Paper short abstract:

Grounded in a study of producing artwork for permanent installation forests, this paper works to recover complex aspects of engaging in environment by looking at what art can do. The origins of anthropology & art are characterised by systematic doubt of ontological distinctions between people and things. Levi-Strauss’ notion of objective chance makes space for transformative potential in things, in an act of recovery.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is grounded in particular practices of producing artwork for 'permanent' installation in Britain's publically-owned forests. It works to recover complex aspects of engaging in environment by looking at what art can do and how artists understand their 'role'. The origins of anthropology and contemporary art are similarly characterised by systematic doubt of an ontological distinction between people and things. Much anthropological work which problematises this relationship in terms of the social significance of art and artefacts has been influenced by Gell's re-articulation of the 'agency' of objects. Levi-Strauss' notion of 'objective chance' makes space for transformative potential in things, in an 'act of recovery'. My suggestion is that art works, itinerant things themselves (cf Ingold, Deleuze & Guattari) mediate these. Marilyn Strathern's extension of "the concept of artefact" to "performance and to event" (Strathern, 1990:40) helps demonstrate how acquiring a time dimension can transform an object into an event, revealing how objects are made up of processes, or, "parliaments of things" (Latour). An artwork, thus framed, is a relational thing at the site of a situated encounter. If Gell fails to provide a theoretical basis for understanding how art can be a mode of action it is because he fails to deal with complexity (Morphy 2009); "the chance encounter that has not been anticipated by those arrangements" (Strathern). This frame has theoretical and methodological implications for anthropological approach to art that emerge here.