Short Abstract:

This lab will take the form of an exhibition that brings together anthropologists through the marks they make and the lines they inscribe. Ranging from visual field notes made in situ to more sustained visual images that bear witness to the interstices between art and anthropology.

Long Abstract:

Anthropology has had a long and sustained relationship with the medium of drawing. From the diagrammatic illustrations of Alfred Gell to the musing offered by Michael Taussig's drawings and collages, to the more recent shift towards a graphic anthropology by Portuguese anthropologist Manuel João Ramos, there has been a longstanding engagement with the medium as a means of description and revelation. This laboratory will take the form of an exhibition that brings together anthropologists through the marks they make and the lines they inscribe. Ranging from visual field notes made in situ to more sustained visual images that bear witness to the interstices between art and anthropology, this exhibition will chart some of the more recent developments between anthropology and drawing. Understood in a more expansive sense to include marks made on a surface, diagrams, map, and visual note taking, the aim of the exhibition will be to explore the visuality of ethnographic fieldwork, the importance of aesthetic forms for observing momentary sensations and securing fleeting ideas and moving of from this, how these impressions and recordings develop beyond the field and offer imaginative exposition and experimental speculation on the future.