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- Convenors:
-
Catherine West
Jane Mulcock (Esperance Community Arts)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Performing Anthropology Creatively
- Location:
- WPE Paraparap
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Short Abstract:
An essential creative urge is evident across human cultures, often observed in the production and reproduction of social and individual meaning. Is human life supported through connecting intimately with arts practice? How might anthropologists engage with the arts as both method and subject?
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks contributions that explore the role of arts-based methods and arts-based participatory research in anthropology. We consider the logic of Design Anthropology as an apposite structure for pursuing these topics, as it maintains reflexivity between the practice of anthropology as a creative process, and the creative process as a subject of anthropology (Gunn, Otto & Smith 2020). We ask what elements of social, political, and economic design underpin the phenomena of 'creativity' and 'arts' in the current day? While participant observation has long been a hallmark of anthropology, there is a growing appreciation outside of anthropology of what Ingold calls 'observant participation'. The 'participatory turn' is evident in Mulligan and Smith's (2010) 'turn to community', and in Leavy's assertion that arts-based and participatory research are core elements of social science research design. In drawing anthropology and the arts into relation, we emphasise the essential creative urge that is evident across human cultures and in the production of social and individual meaning. Is engaging with arts practice a form of life support? We take a broad view of what constitutes artistic engagement. It can include any medium of expression (for example dance, music, theatre, visual arts and crafts, writing, photography, and filmmaking) in many contexts (for example community arts programs, individual arts practice, ritual, popular culture, and everyday creativity). This panel provides a forum to ponder the diverse moments, materials, ideas, and transformations that occur within and between the 'of' and 'for' of anthropology and the arts.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 23 November, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This study explores the relevance of music, storytelling, and first language for people from migrant backgrounds living with dementia in Australia. Anthropology is juxtaposed to music therapy and dementia studies to develop an intervention based on culturally tailored songs, life history and memory
Paper long abstract:
This study, located at the intersection of anthropology, ageing, music therapy and dementia, explores the relevance of music, storytelling, and first language, for the well-being of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CaLD) living with dementia in Australia. It utilises participant observation and the collection of oral histories to co-create a song together with older Italian migrants living with dementia and their families in Adelaide, South Australia. Thirteen Italy-born participants, over the age of 65 (six living in residential care, and seven at home) participated in a twelve-month timeframe study. An anthropological theoretical framework is juxtaposed and informed by concepts from music therapy (therapeutic song-writing and sound identities) and dementia research (co-narration), to develop a method we call comusichiamo (let’s make music together).
Comusichiamo is a music-engagement intervention involving the co-creation of culturally tailored songs in first language revolving around life history, including reminiscence and autobiographic memory. Data show that the co-creation of culturally tailored songs, composed and sung with the participants, can enhance physical and social engagement, and contribute to the general well-being of participants from migrant backgrounds living with dementia.
Central to the intervention is the sharing of life-history, comprising autobiographic memory, the use of one’s ipsissima verba (the particular words participants employ), and the songs from the ‘soundtrack of one’s life’. The singing and tracing of the threads of the participant’s existence, contributes to safeguarding, performing and re-establishing participants’ cultural identity, while providing social engagement in the life of the participants and their families.
Paper short abstract:
This research sets to explore how engagement in digital art and entertainment productions influences Australian Indigenous creative practices, expressions of identity, and cultural self-representation in the eyes of international audiences.
Paper long abstract:
Indigenous art provides fruitful grounds to express Indigenous cultures, traditional knowledges, and identities. However, while traditional and academic art forms have been at the centre of academic inquiry for decades, Indigenous digital production started to attract scholarly attention only recently. If digital art can be a means to act and to express, then it can reveal as much insight as other forms of art in terms of the development, innovation, and richness of Indigenous cultures, identity, and participation in the global cultural exchange. If that is so, then what does this complex process of engaging in digital art production mean for Indigenous nations?
In this thesis, I will look at graphic novels, animated movies, animated TV series, VR experiences, illustrated books (e-books), and mixed media projects produced by or together with Indigenous creators to explore the role of digital art in Australian Indigenous creative practices, expressions of identity, and cultural self-representation. By talking to the creators and examining their works, I aim to understand how Indigenous digital art creators navigate around concepts of authenticity and hybridity, information and its format, cultural preservation and development, traditional and popular culture, exclusiveness, and inclusiveness, and boundaries between Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Paper short abstract:
Community Arts & Cultural Development (CACD), a valued artform in many countries, prioritises community participation & creative storytelling as pathways towards positive social change. This paper explores some strengths & challenges of working within this framework in contemporary regional WA.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ten years of practitioner anthropology (a version of what Kristina Baines and Victoria Costa (2022) describe as 'Cool Anthropology'), this paper uses Laura Berlant's (2007) concept of 'Cruel Optimism' and Tess Lea's (2020) concept of 'policy ecology' as starting points to explore the current dynamics of sustaining community arts practice - in the sense of arts for social change - in regional WA. This includes the challenges of navigating three tiers of government policy and funding models whilst also maintaining the flexibility to respond to changing individual, social, political, cultural and economic conditions 'on the ground', where, building relationships of trust and respect with participants is the primary project (Lillie et al 2020). The idea of cultural life support is used as a tool to consider the role that participatory arts can play in helping to sustain individuals and communities, but also from an organisational perspective to shine a light on the ways that the small incorporated groups that help to sustain the regional arts sector are supported and not supported in their own quests for life at the peripheries of powerful, external systems of value.