Paper short abstract:

An anthropologist’s account of her implication in three artistic events helps to find common ground between art and anthropology in the management of uncertainty: reflexivity may serve as a means of both controlling and enhancing unpredictable processes in the construction of a (scientific and/or artistic) research “project”.

Paper long abstract:

Admittedly, an ethnographic research project, concerning an artistic event, permits to contextualize artistic practices and gain insight to important details of contemporary art production. Nowadays, though, relations between art and anthropology develop in such a way that this kind of project risks intermingling with the artistic project, originally set as its "object" of study.

This paper focuses on three instances in which an anthropologist (i.e. myself), who is also trained as an artist, participated in art projects recently realized in Greece. I grew more and more implicated in art making, first, as an anthropologist doing research on a public art event (part of the 2nd Athens Biennale), then, as a participant in an art project (entitled "What is man?") and finally as the organizer (and artist-participant) of an artistic/anthropological research project (on "Voices").

These experiences have made me realize that the more unpredictable is the process, the more effective turns out to be the project. It seems that uncertainty encourages a reflexive stance (familiar both to anthropologists and to artists), instigating attitudes of both control and "spontaneity". Therefore, in this paper, I wish to discuss the

"administrative framework" of an artistic "project" not so much from an ethnographic perspective focusing on institutional constraints on otherwise "uncertain" artistic practices, but from the point of view of an anthropologist whose discipline takes part, in one way or another, in the construction as well as the deconstruction of institutionalized practices promoting "creativity"(and, thus, uncertainty), both in art and anthropology.