. AS  What does “African” mean in the context of a globalized art world? USCN  As a concept or label, “African” is a sensitive enigma. In the context of a globalized art world, it proposes a set of values that have come to circumscribe works of artists of African origin. Though previously held tropes such as the fetish or primitive no longer underpin the understanding of African art, mainstream expectation is that works by African artists should be able to speak something about their identities or about realities in Africa. This was the focus of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, an exhibition I curated at the Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York in summer 2015.2 The exhibition addressed what I referred to as the burden of “Africanness,” which to a large extent dictates the understanding and reception of artworks by contemporary artists from Africa in the international art world. It is quite instructive that at the moment, work by “African” artists is the latest hype, which reminds me of the cyclical and shifting nature of the interest of “the artworld” (as Arthur Danto meant the term)3 and the role neoliberal capital plays in that shift. At some point in the last few decades, it was China and Latin America. I suspect that attention would soon gravitate to Cuba and Iran given recent attempts, led by the United States, to re-set relationships with the two countries. As we know, cultural transactions often follow political and economic developments, and the West is always in the driving seat. AS  You also curate African art abroad—in fact, also in Africa (recently as the co-curator of the Dak’Art Biennale 2014). How does your approach differ—if at all—from how you work in the U.S?



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USCN  The curator must always take into account the expectations and idiosyncrasies of the audience in question. My official designation at the Hood Museum, and which informs how I am received in the United States, is as curator of African art, although my curatorial interests include the African diaspora and global contemporary. My role thus, given this official designation, is to mediate African art to an American audience that may or may not know much about African art. In that sense, I help my audience to gain better understanding of African expressive cultures, aesthetic traditions, cultural experiences, and so forth. Obviously, there is a mental shift when I am working in Africa as my audience is mostly African. I am just a curator engaged with artistic production (contemporary or historical as the case may be) and not a point man for African art. With this in mind, I am more focused on understanding the dynamic that informs or shapes emergent artistic practices on the continent and the nature of the different local art worlds, and placing this compelling dynamic in conversation with emergent discourses and practices elsewhere. This was very central to our curatorial vision for the eleventh iteration of the Dak’Art Biennale in 2014. My co-curators and I were interested in addressing the world that we live in from what we termed an African perspective. With the theme “Producing the Common,” we sought the intersection of politics and aesthetics in engaging with some of the pertinent issues following the global recession of 2008 from the vantage point of art. AS  As a practicing artist, art historian, and curator, how do you engage with, and what possible benefits do you see in, a dialogue with anthropology / anthropological approaches? USCN  The intersection of (traditional) anthropology and European colonialism in producing non-Western subjectivities is something that begs my intellectual attention. It is very easy to wish away anthropology’s collusion with colonialism in the past, but the legacy is yet to be unlearned. In African art history and museum practice, two fields that I am heavily invested in, the scars of this legacy run very deep. Having said that, I think the value of reflexive anthropology for artists with research-based or socially engaged practice cannot be understated. My work often involves research and is almost autoethnographic, even when the subject of inquiry is a commonly held experience. The body of installation entitled Space, Time, and History, discussed in Chapter 2 in this volume, is one example. I addressed African history and contemporary experience using a very subjective lens. Another site-specific installation, In the Light of Conflict, which I created during an Art Omi residency in New York in 2007, addressed global conflict. An important aspect of the work was a very long and dense poem that detailed my agony and internal struggles as a black person in a world of unending conflicts and deaths. AS  What are the main theoretical inspirations for your curatorial / academic work, and similarly can you name any important influences for your art work? USCN  I have long admired the late Swiss curator Harald Szeemann for his intensity, boundless energy, immense productivity, groundbreaking exhibitions, reinvention of

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the role of the curator, and more significantly, how he was able to successfully and effectively combine three careers as curator, artist, and art historian. I have continued to dwell on his idea of self-generated mythology as a guiding principle in thinking about the form of my exhibitions, and curating as both political and intellectual actions. For similar reasons, I admire Okwui Enwezor’s fecund imagination and tireless attempts in making the exhibition a site of engaged politics, intellectual inquiry, and humanism. Others, including Olu Oguibe, Chika-Okeke Agulu, Salah Hassan, Anthony Kwame Appiah, and Sidney Kasfir are sources of intellectual inspiration. Kasfir, in particular, explores the context of social history as a lens of understanding what the art object has to say. In my artistic practice, I seek the intersection of history and memory in framing my engagement with the world around me. AS  In curating at the Hood Museum, how do you engage with the museum’s collections of African art from colonial and precolonial times, and how do you set these in relation to contemporary African art? USCN  Previously, the museum’s presentation of the arts of Africa emphasized masks, other kinds of ritual objects, and works of material culture. While the Hood continues to collect tradition-based art forms, we have begun to conceive our collecting practice more broadly, so as to encompass artistic production by African artists, in and beyond the continent, as well as non-African artists who address Africa in their work. This new approach signals the museum’s intention to engage with emerging discourses and narratives of the “global modern” and “global contemporary” in art. My recent exhibition, Inventory: New Works and Conversations around African Art (January 16–March 13, 2016) was conceived with the new approach in mind. Where and when necessary, I find useful connections between historical and contemporary African art. This has been fundamental to the exhibitions that I have put together since arriving at the Hood in August 2013. Art of Weapons (April 18, 2014–March 11, 2016) addressed the significance of weapons as purveyors of artistic traditions, sociocultural organization and identity in traditional African societies. It also considered the meaning of masculinity and warriorhood in both African and Western contexts, taking into account the historical moment during European colonialism in which the objects were collected; the identity of the collectors, mostly white male; and the ideology which underscored the collecting practice at that time, the logic of Western enlightenment and imperial imagination. Auto-Graphics: Works by Victor Ekpuk (April 18–August 2, 2015) featured selections from new bodies of work by the Nigerian artist Victor Ekpuk whose visual language is indebted to nsibidi, an autochthonous communication system comprising ideographic, abstract, and gestural signs, largely associated with the Ekpe Secret Society, an all-men trans-ethnic association active in the southern border regions of Nigeria and Cameroon. Auto-Graphics was on view alongside Ukara: Ritual Cloth of the Ekpe Secret Society (April 18–August 2, 2015), which explored the long-standing cultural practice of the Ekpe Secret Society as embodied in the ukara ritual cloth, a composite signifier of the long-standing leopard society’s authority, prestige, and sacrality.



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AS  Do you (or would you consider) co-curate exhibitions with curators based in Africa, or with African diaspora communities in the U.S. and elsewhere? USCN  I have worked with curators based on the continent and elsewhere and would continue to do so. I have exhibited works by artists from the African diaspora and am currently working on an important show in that regard. AS  In recent times, a lot of discussion regarding collections of non-European art by museums has revolved around issues of intellectual property rights and source communities. What opportunities do you see in this also for critical forms of curating, and indeed interventions by contemporary African artists? USCN  Your question is particularly instructive if we are to consider the ongoing discourse and artistic practice on decolonizing the museum. Several European institutions are increasingly coming to terms with their not-so-famous histories, addressing the basis on which most of them were constituted. Kader Attia, Sammy Baloji, and Otobong Nkanga are some of the African artists who have engaged with European collections. Whether such interventions are far-reaching or radical enough is arguable. But one is a little wary and weary of how terms such as “decolonizing the museum” or “decolonial” practice are bandied around. We are goaded into believing that museums are truly addressing their hegemonic or imperial histories. Yet these institutions, without mentioning names—some of whom have reinvented themselves as universal museums—continue to hold on to cultural spoils obtained in dodgy circumstances and offer unconvincing arguments as to why repatriation and/or reparation are not feasible options. From a curatorial standpoint, we should do more to a) challenge the authority of the museum, and b) focus real attention on objects’ biographies. This would bring to light the less than savory paths (consigned to registrar and curatorial offices) several works took to respected collections. AS  In your chapter “Anthropology as Practice” in this volume, you use the notions “Afro-pessimism” and “Afropolitanism.” How do they inform your work? USCN  Afro-pessimism is a term that the curator Okwui Enwezor popularized. It speaks to the deep developmental challenges and historical setbacks that people in Africa contend with. Afropolitanism, to paraphrase the writer Taiye Selasi, alludes to a privileged African who is at home in the world and who is not bogged down by the anomies often associated with Africa. It is a self-affirming social identity that is aspirational and positive. It is also elitist and naive in that it does not represent the experience of a vast majority of people on the continent who deal with the weight of Afro-pessimism on a regular basis. In my work as a curator, artist, or scholar, I see the limitations of the two concepts but also their usefulness and therefore draw measured insights from both. I strike a balance between the sobering realism of Afro-pessimism and the upbeat idealism of Afropolitanism, recognizing that as someone who operates at a somewhat international level, my circumstance is indeed privileged.

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Notes 1

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi responded to a questionnaire by Arnd Schneider.

2

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (July 16–August 22, 2015) featured twelve artists of African origin, some living and working in Africa, others working from elsewhere.

3

See Arthur Danto, “The Artworld,” The Journal of Philosophy, 61 (19) (October 15, 1964): 571–84.

4 What is art anthropology?1 Shinichi Nakazawa

W

e combined the two very common words “art” and “anthropology” to coin the rather unusual term “art anthropology” to act as our guide in creating a new approach to anthropology. So how are we able to combine art and anthropology into one? What results from such a synthesis? And do we derive some blessing, some benefit, by doing so? To answer these questions, we need to first reexamine the source of the words “art” and “anthropology.” *** From the moment when art first emerged in the human mind, it was driven by principles fundamentally different from those upon which society is formed. From the very beginning, an urge to transcend society was inherent in art. The earliest known art was created in dimly lit caves, and yet when we look at these cave drawings discovered in the twentieth century we clearly recognize in them the impulse to transcend the mundane world. The human beings that first appeared in Africa several hundred thousand years ago are our direct ancestors. To distinguish these first modern humans from the humans before them, they are called Homo sapiens sapiens (meaning roughly wise, wise man) to distinguish them from their somewhat less intelligent pre-modern ancestors, simply called Homo sapiens. Although a detailed record of the spiritual life of the first modern humans has yet to be uncovered, we do have considerable information about their spread from Africa to rest of the world. After leaving Africa, they appeared to move north to the foot of the Caucasus Mountains. After a very long interval they split into three groups. One group went eastward and then southward on a route that saw them enter the Indian sub-continent and then work their way around the Himalayas and into South-East Asia. At this time Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo, and Sumatra all formed a single land mass called Sundaland, from which a sub-group made its way

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to Australia by sea. It is thought that this migration took place fifty or sixty thousand years ago. A second group also went east, but along a northern route that took them through the Caucasus and eventually to Siberia. Their journey on foot must have been arduous. It must have been hard to lead an abundant life because it would have been difficult to obtain food amid the harsh climate of the steppe and nearby glaciers. Therefore the population of this group increased little and their eastward migration went slowly. The third group headed westward, out of the Caucasus and into what we call Europe today.They might have also migrated along a southern route following the Mediterranean Sea. Whatever the route, around forty thousand years ago a group of modern humans arrived at the foot of the Pyrenees, where they established a Paleolithic culture.   The oldest art that has survived to the present day was created by the people of this Paleolithic culture. They lived in the area between the Pyrenees and the valleys of central France. I have been to this part of Europe and it is a very nice place. Along the valleys are many sunny rock terraces under whose lees the Paleolithic people probably lived. On the floor of the valley is a dense forest that herds of elk and bison must have moved through in the early spring, providing game for the humans that lived there. Although these Paleolithic people lived among the rock terraces, there were also a lot of caves nearby and these became the stages for acts of primordial artistic expression. I’m sure you have heard of the cave at Lascaux. Here, mural paintings done with a red pigment coloring similar to colcothar were drawn on the walls of the cave. These are traces of the first art ever created by a human being. Even to us living today they are wonderful pieces of art. But what makes them primordial art? This is a central question in the field of art and anthropology, and a challenge that scholars like Georges Bataille have spent their careers trying to answer. I approach this question from the following viewpoint, which I call the “anthropology of symmetry.” All of the caves in which mural paintings were drawn are big, deep, and dark. They are very difficult caves to explore. I think that the fact that these spaces were extremely dark was central to the primordial art created by Paleolithic peoples. As I said a moment ago, these Paleolithic peoples carried on daily life among the sunny rock terraces along the valley. These certainly included families of men, women, and children. The cave entrances where the great mural paintings are found are somewhat far from where these people lived and not very easy to get to. We can assume that these places were “sacred” and forbidden to enter except on special occasions, and even only certain initiated adult males would have been permitted to enter them. A kind of secret society consisting only of adult males (over fourteen or fifteen years old), which I call an “association” to distinguish its members from the general “community” that carried on in daily life, entered the foreboding darkness of the cave. There, in a hall-like space deep in the cave, they conducted activities of a religious character. The details of these activities are still not known, but some specialists suggest that they conducted rituals that included praying for abundant game. In

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the modern society of today, the greatest significance is attached to prosperity and material wealth and we too carry out rituals and feasts, though of a different kind, as transformed by the advertising industry and other modern cultural practices. So it is intriguing that this primordial ritual was held for the reason of proliferating game, because it seems to me that this was a form of primordial capitalism not unlike the capitalism of today, in the sense that it has the function of praising prosperity and abundance of wealth—albeit in a modern industrialized form. And from these rituals came the first art. The adult males of the association drew pictures on the rock walls so wonderful that today’s artists can only feel awe before them. Bataille immediately realized that these paintings hold the secret of why and how art was born and that they must be the starting point for exploring the profound enigma that lies at the heart of human nature. *** What went on in the minds of the males initiated into the association as they held their rituals in the darkness of the cave? Exploring this question may enable us to reach a clear understanding not only about the secret of the birth of art, but about the emergence of capitalism. So let’s begin by imagining how the cave ritual was actually performed. In this pitch-black world, the visual world disappears. All the objects visible in the external world—flowers, rocks, trees, birds, animals, even humans beings— completely vanish. All that remains is the inner world of the human mind. This capacity for an inner mental world gradually expanded, and marks the origin of the mind of modern human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens, our direct ancestors. The people in the cave must have looked into this inner world with astonishment. How different are the modern humans who evolved in Africa more than a hundred thousand years ago from the humans before them? They don’t appear to be different. Still, there was a definite difference between the neurological structure of their brains. The brain of the modern human includes a network of neurons lacking in pre-modern humans. This enhanced mental capacity generated new regions of thought within the human mind. This fundamentally altered neurological structure connected brain functions that had not interacted before, thereby generating the modern human mind. Communication through this complex, multidimensional network of neurons engendered the free and open-ended form of mental activity that we can only describe as the “human mind.” As a result, functions that had been separated in different regions were integrated, making it possible for the modern human mind to engage in representational and symbolic thought and carry out acts of “expression” through the combining of unlike things. And with this enhanced mental capacity art was born. The fluid of the mind never worked so freely in the body of a living organism before. Even in the most simple organism a “mind” functions, but the mind of the modern human being began to clearly manifest itself in the material world.

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The brains of living organisms are the product of the extremely long and gradual process of evolution, a process in which an organism must adapt to the surrounding environment or perish. Every life form, not just animals, has a mind, but their mind is adapted to the structure of the surrounding environment. For example, you will never observe an animal doing something seemingly unnatural as a result of a delusion, as often happens with human beings. When looked at from the proper perspective, even an apparently unnatural act can be explained in terms of cause and effect in the natural world. Birds do not suffer delusions. Human beings are the only living organisms to experience delusions. Delusion is a state wherein there is no correspondence between what is conceived in the mind and the reality of the outside world. The mind’s imagination and thought processes work so excessively that the person can no longer find any objects corresponding to them in the external world. As a result, images and ideas that do not exist in the outside world arise in the mind. This happens all the time in the minds of human beings but never happens in the minds of birds and other animals. The process of evolution tries to fit the external world as perceived by the sensory organs and inner mental activity to the same form (homomorphism) whenever possible. Every animal has evolved its own unique homomorphism. Innumerable variations can evolve, but every variation maintains a close fit between the mind and reality. Thus, even an animal such as an earthworm can survive within its limited world without any problem. By contrast, as the mind of modern humans began to work more and more fluidly as a result of the explosive development of the brain, their inner world no longer necessarily corresponded with external reality. Since the fluid mind crosses different regions and has functions covering several regions, it has no essential attributes. The fluid mind of modern human beings is formless, colorless, and something akin to light, a brilliantly bright and clear light. Indeed, even at this very moment, something formless and colorless is at work within our minds. That is, a hundred thousand years ago a living organism for the first time evolved a multidimensional, fluid mind with no essential attributes. I suggest that what those first modern humans saw as they were looking into their inner world in the darkness of the cave was the speed and strength of their raw mental faculties. In pitch-black conditions the optic nerve starts to oscillate on its own and the vision fills with light through a process called the entoptic phenomenon. The flow of light assumes a particular form, and when looking into one’s inner world seems to be a direct projection of the flow of the mind itself. These Homo sapiens sapiens males were looking into the very nature of the human mind. Although the flowing mind is the source of human mental activity, it is so powerful, formless, and of a higher dimension that it cannot be applied to daily life outside the cave. Even worse, it has the power to destroy communal life. Although they didn’t have the concept of “god” in the way we have now, I think in the cave modern humans might have found something “transcendental” that went beyond the functions of the mind in daily life.

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There must be some connection between the birth of art and those experiences in the cave. Some say that religion and art emerged from the same source. I think this source is the transcendental capacity of the fluid mind. The structure of the modern human mind generated religion and art. Other living organisms that live strictly according to the law of nature create neither religion nor art. Homo erectus, Homo faber, and earlier humans such as the Neanderthals did not create religion or art. This is not because they were inferior living organisms, it is because they had evolved the form best suited to their environment. Only Homo sapiens sapiens has obtained a fluid mind independent of the external world. Thus, we can even describe the modern human being as a kind of “mad” animal for the ability to conceive things that do not exist and for trying to make them real through religion and art. *** That is why, unlike other animals, humans are prone to madness. It is in our nature. The fluid mind enables us to construct things with our imagination that have no appropriate correspondence to the outside world, and based on these constructions we create our self-image, think about the meaning of the world, conduct ourselves in the world, and speculate about what is going on in the minds of others. All of these very human activities are a result of the fluid mind. The human mind began to flow more freely than ever and it expanded beyond the limits set by the laws of nature, and because of its very nature, delusion and fantasy incessantly emerge. Besides the law of nature, human beings need social rules to control the explosive power of the mind, construct stable connections with the external world, and form harmonious social relationships in which people can rationally communicate with each other. People build society through rational understanding and communication with others. Building a society is nothing other than finding that point of conciliation where one feels that his or her thinking is essentially the same as others. Suppose that there is a piece of paper in front of you. Unless everyone realizes that it is a piece of paper, society isn’t possible. Even if people realize what it is, communication is difficult as long as there is someone who says it is something else—say, an elephant. For the fluid mind, however, it is rather easy to go beyond the distinction between paper and elephant. So, in order to achieve social communication, people must suppress the working of the fluid mind as it tries to project itself into the external world. This is how we live as normal and sane people in daily life. But, given that the fluid mind is at work, even the mind of the sanest person will have an element of insanity within it. The fluid mind always wants to move beyond what society requires and tries to go beyond our self-imposed limits. This “affliction,” if you will, constructs the very foundation of mental activity, and, of course, a society cannot be built on such a foundation. This is why we are compelled to suppress the very essence and source of the mind. We suppress and constrain it so that it will not come to the surface because otherwise we cannot act rationally. Rationality is crucial to the nature of human beings.

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The very nature of rationality is speaking and thinking according to the grammar of your native language. Language has a rational structure. All languages are complicated constructions built on the fundamental structure that begins with the contraposition of subject and verb. Language provides people with the ability to think rationally. All languages, including Latin, Sanskrit, as well as and those of Africa, Australia, and of Native Americans, share a fundamental structure that controls the human mind’s impulse toward insanity and enables it to work rationally. Using the structure of language, we sort out and organize the images that arise in the mind. By ordering things in this way, we form a structure of the external world, of what will happen going forward, basically identical in form with our minds, a homomorphism. The sentence structure of every language regulates the explosive power of the mind by providing it with order and structure. This is why we are not overcome by delusions and fantasies and can conduct daily life without going in a wrong direction. The astonishing faculty of language has enabled modern humans to survive despite being a rather weak animal. And that is why the study of human beings tries to understand human nature based on the structure of the language as well as the society that it makes possible. All fields of study, including sociology, economics, and psychology, are based on the rationality generated by the structure of language. It seems to me that scholarship concerned with humankind is afraid of something. It seems to be afraid to look at its own nature. In this sense, I think that the contemporary study of humankind lags far behind what Paleolithic man was exploring in his caves. They were trying to peer into the essence of their own minds, the thing that enabled them to live. Through this process, the powerful, raw, fluid mind appeared right in front of them, as well as the very thing capable of destroying society and the rationality made possible by language. Unlike contemporary man, they were not afraid, and in their purity they dared to approach nature, even though they knew the risk. Compared with them, we contemporary human beings seem to be cowardly and hypocritical, afraid of saying what is really true. In the epigraph of Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault quotes Pascal and Dostoevsky: Pascal Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness. Dostoevsky It is not by confining one’s neighbour that one is convinced of one’s own sanity.2 From the viewpoint of the anthropology of symmetry, I think these words are absolutely right. The endeavor of undermining the base upon which all the social sciences rest and reorganizing them on an entirely new foundation has made little progress despite the efforts of Lévi-Strauss and Foucault. ***

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Given these circumstances, anthropology is an exceptional discipline in that it has tried to go beyond the limits set by the contemporary social sciences. Anthropology steps outside of the boundaries of society and of the rules, laws, and customs under which we live in order to understand humanity from an external point of view. While Europeans in particular tend to assign the highest values to their own views and morals and disdain the values of other societies, anthropologists reject this attitude. In its formative stage (which to me is a rather long period that lasted until only very recently) an important theme of anthropology was looking at your own culture from the viewpoint of other cultures. This approach enabled anthropologists to free themselves from the assumptions they had about the world and from conventional modes of thinking. Unlike the tourist, they joined other cultures, living within them for a long time in order to learn the way the people living there saw the world. By doing this repeatedly, they came to realize that the world to which they belonged was in reality a rigid and confining system. They came to realize that they saw not only the immense universe and nature but human beings, animals, and plants in very biased ways. This realization enabled them to re-evaluate the world in which they lived from an unbiased point of view. Into the mid-twentieth century, anthropology strove to form its raison d’être as a discipline from this viewpoint. It soon became clear, however, that this endeavor had failed. Limiting the discipline of anthropology to this approach had obviously led it to a dead end. In anthropology’s formative period, anthropologists developed the discipline as extraordinarily skilled and privileged travelers at a time when world travel was becoming easier. Today, technological advances have made it easier for film makers and TV reporters to go into the wilderness where ordinary travelers cannot, and as a result, anthropologist have lost the privileged place they once had. More important still is that the nature of the cultures that have been the object of anthropological research has been changed by the tide of Westernization sweeping the world. As a result, the base upon which anthropology relies for research is collapsing. The indigenous cultures that anthropologists could record up to the 1930s changed completely in the decades that followed. People who had lived in so-called “native,” “indigenous,” or “primitive” societies lost the ways of thinking and world view of those societies to the extent that they can no longer entirely pass on their traditions to the next generation. This is why anthropology has split up into so many subdisciplines. Nowadays it is rather difficult to find an anthropology section in big bookstores, while new categories of sociology such as cultural studies and postcolonialism have a lot of space. So, does anthropology still have potential as a social science? The forerunner of a discipline that asks human beings to see themselves through the eyes of others and the dead emerged out of the mysterious practices that the first modern humans conducted in order to explore the transcendental nature of their minds when they first appeared several hundred thousand years ago. Has anthropology, which is based on “thinking from an outside viewpoint” that began and developed in modern times, lost its power to open the way to the future?

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I don’t think so. In the course of its development, anthropology lost its object of research and purpose in the late twentieth century and so the discipline never fully developed its core nature. I think anthropology has a vast virgin frontier to explore. As I mentioned before, every society has language that seems to develop from a universal module shared by all modern humans. The module has a basic structure, and I think we can say that languages developed as a transformation of this common module in order to provide human beings with the means for a rational understanding of the world. All languages—Hausa, Papua, Tagalog, Iroquoi, Gaelic, Latin, and so on—apparently have a common, basic module. I think this is because the structure of language was selected for its utility in the evolutionary process. Anthropology’s ambitions, however, didn’t settle for exploration at this level. Lévi-Strauss repeatedly said that the main theme of his structural anthropology is the exploration of the unconscious side of the human mind. He further says that to explore at this level, structural anthropologists borrow the viewpoint of linguistics. Still, in my opinion, the structure of language is not simply the “unconscious.” Language functions according to a logical system that enables a rational understanding of the world. As Aristotle was the first to study this system in depth, it is called Aristotelian logic. But, obviously, the unconscious doesn’t work according to the rules of Aristotelian logic. I call the intelligence at work in the unconscious “symmetric thought” or “symmetric logic,” which are terms borrowed from the work of Matte Blanco.3 Unlike the module of language, the unconscious works according to symmetric logic, which does not divide and sort objects but links them together. So, here even contradictory ideas are at work, which the rationality of language desperately tries to exclude. In the unconscious, there is no linear time, upon which language so relies when creating the consciousness mind we use when dealing with the world. In the unconscious, past, present, and future intermingle simultaneously. Apparently two completely different systems are at work within the mind of the modern human being. One is the module of language working according to a system whose logic adapts to external circumstances, and which is essentially Aristotelian logic. When we live according to this system, we behave rationally. At the same time, however, in the mind of the modern human being there is a layer, or region, that works according to the complete different rules of symmetric logic. Here intelligence works multidimensionally and nonlinearly, linking together the objects that the logic of language is so eager to compartmentalize. In other words, the human mind is a synthesis of two layers: one working according to the rational module of language to create asymmetric logic, while the other is the fluid, an essential feature of the modern human mind, which creates symmetric logic. In short, the human mind is “bi-logical.” Now, which came first? I think quite likely it was language module driven asymmetric logic, because the pre-modern humans had excellent skills for creating flint tools and hunting, were naturalists with a profound knowledge of the uses of plants, and were highly socialized, yet they had neither religion nor art. What guided

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their thinking in the harsh natural environments in which they lived must have been asymmetric logic completely adapted to their circumstances. Later, when the linkages between neurons had advanced dramatically in the modern human mind, the fluid mind working according to asymmetric logic appeared. This part of the mind works free of the need to correspond to external circumstances. In other words, this part of the mind enables abstract thinking, leading to scholarly disciplines such as mathematics. This development also led to our ability to have fantasies with no correspondence to external circumstances and thus human beings became more prone to delusions and insanity. Having a mind capable of insanity meant that the modern human being had evolved a brain beyond his pre-modern ancestors. In our mind, these two layers, each with their own logic, function simultaneously. In the “conscious” region driven by the structure of language, objects are organized logically and linearly. In the “unconscious” region, another kind of logic is at work, and when the human intellect explores it, “poetic” expressions of every kind arise. Observed from the outside, it is as if the multidimensional, symmetric logic of the “unconscious” intrudes into the rational module of language, distorting it to produce meanings that are multilayered and music-like. In fact, poetry is an expression of the natural state of our “bi-logical” mind. I would say that in this instance the “savage” side of the human mind is rigorously at work. Thus, a frontier unexplored by anthropology lies open before us. When constrained by social rules, and modes of thinking and a sensibility conditioned by custom, it is difficult to see how the symmetric logic of the unconscious fluid mind that is the very nature of the modern human being works. I mentioned earlier that anthropology is an academic discipline that challenges our self-understanding and provides us with the key to building a new form of self-understanding by observing ourselves from outside our conventional viewpoints. If so, we can go beyond the academic disciplines of the social sciences that are confined by rational thinking and recreate anthropology as a new discipline that dares to venture into the realm of the fluid intellect—the very thing that defines the nature of the modern human being. When structural anthropology aimed to do this in the past, it ran into a paradox because it adopted linguistics as its method. But by basing its method on the fluid mind and wisdom transcending rationality that it engenders, the new anthropology we now envisage regains its vitality and moves forward. From the old, we are trying to bring out something altogether new. *** As some of you have already noticed, what I argue about the new anthropology is exactly what is explored through art. I took poetry as an example earlier, but there are many more such examples. When the first art appeared hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was actually the first effort of modern human beings to face the mind’s essential nature. They were trying to directly touch the fluid mind, and the expressive techniques inextricably bound up with the functioning of the fluid mind created the

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excellent artwork on the walls of the cave. Ever since, art has never strayed away from this pure impression first created in the primordial past, and has constantly contributed to the efforts of modern human beings in their quest to see into their essential nature. There remains in the mind an as yet unexplored “savage.” No matter how firmly entrenched rational social and economic systems become in the world, the great symbols that celebrate that first great leap from the pre-modern mind to the modern mind have never disappeared. Those symbols will never disappear as long as humankind survives. Art cannot suppress the desire to bring forth this region of our memory dwelling in the savage regions of the mind in the form of artistic expression. No matter how much society changes, the essential nature of the modern human mind will not. The basic structure of our mind has remained unchanged for several hundred thousand years. We have the same cerebral and bi-logical structure as the modern humans of several hundred thousand years ago. This is a vast unexplored realm and if we are to uncover the essential nature that makes us what we are, that is where we must go. *** I think this clearly reveals what lies at the core of our new endeavor to found the field of art anthropology. I have emphasized that the human is an animal with a complicated, multilayered mind whose thought processes are innately bi-logical. Structural anthropologists have uncovered the meaning of mythical thinking, and according to their research, a myth is a timeless synthesis of symmetric logic that does compartmentalize objects coupled with the logical capacity to present them in narrative form. That is why myths are narrated according to their own unique, disjointed logic—a form of logic completely counter to typical logic. We can say that peoples living in the cultures that traditional anthropology had studied were adept at using symmetric logic and asymmetric logic, the latter enabling rational judgment on even terms and according to the circumstances of daily living. In fact, it is said that symmetric logic is generally attributed to functions of the right side of the brain and asymmetric logic to the left. So, the new anthropology can be described as seeking to adjust the balance between the right and left sides of the brain to achieve bi-logical balance. In this sense, art is typical of a form achieved through bi-logical thinking. Utilizing bi-logical thought processes, art tries to unite the two kinds of intelligence, meaning the capacity of logic to provide artistic expression with order and the fluid mind that drives multilayered and free mental activity in order to explore new regions of expression. I’m sure you have noticed that art is always the product of both the new intelligence as well as the old. As it ceaselessly seeks out new modes of expression, art delves into the as-yet-unexplored “savage” reaches of the human mind. More than that, art has an impulse that even seeks to transcend the bi-logical to explore the transcendental fluid mind and embrace its own possibilities. In this regard, art approaches the realm of religion more closely than ever. Here, art has been drawn

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to that most extreme point where all expression vanishes. In this sense, there is an impulse in art to move beyond mythical modes of thinking toward the transcendent. Lévi-Strauss founded structural anthropology to uncover the bi-logical “savage mind.” On the other hand, by delving into the origin of art and religion, Georges Bataille discovered that the essential nature of the modern human being is the non-thinking processes that arise when all thinking processes stop. We use the newly coined term of art anthropology to refer to our effort to explore the unknown field of thought that emerges when these two great ideas are united. What do we seek with this new discipline? We would like to show unambiguously that within the core of the modern human mind there remains a savage realm and that even now it is possible to find the key that can take us there, although many think otherwise. It is the sort of quixotic venture that one rarely tries today. The guardian deity for art anthropology can be none other than Don Quixote.

Notes 1

This text was published in Japanese in my Art Anthropology (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, March 2006), and is based on a lecture given at Tama Art University on 23 July 2005.

2

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), p. ix.

3

For more details, I refer to my five-volume work Cahier Sauvage (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2002–4).

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5 Art anthropology: Shinichi Nakazawa in conversation with Arnd Schneider1 Shinichi Nakazawa and Arnd Schneider

AS  In your concept of “art anthropology,” you set up an opposition between the asymmetric, rational logic of language and the symmetric, fluid logic of art (and the unconscious). Language, using linear time, has to be unequivocal and precise, whereas art and the unconscious make linkages and associations across, knowing no linear time. What implication has this way of thinking for the encounter between art and anthropology? SN  An interesting question, but not easy to respond to. AS  Reading your text “What is art anthropology?” [Chapter 4 in this volume], I found this the most interesting distinction you make, and which you develop from the Chilean psychologist Ignacio Matte Blanco.2 You extend this concept, if I understand it correctly, by setting up an opposition between the asymmetric rational logic of language, which follows linear time, and where things cannot be reversed, and on the other hand, the symmetric, fluid logic of art. In the latter, different layers of time can be reversed, like in Lévi-Strauss’s mythical thought. What implication has this for the encounter of art and anthropology? Or said otherwise, how do you develop from this an encounter between art and anthropology? SN  I have been crazy about music, especially the music of Mozart. The title of my first book is Mozart in Tibet,3 which I wrote after three years of fieldwork in Tibet. In one of his letters Mozart wrote: “The music came to me, spontaneously, as one sound. So, I hear all of the sound at the same time, and I try to pick out music from this sound, but to write down the music is not interesting for me,” and further: “It’s a labor for me,

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because to make the music understood by other people, I must write it linearly … But when the music came for the first time to me, it came to my brain all at once.” This is like a symmetrical way of thinking. Mozart is not using the expression “symmetric,” but speaks of one sound. AS  How does this relate to your elaboration of symmetric thought? SN  When I was a boy and I read it, I was so impressed by Mozart’s thinking. The first appearing of art all at a time, it’s like achronic [i.e., not belonging to linear time]. By “achronic” I mean here not chronic, i.e., that which is not depending on the structure of time. So, all of art came to the human brain as one sound, one color, one figure at the same time. And we tried to get it out, put it out—in other words, express it through art, using the structure of time, space structures, and three-dimensional structures, but it’s only as a result of labor, as Mozart wrote. I spent three years in Tibet, and my Tibetan teacher taught me yoga meditation, and I practice it. In yoga practice they have a very complicated system of meditation. But in the meditation, I experienced the image, a mandala image, as achronic, and all of the things, all of the images appearing in my brain, came at the same time as a ball of light. As a Tibetan philosopher thinks, it’s the mind itself; the ability of the mind itself is to capture the spirit of the world at the same time as one, in the form of mandala, one sound, and one ball of light. At the same time! But man has a limitation to understand, because of the limitation of the mind’s ability. So we must select accordingly, using the time structures and space structures; hence we call it art—it’s outside of the mind now. But the more important thing for humans is not to see the artistic work, or to hear the music as a separated object from our mind. Our mind and these artworks combine, each other, from a very mysterious root. Therefore we must research these wholenesses at the same time— the Tibetan teachers told me. Thus our mind, using our neural system as a vehicle to put out, i.e., externalize and represent this one-sound mandala, or light, or mandala of colors, is using three-dimensional space structures, or musical scores, and language’s linear structures. But we must characterize the artistic activity, these wholenesses, indeed these processes of wholeness, in our mind as achronic, not depending on the language structures and the time structures which are linear structures. It’s working in the mind itself through our brain computers. It’s very important to research the art combining this symmetrical mind itself and the outer expression of this mind, using these linear structures. So we must call art this wholeness—this whole process. And this is where I got the idea of art and anthropology. And other anthropologists have studied print forms and print making, and printed music. I was so interested in these arts, as they exhibit the whole process of our symmetric mind to linear expression and the connection between the two. This is the idea about art and anthropology. It’s not a study of artistic works, it’s a study of mind process and art. And the importance and the meaning of the study of the graphic and printable arts—these arts explicitly show the process of expression of the mind. Taking this viewpoint, we can see the artistic work from a different perspective. So for me, the process of the mind is very



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much at the center, but—I study having learnt from Tibetan lamas using meditation to explore the mind’s processes. But to express it in academic words, we must use the European concepts and frameworks, so it’s very difficult. But some psychoanalysts explore this process. In my book Mozart in Tibet I pick up the work of Ignacio Matte Blanco, who was a very interesting psychoanalyst. He studied and wrote alone, but he tried to develop from the findings of Freud the symmetrically structured process of thinking of our mind. It inspired me very much, so I took Matte Blanco’s concept, and my findings in Tibet, and mixed these points of view, and eventually wrote the book. AS  That’s a very interesting way how you explain that. Perhaps in a way you have already started to talk about another question: Is art only the expression of symmetric form, or does it also involve the rational symmetries of language? SN  Of course—it’s combined. AS  It’s both, isn’t it, like a liquid—perhaps my question was rhetorical, but just to make it clear for the outsider … SN  Biological processes. Even the natural sciences, too, use symmetrical thought, especially mathematics. There is symmetry in the thinking process, to get the inspiration, using symmetrical thought. But these scientists, too, when they write an article, use asymmetrical logic. However, we can find easily symmetric thought in these articles, for example in group theory. Group theory is a good example of symmetrical thinking. In physics, especially quantum physics, we can also find that symmetrical thought. I was so impressed with the writings of Heisenberg on quantum theory. At that time, he was really using the symmetrical way of thinking. Thus artistic expression is not an isolated phenomenon. It’s a combination of colors, figures, and sounds—they try to express the process of symmetrical thinking in the mind. AS  This clearly also raises the question of anthropology as a discipline. Of course, there are many schools: social anthropology, cultural anthropology, philosophical anthropology, and so forth—but to which part does symmetrical thought, indeed art anthropology, belong? Because in academia, unfortunately, it seems to only be the asymmetrical, linear thought that is represented—the deductive way of thinking. But can it for you, anthropology as an academic discipline, include art and symmetric thought? There is already your quite unique Institut pour la Science Sauvage at Meiji University, and what you’ve done previously at Tama University, but contrasting with this we find the more sociologically inspired social anthropology at Tokyo University, or in other parts of the world as well, including the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo where I am based. So where, in this context, would you see anthropology, and particularly your form of art anthropology? SN  Thirty years ago, one of the professors at Tokyo University invited me to become a professor at Tokyo University, but it turned into a great scandal.

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AS  Please explain further … SN  So, four or five professors at Tokyo University rejected me. They thought my work is not academic work, and to invite me as a member of the anthropological branch became very dangerous for them, they thought. So it was a great, a very big academic scandal at that time. So, I decided to develop my thought independently, outside of the academic authorities. But now, many young students come to my Institut pour la Science Sauvage at Meiji University from Tokyo University and Kyoto University. Before that, I founded the Institute for Art Anthropology at Tama Art University, one of the three central art universities of Japan [Tokyo, Tama, and Musashino]. Art is in Japan a rather free discipline, so at Tama they would accept me as a professor. At that time, many artists and some of the young anthropologists gathered at the Institute that I founded and managed for almost six years. But eventually, I felt the limitation of the Institute for Art Anthropology belonging to Tama University, because its influence is limited in regard to the outer society, so I tried to give more information to the outer world, to Japanese society as a whole. At that time, Meiji University invited me to found a new Institute. Meiji is a very big university, and they wanted to make an innovative Institute and they understood my way of thinking and ambitions. They agreed to make this Institut pour la Science Sauvage here. But, of course, I also remain connected to Tama Art University. AS  I have another question on your understanding of art anthropology, and this is connected to Claude Lévi-Strauss who greatly inspired you. Indeed, the title of one of Levi-Strauss’s famous books, The Savage Mind, and his idea of a ‘science of the concrete’ directly inspire the title of your Institute. If art has an “intermediate position” between the opposition of structure(priority) / science and event(priority) / bricolage, as Lévi-Strauss claims in the introduction to The Savage Mind,4 then where does art anthropology stand? Or, put differently, where do structure and science connect with event and bricolage, but are also different? SN  Claude Lévi-Strauss is an artist; he’s a scientist too, and using bricolage to make his work, to assemble it, but very beautiful too, using paintings of native peoples, and he uses paintings of modern artists, surrealist artists, in his Mythologiques. He could write scientific articles, but his main work, the four-volume Mythologiques, is an artistic work. I think in this he invites the scientific thinking tools and the bricolage and artistic sensibility too; they are combined in the books. I think it’s possible to practice the art in anthropology. Hence I wrote some of my books using Lévi-Strauss’s spirit to make artistic books. The Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro,5 for example, wrote a very beautiful book using correct rigor and scientific logic, but he combined the logic with the artistic sensibility, too. In one of his books, Lévi-Strauss, on the other hand, wrote that “myth combined logical sensibility”—and he thought of his writing as a kind of mythology. Therefore Lévi-Strauss’s book [Mythologiques] is a transformation, a version of mythology itself. He collected many myths from South American and North American Indians—in fact, over 2,000 myths and picked up 813 myths and combined them,



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ordered them, combined their logic, using the correct logic and sensibilities. So he wrote scientific articles, but his main work, Mythologiques, became itself another type of mythology, too. My attitude to writing articles and books is very similar to his. I try to write down an artistic work using anthropological logic. But, it’s a key point—and that was the academic scandal of Tokyo University, when many professors criticized me. “You’re not a scientist, you’re an artist,” they yelled at me. But some of the professors told them, “no, he’s not an artist, he’s a scientist.” As far as I am concerned, I combine art and sciences in my writings. Fortunately, now after thirty years, the rules of Japanese academic society have changed very much. AS  So now you think the climate is more open? SN  Yes, the climate is more open. But some of the professors of Tokyo University are afraid of me, even now. AS  I have some more questions concerning the pragmatics of your research. What forms can empirical research of art anthropology take? And what kind of methodologies do you adopt? For example, with your students, what kind of research projects does your Institute carry out? SN  As a first step at the Institute for Art Anthropology of Tama University, I started to study art brut and the paintings of Down’s Syndrome. AS  You mean paintings by people with Down’s Syndrome here in Japan?

FIGURE 5.1  Marcus Coates, Rice Ritual, Toge, Japan, 2006. Produced by Grizedale Arts, supported by Echigo Tsumari. Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Jamie Goodenough.

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FIGURE 5.2  Marcus Coates, Rice Ritual, Toge, Japan, 2006. Produced by Grizedale Arts, supported by Echigo Tsumari. Courtesy of the artist. Photo © Jamie Goodenough.



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SN  Yes. In Japan there are many institutes dedicated to art brut, and they collect many paintings of them. So I gathered the field research belonging to these Institutes, and I made a conference about art brut and Down’s Syndrome paintings (and I later published three books based on the research on the topic of Down’s Syndrome). In that process I found a strong connection between art brut and the works of so-called “primitive art”; for that project, some contemporary Japanese artists collaborated, too. In the next step, we invited some artists from Europe for a symposium to make a bridge between art brut and contemporary art. We also invited Björk, you know, the famous Icelandic musician. AS  And you mentioned also the artist Marcus Coates? SN  Of course, yes, Marcus Coates. At the Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, curator Yuko Hasegawa, who was my colleague at the Institute for Art Anthropology at Tama University, and I curated the exhibition “Transformations,” and organized the Tokyo Art Meetings, and we published a book from this.6 AS  Let’s returning for a moment to your work here at the Institut pour la Science Sauvage. Does your concept of art anthropology entail a particular methodology when you and your graduate researchers engage in research projects? SN  I founded this Institute three years ago. At that time, the logical structure, and indeed the activities, expanded beyond the purely academic to the challenges arising from the Fukushima disaster.7 When I founded this institution, my key project was to create a new field confronting these disasters; thus the practice and culture of scientific technology became one of my big issues, and of my research. Thus for two years I worked in more practical programs, to create art projects in the affected Tohoku areas. I tried to organize art festivals. It continues even now. In 2016, the first art festival will take place in the Tohoku areas, including the Fukushima area. Two years after I started my art anthropological project I became, in fact, an activist. AS  How do you collaborate with the artists? SN  My artist friends collaborate with me, and we talk with each other about the meaning and the importance of art in confronting these contemporary problems. So now, I try to begin a new step for art anthropology, because in 2016, our first art festival will begin. And the reason why I tried to organize the art festival is that I want to research the practicing process of these artists in the field. Indeed, it has become a very interesting opportunity to research the artist activities and their creative processes in the field. AS  How do you connect your art anthropology to art anthropology more widely? SN  I tried to express my thinking in art anthropology in more concrete objects and form. I try to express my thinking in a more tangible way. For instance, for three years,

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I studied economics and economic anthropology very much, and tried to combine the economics and the art theories, using the art symmetrical point of view. So, now I’m writing a “symmetrical economics.” By contemporary economics I mean the “system”: capitalism. AS  And, presumably, you advance a critique of capitalism …? SN  Yes, criticisms … and to suggest a new possibility, to change capitalism in the future. That’s what I’m writing now. AS  I think this is very interesting, because some people also in Western academic anthropology are also venting new and original critiques of capitalism. Maybe not connected to art, but certainly to social movements, such as the anthropologist and activist David Graeber, famous for his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years.8 I think what’s interesting here is that you come from an entirely different philosophical, artistic, and religious angle (e.g., spiritual Buddhism and your studies in this), whereas Western anthropologists often build upon a Marxist formation or other Western social theory in their basic analysis of the capitalist system. But it’s fascinating that different people in different parts of the world are thinking about the crisis of capitalism from different viewpoints. […] How do you see fieldwork being part of your endeavor? SN  I like fieldwork very much. If I have free time, I pick up my research books and bags and try to go to the field, and I never stop doing fieldwork. Japan is a very interesting place to do anthropological fieldwork, even now. When Claude Lévi-Strauss came to Japan, he was so astonished to find that Japan is very much a “treasure land” to do fieldwork. Even in Tokyo, it’s possible to do fieldwork. I wrote a book on Tokyo … Here’s that book on Tokyo. And, this is a map of Tokyo—4,000 years old. Most of Tokyo is below sea level, and this is a landscape of that time. But now, we can find the shrines and temples—these spots. So the location of the shrines and the temples show the old landscapes too, so using this information, this landscape information, I wrote down the new “scenography” of Tokyo. And I did fieldwork on Osaka, the second-biggest city after Tokyo. This is my second book to investigate the capital, Tokyo, and Osaka, and to find the unconscious level of these cities. AS  So, you are interested in the oldest remnants of cultural manifestation and their sacred geography … SN  That’s right. So they remain as the influence of these old ages, even now. Strongly. It’s a very special characteristic of Japanese cities—so, it’s possible to do fieldwork in these towns, even now. […] One of my students makes these maps using geological information. AS  They are beautiful artworks. SN  That’s right, that’s right. Like a … brain.



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AS  On many occasions you have collaborated with contemporary artists—for instance, at the Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum and of course at Tama Art University, and now with the planned arts festival in the northern area Tohoku affected by the tsunami. What does this imply more generally for the relation between artists and anthropology? SN  The artist and the anthropologist connect to each other. Because the process of thinking of an artist and art anthropologist is … I think it’s the same. The only difference is the medium of expression. When I did a lecture outside the university, many artists came to hear my talks. They told me that my talks are very suggestive and impressive. Because I try to understand the artistic creational process and I think the … process of artistic creation and anthropological situations such as ritual and mythology is very similar and at the same time it’s very similar to the situation of psychiatric hospitals. It’s a very good place to investigate symmetrical thought, in the hospitals. So a hospital, artistic creations, and the anthropological field, we all must combine. We must think of these three fields as the same, because the same thinking process of our mind is the main characteristic, indeed personality of these fields. So art anthropology will become mainstream in future of anthropology. Social anthropologists must convert to art anthropology.

Notes 1

This edited text is based on a conversation between Shinichi Nakazawa and Arnd Schneider at L’Institut pour la Science Sauvage, directed by Prof. Nakazawa, at Meiji University, Tokyo, on June 9, 2014. Arnd Schneider thanks Shinichi Nakazawa for his time, and is grateful to the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo for a travel grant, and to Christian Medaas for the transcription of the original conversation.

2

Matte Blanco (1908–95) was a Chilean psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed a specific theory of the unconsciousness, and a distinction between symmetric and asymmetric logic. See, for example, his Thinking, Feeling, and Being (New York: Routledge, 1988), The Unconscious as Infinite Sets: An Essay in Bi-Logic (London: Karnac, 1998, revd and with a foreword by Eric Rayner; orig. pub. London: Duckworth, 1975).

3

Shinichi Nakazawa, Tibetto no Motsuaruto (Mozart in Tibet) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983).

4

“For if it is true that the relation of priority between structure and event is exactly the opposite in science and ‘bricolage,’ then it is clear that art has an intermediate position from this point of view as well.” Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. 25.

5

Nishida Kitaro (1870–1945) was a major Japanese philosopher, and founder of what has been called the Kyoto School.

6

Other artists included AES + F, Matthew Barney, Simon Birch, Francesco Clemente, Marcus Coates, Jan Fabre, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Naoki Ishikaw, Bharti Kher, Lee Bul, Motohiko Odani, Junya Oikawa, Jagannath Panda, Patricia Piccinini, Shahzia Sikander, Sputniko!, Jana Sterbak, Sarah Sze, Masakatsu Takagi, Tunga, Apichatpong

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ALTERNATIVE ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY Weerasethakul; see Shinichi Nakazawa, Yuko Hasegawa, and Keiichiro Hirano (eds), Transformation (Tokyo: Access Publishing, 2010) http://www.e-flux.com/ announcements/tokyo-art-meeting-transformation/ (accessed 16 December 2015).

7

The Fukushima nuclear disaster which resulted from the tsunami following the Tohoku earthquake on 11 March 2011 is considered the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, resulted in massive loss of life and destruction in north-eastern Japan, with 15,893 people confirmed dead as of early 2015 and 2,572 missing (see Wikipedia entry “Tohoku earthquake”).

8

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011).

6 Flowers’ life: Notes and reflections on an art-anthropology exhibition Tomoko Niwa and Tadashi Yanai

Master Feng March 2012. A message from China frightens me: Mr. Feng is very ill.1 The artist Feng Shanyun. He has been the essential figure for the revivification of folk art in Shanbei region, Shaanxi Province, China. But, for me personally, Mr. Feng has been a true teacher in my learning about life and art of Shanbei. I have lived with his family for months and visited the villages together with him and his son, Mr. Feng Fen. The artist Feng has taught me to feel the life of the local people and at the same time to see it from outside, as an artist in his case. Feng Laoshi (Master Feng). The sad news pushes me to do something for him. Perhaps an exhibition of his artwork in Japan might give him joy, and help him fight against the illness … I tell this idea to my friend Nabo Shimonaka.2 An artist with deep interest in Japanese paper art tradition, Nabo has been my accomplice in my anthropological research on folk art in China from the start. We also visited Shanbei together several times and she had memorable experiences with the people there. She shares my idea immediately. June 2012. On Nabo’s initiative, we contact the staff of Seikatsu-Kobo in Setagaya, Tokyo, and explain our plan. Seikatsu-Kobo is a cultural center funded by Setagaya City, one of Tokyo’s Special Wards, and proposes to ‘Watch, Touch, Feel, and Consider’ about life and the environment, organizing exhibitions and workshops. The idea is fine, they say, but it should fit the center’s objective. An idea occurs: why not combine Mr. Feng’s work with elements of rural life in Shanbei and handicraft works of “window-flowers”?

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The “window-flowers” (chuanghua) are paper cutouts with which the people of Shanbei decorate their houses at each Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). It derives from the art of paper cutting (jianzhi)—or, as the local people call it, ”flower cutting” (jiaohua).3 When the season comes, Shanbei women take sheets of red paper to make different shapes and paste them on the windows. The effect is spectacular. The inhabitants of this area live in yaodong, a kind of traditional cave-house, where sunlight enters only through its façade composed of lattice windows. With these red “flowers” on the windows, suddenly life becomes brightened up in the cold, dry winter landscape of Shanbei. The flowers’ life, however, is not long. With the intense sun and strong winds of Huangtu Plateau, soon the flowers begin to lose their color, the paper begins to tear—only to be replaced, in another Spring Festival, by the flowers newly cut by the hands of Shanbei women. These “flowers” of ancient tradition have existed more solidly in people’s minds and hands than in their material form.4 I became interested in flower cutting thanks to Nabo. Weary of the conventional cult of originality in art which runs so counter to her thinking, Nabo had found her way out in monkiri asobi, a historical Japanese practice of paper cutting. Then her interest expanded into paper art in general. As she knew I read Chinese, she suggested that we should read together a book on Chinese paper cutting, which fascinated me. I traveled to Beijing and became particularly attracted by the paper-cut art of the Shanbei region, for its boldness and freedom in expression. A Chinese artist presented me to Mr. Feng Fen. It was in January 2008. Since then, I have visited Shanbei repeatedly and, with the Feng family’s help, I continue my ethnographic research on the practice of this folk art in Shanbei. I continue? But, in fact, I have not been to Shanbei since 2010 … The great earthquake in Japan in March 2011 had a deep impact on me. I wondered: is it worthwhile to research the art of the people when this same people can become, instantly, victims of such a brutal event and lose everything? Is art, in the end, really a necessary thing? With these questions in mind, Nabo and I have visited some of the areas heavily affected by the tsunami and also known for paper cutting. There we have seen how these persons who barely survived—with their houses entirely destroyed and some family members dead—still find a joy, an intense joy, in the simple act of cutting paper and making something beautiful with their own hands. We started to collaborate with the people of one of these places (Minamisanriku-cho, Miyagi Prefecture).5 It is in these moments, just one year after the great earthquake, that I have received the news from China. The image of Master Feng’s illness overlaps with the experiences of northeastern Japan. Art and life. September 2012. I receive a call from a friend who works at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, a major public art museum. There is a vacancy, she says, in the program calendar next year. Do you have any suggestion, by chance? On my desk is the exhibition proposal for Seikatsu-Kobo. I mention it and, to my great surprise, the museum accepts it shortly afterwards. In a blink of an eye, Nabo and I have a budget far higher than the initial one. With it, a really ambitious project of an art-anthropology exhibition will be possible: going to do fieldwork specifically for the exhibition and to

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film scenes from Shanbei everyday life, bringing real objects—even big ones—from there, creating installations in the exhibition rooms … We dream of a space in which the visitors are invited to feel art and life of Shanbei with their five senses, just as we experienced it during our fieldwork—a space replete, hopefully, with stimuli for the visitors to discover, understand and, maybe, create. This is how we arrived at the double exhibition, Window Flowers, in Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and Seikatsu-Kobo between October 2013 and March 2014.6 December 2012–March 2013. Territorial disputes between Japan and China since September 2012 are threatening to abort the project.7 After wavering for a few months, I decide to go to Yan’an, Shanbei’s capital, only to find an utterly unwelcoming mood for any collaboration related to Japan. The local government, which initially embraced the project with enthusiasm, now begins to hinder it. Decisive support, however, comes from Master Feng: he personally invites officials and intellectuals of the region and, in an emotional speech, persuades them that a project like this must be realized precisely in these troubled moments … I go to the rural area and visit Mr. Mao’s family in the village of Sanwa, where I had lived for several months. There people know me well and I see less tension in them. I show them images I took of the people affected by the tsunami, and they are concerned. Gradually, the horizon opens. I return to Japan and then undertake the second trip with Nabo, this time to collect objects. In Mr. Mao’s house we gather a set of cereals as a sample of the local diet, when Nabo, suddenly, displays them on the bed as if it were in an exhibition. Mr. Mao likes this improvised work by Nabo. Inspired, he also starts to improvise a song mentioning each of the cereals. The exhibition as a collective creative process is already there, long before the opening.

Translations To exhibit is this: to bring things—or traces of things—from different places and to arrange them in such a way that the visitors have a meaningful experience from it. It is a kind of translation in its double sense of transportation and transformation—just as a poem, through its creative translation, is at once transported from a language to another and transformed. Even in Nabo’s mini-exhibition in Sanwa, the cereals were translated from where they were onto the bed (transported), in order to be arranged in a new way (transformed); Mr. Mao, for his part, translated this experience into his song. Ethnographic or anthropological writing can also be considered as a kind of transportation-transformation, realized between the “field” and academic written culture. Translation—in this unitary sense of transportation-transformation between different places, different modes of expression, or different modes of feeling or thinking—would be an essential procedure for both art and anthropology. This translation might be a mechanical process, but often it requires us to be absolutely creative to translate exactly.8

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For anthropologists, ethnographic and documentary filmmaking provides important clues for reinventing ethnographic translation. Robert Gardner’s film, The Forest of Bliss (1986), is one of the most inspiring. Through its fragmented narrative and emphasis on simple material elements (flowers, wood, stairs, etc.), viewers are plunged into something similar to the initial chaos of ethnographic fieldwork, and invited to the experience of “doing their own anthropology.”9 (I could confirm the efficacy of this film when I showed it to Master Feng and his son in Shanbei. Not only did they understand the film, but began to look for elements in Shanbei ritual corresponding to the film and reflect upon the meaning of their own ritual.) No less rewarding are the documentary films of Frederick Wiseman, with his original method to delimit the film by a place— and not by a subject or by characters—as well as his characteristic way of shooting, be it long takes, inserts, or cutaways. These films guided me when I made an ethnographic film in Shanbei10 and also when I filmed moving images for the exhibition. Lastly, Jean Rouch’s idea and practice of “shared ciné-anthropology” is another pivotal contribution. Since his earliest years of filmmaking in Niger, Rouch knew that to make ethnographic films is to do anthropology together with the people, even if “their anthropology” may not coincide with his own—the two “anthropologies,” anyway, will be in communication.11 Nabo, in her own manner, is expert in doing things together. In Shanbei, I am always impressed by the way she understands and communicates with the local people intuitively, without speaking Chinese. Certainly, her knowledge of concrete things—especially about nature and farming—serves her as real communication channels. Nabo believes that to do things together can be, in itself, a work of art.12 Her Ippon-no-ki [A Tree] project in 1989 would be a good example. One of her friends told her that a hundred-year-old zelkova tree had to be cut down, and suggested she should do something with it. She thought: a tree, which has been so generous to other beings (birds, insects, children …) for a century should be shared by many people. Nabo and her friends invited hundreds of people and offered different parts of the felled tree to them, asking each of them to make the best out of it. Three years later they followed the paths of the parts of the tree—now transformed into chairs, sculptures, musical instruments, fiber, dye, frottage, photography, etc.—from which they made an exhibition and a film. It might be said that this was her way of translating the life of the old tree into a collective work of art. Finally, I should mention another artist, Master Feng. Born into a peasant family of Shanbei region in 1949, Feng Shanyun worked hard as a teacher and farmer throughout his youth. He also learned to draw by himself, sketching the bodies of his fellow workers tirelessly. His life changed when, in 1974, he met the renowned painter Jin Zhilin—then posted in Shanbei as a director of Yan’an Mass Art Bureau— in an art workshop. Feng became Jin’s student and close collaborator. The work he has produced since then (drawings, fabric works, woodcuts, etc.) is all based on his deep understanding of the peasants’ life. Concurrently, he began to visit villages of Shanbei to find paper-cuts and other handicrafts to re-evaluate them; and he began to organize folk art workshops for village women, thereby discovering many anonymous artists.13

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What he looked for were not typical handicrafts. He firmly believes that a work must be, above all, “expression-of-the-self” (biaoxian ziji). Thus, in his paper-cutting workshops, he always requests that Shanbei women cut out their own experiences. In fact, this is why the folk art of Shanbei (especially that of Yanchuan county where Feng has worked) stands out for expressive freedom and formal audacity. Master Feng does not care whether one is more skilled or less. “If we gather,” he says, “a hundred genuine paper-cuts, we will have a beautiful collective portrait of Shanbei women.”14 Undoubtedly, his art is also an art of translation.

Exhibition as living being Our question would be, then: how do we translate the art and life of Shanbei people into the spheres of experience of visitors in Japan? From Shanbei we have brought paper-cut flowers, elements of everyday life, filmed images, and woodcuts of Master Feng. We have managed to bring the façade of a yaodong cave-house, too, as we think it crucial for the visitors to feel, materially, the sense of place of yaodong life. We do not plan the exhibition as a definite form, since it will be born twice. In the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, we have a series of white cubes—a linear structure, therefore—and visitors coming to a fine arts museum. In Seikatsu-Kobo in Tokyo, we have an independent square space with natural light; it is connected to an administrative office of Setagaya City, from where casual visitors will come. This marked difference of the two spaces, however, fits rather well with Nabo’s conception of exhibition: an exhibition is, for her, a living being that changes continually in relation to its environment and visitors.15 We imagine the exhibition composed of four parts. Part I will focus on the “windowflowers” (chuanghua) in connection with the daily life of Shanbei women. We will exhibit a large-size piece of Mrs. Gao Fenglian, the best paper cutter of YanchuanShanbei, to show the marvel of Shanbei paper cutting. However, all the other paper-cut works will be small pieces made by anonymous women and children—the same kind as those which adorn yaodong cave-houses each Chinese New Year. These papercutouts will be surrounded by, among other things, women’s everyday utensils. Part II will present Shanbei rituals of death and the people’s vision of the other world. Here, another type of paper cutting—“paper flowers” (zhihua, as they are locally called), generally white in color—plays an important role. We will make abundant use of filmic images and material objects in order for the visitors to feel, concretely, the people’s way of thinking. At the end of Part II, we will place a real façade of yaodong brought from Shanbei, which will serve as the entry to the next part. In Part III, we will try to translate the sense of place of yaodong life. Our initial plan was to set up a tent to reproduce the sensation, but we abandon this idea on seeing the space of Fukuoka Museum so unlike the Huangtu Plateau. Instead, we will try to express the people’s sensation of living in yaodong by two audio-visual devices:

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on one wall we will project moving images of daily life in the yaodong of the Mao family in Sanwa; on the opposite wall, a kind of silhouette art will depict the imaginary dimension of Shanbei life with figures of animals, ghosts, and gods. Another key element here will be the characteristic bed (kang), center of yaodong life. We imagine that the visitors might take a rest on it like Shanbei people do. After seeing these three parts, in Part VI visitors will be invited to meet the people of Shanbei personally. Thus, each “window-flower” will be exhibited together with personal documents about its maker (photos, letters, etc.). Moving images of Mrs. Gao Fenglian—author of the grand paper-cut in Part I—in her daily housework and in moments of paper cutting will be shown as well. Finally, visitors will appreciate woodcut works of Feng Shanyun, through which they will also learn about the history lived by Shanbei people since the Mao era. These are the basic ideas of our translation of Shanbei art and life, which will then be adapted to the concrete conditions of Fukuoka and Tokyo. Actually, on arriving at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, we find an unexpected problem. The preceding exhibition—through which all visitors must pass before arriving at ours—happens to be a set of video installations by an Indian artist where strong audio-visual images are continually screened (including full-screen close-ups of wounds on human body, highvolume sounds of screams, etc.). Evidently, in contrast with this preceding part, our “window-flowers”—however lively they are in the arid winter landscape of Shanbei— will look almost self-effacing. We decide on the spot, then, to work especially on illumination in the introductory part of our exhibition, locating the “window-flowers” in interplays of shadow and light. And this ends up influencing the tonality of the entire exhibition. Only afterwards do we realize that the relation light / shadow—resonating with life / death and yin / yang—had to be there, necessarily. In Tokyo, everything is different. In a single extended space, the four parts we had planned cannot be organized in a linear way: they will naturally communicate with each other, and our intention for the four-part structure will become unclear. However, this weak intentionality is, perhaps, not necessarily a bad thing, since it also means that visitors will have a freer relation with the exhibition.16 Consequently, rather than an exhibition about our fieldwork, we plan to set up an exhibition where visitors will be invited to do their fieldwork … This is how, in Tokyo, we decide to add a half-hidden Part V—we call it “Backworld”—where backstage materials of the exhibition (fields notes and photos, letters from Shanbei people, etc.) are exhibited for those who want to know more. We notice that visitors indeed act differently in this exhibition. They go back and forth between one part and another, relax on the yaodong bed, begin to chat with each other, visit the “Backworld,” and come back to the main part. Children begin to play. More than a few have returned to the exhibition afterwards.

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Everyone becomes, including the exhibition Living beings grow, and for this, they always need extra space. For this exhibition to be alive and to breath together with the visitors, therefore, we must leave margins inside it; in other words, it should always be incomplete.17 One of the inventions we have arrived at in this line of thought might be called “fragmentation.” For example, we have used moving images of Shanbei life throughout the exhibition, but none of them are projected on a white flat screen. Instead, they are projected onto a corner of the room; or partially onto a white curtain or object, with the remainder of the image reaching the wall behind it. Obviously, the projected images become split, distorted, or fragmented. But, for this reason precisely, some visitors take up the challenge voluntarily and try to reconstruct—helped by the video sound—the original reality in their heads. “I had seen a similar ritual on television in China,” says a Chinese visitor in Tokyo, referring to the moving images of funerals (projected onto a big white ritual object), “but I have lived this as a quite different thing. With fragmented images, I have to use my imagination. I had never experienced anything like this.” We had not thought clearly about it, either: moving images, by fragmentation, can communicate better with material objects in the room and become intensified by them. Similarly, we decide to do without most of the exhibition captions. As an anthropologist, naturally I think it necessary to offer, in one way or another, ethnographic explanation of each thing. But I also think that there might be other means of doing this, even if it would be, information-wise, less complete. The volunteer guides of Fukuoka Museum welcome this decision. I say: “I doubted a lot before sparing all the captions …” and a volunteer guide responds: “It is better like that.” For lack of authoritative explanations, they feel free to approach the exhibition personally. “This exhibition reminds me of the life of the place where I’m from,” says another. This does not mean, however, that they go straight into making their own interpretations. On the contrary, they are very keen on the exhibition, listening attentively to our explanations, asking us questions about the minutiae of Shanbei life and of our fieldwork there, looking for information on their own—they become identified with the exhibition. “It’s the first time that I explain an exhibition with my own words,” one of the guides says. And, by doing so, they impart this attitude to the visitors who also become identified. “Visitors often stay with us,” says another, “because they also want to talk about their past, their grandparents, their childhood …” In Tokyo, there are no volunteer guides. So we decide to do as many workshops as possible: we want the visitors to feel close to Shanbei art and life not only by seeing, but also by doing the same things as Shanbei people do, or the same things as we, artist and anthropologist, do. Thus, in the workshops, we propose that visitors conduct a “fieldwork” inside the exhibition, taking their own “fieldnotes,” and then make their own flower-cuts, inspired by the notes they have taken. In a workshop focused on paper flowers (for mortuary rites), after making a flower basket, a visitor said: “I couldn’t imagine such concrete things as Chinese people make in their funerals. That’s

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why I’ve made this, to remember the beautiful things there are in this world—those which may not be seen from the other world.” Certainly, to feel the exhibition with one’s five senses, to become identified with it, and then to make a paper-cut from that identification would be to become oneself. In this sense, maybe we have followed Master Feng’s method of “expression-of-the-self,” without being conscious of it. But there is still another thing which we did not expect at all. The exhibition in Fukuoka has lasted three months—enough time for the “window-flowers” to lose their fresh color. Tomomichi Nakao of Fukuoka Museum, responsible for this exhibition, tells us how he admires “the gracefulness of these ‘flowers’ which accept so naturally their own decay in their coexistence with other beings—in a sharp contrast to those irreplaceable artworks that require permanent protection.” This gracefulness, without our knowing, has taken control of the exhibition. The exhibition itself has become a flower.18

The intensity of the “flowers” I would like to finish this story by mentioning the most important moment for me in this exhibition: the visit of Feng Shanyun and Feng Fen, realized thanks to the Fukuoka Museum. For my part, I have intended to incorporate in this exhibition, albeit implicitly, all that I learned from Master Feng and his son, and from other people I met in Shanbei. Surely, this is our attempt to translate Shanbei art and life into a Japanese context. Nonetheless, it is crucial for me that this is not a bad translation and the people of Shanbei—especially Master Feng and his son—can still feel it as their own … That being so, I am profoundly relieved to see them react positively to each part of the exhibition; Master Feng seems pleased even with some of Nabo’s installations that may look too “art-like” for their taste. However, there is one point on which he clearly disagrees with us: the way we relate Part II to Part III. In Part II, we exhibit images and objects of funeral rites—white “paper flowers” among them. Then comes the façade of the yaodong cave-house, through which the visitors would enter Part III—the daily life in a yaodong house. This seemed natural. But Master Feng says that funeral rites must be followed not by everyday life scenes, but by wedding rites—in order to celebrate people’s life and fertility. “I thought you knew it well,” he tells me.19 It is true. His comment resonates with a sort of ambivalence that I, myself, have felt during this exhibition. I think we have had a valuable experience of art-anthropology, and many people seem to have liked it.20 In particular, I think visitors have lived the exhibition in an intimate way that would rarely be seen in this kind of exhibition. Certainly, Nabo’s idea of collective creation, inspired by certain Japanese traditions of arts and letters, has contributed much to this. But possibly this has entailed sacrificing something: I have often felt that the exhibition fails to express—or fails to express clearly—a very important element. In Shanbei, women usually have little time of their own, since they are always busy going back and forth between housework, child rearing and farmwork. Paper cutting is one of the only activities in which Shanbei

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women, mostly illiterate among older generations, are allowed to indulge. Among them, flower cutting is not considered as “work” (ganhuo), but “enjoyment” (aihao). Absorbed in it at night, they spend hours cutting sheets of paper, sometimes until dawn. “Flower cutting is the song of the woman’s heart,” as a local saying goes. Have we succeeded in conveying this intensity of the flowers, inseparable from the harshness of life lived by generations of Shanbei women?21 We have tried to show “window-flowers” together with people’s everyday life. It turns out that these “flowers” are, actually, at once inside and outside daily life—outside it, because they are flashes of life that go beyond the everyday.22 Looking back, this exhibition existed in a state of permanent tension between two forces: the centripetal force toward the particular experiences of Shanbei people—the place of creation of the flowers—and the centrifugal force toward the experiences of re-creation for each visitor. Ultimately, what visitors take from it depends on each person. “A visitor in her fifties,” a volunteer in Fukuoka told me, “could not contain her tears, feeling that the exhibition overlapped with her own earlier years. She came to see the exhibition all the way from Kobe.” I imagine she and other persons like her succeeded in understanding Shanbei women—and communicating invisibly with them—in a most intense way.

Notes 1

Throughout the main text of this chapter, the first person singular indicates the perspective of Tomoko Niwa though the entire text was produced in close collaboration between the two authors. We organized this text around the present tense—like in filmic images—in order to leave margins for the reader’s imagination.

2

Nabo Shimonaka is a plastic artist born in 1960. She has worked especially in paper crafts and graphic books, and researched on popular culture in Edo-period Japan.

3

Shanbei women use the word “flower” (hua) not only for flowers, but for anything like flowers, i.e., anything beautiful. The motif of a “window-flower,” therefore, can be flowers, plants, animals, people, etc., or any combination of them.

4

See Niwa, T. “Between Form, Word and Materiality: How Shanbei Paper-cuts Appear”, in I. Tokoro and K. Kawai (eds), An Anthropology of Things: The Dynamics of Human and Non-human Interactions (Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, forthcoming). Its Chinese version is found in X. Zhou (ed.), Zhongguo Yishu Renleixue Jichu Duben [China Anthropology of Art: A Reader] (Beijing: Xueyuan-Chubanshe, 2011), pp. 467–82.

5

Cf. Niwa, T. “Scenes of Life with Kiriko: Paper-cuts that Conduct the Regeneration of Stricken Towns” (in Japanese), Kikan-Minzokugaku 142 (2012): 44–70.

6

Window Flowers: Chinese Paper Cutting in Huangtu Plateau, in Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (October 18, 2013–January 28, 2014) and in Seikatsu-Kobo in Setagaya, Tokyo (February 28–March 16, 2014).

7

The area in dispute—Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands—lies between Japan, Taiwan, and China, each of them claiming the uninhabited islands as her territory due to geopolitical and economic reasons. The trouble escalated when, in September 2012, the Japanese government purchased some of the islands—until then owned

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8

This is part of the reflections developed through seminars on “Anthropology of Images” (Imeji-no-jinruigaku) offered by Tadashi Yanai since 2005 at the University of Tokyo (Department of Cultural Anthropology). Tomoko Niwa participated actively in most of them. See also T. Yanai, “Bosquejo de una antropología de las imágenes,” Quaderns-e, Institut Català d’Antropologia, 16 (1–2) (2011): 16–30.

9

R. Gardner and Á. Ostor, Making Forest of Bliss: Intention, Circumstance, and Chance in Nonfiction Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Film Archive, 2002).

10 T. Niwa, Minge, Yangge, Sanwa (2009), screened in various institutions in Japan. 11 Cf. Yanai’s chapters in S. Murao, T. Yanai, and M. Kubo (eds), Eizo-jinruigaku [Ciné– anthropology] (Tokyo: Serika-Shobo, 2014). 12 Her inspiration in this regard comes from Japanese tradition of arts and letters like the collective poetry of renga. 13 One of these women was Mrs. Gao Fenglian (see below), who began to create large-size pieces with Feng’s encouragement. 14 For further details, see T. Niwa, “Feng Shanyun’s Drawing Lessons: Anthropology in Creative Expression of a Chinese Artist” (in Japanese), Choikibunkagaku-kiyo, The University of Tokyo at Komaba, 18 (2013), pp. 103–22. 15 For lack of space we describe here only what Shimonaka and Niwa planned to do in this exhibition. However, it is important for us to clarify that all the decisions were discussed together with the staff of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (especially Tomomichi Nakao) and Seikatsu-Kobo (especially Ritsuko Suzuki, Noriko Amano, and Yumi Takeda) in each respective case, and their help was essential for the exhibition. 16 Here we may mention John Berger’s inspiring idea of weak intentionality, in J. Berger and J. Mohr, Another Way of Telling (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 90. 17 On the importance of the idea of incompleteness, see A. Schneider and C. Wright, “Between Art and Anthropology,” in A. Schneider and C. Wright (eds), Between Art and Anthropology (Oxford: Berg, 2010), pp. 19–21. 18 The word “become” used here is meant to relate to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of becoming (see G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987]). The essential point in our use of the term is that, in a becoming, relations arise not between subjects but between forces working below the subjects. 19 Here Feng has in mind the Chinese conception of “red events” (such as weddings) symbolized by red “flowers” and “white events” (such as mortuary rites) symbolized by white “flowers” of zhihua. 20 The total numbers of visitors were 20,816 in Fukuoka (84 days) and 6,127 in Tokyo (17 days). To the question sheet we handed in Tokyo, ninety people responded, with the evaluation of 72 percent “very good” and 26 percent “good.” 21 And this intensity certainly resonates with that of the paper cutters of northeastern Japan. 22 Perhaps the problem treated here would be fruitfully discussed with the help of Walter Benjamin’s latest thought around “cult value / exhibition value,” “shock experience” and “history.” See H. Eiland and M. W. Jennings (eds), Water Benjamin Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938–1940 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2003).

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FIGURE 6.1  Mao family’s yaodong, traditional cave-house of the region, in the village of Sanwa (Shanbei, China). Sunlight enters only through the façade (center). Life in yaodong revolves around the large bed (left), called kang. Sense of place constitutes the bedrock of the exhibition. Yanchuan, Shanbei (Shaanxi Province), China. Photo: Tomoko Niwa.

FIGURE 6.2  Mr Mao’s daughter-in-law (Yang Tingting) prepares for the Chinese New Year, adorning the façade windows with newly-cut chuanghua (‘window-flowers’). Yanchuan, Shanbei (Shaanxi Province), China. Photo: Tomoko Niwa.

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FIGURE 6.3  Feng Shanyun, Paper-cutting is now paid in foreign currencies, 2012. Original woodblock. Feng has depicted, from inside, the sufferings and joys of Shanbei peasants throughout the years since the Mao era. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Tomoko Niwa.

FIGURE 6.4  A prodigious paper-cut work by Gao Fenglian (330cm x 150cm), expressing the life and the legends of Shanbei (the dragon represents the Yellow River): a marvelous example of the “expression-of-the-self” (biaoxian ziji) all executed in an improvised way. Moving images of Shanbei daily life, filmed by Tomoko Niwa, are projected above. Installation shot of the exhibition ‘Window Flowers: Chinese Paper Cutting in Huangtu Plateau,’ Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, 2013-2014. Photo: Tomoko Niwa.

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FIGURE 6.5  ‘Window-flowers’ (chuanghua) of ordinary small size (5-15cm square) by anonymous women and children. Their shadows—largely magnified—are projected on the walls. Light and shadow, life and death, yin and yang… Installation shot of the exhibition ‘Window Flowers: Chinese Paper Cutting in Huangtu Plateau,’ Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, 2013-2014. Photo: Tomoko Niwa.

FIGURE 6.6  Moving images of funeral rites projected in a fragmented way. Combined with ‘paper-flowers’ (zhihua) and ritual objects, as well as the original sound, their meaning becomes intensified. Installation shot of the exhibition ‘Window Flowers: Chinese Paper Cutting in Huangtu Plateau,’ Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, 2013-2014. Photo: Tomoko Niwa.

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7 Theories in images: Tadashi Yanai in conversation with Arnd Schneider Tadashi Yanai and Arnd Schneider

AS  In recent decades, following partly the “Writing Culture” (Clifford / Marcus, 1986) critique, we have seen an increasing emphasis on experimental practice, and anthropology’s engagement with contemporary art. How is this debate perceived and further developed in Japan? TY “Writing Culture” surely had a considerable impact on Japanese anthropologists in the 1990s. However, I’d like to point out that, in our own context, it was preceded by a sweeping intellectual atmosphere of the 1980s, created around the anthropologist-semotician Masao Yamaguchi (1931–2013). Artists, thinkers, and researchers of humanities and social sciences––from the novelist Kenzaburo Oe or the musician Toru Takemitsu to the anthropologist-thinker Shinichi Nakazawa (see Chapter 5, this volume)––made friends with Yamaguchi, stimulated each other, and published their creations. I began to study anthropology precisely when their influence was pervasive; looking back, it was probably thanks to this memory that, in a later moment, I felt it so natural to go beyond the confines of academic anthropology to study films and philosophical texts (and afterwards to come back to anthropology). This image of anthropology in the 1980s, although weakened today, still inspires young Japanese anthropologists, directly or indirectly. AS  What are the main conceptual notions in Japanese visual anthropology which are different from those in the West? TY In Japanese, “visual anthropology” is usually translated as eizo-jinruigaku— literally, “image-anthropology.” Whereas visual anthropology is a methodological

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idea focused on a technique, this “image-anthropology” has been understood as something fused with ethnographic and documentary filmmaking, like Jean Rouch’s “ciné-anthropology”1 (and in its broad sense it has been practiced and supported by people from television2). But this doesn’t mean, I think, that our “image-anthropology” has failed to be an anthropological method. Rather, Japanese ethnographic and documentary film can be considered as a fertile land to discover a different anthropology carried out through different means (what we need is an appropriate way to “translate” from filmic language to written anthropology3). As just one example, I would like to mention the late documentary films––the “Magino” films––of Shinsuke Ogawa (1935–92), which contain fascinating anthropological ideas about time, nature, technology, and absence. AS  More specifically, what is the specific Japanese contribution beyond interpretive and reflexive anthropology? For instance, you recently published a book on cinéanthropology … TY I don’t think I can make a balanced picture of that contribution, composed of individual efforts and often associated with diverse overseas currents. The fact is that if there are some lines of properly Japanese tradition in anthropology, they are rather interrupted lines, the full lines having been drawn––in Japan, too–– by Western anthropologies, and especially by the Anglo-American one since the 1990s. Our tradition would be like a minority language, something that has to be re-encountered and re-created constantly. And for me, Ciné-Anthropology was just such an opportunity for re-encounter.4 There I collaborated with the researcher of the “image-anthropology” school,5 and in my chapters I took the opportunity to revisit Rouch’s entire filmography––not only ethnographic films and ethno-fictions, but his Nouvelle Vague films, ciné-poèmes and ciné-portraits, and his fiction film Dionysos. My intention was to understand it as a unified whole, and to “translate” what Rouch expressed through filmic images into the language of written anthropology. And I found, in this effort, that Rouch invented not just ciné-trance and shared anthropology, but also a kind of anthropology of nature and of becoming (Dionysos, the Greek god of becoming, was the symbol for it)––a still brilliant vision of ciné-anthropology. AS  What is an “anthropology of images”? TY Though it’s confusing, my idea of “anthropology of images” is a theoretical framework, unrelated in its origin to “image-anthropology” mentioned above. After finishing my fieldwork with the Mapuche of Chile in the early 1990s, I felt it necessary to see how image-thinking is thought and practiced in philosophy (Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza, etc.) and in cinema. My research about the Mapuche had somehow forced me to go beneath the level of experience usually presupposed in anthropology––the terms “culture” and “society” representing that level––and the “image” was, for me, the name of that subsoil I was looking for. Perhaps what was most important was not the name. In a book called Superpositions,6 Deleuze commented on the “method of



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subtraction” practiced by the Italian theater artist Carmelo Bene: take a Shakespeare play, remove a main character from it, and see what kind of story emerges there … The point is to imagine how anthropology transforms by removing the words “culture” and “society” from it. AS  And what does fieldwork as “a sustained effort to be affected by images”7 imply for rethinking research strategies and methodologies in anthropology? TY  Let me take the example of Balinese Character (1942) by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead.8 The book is notoriously ambiguous. We have the impression that Mead’s general introduction is clearly surpassed by the power of the 759 photographs, carefully organized into 100 plates. These photos cannot be easily tamed into the anthropological category of “culture” or “society.” They may be seen to contain three layers of experience: that which was lived by the Balinese people of Bajoeng Gede, that which was captured by Bateson-and-the-camera, and that which was thought afterwards by Bateson and Mead in composing each plate. I call “images” all of these three layers.9 “Affection,” a Spinozist term, is another name for it: the photos show, at once, the bodily affections of Balinese people, the bodily affections of Bateson-and-the-camera, and the mental affections in Bateson-and-Mead during the work of composition or montage of the plates.10 In all these senses, Balinese Character admirably visualizes an example of ethnographic fieldwork, and shows how it can serve not just for sociocultural analyses but for artistic works or philosophical reflections.11 AS  And what do you understand by “theories in images”? TY  Let me continue with the same example. To really appreciate Balinese Character, first you have to read and feel the photographs one by one, slowly, and then to observe, inside you, how the montage effect of the combined photos is produced. The image that emerges in this process would be a hint of “theory in images” (theoria meaning contemplation), which can be extended by combination and consolidated by repetition. I think anthropologists, since Malinowski, have intuitively worked with these kind of theoretical images, but then, too often, have hastened to fuse them into sociocultural analyses. AS  And how would this connect with your insights from your own ethnographic fieldwork? I am thinking here about your work on dreams and visions among the the Shipibo-Conibo of the Peruvian Amazon, and the Mapuche of Southern Chile. TY As I mentioned, the “anthropology of images” came from the reflections on my fieldwork with the Mapuche of Chile in the early 1990s (and this, in turn, was united with my earlier researches in Peruvian Amazon and in Galicia, Spain12). In this fieldwork, I planned to study Mapuche dream images in connection with their sociocultural reality and––to the point where it was analyzable––with the ongoing political

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and economic changes in Chile. My theoretical scheme, basically sociocultural in inspiration, was soon surpassed by the ethnographic reality in three ways. First, I began to see that their dream images were intimately related with Mapuche oral traditions and, together, they formed a kind of ontological idea like Platonic anamnesis––something much stronger than “culture” as it is understood in anthropology. Secondly, I began to understand that the relationship between Mapuche and Chilean “cultures” was extremely complex. I recognized, paradoxically, Chilean or Western influences exactly where the Mapuche considered themselves as Mapuche, and, in a similar vein, some profound Mapuche motives exactly when they were rejecting their own tradition.13 Deleuze’s philosophical ideas of “repetition” and “becoming” came to my rescue only after some years. Thirdly, underneath this “becoming” of contemporary Mapuche, I found an older layer of another “becoming,” which I could elucidate thanks to Viveiros de Castro’s idea of “cannibal cogito.”14 In Mapuche culture / society, “within” and “without” were communicating to each other from the ground up, which again pressed me to question the very notions of “culture” and “society.” AS  How does positional thinking and the notion of “placeness” in Japanese language and philosophy link to your notion of “theories in images,” and how can it inform a distinct research practice? TY  In Japanese, the only indispensable element of a sentence is the predicate (the subject is not grammatically required). So, to determine the meaning of an utterance we have to infer continually from where it is said.15 Of course, generally we can identify the subject easily, but, sometimes the grammatical ambiguity of the subject is consciously used to manipulate the subjectivity, or to explicitly express a non-subjective thinking. This makes us feel that the divide between discursive language and image-thinking–– which is a predicative thinking––is not categorical. This said, Western thinkers also have jumped this divide when they felt it necessary; Vygotsky, to cite an example, conceptualized image-thinking beautifully by his idea of “inner speech”.16 And, of course, anthropologists have often come near to––and even practiced––some sort of predicative thinking, by following closely local people’s thought. AS  How do your students integrate art practice and theory in their anthropological fieldwork? TY  It depends on each case. The invariant element is anthropological fieldwork taken in its ordinary sense, but if their inclination and experience in art permit them to draw a parallel line to it––even if it’s an interrupted one––they experiment it (and, at some moments, this relation might well be reversed). We have no efficient methodology, but perhaps we do know where to get to: after all, anthropologists learn to appreciate the art of life of the people, and this art can be, in itself, a work of art; in this motion, art and anthropology must coincide. Personally I think it important for us to be a little disrespectful and to become a kind of wild amateurs, just as Rouch was in filmmaking (and as Malinowski was a wild economist, Lévi-Strauss a wild philosopher).17



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Notes The questions for this conversation were developed after a graduate seminar of Prof. Tadashi Yanai’s research group in visual anthropology and the anthropology of art, Department of Anthropology, Tokyo University, which Arnd Schneider attended on June 12, 2014. Tadashi Yanai responded to the questions in written form. Arnd Schneider is grateful to Tadashi Yanai for hosting an invited lecture (“Dialogues between Contemporary Art and Anthropology: Future Challenges”) at his own department, and for providing insight into the fascinating work of his research group. Thanks are also due to the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, for a travel grant. 1

Actually the leading figure of this eizo-jinruigaku inside academic anthropology was, for several decades, Yasuhiro Omori, who studied with Rouch.

2 Especially the name of the producer Junichi Ushiyama (1930–97) should be remembered. 3 Here I use the term “translate” in the same way as in Chapter 6 (this volume) by Tomoko Niwa and myself. See also the relationship between concepts, precepts and affects, and functives in G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, What is Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 4 S. Murao, T. Yanai and M. Kubo (eds), Eizo-Jinruigaku/Ciné-Anthropology (Tokyo: Serica Shobo, 2015, in Japanese). 5 I mean here Yasuhiro Omori (see note 1) and his former students. 6 G. Deleuze and C. Bene, Superpositions (Paris: Minuit, 1979). 7 Tadashi Yanai, Statement paper for a joint workshop of Tadashi Yanai’s research group with Arnd Schneider, Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Tokyo, June 13, 2014. 8 G. Bateson and M. Mead, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1942). 9 The term “image” comes from Henri Bergson (Matière et mémoire, 8th edn, Paris: PUF, 1939). 10 Spinoza’s affection is concerned not only with body but also with mind (Ch. Jaquet, L’unité du corps et de l’esprit: Affects, actions et passions chez Spinoza, Paris: PUF, 2004, p. 85). 11 Here we have in mind, of course, Bateson’s theoretical work in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972) as well as Bateson-Mead films that contain, undoubtedly, genuine aesthetic ideas (Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea or Trance and Dance in Bali). 12 George Devereux’s ethnopsychiatry (and also From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences, The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1967) was pivotal in this connection. 13 The complexity of this situation may be best illustrated by the dramatic experiences of Sebastián and his son I analyzed elsewhere (“Rememoración y repetición: análisis de un relato mapuche sobre la creencia,” Scripta Ethnologica, xvi (1994): 67–83). Sebastián, one of the village religious leaders, once had an unforgettable dream––a truly “reminiscent” dream––that convinced him of the certainty of Mapuche truth. It came when his faith was in a deep crisis: despite his role in the village, his children had turned Protestant one after another and finally all refused to participate

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14 See E. Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Viveiros de Castro wonderfully analyzed the contemporary Araweté’s idea of the “cannibal gods”––gods are ancestors and (cannibal) enemies at once, an idea that introduces an essential instability of being, or becoming––and then situated it neatly in the panorama of entire Tupi-Guarani ethnology. Historical documents as well as oral traditions seem to suggest that the Mapuche––though unrelated to the Tupi-Guarani––had a somewhat similar idea in the past. As it seems to me, this instability of being would explain well their ambiguous relationship with spirits, with animals (pumas, especially) and with their enemies in the colonial era: the Spaniards. 15 Based on this and other features of the Japanese language, the grammatologist Motoki Tokieda (1900–62) elaborated an original theory of language (“language process theory”), different from European linguistic theories. 16 L. Vygotsky, Thought and Language (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). 17 I appreciate the help of Tomoko Niwa, Rieko Tanaka, and Irina Grigore in composing this part.

8 Anthropological studies of urban art districts: The thinking behind the exploration of Dashanzi Art District Lili Fang

The beginning of field studies on city art districts in China Since the 1990s, China has been developing from an industrial society to a postindustrial society. With such a profound transformation, a large number of mechanized industries withdrew from the city, leaving many abandoned industrial plants and spaces. In the meantime, with the acceleration of urbanization, suburbs were being included into the urban areas, where the low rents created conditions for the settling of artists. This is where China’s urban art districts were born. As artists began exploring them, these districts became new cultural and commercial spaces and showed us that in late industrial society, material commodity, once the core of our social economy, has given way to the new information-oriented symbols, images, and other new consumer objects; thus the art districts were also developed into consumable spaces rather than simply artists’ colonies. In short, this can be considered as “space commercialization” and “art symbol commercialization.” Therefore, the urban art districts we see today are not only artistic areas, but also cultural and commercialized regional spaces with multiple implications of material, culture, and commodity. In the Western tradition, anthropological research mainly focused on “different cultures” of remote regions, but when this approach was taken to China, a country with a long history and ancient civilization, Chinese anthropologists started to research their own hometowns. The foremost example is the famous work Peasant Life in

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FIGURE 8.1  A square in 798 with the old 718 Joint Factory. Photo © Fang Lili.

China by Xiaotong Fei.1 Hometown anthropology study was then followed by a group of urban anthropological researchers. From “different culture” to hometown culture, and then further to urban culture, it is a progressive development for anthropological study. However, there is also a common feature in this course of development: the studies are all basically on primitive tribes, or country life. Even in the urban culture study, the focus is also on rural area or minority immigrants in the cities. Although there are some exceptions concerning the study of urban community, such as Street Corner Society by Whyte,2 the practice of urban ethnography up until the 1960s was not considered in the mainstream of anthropology, although this has since changed. This chapter mainly focuses on city art districts—a very new field of study in anthropological research history in China. In the 1990s I started to pay close attention to the handicraft art area of ceramics of Jingdezhen and made a series of studies. From 2006, I started to focus on the contemporary art districts in Beijing, by which time there were already over a hundred “artist villages” in the Beijing suburbs. Among these art villages which have been created by artists gathering together, the most famous ones are the 798 Art District located in Dashanzi area, Songzhuang Artists Village, Winery Art District, Caochangdi Arts, Huantie Art District, and Guanyin Hall Gallery Street. Not only in Beijing, but also in other large cities many art districts have appeared, for example in Shanghai and Guangzhou. I believe this is a kind of art phenomenon that resulted from the social transitions during the 1990s in China. Along with this transition, abandoned industrial buildings and spaces were all left to



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FIGURE 8.2  A gallery in 798. Photo © Fang Lili.

the cities after much mechanized industry had withdrawn. Besides, with the speeding up of the urbanization process, surrounding rural areas started to be incorporated into the city, creating ideal conditions for the expanding cultural and information industries. In order to investigate this process, I devised a number of doctoral research projects to carry out field studies: two for the 798 district, two for Songzhuang, another one involving three master’s students in Jingdezhen “Sculpture Porcelain Factory,” “Aged Factory,” “Crow Beach,” “Fanjiajing,” and other art districts. Why did many different Chinese cities simultaneously begin to build art districts on the sites of disused factories from the end of the 1990s? Of course, this happened not only in China, but also in many other developed countries. What relationship is there between this phenomenon and globalization, including the transitions in the function of the city in post-industrial society? This is a question that much deserved to be discussed. In this chapter I will discuss this question with special reference to two doctoral dissertations which I supervised: Dashanzi Art District: A Field Study and Tracking Changes in the Market Economy Context by Dr. Mingliang Liu, and A Comparative Study of Cultural Art Districts in the Cultural  Context  of Post-modernism: Beijing’s Dashanzi Art District and Seoul’s Insadong District by Dr. Kim-Wenting.

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FIGURE 8.3  An old factory in 798. Photo © Fang Lili.

The challenges for anthropological research in urban art districts The study of urban art districts represents a considerable challenge to anthropology’s research methods. Once so-called “primitive tribes” and village areas researched by traditional anthropology were mostly conceived as statically enclosed spaces. The later urban research was indeed dealing with more open spaces with more mobility, but was still focusing on relatively fixed residents, such as in neighborhood studies. By contrast, the city art district consists not only of a street, square, market, building, or other physical spaces, but also includes sophisticated cultural spaces with paintings, sculptures, installation arts, galleries, artist studios, advertisements, music, pictures, net-spaces, artists, floating tourists, and so on. Artists, gallery staff, and tourists are almost all moving out-comers. There are no permanent residents, no fixed organizations except governmental administrators. The philosopher Cassirer thinks human beings do not actually live in physical cosmic space, but in a world of myth, art, language, religion—that is to say, in systems of symbols. This means that even though we directly face the world which contains real objects, we do not really understand them, rather we observe and understand this world through the myth symbols, art symbols, language, religious rites, scientific concepts, and other media created by us.3



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In today’s postmodern world, the emerging internet, pictures, videos, and other virtual spaces have become symbols of human social culture that encompass every layer of material objects, further changing people’s knowledge of physical and cultural space. As indicated by Bell, in late industrial society, the commodity has lost its core status in the social economy, being replaced by symbols, images, and other new information focused on consumer goods.4 As Dr. Kim-Wenting explains in her dissertation, “Capital governs and controls the production process of the capitalist city space”;5 that is to say, in this age “space is being commercialized,” which means space is becoming the tool of capital for creating continuous profit.6 Thus, the city art district we see today is not only an artistic and civilized area, it is also a commercialized regional space with multiple meanings of material, culture, and commodity. On the other hand, Dr. Mingliang Liu contends that the opening of the art district resulted in public involvement in contemporary art. This kind of intervention changed the art groups themselves; more importantly, it changed the relationship between art groups and the public, as well as society. Because, when contemporary art comes into the public view, the public is not only the audience, but also the potential market—in a way they are also important judges.7 Hence, the urban art district is a special area in the globalized postmodern society. It is different from the districts of the past industrial age. It is a new research space, and a district in which anthropological study has never set foot before. Thus research must be carried out from a new angle and observing method, which is obviously a great challenge to the traditional approaches of anthropological study. On one hand, due to the quick change of the district, mass data statistics are needed to analyze the proportion of variation of different compositions during different phases, as well as their graph, histogram, pie chart, and to combine the mathematical logic with empirical research—namely to do collaborative studies in the fields of anthropology and sociology. On the other hand, such studies need to be done from the angle of the anthropology of art, which requires the researcher to be knowledgeable in both anthropology and contemporary art theory, or art history. Dr. Mingliang Liu once studied oil painting, while Dr. Kim-Wenting majored in contemporary art history. Therefore, both of them were well qualified, and completed this task well, making discussions from their own views based on rich field studies, as well as statistical materials.

Highlights of commonality of the former “Utopia” and contemporary art Dr. Mingliang Liu’s Ph.D. thesis, Dashanzi Art District: Field Study and Tracking Changes in the Market Economy Context shows us the past and present of 798 district, presenting us with ever-changing art groups and artistic ecological systems. He wrote in his dissertation that the emergence of the Chinese artist village in the

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true sense happened in the 1990s, and the most representative one was Beijing’s Summer Palace Artist Village, but for various reasons it was banned in 1995. This is the first time the artists challenged the system in the form of a community. Although it ended up with an eviction, its influence should never be overlooked.8 In the 1990s, there was barely a market or display field for Chinese contemporary fine art, when it was mostly displayed in private apartments or embassies; therefore it was also known as “apartment art” or “embassy art.”9 Artists were not able to make livings by selling paintings, so they began to gather outside the city and started group-living, leading to the appearance of a “holy revolution land” of Chinese avant-garde art like the Summer Palace Artist Village.10 Back then, 798 was an abandoned ordnance factory, its cheap rents and large spaces attracting some libertine, cosmopolitan  artists who moved in together. The artists turned this place from an ordinary block, a discarded factory into an attitude, a state of mind, a rebellious style of self-assertion. And finally, it became an artists’ enclave to fulfil their artistic dreams. Later, with the establishment of Belgium’s Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Spain’s Iberia Center for Contemporary Art (ICCA), the U.S.A.’s Pace Gallery, and the Faurschou Gallery in Denmark, 798 began to receive increasing attention from China and abroad, and was gradually developed into China’s largest distribution center of contemporary art with a continuously rising influence across the world. During that period, the artists’ attention was not so much on the market as on the pursuit of the Utopian ideal.

FIGURE 8.4  The largest gallery, “Ullens,” in 798. Photo © Fang Lili.



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The added value of such a pursuit is to highlight the commonality of contemporary art. The “reconstruction” process of 798 from an abandoned factory to today’s most influential contemporary art distribution center primarily demonstrates that in the context of globalization and market, civil power begins to overwhelm the utopian pursuit of the early stage of idealism, linking the pursuit of art with current society and people’s state of life and including their own voices. As well as bringing 798 to public attention with an open gesture, the idea and action of “reconstruction” is a great forward-looking ideal and a positively practical one as well.11 That is to say, before the existence of the art district, when art was basically monopolized by the elite upper class, the emergence of the 798 art zone triggered contemporary art’s function of public art education, and has become a significant bridge and approach for the public to get involved. Contemporary art began to change from “underground work” to “on the ground work,” and moved from the margins to the public stage. It eventually began to enter into public life with the functional expansions of the art district and the artists’ village. These changes enabled the artists to gradually move on from the days when their groups might be banned or expelled at any time and step onto a new stage. This can be considered as a loosening of the more rigid society, indeed it can also be seen as a democratic process. Thus, Dr. Mingliang Liu concluded that “the public is no longer absent from contemporary art.”12 The title of Dr. Kim-Wenting’s Ph.D. thesis is Comparative Study of Cultural Art District under the Cultural Context of Post-modernism -- Beijing Dashanzi Art District and Seoul’s Insadong, in which she makes a comparison between 798 and Insadong, sparking a great many discussions that are worth considering. In her thesis, she wrote from the perspective of a Korean scholar: In the 1970s, art was considered only to be enjoyed by a small number of wealthy people, and had nothing to do with people’s livelihoods. Traditional culture was thought to be outdated and backward. Korean people began to talk about culture in the 1980s. After then, art has become a part of the everyday life of ordinary people.13 The Insadong Art District was formed during the 1970s–1980s, two decades earlier than China’s 798 Art District; their appearance made art a part of our general public’s daily life, and Dr. Kim-Wenting and Dr. Mingliang Liu both coincide in their research on this.

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Reconstruction of tradition and changes in the region’s function against the background of post-industrial society In his Ph.D. thesis Dr. Mingliang Liu repeatedly put forward the notion of “from heritages to resources,” which was concluded from the author’s eight-year field investigations, where heritage refers to traditions. The concept implies that today all traditions, rather than being abandoned, are developed into new cultural foundations and resources.14 798 district, too, has turned the disused factory plant and vacant land of the industrial age into artists’ villages, art galleries, or art districts, which not only enables this specially significant space to be well preserved, but also endows it with new development possibilities through the intervention of arts. Meanwhile, the economic and cultural development of its surrounding areas was also promoted.15 The space is being used, and more importantly, the old plant and machinery left from the industrial age, as well as the numerous slogans of the planned economy and the Cultural Revolution, are all being used as heritage, reminding us of the fading away of cultural symbols from those ages. Seoul’s Insadong district also investigated by Dr. Kim-Wenting shows similar features to 798: Old buildings and machinery equipment of 798, the Korean house and antiques of Insadong and all the old resources of the two districts are being used to the greatest extent, trying to make symbolic practices via representation of the landscapes, and making communications through a variety of signs and images.16 Eric Hobsbawm believes that with the rapid transformation of society, the model that was built on old traditions would be weakened or destroyed. As a result, the emergence of a new tradition will often bring invention of new traditions. The unique feature of this process consists in using old material and integrating it with the new one to form a completely new type of tradition.17 He points out that it is incorrect to simply think that the old tradition will vanish because it is not suited to the new phenomenon of modern society, or a new tradition should be developed since we cannot flexibly use the old ones. Real “adaption” implies using old things in the new environment, or using the old models to achieve new goals. Every country and society has a lot of old materials, where all kinds of symbolic practices and communication methods are selectively modified and ready for use.18 Both China’s 798 and Korea’s Insadong are great examples of building new cultures from old traditions and heritage resources. By reviving history and digging into public memory, decaying areas are offered a renaissance, and a new view of the city is promoted through a cultural symbolism that has already become a stock-in-trade of all contemporary urban art districts.



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A new space for artistic experience From the perspective of art theory, Dr. Kim-Wenting discussed the interaction between the artwork and its audience, and further expanded on the interaction between the art district and its viewer. She suggests that the artwork can no longer be comprehended simply on an aesthetic level, but should be appreciated through different ways and perspectives according to the recipient’s ability and purposes. Therefore, a work can be for pure aesthetic appreciation, but most often it will also be seen as a tool for gaining new experience or playing a game.19 This amounts to a brand new way to experience the art. Regarding the concept of “interactive art,” she writes: Interactive art requires receivers to go into the inner world of the work, rather than standing outside. Of course, here it does not mean that you really go into the physical space of the image, but to feel the inner world from the level of affects and perception. In other words, generally, recipients only stand outside of the artwork and observe its internal space in front of the image, but here in contrast, the image space created by interactive art requires recipients to actively go into it and fully experience it with your soul.20 Art districts such as 798 and Insadong are also great artworks themselves; walking through them is like entering a full view theater. With this panoramic realism effect, the audiences are not able to distinguish between reality and image, and thus are deeply addicted. In such spaces, their imagination is greatly stimulated and they are all brought into the imaginary world. Further, this experience is not just visual; it is also tactile, aural, and involves time and space. Here, the artists and audiences break off from the identity of creators and recipients, and develop an interactionbased relationship of feedback and cooperation. Eventually, the experience and cultural background of the audiences become an extremely significant factor in interactive art, which is almost equally important as the artists’ artistic concepts and experiences. This artistic sensibility can be hardly experienced in the “pure” art we used to see; here the audiences are no longer passively accepting, but are involved in the artwork and its surroundings in a more active and innovative way, and promoting its change. For some people, the art district is a place to meet with the creators of fine art, for others it is a fashionable dating site. Finally, it is split into numerous “private places” for every visitor, as Dr. Kim-Wenting wrote in her Ph.D. thesis.21 Her understanding and discussion of this is really interesting, and it deserves our attention on the interactive issue of the relationship between contemporary art and individuals. This relationship tells us that 798 is no longer a simply a space presenting artworks, it is more a space to experience, which could be understood as a subjective space. Based on personal experiences and preferences including their growth process, the spaces all the subjects experience are transformed into places with personal meanings in

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various ways. Thus, a space is split into private spaces for each subject and presents a myriad of relationships.22 In the traditional art market system, galleries and artists occupy a central position in the production and circulation of artwork, but now with the advent of new interactive art, the focus is being shifted to visitors (recipients). Therefore fine art, besides its selling and collection values, is further endowed with a new value of joint participation, re-creation, and sharing—the basic starting point is the visitors (recipients) themselves. With them, 798 and Insadong Cultural District achieved a true sense of art sharing, practiced the value of interaction, and were given a fresh interpretation as a whole new connotation.23 The serious discussion in Dr. Kim-Wenting’s thesis offers a new angle on the relationship between the artwork and the viewer. In the meantime, it shows us the value and significance of the emergence of the art district in the entire history of fine art. It might break some of the traditional fine art concepts and become a turning point in fine art history.

Space and landscape of post-industrial civilization The rise of city art districts is closely linked with the development of postmodernization. Back in the industrial age, the city was often a production center, with serried chimneys and neatly built plants that once symbolized the industrial cities, whereas in postmodern society, cities began to function more as consumption and entertainment centers, and reconstructions of space happened constantly as a result. As defined by Mike Featherstone, “postmodernization” refers to “the reconstruction of urban space, the development of urban arts and cultural centers, and the consequent upstart gathering area.”24 At the very beginning, an urban art district was merely a gathering place for artists and intellectuals with some middle-class aspirations and tastes with later it gradually developed into a commercial and tourist area. The appearance of such places is changing the traditional structure of cities. As proposed by Marshall McLuhan early in the 1960s, cities will eventually become means to offer visitors comfort. Human civilization has never in its history been like today, with so many people on the move. It can be anticipated that both the distance and number of human beings’ physical movements will dramatically increase in the future. We can thereby see that the physical space today is filled with mass media images and data, providing a completely different space experience to those who lived in a more traditional era.25 Digital images blend the real and virtual worlds and blur their boundaries. Paintings, photographs, films, and other visual material erase their origins, and all are involved in the process of integrating the concrete experience space, media space, and mental space into a mixed one. For all its users, space is more for experience, not merely for presenting.26 The majority of citizens who are not able to possess the physical space of the city show others their experience, culture, and knowledge. This is the basic reason why,



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based on the user’s own bodily experience, we can separate a space to a private place. Hence, Dr. Kim-Wenting thinks that in 798 and Insadong Cultural District— spaces which embody both art and city—our body is the subject to experience these places, but it is also the tool to measure the experience. The two artistic areas are split into numerous small places by our bodily experiences and then are reassembled into a flowing new structure with our movements.27 Dr. Kim-Wenting also considers it a “continuous changing of view and personalization process,”28 proving that view is not just the objective environment, but also a cultural and political visual surroundings. Tall factory buildings, machines from industrial ages, slogans of the Cultural Revolution, The Little Red Book, art galleries, artists’ studios, bookstores, craft shops, cafes, alleys and streets with crowded people and goods, tourists from around the world, all kinds of commodities and fine art in the windows to catch people’s eyes, posters everywhere on the road. With their own vibrant colors and special features, these little things vitalized the art district, created a space to read and appreciate, and turned this community into a visible symbol and sign for visitors, thus making it a space that can speak for itself. Different spaces form different cultural, political, and economic communities. The consumers in that space also become a rank and a symbol. Shopping at 798 also forms a kind of identity, in that mostly this is a place for white-collar workers, the fashion-conscious, and the upwardly mobile; but most importantly, they come to feel an emotional and cultural identity.

FIGURE 8.5  Coffee shops in 798. Photo © Fang Lili.

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In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Daniel Bell defines post-industrial society as “a society of knowledge,” and believes that “in the society of knowledge, the most important groups are scientists.”29 “The power of the society, to measure by the majority of GNP and employment, will come increasingly from the knowledge field.”30 Based on this theory, we can imagine that the main forces of an agricultural society will be farmers, of an industrial society workers, while for a postmodern society it will be intellectuals, a category which includes scientists, engineers, sociologists, designers, artists, writers, reporters, editors, etc. These, in fact, will be the main professions of most urban residents. Thus the appearance of an art district offers them a place to enjoy arts; more significantly, it is a place to meet friends, enjoy a cup of coffee and relax. I often see many newlyweds come to 798 to take wedding photographs. In their eyes, the art district is the most cultural place with fashionable taste in Beijing. Therefore, more and more people come to feel the fashion; hanging out here is considered a fashion in itself, such that a popular online joke says that 798 is a gathering place for literary and artistic youth.31 It is also quite a fashionable thing to appreciate artwork because it shows a person’s economic strength and culture. Meanwhile, just like the faded “Long live the Communist Party of the Chinese people” and “Long live Chairman Mao” on the wall, the old industrial plants of 798 are also the memory of a generation. The red-brick houses, a typical Chinese architecture of that age, are well preserved today in some areas. The imprint of that specific era brings visitors a rich history. Recalling the history is also a fashionable way of consumption in contemporary world, and an art district like 798, which represents both history and fashion, has become an important name card of Beijing. From there we can see that the emergence of urban art districts is closely linked with the development of post-industrial society; this is a new type of urban space and the most representative and typical cultural symbol of the city. Like the Great Wall and the Palace Museum, 798, as a symbol of Beijing, has now also been included on visitors’ must-see list. While one trip should be enough for the former two sites, 798 is worth visiting several times because the view is constantly being updated by the launch of a new gallery, opening of a new store, start of a new exhibition, placing of new advertising, and so on.

Interest shifting through market games We can tell from previous discussion that art districts like 798 are not static but are constantly evolving. From its earliest beginnings as an artists’ utopian fantasyland to an open space to provide citizens with modern art education and spread art democracy, it was later discovered to possess a huge commercial opportunity. Housing prices began to rise well beyond the artists’ means, and many then started to move to more remote and less expensive places to create art. During that period, mass galleries were established here and became the dominant force, while the influence of artists



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began to weaken and eventually became a marginalized ingredient of the art district.32 Very few artists’ studios can be found here since 2005. It was at that time that 798 turned from an artist enclave into a gathering place for galleries. In 2006, 798 was recognized as the first batch of cultural and creative industrial parks in Beijing, when many businesses also began to relocate here. Functionally, 798 was already far more than an artist enclave, it had become a new-fashioned art park with multiple functions.33 Some scholars define it as the contemporary art market: Being a new public urban space, 798 was spontaneously generated with the accumulation of multi-polar powers, and has already become a multicultural reactor for art and fashion. Globalization and localization, industry and anti-industry, spontaneous rise and planned development, grassroots and art trust, art and business, high-end and low-end, domestic and foreign, social and elitist, multiple power, multiple contradiction and diversified values make their coexistence at 798. 798 has already formed and become Beijing’s only collecting field for contemporary culture and art in the age of globalization. Beijing has multiple art districts, but only this one operates in the collecting field.34 Dr. Mingliang Liu defines it as “the distribution and trading center of contemporary art.”35 Mark Hankbale (curator / manager of New York Artist Alliance) also said that “798 has long surpassed that functional stage [i.e., the grassroots stage; F.L.]; it is

FIGURE 8.6  Works of art in 798 street. Photo © Fang Lili.

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now a center to demonstrate art through galleries and art festivals, meanwhile it is also a high-end retail center.”36 Greater changes occurred to 798 in 2009, in that sometimes you could see several businesses open almost simultaneously. Of course, the businesses here mainly refer to cafes and stores,37 since at that time 798 was becoming more and more overtly commercial. Dr. Mingliang Liu writes that statistics from June 2009 indicate that at 798, in addition to a large number of galleries, several art and design institutions, and a few artists’ studios, all other businesses are stores and restaurants whose scope mainly covers books, accessories, original products (clothes), embroidery, furs, pottery, ocarinas, bondage, root carving, cheap arts, produce (food and beverage), souvenirs, etc.38 Hardly any art district can escape this destiny of being transformed into a commercial area. Dr. Kim-Wenting describes in her dissertation the same situation that Insadong Culture District faces: “At the Insadong Cultural District, the rent began to rise a decade ago, and now it is far more expensive than any of its surrounding areas. Sometimes the rent doubles or even trebles once the house changed hands.” Because of the high rents, artists and even some galleries have begun to move away from Insadong one after another. Consequently, “today’s Insadong Cultural District, inevitably, is being criticized as already having lost its original appearance and gradually reduced to a shopping street to attract tourists.”39 Coincidentally, Taiwan artist and curator Qianhui Gao introduces the situation of New York’s SOHO Art District in her A Journey to Contemporary Art, showing us the scene after its commercialization: Walking down the street from “Victoria’s Secret,” “Armani,” “Banana Republic” to the cafe with transparent glass toilet door (…), or the Dante cafe which was decorated with pictures of old Florence, SOHO has become a cultural tourist area piled up with money.40 Therefore, we can see that, from the earliest pure art district to a cultural tourist place which leads with galleries and becomes filled with all other businesses, and finally to a real commercial area with less and less art, this process of transition for 798 is almost the destiny for every art district, no matter whether it happens in China, Korea, or the U.S.A. Here we can see that in the first stage, artists were the main group of 798; galleries dominated the second stage; while in the third stage, various commercial organizations almost overwhelmed the original dream of 798. This shows us the strange but predestined relationship between artists and the art districts: that their settling revitalized the area, which led to its appreciation in a short time, house rents rose accordingly, but then they are forced to leave for another suitable place due to the high living cost and noisy environment, thereby creating another round of circulation.41 Hence, despite being the founders of 798, artists are not necessarily the ultimate residents here.



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Dr. Mingliang Liu paid much attention to this problem during his study; when mentioning this to the settlers in 798, most of them also expressed their concerns, and some even showed clear opposition. Most people have noticed that 798 has now become very vulgar, and is almost turned into a low-end tourist area with countless stores selling souvenirs.42 How should we face such a situation, and what judgment should we make on the current status and the future of 798 is the last but not least issue to be discussed in this chapter.

The existential significance of art in the postmodern context The biggest challenge for an anthropological study on art districts such as 798 is that they are in constant flux and have no stable structure, no certain model, even no fixed settlers. Rather like watching the fast-passing scenery through the window of a moving train, we cannot make a study on one particular still fragment, but are obliged to comb through the whole process for any possibility of a clear view. Around a decade ago, the artists were living right here under our eyes, but now, when coming to 798, only the sculptures in the street and the graffiti on the walls can remind us that they once lived here. 798 has now been recognized by local government as a cultural and creative industrial park, which is after all different from the definition of art district. The commercialization of 798 is a troublesome problem for Chinese modern fine art, as well as a pity for all the people who care about its future. Charting its growth, first came gatherings of artists and gallery openings, then some very artistic cafes began to appear, decorated with fine arts and exuding unique charms. These were followed by various shops and craft stores. However, we can speculate that when all artistic things are gone, this place will have lost its vitality. People will stop coming, and stores will be closed. In turn, with the disappearance of the flows of tourists, art is not going to survive either. Will the ultimate outcomes turn out to be like this? Will all the artistic stuff disappear? This question is worth exploring. Actually, it is a problem of art and commercialization, a problem of the culture industry, and a problem concerning how art should make its existence in the city. Theodor Adorno considers the culture industry a phenomenon of “de-artisticization.”43 He believes that art stands outside of the “managed society” and is the only means to negate and criticize the whole society. Therefore, art is not a commodity and can never become one. So commercial acts absolutely cannot be processed in the name of art. Art and commodity are two independent things. In my view, this concept fits the industrial age, back when professionalism and simplicity were greatly emphasized—that art can only exist in the museum or fine art gallery, or a specific urban space, purely representing ideological or aesthetic thoughts, with visitors also limited to the nobility who have artistic taste.

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However, in the post-industrial age and the information age, with the emergence of new media development of communications, human perception now is completely different. As mentioned by Dr. Kim-Wenting, the actual users of 798 and Insadong Cultural District are re-entitled as the active participants and creators of these areas. Thus, the two districts should not be considered as stationary solid physical structures, but should be comprehended as interactive spaces which contain the certain aesthetic values of the interactive art of the new era, with a completely new transferring spatial framework where constant mutual feedback occurs.44 In such spaces, participants of artistic activities are not just artists and galleries. Cafes, restaurants, clothing stores, and accessory stores are all consciously stepping closer to art, making it the air that fills the whole district. Additionally, the physical locations of most art districts are in cities; therefore, directly or indirectly, they are inevitably linked with industry. Adorno feared that the freshness, particularity, and individuality of art would be destroyed by industry, yet the integration of industry and art makes the urban space more special and attractive. Differentiation is also achieved, which instead of destroying the fine art actually helps with its development and renaissance.45 Dr. Mingliang Liu also believes that “798 is more than an artistic behavior, it is a complex of art, culture, politics, economics as well as social changes.”46 Therefore today, art is already integrated with culture, politics, and economics; it can hardly exist purely on its own. It is also difficult to study merely through artistic or aesthetic theories. To this end, the involvement of anthropology becomes especially important. Anthropological study on art of the pre-industrial period is not new to us; back at a time when art was mixed with human culture, art was therefore a compulsory course in cultural research. The topic we are discussing today is whether art can return to our daily life and public discourse, and to the era when “objects are used for conveying the truth.” Throughout history, we see that in the period of agricultural civilization, art was closely linked with the solar cycle, farming seasons, life rituals, and all kinds of celebrations; everyone was involved as artist. That was the cultural characteristic of the era. Coming to the industrial age, art was separated from life and became an object for appreciation, an occupation for genius, and could only be enjoyed by a small number of well-educated cultural elites. Spaces for art were also specific places which were isolated from everyday living, such as theaters, cinemas, concert halls, and art galleries. The emergence of today’s art district breaks this traditional fixed space, making art open to the public. Calls for public participation help art to step toward democracy and even the private spaces. People are able to choose according to their needs and preferences, and everyone can feel the space in their own way. Thus, a single space allows the coexistence of numerous places; it can be a gallery street, a shopping mall, a dating site, a wedding photography location, and a tourist spot.47 The concept of art here is no longer selling a particular product, but rather the artistic atmosphere it presents; people come not only to buy a craft or commodity, but also to enjoy the cultural space. Art seems to be becoming a part of our daily life once more—to feel it in the art districts, to sing Karaoke in the bars, as if we have returned to the age when everyone is an artist.



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We have also seen that the physical space today, which is filled with media images and mass data, is no longer the traditional one. It is a completely different experience for us who live here.48 The urban space is showing a phenomenon that the sign system and symbolic system, which originally had different properties, are now integrated with each other; the space is turning to a “field” with overlapped layers, in which various disparate, complex elements blend together, making conflicted movements. A large number of cross-movements between popular culture and art, commodity and artwork occur in today’s art world, so we cannot simply consider the industry-related art or art-related industry to be fake or counterfeit.49 Dr. Kim-Wenting wrote in her paper: Mentioning Insadong, many people believe that its function as an art district is weakening, and is descending to a fuzzy space only to meet people’s sightseeing and shopping needs. Nevertheless, still a great many artists, fine art associations, and art universities hope to host art exhibitions there. This is because “the feature of Insadong gallery is that it is the galleries’ ‘ancestor.’ In fact, ‘ancestor’ has various meanings, because of its presenting of the history and time.”50 In other words, even if its function is weakening, Insadong remains the acknowledged art district. Also, the major common ground shared by 798 and Insadong is that, in their respective countries, they are the districts where art galleries are most densely distributed. In 2013, for instance, over 260 galleries were located in 798, and Insadong had more than 170 galleries. Although faced with the overwhelming tide of commercialization, the two areas are home to the largest number of galleries in China and Korea.51 I believe that, even if the galleries have to leave due to rising rents some day in the future, their art has baptized history and that characteristic will never go away. The views stating that art and the culture industry are opposites should also be corrected. I once led a team and spent eight years in western China to study the folk art and intangible cultural heritage. We worked on more than seventy cases and found that all the intangible cultural heritage which can be integrated with art or expressed via an art form will not disappear; on the contrary, they are all well developed in our modern society with strong vitality, or else, no matter how carefully protected, they will finally fade away. It is the artistic expression that endows them with new vitality; it is also the art that fills the wide gap between tradition and modernity. In the past, tradition and modernity were considered opposites to each other—in other words, we have to first destroy the traditional local culture in order to develop the economy. But today we find that tradition is no longer a barrier to development, but actually has become the foundation and available resource for modern society’s growth. All these changes lie in the development of cultural industries. We can say that the culture industry cannot exist without art; almost all the cultural industries are associated with arts. Similarly, without the culture industry, art will always be far removed from the public and reality, popular art will no longer exist, and artistic life will

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never appear. Mr. Xiaotong Fei even thought that “a high level of culture should be art,” while the human being’s “good life is the artistic life that contains more than general material.” He believed that this is “the direction of human progress.”52 However, if we cannot bring art back to life, we can hardly achieve the dream. So today, we have to rethink the relationship between art and the culture industry. There will be two pillar industries in the postmodern society: high-tech and cultural. The emergence of the culture industry turns traditions to resources, enables it to smoothly integrate into and become a part of modern life—all these rest with the participation of arts. Hence, this is an important topic for future anthropological research. Speaking of which, some might think that I would agree with the full commercialization of 798, but in fact, like the vast majority’s point of view, I wish it to be more artistic—after all, art is the soul of this place. However, we can see that most of the time, reality is not pre-designed, it has its own path and law of development. Its next step will also be self-planned based on its own needs. I do not prefer excessive government planning on it, and also am not in favor of many scholars’ ideas. I would rather believe in the self-regulation of the society and market, as well as the creativity of the people living there. I assume that people will figure out a new way of life which best fits this new era, and the artists will find their right position in the city’s development process. During the industrial ages, artists were marginal to the life of the city. However in the future, when the city becomes a fresh landscape and brand new symbolic space, artists could be its most important workers. In the post-industrial era,

FIGURE 8.7  The abandoned factory transformed into a gallery. Photo © Fang Lili.



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as we transfer from a capitalist society to a knowledge-based one, I believe that we will need more scientists and engineers; in the meantime, more artists and designers are also needed—because human beings are always in need of a poetic living, and as a cultural space full of imagination an art district is just as qualified. Life was remote from art in the industrial ages; people only made practical products that had use value but with very little cultural connotation or symbolism. People focused more on man / machine functions and the relationship between cost and working hours; the products were all cold industrial goods with no emotional meaning. While in the agricultural ages, even a bowl, a spoon, or a table has its elaborate decorations and exquisite handicrafts—almost all the necessities of that era are works of art to us today. That’s because they were made with a soul and were endowed with cultural significance. In today’s postmodern culture the question is whether we can return to the original meaning of the world, and let our living spaces and cities be filled with art. Such spaces would not only contain our history and our culture, but also a great many new artistic creations. In the future, the artists will become the major builders of the urban landscape and environment, and the art district will not be shrinking, but constantly expanding.

Notes 1

Fei Xiaotong, Peasant Life in China (London: Routledge, 1939).

2

William F. Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).

3

[Korea] Yihu Piao, “Cassirer’s Symbolic Form and Art,” Modern Fine Arts, 7 (2003): 36. Quoted in Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District under the Cultural Context of the Post-modernism – Beijing Dashanzi Art District and Seoul Insadong,” doctoral dissertation, China Art Research Institute (2014). The reference is to Ernst Cassirer’s The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.

4

Kim-Wenting, ibid., p. 94. See also Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1974).

5

Kim-Wenting, ibid.

6

[Korea] Wuyong Lee, “Spatial Cultural Politics,” Seoul: On the Form, 2004: 4. Quoted in Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District.”

7

Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District: Field Study and Tracking under the Marketization Context,” doctoral dissertation, China Art Research Institute (2010), p. 23.

8

Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 4.

9

Minglu Gao, “From Elite to Small Man: The Many Faces of a Transitional Avant-Garde in Mainland China,” Inside Out: New Chinese Art (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1999), p. 161.

10 Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 94. 11 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,’ p. 45. 12 Ibid., p. 23.

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13 Kim-Guangyi, “Art and Politics: The National Art Movement in Korea in the 1980s,” Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities, 1 (2009): 4. 14 Lili Fang (ed.), From Heritage to Resources—Research on Western Human Resources (China Academic Press, 2010). 15 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 41. 16 Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 163. 17 Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp. 2–6. 18 Ibid., p. 5. 19 Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 172. 20 Ibid., p. 176. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., p. 189. 23 Ibid., p. 185. 24 Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (Shanghai: Yilin Press, 2000), p. 87. 25 Kim-Chengdao, “Mega-city and Digital Media: Archaeology that Strengthens Urbanization and Mint-mark,” Social and Theory, 20 (2012). Quoted in Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 177. 26 Kim-Wenting, ibid., p. 179. 27 Ibid., p. 180. 28 Ibid. 29 Daniel Bell, trans. Gao Xian et al., The Coming of Post-Industrial Society—A Venture in Social Forecasting (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1984), p. 239. 30 Ibid. 31 Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 59. 32 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 81. 33 Ibid., p. 36. 34 Lei Cheng and Qi Zhu (eds), Beijing 798 (Beijing 798 Art District Construction Management Office, 2008), p. 78. 35 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 36. 36 Lei Cheng and Qi Zhu, Beijing 798, p. 194 37 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 76. 38 Ibid., p. 97. 39 Ibid., p. 76. 40 Qianhui Gao, A Journey to Contemporary Art (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2003), p. 66. 41 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 54. 42 Ibid, page 76. 43 Theodor Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970); Aesthetic Theory [Korean translation] (Seoul: Moonji Publishing Co., 1983), p. 36. 44 Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 187.



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45 Ibid., p. 59. 46 Mingliang Liu, “Dashanzi Art District,” p. 150. 47 Kim-Wenting, “Comparative Study of Cultural Art District,” p. 189. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 110. 51 Ibid., p. 133. 52 Lili Fang, Fei Xiaotong in His Remaining Years (Yuelu Press, 2005), p. 11.

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9 Dobrak! Taking matters into their own hands Adeline Ooi

D

obrak! is an exhibition of five collaborative projects developed by artists with specialists from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, and social sciences. The collaboration project and exhibition was initiated by Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2013 and was curated by Adeline Ooi and Mella Jaarsma. The five projects in this exhibition are the results of a six-month development process between the partners in each team. The way each team chooses to work is entirely up to the collaborators; certain teams have chosen to share information and resources but produce works separately, while others have chosen to work together to produce a work as partners. The subject matter ranges from religion as a spectacle to the changing perception of tradition in batik making, from second-hand objects and markets to the precariats and “togel” (a form of illegal gambling based on number guessing) and the advent of social networking in a rural agrarian community. While collaborative projects are not without their failures, this exercise has taken the artists and their fellow collaborators to places they have never been and enabled them to do things they would otherwise not have done. In Bahasa Indonesia, the word dobrak means “to break down” or “to smash.” The act of breaking can imply negative connotations—as destructive and violent—or can be read in a positive sense as a necessary step in the process of renewal. For this project, it was the positive essence of dobrak that we adopted as the point of departure. Dobrak in this instance implies breaking with tradition, breaking down preconceived perceptions, stereotypes and boundaries. From the onset, we knew that we wanted this exhibition to break away from the conventions of a “typical” group exhibition in Indonesia, where artists were usually invited to contribute works, while curators would conveniently find a theme and title to “wrap” the show and call it a day. Mella and I knew that we wanted more; it was

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important to us that whatever project we were going to embark on, there had to be some form of meaningful engagement between us as co-curators as well as with our artists. We also wanted the project to reflect our personal interests and the areas that have informed our individual practice and / or profession: history, cultural studies, anthropology, and ethnography—the broad areas that make up the field of social science. The human condition, identity, and her surroundings have been the key themes in Mella’s artistic practice. Her earlier works were focused on her personal relationship to her environment and this later expanded into broader interests such as other cultural traditions across Indonesia and beyond. Exploring the idea of garments as symbolic and physical ways in which we negotiate group and personal identities, Mella is widely known for her elaborate costume installations created out of animal skins, horns, cocoons, camouflage, and a variety of culturally loaded materials. Over the years, her practice has also become more relational, incorporating performance or elements of performativity, as well as increased cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographers and stage productions. Meanwhile, on the other side of the divide, as curator and writer I have always been somewhat of a “straddler” in that my work has always flirted with the fields of anthropology and social studies, where I have embarked on collaborative research projects with fellow anthropologist friends on cross-border studies.

About the exhibition Dobrak highlights the collaborative processes and team work as an alternative to the individualism that is typically characteristic of the art world—the romantic assumption of the artist as a solitary genius making magic in his studio—to stress that contemporary art practice has been increasingly informed by research, fieldwork, and community-based interventions. The underpinning exhibition framework for Dobrak! was about interdisciplinary collaboration and research. In many ways, this exhibition can be considered a follow-up to “The Past—The Forgotten Time”: Six Indonesian Artists Reflect upon the History of Indonesia, 1930–1960 (2007), in which six artists were invited to revisit and interpret Indonesia’s history provided by the historians from University Gadjah Mada (UGM). While “The Past—The Forgotten Time” was generally considered a one-way transfer, from historical data to artworks, we wanted instead to create a more fluid engagement between the artist and his/her fellow collaborator in Dobrak!. In this case, the meeting point would be between art and the different areas of social sciences such as anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, and so on. To make things more challenging and “open”, we invited five artists and five researchers to pair up, determine their subject of interest, and devise their own research and working strategies to carry out their research and subsequently produce work for an exhibition



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at Cemeti Art House. We hoped that through their differing backgrounds and disciplines, their encounter with one another might inform and perhaps challenge their individual working methods, particularly their research and information gathering process. We were also interested in the way each pair would interpret the information they had gathered and creatively translate their findings as artworks for an exhibition. Would the artist end up making a typical artwork and the researcher present their data in the form of charts and graphs? We hoped that the project would lead the participants away from their typical working methods—that the researchers involved in our project would be open to their partners’ more creative and unorthodox manner of data interpretation and fieldwork and, vice versa, that the artists would accept the more structured methodology of research that is practiced in the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, or sociology as they formulate concepts of their respective projects. When we got together with the participants for brainstorming sessions during the early stages of the project development, each participant shared their personal viewpoints about research or data gathering processes with one another­: whether or not Google Image and Wikipedia could be accepted as “data” and trawling through the internet could be accepted as a form of “research.” The participants also discussed possible general areas, subjects and themes that piqued their personal interests as well as ongoing ideas and projects that certain individuals would like to carry forward, their uncertainties and concerns about how this might involve their respective partners, and possible next steps. It was clear that the success of any collaboration would rest on the communication process among team members. The negotiation, agreement and disagreement, deliberation and compromise would take place in the form of lengthy face-to-face discussions, field trips, and email exchanges, messages via different web-based platforms and mobile phones over weeks and months as each project slowly took shape. As the projects progressed, Mella and I realized also that we had adopted different curatorial approaches of our own. Hers was a more instructive if demanding approach: setting up artists with new partners and topics, and (in a way) forcing them to research and examine different perspectives (when dealing with a particular subject matter), encouraging artists and researchers to adopt new media and approaches. As a result, artist Leonardiansyah Allenda found himself indirectly paired with Dr. Pujo Semedi, from the Gadjah Mada University’s Faculty of Cultural Sciences, through his paper ”Wild Boar Hunting in Petung Kriyono”.1 Leonardiansyah embarked on an adventure to Petung Kriyono, located in the highlands of Pekalongan, close to the north coast of middle Java, and learned a few hard truths about fieldwork and the realities of this matrilineal agrarian community. Mella also thought Restu Ratnaningtyas and anthropology graduate and musician Leilani Hermiasih would make a likely match and encouraged both ladies to further explore together Leilani’s Bachelor thesis about the tradition of batik-making.2 This fruitful partnership resulted in new batik motifs and animation created by Restu and experimental music tracks by Leilani, who took the rare opportunity to interpret her findings by putting on her musician hat instead.

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As I was working with artists and researchers who were comfortable steering their own course, I found myself in the role of the facilitator, regularly checking in with each team as their simultaneous sounding board and devil’s advocate. Long-time friends Ade Darmawan and Nuraini Juliastuti joined forces and brought their mutual interest in second-hand commodities to a common ground with an unexpected twist by inviting writer Ugoran Prasad to contribute to the mix. Similarly, artist / architect Iswanto Hartono and anthropologist / video artist Aryo Danusiri—another “no-brainer” pair, who immediately expressed interest in working together when they learned of each other’s involvement in the project—presented a kitsch interpretation of a Muslim heaven through a four-channel live web camera feed. The idea for this project stemmed from Aryo’s fascination with the habib community’s long-standing presence in Jakarta. Social welfare studies researcher Budi Mulia a.k.a. Singen and Julia Sarisetiati’s interest in the precariats—influenced by Julia’s encounter with Budi Mulia, who would hang out at ruangrupa (an artists’ initiative based in Jakarta) regularly, and their lengthy discussions about his current postgraduate research—took their understanding of the precariats left of field by illustrating the uncertainties experienced by 4D gamblers (penjudi togel) in video and statistical charts as a metaphor for life’s uncertainties. I should also mention that Singen is Ade Darmawan’s elder brother. As you can see, from a social mapping perspective, the project was a tangled web of past affiliations, friendships, and kinship. Feedback and comments from the researchers

“The trajectory of what we have always thought as the afterlife of events and things” by Ade Darmawan and Nuraini Juliastuti Nuraini Juliastuti: Organising new journeys for people and objects (while procrastinating). The daily routine of selecting second-hand goods and visiting the flea market has become a part of our way to collect things. Apart from my personal interest, secondhand goods have also become, in a different way, a part of my area of research. The main topic of my doctoral research at Leiden University is music and technology. One of the main elements that came to my attention while undertaking fieldwork was how new music can be composed or created from existing music. Like a scavenger, a person searches for and collects sound (audio) products from their environment. These are then selected, modified, or processed in a particular way and transformed into new (generations of) sound products. The new sound products do not in any way sound particularly new or old. This unique characteristic became the subject for further exploration in our collaborative project.



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FIGURE 9.1  Ade Darmawan and Nuraini Juliastuti, “The trajectory of what we have always thought as the afterlife of events and things” 2013. Installation of objects (480 x 120 x 145 cm). Exhibition Dobrak! Text by Ugo Prasad. Courtesy of the artists and Cemeti Art House.

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Ade Darmawan sought to convey the production process of everyday living and human labor through the things he had found at the flea market. As he sorted through his process of categorization, patterns of living began to emerge and became clear. Ade wanted to create new narratives in the form of short stories. The stories were to be adapted from the articles we had selected from the local media. We invited Ugoran Prasad, a short story writer, to collaborate with us. Elements from the chosen articles would be displayed in a particular manner. The elements we chose to highlight in our presentation were based on our speculation of the possible direction the lives of the people and the objects from the news articles would take after the events in which they were involved had ended (and were recounted to others). The three keywords we gathered as defining points of interest in our project were “narration,” “after life” (that immediately rang in my ears like the title of Clifford Geertz’s autobiography After the Fact [1995]) and “second-hand.” This concept of using keywords refers to the emphasis on directorial possibilities in certain aspects of the life of something (an object, human life, etc). We discussed the criteria of the articles according to their significance in our work. Should they be selected from the rubric of crime, economy, politics, or culture? We also discussed which types of newspapers and magazines to source the articles from. I shopped for newspapers every morning. Our subsequent discussions revolved around whether the articles were suitable for our project and were then sent to Ugoran for him to adapt into short stories. He worked independently from Ade and I; we wanted him to follow his own thoughts and work process after reading the selected articles. We focused on the objects and people described in each event in each article. The series of events conjured certain moods and feelings, and we allowed ourselves to become immersed in them and get lost, so to speak. This immersion helped us to come up with the most appropriate form of presentation. The idea: to make a model of a city as the site where the events from all the articles we had chosen came from our conversations about the objects that were described in the articles. We encountered an interesting thing in this project: each time we were asked to explain the events that we displayed in our city model, people thought we were making up stories.

“Kitmir” by Iswanto Hartono and Aryo Danusiri Aryo Danusiri: We talked a lot about issues surrounding urbanity, religion, and the working-class youth in Jakarta. Together we visited several important sites of the habib3 community in Jakarta, such as Tanah Abang and Kampung Pulo Jatinegara. We met a number of key people and listened to stories about how mawlid4 practices have been passed on, altered, and developed throughout history. I showed Iswanto a video work that I was working on at the time called “The Leaving,” which captured the visual aesthetics of



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FIGURE 9.2  Iswanto Hartono and Aryo Danusiri, “Kitmir,” 2013. CCTV cameras, video projections, flat screens, plastic plants, flowers, toys, variable dimension. Exhibition Dobrak! Courtesy of the artists and Cemeti Art House.

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FIGURE 9.3  Aryo Danusiri, “The observance” (study for “Kitmir”), 2013. Digital photograph. Exhibition Dobrak! Courtesy of the artist and Cemeti Art House. the crowd at a mawlid assembly—a homage to the first depiction in cinematic history of the working class, “Leaving the Factory” (1895) by the Lumière Brothers. This video got us to think deeper about the people (who participated in the mawlid): are they merely the “consequence” of popular religious practice, or are they in fact the aim? If they are the result of popular practice, then what kind of cultural technology had been employed to choreograph mawlid observances to become a form of spectacle (based on the understanding of Benjamin’s notion of aestheticization of politics)? This is where the broadcast message from a particular habib with a large assembly in Jakarta became relevant to our project. His message compared Kitmir’s loyalty from the tale of Ashabul Kahfi5 with the loyalty between a student and his teacher. I immediately sent this broadcast to Iswanto and we agreed that this would be the launching point of our artwork. The first time I was involved in an artistic research project was with the research group Global Prayers in Berlin in 2011. Consisting of artists and researchers, this group began by discussing various stereotypical dichotomies between art and social science. On one hand, art will never be considered a science—merely egocentric expressions—and due to its ambiguous nature, art can only be considered illustrations of knowledge. On the other hand, social science can be considered dry reports that are ineffectively boring and merely focused on data collection. For a long time research has been a part of (contemporary) artistic practice, however what kind of research has



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been conducted? What variety of research methodology can be exchanged here? How is social science limited in the practice of “visualization”? What can be learnt (about visualization) from contemporary art? This group was an oasis for me because they spoke enthusiastically about urban faith (an under-developed area of study in anthropology and religious study) and we also discussed matters I faced in my exploration of visual anthropology. Every time I talk about this issue, I am reminded of the classic article by David MacDougall, a senior visual anthropologist who spoke of the marginalization of “the visual” in anthropology as a science dominated by written text practices.6 But therein lies the challenge for visual anthropologists (now referred to as “sensory ethnographers”): how to produce anthropological knowledge using technological media with the aim “to conjugate art’s negative capability with an ethnographic attachment to the flux of life,” as the work of Lucien Castaing-Taylor has been characterized.7 In my collaboration with Iswanto, I discovered an interdisciplinary zest. Iswanto is also a “border crosser” due to his background in architecture and we share interests in issues of urbanity, religion, and technology.

“Clouded Vision of a Dyeing Tradition” by Leilani Hermiasih and Restu Ratnaningtyas Leilani Hermiasih: In the batik producing district of Giriloyo in Imogiri, Bantul, Yogyakarta, there is a group of elderly batik makers or “grandmothers” called Bima Sakti. During my research in Giriloyo, I purposely chose to stay in the house of Bu Hartinah, the head of this group, as it seems that Bima Sakti is the only group left in the district that still specializes in the production of fine quality, traditional hand-drawn Yogyakartanese batik. I found evidence of change in the social system and preservation values of traditional Yogyakartanese batik, not only in the actions and decisions of the local batik makers, but also by other batik makers and batik merchants outside of Giriloyo who are still connected to them. Yogyakartanese batik is no longer strictly “fine” hand-drawn batik depicting traditional motifs of the Kraton (royal palace) in shades of brown, white, and indigo. Nowadays, it can be “rough” batik with traditional motifs in a mixture of colors. This change in style is in part influenced by changes in the batik makers’ economic situation as well as due to the way batik is being used. From the perspective of the makers, those who used to consider batik as a secondary source of income have now made it their primary economic focus. They have become more money-oriented and less concerned about the quality of their product. Meanwhile, clothing trends favoring ready-made pieces have led consumers to feel uncomfortable about spending money on an expensive length of batik (kain panjang) that would be cut into smaller pieces and sewn together.

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FIGURE 9.4  Restu Ratnaningtyas, “Merantai / Chaining #1,” 2013. Batik on cotton (511 x 300 cm). Exhibition Dobrak! Restu Ratnaningtyas in collaboration with Leilani Hermiasih Suyenaga. Courtesy of the artists and Cemeti Art House.

Ever since I began to take an interest in Bima Sakti’s batik techniques, I have had a strong desired to show off their work to my grandmother who was a batik merchant in Panembahan during her younger days. I deliberately chose a scarf fringed with the “sungging” motif in an attempt to impress her. However, my hope of impressing my grandmother was dashed when she saw the Sido Asihblidhak scarf and declared that the batik pattern was “not fine enough.” To prove her point, she showed me her collection of batik she had produced in the past. The patterns were far tidier and a lot more complex, and the lines were so fine. It turned out I was the one who was astonished. Batik which is considered “fine quality” by today’s standards is not up to scratch according to the batik makers from the past. What will this become in the future? During our research, we visited batik collectives and the batik market of Beringhardjo. After the visits, we realized that we were trying to cover too many topics (changing economic patterns of batik makers, comparisons between printed batik with handdrawn or stamped batik, the sustainability of fine quality hand-drawn batik, the personal lives of batik makers, etc.). We eventually decided to limit our investigations to questioning the nature of this “tradition,” as the position of batik as a cultural heritage is being promoted increasingly in present-day Indonesia. Yet, on the other hand, its very existence and embodiment has evolved with the influx of new influences. The question of what constitutes



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“tradition” can also be addressed in other cultural forms, such as music, dance, food, etc., which then widens the focus of our research. After consultation and discussions with the curators and Restu, I realized that an art form (any art form) does not need to be too rigid in conveying a message. It needs to allow space for the audience to make their own interpretations. From my perspective as a researcher, this certainly does not conform to the norms of investigative procedures.

“Sharing Strategies of Uncertainty” by Budi Mulia and Julia Sarisetiati Budi Mulia a.k.a. Singen: Developing (in)security The primary aspect of globalization (that has affected our mindset and action) can be summarized in one word: “commodification.” Everything is treated as a commodity to be bought and sold; subject to the mechanism of market forces, with prices determined by supply and demand; without effective institutional control (the ability to object or regulate). Commodification is present in all aspects of life—family, the education system, film, art, labor unions, social welfare policies, unemployment, disability, society, and politics. People must be able to sell themselves in the available labor market. This has led to the emergence of a vulnerable class of people that has proliferated in cities across the world; a class which, for various reasons, has been overlooked or excluded from the market; a class that is unable to transform itself into a commodity for the market. For these people, insecurity is a constant in their everyday living. How does this vulnerable class deal with such conditions? According to our findings, those who are able to survive are the ones who have managed to create their own market. It is interesting to see the “tricks” people have employed to overcome these situations, as place (space), time, and technology have become increasingly smaller / tighter / more out of reach for them, becoming so marginalized to the point that they have less and less space to operate. Place (space): increasingly exclusive; available strategic spaces are ever decreasing. When place (space) becomes a commodity, it has clearly fallen under the control of large capital owners for the continued circulation of their capital. Yet, parking attendants around Pondok Cina Station8 are able to work around their limited space so as to fit in as many motorcycles as possible while allowing unhindered entry and exit. The laundry workers also cope with less space to hang their washing within a small space. Time: becoming tighter and accelerating faster—time is money. Nevertheless, street vendors still manage to push their carts and their equipment to work and back home, set up in the afternoon, unpack late at night.

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FIGURE 9.5  Julia Sarisetiati and Budi Mulia, “Sharing Strategies of Uncertainty,” 2013. Video still, single channel video. Exhibition Dobrak! Courtesy of the artists and Cemeti Art House.

Technology: becoming more inaccessible. When knowledge and technology become commodities (yet again), they become accessible only to certain groups of (moneyed) people. This implies that many people are unable to access knowledge and technology, and certain aspects of knowledge and technology will become obsolete or rarely used, not because they are impractical, but because they are no longer trendy. In place of a proper bottle opener, nearly every street vendor who sells drinks uses a nail (slanted at an angle) as a makeshift bottle opener instead. Therefore, the real challenge (for this vulnerable class) lies in how they are able to build a world within an increasingly confined space, where time is accelerating, and with limited access to technology and knowledge. The “togel” players are the most extreme example of people who are courageously building their own world. Togel is a form of illegal gambling based on number guessing. It seems that the (winning) figures correspond to the lottery draws in Singapore and Malaysia (although it is unclear where these figures actually come from and there has been no proof of their validity up until now). Every district in Jakarta has a bookie who collects and sends the money to a bigger bookie, who holds a larger pool of money. The sum of money that circulates in these larger pools is unclear and remains a mystery, in the sense that nobody actually knows. If someone asks this question, the reply is: “I’ll deposit it with a bigger bookie.” For many people from the lower class, togel represents hope: “There’s something



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to wait for … life is no longer empty.” They believe they can guess which numbers will come up and that it will be their luck telling. They make up their own formulae and these are usually kept confidential; there are those who believe in nature’s codes, or base their predictions on their dreams, etc. We interviewed four togel players and documented their respective methods of predicting numbers that would come up in the next day’s draw. We asked them to “seek out” the figures and invited them to consult as togel specialists, to come up with numbers for us to buy in the next game. We wanted to see how they determined the future (or faced uncertainty) by developing their own discourse, their personal knowledge, their individual strategies.

“The Art of Speed” by Pujo Semedi and Leonardiansyah Allenda Leonardiansyah Allenda: During my two-week stay in Petung, I attempted to find evidence to support the facts that I had read in Pujo Semedi’s essay. I decided to stay with the local people and participate in their daily activities and routines. Within a few days, I began to realize that things were rather different from what I had imagined. I started to question how viewpoints affect an investigation. How does one create a framework and come up with a coherent essay? How do viewpoints arise and when do they become facts? At first, I wanted to disclaim and disagree with the gist of Pujo Semedi’s research. In the end, I didn’t wish to prolong this difference of opinion. Clearly, Pak Pujo’s research had been based on his observations over a number of years ago. Perhaps I hadn’t had the time to grasp what he meant, even though I instinctively trusted his theories. In a way, I also felt that questioning these facts would restrict other possibilities to develop in my observations. I observed the contrasting mindset between the young people and the older generations. The complexity of this change is due to many interrelated matters which were first triggered by easy road access between Petung and Pekalongan, the relatively greater ease with which people could now own motorbikes, and later, the developments in communication and information technology in the area. I tried to devise a workshop (motorcycle modification as a means of connecting with the local environment) with the aim to interact and exchange viewpoints with the locals. Although it is unlikely that this would bring about any changes, I hoped it would trigger some reflection. The plan didn’t go well, as my social relationship with the Petung community hadn’t yet “matured.” I tried to interact in another way, through making photo collages on Facebook, a very casual activity. This worked quite well and was instant—I began to understand that instant interaction was the best way to communicate with the Petung teenagers. They became less withdrawn and more eager to talk with me.

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FIGURE 9.6  Leonardiansyah Allenda, “The New Sun (Matter of Knowing),” 2013. Hologram stickers, audio and video projection, variable dimensions. Exhibition Dobrak! Courtesy of the artist and Cemeti Art House.

My exploration of visual communication media was prompted by the interaction problems I had experienced. I realized that I was part of this superfast communication culture. Through the Facebook project, I began to understand how this medium of communication fits very well with the fast lifestyle. I didn’t need to be in Petung, trying hard to get to know the people directly. I didn’t need to waste energy getting there and living there. And, most importantly, I didn’t need to fear being an outsider or the risks involved in “real” physical social life. I was able to put myself in the position of the Petung youth; I had begun to understand one dimension of my observations about the changing mindset that was happening there. I learned, for example, how the speed of their Facebook status updates was inversely proportional to their physical activities; they confessed and complained a lot about their surroundings, family problems, etc. Interaction in a two-dimensional culture was the crux of my project. Nontheless, the idea for “The New Sun (Matter of Knowing)” grew out of my “real” (physical) experience in the countryside of Petung Kriyono. The natural conditions were amazing. What I define as real is to “see” with all the five senses. The body is the supreme medium for understanding the world and in order to truly experience Petung Kriyono, rather than apprehend it only through the writings of Pujo Semedi, my body must be present. If my interpretation of “real experience” is put in the context of a



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FIGURE 9.7  Leonardiansyah Allenda, “Untitled,” 2013. Fieldwork documentation at Petung Kriyono village, Indonesia. Exhibition Dobrak! Courtesy of the artist and Cemeti Art House.

changing mindset of the young people of Petung, then the light source of the sun is replaced by the LED display of a mobile phone.

Conclusion In the end, Dobrak! can be defined as everyone’s willingness to subject their individual practice, methodologies, and interests to uncharted and at times uncomfortable territories. The works presented in the exhibition offered unusual yet refreshing interpretations on different subjects and themes that reflect the diverse layers and contexts that make up the everyday Indonesian reality. A number of the works expressed a fascination with “new” communities (i.e., other than the participant’s own) at differing locations. Through the works, we were also able to distinguish different models of the collaboration: partnership, collective action, participation, and co-operation, as each team revealed different methods of selforganization, the way work had been structured among team members. So, do we consider the end results in the exhibition merely a resumé of the research, or does it have the potential to develop into something else—a new project perhaps for the artists?

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We hope that this brief experience of working together and the exploration of new topics have inspired the participants’ individual practices along the way and opened their minds to possibilities of data translation—to transfer something oral or textbased into a visual experience, as well as to communicate one’s findings to the public in an engaging and entertaining manner. There is no way of determining how these factors will affect one’s practice in the long run; it may be a one-off event for certain individuals, or it may spark future ongoing collaborations—who knows? What is clear is that Dobrak! has taken us to places we have never been and enabled us to do things that we would otherwise not have done.

Notes 1

Pujo Semedi, ‘Wild Boar Hunting in Petung Kriyono’, Humaniora 22 (1) (February 2010), pp. 1–13 (https://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/index.php/jurnal-humaniora/article/view/1334 (accessed 9 October 2016).

2

Leilani Hermiasih, Ana Rega Ana Rupa: Perubahan Sosial dan Pelestarian Nilai-nilai Batik Yogyakarta (The Price of Quality: Social Change and Preservation of the Values of Yogyanese Batik) 2012, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia.

3

A member of the Muslim caste said to be direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad.

4

Celebration of the birth of the prophet Muhammad.

5

A Qur’anic miracle story in which a dog (Kitmir) accompanies a group of young men who take refuge in a cave for 309 years.

6

David MacDougall, “The Visual in Anthropology,” in Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy (eds), Rethinking Visual Anthropology (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1997).

7

In a biographical note on the award of his Simon Guggenheim Fellowship 2012, see http://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/lucien-castaing-taylor/ (accessed 1 February 2016).

8

A train station in Depok, Jakarta.

10 Turning targets in Indonesia and beyond: Mella Jaarsma and Adeline Ooi in conversation with Arnd Schneider Mella Jaarsma, Adeline Ooi, and Arnd Schneider

AS  What specific challenges does contemporary Indonesian art face in Indonesia and globally? MJ, AO  In Indonesia all the significant art spaces that contribute to the discourse about contemporary art and its developments are private initiatives: private museums from collectors and artists, alternative and artist-run spaces, commercial galleries, art foundations, archives, research initiatives, and NGOs. The biggest challenge we face is to collaborate with the government, to advocate the importance of art to the government and the public. Related to this is the issue of how to build a sustainable art infrastructure equally divided over the islands of the archipelago in which also the government develops a vision and supports their development. In global terms, most of the art practices in Indonesia relate to specific local issues and political, social, and environmental reality and circumstances. The challenges are how to communicate and place these specific locally related artworks or projects to a wider audience. The most successful Indonesian artists are the ones that can communicate their work to a wider audience, without losing their locally related involvement. What is interesting in observing the latest developments is that the art world in Indonesia, with the lack of an art establishment, appeals to many foreign curators and artists, attracted also by its freedom of finding different formats and functions of art with little burden of art history and conventional art institutions.

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AS  What is the status of Cemeti Art House in the contemporary art world of Indonesia, and in a global context, and how does it relate to other institutions in the art world?1 MJ, AO  In 2013 Cemeti Art House celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary with several events called “Turning Targets.” These twenty-five years have brought us diverse challenges and developments. When we started in 1988, the term contemporary art did not exist yet in Indonesia, and there were no curators. We grew up together with the artists, art workers, and curators, and at Cemeti we changed our tactics and targets as the time evolved. Cemeti has existed through several eras. The changes brought along by each era and work with different artists and generations have also changed the focus of Cemeti over the years. When we started in 1988 our goal was to create a space for artists to meet and exhibit their work. The flow of creative energy kept us going: looking at what was happening, to learn from it, and respond and develop projects relevant to the conditions in Indonesia. The way to survive was to stay low profile and relate to local circumstances. Our exhibitions and projects were connected to the local public in a fast-changing society, while at the same time we brought information to the international art world. In 1999 we moved to a new venue, a larger place with many more possibilities. We changed from Cemeti Contemporary Art Gallery into Cemeti Art House hoping the name would capture the wide range of activities that we wanted to realize. What we did related to the possibilities offered by this space; we could work with curators and do interdisciplinary projects. During this period, Cemeti as an alternative art space got critically questioned in some local art communities. We became valued as an established institution, not alternative enough any more for some artists. At the same time, art collectors invented the stamp “ABC—Asal Bukan Cemeti” (“as long as it is not from Cemeti”) to distinguish (sellable) Indonesian artists from “Cemeti Artists.” The artists on view at Cemeti were not categorized as mainstream enough, but when contemporary “Cemeti” artists started to enter the art market in 2008, the distinction between “alternative” and “mainstream” began to blur. Nowadays, Cemeti is not seen as the ultimate alternative space any more, and we do not need to break through conventions because there are other art communities and spaces in place that serve that purpose. At the same time, formal institutions in Indonesia, such as government-supported modern and contemporary art museums, are absent. The decision makers and inventors in the art world are all from the private sector, including the artists, independent curators, art workers, and collectors. The art scene in Indonesia seems to exist independently from the grand continuum of conventional art history, because art in Indonesia has not been formally institutionalized. As a result art is diverse and comes in endless forms and with different purposes. One of Cemeti’s aims is pushing the creative borders of Indonesian artists— which means to professionalize artists, to bring them further along their careers by promoting and guiding them through their creative processes and recommending



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them for further studies, residencies, and exhibitions in other places and countries. We have also been trying to create awareness of the different forms and functions of the arts, to expand networks to reach wider audiences and communities, and advocate the importance of the arts to the public and (government) institutions. We have used art as a tool for educational developments in Indonesian society, among many other projects. Although we do many projects that focus on the creative process and development of the artists with strong public involvement, we believe in the strength of the artwork itself and its autonomous role of forwarding a meaning, to educate, to amuse, to inspire and confront. Art has different agendas, which are probably wider than we can imagine. It brings us to something that we haven’t thought about or experienced before, outside our regular social, educational, and religious standards. Art is able to give us alternatives and questions. The strength of art lies in finding a way to create a context and essence. AS  How does Cemeti’s work relate then to the specific Indonesian context? MJ, AO Visual arts have played a significant role in the national development of different Asian countries during the last decades. In Indonesia, the arts have contributed to public discourse on social, political, and educational issues and have reflected on identity and democracy. At the time when Cemeti was founded in 1988, our mission was to link artists to an international scene. During the Suharto New Order regime that ended in 1998 art works that we exhibited at Cemeti often commented on political and social circumstances. When Suharto fell in 1998, the era of reform—Reformasi—swept across the country. During this period the art that emerged was often educational, community-based, and liberating. A boom in critical and conceptually based art prompted capacity-building initiatives and encouraged new perspectives on history. This gave new content to personal, local, and global reflections. This period fostered diversity, critical thinking, and experimental art, and artists generally felt linked to the larger social and political movements for change. At the same time, more and more young Indonesian artists participated in international events. Starting in 2008, the Indonesian contemporary art scene experienced an unprecedented market boom. During this period Cemeti began its residency program to strengthen artistic processes and rethink art’s relevance. The strength of the market acts as a lighthouse for the welfare of artists, however market capitalism also makes oligopolistic demands; it does not always provide adequate space for the development of the arts. AS  The Cuban art critic and curator Gerardo Mosquera coined the expression “art from here,” characterizing art produced by artists and their collaborators outside the dominant Euro-American circuits, and yet referencing international, global discourses and influences. How do Indonesian contemporary artists define their positions in this respect?

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MJ, AO  The most important projects that we initiated have dealt with the search for the relevance of art related to specific time frames and conditions in Indonesian society. For example, the project Out of the Box reflected on the undemocratic (1997) and The Past—The Forgotten Time on the rewriting of history (2006). In the recent Dobrak! project (2013)—featured in Chapter 9 of this volume—artists were paired up with anthropologists and sociologists to do research and visually represent their findings. In the one-year-long project Pseudopartisipatif (2013–14) artists from diverse disciplines were challenged to investigate in and research on other communities and art practices. As part of the the “Turning Targets” program, a Young Curators Forum was formed together with a Visual Art Management Forum. These initiatives were an outcome of several focus group discussions held in 2012, involving different generations of artists, curators, and critics, who brought about an understanding that the most urgent issue in Indonesian’s art infrastructure today is capacity building of the art workers and sustainable funding. The profession of curating in Indonesia has so far been developed by self-taught individuals, although often with a background in art studies, philosophy, communication, social science, or political and anthropological studies. The curators can still be counted on one hand, and the field is ruled by the few. Young artists wish to be curated by established curators in their rush for fame. Consequently, the voice of this generation has yet to be heard. The young artists are not truly represented by writers and critics as a part of the same community. Beginning curators have few chances to develop. We worked with Alia Swastika to conduct the Young Curators Forum and she held several workshops through the year working with fifteen young curators, resulting in some interesting projects, such as “1 x 25 Hours” by Mitha Budhyarto. The Visual Art Management Forum reflected on the importance of art initiatives by creating a platform for exchange, looking into possibilities for future education and art management training, and to strengthen national and international networks. The Visual Art Management Forum had participation from thirty-six art organizations from nine cities across Java. One of the main concerns raised at the symposium was the need for a regeneration of the art infrastructures in Indonesia. With very little government involvement, the developments in the art scene depend on private initiatives, and people who are all self-taught and self-skilled. Like Cemeti, most initiatives are founded by artists that represent a first generation of progressive art infrastructure in Indonesia. Despite the seemingly vibrant art scene in Yogyakarta, we experience challenges in finding sustainable ways to hand over the work to further develop art infrastructure in Indonesia. A key concern for the future of the arts is how the existing art institutions will succeed in transmitting knowledge, experience, and passion to the next generation, while we are experiencing a shortage of systematic, indeed systemic support from the academic world and the government. Related to the organic coming and going of art hubs, we all struggle with the same problems and questions about how to sustain and pass these on—with their specific ethos—to the next generation. How best can we convey our knowledge, passion, sense of belonging, and involvement?



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And is it necessary to continue? Is it enough only to inspire members of the next generation to find their own way? We argue that as long as there are no public government institutions for the arts that provide a sustainable art infrastructure, there will be a dependency on the alternative in the form of private art organizations. In this capacity, private art organizations thus have a responsibility to fulfil and their network is of great importance. Networking and alternative education systems are important means to contribute to capacity building, which has already been a main concern for the Kelola Foundation, for example. In previous years the arts have depended on foreign funding. Recently, considerable efforts have been made to involve the Indonesian government in the funding and support of the arts and its existing infrastructures such as archives, residencies, biennales, and research projects. It seems as though we are entering a new era, in which the government cannot avoid the importance of art practices and creative developments as part of the social and economic developments. AS  How common is it for artists and anthropologists to collaborate and what notions of collaboration do they adopt? MJ, AO  Anthropologists often collaborate with the artists, first for their research and knowledge in providing research materials, second as a discussion partner (curator), and third as a colleague for developing materials and art production together. With Dobrak! we tried to combine all three ways of collaborating. AS  What does the notion of collaboration for you consist of, between curators, artists and anthropologists, and between artists and anthropologists? MJ, AO As a curator or program designer at Cemeti, we always think about the benefits for the artists and other people involved, as well as for the public. We always hope to put artists as well as the public on another footing—in other words, to create projects in which both artists and public are taken out of their regular path. What is interesting to see is how the people involved in Dobrak! have changed their art practice and how collaboration in this project influenced their subsequent work. AS  How did you choose the artists and anthropologists for Dobrak! and what were the criteria? MJ, AO  We were interested in anthropologists who researched interesting subjects or were already doing overlapping practices with the arts (such as anthro-film, anthrophoto, anthro-music, anthro-art projects). We also wanted people from different backgrounds and at different stages of their career, ranging from just graduated, doing Ph.D., to professor. Similarly, the artists that were chosen came from diverse backgrounds as well. Some had never collaborated like this before (Restu, Leo) and some had done collaborative projects but not so directly with anthropologists researching a certain topic together.

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AS  What was the reaction to Dobrak! a) in the Indonesian art world, b) among academics (especially anthropologists), and c) among the general public? MJ, AO  The reactions were very positive; it is often spoken about as a reference and its format is used as a sample for further projects in other institutions. More anthropologists became artists and there is more frequent contact between the two. AS  Have there been similar art-anthropology collaborations, and what potential do you see for such future interdisciplinary collaborations in Indonesia? MJ, AO  Not in the same format, but yes, there are still collaborations, and we can see their influence also in the Jogja Biennale and Jakarta Biennale, because of the interest in interdisciplinary and community-based practices.

Note 1

The answer to this question is a revised version of a text we first published as “Turning Targets: 25 Years of Cemeti Art House” (Yogyarkata: Cemeti Art House, 2013).

11 Art and anthropology: Portrait of the object as Filipino Almira Astudillo Gilles

Introduction Anthropological research, in studying material culture, involves reconstruction and representation. Artistic creation is likewise engaged, and both work on the premise that an ethnographic object is incomplete, and that the “archive” of that object is open and ongoing. In this chapter I will provide the background and personal reflections on the project Art and Anthropology: Portrait of the Object as Filipino, concentrating on this intersection between art and anthropology with a goal of enacting the creation of meaning or knowledge by re-engaging with ethnographic objects. Focusing on both the process of art creation and its outcome, five painters from the Philippines and five Filipino Americans from Chicago created art that portrayed their cultural identity and relationship to an ethnographic object. The impetus for the project was a collection of over 10,000 Philippine ethnographic objects in storage at the Field Museum, Chicago. The majority of these were collected in the early 1900s by anthropologists, and some were donated by American servicemen and private collectors. More recently, John Terrell, the Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology at the Field Museum, conceived the notion of co-curation,1 which allows a shared stewardship with original producers and users of archeological and ethnographic materials. Art and Anthropology: Portrait of the Object as Filipino is inspired by the notion of co-curation, but also goes beyond it in its examination of the specific construct of cultural identity. The question of “What or who is Filipino” is asked of the members of two contemporary groups, Filipinos in the Philippines and Filipino Americans in Chicago, and the results of this dialogue are then shared with the public. Unlike co-curation, the nexus shifts from the anthropologist asking “Who are you?” to Filipinos asking themselves “Who are we?”

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The project After consultation with the Philippine Consulate General in Chicago, the project team, consisting of Field Museum staff, decided that choosing a non-governmental institution as the Philippine partner would be the most efficient way to complete the project. It was also decided that a smaller pool of artist applicants, rather than a national one, would parallel the pool in Chicago. The Erehwon Center for the Arts, a non-profit arts and culture organization in Quezon City, the Philippine capital, was chosen because it was already working with a diverse network of artists. The Erehwon Center then assembled an exploratory team consisting of officers of the organization, several artists-in-residence, and an art historian. In my capacity as project director I chose the members of the jury for each location. For Chicago, the jurors included an officer of the Philippine Consulate in Chicago, an arts professor, a medical doctor who was also a musician and composer, a staff of an Illinois politician, and a Field Museum exhibitions staff. In the Philippines, jurors included a journalist, a professional photographer, an officer of Erehwon Art Center who is also a painting conservator, an artist from the National Museum of the Philippines, and a humanities professor. Since the Philippine jury met before the American jury, the former decided on the following criteria, in order of importance: depth of meaning, visual impact, technical skill (of which rendering skills was an important component), and experience in mural or large painting production and in the use of acrylic pigments. Jury decisions were based on a portfolio of five submissions and an essay. The Filipino artists chosen were all male, self-employed as professional artists (one taught at the university as well), and ranged in age from late twenties to forties. The Chicago group had three females and two males, ranged from twenties to early fifties, and all but one held other jobs, in addition to their art practice. The artists and their works traveled to and from the Philippines and Chicago (home of the Field Museum of Natural History which houses 10,000 Philippine artifacts in storage). In addition to individual paintings, two collaborative paintings were produced by all ten artists: Art in Plenty in the Philippines, and Deconstructing “Filipino” in Chicago. In order to gain an intimate familiarity with ethnographic objects, all artists visited collections in the Philippines and Chicago prior to the creation of individual and collaborative works. In separate groups, they visited the National Museum and the Ayala Museum in the Philippines and the vaults of the Field Museum in Chicago. As project director I suggested that they take photographs and do studies of the artifacts, but were not required to actually portray these artifacts in their works. The artists were allowed to create in the medium of their choice for individual works, but acrylic was to be used for the collaborative painting. Two Chicago artists did not usually work with pigments, but their applications demonstrated acceptable drafting ability. All artists agreed to use acrylic for the large paintings. The Chicago artists met with me to discuss the concept for the Field Museum painting. Most of them were second and third generation Filipino Americans, and



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two had not yet visited the Philippines. Feeling that their ties to the Philippines were tenuous and not represented in their art practice, they decided on the title, Art in a Vacuum. The Filipino artists likewise met as a group, along with myself, Erehwon officers, and an art historian, to brainstorm about the concept of the Erehwon painting. The art historian moderated the meeting, and he coined the title, Art in Plenty, in counterpoint to Art in a Vacuum. They chose to fill the canvas with photorealistic images of artifacts. Leadership for the blueprint for the large painting to be created in the Philippines was assigned to the Philippines-based artists, and the blueprint for the large painting to be created at the Field Museum was delegated to the Filipino-American artists.

Online collaboration, first segment A Facebook page was created to serve as a forum for dialogue among the artists. However, it soon became apparent that contributions to the Facebook page would be unequal and intermittent. A blueprint for the Field Museum painting was created by the Chicago artists on July 30, 2015, despite the fact that the American segment of the project (October 30, 2015) would occur after the Philippine one (August 29, 2015). Some of the Philippine artists felt that art creation should be organic, and they were hesitant to present a design for the Philippine painting. In order to hasten the

FIGURE 11.1  Study of Erehwon collaborative painting, rendered by Jason Jacobe Moss (Philippines). Photo © Almira Astudillo Gilles.

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production of a blueprint, a younger Filipino artist took the initiative of urging his fellow artists to work on a study, after consulting with the “leader” whom they had chosen. Several studies for the Erehwon large painting were presented, but there was no formal acceptance of a final design. One version, which the artist designer called a gestalt composition, showed floating Philippine artifacts in the foreground. The ancestral Philippine boat (balanghay) was later added in the background. All artists were requested to post studies of artifacts that they intended to paint, in order to avoid duplication, but very few did so. Although the Chicago artists had voiced concerns to me about not having a final design prior to their travel, they had not publicly expressed this on Facebook. As project director I visited each Chicago artist to view their work and interview them, prior to their departure for the Philippines. The works were at various stages, from the conceptualization stage to near completion. Likewise, I requested to see images of individual Filipino works.

Painting the mural in the Philippines Prior to the arrival of the Chicago artists in the Philippines, Jason Jacobe Moss and Emmanuel Robles Garibay (who acted as the informal leader) started work on the painting. Each artist was to paint a certain number of artifacts, and they were to select photographs as guides for these realistic renditions. It was decided that the objects would be grouped according to geographic origin. The lead Filipino artist posted reminders about depth, foreshortening, overlapping, balance, scale, and size variations. By the time the other Filipino artists joined the two, the background and several objects had already been painted. In fact, when the Chicago artists started arriving in the Philippines, contributions by the Filipinos were almost finished. The artists worked when their schedules permitted, although about seven usually worked together at one time. The Chicago artists felt that they had little input into the overall design of the painting, but this was not a major issue because they had been told that the Filipino artists would take charge of the Philippine painting. However, some Chicago artists were a little concerned about painting photorealistic images, since their individual works did not reflect that style, and one Chicago artist had requested that a Filipino improve an image that he had started. The Filipino artist had informed the project director about that request, which was not approved, because the director felt that each artist should be responsible for his or her own work. Despite instructions about appropriate regional placement of the artifact, several objects were not correctly placed in the painting. The exhibit opening was held on August 29, 2015, at the Erehwon Center for the Arts in Quezon City. The exhibition included ten individual works and the large collaborative painting. The individual contributions consisted of different media: paper collage, oil, acrylic, and mixed.



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FIGURE 11.2  Finished collaborative work, “Art in Plenty.” Acrylic on canvas (7 x 28 ft). Erehwon Center for the Arts, Quezon City, Philippines. Photo courtesy of Erehwon Center for the Arts and Almira Astudillo Gilles. On the day of the exhibit, prior to ribbon-cutting, I called a meeting of all artists to discuss the upcoming large painting at the Field Museum, Chicago. The artists were asked to produce a study, and the Chicago artists argued that they had already created one, months ago, which was shared online. The Filipino artists did not approve of the design, and a discussion of alternative designs commenced. No design was formally accepted at the meeting, and it was agreed that discussion would continue online after the Chicago artists returned home. During the exhibit, I was approached by an artist who had withdrawn his application because he felt that his stature and experience should have guaranteed his participation in the project. He admonished me about my choice of jurors, and expressed that the jurors should have been art critics. This person believed that only people with formal art credentials were qualified to select participants for an international project, in order to showcase Philippine art of high quality to the world. After the exhibit, some officers of Erehwon and several Filipino and Chicago artists expressed dissatisfaction with the large painting. They felt that it look unfinished, was not visually interesting, and that the dispersed objects were not tied together in a coherent way. The ten artists were called to a meeting to discuss these issues, but attendance at this meeting was not complete, and was dominated by the Chicago artists. The attending artists decided on a remedy, and modified the painting accordingly. One Filipino artist remarked that this painting was “a rehearsal” for the Field Museum painting to take place later that year.

Online collaboration, segment two The Chicago artists decided to stick with their original design. Facebook, Chicago artist 1, October 1, 2015: The filam52 have met recently and we discussed the concept of the art exhibit and the mural as “Portrait of the Object as Filipino.” We looked over our master design

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and discussed how each object we chose has a personal narrative describing each of our Filipino identities. We’ve narrowed it down to one object per artist. We have taken some artifacts out of the design and can scale and move images on the design to incorporate the Phil5’s ideas. We are asking that each Phil5 pick one object that can narrate their personal story of their Filipino identity. You could add a character or narrate the object itself like Leo’s (Aguinaldo) screaming bulul.3 Let us know where you envision it to go on the master design. The beauty of this mural is that there is not just ONE Filipino identity, and that we’ve discovered how each person has their own perception of their Filipino identity and that we can show that together in one mural collaboration, where each artists idea is respected. I also noticed through our personal stories of the objects that we also began sharing more stories of how those objects also relate to us. This will provide a more enriched perception of the Filipino identity with 10 different artists’ viewpoints / objects / stories. Privately, the Filipinos expressed their disinterest in the design presented by the Chicago artists. They felt that it was too literal an interpretation of Filipino culture and identity. They complained that the studies were simplistic renditions of artifacts, and that the overall design did not have a coherent message but was merely a recreation of objects. A lively discussion ensued online about both the overall design and certain elements. Colonialism, mixed ethnicity, and identity proved to be contentious issues, but the Chicago artists were more outspoken than the Filipinos. Facebook, Chicago artist 2, October 3, 2015: Perhaps it ([the] Field [Museum] painting) can be called “Art in a Vacuum—Identity in a Vacuum.” My experience from the Philippines is that of disappointment on what is Filipino identity. When I see more blond Filipinos, more English spoken than Tagalog, more like a sub province of the States. I stand by my contribution of the pillars as we the colonized, still are colonized in thoughts, actions, and persuasion. The pillars morphing with the bulol is significant as negotiating identities. The Corinthian pillars representing the West and the bulol representing the East: a negotiation of identity as we constantly frame and re-frame our own identity as Filipino-Americans. Maybe the Filipinos from the Philippines can define what it is to

FIGURE 11.3  Study of Field Museum collaborative painting, rendered by Chicago-based Filipino-American artists by Elisa Racelis Boughner. Photo © Almira Astudillo Gilles.



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be Filipino. Yes, from my Fil-Am perspective, these objects are utilities and tourist artifacts. It made me proud of the craftsmanship and have been influenced by their design, but my visiting the Philippines and barely seeing them used as everyday objects (I speak for myself because I did not venture out of the metropolitan area). This trip made me question more of what is Filipino identity, and I pose that to everybody. We come from a lineage of different tribes and colonized and mixed heritage. I find it disturbing that our idea of beauty is still engaged in the whiteness of our skin. It is only fair to say and defend the stance of what the Fil-Ams choosing to maintain the objects which represents them individually. We Fil-Ams have grown in this society where communalism is non-existent. Individualism is celebrated. Perhaps to make a provocative statement, it is best to apply in the design the pillars holding a floor and having different feet (wearing different shoes) representing people walking through the museum. It also serves as a metaphor on how we Filipinos ourselves step on our own identity and have low self esteem. When I was in the Philippines, I have not heard a statement or word that we are great as people. Always a critique. We are stepping in our own culture and the Field Museum keeps it under wrap by trivializing our culture with this project. I want to pose a question, are we any different from the tribes they brought from the Philippines and made to eat dogs everyday in public view as we paint during museum hours to be in public view.4 Are we? How can we rise above that? Facebook, Chicago artist 1, response to above: I did grow up bi-racial but in an almost all white community … I was never perceived as white, I always stood out as Asian and a foreigner because I looked different, and was ridiculed with racism. I also had to fight to show that I was American. When I would travel back to the Philippines growing up, it was a sanctuary where I could feel comfortable being half Filipino. But even then I don’t fully fit in because I’m bi-racial. Being bi-racial can be difficult, I’m never going to be white enough or Filipino enough. So I don’t want any assumptions about my identity. And I don’t want to have to prove that I’m one over the other. I’ve always felt more of a connection with my Filipino side because I’ve always felt more welcomed and agree more with Filipino values. Filipino suggestions for the painting depicted the influence of American culture, both during American colonialism in the Philippines and in contemporary Philippine society. One element proved to be generally accepted. The bulol, or rice deity figure, from the northern province of the Philippines, would be the central figure of the design, and the Chicago artists decided this would serve to demarcate Filipino contributions on the right and Chicago contributions on the left. Aside from individual contributions, the Chicago artists also decided that each artist would paint a self-portrayal, to give a message that they are also gazing back at the viewer, and that the dialogue represented on the canvas is a reciprocal exchange. They changed the title of the Field Museum painting to Deconstructing “Filipino.”

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Painting the mural at the Field Museum, Chicago Prior to the arrival time of Filipino artists in the U.S., the Chicago artists drew the blueprint on the canvas provided by the Field Museum. By the time the Filipino artists arrived in Chicago, the final design had not yet been approved by all ten artists, despite it having been drawn on the canvas. Knowing that they would have the opportunity to discuss the painting as soon as they arrive, the Filipino artists decided to wait until that meeting to make their opinions known. They had felt uncomfortable about the self-portrayals, and in the end they decided to create representations of their ideas and beliefs, rather than a physical resemblance. Similar to what occurred in the Philippines, the Filipino artists painted together while the Chicago artists had a staggered schedule, due to work commitments. There were several days when all ten artists were present. The Filipino artists completed their side in the first three days, and they kept adding more elements until I suggested to them to wait for a more completed left side, for balance. The incident of a Chicago artist requesting help from a Filipino artist was repeated (although different artists were involved from those in the incident in the Philippines). The Filipino artist confided in the project director that he felt uncomfortable about that request, and I stressed again to the artists that the design called for a dichotomy and that the panel description already submitted to the Field Museum referred to such a division. The Chicago artists protested, on the grounds that the Filipino artists themselves believed in a more “organic” process, and that this was simply part of the collaborative process. The director countered that the Chicago artists themselves had produced that notion, the panel description had been printed, the Filipino artist was uncomfortable about the request, and the Chicago artists could help each other. The Chicago artists complied, but this situation created some tension in the workspace. Another issue arose when one of the Chicago artists painted “KKK” in his selfportrayal. He had intended to refer to a pro-democracy movement with these initials at the end of the Spanish colonial period. But he also admitted that this was a side reference to the discrimination against people of color, using the history of African Americans for illustration. The bulk of this artist’s work focused on racial discrimination against African Americans, and he felt that this issue was relevant for Filipinos as well. The Filipino artists expressed discomfort over the KKK element because they did not feel that the Philippine KKK had any connection to the American KKK, and any reference was not valid. The Filipinos said that people who were involved in KKK were nationalists and anti-imperialists who fought against a powerful adversary, Spain. The American KKK was racist and fought from a position of superiority against a weak minority. For the Filipinos, there were no parallels in the flag-bearers of these letters, and they believed it did not belong in this collaborative work. In addition, several Field Museum visitors who watched the artists at work objected to the letters. I brought the issue to the attention of the Field Museum, and the Museum responded that they did not want to edit content or curtail artistic expression, but the outcome should be



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a collective decision. The artists met as a group, the Filipinos requested removal of the letters, and the artist agreed and eventually transformed the three Ks into three lizards.

Discussion Individual works The Chicago artists interpreted narratives from their cultural heritage in a much more literal manner than their Filipino counterparts. Their individual works were mostly portrayals of ethnographic objects in the context of their own personal lives. For

FIGURE 11.4  Elisa Racelis Boughner (U.S.A.), “Revealed.” Oil on canvas (36 x 36 in). Photo © Almira Astudillo Gilles.

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FIGURE 11.5  Emmanuel Robles Garibay (Philippines), “Ilaw” (Light). Oil on canvas (36 x 36 in). Photo © Almira Astudillo Gilles. example, one Chicago artist was inspired by a necklace made of hair, so his individual painting was a girl with a voluminous head of hair. Another Chicago individual work was a compilation of images that were important to her (the ocean, a guitar-type instrument). The exceptions to this type of representation were the Chicago artists who did not use paint as their medium. One was an abstract collage of strips of paper, and the other arranged handmade paper in a native pattern. On the other hand, the Filipino artists went beyond a literal representation. One painted an artifact in a glass case, but it was dissected in half by the reflection of light in the center. Another drew golden death masks on members of a family. One placed a screaming rice deity in the middle of the Field Museum, and this image became so popular among all the artists that they decided to make it the central figure.

Large paintings The Chicago artists had finished individual works prior to their visit to the Philippines because they brought them for the Philippine exhibit. The large painting at the Erehwon Center in Quezon City did not allow for personal interpretations (photorealism), but the



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Field Museum one did. The Chicago artists’ experience with poverty in the Philippines was not represented on the large painting at the Field Museum, and they painted images they had chosen prior to their Philippine visit. While the American side did contain Filipino and American elements, these were portrayed as separate, singular elements. The Filipinos were more interested in exploring and portraying the Philippine– American relationship and providing a critique of the colonial and postcolonial context, as evidenced in both history and contemporary society. One example is the popular souvenir, the barrel man, wearing an Uncle Sam hat. (The barrel man is nude under a barrel, and when the barrel is lifted, an oversize penis springs forth.) Another is the McDonald clown taking a selfie (of the artist) wearing a Jollibee (the largest hamburger chain in the Philippines) uniform. The Filipinos often blended Filipino elements with American images, putting both a durian (a Philippine fruit) and an apple side by side, or a hotdog in a ritual bowl. They were indifferent to the title coined by the Chicago artists, Deconstructing “Filipino,” because they felt there was no need for intensive self-examination or deconstruction. The Filipinos drew their objects in such a way that shows the force coming from the bulol. They drew strong currents in the ocean background to indicate the often

FIGURE 11.6  Finished collaborative work, “Deconstructing ‘Filipino.” Acrylic on canvas (7 x 28 ft). Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Photo © Alpha Sadcopen.

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tumultuous relationship between the two countries. The ocean background on the Chicago side showed static, uniform curls. This difference might be explained partly by the fact that each group had different experiences with external influences. The Chicago group were, by their own admission, more American than Filipino, and while there was no dualism in the Filipinos’ identities, the Philippines as a whole, and the Metropolitan Manila area in particular, are very Westernized—evidence of its postcolonial context.

The bulol as central figure As mentioned previously, the rice deity was unanimously chosen as the central figure of the large painting, cutting the canvas in half. Although the traditional bulol is a seated figure, with a placid countenance, and usually holding a big bowl in front of him, the Filipino artist who painted this (and who lives in the area populated by the indigenous group that uses this figure) makes his figure erect and screaming. He says that (Facebook post, October 7, 2015): [t]he Bulol as we know it is one of the most enduring pre-colonial cultural object[s] both in form and function, but the Bulol is just an object as any other artifacts unless it’s ritualized and used as a medium for ceremonial purposes … the screaming Bulol as my choice for the project I think is as symbolic as wanting to define identity of what is really Filipino whether we’re in any other place in the planet / universe. The scream could be of disgust on what’s happening around us, could be of frustration, anger or defiance or letting it all out, etc., but with this it’s a scream of identity, as in my individual piece it’s about awakening, awakening the spirits of the artifacts that have been kept hidden in the vaults of the field museum. As artists, I think, we are modern shamans and as we collaborate to creating the mural we are in essence ritualizing / charging the piece with our own individual identity, sanctifying it with our Pinoy spirit … thus my suggestion of superimposing luminous color shamanic lines or drawings because I think that’s the only thing uncolonizable, the Filipino spirit.

Interaction The Filipinos in the different context of the U.S. still adhered to their informal hierarchical structure, choosing to defer to the appointed “elder” and myself as project director in many decisions. The desire for smooth interpersonal relations, something also common in Philippine society, was facilitated by transferring responsibility for decision making to a central authority. The Filipino Americans had not appointed a counterpart leader and were vocal in espousing equality in everything. They had no



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reservations in questioning some decisions made by the project director and the Field Museum. Another difference is that the Filipinos continue to collaborate on projects with each other, while the Filipino Americans have not. Despite disagreements and differences that prevailed during the course of art creation, the Filipinos chose toleration over confrontation. The Chicago artists did not seem to have any personal conflicts or even disagreements with each other during the project, and they often came to each other’s defense, especially during the later stages of working on a blueprint for the Field Museum painting. This chapter has only addressed the processes of creation of the murals at the Erehwon Center in the Philippines and at the Field Museum in Chicago. Future research might bring to light more about the important issue of audience inter­pretation. Thompson5 suggests that an artist creates work that is then “left intentionally open to audience re-interpretation.” Community engagement between the artwork and artists with the host community and the public is sure to reveal even more interesting insights on appropriation and the creative process. The ethnographic object, which was the impetus for the project Portrait of the Object as Filipino, served as a stimulus for individual perceptions of cultural identity. In doing so, the object has progressed beyond its traditional utilitarian function and become a symbol for the culture it represents. And as the meaning of the symbol varies over time, in different contexts, and by intention of the user, it is not surprising that the two artist groups had different views on the content of the object–identity relationship. While no two artists chose exactly the same object, they did choose from the same class of objects: a Filipino American painted spoons to signify the importance of food in Filipino culture, while a Filipino painted a bowl with a hotdog in it, juxtaposing Filipino traditional culture and American colonialism (Filipinos are very fond of hotdogs and frequently put them in traditional dishes). The same artist went further and painted a ritual bowl with one American fruit and one Philippine fruit.

Conclusion A painting is a vehicle for visual literacy, by making the invisible visible. Art that is accessible enhances relations both within a community and among different groups. In this case, the collaborative painting did not seem to bind the two groups as a team working toward a common goal of representing cultural identity. In fact, one of the more interesting outcomes from the interaction between the Filipino and FilipinoAmerican artists was a strong dichotomy perceived by the two groups regarding their cultural identities, which was reflected in the mural design in Chicago. In the course of their art creation and interaction, tension arose around issues of cultural appropriation, national versus diasporic ethnic identities, and creative expression. The Filipino artists expressed disappointment over how little influence the visit of Chicago artists to the Philippines seemed to have over their contributions to the Field

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Museum large painting—choosing, for example, to paint a bucolic rural scene rather than the shanty towns they saw regularly in Manila. One Filipino artist pointed out that the manner in which a headdress was tied on the American side did not resemble that of any Philippine indigenous group (but rather an African or Caribbean influence), and he expressed his concern (to me as project director) over the misrepresentation, especially in a vehicle meant for public consumption. The Filipinos felt they had included much more symbolism in their half and offered more opportunities for interpretation from the viewer. The Filipinos thought of expressing their national, rather than personal, identities as Filipinos: no personal likenesses in their self-portrayals, a theme of anti-colonialism, and the often haphazard appropriation of Filipino traditions by those living outside the Philippines. The Chicago artists were more interested in examining their own emerging self-identities as Filipino. In fact, most of them had not given this much thought prior to the project, and most were not as embedded in the larger Filipino community in Chicago as older generations. The Filipino-American artists were just beginning to discover their hybrid identities, while the Filipinos were lamenting the loss of authenticity. As original researcher, project director, and activist in the Filipino-American community, I somehow had hoped for even a microscopic realignment of identities between the two groups, through collaboration and immersion in each other’s countries. What seemed to have happened instead was a polarization, with each group adhering to previously held concepts and behaviors. For the Filipino Americans, identity was a personal construct, while for the Filipinos, identity was a national one. Indeed, an issue of merit versus representation arose during Philippine jury deliberations. When the sole successful female artist backed out of the project, the jury decided to replace her with their number six choice, a male, despite protest from a female juror (three out of five jurors were female) that a female artist be included in the project. The Philippine jurors decided that since this project would bring international exposure to the Philippines, the representatives should be of the highest caliber. Although individual identity is a composite of multiple identities operating in personal and public spheres, this project shows that, when given the task of artistic expression based on ethnicity, the reference point for defining identity differed among groups sharing one cultural heritage. In a country struggling with racial and cultural pluralism like the United States, the Chicago artists chose a personal level of identification. The project was primarily a vehicle for self-discovery. Hence, their self-portraits on the mural displayed a resemblance to their individual selves. This was not the case with the Filipinos. Although they lived in different geographic areas in the Philippines, espoused different religious views, and spoke different dialects, they were bound as a social group by their nationalism (or at least, their strong advocacy for Philippine progress and development). This project was, for them, a unique opportunity to showcase Philippine talent and express nationalist sentiments. They did not paint their self-portraits with their likeness, choosing instead to use that element as another means of expression. In fact, in planning the design for the Erehwon painting in the Philippines, they had painted the communal balanghay boat, which carried groups



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with kinship ties to Philippine shores, as the background for the swirling artifacts. They conceived of it as a spirit, painting it in muted grey, to indicate that Philippine society is still changing, while trying valiantly to bring cultural objects and traditions along for the ride. In my view, this intergenerational, transnational project supports Keesing’s6 assertion that “differences in interest, commitment, intellectual ability, social status, access to information, and life experience” act against the sharing of meaning. In the apparent absence of shared meaning, the Philippines-based artists were more active in referencing or appropriating elements from various sources (popular culture, mass media, history, literature, folklore), while the Filipino Americans were more internal. In this artificially induced collaboration, the two groups did little to reference each other’s elements, instead working as though there were two separate panels. In fact, of the many photographs taken during the creation process, there were hardly any of artists from one group contemplating the works of the other, but many photographs showed the artists examining the work as a whole, from a distance. While this could be a parallel description of the diasporic Filipino community in years past—Filipino Americans visiting the Philippines mostly as tourists—this is no longer true. Filipino Americans are increasingly returning to the Philippines to retire, set up businesses, contribute to local charities. In blurring the distinction between their Filipino-American and Filipino identities, they are no longer passive observers of what the “other side” is doing. However this project indicates that we have yet to witness a fuller unfolding of the Filipino-American identity, as represented in the visual arts in the Midwest.

Notes Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this project is an extension of a global heritage management initiative by the Field Museum. Support for the research component of this project was provided by the Filipino American National Historical Society—Midwest Chapter. 1 Marielle Shaw, “Looking for 10,000 Kwentos: Field Museum Seeks Help in Uncovering Filipino History,” Arts and Entertainment, Chicagoist, March 16, 2014. http://chicagoist.com/2014/03/16/looking_for_1000_words-_field_museu.php (accessed 12 October 2016). 2 Filam or FilAm are common shorthands for Filipino-American. 3 A bulol or bulul (Ifugao rice deity) is an anthropomorphic figure, usually carved from a hardwood tree by indigenous groups in the Cordillera region of the Philippines. It is believed that when a spirit (anito) inhabits the figure, the household is blessed with fertility, wealth, and happiness. 4 The reference is to the 1904 St. Louis world fair, where Igorot people from the Philippines were put on public display as “dog-eaters.” 5

Matthew D. Thompson, Review of Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Practice, Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds) (New York: Berg, 2012) p. 224 in Museum Anthropology Review, 6 (1) (Spring 2012): 71.

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ALTERNATIVE ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY R.M. Keesing. “On not understanding symbols: Toward an anthropology of incomprehension.” Transcribed and edited by Jordan HAUG, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 423. (http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/ viewFile/hau2.2.023/294) (accessed 12 October 2016).

12 In the presence of Filipino art and objects: Almira Astudillo Gilles in conversation with Arnd Schneider Almira Astudillo Gilles and Arnd Schneider

AS  What is the principal idea behind the project Art and Anthropology: Portrait of the Object as Filipino? AG  As a Filipino American, I wanted to see how the material cultures of indigenous groups are transformed, not only when they leave the community of production, but also in the wider context of country. I started out with the idea that ethnographic objects can be reanimated by both original and secondary users, the latter being Filipino Americans. AS  How did the current dialogues between art and anthropology inspire you to develop your project? AG  I know many Filipino artists in the Chicago area, and I’m also very active in the Filipino-American community in the U.S. I’m a member of several organizations, and a lot of the people from our diasporic community really struggle with the issue of cultural identity. When I look at the art that is produced here by Filipino Americans, I notice that there is a dichotomy between the works. On the one hand, this art can be either very traditional, in the sense that the subjects are very Filipino—for example, the things the artists see in their homeland, and through the memories of their homeland—and on the other hand, there is a complete absence of anything Filipino in their art. I wanted to see if there is some sort of nexus, or an intersection that is possible between the two when I enhance the experience of Filipino Americans by bringing them back to the Philippines.

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AS  What is the further purpose of the project, and how does it insert itself into broader discussions of restitution and work with source communities in the museum context? AG  I see this project as the start of a discussion on how Filipino Americans perceive their cultural identity here in Chicago, and in the U.S. more generally. In the Field Museum, there are all these cultural objects in storage, and that has been a source of great discussion among Filipino Americans who want to bring those objects out to display not only for the Filipino community, but to the broader public in mainstream America to show what our culture is like through these objects. So by asking the artists who portray expressions of their cultural and self identity, I thought we could at least start with something more abstract, and then go on to the material world, rather than vice versa. AS  The project brought together Filipino artists and Filipino-American artists, as well as institutions from the Philippines and the U.S., such as the Erehwon Center for the Arts and the Field Museum. What are the specific challenges of such a transnational collaboration? AG  The thing that really struck me the most was that I did not expect the two groups of artists to be so different. Because most of the selected Philippines-based artists focus on contemporary issues that are influenced by a Western perspective, I thought that maybe they would be more similar in perspective and attitude to FilipinoAmerican artists, especially due to American influence and the American colonial administration of the Philippines (1898–1946). Yet I found that they are very different in their perspectives on almost everything—for instance, how they view the cultural objects, and how they present themselves as Filipinos. I think part of this is really that the two pools of artists I am working with for this project are very different. The Filipino-American artists—except for one who came as a child—are not first-generation Filipino-American, but are actually second- and third-generation, and they have very little contact with the Philippines. Some of them actually went to the Philippines for the first time in August (2015) as part of this project. So they are in some sense more American than Filipino. At the same time, they are also not very involved in a lot of Filipino-American communities in Chicago, and most Filipino Americans are not like them. I would say that these artists are sort of outsiders in the Filipino-American community. They don’t really mix with many Filipino Americans, unless it’s for family gatherings, so they are not as much a part of the diaspora community here. AS  But what about the participating institution? AG  The Philippine partner, the Erehwon Art Center, is a collective of artists, which meant they already had a pool of artists to choose from, and so when I approached the Philippine government and several other groups to ask advice about how to recruit artists for this, they suggested I not solicited nationwide. Just for logistical purposes. So that was how they were chosen but it turns out that the final artists chosen actually



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were not limited to those belonging to the collective. Which I thought was a good thing for the project. AS  For over 300 years, the Philippines was a Spanish colony, and after the Spanish– American war of 1898 became a U.S. colony until 1946. What does it mean to work with a collection acquired during colonial times? What are the aspects of colonialism? AG  There is not a homogenous attitude towards this issue among Filipinos. I mean there are principally at least two groups of people. One group is very aspirational, in that they want to be like or emulate Americans, or even Spaniards. They take pride in their English, in the influence of Western culture on their lives, and the ability to speak Spanish, even in physical attributes and presumed descent from Spaniards, you know, they are proud of that. The other group is very anti-imperialist, and critical towards the colonial period. I’m on that side, especially since I’m a graduate of the University of the Philippines, and it is known for its rebellious attitude, but also very anti-colonial and very anti-imperialist. So, I tend to agree with that generation. By contrast, the older generation feel they have a debt of gratitude to the Americans, the U.S., because they see them as those who bestowed democracy, liberated them from the Japanese occupation, and gave them all these American governmental systems and institutions. So they’re thankful for that, but the younger generation doesn’t feel quite like that. In fact, when there was a question about American bases staying in the Philippines, one group was very vocal about kicking out the base: no American bases should be staying in the Philippines. So, for me it’s really those two groups. There’s really this dichotomy in attitudes towards our previous colonizers. AS  What was the reaction to the project in the Philippines, specifically to the issue that Filipino and Filipino-American artists should collaborate in a mural, which was shown at the Erehwon Center? AG  Because this was a project conceived by a Filipino, and because it came from abroad with a Philippine component, the Filipinos in the Philippines were very receptive towards it. They admired also the fact that there was a Filipino-American component. However, because it was so admired and participation was so much cherished, everyone who was involved in the project in the Philippines wanted to control the public impression, and also the roles that they played in it. There were occasions when, for example, it was packaged as an Erehwon project, and I had to correct them several times that they had to mention that it was a MacArthur Foundation funded project, that the funding came from abroad. And similarly, sometimes when I would forget to say the Philippine partner was Erehwon, I would be corrected, and reminded to acknowledge that it is half Erehwon, that’s how they see it: half Erehwon and half Field Museum. AS  What specific challenges do contemporary artists face in the Philippines, including the painters who participated in your project, to succeed on a national, or even global scale?

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AG  I think the best way to answer that question is by first explaining the selection process for this project. It was a juried project where artists were invited to submit applications. I specifically did not choose art critics to be on the jury, because I wanted a more inclusive group of artists. Art critics would have selected those at the top of the art scene, but that wasn’t what I was aiming for. I wanted to have many kinds of artists in there, different levels in their careers, and I wanted fresh ideas as well. I was criticized for that; in fact, several of the more prominent artists who had submitted their applications originally withdrew them when they found out that the application process was also open to younger, emerging artists who were not as successful as they were. I received a lot of criticism for the way I had put the jury together in the Philippines, and that’s why I said they had to remain anonymous. AS  What are the specific challenges contemporary Filipino-American artists in the U.S. are facing to succeed? Obviously, there are others beyond your selection that just concentrated on the Midwest, Illinois area, Chicago in particular. For instance, a young Filipino-American artist who wants to make a living, how does he or she succeed in the U.S? And how will they be recognized: as contemporary American artists and / or in ethnic categories, as Filipino-American artists? AG  I think, definitely, that identifying themselves as a member of a cultural or ethnic group would help them. In addition to their individual artwork, the artists would have the further advantage of portraying something else, such as their identity, or expressing their culture that is different from the mainstream. That might give them an edge on the national scene. This is assuming that everyone here had equal talent, and that there was a market for all styles, and that kind of thing. I think being identified with an ethnic group might help, because especially when they are promoted or promoting themselves, that would make them different from mainstream artists. They would have an issue. For example, Cesar Conde, one of the participating artists, is very embedded in race issues here in the U.S., not necessarily his own, but those of African Americans. He has identified with them. So his exhibits are powerful because they attract people who are interested in those issues. And Filipinos being one of the largest ethnic groups, or immigrant groups in the U.S., I think that we would be very open to having an art scene that is dominated by Filipinos who speak to our issues. Therefore, I think it would be an advantage if they portray themselves as Filipinos. AS  What then is the principal message of the mural in the Field Museum? AG  As projects director, what I instructed them to do was to grapple with the issue of their Filipino cultural identity. I did not want to be involved in the actual creation of the mural to the extent that if there ever were any issues that arose, I would defer judgment to the Field Museum. But for me it was important that it would be a collaborative process somehow, and that they come up with their best work. AS  The project operated within very specific parameters of subject, that is objects



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from the Philippine collection at the Field Museum, and to employ a specific genre, painting—moreover, painting in quite a traditional established style, that is figurative easel and brush painting. For example, as explored by one artist, it would not have been possible to use other materials with which she usually works, such as attaching paper and papier-mâché or indeed other things on to the canvas. It was established beforehand that the work should be executed in brush painting on canvas. What are the costs and benefits, or limitations and opportunities, which arise from such a set frame, weighed against what we might call artistic creativity? How to produce something exciting and innovative within these limitations? AG  I understand that the artists want to be given full opportunity to express themselves creatively. However, as a writer, I also am a creative person and I know what it is like to work within certain parameters. I have told them, when they have brought forth certain issues, that that these are challenges that I’m sure they would be able to overcome, being artists, and these should not stand in the way of the task at hand. And I tried to be flexible when I could be, but I felt that everybody works with constraints. AS  You asked the group to stick with their original proposition to divide the canvas into two halves, with the Filipino Americans working on one side and the Filipinos working on the other. Would you have objected as project director if a proposal had come, for example, of alternating one Filipino and one Filipino-American artist, rather than dividing the canvas exactly in half for the two groups? AG  To work on two halves was the original plan proposed and accepted by the artists. But then one Filipino-American artist responsible for a specific element in her section approached one Filipino artist to paint her object. The remaining Filipino-American artists supported her in asking this one Filipino to help her. Yet when I asked the Filipino, he told me that he felt very uncomfortable doing that. That made me more certain that we should just stick to the original plan, because the Filipino-American artists had conceived it in the first place. I felt that there was enough capability on the Filipino-American side to execute the painting. The Filipino Americans shouldn’t have had to ask the Filipino artists for help. I told them to be true to their art. AS  As part of the mural, every artist also painted a self-portrait. One of the artists used the acronym KKK on his head, as part of the self-portrait. This is highly ambiguous, because in this specific context, it refers on the one hand, for the American public, to the acronym of the Ku Klux Klan, but it also refers to the Filipino resistance army. Its intended ambiguity was in an interesting way put to the test, because members of the ordinary American public only reacted to this part of the message, identifying it as the Ku Klux Klan acronym. A group discussion among the artists ensued and, eventually, the artist was persuaded to transform the three Ks into three lizards. When one looks closely and knows the background of the story one might still recognize little Ks behind the lizards, but in any case it has been somewhat disguised in this way. The

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artist was quite adamant at first that he wanted to keep the acronyms, the three Ks, but how was this resolved in the group? AG  I brought this issue to the attention of the executive level of the Field Museum, and they came back saying they would let the artists decide as a group. I relayed that to the Filipino artists, and they were united in saying that it made them very, very uncomfortable for several reasons. They didn’t want to be associated in any way with the Ku Klux Klan. The other thing was that they felt that the artist who drew it was sort of appropriating something that wasn’t his, i.e., the Filipino Resistance Army (the short term is Katipunan, which stands for Samahang Kataastaasan, Kagalanggalang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan). Although it was also in some sense his history, the Filipino artists felt that he had not gone through the process of really owning it—that it was something he just searched online, and that there was really no personal connection. The Filipino artists felt that he was using it to draw attention to his work. Because that’s the first thing you see, it immediately sends this message. The Filipino artists expressed that it distracts from the other element of the mural, because after you see that it’s hard to get past it. It was coloring the message of the entire mural. So they felt it was unfair: that was the word they used. So I told them that if you feel strongly enough about it, then you should tell him—which eventually they did as a group, and he changed it. AS  Now suppose the artists had opted for an almost entirely abstract form, or many more abstract elements as part of the mural, rather than figurative painting. Would that still have been possible, or would you have objected? AG  First of all, I put the burden of selection on the jurors, and I told the jurors that the artists needed to have drafting skills, because the mural was going to be a collaborative effort. However, like the Field Museum, I didn’t want to impose any restrictions. In fact, I was looking forward seeing what they would do in a more conceptual or abstract way, but they chose not to. And since the large painting they had created in the Philippines was very figurative, I felt they had suffered enough, being forced to draw objects copied from photographs. The objects painted on the large painting were copied from photographs of real objects. So I wanted to give more freedom here, but they didn’t go for that. AS  How did the experiences and artistic training backgrounds, in fact, of the Filipino artists translate into the U.S. context, and how for the Filipino-American artists to the Philippines? And how did they collaborate? AG  I think as a whole the Filipino-based artists were more sophisticated in their world views, and much further along in their art careers, than the Filipino-American artists. That’s because they are tied to the national art scene in the Philippines, whereas the Filipino Americans’ market was mostly Chicago. Now, had I recruited from the U.S. on a national scene, rather than from Chicago, the results would have been different, I think the two groups would be more parallel to each other in terms of career.



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AS  How did the artists choose the objects from the ethnographic collection? AG  They did a tour together of the artifacts in storage, and then they brought them out, and they took pictures. In the Philippines, the Filipino and Filipino-American artists were brought to the National Museum and the Ayala Museum. They were in the physical presence of the objects, but then they ended up choosing many objects online as well. AS  What further potential for art and anthropology collaborations that intervene into the museum context do you see? And in connection also to the Filipino-American community, what are the things you would like to make happen, beyond this mural? AG  I think that this mural is now an object in itself. If it travels—and I hope it will—it will elicit the same interest in creating other projects and exchanges. I think the important feature of this really is the exchange between two different groups, Filipino Americans and Filipinos, especially since more Filipino Americans are returning to the Philippines. In other words, what used to be really distinct groups—the diasporic community in the U.S. and those who stayed behind—are fusing. There is this bridge between them which is already being traveled by them back and forth. That something like this is possible, and then that they can create their own art projects from it, using our project as a model, is important. If I were to lead another art and anthropology project, I would definitely use a bigger pool of artists. I would organize a nationwide competition for Filipino Americans, because I think that’s one important ingredient missing from this one—not only focus on the Midwest, but include the East and the West coast where the really big Filipino communities are. AS  The Philippine collection at the Field Museum was dis-installed from public view in 1985, and currently there is only one prominent object from this collection on display: the golden tara or Agusan image. As a cultural activist within the Filipino-American community, and as social scientist and a writer, how would you like to see the collection, which is now in the vaults, brought to the public in the future? AG  I would like to have a more permanent exhibition here, because I think, given the size of our community, we deserve a permanent exhibition. Here in the U.S., when people say Filipino they just refer to our food, like the famous noodle dishes, pansit, or our eggrolls, but we are more than our food! There are lots of artifacts in the Field Museum which you can’t find in the Philippines and its museums, because many were destroyed during the war. Judging from the success of the golden exhibit that came from Ayala museum and is now on display at the Asia Museum in New York, which the New Yorker magazine has written about, I think we need more Philippine artifacts on display. Mostly, people are just interested in our dances, but I want people to actually stand in the presence of our material objects and really see what it was like for the first Filipinos—what objects they actually used. I think that’s very important, to be in the presence of these objects and not just see them online. There is a digitization

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project which is ongoing in the Field Museum, and that of course will reach a broader audience. But for me there is no substitute for actually seeing the objects in person, and maybe even drawing some sort of connection, the way indigenous people do when they are in direct communication with their objects.

Note This edited text is based on a conversation between Almira Astudillo Gilles and Arnd Schneider at the Field Museum, Chicago, on November 10, 2015. Arnd Schneider thanks Almira Astudillo Gilles for her time, and is grateful to the Filipino American National Historical Society—Midwest Chapter for a travel grant, and to Magnus Godvik Ekeland for the transcription of the original conversation.

13 Tigers and splashes: An actionoriented art and art education exchange between Bhutan and Switzerland Annemarie Bucher, Sonam Choki, Dominique Lämmli

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oday, many cross- and transcultural discourses are seeking to map the arts globally.1 These discourses are situated increasingly between diverse art traditions and within several production, distribution, and reception spaces. This is a relatively new phenomenon, which needs to be understood as an effect of ongoing globalization. Since the 1970s, we have been witnessing a rapidly growing worldwide interlinking of economic, social, cultural, financial, and political activities, whose number and complexity are accelerating as we write. Various forms, styles, and conceptions of art are now interrelated, just as practitioners and institutions alike are exchanging ideas about art practice and education across the world. In 2010, FOA-FLUX, Zürich, and Choki Traditional Art School (CTAS), Thimphu, initiated an exchange project to investigate the above processes in educational settings dedicated to contemporary European and Bhutanese Buddhist art traditions.2 The project explored how art practices and understandings in Switzerland and Bhutan are similar yet different and aimed to reveal the future potentials of our particular art notions. This chapter describes the formative stages of our collaboration. It invites readers to understand a complex exchange process, which involved a constant rethinking of positions, the renegotiation of interests and disposable media, and the joint production of a mural.

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FIGURE 13.1  Collaborative mural in Kabesa, Campus of Choki Traditional Art School. Details with crane. Photo © FOA-FLUX.

Preliminaries Motivations and rationales Our exchange project, which is still ongoing, is rooted deeply in globalization’s paradigmatic uncovering and reshaping of the arts and art contexts. From this spring not only a multitude of co-existing or competing art notions and practices, but also a major disorientation about the criteria for discussing art.3 But how to deal with this? What Dave-Mukherji4 (2014) raised as a question for art history—“what becomes of art history when the world shrinks into a planet?”—is also a pressing concern for practitioners. Simply put, there is no single answer to this question. Art is always context-based—“however multilayered this context may be.”5 Thus, our project set out to explore art in global contexts, not exclusively on theoretical grounds but also within practical settings and with an experiential perspective on doing. Our exchange used art to produce knowledge symmetrically for collective benefit. Neither CTAS nor FOA-FLUX was interested in rubber-stamping existing and imaginary dictonomies (“we and the others”6 and “contemporaneity and tradition”). While CTAS suggested a joint workshop to enhance its understanding of contemporary art, FOA-FLUX from the outset envisaged collaboration as an invaluable opportunity to reflect on and challenge the prevailing European notion of art as much as to learn



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more about Bhutanese Buddhist art. Both partners, then, were strongly driven by their practical interests to position themselves within the complex reality of art, to question their specific notions, and to further develop these by applying a multiperspective approach that links and repositions their respective arts within a global framework. Our common goal was not to reach a shared understanding of art, but to open up our conceptions for examination from multiple perspectives, to critically explore our assumptions and beliefs, and to take these into consideration for further production. From its outset, our project thus rested on the multiperspectivity provided by our different notions, by our diverging theoretical and practical perspectives, and by their meta-level comparison. This approach proved highly productive, as it enabled a thicker understanding of particular art notions and their transfer into practice. Our project, then, can be seen as a stream of interrelated events undertaken with various partners in various places at different times.

Partners, encounters, interfaces Such projects depend much on appropriate funding, partners, and personal encounters. Our project began in 2010, when the directors of FOA-FLUX and CTAS met in Zurich for the first time and discovered their shared awareness of particular art practices and art education (see below). The fundamental desire to collaborate on these questions led us to consider how to best develop and run a mutually beneficial exchange program.7 FOA-FLUX8 is an independent art research venture operating in transcultural and transnational contexts. Its main goal is to investigate the functions of art in global contexts and to consider the paradigmatic changes in the arts arising from global and glocal processes. FOA-FLUX analyzes selected art phenomena that exemplify glocality9 and are linked with local and global structures. As a platform for critical reflection, research, and action, FOA-FLUX interconnects art practice, art theory, and interdisciplinary approaches to gather, generate, and exchange data, information, and knowledge (see below). Choki Traditional Art School (CTAS)10 is a privately supported non-profit educational institution offering training in selected traditional Bhutanese arts (painting, woodcarving, weaving, embroidery, etc.). CTAS is located outside Thimphu in the village of Kabesa. It was founded by Dasho Choki Dorji in 1999 to provide training in traditional Bhutanese arts to disadvantaged and underprivileged Bhutanese youth. Besides enabling students to find employment and become self-sustainable, CTAS preserves and promotes the country’s traditional arts. A complete course lasts six years, during which students follow a curriculum designed by experienced artists and craftsmen and that includes theory and practice. Because students come from different educational backgrounds, they are also taught basic mathematics, English, and Dzongka. Years 1 and 2 focus on basic drawing and painting and lay the basis for studying other crafts, which students choose from Year 3. Besides their academic development, CTAS also fosters students’ spiritual development through special prayer sessions every morning and evening.

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The Bhutanese Ministry of Labour and Human Resources, which approved of our joint workshop, suggested the National Instiute for Zorig Chusum (NIZC) in Thimphu as a partner. Established by the Bhutanese government in the early 1970s, NIZC is the first institution for traditional arts and crafts to preserve Bhutanese culture and to offer four- to six-year programs in the traditional thirteen arts (zorig chusum). A further partner in both workshops in Thimphu and Bangalore was Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).11 ZHdK is Switzerland’s largest arts school and has five departments (music, art and media, design, performing arts and film, cultural analyses), several research institutes, and a notable design museum. The university offers Bachelor and Master degrees in various arts and related fields.

Conflicting or converging art notions? Exploring the arts in global contexts implies accounting for different art notions, practices, and their potential intersections. Below, we therefore first outline the prevailing concepts of contemporary art and traditional art. This requires a twofold awareness of these perspectives as verbal devices. On the one hand, these concepts are used to negotiate different understandings of art. On the other, if taken seriously, they limit each other’s reach: both become obsolete in a paradigmatic sense while remaining relevant within particular, limited contexts. Within the last few decades, the term “contemporary art” has widened significantly.12 In 2009, the influential MIT journal October published an edition on “The Contemporary,” which collected various relevant statements debating the ongoing shift in art. What has indeed changed is that the “contemporary” now subsumes art practices and art works from various traditions—and that can therefore not be seen as exclusively handing down the Euro-American modern / postmodern tradition. Consequently, contemporary art has evolved into a more inclusive category than an exclusive one used to classify heterogeneous art phenomena.

Bhutanese artists and arts between tradition and contemporaneity The creation of art in Bhutan was and remains linked to Buddhist spiritual practice and is used to convey spiritual values. The most important clients for artists were and still are the Dzongs,13 where existing works are preserved and new ones commissioned. Bhutan also has a market for painted symbols in more profane contexts, such as house façades and interiors. Public space abounds with murals, considered “signs of good fortune.” Painted vignettes of penises, conches, lotus flowers, fishes, tigers, etc. emblazon façades all over the country. This functional regime started to change with the rise of globalization and the ensuing contact with other worlds. On the one hand, tourists expressed a desire for



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local souvenirs and galleries offered an alternative market. On the other, promoting Bhutan’s art tradition in international contexts revealed its long-standing confinement to ethnographic museums and its difficulty of living up to a contemporary art world pervaded by Western art notions. Bhutanese traditional arts are known as zorig chusum (zo = the ability to make; rig = science or craft; chusum = thirteen). These thirteen practices encompass the creative handling of various techniques (such as carving, painting, weaving, smithing) and materials (such as paper, stone, iron, wood, textiles) to produce objects for spiritual and everyday practices. They are listed in Dzonghka as follows:14 Dezo (paper making), Dozo (= stonework—used in the construction of stone pools and the outer walls of dzongs, gompas, stupas, etc), Garzo (= blacksmithing), Jinzo (= clay arts for religious statues, ritual objects, pottery, the construction of buildings), Lhazo (= painting: thangkas, walls paintings, statues, decorations on furniture and window frames), Lugzo (= bronze casting for bronze roof crests, statues, bells, ritual instruments, jewelry, household items), Parzo (= wood, slate, and stone carving: printing blocks for religious texts, masks, furniture, altars, and the slate images adorning many shrines and altars), Shagzo (= woodturning), Shingzo (= woodworking, for the construction of dzongs and gompas), Thagzo (= weaving), Trözo (= silver- and gold-smithing: jewelry, ritual objects, and utilitarian household items), Tshazo (= cane and bamboo work), and Tshemazo (= needlework: working with needle and thread to make clothes, boots, or the most intricate of appliqué thangkas). Zorig chusum date back to the fifteenth century, when Pema Lingpa, a famous master of Tibetan Buddhism, introduced these practices to the Bhutanese people so they could make art merely for themselves and their ritual practices. In the seventeenth century, zorig chusum were established by founding a strict regime for the proper teaching of these art forms. It is in these times that zorig chusum were formally described and categorized. Developed through the centuries, the thirteen arts and crafts of Bhutan have been passed down mostly through generations of families with long craftmaking traditions. Thus, the traditional Bhutanese arts not only have religious roots but are also anonymous in terms of individual authorship. Bhutanese artists often lead a nomadic life, journeying through the country to perform their arts and to earn a living. For their commissioned work, performed in situ, they receive board and lodging and a small fee. This specific context has generated a rich cultural heritage, which provides Bhutanese cultural identity and values with a solid foundation. Not only does the handing down of knowledge from father to son, mother to daughter, preserve a strict system of rules, but it also keeps alive and legitimates traditional arts and crafts, even amid today’s rapid economic and technical change. To protect zorig chusum, the Royal Government of Bhutan established the National Institute for Zorig Chusum. The government places great emphasis on preserving Bhutanese culture and tradition and on supporting the traditional arts. Outside Bhutan, the country’s traditional arts are displayed in ethnographic museums and in so-called museums of non-European art, as evidence of diverse

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traditions within world art. This conceals the fact that, beyond traditional art production, Bhutanese artists aspire to joining international art scenes with their corresponding market systems and exhibition institutions.15

Engagement Negotiating interests and approaches Collaborative art production has become a global phenomenon. Numerous contemporary artists develop their work within micro-communities and through dialogue and exchange. This reveals an increasing interest in considering different perspectives, positions, and needs when working on particular issues. Working with, working together, evokes a broad range of terms, with the prefix “co-” used to describe these phenomena: cooperation, collaboration, collectivity, community, communication, consensus, complicity, etc. Discussing community-based art, Grant Kester speaks of a “dialogical aesthetic” because, broadly speaking, dialogue plays an essential role in producing art besides its use as an artistic medium.16 Beyond dialogue, FOA-FLUX views negotiation at all levels as an important means of pursuing collaborative projects. CTAS and FOA-FLUX were both interested in learning more about their specific understanding of art through another perspective. We therefore decided to co-design the workshop contents, tasks, and formats, and to co-organize the events. Thus, from the outset, dialogue and negotiation were pivotal: from conceptualization and content definition through discussing preliminaries and specific interests to choosing formats and practical work. Discussions intensified before meetings and on site.

CTAS interests: Learning about the “contemporary” and reflecting on tradition CTAS’s interests in our exchange were rooted deeply in the current situation of the arts in Bhutan (an outstanding tradition, changing functions and media, dissenting perceptions inside and outside the country). This raised fundamental questions, which revealed the main reasons behind its interest in our exchange: how to consolidate and transform tradition without destroying its agency. Bhutan’s rich cultural heritage offers great potential for identification. Notably, the thirteen arts of the zorig chusum, grounded in religious and national history, first and foremost serve religious purposes and everyday needs. Such an introverted orientation coheres with Bhutanese society, which looks much more to innate traditions for guidance than to external stimuli. Thus, heritage became and remains a powerful argument for guidance in Bhutan. In a global perspective, however, this contrasts with the widespread concept of modernity and development that denies well-established



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customs and traditions. Given the current changes in Bhutan, its growing openness to international exchange challenges art produced exclusively for local use. But how, then, can Bhutan’s artistic production achieve international visibility? Outside Bhutan, as observed, traditional arts are often displayed in ethnographic museums, which positions them as one of many indigenous others of a Western tradition. This situation is changing rapidly, also due to active exchanges, theorization, and the rethinking of art histories within global and South Asian contexts. Nevertheless, Bhutanese artists are challenged to break the borders of these prejudiced institutions and to become visible in the global art world with contemporary contributions. Training disadvantaged youth, and thereby complementing the National Institute for Zorig Chusum, CTAS is substantially shaping the role and profile of the artist in Bhutan. CTAS is responsible for establishing a feasible role model and for ensuring artists’ livelihoods. So how to adapt the role of the Bhutanese artist to present global contexts and conditions while maintaining the means of subsistence?

FOA-FLUX interests and approach: Why art? There is a consensus that the existing criteria of art history and art theory as practiced in the West fall short of substantial discussion on ongoing art phenomena.17 This formerly dominant art discourse is informed largely by self-limiting and ideological concepts and biased perceptions of art, which have failed to amount to a convincing framework for studying the ongoing transformations in the arts. Consequently, this art discourse is suffering from a randomness of criteria and methodology.18 Therefore, studying art in global contexts means examining methodological possibilities for overcoming these limitations. Which methodological framework allows us to study art in global contexts while taking seriously its many traditional traits and contextual specificities? Given these questions, FOA-FLUX decided to ground its research approach in both theory and practice and to collaborate with like-minded stakeholders from different contexts and who are affiliated with various art traditions. Our research provides the theoretical analysis needed to study art in global contexts and fosters practicebased and action-oriented knowledge production. Studying art in global contexts amid dynamic changes and in a multilayered art field involves exploring exemplary interfaces and studying concrete cases. Merging theoretical, practical, and collaborative approaches, FOA-FLUX research produces such interfaces and creates self-reflective and productive contexts. The seeds and the motivation for such interface-projects often spring from exchanging experiences and interests with other art stakeholders. Therefore, collaborative production and the negotiation of interests are essential to FOA-FLUX research on art in global contexts. FOA-FLUX values art both as a cross-cultural phenomenon to be investigated and as a research tool for investigation. Such an extended understanding of art departs from the prevailing aesthetic and essentialist perspectives of a European tradition championing

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a highly exclusive notion of art. To overcome this limitation, FOA-FLUX research draws on an anthropological definition of art as a cross-cultural category that meets distinctive needs in every context, especially on Alfred Gell’s view of art as a form of action.19 This approach refrains from understanding art through (seemingly) convincing definitions or through viewing existing phenomena solely through the lenses of such definitions. Rather, it adopts an anthropological framework to value art as a powerful social agent. Instead of predefining what art is, this approach reveals and describes the functions attributed to art in particular contexts. Furthermore, it considers art in relational terms, identifying its constituents and describing their relations. Thus, it asks “Why and where is art?” and not the essentialist question “What is art?“ Gell’s anthropological approach provides a promising starting point for studying art in global contexts. It does not, however, supply everything needed for detailed study. FOA-FLUX has therefore devised a set of methodological tools (GLOCAL SET).20 This set comprises useful research procedures and principles based on the transdisciplinary methodological knowledge of global studies, anthropology, cultural studies, and art history. Over time, these preliminary assumptions have led FOA-FLUX to carefully consider the interrelations between data collection, knowledge production, collaboration, and practical needs—which, in turn, has resulted in a particular research design: 1 Data, information, knowledge production



FOA-FLUX collects the much-needed data on the globally extended art field. By data, we mean an accurate representation of the research context including facts, observations, descriptions, and even practical experience. Responding to an overarching research question, this mode of data collection is context-driven and self-reflexive, and enables focused knowledge production.

2 Collaboration and negotiation



FOA-FLUX researches art fields from within—that is, with, and not for, possible users: we plan and conduct projects with practitioners and theorists whose interests and aims collude. Consequently, research objectives and the corresponding research questions emerge from the convergence of more than one perspective. This multiperspectivity (arising from the research partners’ cultural, social, and individual differences) means that these collaborative strategies are not aimed at canonization, but instead at opening up a transdisciplinary field of constant encounter, questioning, and negotiation.

3 Practice-based and action-oriented research



Art practice offers not only a direct form of experience but also a mode of knowledge production.21 Surprisingly, little attention has so far been paid to such artistic research. Acknowledging artistic practice as a research component refers to the concept of action-oriented research, defined as a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations



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and validated in practice.22 Adapted to the art field, this involves studying a specific art context or situation using art and transdisciplinary method-clusters to explore the functions of art in global contexts. Because this action- oriented approach comes from within, and closely interlinks the research process and its context, it is chiefly practical and helps stakeholders to improve their skills, or indeed to better cope with a concrete situation. In sum, FOA-FLUX combines action and reflection and fosters bottom-up collaborative strategies. It creates and maintains interest-driven research communities, organizes safe spaces for dissenting opinions, approaches and aims, and promotes dialogue23 and negotiation as key methods.

Places of encounter Our meetings in Switzerland and Bhutan revealed that aside from planning, various specific issues needed attention, including new contextual features or dissenting perceptions. Fundamental pre-collaboration questions included “How to organize decision making?” “How to call for stewardship on site?” and “What is reasonable for outsiders?”

The Zurich context: Teaching the contemporary At a 2010 exhibition on Bhutanese art at Zurich’s Rietberg Museum (“Bhutan—Heilige Kunst aus dem Himalaya”), Sonam Choki and three CTAS students were invited to act as thanka painters and to pay tribute to their tradition for the benefit of a Western audience. Besides their performance, the CTAS group wanted to visit a local art school and to learn more about art education in Switzerland. Initial contact between the Bhutanese and Swiss artists and teachers was established through the Swiss person in charge of the Bhutanese group during their stay in Switzerland. This call reached Annemarie Bucher and Dominique Lämmli while co-teaching a seminar on art in global contexts (“Why art?”) aiming to provide BA Fine Arts students with a multilevel perspective on contemporary art fields worldwide. A meeting was arranged, and the Bhutanese group joined a seminar session, where all students were asked to present their works. Essentially, the Swiss students’ works represented the dominant paradigm of contemporary Western art, especially its focus on individual artistic authorship and research. By contrast, the Bhutanese students showed their traditional Bhutanese paintings, which they had been producing at the Rietberg Museum. This situation reflected not only two obviously different art notions but also two very different teaching concepts. On the one hand stood academic instruction

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aimed at promoting individual artistic expression as well as critical reflection on aesthetic norms, artistic means, and their contexts. On the other stood an oral tradition comprising skills and techniques combined with a predefined process handed down for generations. CTAS and ZHdK teachers understood art not only as a complex subject to teach but also as a challenge for future developments and positionings within the arts. What emerged very plainly from the seminar was a shared interest in how to best ensure a successful and sustainable future for art education. The Swiss/Bhutanese group also visited an exhibition of works by Klaudia Schifferle and Tatjana Gerhard at the Helmhaus Zürich. The visit led to a fundamental but fruitful controversy. The works of Schifferle and Gerhard, two Swiss women artists from different generations, focus on extreme physical and mental states, such as joy and despair, tenderness and violence, seduction and abuse. Both artists act out various identities through their paintings and sculptures. Whereas the Swiss participants acknowledged the exhibition as a referent for their own work, for the Bhutanese participants it was a disturbing experience that amounted to a clear statement: these works would not be recognized as art in Bhutan. The distorted forms, as well as the blurred lines and colors, would be perceived as a provocation and could never fulfil the intended purpose of art.24 This encounter plainly revealed a strong shared interest in an open and direct exchange about different and differing perceptions, expectations, and aims. Whereas both groups were aware of their conflicting notions, this prevented them neither from openly stating their views and arguments nor from expressing genuine interest in each other’s reactions.

The Thimphu context: Teaching tradition One and a half years after the first meeting in Zurich, CTAS suggested organizing a workshop in Bhutan, which included the possibility of inviting students from ZHdK. Soon afterwards, CTAS and FOA-FLUX began co-designing a workshop along the following lines: Content: We agreed that the workshop would question tradition and contemporaneity and embrace both traditional and contemporary artistic strategies as appropriate guiding principles for art education. Participants: CTAS wanted to involve more local stakeholders such as the National Institute for Zorig Chusum in Thimphu. Development process: We co-defined which content would be addressed during the workshop and who would take the lead in which sequences. Consequently, we all became participants in each other’s workshop-sections. The exchange worked so well because from the start we new each other’s interests and expectations and based our collaboration on the belief that each party knew best how to create an action-oriented setting that introduced their particular viewpoints and practical expertise.



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In April 2013, after nearly a year’s planning via e-mail and Skype, a delegation of two Swiss teachers and researchers and five ZHdK students traveled to Bhutan to participate in a two-week joint learning program entitled “Our traditions: Re-thinking contemporary art and traditional art.” The workshop took place at the CTAS campus in Kabesa. The Swiss participants were invited to stay on campus, which also houses most of the local students. For the Swiss students, this closeness facilitated an intense everyday experience that enabled them to gain a foothold in daily Bhutanese routines and to behave accordingly. Life at CTAS follows strict rules; teaching and learning are accompanied by religious ceremonies and traditional folk activities such as archery, dancing, and singing according to a formal timetable. Days begin with a traditional early morning assembly, where spiritual and social rituals are performed and discussed. Apart from reciting prayers, the director gives instructions and provides information. The workshop involved fifty participants: Sonam Choki and three CTAS instructors,25 eighteen final-year students and eight students from different specializations; one instructor26 and twelve students from NIZC; one instructor27 and five students from MAF; one researcher-cum-observer28 from IFCAR. Group composition seemed somewhat lopsided: a minority of Swiss female participants (in their mid-twenties to late forties) faced a majority of much younger and mostly male Bhutanese students. This created a particular relationship among participants, which mirrored customary teaching practices and gender relations in Switzerland and Bhutan. Both sides, however, accepted the imbalance as part of the cooperation. CTAS, as the host, sequenced the sessions. The first session was dedicated to the question of the contemporary. The introduction questioned the terms “traditional” and “contemporary”: What do they denote? How are they related to “Traditional Art” and “Contemporary Art?” The introduction concluded that both forms have their traditions and are contemporary, suggesting that their usual designations are somewhat misleading and imply value judgments. The introduction also established terms for negotiating and examining the different art notions and practices. The following sessions were sequenced according to local courtesy habits: the guests from abroad were followed by the guests from Thimphu, who were followed by the hosts. The Swiss students were asked to create situations reflecting their own art practice (including key issues and methods) to facilitate active participation.29 NIZC and CTAS participants gave brief introductions to selected zorig chusum arts (painting, carving, weaving, embroidery). Mr. Tenzin, a NIZC instructor, presented a twofold approach to art to highlight the current situation of Bhutanese artists between tradition and contemporaneity: predefined rules concerning forms and techniques on the one hand, experimentation with these elements to achieve individual expression and tackle everyday issues on the other. CTAS teacher Mr. Katru and his students demonstrated the technical and symbolic dimensions of color and paint. They showed participants step by step how to paint and draw clouds and flowers. Other CTAS-led sessions (Ms. Tenzin and Ms. Dorji) displayed wool-dyeing and weaving techniques using local products and plants.

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FIGURE 13.2  Collaborative mural in Kabesa, Campus of Choki Traditional Art School. Details with tiger and four friends. Photo © FOA-FLUX.

FIGURE 13.3  Collaborative mural in Kabesa, Campus of Choki Traditional Art School. Details with tourists. Photo © FOA-FLUX.



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Production Collaborative mural painting Already in the early workshop preparation phase, the idea of collaboratively painting a mural arose. This offered an unexpressed traditional basis for developing a material art work drawing on both traditions. Bhutan has a long tradition of figurative and ornamental murals in profane and sacral contexts. These so-called lucky signs appear on house façades and complex narrative wall paintings in Buddhist temples. The murals are geographically concentrated and are therefore an important signifier of Bhutan’s cultural landscape. In preparation for their collaborative painting, workshop participants studied exemplary Bhutanese murals on the CTAS campus and in its surroundings. In Switzerland, murals are a traditional category of public art. Sgraffitos and mosaics appear on town halls, school buildings, churches, and other significant façades, but seem to be waning. However, significant amounts are spent on site-specific wall paintings and on other commissioned works (artists range from blue-chip to local). Recently, street art has also entered the public sphere. Graffiti can be seen as extending the mural as a traditional artist medium in subcultural contexts. Born in the subcultural contexts of big cities, this uncurated art reclaims the streets with various visual strategies (mostly signs and tags).

FIGURE 13.4  The first layer of the mural represents a traditional Bhutanese landscape. Photo © FOA-FLUX.

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FIGURE 13.5  The second layer adds an abstract color pattern with loosely poured paint from the top of the wall. Photo © FOA-FLUX.

FIGURE 13.6  The third layer covers the first two layers with blotted paint. Photo ©

FOA-FLUX.



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FIGURE 13.7  The fourth and last layer consists of figurative and narrative inserts. Photo

© FOA-FLUX.

The making of the mural CTAS chose the wall to be used for the collaborative mural: located on campus, it was 30 meters long and 2 meters high. When FOA-FLUX and the Swiss students arrived, the finishing touches were being applied to the wall. Technical aspects—which paint to use, which painting strategies to apply, how to involve everyone, how to build up the image—were discussed by CTAS, FOA-FLUX/ZHdK, and NIZC instructors. A mixture of natural pigments and synthetic paint was considered best suited to the local climate and the smooth surface. Negotiations also covered meaning and form (which iconic or emblematic style?). The possibilities of mixing visuals from traditional Buthanese art and contemporary art were carefully discussed and the process of collaboratively developing imagesolutions designed. Other aspects of the collaboration were also decided (action leaders, group composition, in-process decision making). The instructors decided to work in several layers with each covering the whole wall. The first layer was a simple line drawing of mountain scenery. While the students were busy in the workshop, three instructors, one from each institution (CTAS, NIZC, FOA-FLUX/ZHdK), drew the horizon on the cement using charcoal to make it visible. When the actual painting started, participants were asked to cover the wall with white paint, but not to touch the lines and not to cover the sky. The result was an

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impressive huge landscape. At this stage, the wall already displayed an interesting image. Next, all fifty participants took a cup filled with blue color, lined up in front of the wall, and let the color drip down the wall from above. Then everyone crumpled up a piece of paper, dipped it into green, yellow and red paint, and pressed it against the wall wherever they liked. So what first seemed to be a jumble of formal languages became a common basis for further work. Painting an unconventional layer over the given layout was not understood as a destructive action, but as a serious contribution to a new, collectively designed image. The initial mountain scenery turned into a noisy visual surface, which called for further action. Participants30 were asked to propose specific motifs. The instructors had decided to run a competition to choose the best motif. But the students had already divided up the wall among themselves, thus knowing which section was theirs and allowing each motif to be realized. The fact that all motifs could be painted raised the question of how to create an overall dynamic. A painting, be it traditional Bhutanese or contemporary, works when its many elements come into a thrilling interplay. With so many motifs, and with participants knowing which surface to cover, there was a significant risk that all groups would choose similar dimensions and thereby create an all-too-even image. Therefore, it was decided to paint all motifs, but to predefine their dimensions. Everyone seemed happy with this decision, and the final layer was added the next day. The final layer was created by groups of students finalizing the multilayered ground with their own iconic ideas, such as tigers, four friends, cranes, tourists, and other mythical creatures. This prolific phase of detailed finishing involved both innovative and traditional image production strategies. Within a week (the actual painting was done in two days with a few days for motif design) a completely new combination of motifs had emerged from our collaboration. Careful collaborative planning made the actual painting and the concrete motif decisions by all workshop participants feel like a gentle and somehow self-evident process. Here, then, conceptual decisions and implementation converged as a result of collective negotiation. The richness of traditional skills and motifs was negotiated in shared decisionmaking and implemented by all participants, leading to a playful and insightful collective experience. The result was stunning: there, before us, was the energy of fifty painters mustered in a short, intense period, dedicated to shaping a vast surface and demonstrating the dynamics and verve of collaborative production.

Learnings Outcome The collective wall painting on the CTAS campus emerged from rolling wave planning and revealed amazing novel formal and discursive qualities. These resulted on the one



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hand from collaboration and negotiation, and on the other hand they represented and produced a multiperspective context comprising different art notions and practices reflecting the current global situation of the arts. The painting is a visible milestone in a project that extends far beyond the mere conception and production of material work. This chapter has illustrated how an art and art education exchange project might be organized and conducted based on mutual trust and respect. By integrating different positions (theoretical understandings and practical experiences) into shared knowledge production, we not only collected but also generated data on art in global contexts. By data, we mean all kinds of findings on the forms and functions of art gathered, gained, and produced by observation, participation, and interaction in a specific context. Such data forms a robust basis for further reflection and negotiation and might initiate new exchange projects. Learning and researching through mutual artistic production shifts the focus from what an ideal art context requires, from following its rules, to what is possible in a specific context. Our approach enables those involved to engage directly with co-designed content and work processes. We see ideas not as guiding principles, but as open questions to be considered and integrated into one’s specific context. Mutual respect and open communication are crucial to achieving broader understanding and greater insights for everyone. Obviously, such short-term collaborative art production runs the risk of being criticized for remaining superficial. This might be true if one claims a deeper understanding of the so-called “other” from an exclusive perspective. But it is certainly not true of experiencing a concrete situation as part of a collective of practicing artists or of a research community. Thus the outcome in our case served not so much a closeted research institution, but each and every person involved. Hence, such projects can best be evaluated from within, by the participants together with their fellow collaborators.

Notes 1

Hans Belting, Jacob Birken, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel, Global Studies: Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011); Hans Belting and Andrea Buddensieg, The Global Art World: Audiences, Markets and Museums (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009); Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme (eds), World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008).

2 foa-flux.net; www.chokischool.com (accessed 12 October 2016); see also Society Switzerland-Bhutan (ed.), Far Apart and Close Together: Bhutan and Switzerland— Partners in Development Since 1950. 3 “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary’,” October, 130 (Fall 2009); “The And: An Expanded Questionnaire on the Contemporary,” Field Notes, 01 (Hong Kong: Asian Art Archive, 2012); Annemarie Bucher and Dominique Lämmli, Art in Action, exhibition booklet (Zurich: FOA-FLUX, 2014) available online: foa-flux.net; Dominique Lämmli, Art in Action: Make People Think! (Zurich: FOA-FLUX, 2014) available online:

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ALTERNATIVE ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY foa-flux.net/texts; Dominique Lämmli, Why Art? Contemporary, Traditional and Global Art (Zurich: FOA-FLUX, 2010).

4 Parul Dave-Mukherji, “Art History and its Discontents in Global Times,” in Jill H. Casid and Aruna D’Souza (eds), Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn (Massachusetts: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2014). 5 Dominique Lämmli, Gobalist or Glocalist View? Taking Preliminary Assumptions Seriously (Zurich: FOA-FLUX, 2012) available online: foa-flux.net/texts (accessed 12 October 2016). 6 We have to be careful not to shift “othering“ into the negotiation of different art notions and practices. On othering as a strategy of alienation, see Gayatri C. Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean (eds), The Spivak Reader (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 203ff. 7 2010: Seminar sessions at ZHdK on “Culturally informed notions of art,” conducted by Bucher/Lämmli at ZHdK, Zurich; 2013: First workshop (CTAS and FOA-FLUX) in Thimphu, Bhutan: “Re-thinking contemporary art and traditional art”; 2014: Second workshop (CTAS, FOA-FLUX and Srishti) at Srishti in Bangalore, India: “Talking Sites (Bangalore)”; 2015: art production (CTAS and FOA-FLUX) in Schmerikon, Switzerland; 2016: Third workshop (CTAS and FOA-FLUX) planned in Thimphu, Bhutan. Besides its initiators (FOA-FLUX and CTAS), the project has at times involved other institutions. 8 See foa-flux.net. The private research venture was founded by artist Dominique Lämmli and art-and-landscape historian Annemarie Bucher, who both also teach at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). 9 With the concept “glocality” we refer to Roland Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity,” in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds), Global Modernities (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 25–44. 10 See www.chokischool.com (accessed 12 October 2016). 11 www.zhdk.ch (accessed 12 October 2016). 12 See, for example, What is Contemporary Art? e-flux reader 2010; Dominique Lämmli, Art in Action; Terry Smith, Contemporary Art: World Currents (London: Prentice Hall, 2011); Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary’”; “The And: An Expanded Questionnaire.” 13 A Dzong is a distinctive type of Buddhist fortress architecture. 14 See The Dragon’s Gift: The Art of Bhutan (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2009); see also http://www.bhutantravelportal.com/miscellaneous/thirteen_crafts.php (accessed 21 March 2015). 15 A renowned artist in this regard is Asha Kama, who received his traditional art education in Bhutan and then studied in the U.K. where he earned a degree in media communication. He has built his reputation with exhibitions, art awards, and grants. He is also one of the founders of VAST, a voluntary artist’s studio in Thimphu. VAST was set up in 1998 by a group of contemporary artists as a non-profit and non-governmental organization (NGO) with the aim of providing an opportunity to Bhutanese youth to develop their potential talents and to share social responsibilities through artistic explorations. VAST promotes the importance and the value of visual art and a corresponding contemporary expression for taking part in national, regional, and international art events. 16 Annemarie Bucher, “Co-art”: Remarks on Collaboration, Community Building,



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and Addressing the Public in Contemporary Art Projects (Zurich: FOA-FLUX, 2015) available online: foa-flux.net/texts; Tom Finkelpearl, What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013). For “dialogical aesthetics” see Chapter 3 in Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); Grant Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011). 17 Dominique Lämmli, Art in Action. 18 See “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary’.” 19 Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983); George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers, The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright, Anthropology and Art Practice (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). By analyzing art objects from a subject’s perspective, Gell (1998) reveals an active aspect of art and therefore declares art as a powerful agent within a specific social context. According to Gell, art objects are seen as direct components of social relations; the making of objects is a means of influencing the thoughts and actions of the members of a community or society. 20 Annemarie Bucher and Dominique Lämmli, “The Glocal Set,” unpublished paper (Zurich: FOA-FLUX, 2012). 21 On artistic research, see The Hague Reader 2010: Can Art be Demonstrated? The Artist as a Researcher, a two-day international conference on artistic research and the Ph.D. in visual art and design, Royal Academy of Arts (KABK), The Hague (2010). 22 Action research identifies and investigates problems within a specific situation. It is evaluative, reflective, and participatory as it aims to improve and provide the basis for collaborative, team-based investigation. See also Stephen Kemmis, The Action Research Planner (Geelong: Deaking University Press, 1988). 23 See Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces. 24 In Bhutan, to walk by such a painting when, for example, leaving the house would provoke bad luck and maybe one would have to encounter such terrible human psychological states in reality. 25 Mr. Katru, Ms. Dorji, Ms. Tenzin. 26 Mr. Tenzin. 27 Dominique Lämmli, artist, philosopher, professor of drawing and painting at ZHdK. 28 Annemarie Bucher, art historian, curator, art critic, landscape historian, senior lecturer at ZHdK. 29 Ideally, they would use the opportunity to create their art while allowing everyone involved—the other Swiss participants and the Bhutanese participants—to contribute in an essential way. 30 They were grouped such that all groups included CTAS, NIZC, and ZHdK students.

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14 Remains and gains: A conversation between Sonam Choki, Dominique Lämmli, and Annemarie Bucher on expectations, challenges, benefits, and learning processes Annemarie Bucher, Sonam Choki, and Dominique Lämmli

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hree years later, our exchange project—and especially the workshop in Bhutan—is still making an impact. Besides the final, collaboratively produced mural, several immaterial outcomes have emerged over time. In retrospect, the project involved many negotiations, which resulted in a multilayered narrative of intercultural exchange on art and art education. Each of us has a particular position within this story and feeds that story from an individual point of view. It was a rich experience for all of us—an experience that is challenging to observe and describe with the benefit of hindsight. Without a doubt, this experience has changed our-“selves,” sharpened our gazes, and created more desires and needs on all sides. How to go on? The best evidence that the project has been worthwhile is that we are continuously striving towards, and already pursuing, various follow-up projects. The following digital talk between Sonam Choki, Annemarie Bucher, and Dominique Lämmli reflects on our project experiences three years later.

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As experiences change over time, how would each of us describe our experience of the workshop in Thimphu three years later? SC  In my opinion, our exchange not only generated ideas and exposed us to unfamiliar ways of thinking, but it also helped us to understand our different conceptions of art in a wider sense. So I am really convinced that such exchanges expand our values and enrich our learning. DL  The practical collaborative setting had a delimiting effect on preconceptions of art and culture—this was a crucial, stimulating experience for me. Each and every one of us came in with practical questions that related to our work and the current global dynamics in the field of art. This practical approach enabled a practice-led exploration both of our respective standpoints and of the future possibilities lying beyond the limits of particular art notions. AB  Looking back at the workshop several years later, it still feels like a unique but fundamental experience. Beneath the more obvious benefits, over time I have become keenly aware of a sustainable expansion of my methodological and operative framework in the field of art and research. Facing two obviously different realities of artistic production and education in one and the same setting conveys the compelling effect of producing a flexible and interconnected point of view. This refers to our open research framework and makes clear that no single, unified scientific framework can justifiably be drawn on to classify art in general. This means that previously separate art worlds can easily merge.

How did this project affect our understanding of art? Our notions of the functions of art? Our art practice? SC  After the exchange, we came to better understand the concept of contemporary art, as well as the different perceptions and methodologies applied during the workshop. Since we in Bhutan come from traditional art, we discovered a hugely different outlook and a range of unfamiliar notions. Thus, our collaborative mural was a good exercise in this respect; working together enabled all participants to apply their ideas and techniques so as to achieve a piece of visual art. AB  Our collaboration revealed just how different and yet how similar the role of the artist can be performed. Whereas artists’ self-positioning in the public sphere and their social acclaim can be similar, there is still a significant difference between



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self-centered contemporary artists, who are rooted deeply in Western modernism, and function- and tradition-oriented artists, who refer to and serve various contextual (social, religious, and other) functions. Our project showed that artistic production referring only to the artist’s self is a confined field and curbs the vast potential of art. DL  Our project made me understand that artists everywhere are actively altering existing frames of reference through their practice and through their personal observations of life—no matter how differently the “personal” is understood within particular cultural contexts. Discussing the particular “why’s” and “how’s” helps one to reflect on one’s own position and to become capable of playing an active role.

What were the most challenging aspects and situations each of us had to face and to deal with? AB  There were many challenges on all levels, but none to be really disappointed about. I underestimated the individual artist’s ego of our Swiss students, who are trained to develop their artistic strategies towards individual authorship. Such canonized and hierarchical positions created certain misunderstandings and hindered a deeper engagement with the Bhutanese context. This revealed a deeper problem of intercultural exchanges, namely, of facing so-called culturally defined limitations, which are extremely resistant to change. DL  For me, the most challenging part was how to open up the perceptual limitations of European-trained art students. Although they come from different European cultures, their value-judgments are informed by the European art tradition. This made it difficult for them to access joint learning, many falling again and again into the trap of “the teacher, knowing how things have to be done.” I tried to counteract these dynamics with several pre-meetings, by discussing these dynamics, by creating awareness, and by strengthening an action-oriented and collaborative approach. Looking back, I realize that their “knowing-all” attitude made it impossible for some students to assimilate, let alone absorb, the new information. Sharing my experience with other project managers of intercultural projects involving students with Euro-American backgrounds revealed this as a common problem. It requires a change of mindset, and that really does take time to emerge. SC  I found the visa process quite lengthy and time-consuming. The other challenges we faced were the manifold cultural differences and interacting across cultural boundaries. Since our students come from a remote region of Bhutan, they found interaction quite difficult.

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What were the benefits of this exchange project? Its short-term effects? Its long-term consequences? Which specific needs did it meet? What about knowledge production? SC  It provided good exposure to unfamiliar surroundings and perspectives, and allowed us to learn from other points of view. Participants gained first-hand experience and practice. They were able to share and express their ways of doing things. It also helped participants to get to know each other and to gain an enriched understanding of art from a wider perspective. DL  When preparing the exchange, one of the fundamental issues we had to deal with was how to create a setting in which to exchange experiences and ideas on equal terms. The highly judgmental terms (within art discourse) of “contemporary art” and “traditional art” seemed to make this difficult. Finally, after a lot of thinking and discussions we came up with a solution that, in fact, is quite simple: both art traditions are contemporary and have their traditions. It proves most fruitful to have a look at facts and to reflect back on concepts, and vice versa. Also, having and sharing practice-driven interests proves very productive; our main focus lay not on categorizing an existing state of affairs or a status quo, but on producing the unfamiliar, making the unexpected happen, and becoming susceptible to new potentials. AB  In my opinion, this project has created new perspectives for art research in particular and art production in general. These perspectives become manifest in little steps, such as individual cooperations and the sharing of interests across conceptual, cultural, and geographical boundaries.

How did each of us deal with the cultural parameters? DL  Based on my experience of other intercultural artist-run workshops, I favor the following approach: I value each participant as unique, as quite familiar as a human being and yet a mystery in terms of ideas, beliefs, and concepts—regardless of their cultural and social background. I never assume that I see things the same way others do. Similar perceptions emerge when we engage and exchange experiences and ideas. Therefore, my starting point is to have a group of ten people exchange their views and work together: there are ten different perspectives. Obviously, this means that I do not apply a notion of what and how much it takes to constitute “sameness” or “difference.” These relational concepts may help to legitimate and sediment certain



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belief systems. But they prove inadequate for a potential-orientated and practicebased thought and developmental process. SC  It is interesting to know that although participants came from diverse backgrounds, they were still able to adapt to each other. Initially, there were lots of questions from both sides about a great many issues. But by being patient and enthusiastic, we were quickly able to deal with the situation much better than I had imagined. I quote Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” I think it’s from such involvement that one reaps the benefits and can overcome (m)any obstacles. AB  Bhutan and Switzerland are geographically similar (both countries are mountainous), but culturally diverse. During the workshop, contemporary Western and Eastern traditions faced each other and were often in conflict. I experienced so-called cultural differences in a very ambivalent way. Only at first sight were there insurmountable differences between art as practiced and taught in Bhutan and in Switzerland. Purported differences started to disappear when we began working together. But during the workshop, many of these preconceived constraints became obsolete, while others became distinctly perceptible and needed to be discussed. In the end, participants from both sides became a productive body of individually, socially, and culturally different agents (experts, freshmen, instructors, students, and researchers) guided by a strong shared interest and a distinguished form of dialogue.

What would you suggest doing differently next time? SC  In the future, I would suggest that at least a minimum of one week be dedicated to each resource input in order to be able to understand the basic terms and concepts. These inputs will help generate new ideas and evoke creative thinking. An induction session needs to be held before the beginning of the program to make the participants comfortable and to allow them to gain a basic understanding of each other’s backgrounds. Once participants have assimilated the fundamental ideas and knowledge, another three days to one week would be needed to produce a collaborative piece of work or to undertake a joint activity (such as our mural). Such a conclusion to the exchange helps participants to analyze their perceptions, the whole process, and the functions of art. AB  Within such ongoing research, improvements (or rather adjustments) need to be made as one moves along and learning effects will occur little by little. When it comes to making things better, applied knowledge production and the individual capacity to learn from direct experience come to the fore. This project definitely provided a lot of both and thus upset conventional disciplinary research frames, which often tend to separate knowledge production from context and therefore to generalize it. This

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experience made me particularly attentive to a general need for enlarging the research framework (including time and means) for collaborative art making and reflection within such a research project and context. On the one hand, this need underlines the mutual benefits of this project; on the other, it draws much-needed attention to the barely acknowledged research status of such collaborations in general. DL  Several features of the workshop worked very well. I am interested in bringing these into other projects and in developing them further. These features include the collaborative process of co-designing content, procedure, and organization by starting with a discussion paper and then collectively writing the program while clarifying each other’s motivations and interests, and so on. Also, the highly ritualized Bhutanese forms of meeting, getting to know each other, starting events, etc., all had a positive effect on the group. It fostered a sense of community, a feeling of meeting to undertake a shared task, and trust. Such rituals of connecting people are highly useful for other joint learning projects.

What has happened to the mural? What is the current state of the work? SC  The mural painting has evoked many questions and discussions. Such art helps to communicate one’s particular form of expression and methodology. Today, besides ornamenting the school compound, it has become an object for everyone to understand the collaborative values, techniques, and good spirit of teamwork evident during the workshop. Such a work definitely sends out the message that if one so chooses, and no matter how vast the cultural differences are, one can come together to create fascinating art, just as we did.

Note This digital conversation was carried out via Skype in April 2015.

15 Ethnography, ’pataphysics, copying X. Andrade

The past thirty years have indeed witnessed a curious mimicry at work within the shoals and shallows of enterprise culture. As if responding to the ruined public landscape of enterprise culture, an assortment of ersatz institutes, centers, schools, bureaus, offices, laboratories, leagues, departments, societies, clubs, and bogus corporations have inserted themselves into the deterritorialized space of the spectacular global marketplace. Each of these mock-institutional entities sports its own logo, mission, and website, engaging in a process of self-branding not so much aimed at niche markets or product loyalty, but rather to gain surreptitious entry into visibility itself (although significantly these maneuvers typically provide art world positioning whether intended or not).1 This chapter provides an overview of selected works of Full Dollar, a phantom entity— “an anthropological enterprise,” “a corporation,” “an apocryphal society”—initially launched as a mock pop-up gallery in 2004 in Guayaquil, Ecuador. By examining my own transitions from classically trained ethnographic fieldwork to ’pataphysics-based art practice, I discuss theoretical influences taken from contemporary art and the ethnography of the art worlds. Working in collaborative projects mainly with non-artists, Full Dollar uses strategies of appropriation to further develop an institutional critique-based ethnographic gaze on differently situated visual economies. For instance, while conducting the project The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art (TFDCCA), from 2009 through 2015, I collaborated with sign painter Victor Hugo “Don Pili” Escalante (from the small coastal town of Playas, Ecuador) to have famous works by contemporary artists such as Jeff

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Koons, Mike Kelley, and other celebrities repainted as signs for imaginary business with inscriptions in Spanish. A series of mistranslations are essential to a process in which two visual economies are confronted: the popular tradition of hand painting for advertising purposes, and the languages of global art markets. Full Dollar’s appropriation approach “questions ideas of authenticity and the creation of value in the global art world, as well as Ecuador’s own peripheral status (as a Third World and dollarized economy)”—lacking cultural institutions with collections of contemporary art—“within the international division of labor.”2 In 2012, the TFDCCA project was replicated in Los Angeles, California, when I was invited as an artist in residence at the Outpost at the Armory Center for the Arts, working with sign painters and visual artists in a neighborhood subjected to an ongoing process of gentrification. This chapter discusses how locally developed artistic practices with an anthropological background can be transferred to the global art world. It articulates ethnographic findings in collaborative practices, and discusses an expanded notion of fieldwork by reflecting on questions surrounding the production, circulation, and consumption of knowledge so created. I reflect on the dialogic nature of the Full Dollar projects, and the different instances—such as gallery openings, exhibitions, press and curatorial reviews, interventions of art as social practice, and publications—in which ethnographic knowledge is created as a result of experimental forms of fieldwork.3

Ethnography and ’pataphysics Since its opening in 2004, Full Dollar fosters artistic interventions that expand my work as a visual and urban anthropologist. At the time, I was particularly interested in the sociological effects of a radical process of urban renewal that started to take place in 2000 in the downtown district of Guayaquil, the largest city, with a population of around 3 million, and the most important port in Ecuador. This process is led by an ultra-conservative local government that has controlled the city since 1992 to the present in what constitutes a unique example of political stability in the country’s history. The main purpose of the spatial reform was to develop a neoliberal city with its emphasis on the privatization of public space, productivity, the displacement of homeless and informal vendors to the margins of the renovated areas, the elimination of public debates about the city’s destiny, and the construction of a generic landscape that would fit within the expectations of the global tourist markets.4 The collusion between notions of efficiency, globalization, tourism, securitization, and social cleansing is, of course, a recipe that has been applied in different urban contexts.5 Guayaquil represents, in the Ecuadorian case, a paradigmatic example in this regard. Critical thinking towards this process was practically abolished by different means. On the one hand, support in the public sphere was monolithic due in great part to mass media celebration of spatial changes. On the other hand, state violence served to keep social unrest at a minimum by prosecuting political enemies, sexual minorities, and informal vendors.6 Equally effective, by promoting notions of “self respect” and



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civic discipline among the population, a hegemonic narrative about emergent forms of citizenship was consolidated. Accordingly, ideal citizens must rely on their submission to an authoritarian style of administration, and also embrace the core of neoliberal values such as individuality as a prime late capitalist value.7 The most conservative aspects of history and popular culture became instrumental in further stabilizing commonsense understandings about race, cultural identity, spatial order, and politics.8 Amid a landscape of silence and / or approval in the public sphere, my work as an ethnographer was largely inefficient. Academic discipline promotes the textual form as its main, if not the only, way to produce and circulate knowledge. In a city like Guayaquil, where critical thinking was, until very recently, largely marginal, my writings were condemned to circulate in the hands of very few people elsewhere. I felt alienated by the language and codes of political correctness consecrated in social sciences and the everyday life of my experience as a citizen living in a politically reactionary context. Drawing upon earlier collaborative projects with artists in New York City in the 1990s, and my own interest in contemporary art, I searched for strategies that could help to expand my traditional ethnographic training. At the time, Aleksandra Mir’s compilation, Corporate Mentality: An Archive Documenting the Emergence of Recent Practices Within a Cultural Sphere Occupied by Both Business and Art, was crucial in discovering a larger field of mock institutions and research-based art practices.9 My critique was not against anthropology and its methods, but in opposition to the politics of academia and the dominant paradigm of Andean anthropology in Ecuador and the larger region, with its emphasis on indigenous societies and ethnicity. Strategies highly valued in the realm of art, which in turn are despised by anthropology, became my main tool box to carve a conceptual project that would allow me to move from the frontiers of academy to the art worlds, and vice versa. For instance, irony, sarcasm, humor, laughter, parody, copy, and various forms of excess and appropriation became central. Looking at the traffic between anthropology and art, my interests were certainly not unique—as the long trajectory of encounters between anthropologists and art practices witnesses.10 My definition of “traffic,” however, differs from those traditions. I use this notion to highlight the precariousness and ambiguity of a certain condition. Given my lack of artistic training, and taking as a reference earlier research on drug trafficking in Ecuador and New York City, I conceptualize and design my projects as deliberately suspicious, somewhat illegitimate forms meant to question disciplinary boundaries by creating frictions on both sides.11 Therefore, I see my position as closer to a drug trafficker’s: transporting illicit ideas, images, methods, and objects within the realms of both anthropology and contemporary art.12 Among my main influences at that point were artist and critic Luis Camnitzer’s discussions on conceptualism in Latin America, a tradition characterized by its direct engagement with political issues, and Hans Haacke’s critical works on the art system.13 Translating their lessons into anthropology was facilitated by artists like Mark Lombardi’s research-based drawings of “narrative structures,” a sophisticated graphic

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form of political denunciation.14 Following Lombardi’s visual take on political economy, I wanted to map out the perversities of urban privatization using more effective and critical tools beyond the—largely inefficient—academic text. For this purpose, the institutional parody developed by ’pataphysics thinkers in Latin American circles became crucial. For instance, in Argentina, curator and writer Rafael Cippolini and, in Mexico, artist and writer Rubén Bonet were of particular relevance in conceptualizing Full Dollar as an institution of dubious nature, operating under the logic of the exception rather than the rule—a basic ’pataphysics principle.15 Cippolini is the highest authority of the Longevo Instituto de Altos Estudios ’Patafísicos de Ubuenos Aires, an extension of the Collège de ’Pataphysique—a parody of institutions such as the Collège de Sociologie—created in 1948 in Paris in homage to Alfred Jarry’s “science of imaginary solutions” legacy. Bonet is the President and Secretary of Fundación Adopte a Un Escritor (translated as the Adopt-A-Writer Foundation), an institution devoted to raising funds for supporting one only writer, Bonet himself, by means of selling services as a private teacher of literature, sexual encounters, and anything in between. Further inspiration comes from artist and writer Filip de Noterdaeme, founding director of the Homeless Museum, HoMu, an art project of institutional critique based in New York City that currently takes the form of a book.16 This type of connection also explains, for instance, that the second authority of the Collège de ’Pataphysique— only after one fictional character of Jarry’s invention, Dr. Faustroll—is a baboon, while HoMu’s programming director and director of public relations are a chimpanzee and a stuffed coyote, respectively. Full Dollar’s board of directors is composed of its President and Chairman-for-Life (Andrade) and two, unnamed, street dogs: a hierarchical structure that “simplifies the decision-making and planning process enormously.”17 Equally of importance, Marcel Broodthaers’ early experiments with the museum form and its bureaucratic language speak eloquently of confluences between ’pataphysics, ethnographic questions on representation, and contemporary art.18 I initially launched the Full Dollar project following an epiphany in front of an urban ruin during my daily walks through the renovated part of Guayaquil, my main field site for studying the politics of spatial reform. I chose an abandoned building showing signs of imminent destruction; the fact that it was located at the heart of the main area already subjected to aggressive urban renewal made its existence anachronistic, an exception in a block that has been otherwise almost entirely modified. This edification turned emblematic for other reasons as well. It had a sign advertising telephone rentals before telecommunications were handed over to transnational corporations. The dilapidated condition of that sign painting—immediately adopted as our company’s logo—and the space itself, which for years had been a warehouse of recyclable objects and an improvised shelter for the homeless, led to its appropriation to show the illusory nature of progress. This location served for the purpose of holding sometimes even fictive monthly happenings that were advertised by e-mail. According to the opening release:



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FIGURE 15.1  Full Dollar’s original incarnation as a pop-up gallery in downtown Guayaquil, 2004. Photo © X. Andrade/Full Dollar. Formerly having a bad reputation due to street violence, administrative chaos, and architectural decay, [Guayaquil] recently was awarded a UN award as a paradigm for urban development.  Officially, signs of success are the cleaning-up of street sellers, the increasing tourism and private security, and the surplus generated in the real state markets. Perverse effects on the history and identity of the city are also clear, as exemplified by the creation of a generic landscape, sociological cleansing and exclusionary policies for vast populations. Once spaces are homogenized, renovated, and sold to people inscribed within tight networks of political connections, they are privatized by different means. In doing so, public spaces are disappearing and everyday life is increasingly on private hands […] A complicit silence about these processes within the social science and art circles justified the gallery’s creation on the first place. The space was inaugurated without previous notice to anybody but the onlookers.19 Although initially my idea was to merely mimic art’s language to advance anthropological and political statements, soon after the gallery’s opening in March 2004 an early demand for the production of material interventions prompted a major change in our practices.

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Vernacular painting and confrontations Since the mid-1990s I developed an interest in visual economies, the historical formations in which images / objects are inscribed. By “visual economies,” I understand—following Deborah Poole—the complex ways in which images are affected by being part of concrete processes of production, distribution, and consumption. According to this framework, images are, first and foremost, an historical product, and also a particular type of commodity: an object and fetish that speaks in the language of desire, excess, and sensuality, with meanings that are constituted by larger discourses on visuality in conjunction with ideologies of nation, race, class, and gender.20 Gradually, the effects of images upon social life became my main topic of inquiry. I started by conducting fieldwork on political pornography in Ecuador as a source for understanding populist representations of democracy during the 1980s. My research focused on humorous—albeit sexist—obscene caricatures published in underground magazines. How did crude textual and visual language contribute to the purposes of debunking public images of political power and democracy? Attending to readers’ responses, a mix of both laughter and repulsion emerged as reactions to grotesque narratives on the body politics.21 W. J. T. Mitchell’s studies on images and their capability for awakening different sorts of social relations between viewers and objects opened up a series of ethnographic questions. Mitchell asks about the paradox of images as being inanimate objects that are, however, capable of moving viewers—to the point of offending them—with sequences of censorship, rage, and hate, as well as love and devotion.22 After studying underground cartoons, I became interested in questions about the economies of sign painting, and topics such as copy, mimesis, and serial reproduction. Later on I came upon debates on drawing and photography by John Berger and Michael Taussig. While Berger sees drawing essentially as a process, a dialogic exercise between the artist and what is drawn, Taussig’s reflections on the thingness of drawing and mimetic power helped me thinking about the fetishistic nature of images and the “spiritual” life that lies underneath their materiality.23 Calling upon notions of “sympathetic magic,” Taussig goes beyond the utilitarian reason (“the voodoo effect”) in James Frazer’s original theories. His reflections on the thingness of the image within anthropologists’ fieldwork notebooks and the system of exchange between images and texts helped to shape my research on sign painting and the creation of value within the contemporary art world. Following these discussions, I asked “what do sign paintings want?” beyond their main advertising purposes. Do they trigger specific forms of social relations? How do the image-makers come up with certain styles and a stock of images to create vernacular forms of advertising? Are there ways to put such visual economy into a critical dialogue with contemporary art? Inspired primarily by Johannes Fabian’s (1996) exemplary curatorial and anthropological work on painting and popular history in Zaire, I developed an early project on vernacular painting in Ecuador, the ironic series “The Foremost Dramatic Problems of the Contemporary World” (2006–8), which resulted from an encounter with a street



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painter of tropical landscapes.24 Ruddy worked in downtown Guayaquil and was subjected to daily harassment by police officers as part of the politics of control and discipline imposed upon working-class citizens in the regenerated areas. At first, I commissioned three series of thirteen miniature paintings (oil on paper, 6 x 5 in), each of them depicting subjects such as terrorism, prostitution, and drug use (commonplaces of conservative ideologies). They were reproductions based on pedagogical sheets that are used in children’s schools to teach about any subject in a, supposedly, comprehensive and objective manner. In fact, moralistic and religious discourses permeate these materials. Ruddy’s painting skills rendered them very differently from the original references in a comics-like fashion. Three further series followed on a range of topics to be considered mockingly “dramatic” as well: urban renewal, cultural institutions, and contemporary art. While the first one depicted the painter’s autobiography and his daily struggle for survival, the second showed the mestizo cultural elite on opening nights, drinking and posing for photographs.

FIGURE 15.2  “The Foremost Dramatic Problems of the Contemporary World: The Cultural Management Series.” The white–mestizo elite at a show opening. Guayaquil, 2006–8. Photo © Juan Antonio Serrano/Full Dollar.

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The last commission, on contemporary art, outlined the social life of the whole project from the painter’s perspective: seventy-eight paintings. Ruddy depicted their exhibition as part of an international event. He painted me becoming globally famous (cocktail parties, media exposure) while Ruddy continued to sell his works in the streets. In a denouncement of unequal power relations between the anthropologist and the painter, the very last painting closed with caustic sarcasm: Andrade is shown in the act of reading a newspaper’s headline: “Full Dollar: Contemporary art has never been this badly represented.” A comment on myself as a bogus artist, this phrase became Full Dollar’s corporate slogan since then. Ruddy’s interpretation speaks powerfully about misunderstandings and the limits of ethnographic encounters in projects of this nature. After asking for analytical distance towards idealized versions of collaboration on art practices, Schneider and Wright correctly argue that: One problem with collaborations in the vein of relational aesthetics has been that they have failed to fully acknowledge the power differences that exist within a

FIGURE 15.3  “The Foremost Dramatic Problems of the Contemporary World: The Contemporary Art Series.” Upon returning home after an international invitation, Andrade is shown reading an article in a newspaper. Its title is telling: “Full Dollar: Contemporary art has never been this badly represented.” Guayaquil, 2006. Photo © Juan Antonio Serrano/ Full Dollar.



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globally structured art world and global economic differences at large. It is also obvious that long-term durational work seems to offer quite a different set of issues in terms of participation than those involved with short-term collaborations.25 Power differences were deliberately inscribed by Ruddy on his work in these series, reminding me of Fabian’s discussion on “confrontation” as an epistemological concept in ethnography and its relevance to dialogical practices that are structurally conditioned by competing perspectives and interpretations between, for instance, an ethnographer and a vernacular painter.26 Far from an idealized situation, collaborative projects are constituted by tensions derived from different understandings about power, art, and ethnography. By pushing Ruddy to detach himself from the constraints of genre painting—bucolic landscapes of coastal Ecuador—he found himself in an uncertain territory dominated by my role as patron and commissioning curator. The project built a dialogical space about image making while it also broadened the social distances imposed by institutional distinctions between “crafts” and “art,” the informal economy and the academy.

The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art Additional understanding on confrontation as a productive force in ethnographybased art practices was brought to light forcefully in my following projects. The book Gráfica Popular: Ecuador, a photographic survey of sign paintings throughout Ecuador, resulted from shared interests in vernacular imagery with graphic designers and photographers.27 I focused more specifically on Playas, a small touristic and fishing village, and its surroundings. Until recently, this town was marginal to urban planning and development, resulting in decaying streets, abandoned houses, and general disorder. At the same time, it is a vivid, colorful place. I took snapshots of hundreds of sign paintings on a broad range of mainly mom-and-pop businesses ranging from churches to bordellos. I noticed that someone called “Don Pili” signed the nicest works, and followed up on his trail until I found a tiny workshop right next to a soccer field. Victor Hugo Escalante Yagual, a.k.a. “Don Pili,” is a sixty-five-year-old former fisherman who early on devoted himself to sign painting. While fishing since a boy—the main occupation for people of his generation—he also made handicrafts and helped his brother to paint boats upon request from fishermen of nearby towns. Boat painting traditionally mixes religious imagery with TV cartoons or soccer clubs’ emblems. Elaborate typography is used to name a boat after its owner, his relatives, and a religious patron. Upon the book’s publication, which included assorted photographs of Don Pili´s work, I continued fostering his friendship. I found someone self-reflexive about his artistry and open to future collaboration, making him an ideal Full Dollar accomplice.28 Don Pili was proud to remark that his most artful pieces were painted inside brothels.

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Confronted with wall-to-wall, impressive, murals of almost naked female models, the displays resembled one-man museums. After touring them, a project started to take form: to develop a critique on commodification and art collecting practices through the language of sign painting. Conceptually speaking, the departure point was to visualize unequal relations of power between what is considered “art” and “crafts” by assembling a collection of handmade reproductions of well-known works by worldfamous artists. A particular collection of—obviously fake—copies: Don Pili would have to reinterpret each piece, keeping in mind commercial advertising. Francis Alys’s Sign Painting Project was a reference.29 I wanted to direct the copy method towards the world of art itself, the language of sign painting proving perfect for my purpose of rendering the practice of “collecting contemporary art” into the language of “popular culture” to make a point about unequal power relations at different levels. A faithful reproduction of the original works was the painter’s immediate understanding of “appropriation” when I commissioned a first series of three paintings. Without a common visual and/or conceptual vocabulary to relate to, I encouraged him to think about the originals not as “art” but as signs in need of his intervention in terms of thinking the images as commercial illustrations. Accordingly, Don Pili’s only question, besides sizes and painting materials, was in regard to their future use and display: “Would the signs hang inside or outside the stores?” Alien to contemporary art, museums, or galleries, the question was both practical and aesthetical. When the sign painter “intervenes” in “master art” to show its commercial potential / hidden agenda, Don Pili’s insistence on a fundamental difference in representational purposes between a sign for external / street use vs internal (“private”) exhibition, and the aesthetic variations that result from such difference, also implied the potential for its subversion. Drawing upon his own background of craftsmanship and the function of sign paintings, Don Pili provided an interpretation of my project on his own terms. We reached an awkward meeting point: I had in mind a gallery space for exhibiting the collection, while he imagined a shop. An agreement based on such conceptual misunderstandings followed. We settled issues regarding prizes, sizes, payments, and deadlines. We also talked about the texts accompanying the images after a careful discussion on which kind of store could gain from advertising a chosen image. Finally, we formulated a method in terms of general rules: MM

Full Dollar would sponsor the project from its production to its exhibition, promotion, circulation, and theorizing in both artistic and academic settings.

MM

The ethnographer is the project’s conceptual author and the collection’s owner.

MM

The painter retains authorship on the pieces (including signing them whenever he decided).

MM

An artwork will be chosen out of a previous pool of images (photographic reproductions) selected by the ethnographer based on his previous knowledge of contemporary art and the celebrity of certain artists in the global markets.



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MM

The painter will propose the main potential use of a given image, taking into consideration the message that the original piece could suggest for commercial advertising.

MM

Titles/inscriptions will be chosen based on either the name of the original artist or the title of an original piece. Either one or both should serve as a source of inspiration to accomplish the former task.

MM

The ethnographer will pay the painter in advance an amount based on the latter’s assessment of the amount of work required and his regular fees as a sign painter.

MM

Once the paintings are inscribed within contemporary art circuits, economic benefits will be equally distributed and any profit for the ethnographer / collector will be reinvested in expanding the collection in different directions.

Images were primarily selected from the book Collecting Contemporary Art.30 The dialogue established about the possible relations between texts and images was particularly telling about the coexistence of conflicting perspectives on the project as

FIGURE 15.4  The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art: “Damián’s Real Cebiches, Best in Cown!” 2009–15. Don Pili’s reading of Damien Hirst´s piece as a commercial sign for a restaurant. “Cown” is “town” misspelled. All forms of mistranslation were preserved in this project. Photo © Full Dollar.

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a whole. First, “contemporary art” is an empty label for Don Pili, a self-taught painter himself, since he is not familiarized with either the concept or the field. Absence of clues about an artist’s work or art history became an extraordinary advantage; Don Pili would freely associate the originals to produce paintings that would resemble actual signs: acrylic on plywood, most of them of 47 x 31 inches. Digging upon his own repertoire for decorating restaurants, hair salons, mini-markets, tailor shops, bazaars, and boats, he would use images produced by the most expensive and globally famous artists.31 The first three pieces were of an installation by Paul McCarthy, a painting by Gilbert and George, and a sculpture by Sarah Lucas. To my initial delusion, Don Pili produced what seemed to me a highly standardized set of reproductions. He was obviously concerned with showing his skills at providing faithful copies of the originals. Indeed, he made several remarks on how great a resemblance they had. The lettering, on the other hand, was flat and plain, using a formula that it seemed to him was the least possibly intrusive on the images as such (straight, yellow letters on a blue background on the lower part of the image). Working as separate captions, frequently with mistranslations from English to Spanish, he wanted to keep texts apart from figures

FIGURE 15.5  The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art: “Betty Bon Military Academy,” 2009–15. Don Pili justified the original author Raymond Pettibon’s misspelled name because he read the woman’s image as a pin-up character, hence her name, Betty. Photo © Full Dollar.



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to avoid visual contamination. Don Pili kept his own agenda—to show his creativity by highlighting his own artistic skills: “to paint as good as a famous painter” (never mind that he provided renderings of photographic reproductions of installations, sculptures, photographs, or paintings). For me, on the other hand, the project’s sense of creativity relied on expanding popular painting traditions. The pictures created by Don Pili were certainly intriguing. Even though he chose to hide his legacy as a typographer, captions worked as powerful, critical, and humorous commentaries on the images’ authenticity and iconic reference. Over the next couple of years, further conversations developed in order to assure that Don Pili would show his full skills at typography. I wanted him to explore his own vocabulary as much as possible, and also to highlight rich chromatic mixes that form part of the classic sign-painting repertoire. We finally achieved a delicate balance and the collection is currently composed of two dozen pieces for exhibition at gallery spaces.32 Famous pieces authored by the elite of the global art world were effectively rendered as sign paintings for hypothetical small-scale businesses. The collection includes works by Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, and Martin Kippenberger, among others.33

Sign painting as social practice In 2011, Outpost for Contemporary Art, an independent space, selected a project based on the premises of TFDCCA to be translated into an entirely new context. Soon, Julie Deamer, Outpost’s director and main curator, asked me to further develop the original method for the purpose of transforming it into a community-oriented, arts-based project in the neighborhood of Highland Park, Los Angeles. The principle: a dialogue between sign painters and visual artists; the method: the establishment of a series of partnerships with relevant institutions in the fields of communication and education to widen the potential visibility of the project; the location: the public space. Gradually, as a result of my virtual exchanges with the curator, my own role as an ethnographer-patron-curator-collector-artist of the TFDCCA was radically transformed. My ethnographic interests became part of a larger, productive, and innovative form of “curatorial design.”34 It was Deamer who broaden the scope of the project, made it much more coherent with the social context in which it would take place, and made me aware of competing sign-painting traditions in the area. She redefined the method, making open discussion among different collaborators an essential aspect. The whole project took yet another turn thanks to Juan Devis, senior, vice president of content development and production of KCET, the largest independent television network in the U.S.A. KCET generously provided a versatile multimedia platform for the project: http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/participate/fulldollar/. It serves as the permanent archive of multiple exchanges echoing debates on commercial signs and art in the Los Angeles area, to make visible different forms of sign painting,

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muralism, graffiti, street art, and other forms of advertising, and to actively involve the student community of Occidental College (the main university in this area) in an ambitious project: to make a photographic survey of the gentrifying York Boulevard and the surrounding areas.35 Again, a series of mistranslations—to quote artist Irene Tsatsos, the Armory Center for the Arts’ director and responsible for providing institutional support for my stance in Los Angeles and carrying the project through to the end—was key for understanding the many transformations that the project had when letting the notion of authorship float free among participants (an estimated fifty people were involved at one stage or another). Acknowledging the collective and participatory dimension of the project, I left different cultural brokers to take crucial decisions. My voice was heard only when I felt that our critical mission was somewhat derailed and I insisted on attempting to subvert the dominant power relations within the global art circuit (with its hierarchies regarding “arts” and “crafts”) as a basic methodological component. The most frequent form of building artistic and ethnographic authority in relational art is by producing a catalog, frequently accompanied by a documentary, in order to construct a public memory of a given project. As Grant Kester has pointed out, the catalog frequently serves to produce an authoritative version of the social effects of art, granting artists and curators the ultimate voice on the matter, generally to overestimate those effects while displacing the participants’ voice to an instrumental level in that regard.36 On the contrary, the KCET web page served to extensively document all the voices involved, the tensions subjacent to different understandings on diverse aspects of the project, and the many obstacles confronted at different stages of its production. Although a sense of authorship was retained, both the curators’ and my own presence coexists with other key cultural brokers: from additional researchers who were involved in broadening the range of discussions surrounding public art in the Los Angeles area—with Richard Ankrom’s paradigmatic interventions on the emblematic L.A. highways and his alternative life as a sign painter—through different readings on the subject by the artists and painters involved, with the latter frequently disputing the conceptual distinction made between “art” and “craft” for the L.A. context, where sign painting is taught at college level. If in Ecuador both spheres hardly ever intersect, in L.A. some of the sign painters defined themselves as artists first, and have their own portfolio careers on the side. Their perspectives questioned some of my basic premises and are extensively documented on video. Even the four participating teams of sign painters, artists, and business owners were recruited by Outpost, liberating me from most decisions in that regard, with the exception of artist Sandow Birk, whose work is highly influenced by appropriations of art history, graffiti, and street art, and whom I had invited. Other participating artists were Shizu Saldamando, who documents her community by way of detailed portraits of its members, Ruby Osorio, and Martin Durazo, all of them familiar in the Highland Park scene. Among the sign painters Rodolfo Cardona a.k.a. Kardona, Kimberly Edwards a.k.a. The Window Goddess, and Anna Ialeggio a.k.a. Cube represented completely different styles and intellectual backgrounds. Kardona, an immigrant from



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El Salvador, was the closest link between sign painting traditions in Ecuador and what myself and the students of Occidental College documented photographically in Highland Park. Finally, participating local business were the printing shop Digicolors, a children’s playground Awesome Playground, the design boutique Mi Vida, and the Nogueira Building. They generously provided their storefronts along York Boulevard, the main artery of the neighborhood, for generating fixtures of artwork. According to the original spirit of TFDCCA, sign painters and business owners should call the shots at the end for the project to work properly. Painters will copy original pieces of the artists involved in order to create functional sign paintings in the storefronts. On a modest scale, TFDCCA hoped to give back to the Highland Park community an opportunity to rethink about the multiple ways in which the urban space can be modified while granting a proper place to historical elements of a given visual economy. This was the idea behind making this “collection” public. A sign painting is the result of a person-to-person negotiation about advertising, but also about the role of images in public space and contemporary society. The murals created on York Boulevard attested to the dialogic nature of this encounter, a powerful tradition that is still very much alive in Los Angeles.

FIGURE 15.6  The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art at York Boulevard, Highland Park, Los Angeles, 2011–13. Kardona’s mural at the Nogueira Building on York Boulevard. A rendition of Sandow Birk’s “The Course of Empire: The Pastoral State,” in turn, his take on the original Thomas Cole series. Photo © The Armory Center for the Arts/ Full Dollar.

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Full Dollar’s projects are forms of trafficking into the art worlds. At the same time, by incorporating different strategies of curatorial design into the fieldwork process and projects described, my practice echoes George Marcus’s call on collaborative projects: anthropological research today rethought as a design process would encompass and preserve classic fieldwork perhaps still as a core modality. It would, however, both relativize its functions and blur its beginning and end in conceiving it within the broader contexts and operations that so much research now entails […] This would lead immediately to the three other issues […]: incompleteness as a norm, […]; the more complex role of collaborations in producing individual projects; and the more formal or conceptualized incorporation of the receptions of the project into its design and doing.37 Thinking from the margins of anthropology, however, my challenge was to incorporate the Latin American traditions of conceptualism and ’pataphysics philosophy at the core of this type of operation in order to explore radical forms of ethnography as institutional critique. In doing so, fieldwork could truly prove an exceptional, utopic location for dialogues and confrontations about art, anthropology, and politics.38 In the Los Angeles project, I saw a possibility to visualize different traditions of sign painting in the area of Highland Park, to dialogue with professional sign painters of diverse backgrounds, artists at different stages in their careers, and business owners, in order to create works that will have a functional purpose as advertising for storefronts. My mission was to foster research on sign painting, and to develop an ethnographic look at this legacy by involving a student community in portraying and reflecting on their public space. Photographic surveys of Highland Park´s handmade ads, and further debates on the social life of these images in the competing visual economy of advertising, was a key part to a project that was born in ethnography. The translation of the Full Dollar Collection into a completely different setting (from Playas, Ecuador to the megalopolis of Los Angeles, California), by the mediation of an art institution such as the Armory Center for the Arts, opened an entire new set of questions, methods, negotiations, and debates along the process. At the core of all these, issues of authorship, power, and conflict emerged: between ethnography and art, between art and crafts, between businesses and advertising. How much of the origins of this project, with its clearly critical and political aims, was kept on its next reincarnation in Los Angeles was an open question due to issues of history and context. However, by broadcasting the process from multiple perspectives, the community could find a relevant reference to discuss undergoing processes of gentrification in the area. The lack of contemporary art collections in public museums in Ecuador, and also institutional neglect towards vernacular forms of painting, contrasts with the global markets for art and the commodification of the art systems.39 In 2009, the collection was born as an ethnographic / artistic project on these issues. Against the strategies of appropriation by established artists of images of advertising and publicity—a



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long-standing trend present from surrealism to pop art and beyond, with recurrent shows in museums across the world for the last fifty years—I saw my dialogue with a sign painter as a method of dissecting power relations in the art world. Instead of taking sign painting as a fixed tradition, the collection—in Ecuador and Los Angeles—attested to the possibilities of expanding the dialogue between ethnography (with its well-known interest in actual people, concrete locations, different perceptions on visuality and art, and the social life of images) and contemporary art. While criticizing idealized notions of “authenticity” in the anthropology of popular culture, this project also served to foster my own critical stance towards the marketoriented world of contemporary art. Finally, discussing some of the effects of juxtaposition and appropriation is a productive way to approach the collections created so far. What Don Pili achieved in the series is to exploit a key feature, in fact one of the main staples, of traditional sign painting: the hilarious, the capacity to create laughter out of mixing images and texts from different sources, to ridicule art collecting as a practice, and to mock the snobbish stance derived from the link between economic power, private property, and the commercial value upon which contemporary art as a global market holds nowadays. That kind of conceptual input was largely lost in translation, however, when relocated to a very different social and spatial context. Still, I gained ethnographic knowledge on artistic practices, and the need to rethink anthropological fieldwork by means of art strategies and curatorial practices. I close this chapter by spiraling out from what moved and shaped our early “fathers and mothers” of social anthropology with their systematic concern with questions regarding art, representation, collecting practices, and visual display, and, I hope, showing a way onward for those interested in contemporary intersections.40

Notes 1

Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2011).

2

Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds), Anthropology and Art Practice (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 9–10.

3

Tarek Elhaik, “Response Paper: What is Contemporary Anthropology?” Critical Arts 27 (6) (2013): 784–98.

4

X. Andrade, “‘Más Ciudad,’ Menos Ciudadanía: Renovación Urbana y Aniquilación del Espacio Público en Guayaquil,” Ecuador Debate 68 (2006): 161–97.

5

Michael Herzfeld, Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Teresa De Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Sao Paulo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

6

For instance, as a weekly columnist for the newspaper El Telégrafo for two years, in late 2009 my opinions were met with death threats from sectors closely aligned with the local government. For a detailed account of everyday violence, see X. Andrade, “Diarios de Guayaquil: Ciudad Privatizada,” Guaraguao 26 (2007): 31–52.

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7

Slavoj Zizek, “From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism,” Cabinet 2 (2001): 33–6; X. Andrade, “La Domesticación de los Urbanitas en el Guayaquil Contemporáneo,” Iconos 27 (2007): 51–64; X. Andrade, “Burocracia: Museos, Políticas Culturales y Flexibilización Laboral en Guayaquil,” Iconos 20 (2004): 64–72.

8

X. Andrade, The Vulgarity of Power: Cartoons, Masculinity and Politics in Ecuador (New York: The New School for Social Research, Ph.D. dissertation in anthropology, 2014).

9

John Kelsey and Aleksandra Mir (eds), Corporate Mentality: An Archive Documenting the Emergence of Recent Practices Within a Cultural Sphere Occupied by Both Business and Art, by Aleksandra Mir (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2003). Mir also invited me to contribute to her project “Naming Tokyo,” an alternative map of that city meant to convene idiosyncratic readings of constructed space and the politics behind labeling the urban gridlock; see http://www.aleksandramir.info/projects/naming-tokyo/ (accessed 12 October 2016).

10 George Marcus and Fred Myers (eds), The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds), Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Ethnographic Practice (Oxford: Berg, 2010); Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (eds), Contemporary Art and Anthropology (Oxford: Berg, 2006). 11 X. Andrade, “Del Tráfico entre Antropología y Arte Contemporáneo,” Procesos 25 (2007): 121–8. 12 I studied the drug economies of marijuana and cocaine between 1988 and 1992 in Ecuador, and the heroin markets between 1996 and 1998 in New York City. Life histories of drug dealers showed me the importance of developing different forms of symbolic capital as part of their craft and public performance, as well as the ways in which they mastered the codes of both the legal and illegal worlds. Accordingly, to pass as an artist, I will have to learn to mimic one by appropriating established forms of symbolic capital. 13 Luis Camnitzer, Didáctica de la Liberación. Arte Conceptualista Latinoamericano (Montevideo: Casa editorial HUM, CCE, CCEBA, 2008); Michael Kimmelman, “Hans Haacke,” in Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre and Elsewhere (New York: The Modern Library, 1999), pp. 216–31. 14 Mark Lombardi, “Narrative Structures,” in Kelsey and Mir (eds), Corporate Mentality, pp. 232–7. 15 Rafael Cippolini (ed.), ’Patafísica: Epítomes, Recetas, Instrumentos y Lecciones de Aparato (Buenos Aires: Caja Negra Eds., 2009); Rubén Bonet, Jaicús Maniacos (México: Editorial Moho, 2009). 16 Filip de Noterdaeme, The Autobiography of Daniel J. Isengart (San Francisco: Outpost 19, 2013). 17 Lillebith Fadraga, “Interview, Full Dollar: Representing!” 2007, available online: http:// www.latinart.com/transcript.cfm?id=90 (accessed 3 April 2015). 18 Rosalind Krauss, “A Voyage in the North Sea:” Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999). 19 See http://www.laselecta.org/archivos/full-dollar/galeriafull-ing.html (accessed 12 October 2016). 20 Deborah Poole, Vision, Race and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).



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21 Xavier Andrade, “Pancho Jaime and the Political Uses of Masculinity in Ecuador,” in Matthew Gutmann (ed.), Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 281–304. 22 W. J. T. Mitchell, “Offending Images,” in What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 125–44. 23 John Berger, Berger on Drawing, edited by Jim Savage (London: Occasional Press, 2007); Michael Taussig, “What Do Drawings Want?” Culture, Theory and Critique 50 (2) (2009): 263–74; Michael Taussig, I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 24 Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). In 2006, part of this series was exhibited in the event Estrecho Dudoso / Doubtful Straight in San José, Costa Rica, curated by Virgina Perez-Ratton and Tamara Diaz Bringas. In 2008, it was shown in Bogotá, Colombia, as part of the alternative art fair La Otra Feria de Arte Contemporáneo, curated by Elizabeth Voelert and Jairo Valenzuela. Finally, in 2009, a selection was included in the collective show Playlist 2007–2009, Top Hits in Ecuadorian Contemporary Art, curated by Rodolfo Kronfle, at the Municipal Museum of Guayaquil and Galería Procesos, Cuenca. 25 Schneider and Wright (eds), Anthropology and Art Practice, p. 9. 26 Fabian, Remembering the Present, p. 306. 27 Juan Lorenzo Barragán (ed.), Gráfica Popular, Ecuador (Quito: Dinediciones, 2007). 28 “Complicity” is the best notion for describing different forms of collaboration in Full Dollar projects; it serves to remark some understanding on their playful, albeit dubious, artistic nature, always open to contradictory interpretations. 29 Francis Alÿs with Juan García, Emilio Rivera, Enrique Huerta, Sign Painting Project (Göttingen: Steidl, 2011). 30 Adam Lindemann, Collecting Contemporary Art (Cologne: Taschen, 2006).This is not an art history book, it is rather an assemblage of grandiloquent and crude interviews with power brokers who make money out of dealing in contemporary art. The book is meant to teach beginners about the appropriate ways to build a collection. 31 I wanted Don Pili to develop a totally independent reading of the originals. Their meaning for the artists who created them was irrelevant, never asked about, and never discussed. Neither were the artists’ intentions, their status, or their background important. Certainly, Don Pili was delighted with the idea of reproducing the “masters,” for him a way of showing his mastery as a professional painter and artist, and to confirm his status as a local legend. 32 Between 2010 and 2014, the collection was shown in four galleries in the cities of Lima in Peru, and Guayaquil, Quito, and Cuenca in Ecuador. 33 For a in-depth account on the TFDCCA, see https://corporacionfulldollar.wordpress. com/2014/02/06/entrevista-a-x-andrade-the-full-dollar-collection-of-contemporary-art (accessed 12 October 2016). 34 Tarek Elhaik and George Marcus, “Diseño Curatorial y Política de la Etnografía Actual: Una Conversación,” Iconos 42 (2012): 89–104. 35 Maryam Hozzeinsadeh, a Highland Park cultural activist, was in charge of facilitating meetings, holding open discussions, and recruiting the final roster of participants

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ALTERNATIVE ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY (four teams composed of a sign painter, a visual artist, and a business owner for the murals created in order to work as actual advertising in the storefronts of the collaborating businesses). Sinead Finerty-Pine, from the Armory, helped to make major decisions in the field, and assured to accomplish our main goals.

36 Grant Kester, “Lessons on Futility: Francis Alÿs and the Legacy of May ’68,” Third Text 99 (23) (2009): 407–20. 37 George Marcus, “Notes Toward an Ethnographic Memoir of Supervising Graduate Research through Anthropology’s Decades of Transformation,” in James Faubion and George Marcus (eds), Fieldwork is Not What It Used to Be: Learning Anthropology’s Methods in a Time of Transition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 27. 38 See Elhaik, Response Paper: What is Contemporary Anthropology? 39 See Aiwa Ong, “‘What Marco Polo Forgot’: Contemporary Chinese Art Reconfigures the Global,” Current Anthropology 53 (4) (2012): 471–94. 40 I thank Arnd Schneider and Barbara Grunenfelder-Elliker, from whom I borrow this final image, for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

16 Inscription and desinscripción: X. Andrade in conversation with Arnd Schneider1 X. Andrade and Arnd Schneider

AS  What lessons can be learnt for future art-anthropology collaborations from your work in Ecuador and the U.S? XA  I operate from a rather particular location, both within the academy and the art circuits, inscribing my work into the cracks of both. I can’t characterize my location as marginal, since I teach anthropology at graduate institutions with high symbolic capital (i.e., FLACSO, Quito, and more recently, the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá), while at the same time I’m not necessarily regarded as an “artist.” In fact what I do in art is an extension of ethnographic questions. My way of contributing to the art and anthropology dialogue, besides my work with Full Dollar—a phantom entity of my own, running since 2004—was to build a graduate program in visual anthropology in 2008, an academic space meant to teach and experiment on related matters. “Visual anthropology” is nothing but an excuse to justify dealing with art in an academic setting. In this context, it was important for me to recruit students from the whole Latin American region in order to foster a space for creative exchanges between students with common but also different disciplinary backgrounds (from anthropology to journalism, cinema, and visual arts). A quota of four or five artists was admitted on a yearly basis during these years, hoping to trigger academic effects in the future on both sides of the disciplinary border, in Ecuador and Colombia, and the broader region. However, this has been a very complex process, with more failures, perhaps, than successes along the road. To work with classically trained artists within intellectual environments that are not much permissive to border crossings, to shift their practices from object production

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to theory, and to train them as researchers first, and then artists, has not been always conductive to redefine their professional skills. However, some of our graduates are now teaching in art schools, and are radically transforming their own practices. At the other extreme, several artists were expelled on the grounds of blatant plagiarism, which speaks of these crossings also as misunderstandings. In fact, in both my teaching experience and as an ethnographer who intrudes art systems, I am far away from idealizing the dialogues between the two fields, especially considering that anthropology-trained students are even more resilient to changing their ways of thinking and practicing the discipline than artists. In Latin America, that attitude is a symptom, at least in part, of the prominence of ethnographic film traditions in visual anthropology, and the populist denouncing of contemporary art as part of the elite “culture.” We still need time to evaluate how these dialogues develop in practice (or not). In the U.S., of course, experimental forms have been legitimated since the 1990s, and current debates on design anthropology are further integrating art among other disciplines. I think in each location some different types of crossing make more sense than others. AS  Similarly, what can ’pataphysics teach practitioners engaging with art-anthropology border crossings globally? XA  I found myself in the intersections between conceptual art (on both Duchampian and Latin American traditions), curatorial conceptions of fieldwork, and ’pataphysics readings of art and science. I see ethnography essentially as a form of intervention in people’s lives, as a catalyzer of social processes mediated by the anthropologist’s presence on any given web of social relations, and as a location of productive frictions— and exceptional reactions—that take place with informants, archives, or multimedia platforms. Ethnography, therefore, can’t be reduced to a mere instrument but rather, following Raymundo Mier and Tarek Elhaik, becomes a particular form of intrusion. Issues of confrontation, mistranslation, and conflict emerge constantly while conducting fieldwork, which I see it now as a process perhaps closer to curatorial practices—that is, fieldwork as guided by an informed sense of selection, and a carefully designed inscription of texts, objects, and ideas into the anthropology and art worlds. If fieldwork is understood as a collaborative enterprise, selective forms of collaboration should be used to produce new anthropological knowledge. For instance, a gallery opening or an exhibition could serve as a privileged space for gathering information on a set of research subjects. The ways in which the press covers a project such as the Full Dollar Collection are also telling about how anthropology is frequently mistranslated when is read only as “art,” and that is very valuable information. However, the principal challenge is to radicalize anthropology-based art practices beyond considering ethnography and / or the art paraphernalia at merely instrumental levels. For me, the goal of experimentation with art forms, and to include them centrally in the process of fieldwork, makes sense when advancing an understanding of ethnography as an anarchist practice. Drawing upon Feyerabend’s discussions on method,



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and echoing the Collège de ’Pataphysics’ teachings, disorder and exception are keys to fulfill new philosophical understandings of ethnography, and to really take it as a relational process, as knowledge-in-the-making, to follow Tim Ingold’s manifesto. Beyond that, I also value ’pataphysics’ parodies of the academic and institutional worlds as fresh air—via laughter and sarcasm—breathing into rather stale environments. Besides, ’pataphysics—being the science of imaginary solutions, the science of exceptions—is from its very inception in the 1940s a science born within the arts, literature, and beyond. I try to develop my ethnographic practice using ’pataphysics philosophy and drawing upon mock institutions operating within the art worlds, a phenomenon particularly prolific in the last three or four decades. Both ’pataphysics and parodic institutions have a long trajectory in Latin America. By informing my practice through them I manage to escape superfluous postcolonial discussions on otherness. Full Dollar is, as its very name suggests, a cosmopolitan entity, a phantom of globalization based in a “socialist” country with a dollarized economy. If it sounds ridiculous, it is because it is ridiculous. AS  What are the difficulties in translating terms and methodologies (such as fieldwork) from a metropolitan conversation to Ecuador, and Colombia, and vice versa? XA  I need to make a little detour here to properly answer this question. I studied in Ecuador within a strongly Andeanist tradition—which is essentially a metropolitan construction about “otherness”—then moved during the 1990s to New York City where I found myself in the midst of a highly creative environment both inside and outside academia. At The New School for Social Research, where I studied for my doctorate, I learned from several professors teaching seminars on images as their main subject. For instance, Deborah Poole was at the time working on her influential book on the visual economies of the Andean world. Johannes Fabian discussed his, for me, groundbreaking contributions on vernacular painting in Zaire while imagining the ethnographer as a multidimensional figure, a broker of artistic practices (my take on Fabian’s ethnographic method). Kevin Dwyer called attention to dialogic anthropology and problems such as translation and transcription in fieldwork. Steven Caton taught on ethnography of films, and so on. This was the 1990s. A few artists and designers attended those courses, and I found myself particularly interested in their use of research for artistic purposes. At the same time, I immersed myself within the art world as a systematic visitor to the gallery circuit in SoHo, and in the streets, where I admired Curtis Cuffie’s (1955–2002), then a homeless, ongoing installations during my daily walks to school. His pieces worked, for me, as epiphanies about art, space, and urban marginality: exactly the kind of gaze that informed, years later, my early work with the Full Dollar (FD). I devoted an entire day every single week to conduct my rounds. I would attend openings, collect all types of memorabilia, and simply observe how issues of cultural identity, among several other anthropological subjects, were addressed by a generation of global artists. Very significant encounters occurred. For example, I found Mark Lombardi’s

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(1951–2000) work extraordinarily inspiring. His research on secondary sources about the intersections between legal and illegal economies in the global map, and how he represented research findings by visual means, was outstanding. In retrospect, I think I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. After my years in NYC, and a couple of years in India where I got fascinated by the public cult of movie stars in Tamil Nadu, art had changed my ways of thinking about the whole ethnographic enterprise. Back in Ecuador, I worked against the Andeanist tradition characterized by the predominance of a research agenda devoted to Indian societies from the Highlands and the Amazonia, mainly. More recently, the, so-called “ontological turn” in the region has served to strengthen such agenda (with its assumptions of radical alterity and idealizations of otherness). Upon my return, I based myself in the largest city on the Pacific Coast, Guayaquil, where FD operated between 2004 and 2010, while studying the perverse effects of urban renewal—a city where not even a school of anthropology exists. For years, then, I operated from the very margins of the periphery in anthropology in my own country. I still do, and I think it is a great opportunity to mock the establishment. While in Guayaquil, starting in 2004 I contributed to form an emerging art school (a seed for the recently created Universidad de las Artes), where I first taught seminars on art and ethnography to artists at undergraduate level. Then, in 2008, I designed an academic niche for the purpose of expanding anthropology towards the worlds of images and contemporary art: the Masters Program on Visual Anthropology at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO-Ecuador), a prestigious graduate school of social sciences in the region at large, based in Ecuador’s capital, Quito. Since then, I established a yearly seminar on related subjects as part of the academic curriculum, developed a permanent workshop as the main context for conducting systematic research on / with artistic practices, and sponsored students’ experimental projects. Also, not without resistance, during the past decade art is slowly changing and more attention is given to anthropological methods, ethnography, and theory. In this context, the difficulties derive mainly from working against a largely established academic tradition that is very much concerned with questions of cultural difference, ethnicity, and so on. Space for experimentation is limited. But I don’t care. I have been working out of the mainstream in Ecuador since the late eighties, when I started to conduct urban research instead of Andean studies; now I operate at the edges of visual anthropology in the region, which, again, is in itself very marginal. As far as the art circuits, I move in and out whenever a project arises. In my experience, even though I have found resistance in the art circuits, they are more permissive than the social sciences, and that explains how an apocryphal entity such as FD has some presence in that scene. Of course, I am very much aware that there is a long way to go in reshaping dominant, instrumental, and conservative teaching traditions in anthropology. For instance, to publish a hybrid book compiling ethnographic articles and the FD projects on urban renewal, which are an extension of my anthropological gaze on the subject, has turned out to be impossible. For me, of course, there is a theoretical and philosophical unity in what I do in both fields.



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AS  How would you say the notion of “appropriation” changes, or needs to change, in a global context in light of the sign painters “usurping” the work of artists consecrated by the international art world? XA  “Appropriation” has been a staple in the methodologies of both art and sign painting. It would be wonderful if what I tried to do in Los Angeles would happen on a larger scale, but I’m afraid it won’t happen because of, among other reasons, the accelerated vanishing of sign-painting traditions by digital reproduction, and the maintenance of codes of distinction largely established in the art worlds. The Los Angeles iteration of the Full Dollar Collection, for example, highlighted many difficulties on border-crossing practices—from actual borders (my U.S. visa application was neither rejected nor approved, and I have to get around that fact in order to fulfill my commitments with Outpost at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena) to the distinctions between “art” and “commercial signs,” which are constantly patrolled in any scene. I conceive “appropriation” as a set of strategies of inscription and desinscripción (“de-inscription”) of ideas, goods, and devices appropriated from the art worlds (I’m borrowing Argentinian ’pataphysician Rafael Cippolini’s discussion of Marcel Duchamp’s and Jean Dubuffet’s rather different strategies). ’Pataphysical readings of Duchamp’s ready-mades as forms of inscribing massproduced objects into art by destabilizing its ontological value comes to mind. For Duchamp, a ready-made was defined by a set of methodological procedures. When he dictated his method to his sister Suzanne, the work of art emerged out of several forms of inscription, from taking any object to inscribe it into the art world to asking Suzanne to sign “Marcel Duchamp” on the base of a bottle rack. As such, inscription is an act that certifies basically a fraud. What I do through FD is basically a series of frauds, hence my definition of “traffic” between art and anthropology as closer to drug trafficking. I like to keep a feeling of “illegality”—the possibility of fiction and frictions—in appropriation practices. As Erik Satie, also a ’pataphysician, would put it: “although our information is false we do not vouch for it.” On the other hand, the notion of desinscripción comes from Dubuffet’s realization that the production of art can obviate artists altogether. I see ethnographic appropriation as depending upon the arts of inscription and desinscripción simultaneously. That is what I did with the Full Dollar Collection in its original incarnation in Ecuador, asking Don Pili Escalante, a sign painter, to inscribe his own visual language on the reproduction of deliberately obvious copies of “masterpieces” of the contemporary art global canon, while at the same time both I (an anthropologist) and he (an “artisan”) got involved in a curatorial project that is getting by without artists. In Los Angeles, other forms of power relations complicated the project, like the fact that the art and sign painting worlds do overlap. Most of the participating sign painters were, in fact, trained in art school as artists first. Not to mention that my symbolic capital as a global “artist” was very much in doubt. The project worked because several institutions took it seriously and provided their own readings of its importance for the local community where the intervention took place. The institutions involved—independent

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TV stations, community organizers, private businesses, and a college—really took the project to the next level. I feel that it contributed to make a critical statement towards the gentrification of the Highland Park area. The multimedia platform hosted by KCET is a tribute to the community’s memory on urban and social change. AS  You use the interesting notion of ethnography practiced as “institutional critique” (see Chapter 15 in this volume). How would such an expanded notion of Hans Haacke’s and others’ critique apply differently in Ecuador and in the U.S., and what would it mean on a global scale? XA  All institutions need to be debunked, starting with academia. Its political correctness alienates me. Academic demise or de facto censorship of critical strategies such as humor, parody, irony, and sarcasm, for instance, are constantly reinforced. There is no way to foster a broader field of exchanges between art and anthropology without changing the micropractices of teaching and learning. That said, I firmly believe, following Fred Myers and George Marcus’s take on these issues, that border crossing for an anthropologist can be productive only when one is properly disciplined in anthropology and systematic ethnography. Otherwise, the risk of losing sight of the value of ethnography in the process is high. And I see no contradiction in this statement: being an anthropologist and, then, perhaps, exceptionally, an artist. It would also be easy to adopt art strategies at a merely formal level, as mere communicative devices for larger audiences. I’m not interested in art as another form of mediation for anthropological knowledge, beyond texts or film. I see it as involved in the very production of ethnographic knowledge. Hans Haacke exposed, by turning them inside out, the power relations in the global art world. He put art politics on the table in a very effective way while conducting expansive research. Also the Museum of Modern Art Syros by Martin Kippenberger—who gained its own place as part of the Full Dollar Collection—has been of great influence. I would say, however, that my principal references in that line have been mock institutions. In fact, in my chapter I mention the Homeless Museum and the Fundación Adopte un Escritor, among many others that inform my ethnographic gaze towards institutions. Anthropology deserves the same treatment especially in contexts resilient to change. However, the challenges of institutional critique in different locations are multiple and diverse. I speak from a place with no public institutions of contemporary art, where indigenista painting is very much part of the choreography of the state for at least the last sixty years, where ethnography is mainly taught as technique, where most artists are unaware of ongoing dialogues between social sciences and art. Through the FD projects I have tried to address several of those issues by exploring— mainly in ironic, parodic, and sarcastic ways—the limits of debate within and outside the academy, in the field of cultural management, the discourses of the state and museums on the visual arts, and the use of anthropology for political purposes. AS  Notions of the curator as ethnographer, or the anthropologist as curator, have been circulated with different connotations by Okwui Enwezor, Jean-Hubert Martin,



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Francesco Bonami, and Tarek Elhaik.2 What are the prospects for an expanded role of the anthropologist in this respect? XA  Hyphenated figures do not answer questions regarding how to do anthropologybased art. For me the key question relies on ethnography and its processes, and how to integrate art into the production of knowledge. In the meantime, I define my ethnographic practice as characteristic to a trafficker-in-art, because I’m very much aware of suspicions from the art world and hypocritical silence from the anthropological encampment. I don’t think there is a formula to cross borders either, because the possible relations between the two fields depend on trajectories and traditions that need to be historicized. As an anthropologist, at some level I embrace the practices stimulated by the above-mentioned curators and ethnographers. But I also remain quite pessimist about the “curatorial turn” and its impact in other locations, such as the one where I operate mainly. As with the “ethnographic turn,” such movements need to be explored in relation to specific anthropological and artistic traditions. Their relative impact upon practice and theory in both fields can’t be taken for granted. Roger Bartra and Tarek Elhaik, for instance, have warned about a tendency to read this traffic out of history. Furthermore, in contexts such as Ecuador—and probably most countries in Latin America, with a few exceptions such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and most recently Colombia—the art world, characterized by its precariousness, seems to have closed its frontiers even before allowing contemporary traffics to expand. That is certainly the case with public institutions of art that seem to redraw their borders periodically to avoid further contamination from the type of anthropology included in this volume. The history surrounding the opening and gradual dismantling of a pioneering project such as the Museo de Antropología y Arte Contemporáneo, a project with which I was involved from 2001 to 2003 in Guayaquil, is testament. Conceived as an experimental place to bolster many forms of exchange, with multidisciplinary teams, and research projects surrounding art and involving ethnography, intervention swiftly enabled the conservative forces in both fields to regain control. Museums, biennials, and galleries are largely resistant to change. Not to mention anthropology. In Colombia, though, the panorama is slighty different, thanks to independent initiatives. It is precisely these kinds of reaction that stimulate my practice as an ethnographer, professor, and sometime “artist.” Let me finish where I started. There are always cracks in the system where one can grow, as weed does in the streets. I think that is a good way to describe my ethnographic practice as emerging from a precise ’pataphysical location.

Notes 1

The conversation was realized via e-mail between June and September of 2015.

2 Okwui Enwezor, “Introduction,” in Okwui Enwezor, Mélanie Bouteloup, Abdellah

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17 Conversación de Campo (Field Conversation) Rosario Carmona, Catalina Matthey, Maria Rosario Montero, and Paula Salas

CDC [Conversación de Campo] is a working system, a strategy to learn and communicate. We use art and ethnography as tools to create meaning and share it, not as ends in themselves. Our fundamental method is the conversation, defined as a horizontal exchange of subjectivities: open, not hierarchical and not preset, free and not intended a means to solve problems. Each CDC project arises from the communication and collaboration between all participants. We begin with a conversation in which we fix the parameters to continue, and we finish with another conversation where we look back on the process and its consequences. We want to reach a global audience, limited only by the properties of each project and not by the constraints of any specific field, such as anthropology or contemporary art. CDC seeks to involve people from different fields of knowledge, occupations, cultures, age and interests, in interdisciplinary dialogues. Our aim is to create conceptual and non-conceptual knowledge about the ideas, preconceptions, stories, actions, and feelings that constitute our societies. For every society, the manners in which people interact generate a cultural identity that not only justifies those group relations, but also defines the behaviors and perceptions of each social subject. CDC explores and reflects about the existence and changes of those cultural identities in different contexts, looking at them methodologically to understand how we relate to them and how those relations modify us. Starting by observing the social, cultural, and geographical context, CDC attempts to open up new possibilities to relate through art, ideas, and experiences. Moreover, through our practices we want to propel changes in the power relations among individuals around us, including ourselves.

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We write this manifesto today to fix a point of departure from where to travel. CDC is based upon the idea that identity is a flux of relations and context, which can be seen only at specific times and spaces. Therefore, this manifesto is a “here” and “now” from where to observe our own flow. Conversación de Campo (Field Conversation) Manifesto, January 2012 CDC (as per its initials in Spanish) is defined as a system of analysis, discussion, and learning, which explores the presence of anthropology in art and the relevance of art in anthropology. Considering its social, cultural, and geographical context, CDC seeks to propose reflections that enable the opening of possibilities to relate to each other through art, ideas, and experience. The following discussion is an exploration of the crossing of methodologies carried out by a group of four Chilean artists, Conversación de Campo (CDC). The aim was to establish an approach to anthropology from each of their respective disciplinary fields and various countries of residence (Chile, Mexico, U.K., Netherlands) through a series of conversations, literature reviews, and audiovisual responses discussed regularly via Skype. Thus, from January 2012, CDC became a collaborative research: a system of analysis and discussion that explored the relationships between art and anthropology. First CDC created a digital platform to share readings, images, videos,

FIGURE 17.1  Rosario Montero, Copia Conflictiva (Conflicted Copy), from the series “No Way Out,” 2011. Photo © Rosario Montero/CDC.



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theories, and impressions. There, we articulated a personal strategy to activate our experience in the fields of both disciplines. In 2012 CDC participated in an exhibition at the Gabriela Mistral Gallery (Santiago, Chile) with the work “En la Otra Cuadra.” Later that year Montero presented the experience in the conference “Imagined Landscape” (University of Barcelona, Spain.). In 2013 Carmona presented the project in the international seminary “Estudios y Encuentros entre Antropología y Arte” (PUC Lima, Peru), published in a book in 2016. Currently the authors are working on different projects related to the issues discussed during the CDC experiences. The purpose is to now present a dialogue between the participants, who do not intend on having a single viewpoint or the same answers, but to establish an exchange in the present situation, which considers the elapsed time. Thus, this new conversation looks into the productivity of the methodological crossing between anthropology and art. RC  Well, I think to start this discussion it is relevant to note that our starting point is a question, which we will attempt to address together. This question has to do with the ways of making productive methodological crosses between anthropology and art. To try to answer it, we decided to establish the conversation as the work methodology, and base it on the definition proposed by Ricardo Basbaum: Conversations are a way of thinking, where the self opens to the outside, producing a special social space where no single language of truth is prevalent. It enables the transformation of the voice of the other […]. “Conversations” are a sort of dialogue that have their own dynamics, always surprising the participants […] a permanent state of awareness and change (flexibility) […] when they finish a particular dialogue—they just cannot go back to the same places they left before (some transformation might have happened). Therefore, “conversation” is a modality of movement.1 PS  One aspect of the conversation that seems essential is the movement effect mentioned by Basbaum. Conversing requires, on the one hand, setting a starting position and defending it, but also involves opening to the possibility of changing position, moving. It is an exercise that requires strength and flexibility at the same time. When we started the conversation as CDC, doubt reigned among the group, there was uncertainty over conviction, therefore the exercise of appropriating a viewpoint and defending it often felt forced. However, we engaged time and again in dialogues that led us to confront ideas, analyze them thoroughly, combine them, and reformulate them to then end up, on several occasions, with more questions than answers. As in a game, everything that happened while conversing—including triumphs, defeats, and clashes—remained in the sphere of the conversation, like a secret between us four. However, the effects of these dialogues exceeded by far those of a game, not only changing our initial convictions, but also our artistic and anthropological practices, and even the way we felt in the contexts in which we were.

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RM  Yes, as Paula rightly says, I think CDC was established from the exchange and the problematization of points of view. It is more about a dialogue that does not seek to find answers but rather understand the questions. At first, I did not consider the conversation to be an end in itself but instead a means to reach a place, a means that as time passed became the end … a bit like the classic cliché that says the path becomes the destiny … CM  The conversation was established as a work methodology because it is a fundamental means for the collection of data within anthropology, which would also allow us to think freely, based on our experiences and points of view, despite the physical distance from one another. More than a structured work plan, we were looking for a tool that could lead to the improvisation and deployment of ideas, in order to start giving shape to topics of discussion and research that we thought were necessary to formulate—to the extent that our interests and concerns required it—without major planning in advance and trying to avoid pre-established ways of thinking within the arts. RC  The approach we took to guide our conversations comes from the crossing of our disciplinary fields—painting and photography, fundamentally—and personal circumstances that led us to become interested in anthropology. Particularly, I think the feeling of personal change that is experienced in a context different from the one of origin, and the need to address it in one’s artistic production, is key. To me, what motivated me the most was to try to structure a critical view of the systems of production and circulation of contemporary art. CM  For example, my artwork was always closely linked to the concept of how, through visual repetition, the same sign could change its initial meaning. And, the irony was that when I went to live in Mexico it was art itself that changed definition. My work was seen and explained differently and I was seen as exotic, as strange, as the “other.” I realized that there was a cultural codification that went beyond my theoretical concepts of art and that inevitably permeated all production. I understood that in order to comprehend and use such codes I would have to first understand Mexican culture, its particular dynamics, and accept the versatility and dynamism of the culture as such. PS  For me, my artistic production led me to seek other means to represent human groups beyond painting. In ethnography, I found a way of creating community portraits based on anthropology. So I started to use it in conjunction with art tools in order to portray the communities with which I worked. However, it was not a coincidence that I discovered ethnography while in Holland, instead of Chile. With the optimism brought by this new instrument also came the awareness of its imperialist tendency, as a Western mechanism of categorization of the “other” non-Europeans, like me. RM  In the same manner as Paula Salas, the experience of perceiving oneself as an “other” led me to modify certain approximations of my artistic practice, which has always been linked to the gaze of an “other,” the relationship established between the



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object / subject observed and myself as the observer. But despite the fact that it has been a constant, I had not always had the clarity or ability to name those processes until migrating to London. When I arrived, there arose a need to understand what involves working with ethnographic tools, and based on these creation processes problematize the notions of identity and territory. RC  In my case, through a journey that began in the field of art, I realized that sometimes, as artists, and as a product of a system and market that demands a so-called originality and visibility, we forget that art is the product of a given context, that works of art are not completely original, that our interests come from external influences and that these somehow influence us, consciously or not. This motivated us to try to understand and rethink what we did, from a perspective constructed on the basis of our motivations, limitations, and appreciations that determine such actions, as well as from the interpretations we make of them and their processes. In this sense, I believe that addressing one’s own biography under Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as incorporated history, which becomes second nature, and so forgotten as such,2 allowed us to reconstruct the path that we were in at the time. CM  Reconsidering the personal experiences described above, each one of us wanted to approach art anthropologically, and in a way that would enable us to resolve our

FIGURE 17.2  Paula Salas, Conversación de Campo, “Study of my habitus.” Drawing on paper. Visual exploration of the influence of family and institutions on an individual identity. The Netherlands.

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concerns. We realized that the context in which our biography was developing was also changing and being constructed. Regarding this, Clifford Geertz’s definition of culture as “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms”3 helped us understand this idea as something extraordinary, linked to a specific social reality, just like our notion of artist and artwork. PS  In relation to the question of how we situate ourselves in our new contexts, personally, I was interested in envisaging my agency as an artist around the foreign society in which I was. I wanted to find out how far I could take using art to understand, explain, or modify this context. The idea of culture as a reality constructed by all members of society made me see the organic, permeable character of communities, including their cultural identity. At this point, I found useful Hall’s idea of cultural identity4 as a position from which one speaks. This position, according to the author, is connected to the locations of other cultural subjectivities and it is flexible—that is to say, one may adopt various identities, even simultaneously. RM  In this sense, the collective’s experience is what enabled me to ask questions about my place in this new territory, where my identity was being affected. It was then that Foucault’s texts on the idea of the monster as a localized group construction,5 as well as Hall’s understanding of identity as a flux,6 helped me comprehend my place in a new context. These theoretical approaches led to ways of addressing these problems through visuality. One of the ways of addressing the problems of identity was the question of what is an original in relation to a copy, where the aim was not only to understand the definition and materiality of these concepts, but to consider the marginalizations that arise when designating something as a copy; or those occurring in discourses regarding center–periphery in the postcolonial context. CM  So, every week in CDC, a conversation topic around a specific text was proposed. Some of the issues discussed were the idea of identity, translation, the exotic, the monster, and so on. RC  We are aware that a central theme in our research was the notion of identity, considered by different authors, such as García Canclini and Gutierrez,7 as a process of constant change, registered in practices and cultural expressions that refer to different contexts; also, it arises due to different motivations and can be interpreted by others in multiple ways. On the other hand, returning to the idea of Paula Salas, Stuart Hall points out that “identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think […] we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation.”8 This definition is discussed through multiple works and images, like this one from Catalina Matthey (“animalito”) (Fig. 17.3). CM  Regarding that response, the “animalito” or “little animal” in question, which appears in the photograph, corresponds to clay pieces made by people of southern



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FIGURE 17.3  Catalina Matthey, Conversación de Campo, “Another on Hall.” Picture, Mexico. Visual exploration on the notion of self. Photo © Catalina Matthey/CDC.

Mexico, which are characterized by personal creations that combine their imaginary with parts of different real animals. The relationship with identity is in the construction work, which can be seen both in the figure and in the concept of identity itself, as both are made from the overlapping of ideas, beliefs, and norms, reconfigured in new environments. Subsequently, these reflections were linked to the beginning of our own identity crisis as artists. RM  What Catalina Matthey indicates, demonstrates how the CDC processes and dialogues were not static but a path of constant change. In this sense, I believe the words of Ingold in his book Lines (although not part of the references examined by CDC) summarize quite well this path we took collectively, and the way we now try to tell a story like a drawing, where “we weave a narrative thread that wanders from topic to topic,” just as in our walk, where “we wandered from place to place.” “This story recounts just one chapter in the never-ending journey that is life itself, and it is through this journey—with all its twists and turns—that we grow into a knowledge of the world about us.”9 RC  So by understanding identity as a production, we attempt to show through our work the ability to assign to multiple identities. The images we produced aimed to

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challenge stereotypes and highlight the importance of the “other” in the construction of social and personal identity. PS  At this point we also explored the politics of cultural identity by focusing on the mixture and hybridity rather than the purity or authenticity of each culture. According to García Canclini (an author we did not read together but who addresses hybridization as a methodological standpoint), this approach reveals the creative processes—sometimes peaceful and sometimes conflictive—through which today’s Latin American identities are articulated.10 RM  This concept of Latin American identity led us to rethink the notion of otherness, taking into account the experience of becoming an “other” in a context where such cultural mixtures are often excluded. CM  In regard to this idea of the “other,” I thought of Lévi-Strauss, who talks about how identity is shaped in relation to the construction of an “other.” He speaks about how humanity ends at the borders of the tribe, of the village, to the point that many primitive peoples called themselves a name that means “men” and therefore the others are not men, and are “bad.”11 It is from the idea of the “other” that we shape ourselves; this is why seeing ourselves as the “other” caused such a stir among us. RC  For me, the response of Paula Salas is very illustrative of this; moreover, she takes as reference the work of another Chilean artist, Magdalena Atria, as well as the work of Catalina Matthey, “Fuera de lugar: Situaciones concretas de un extranjero en un país que no es el suyo” (Out of place: Specific situations experienced by foreigners in a country that is not their own) made from photographs taken during her father’s visit to Mexico City. They both felt completely surprised by all the customs they observed in such an intense and diverse city. Due to their awe, they did not go unnoticed as foreigners. PS  I think that the foreign outlook and seeing yourself as Latin American from the outside (as a foreigner) contributes to the construction of a local identity, even more so than the outlook from within. Prejudices and stereotypes, even if they are ridiculous, shape identity. According to García Canclini, “What it means to be Latin American, is not just observing what happens within the territory historically defined as Latin America. The answers regarding the Latin American way of being also come from outside the region.”12 RM  Taking what Paula Salas states, I have always found it ironic that I was only able to understand the relevance and impact of the construction of foreign stereotypes in local reality once I left Chile. RC  On the other hand, this also led us to think about the idea of abnormality that often involves otherness, or the idea of the monster, understood by Foucault as a legal– biological construction that combines the impossible and forbidden, and therefore must be submitted to the devices of domestication of the body and discipline,



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designed by and for a society that craves a so-called normality.13 These devices are evident in places like prisons and psychiatric facilities but fade into the background in other places they usually inhabit, such as schools, universities, or even just the street. We also perform works around these reflections. The responses of Rosario Montero in relation to this idea and the migration laws in countries like the U.K. reflect on the imposition of paradigms and stigmas under which we can be categorized; to the first ones we must submit, while the latter are attributed to us. CM  Regarding this notion of the “other” linked to the abnormal, Foucault also defines the monster as a transgression of “natural limits, transgression of classifications, […] of the table, and of the law as table.”14 For instance, in the conversation about the monster I replied with a reflection in regard to how we could see as monsters those who did not adjust to our idea of “normal.” For example, the men who dress as women in Mexico for festivity dances in post-indigenous towns surrounding the Federal District, which for them is an honor. RM  We observed otherness while being part of it, becoming something like an exotic landscape, where we could visualize that expressed by Gregory: “The central representational predicament was to find a way of conveying the otherness of other natures (and other cultures), of bringing them within a European project of a universal ‘earth-writing’, that would make them intelligible to metropolitan audiences without at the same time destroying the very sign that marked them as other.”15 RC  I think sometimes it is not very comfortable to feel like the “other,” to be part of a minority, as we are used to feeling safe in our context, not perceiving the power exercised over us invisibly in our daily lives. I think that somehow this idea of imposing categories and stereotyping can be applied to the art system—and the knowledge production systems in general—which tend to establish paradigms and perspectives from which not only to produce, but also from which to perceive art and knowledge, thereby mediating and limiting experience. PS  Nevertheless, I feel that the position of “other” is not always a disadvantage, especially in the field of art. Several contemporary artists use their ethnic, sexual, and national identity as a standard, making their personal and cultural subjectivity the theme behind their work. Gerardo Mosquera speaks of this strategy in his book Caminar con el Diablo (Walking with the Devil). According to the author, particularly non-European or non-U.S. artists need to create their own tools to compete in the international field of art, a field created by and for Europeans and U.S. Americans. Mosquera states that there is an international language of art, which consists of “certain canons of encoding in art that are disseminated in the central circuits and, under their legitimizing aura, they are imitated or appropriated by the peripheries […] It is in reality a language of initiated members that allows an international communication between members of the same sect.”16 In this context, “otherness” provides a strong position from which to speak this sectarian language.

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CM  Regarding this, Pierre Bourdieu says that objects, which are socially designated as art, are imposed by the institution, referring not only to academia and museums, but also to family and school. Society dictates, through its institutions, what to see and how to see it. The work of art “only exists as such for who is in possession of the means to appropriate it by deciphering it, that is to say, for who possesses the historically constituted code.”17 There is a sort of knowledge that categorizes, compares, discriminates; knowledge that due to the fact that it has always been there becomes logical and natural, but that basically corresponds to a system that comes from the social sphere, from the idea of order that each society proposes. RM  If we take into consideration the notions gathered by Bourdieu as to how the habitus plays a fundamental role in the creation and appreciation of the work of art,18 we can say that the role played by the context in the work of CDC is decisive. Every encounter, dialogue, and response originated from the inputs created by the different contexts in which the four of us were. RC  Indeed, the context first determines the experience of the artists and their production, then the multiple readings that can be made of the work. Now, this idea, although it attempts to question the way we traditionally produce and interact with art, it is heavily promoted by the same methodologies that art has installed in the twentieth century. We cannot ignore that fact. RM  Following the idea about the relevance of the context, I think that, at this stage, it would be productive to discuss the issues around our digital form of communication, and how this material form has shaped the way we have communicated through the whole process. In this sense, I wonder how a context such as the internet, and specifically our website, defined our production. Do we think our ideas, images, and responses in the conversation were somehow prefixed by the fact that they were made for the Web? Following Bourdieu’s reasoning, I guess society also dictates what and how to see art on the internet, but it is hard for me to imagine in which ways this could have affected our own project. PS  I definitely think the internet did define the shape of our conversation. In my case, I feel that at the beginning this materiality did act as a restrain. I mean, that the material form of my responses in the Web were limited by the technologies given by this format, technologies that allow to experience only two senses: things can be either watched or heard—touch, taste, and smell are excluded from the equation. Some of us were used to making corporeal objects—paper sculptures, oil paintings, dark boxes, silverprints, etc.—so we had to adapt our creative process to invent immaterial objects for the Web. We were forced to translate our experience, our know-how, into another language. Thus, we pushed ourselves to confront an unknown territory and come up with experimental solutions. The fact that we knew our responses were made for that particular website, with a particular interface and architecture, at the very least, defined their shape, if not also the content itself. For example, each



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response needed a written title, and also had to fit within pre-established labels and keywords. Moreover, we had to assign all the metadata to describe the images, so that they could be found through search engines (e.g.Google). CM  We decided to create this digital platform with the aim of reaching different audiences. Our intention was to explore but also to share our experiences around this crossing of fields between art and anthropology. In this sense, the fact that we chose to use .com instead of .cl [the web domain for Chile] for our site reflects a certain degree of awareness about the audience we wanted to reach. As we stated in the manifesto, we wanted to reach people beyond the limit of our geographical and historical contexts (friends and acquaintances). We aimed to create a space for dialogue that wasn’t limited by the personal network of the transmitter, but by a shared understanding with the receivers. Of course, this is a utopia, nonetheless a productive one, because it forced us to produce concepts and images outside our comfort zone, beyond our common sense. RC  Maybe our aim to reach global audiences was naive considering that the Web is full of noise and brands with PR strategies pushing to gain visibility. We didn’t put much energy into reaching a new public or people in other fields. But the Web allowed us to create a point of intersection where all that we had done could be visualized and organized (or unorganized) and seen by the few who share our interdisciplinary views on art and anthropology. For example, in my case, while working as an anthropologist, many people have approached me to comment on our website. I’ve been contacted through social networks, and even been to some international institutions that have asked me to participate in seminars. This is the case with Universidad Católica de Lima, which, after seeing our website, invited CDC to present our project in their seminar about Art and Anthropology last year. Both in Lima and Santiago, I heard of colleagues in the academy who use our website as case study for interdisciplinary work between art and anthropology. I’m not suggesting we are an example, but I do think we raised some questions that other people in the field were asking too, and because our website is in itself a materialization of that experience (not only the art practice-documentation that many websites offer), it allows us and others to observe and discuss our findings. CM  Besides, we saw the website as a way to escape the local art circuit, eluding the distortion of meaning that places like commercial art galleries or national museums produce on works of art. For sure, the fact that our responses were uploaded to CDC’s website, including the .com domain, the system (WordPress based) and the economy of the digital environment (Google and social media) had an impact on the meaning of our outputs, however we managed to use it to get people who would never visit an art space (in Chile) to see our conversation. PS  Nevertheless, at a certain point we were invited to make a project for an art gallery; thus we were tempted to confront that local system of power we were trying

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FIGURE 17.4  Conversación de Campo, “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next block”). Mural installation. Collaborative art project, 2012–13. Galería Gabriela Mistral, Chile. Photo © Paula Salas/CDC to elude, giving us an opportunity to challenge the subjects we were discussing in a specific context. This challenge made us aware that we needed to confront the power involved in contemporary artistic production. As Chantal Mouffe says, all art is political, because it either contributes to maintaining the social order or focuses on its destruction or questioning.19 I then wonder if the same art tools that have been used to maintain current hegemony can be used to dismantle it, or at least criticize it. In light of this invitation arose the need to put to the test the ideas and questions we talked about for months. Can identity be represented as a flux? Can something that is changing all the time be shown? Can a community be represented without stereotyping it? RC  And thus originates this collaborative project, named “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next block”), which attempts to answer our questions. Carried out in the civic district of Santiago, it involved the direct participation of the environment in the formal construction of the work, expanding the notion of workshop as a fixed space. We invited different actors to participate, through visual, oral, and written accounts that would give shape to a map. This map was different from the official ones, which seek to put the territory in objective terms, eliminating irregularities, movements, and the transience of what is real. The objective of this project was to introduce, in the stories of our own artistic work, the stories of those who inhabit the territory and are



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FIGURE 17.5  Conversación de Campo, “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next block”). Mural installation. Collaborative art project, 2012–13. Galería Gabriela Mistral, Chile. Photo © Paula Salas/CDC commonly not part of these narratives. These stories were collected from conversations that connected with our subjectivity; they were also made public through an installation and two talks, in the context of an exhibition, a gallery, and the street. RM  Just to put things in context, it is worth explaining a bit about the place where the project was conducted. We were invited by Brazilian curator Fernanda Albuquerque to produce a project at the Gabriela Mistral Gallery from November 2012 to January 2013. This gallery is located in the middle of the civic district of Santiago de Chile; it is a space heavily charged by social tensions and historical context where everyday life is interwoven with poverty, business activity, and a strong police presence that bounds the use of public space. In front of the gallery runs the main street of Santiago, the spinal cord of the city from the mountains to the sea: the Alameda high street. This part of the city, where the gallery is located, is also home to one of the major underground stations, where a large number of people pass by every day. It is the heart of the commercial district and the government, and also a hub of connection where people from different places commute to work. It is an open area surrounded by high buildings mainly from the 1960s that create a sense of contained openness. The pedestrian part is highly populated with street commerce, movement, and noise. The gallery then appears as an island, at a slower speed and isolated from the bustling street sounds just outside the gallery doorstep.

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FIGURE 17.6  Conversación de Campo, “En la otra cuadra” (“On the next block”). Collaborative pocket map of the neighborhood. Collaborative art project, 2012–13. Galería Gabriela Mistral, Chile. Photo © Rosario Montero/CDC PS  One of our motivations was to demonstrate the power structures that separate the inhabitants from the artists and also from the institutions; subvert them through an open invitation to occupy the gallery space, and position in it the story that no one seems to care about, but that nonetheless is key to understanding local and global processes of construction of place. By crossing tools of different disciplines, such as maps, interviews, walks, and drawings, we decided to reorganize the meanings of the neighborhood, eclipsing the monumental presence of La Moneda (government palace, ministries and police force) to see the hundreds of personal subjectivities that also articulate the identity of the civic district. RM  Following these ideas, we started to wonder if this place could be understood as landscape and to what extent it could be thought of as an interwoven space where people cannot be separated from it. Landscape develops as part of human lives, not as a container that signifies or symbolizes power relations but as “an instrument of cultural power.”20 The experience carried out by CDC during December 2012 intended to explore how landscape appears as a tool, a medium to access and to understand, through established relations and symbols, the power relations that take place within that neighborhood. This collaborative project, which used anthropological methodologies, was also an attempt to identify other opportunities to relate to the city, using tools specific to the art field in order to symbolically appropriate the landscape.



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CM  So, the project took as a starting point the location of the Gabriela Mistral Gallery, as it stands on the core of this landscape—a node that will structure our perceptions in relation to this context. The first process of collaborative landscape imaging took place during November 2012, where we interviewed local people—a mix of passers-by who worked or lived in the area. Each of them was asked to draw their favorite place in the neighborhood—that is to say, how they position themselves as part of the context rather than separated from it. The second stage of the project was about creating a full view of those drawings. The challenge was to create a palimpsest of meaning, a collective narrative that combines individual stories and images. With this in mind, we drew a map on the wall of the gallery that included lines representing the streets, labeled with their respective names. RC  Yes, we did all this aiming to position the drawings in relation to a recognizable set of references, allowing the audience to create a narrative that could have as starting point something they already knew how to locate. Lines were drawn with a graphite pencil across the surface of the gallery wall in the shape of a simplified cartographic map, a transitory way to intervene the space as an occupation rather than a habitation. Through the presence of this line an imaginary space was created, where the relevance resided not in the line in itself, but in the frontiers of an enclosed bi-dimensional space. Drawings were placed with pins over the sketched map, so that street names and recognizable features became a loose reference, reducing its importance against the layer created by the collaborators’ drawings. The third and final phase of the project was a public event, a walk/talk in which the path was selected from five of those narration/ drawings previously made by our collaborators. During the interviews we invited all collaborators to participate actively in the talk. Our aim was to re-enact the narratives surrounding all those places chosen by some of our collaborators. The walking talk took place in the first days of January 2013, just after New Year’s weekend. On a hot summer afternoon the talk started inside the gallery with a traditional round table with questions addressed by the audience to the artists and, after the walk, it finished in the same way. CM  Here again we are confronted with the questioning of concepts—the creator, artist, spectator, workshop, institution, artwork, landscape, and so on—through the creation of a work by hybrid means, such as the integration of the viewer in the creation or presentation-path of the work in public space, using anthropology tools such as interviewing and mapping. In this project we explored how the work could become more than an object, how the process of preparation, discussions, shortcomings, set-up, opinions and contributions of those who observed, was all part of the work too, and not in a stable, but in a voluble manner. “By reducing art to only one of its facets, which is to convey messages, communicate meaning,” Elizabeth Araiza states that the question about other possible functions remains silent.21 With this project, we also tried to show these other possible functions in which art can develop, linked not only to the artwork as a product but to variants that converge in it and that are also part of its configuration.

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RM  Through this project we were able to observe how landscape as a cultural medium can “naturalise a cultural and social construction, representing an artificial world as if were simply given and inevitable,” and at the same time we were able, through representational operations, to “interrelate its beholder in some more or less determinate relation to its givenness as sight and site.” Hence, landscape as a totalizing image allowed us to reflect about that place in which the material production of our reflection (the images and narratives) were able to “circulate as a medium of exchange, a site of visual appropriation, a focus for the formation of identity.”22 Therefore landscape, as a reflection and representation of culture, appeared as a medium to reflect about power structures and how these are constituted as a dialectic instance that is never finished and always changing. PS  In this sense, the experiences conducted through the physical project (“En la Otra Cuadra”) and the website allowed us to reach different audiences, having diverse reactions, especially from people within the worlds of art and anthropology. Generally, both spaces of intersection were welcomed in both fields of study, giving us multiple opportunities to discuss the two experiences. But despite the positive reception, the physical project raised some concerns in both disciplines. For example, during the Q&A conducted in the gallery for the exhibition, some artists posed doubts in relation to our appropriation of data from the fieldwork and how it could be used as an

FIGURE 17.7  Paula Salas, Conversación de Campo, “A page of the field diary.” Drawing on paper. Fictional diary based on Catalina Mathey’s diary of San Juan Tezontla and Bronislaw Malinowski’s diary of the Trobriand islands. The Netherlands. Photo © Paula Salas/CDC



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aesthetic tool to enrich the discourse we proposed in relation to the city. And similarly, in other anthropologist groups belonging to academia, people tended to question this process of appropriation in relation to the ethics and responsibility that we, as practitioners, had with our informants. These two different concerns pushed us to rethink our own processes, realizing that in this crossing of fields the perception of our work will always differ depending on the discipline associated to the specific public viewing it: artists or anthropologists. Finally, the collaboration with people from other fields of knowledge (through drawing, walking, or conversing in the gallery) helped to expand the reach of the project, transforming it in an experience of the city, an event and an exchange that overstepped the gallery and the field of contemporary art. Returning to the question regarding what is productive about the crossing between art and anthropology, we can say that the work carried out by CDC opened a place to reflect and analyze initial ideas that each member had about these two disciplines, thus generating a collective production focusing on processes and learning. CDC proposed a new perspective from which to critically observe the social, political, and cultural contexts in which we live. This had several effects on the personal production of the artists involved, and although for four of us these effects were very diverse, methodological openness was decisive for the reformulation of artistic proposals that consider the relationship between art and society as a matter of discourse and visual production. In concrete terms, CDC made possible to obtain new tools to analyze the environment, placing the production of art in a constant dialogue with the context. Going back to the manifesto at the beginning of this chapter, this conversation again sets a “here” and “now”, which—at the end of a cycle of over a year of conversations, a joint art project, and this new opportunity for dialogue—results in new questions that could start new dialogues, such as that question regarding identity and its representation as a flux, or how to make the contributions of others your own in an authorial project, considering the ethical and aesthetic implications. What lessons from the political reflections within the anthropological field can we incorporate into our practice? In what ways can work in transdisciplinary teams use art and anthropology as a means to create meaning? What can the artistic dynamics bring to the fieldwork, within anthropology? In short, CDC will continue to combine (interweave) voices without trying to align within the same expression, and will aim to reflect, through our practices, the versatility and change that we seek. Text by Conversación de Campo: Rosario Carmona, Catalina Matthey, Maria Rosario Montero, and Paula Salas. Translated by Natalia Alvarez-Martínez.

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Notes 1

Basbaum, Ricardo, Re-projecting (Utrecht), Utrecht: Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory (Utrecht: Casco, 2008), p. 11.

2

Bourdieu, Pierre, La Distinción: Criterios y bases sociales del gusto (Madrid: Taurus, 1988), p. 94.

3

Geertz, Clifford, Descripción densa: Hacia una teoría interpretativa de la cultura en La Interpretación de las culturas (Mexico: Gedisa 1973 (1987)).

4

Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Rutherford, Jonathan (ed.), Identity: Community, Cultural, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990).

5

Foucault, Michel, Los Anormales (Madrid: Editorial Akal, 2001), pp. 68–82.

6

Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.”

7

García Canclini, Néstor, Diferentes, Desiguales y Desconectados, Mapas de la interculturalidad (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2004); Gutierrez García, Antonio, Identidad excesiva (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2009).

8

Hall, Stuart, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” p. 222.

9

Ingold, T. Lines: A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 87.

10 García Canclini, Néstor, Diferentes, Desiguales y Desconectados. 11 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, “Introducción,” in Benoist, Jean-Marie (ed.), La identidad. Seminario interdisciplinario dirigido por Claude Lévi-Strauss, profesor del Collège de France, 1974–1975 (Barcelona: Ediciones Petrel, 1981), p. 12. 12 García Canclini, Néstor, Latinoamericanos buscando lugar en este siglo (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2002), p. 27. 13 Foucault, Michel, Los Anormales. 14 Ibid., p. 68. 15 Gregory, D., “(Post)colonialism and the Production of Nature,” in Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, Social Nature: Theory, Practice and Politics (London: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 84–111. 16 Mosquera, Gerardo, Caminar con el Diablo: Textos sobre arte, internacionalismo y culturas (Madrid: Exit, 2010), p. 67. 17 Bourdieu, Pierre, “Disposición Estética y competencia artística,” Revista Lápiz, no. 166, Año XIX (Madrid, 2000): 2–4. 18 Bourdieu, Pierre, La Distinción. 19 Mouffe, Chantal, The Return of the Political (London and New York: Verso, 1993), p. 100. 20 Mitchell, W. J. T. Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 2. 21 Araiza, Elizabeth (ed.), Las artes del ritual. Nuevas propuestas para la antropología del arte desde el occidente de México (México: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2010), p. 17. 22 Mitchell, W. J. T. Landscape and Power.

Index Abélès, Marc, 24n. Adesokan, Akin, 18, 25n. Adorno, Theodor, 109, 110, 114n. AES + F, 73n. Alberro, Alexander, 44n. Albuquerque, Fernanda, 229 Allenda, Leonardiansyah, 119, 129 Alÿs, Francis, 198, 207n. Amano, Noriko, 84n. Andrade, X., 13, 16, 189, 192, 193, 205n., 206n., 207n., 209 Angelis, Alessandra de, 25n. Anheier, Helmut: 22n. Ankrom, Richard, 202 Anton, Gutierrez, 222 Appiah, Anthony Kwame, 50 Araiza, Elizabeth, 231, 234n. Areen, Rasheed, 22n. Aristotle, 60 Atria, Magdalena, 224 Attia, Kader, 51 Augé, Marc, 39 Ayala, Raul Ortega, 22n. Ballerini, Luigi, 25n. Baloji, Sammy, 51 Banks, Marcus, 132n. Barney, Matthew, 73n. Barragán, Juan Lorenzo, 207n. Basbaum, Richard, 217, 234n. Basu, Paul, 44n. Bataille, Georges, 54–5, 63 Bateson, Gregory, 91, 93n. Bell, Daniel, 99, 106, 113–14n. Belting, Hans, 22n., 24n., 43, 46n., 179n. Bene, Carmelo, 91, 93n. Benjamin, Walter, 28, 45n., 84n., 124 Benoist, Jean-Marie, 234n. Berger, John, 84n., 194, 207n. Bergson, Henri-Louis, 90, 93n. Bertorelli, Diego, 2

Birch, Simon, 73n. Birk, Sandow, 202 Birken, Jacob, 179n. Björk, 71 Blanchot, Maurice, 23n. Blanco, Ignacio Matte, 60, 65, 67, 73n. Bonami, Franesco, 215, 216n. Bonet, Rubén, 191, 206n. Bošković, Aleksandar, 25n. Bostock, Anna, 45n. Boumediene, Houari, 45 Bourdieu, Pierre, 221, 226, 234n. Bouteloup, Mélanie, 22n., 215n. Braun, Bruce, 234n. Bringas, Tamara Diaz, 207n. Broodthaers, Marcel, 192 Bruns, Gerald L., 23n, 180n. Bucher, Annemarie, 16, 163, 171, 179n., 180–1n., 183 Buddensieg, Andrea, 22n., 24n., 46n., 179n. Budhyarto, Mitha, 136 Bul, Lee, 73n. Butler, Shelly, 44n. Bydler, Charlotte, 44n. Cadena, Marisol de la, 14, 24n. Caldeira, Teresa De, 205 Calzadilla, Fernando, 22n. Camnitzer, Luis, 191, 206n. Cardillo, Rimer: 22n. Cardona, Rodolfo, 202 Carmona, Rosario, 17, 217, 219, 233 Casid, Jill H., 180n. Cassirer, Ernst, 97, 113n. Castaing-Taylor, Lucien, 125 Castaneda, Carlos, 10 Castree, Noel, 234n. Cavatorta, Beppe, 25n. Chambers, Iain, 25n., 216n. Chandra, Mohini, 22n.

236 Index

Cheng, Lei, 114n. Chika-Okeke, Agulu, 50 Choki, Sonam, 16, 163, 171, 173, 183 Cippolini, Rafael, 192, 206n., 213 Clemente, Francesco, 73n. Clifford, James, 89 Coates, Marcus, 71, 73n., 89 Coda, Elana, 25n. Conde, Cesar, 158 Condee, Nancy, 46n. Coronil, Fernando: s 12, 16, 23n., 25n. Costales, Victor, 4–6, 8, 11, 21, 23n. Coty, René, 35 Cuffie, Curtis, 211 Cummings, Scott T., 25n. Damme, Wilfried van, 179n. Danto, Arthur, 48, 52n. Danusiri, Aryo, 120, 122 Darmawan, Ade, 120, 122 Dave-Mukherji, Parul, 18, 22n., 24n., 25n., 164, 179n. Deamer, Julie, 201 Debord, Guy, 25n. De Gaulle, Charles, 35 Deleuze, Gilles, 16–17, 25n., 26n., 84n., 90, 92, 93n. Derrida, Jacques, 14 Descola, Philippe, 2, 22n. Devereux, George, 93n. Devis, Juan Sr., 201 Dienderen, An van, 44n. Dilthey, Wilhelm, 15 Doherty, Claire, 20, 25n. Dorji, Dasho Choki, 165, 173, 181n. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 58 Downey, Anthony, 46n. D´Souza, Aruna, 180n. Dubuffet, Jean, 213 Duchamp, Marcel, 210, 213 Durazo, Martin, 202 Dwyer, Kevin, 211 Edwards, Elizabeth, 45n. Edwards, Kimberly, 202 Eiland, Howard, 84n. Ekpuk, Victor, 50 Elhaik, Tarek, 18, 20, 25–6n., 205n., 207–8n., 210, 215, 216n. Elkins, James: 22n.

Enwezor, Okwui, 22n., 40, 42, 46n., 50–1, 214, 215n. Escobar, Ticio, 4, 22n. Fabian, Johannes, 12, 24n., 44n., 194, 197, 207n., 211 Fabre, Jean, 73n. Fadraga, Lillebith, 206n. Fashola, Babatunde, 40 Faubion, James, 208n. Featherstone, Mike, 104, 114n., 180n. Fei, Xiaotong, 96, 112, 113n. Fen, Feng, 75–6, 79, 82 Fenglian, Gao, 79–80, 84n. Finkelpearl, Tom, 181n. Foster, Hal, 25n., 27–9, 44–5nn. Foucault, Michel, 18, 25n., 58, 63n., 222, 224–5, 234n. Franke, Anselm, 2, 22n. Franklin, Benjamin, 187 Frazer, James, 194 Freud, Sigmund, 67 Friðriksdóttir, Gabríela, 73n. Fryer, David Ross, 44n. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 15 Gao, Minglu, 113n. Gao, Qianhui, 108, 114n. García, Juan, 207n. García-Antón, Katya, 6–7, 23n. Gardner, Robert, 78, 83n. Garibay, Emmanuel Robles, 142 Geertz, Clifford, 15, 122, 181n., 222, 234n. Gell, Alfred, 170, 181n. Gerhard, Tatjana, 172 Gerz, Jochen, 9–10 Gibson, Jade, 44n. Gilbert & George, 200 Gilles, Almira, 16, 20, 26n., 139, 155, 162n. Given, Lisa M., 23n. Goldmann, Marcio, 25n. Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, 18 Graeber, David, 72, 74n. Graham-Stewart, Michael, 45n. Gregory, D, 225, 234n. Grigore, Irina, 94n. Grimshaw, Anna, 21, 26n. Grinker, Roy Richard 45n.

Index Grunenfelder-Elliker, Barbara, 208n. Guattari, Félix, 17, 25n., 84n., 93n. Gutmann, Matthew, 207n. Haacke, Hans, 191, 214 Hall, Stuart, 222, 234n. Hancock, Caroline, 45n. Hankbale, Mark, 107 Hardt, Michael, 28, 45 Hartono, Iswanto, 120, 122, 125 Hasegawa, Yuko, 71, 73n. Hassan, Salah, 50 Haug, Jordan, 154n. Heidegger, Martin, 11, 23n. Heisenberg, Werner, 67 Henare, Amiria, 23n. Henley, Paul, 26n Hermiasih, Leilani, 119, 125, 132n. Herzfeld, Michael, 205n. Hirano, Keiichiro, 73n. Hirst, Daimen, 201 Hobsbawm, Eric, 45n., 102, 114n. Hockings, Paul, 26n. Holbraad, Martin, 23n. Holmes, Douglas R., 23n. Hozzeeinsadeh, Maryam, 207n. Huerta, Enrique, 207n. Ialeggio, Anna, 202 Ianniciello, Celeste, 25n. Inagaki, Tatsuo: 22n. Ingold, Tim, 211, 223, 234n. Isar, Yudhistithir Raj: 22n. Ishikaw, Naoki, 73n. Issiakhem, M’hamed, 36–7 Jaarsma, Mella, 20, 117–19, 133 Jaquet, Chantal, 93n. Jarry, Alfred, 192 Jennings, Michael W, 84n. Juliastuti, Nuraini, 120 Kama, Asha, 180n. Karroum, Abdellah, 22n., 215n. Kasfir, Sidney, 50, Kaspin, Deborah, 45n. Katru, Mr, 173, 181n. Kaur, Raminder, 18, 22n., 24–5n. Kawai, Kaori, 83n. Keesing, Roger M, 153, 154n.

237

Kelley, Mike, 189 Kelsey, John, 206n. Kemmis, Stephen, 181n. Kester, Grant, 168, 181n., 202, 208n. Kher, Bharti, 73n. Kim, Alice, 22n. Kim-Chengdao, 114n. Kim-Guangyi, 114n. Kim-Wenting, 97, 99, 101–5, 108, 110–11, 113n., 114–15n. Kimmelman, Michael, 206n. Kippenberger, Martin, 201, 214 Kirsch, Stuart, 25n. Kitaro, Nishida, 68, 73n. Koons, Jeff, 189 Kouris, Heather, 216n. Krauss, Rosalind, 206n. Krischer, Olivier, 11, 22–3nn. Kronfle, Rodolfo, 207n. Krstić, Marija, 44n. Kubo, M., 84n., 93n. Kuoni, Carin, 216n. Lämmli, Dominique, 16, 163, 171, 179–81nn., 183 Landau, Paul S., 45n. Landowski, Paul, 36–7 Landry, Donna, 189n. Lash, Scott, 180n. Latour, Bruno, 2, 22n. Lee, Wuyong, 113n. Lemu, Massa, 46n. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 58, 60, 63, 65, 68, 72, 73n., 92, 224, 234n. Lewis, Dave, 22n. Lili, Fang, 13, 95, 114–15n. Lindemann, Adam, 207n. Lingpa, Pema, 167 Liu, Mingliang, 97, 99, 101–2, 107–10, 113–15nn. Lombardi, Mark, 191, 206n., 211 Lovelock, James: 2 Lubkemann, Stephen C., 45n. Lucas, Sarah, 200 Lumière Brothers, 124 Macdonald, Sharon, 44n. Macdougall, David, 125, 132n. Makhubu, Nomusa, 29–30, 32, 34, 41, 43, 45n.

238 Index

Malcom, Frances, 28, 44n. Malinowski, Bronislaw, 91–2 Mao, Mr, 77 Maranhão, Tullio: s 13, 24n. Marcus, George, 23n., 28, 43, 44–5nn., 181n., 204, 206–8nn., 214 Martin, Jean-Hubert, 19, 214–15n. Matthey, Catalina, 17, 217, 222–4, 233 McCarthy, Paul, 200 McLuhan, Marshall, 104 Mead, Margaret, 91, 93n. Menia, Amina, 29, 34–7, 41, 43 Mignolo, Walter, 14, 24n. Mir, Aleksandra, 191, 206n. Mitchell, W. J. T., 194, 207n., 234n. Mohr, Jean, 84n. Montero, Maria Rosario, 17, 217, 219, 225, 233 Morphy, Howard, 132 Mosquera, Gerardo, 1, 18, 22n., 135, 225, 234n. Moss, Jason Jacobe, 142 Mouffe, Chantal, 228, 234n. Mozart, Wolfang Amadeus, 65–6 Mulia, Budi, 120, 127 Murao, S., 84n., 93n. Myers, Fred, 44n., 181n., 206n. Nakamura, Fuyubi, 11, 22–3n. Nakao, Tomomichi, 82, 84n. Nakazawa, Shinichi, 16, 53, 65, 73n., 89 Negri, Antonio, 28, 45n. Nestor, Canclini, García, 222, 224, 234n. Niwa, Tomoko, 16, 20, 75, 83–4n., 93–4n. Nkanga, Otobong, 51 Nora, Pierre, 45n. Noterdaeme, Filip de, 192, 206n. Nzewi, Ugochukwu-Smooth C., 20, 27, 46–7n., 52n. Obrist, Hans Ulrich, 25n. Odani, Motohiko, 73n. Oe, Kenzaburo, 16, 89 Ogawa, Shinsuke, 90 Ogboh, Emeka, 29, 37–9, 41, 43n., 46n. Oguibe, Olu, 50, Oikawa, Junya, 73n. Ole, António, 44n. Omori, Yasuhiro, 93n. O’Neill, Paul, 20, 25n.

Ong, Aihwa, 13, 24n,. 208n. Ooi, Adeline, 20, 117, 133 Orabona, Mariangela, 25n. Orozco, Gabriel, 44n. Orrantia, Juan: 22n. Osborne, Peter, 12, 24n. Osorio, Ruby, 202 Ostor, Ákos, 84n. Panda, Jagannath, 73n. Papastergiadis; Nikos, 43, 46n. Pascal, Blaise, 58 Paternosto, César: 22n. Pels, Peter, 45n. Perez-Ratton, Virgina, 207n. Perkins, Morgan, 11, 22–3n. Petrella, Rodrigo, 4, 22n. Piao, Yihu, 113n. Piccinini, Patricia, 73n. Poole, Deborah, 194, 206n., 211 Prasad, Ugoran, 120, 122 Prendergast, Christopher, 11, 23n. Price, Joshua, 15, 25n. Prince, Richard, 201 Quadaro, Michaela, 25n. Rand, Steven, 216n. Ranger, Terence, 45n. Ratnaningtyas, Restu, 119, 125, 127, 137 Ravetz, Amanda, 21, 26n. Raymond, Rosanna, 22n. Rayner, Eric, 73n. Renard, Émilie, 22n., 215n. Ricoeur, Paul, 15 Rivera, Emilio, 207n. Robertson, Roland, 180n. Rometti, Julia, 4–6, 8, 11, 21, 23n. Rosselli, Amelia, 17, 25n. Rouch, Jean, 16, 21, 26n., 78, 90, 92, 93n. Ruddy, 195–7 Rutherford, Jonathan, 234n. Rutten, Kris, 44n. Salas, Paula, 17, 217, 220, 222, 224, 233 Saldamando, Shizu, 202 Sansi, Roger, 21, 26 Sarisetiati, Julia, 120, 127 Satie, Erik, 213 Savage, Jim, 207n.

Index Schacter, Rafael, 23n. Schielke, Samuli, 24n. Schifferle, Klaudia, 172 Schiwy, Freya, 24n. Schneider, Arnd, 1, 24–5n., 43–7nn., 65, 73n., 84n., 89, 93n., 133. 153n., 155, 162n., 181n., 196, 205–8n., 209 Selasi, Taiye, 40–1, 51 Semedi, Pujo, 119, 129–30 Shakespare, Willam, 91 Shanyun, Feng, 75, 78, 80, 82, 84n. Shaw, Marielle, 26n., 153n. Shimonaka, Nabo, 75, 83–4nn. Sholette, Gregory, 205n. Sikander, Shazia, 73n. Smith, Terry, 12–13, 24n., 44n., 46n., 180n. Soetaert, Ronald, 44n. Spinoza, Baruch de, 90, 93 Spivak, Gayatri C., 180n. Sputniko!, 73n. Ssorin-Chaikov, Nikolai, 9, 23n. Stabler, Claire, 22n., 215n. Stallabrass, Julian, 180n. Steiner, Christopher B., 45n. Sterbak, Jana, 73n. Stevenson, Michael, 45n. Streck, Bernhard, 24n. Strohm, Kiven, 21, 26n. Suharto, Haji Mohamed, 135 Suswannakudt, Phaptawan, 12, 24n. Suzuki, Ritsuko, 84n. Swarowsky, Daniela, 24n. Swastika, Alia, 136 Sze, Sarah, 73n. Szeemann, Harald, 49 Taiwo, Olufemi, 14, 24n. Takagi, Masakatsu, 73n. Takeda, Yumi, 84n. Takemitsu, Toru, 16, 89 Tanaka, Rieko, 94n. Taussig, Michael, 194, 207n. Tenzin, Mr, 173, 181n. Tenzin, Ms, 181n. Terrell, John, 20, 139 Thompson, Matthew D, 151, 153n.

239

Tinbu, Bola, 40 Tokieda, Motoki, 94n. Tokoro, Ikuya, 83n. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 45n. Tsatsos, Irene, 202 Tuakli-Wosornu, Taiye, 40 Tunga, 73n. Ushiyama, Junichi, 93n. Vail, Leroy, 45n. Valenzuela, Jairo, 207n. Vangelisti, Paul, 25n. Velazquez, Diego, 18 Venuti, Lawrence, 24n. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 2, 4, 5, 7, 22n., 23n., 25n., 92, 94n. Vliavicharska, Zhivka, 22n. Voelert, Elizabeth, 207n. Vogel, Susan, 48 Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich, 92, 94n. Wastell, Sari, 23n. Watson, Mark, 18, 19, 25n. Weber, Max, 15 Weerasethakul, Apichatpong, 73n. Weibel, Peter, 22n, 24n, 179n. Whyte, William Foote, 96, 113n. Willerslev, Rane, 22n. Wiseman, Frederick, 78 Wolf, Eric, 45n. Wright, Christopher, 20, 22n., 25n., 44–5n. 1, 84n., 153n., 181n., 196, 205–7n. Xia, Gao, 114n Yagual, Victor Hugo Escalante “Don Pili”, 189, 197–8, 200–1, 205, 207n., 213 Yamaguchi, Maso, 16, 89 Yanai, Tadashi, 16, 75, 84n., 89, 93n. Zegher, Catherine de, 19 Zhilin, Jin, 78 Zhou, Xing, 83n. Zhu, Qi, 114n. Ziljmans, Kitty, 179n. Zizek, Slavoj, 206