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Paper short abstract

Ulaanbaatar demands anthropologists and artists alike to deal with the burn of modernism it has borne and the post-socialist contradictions it carries and inflicts upon its inhabitants. Art and anthropology rupture such 'crises ordinary' to generate moments of crisis and, thus, vital creativity.

Paper long abstract

Intellectual synergies and problems shared by contemporary art and anthropology run much deeper than the ethnographic turn in art and the creative turn in anthropology. More fundamental, I argue, is the problem of critique that rests in an awkward and oblique relationship to both art and anthropology. Whereas contemporary art seeks to expand accepted forms of expression and imagination, contemporary anthropology seeks to multiply accepted ways of describing and explaining human being-in-the-world. Professional and, thus, institutionalised practitioners of both disciplines aspire to be 'critical' yet remain caught in the discipline of neoliberal 'creativity'.

Post-socialist Ulaanbaatar—caught between romanticised dreams of progress, persistent faith in development, and snowballing neoliberal destruction—demands anthropologists and artists alike to deal with the burn of modernism it has borne, and the everyday contradictions it carries and inflicts upon its residents, tourists, artists, and ragpickers. Despite scholarly diagnosis of a 'crisis ordinary' (Berlant), Ulaanbaatar people remain surprisingly optimistic. Many trust that 'art will change this country one day'. This paper will discuss key 'moments of crisis' in the social life of Ulaanbaatar artists when conflicts erupt and friends confront one another. It is precisely in these moments of crisis—and intensified intersubjective spacetimes (Munn)—when people succeed in moving one another's 'heart-mind' (setgel). Movements of the 'setgel', I argue, is ultimately what art and anthropology both seek, for the sake of crisis and, therefore, the practical, experimental, and circumstantially activist creativity to rupture crises ordinary and regenerate life.