Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing from one personal specific art and anthropology project, I will give some examples of the challenges and difficulties we face when using participatory practices, and question the ways and moments in which self-representation might be adequate and whose expectations it fulfills.

Paper Abstract:

This presentation takes the author’s experience as a photographer and anthropologist in developing bodies of work that articulate arts and anthropology and its challenges. Focuses on “A incompletude para além do fim”, a project undertaken for the last 18 months in Campanhã, a specific economically deprived area in the city of Porto, Portugal. Its objective is to address notions of identity and territory from the local population in a region currently going through what I have come to designate the liminality of urban time. It is an ongoing visual anthropology project, collecting and co-creating stories, memories, and experiences of its inhabitants by themselves and the author. It also inquires into the initiatives and good practices contributing to the social and cultural development of the territory. In between photographic practices, ethnographic itinerances, and collective participation, it was materialized into a website (a-incompletude.com), two fanzines resulting from two workshops with several presentations at the community level, and a traveling exhibition. We extrapolated structural and systemic issues that are linked to global economies and movements that manifest themselves locally, such as migratory movements, gentrification, cultural and creative industries, sustainability, public housing, and public space.

But what are the challenges and difficulties we face when using participatory practices? In what ways and moments might self-representation be adequate and whose expectations does it fulfill? In this presentation, I will give some empirical examples of the permanent and ongoing negotiations, doubts and events that come up in projects of this type, where practices are disputed.