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Accepted Paper:

Creative practice as archive  
Melinda Hinkson (Institute of Postcolonial Studies)

Paper short abstract:

Following the trajectory of objects from makers, to anthropologist, to museum, this paper asks what transformations occur when practice becomes archive? What are the methodological potentialities and constraints on taking up an archive and reactivating it as practice?

Paper long abstract:

This presentation reflects on my research with Warlpiri visual culture collections — the material outcomes of eight decades of creative practice by one central Australian Aboriginal community. It begins with a critical reflection on the recent emergence of repatriation as a new moral frame and stimulus for humanities scholars working with indigenous communities. It considers the ambivalence that often greets the 'return' of object-based collections to the places where they were made. The paper hones in on a particular form of creative practice that occurs at the interstices of cultural worlds; a fusion of sense making, aesthetic pleasure and attempted cross-cultural communication. Following the trajectory of objects — from the hands of makers, to those of the anthropologist, to the museum — a complex interplay of conflicting temporalities is revealed. The paper asks what transformations occur when practice becomes archive? What are the methodological potentialities and constraints on taking up an archive and reactivating it as practice? In what ways can research that is alive to such questions contribute to a reinvigorated public anthropology?

Panel Cre01
The art and sensibility of being ethnographic: moral responsibility and future orientations
  Session 1