Short Abstract:

Is it possible to study how something tangible transforms into something imaginary or when what seems immediate yet intangible becomes a concrete reality? How do people shape relationships through and with certain things in their environment as they construct meaningful lifeworlds?

Long Abstract:

In this laboratory we shall present an installation for participants to explore narratives of things and places, and how anthropologists can get a sense of a person's reality through objects, which are either physically present or absent.

Representations (e.g. a photo of/without the thing or the place, drawing) of 8-12 objects or places are displayed on cubes/tables/wall and complemented by audio stories (2-4 min, mp3 with headphones) recorded by the people to whom they are meaningful. In responding to visual and audio-recorded material in the installation, lab participants will add to and adapt the installation with their own narratives. Participants can re/write 'object labels', acting as interpreters or re-tellers of the story, trying to "explore the lifeworld of someone" through the narrative presented and their own personal experience. The variety of responses to a single object/narrative would raise questions of to whom and about whom the materiality speaks, and whether it is possible to 'translate' senses of joy, memories, attachment, loss or belonging into words.

By exploring responses during the lab time(90min) the aim is to start a discussion of how we experience - individually and collectively - our reality through material or imaginative objects, how stories are retold and theorized depending on an anthropologist's personal experience.