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- Convenors:
-
Giuliana Borea
(Newcastle University Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)
Alex Ungprateeb Flynn (University of California, Los Angeles)
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- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Monday 29 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
How does the practice of artists who self-identify as indigenous make us rethink categories of activism, indigeneity and artistic intentionality? This panel welcomes papers that consider approaches to human rights, migration, extractivism, urban place-making, decoloniality and ontology.
Long Abstract:
Recent years have seen ever greater interest in the practice of artists who self-identify as indigenous. Reaching wider publics through internationalised frameworks of contemporary art, many such artists have become artistic and political points of reference, mobilising diverse agendas while re-addressing their own indigeneity. Processual work with artists requires a deep sense of responsibility: it is our contention that such engagements open up new possibilities and challenges for anthropologists and indigenous peoples to establish lasting and meaningful collaborations.Starting from perspectives put forward by artists in Latin America, this panel asks how artistic practice might allow us to rethink categories of indigeneity. Do indigenous artists challenge anthropological analyses that have perhaps overlooked vectors of class and mobility? How do such processes oblige us to rethink anthropological practice in terms of a responsible discussion on the tropos of "indigeneity" in the contemporary world, not only in terms of indigenous voices but also regarding bodies, practices and networks? How might a parallel anthropological/curatorial approach facilitate arenas of collaboration and the possibility to think beyond? We also consider how artistic practice touches on global questions: Does the practice of indigenous artists through the apparatus of contemporary art enable us to rethink categories of activism and artistic practice? To what extent can we interrogate the manner in which large institutions seek to work with 'indigenous art'? We welcome papers that consider approaches to human rights, migration, extractivism, urban place-making, decoloniality and ontology. How are indigenous artists approaching and mobilising these issues?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 29 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Moving from a collaborative ethnography and artistic production with Mapuche artists and activists in the urban context of Santiago (Chile), the paper explores a shared elaboration of decolonial epistemologies and political aesthetics beyond common representations of indigeneity.
Paper long abstract:
Moving from the significance of collective creative work, the project MapsUrbe: The invisible City collaboratively engaged in the elaboration of decolonial epistemologies and representations with young Mapuche artists and activists in the urban context of Santiago, Chile. Addressing indigenous migration to the capital city through practice-based methods and multimodal ethnography, the project resulted in a site-specific performance and an artistic exhibition. In the context of this artistic productions, subterranean narratives emerged, pointing at indigenous mobility and practices of place-making within the city. These subversive political aesthetics allowed thinking beyond common representations of indigeneity, producing alternative imaginations claiming for mixture and non-whiteness under the skin of the nation, interrogating at the same time anthropological, artistic and activist practices and the interconnections between them.By analysing this process, in which co-theorization (Rapport 2008) and collective thinking and writing (Deger 2019) play a fundamental role, the paper elaborates on ethnographic and performative methodologies of co-creation, exploring the possibilities and challenges of a meaningful collaboration between an anthropologist and indigenous artists and activists. How do these research practices challenge and rework the concept and practice of indigeneity? How do co-elaborated political aesthetics enable us to rethink the categories of both ethnographic and artistic practices? What do they allow to emerge within a particular context of (unequal) knowledge production, and yet which dynamics of power and inequality still result inescapable?
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the work of one of Peru’s key Amazonian artists, Brus Rubio. His practice approaches issues of transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, cities and knowledge production, in which he directly engages anthropology and art proposing new perspectives of the indigenous and humanity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the work, concepts and agendas of the Bora-Uitoto Brus Rubio, one of the most prominent Peruvian Amazonian artists. In exploring Rubio’s trajectory it sheds light on the expansion of the limits of contemporary art in Peru, the role of the city in the boost of Amazonian indigenous art and in its current global circulation, and explains the different strategies of the artists to position himself as an artist and as an indigenous. The paper explains how the relationship artist-indigeneity acquires diverse meaning/performativity in time as Rubio explores broader arenas and in relation to national and international policies. It also explores how Rubio’s work rethink his indigeneity in his long dialogue with anthropology.Moreover, it is this process of mobility and knowledge production that Brus Rubio opts to make the centre of his art practice, illuminating with his work discussion on transnationality, cosmopolitanism, epistemologies and ‘world-making.’ I elaborate on how Brus Rubio’s work is simultaneously based on a cosmopolitanism from below and on reflection of his transnational circulation as artist, proposing new perspectives and concepts of mutual understanding and cohabiting. This paper is based on my Marie Curie project ‘A collaborative approach of the aesthetical political dimension of Amazonian art’.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the artistic perception on the indigenous world in Venezuela since the mid-20th century. While Pre-Hispanic Art has been traditionally valued as art, the living indigenous world has been seen either from an exoticized perspective, or it has been judged as an acculturated world.
Paper long abstract:
In light of the growing importance that the indigenous presence has acquired within the artistic field, debates have opened on the role of the art world as a possible meeting point between indigenous cultures and “western” society. Indigenous artistic practices offer in this sense, new forms of transmission of knowledge and of world perceptions that dwell between the traditional and the “westernized” world. In this paper we will discuss the case of Venezuela, and how indigeneity has been seen from the artistic perspective since the mid-20th century. During the 60’s, Napoleon Chagnon’s work on the Yanomami Society, which was described by him as the last vestige of the “savage” man, was most influential not only in the anthropological field, but in the cultural spheres in general. Between the 70’s and the 90’s the Venezuelan Amazon became a popular destination for artists who wanted to explore and exchange experiences with indigenous communities such as the Yanomami. Most of these encounters were part of the artist’s need to step out from a hyper-technologized world and live the “ultimate” experience of otherness by facing completely “opposed” cultures. However, very few approaches have actually taken into consideration the voices of those indigenous communities and their culture as valid forms of transmitting knowledge and aesthetic experiences. We will delve into the different valorizations indigenous art forms have had among artists and artistic institutions. Also, we will take a closer look into some instances in which indigenous knowledge has been transmitted through contemporary artistic language.
Paper short abstract:
In order to share the responsibility of becoming indigenous in the little known history of an underground groove music scene in Seoul, now I invent a new question as an indigenous cosmopolitan anthropologist in the fullness of time. “When is indigenous art?”
Paper long abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ontology of a minority of underground groove musicians in Seoul, South Korea. Although small, a new style of underground music scene somehow came into being spontaneously in Seoul in the early 2000s. The primary goal of musicians seemed simple in its embryonic stage. Introducing various genres of foreign groove music such as soul, jazz, funk, reggae, afro-beat and the other exotic indigenous rhythm, a passionate few tried to their best to reproduce the original style with complete fidelity. No one disputed the basic premise that authenticity could be verified by the power of mimicry. By the way, after an unexpected mainstream success of one underground jazz-funk band in 2003, a potential conflict inherent in the scene was actualized with two similar but mutually incompatible agendas. Both are the same in that they set the next phase of performance as becoming more indigenous, but one party made an effort to invent a new style of indigenous Korean-ness targeting a broad world audience, while the other denounced that the project is neither indigenous nor authentic. The latter seemed to deepen what they had been doing from the start. Nowadays the players and supporters of the scene still continue to ruminate on the issue of becoming indigenous, for importing and exporting indigenous groove music at the same time causes an inevitable paradox. To clarify what these problems really are, I finally invent a new question as an indigenous cosmopolitan anthropologist. “When is indigenous art?”