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Contribution short abstract

An abstract, animated film on socialist panel-block housing exhibited in the space of an ethnographic museum brings certain questions into focus, and leaves others out. It is presented with a series of watercolour paintings: still frames that point to anthropology's often competing attachments.

Contribution long abstract

The proposed multimodal installation will exhibit twelve original watercolour paintings that served as still-frames for the film, Empathy for Concrete Things, as well as the film itself. The proposed multimodal installation will engage with the exhibition’s theme by drawing attention to anthropology’s competing attachments, bringing focus to-, and away from, research participants, the ethnographer, the viewing audience, visual framing devices, ethnographic narratives, and wider discourses of power. If paintings are textured, sensory objects, they invite a different type of engagement when animated and projected as stop-motion sequences onto a screen. A film on socialist panel-block housing exhibited in an ethnographic museum interrogates what we consider worthy of display as aesthetic-, political-, or social objects, beckoning the viewer to engage with competing visualities and materialities. Similarly, while the paintings are the ethnographer’s own creative effort, the film is part of creative commons, leaving it open to interpretation, modification, and remix. 



Installation created by Gregory Gan and Stephanie Loose

Link to the film: https://vimeo.com/gregorygan/empathy