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- Convenors:
-
Elizabeth Hallam
(University of Oxford)
Clare Harris (University of Oxford)
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- Discussant:
-
Clare Harris
(University of Oxford)
- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We invite presentations from artists and anthropologists to explore issues of response and responsibility through art practices and art works grounded in particular material contexts. Investigations in any area of practice are welcome, including drawing, mixed media, photography, video and sound.
Long Abstract:
If art entails and demands more than an 'aesthetic response' (Gell, 1998), how might current anthropological work on and with art and artists generate fresh insights with regard to responsibility? This panel invites presentations, from both artists and anthropologists, to explore issues of response and responsibility through art practices and art works that are grounded in particular material situations and contexts.
Artists have adopted, and advocated, various positions on responsibility and its reverse: surrealist activity in the 1920s rejected it to embrace forms of freedom; a century later artists' work foregrounds, or urges, responsible and ethical action, as in bio art, eco art and critical/collaborative installations and projects (see Helmreich and Jones, 2018).
This panel explores how responsibilities are produced, assigned, and questioned by art - for its makers, its curators/exhibitors, its viewers/receivers, its owners, and its destroyers. We ask how art practices and works provoke consideration of responsibility in relation to urgent social, economic, political, and ecological issues, as in the case of art concerned with climate change, colonialism, inequality, urban decay, or waste, for example. How does the making of art open up different perspectives, motivate action, and facilitate interventions in difficult or problematic situations? Can anthropologists engage with art and artists to more fully understand and sensitively refigure their responsibilities in anthropological work, including teaching, research, method design, theorising, and communication beyond the discipline.
Presentations from anthropologists and artists working with/on any area of practice are welcome, including drawing, mixed media, photography, video, and sound.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will discuss responsibility in relation to my ‘art-anthropology’ project(s) 'Feminist Hospitalities'; describing works which employ film as a critical methodology to address feminism(s) and ecology in contemporary art, and the emergence of socially engaged art in ‘post-disaster’ Japan.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will discuss responsibility in relation to my ‘art-anthropology’ project(s) 'Feminist Hospitalities'. Becoming a mother, and a lecturer, motivated me to pay more explicit attention to embodied experience in relation to the troubling nature of feminism(s) in artistic and curatorial practices, as well as everyday responsibilities, in Japan as well as at home. This working paper will describe two strands of this project, which employ film/video as a critical, artistic, methodology 1) The experimental film Speculative Fiction: Practicing Collectively (2020) and its online, trans-national, and 'para-digital' making, rooted in a feminist ethics of co-creation 2) Voices of Care:彼女たちの声を聴いて (Listen to their voices), a socially engaged art project, funded by Kawamura Foundation, that focuses on women’s (especially mothers’) responsibilities and experiences of care in the North East of Japan, as made manifest in everyday practices, objects, stories, and specific ecologies. The research context is the role of feminism(s) in contemporary art, with the emergence of socially engaged art in ‘post-disaster’ Japan, especially projects which pay attention to environment and ecology. While male-dominated arts organisations generate important debates about social engagement, they are, arguably, stuck in a “culture of disaster”, within possibly problematic discourses around risk and resilience (which are seen as 'masculine', and exclusionary). Theoretically, will question the nature of my work as 'para-sitical', i.e. its excessive condition; the potential of the para-site as a figure, both 'threatening' and generative, troubling boundaries: questioning the responibilities of artists and anthropologists, as hosts, guests, parasites.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the insurgent material worlds - and their ethical call for action - on display at two exhibitions held in Delhi in early 2020: the Sahmat art exhibition titled ‘Celebrate, Illuminate, Rejuvenate, Defend the Constitution of India at 70’ and ‘Suññatā Samānta: Emptiness Equality’.
Paper long abstract:
At the time of the 2020 edition of the India Art Fair in Delhi – an art event that acts as a catalyst of many others across the city -, two exhibitions stood out for the insurgent material worlds on display: the Sahmat art exhibition titled ‘Celebrate, Illuminate, Rejuvenate, Defend the Constitution of India at 70’ and ‘Suññatā Samānta: Emptiness Equality’. These exhibitions’ aims inadvertently intersected: the former aimed to uphold the legal foundations of the nation enshrined in the Indian Constitution while the latter infused anti-caste ideologies into art – especially those engendered by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the very architect of the Constitution. Rather than being ‘post-event’ displays, these exhibitions’ evocative power was augmented by their accidental coevalness with the anti-CAA-NRC protest at Shaheen Bagh (also in Delhi) and its pan-Indian proliferation. This paper examines the co-constitution of artists, art works and exhibitions’ sites in three directions: the ensemble of known and less-known artists featuring in them vis-à-vis the flourishing of spontaneous art and performances at the protest sites; the entry into the ‘mainstream’ by artists who had previously remained confined to the ‘Dalit artist category’ among others; and the presence of recursive anti-caste iconographies enlivening art-world spaces and their refashioning at the protest sites. Overall, the paper speaks of these exhibitions’ ethical call for action in favour of both immediate and long-standing concerns within the Indian nation.
Paper short abstract:
A general discussion of the papers and questions in this panel. Discussion led by Clare Harris.
Paper long abstract:
In this slot we will have a general discussion of the papers from all three sessions of this panel. Discussion led by Clare Harris.