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Short abstract

This contribution frames ethnography as a mimetic practice shaped through encounters with art–science projects, activating new forms of situated epistemic experimentation through fieldwork.

Long abstract

This contribution starts from the proposition that ethnography is fundamentally a mimetic space. Since the early history of anthropology, mimesis has been treated with ambivalence, often distinguished from imitation and positioned in tension with modern forms of knowledge. However, since the 1980s, different authors have challenged this distinction, showing that ethnographic practice itself involves embodied, affective, and mimetic processes through which researchers attune to the worlds they study.

Building on this perspective, I argue that when ethnography comes into close contact with art–science practices, its mimetic character becomes particularly generative. Drawing on my ongoing ethnography of neuroscience laboratories in Colombia, I focus on groups of neuroscientists who are themselves deeply interested in art–science collaborations and in experimenting with alternative forms of expression. Sustained engagement with their experimental practices, tools, and aesthetic concerns permeated my own ways of sensing, thinking, and working, encouraging me to explore formats beyond conventional academic writing. Rather than remaining confined to representational accounts, ethnographic fieldwork triggered tentative forms of expression influenced by the practices and sensibilities of the community itself.

In this trajectory, mimesis operates as a mode of creative and relational labour that transforms ethnography from a detached observational stance into a practice of interrogation. The ethnographic process becomes a space for questioning the current conditions of ethnographic work, as well as the broader situation of critical approaches within these settings. The contribution narrates this process through experimental audiovisual and performative practices developed using art–science techniques learned in collaboration with neuroscientists.