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- Convenor:
-
Marcel Reyes-Cortez
(Goldsmiths)
Send message to Convenor
- Track:
- Visual Anthropology
- Location:
- University Place first floor foyer
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 August, -, Wednesday 7 August, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The photographic exhibition brings together an international group of social researchers/artist who use photography as a methodology. The exhibition would open a space to discuss but also to show how the practice of photography can be of value to anthropology, social research and beyond.
Long Abstract:
Challenging the limits of the visual arts and social sciences, I am interested in curating a multidisciplinary and collaboratory photographic exhibition by contributing researchers/artists who are currently practicing and using photography both as a research methodology and as an art form. Social researchers who are both ethnographers and art practitioners form a new hybrid family of academics who have embraced visual practices and particularly the practice of photography as their research methodology. The exhibition would provide the conference with an innovative approach to current practices of visual anthropology, field research and the dissemination of knowledge. The exhibition will highlight how photography engages and dialogues with society, history and memory. The exhibition will also show how art and anthropology can collaborate but most importantly become fused as one professional academic discipline and not as separate entities.
The exhibition of photographic works would form part and become an extension and accompaniment to a panel entitled: Photography as a research method. The photographic works would be of the presenters from this panel.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 August, 2013, -Alexandra Urdea (Goldsmiths College)
Paper short abstract:
Folklore and tradition on one side, stardom and fashion on the other are terms which usually seem to sit in opposition. I am proposing a series of photographs that challenge this opposition and show a context in which these terms are open to negotiation.
Paper long abstract:
The images I bring show a particular type of interaction between myself as a photographer-researcher, and the people who wish to be the subjects of my photographs. They capture partly the performative nature of costumes, the way the "actors" behave in a certain way and place themselves a ensemble, where folkloric costumes seem to belong. The discourse they are composing is the one of "tradition", of "folklore", and within that, stardom. We can look at how my subjects are constructing this rhetoric of "folklore", which elements go well together to form this discourse, and which of them don't.
Along with my subjects' performance, there is also my performance: as I am taking the photographs I am taking on a particular role while my informants are teaching me how to fulfill it. They are constantly helping me, answering the questions I am supposed to ask, posing for me and telling me what angle I should take the picture from.
Most of these pictures refer to a particular type of folklore - that of show-biz. Others are of people in the village where I spent a few months, taken outside at a church on a Sunday when it was announced a TV crew would arrive. Here, photography points to a variety of disciplines or areas developed around peasantry: folklore, ethnography, anthropology, show-biz and media. Photography is crucial in capturing one's understanding of these areas/disciplines, one's use of the rhetorics of the respective disciplines, and one's disposition to negotiate and perform identity.
Evangelia Katsaiti (Nottingham Trent University)
Paper short abstract:
The photographs are a visual recount of my feelings of loss (grief) in a creative life narrative in which I have used photography as both a social science and an art practice in a combined research methodology. The photographs mediate my struggle to control memory in the small community of my family and were intended to control my power over negotiating self identity. The art project is about the feelings of devastation created by the loss of a family member and is used in an effort to overcome it. In doing so I explore photography as a tool mediating loss and how that is communicated and received in a culturally shared environment.
Paper long abstract:
'Dedicated to" is the resulting art piece of an auto ethnographic research project ,set in Perama the working class, sea industry suburb of Athens Greece from which I originate. I have used my photographic art practice to perform identities of loss attached to my family, while in bereavement. I was interested on how different people choose to remember or forget selectively through objects (photographs) in an effort to choose what and how to be. The evocative lens intention was to unearth gender politics practises in the family as well as an understanding of the dynamic of being both the researcher and the subject of the research. The photographs visualised the language that etches my memory and thus empowered me to articulate through the story telling the process of articulating, owning and thus redefining my history. Photography as an art practise and a research tool opened possibilities for new knowledge, and conversations to evolve and thus catered for the need for an unconventional self-directed way of redefining identity.
Luc Pauwels (University of Antwerp)
Paper short abstract:
This visual essay is an attempt to disclose aspects of the city and city life through a combination of texts and black and white pictures of unstaged aspects of urban material culture and human behavior. The - mostly panoramic - pictures were made in numerous cities around the globe.
Paper long abstract:
This visual essay is an attempt to disclose aspects of the city and city life through a combination of texts and black and white pictures of unstaged aspects of urban material culture and human behavior. The introductory text describes and evokes the city as a hybrid semiotic place which can be literally looked at from different angles that often refer to different orders of signification: the use of space, the types, means and degree of control, mobility, fashion, cultural diversity, entertainment, tourism, commerce, personal, interpersonal and group behaviour, the public and the private sphere. Much of this materializes in numerous artefacts and behaviours. These multiple intermeshing discourses - the historic, the political, the social, the multicultural, the commercial, the religious etc. - provide the city with its unpredictable, multi-layered, never fully graspable, character. The text contains multiple hints to visual aspects of experiencing the city and as such it helps to read the photographs in a certain way. In turn the photographs provide a concrete context to the introductory text, as well as opportunities to move beyond it. The - mostly panoramic - pictures were made in numerous cities around the globe: New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Beijing, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, Manchester, Phoenix, Berlin, Montreal, Copenhagen, Las Vegas, Dublin, Barcelona, Milwaukee, Lisbon, Shanghai, Milan, San Francisco, Rome, Athens etc.
For a sample of my previous photographic work on urban culture see http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v1/a17/
Beate Engelbrecht (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity)
Paper short abstract:
In the three cities of Singapore, New York, Johannesburg the interaction in public space is explored using collaborative and participatory photographic projects as research method. The aim of the projects is to put up an exhibition in the research area itself and to collect feedback from the locals.
Paper long abstract:
In the research project "Globaldivercities" at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity interactions in public space of diverse people living in certain quarters of Singapore, New York, and Johannesburg are studied. Besides participant observation and interviews various visual methods are applied. The local researcher developed the idea of doing photographic projects to get more insights on how people perceive the diversity in public space. Anna Cieslik started a collaboration with a photographic class in a college. They have the task to take photos in the research area on certain topics, to put up an exhibition and comment on the photographs. Junjia Ye started a participatory photography workshop in Singapore, teaching interested migrants how to photograph giving them several tasks to exercise the skills. Each task is combined with a research questions and the results are discussed in the class thus getting insights in how fairly new migrants perceive their new living space. Alex Wafer is preparing a participatory photography workshop in Johannesburg where he wants to explore the difficult living situation with the help of younger citizen.
In all three cases selected photographs from the projects are exhibited in the research area thus giving the research partners some insights in the work but also being able to get some feedback from them and talk with the locals about the photos and the daily encounters in public space. In the conference some photo of these projects will be presented and the results will be discussed.
Marcel Reyes-Cortez (Goldsmiths)
Paper short abstract:
My visual research project explores how through daily and yearly cycles, the bereaved, mourners and workers develop and maintain intricate funerary rituals involving the dead buried in the cemeteries of Mexico City. Commemorative visual and material culture both religious and secular already plays an important role in mourners’ everyday life and activities. A more extensive use of the photograph and the practice of photography became a valuable social research tool, especially when looking at the exchanges and interactions between the dead, memory and the visual material worlds that assist the living, the dead and the ánima (spirit/soul) to stay connected in the spaces in which they interact.
Paper long abstract:
My visual research project explores how through daily and yearly cycles, the bereaved, mourners and workers develop and maintain intricate funerary rituals involving the dead buried in the cemeteries of Mexico City. A more extensive use of the photograph and the practice of photography became a valuable social research tool, especially when looking at the exchanges and interactions between the dead, memory and the visual material worlds that assist the living, the dead and the ánima (spirit/soul) to stay connected in the spaces in which they interact.
I have chosen to explore the above social and cultural processes in part through a visual methodology, documenting meticulously through photographs as well as text the numerous ways in which the living and the dead remain connected over generations. The practice of photography eased and speeded the entry into the cemetery and mourners private and public spaces, it also opened access to the possibilities of collaboratory encounters within the field and with those people with whom I was working. Thus, I examined and extensively recorded through photography the cyclical memorialising and mourning practices, ritualised routines, and daily habits associated with the dead and the cemetery space in the borough of Álvaro Obregón, Mexico City. A visual methodology in combination with traditional ethnographic methods such as participant observation, formal and informal interviews, investigation of life histories of the bereaved, mourners, visitors and workers with an overview of contemporary Mexican funerary practices in Mexico City offered the project a more nuanced understanding of the bereaved and mourner's ideas about their relationships with the dead.
Stephen Parkin (University of Huddersfield)
Paper short abstract:
This exhibition will provide an understanding of a particular health inequality (and related social suffering) concerning the appropriation of public places for the purpose of injecting drug use, alongside an appreciation of the applied nature of visual methods.
Paper long abstract:
This proposed photographic exhibition concerns the topic of injecting drug use and the environments used for the injection of heroin and crack-cocaine. This exhibition has emerged from over 5 years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the photographer/author as part of three separate studies of street-based injecting drug use located throughout the UK. These studies have involved visits to almost 200 public settings affected by injecting episodes and/or drug-related litter in addition to interviews/attachment with 72 injecting drug users and 170 agency representatives.
The exhibition consists of selected images taken during ethnographic data collection within drug using environments. An estimated 100 photographs will be used to provide a 'photo-ethnography' of injecting drug use in street-based settings. These images will be organised into three themes; place, litter and management.
The exhibition aims to provide a meaningful insight into the lives of some of society's most vulnerable members. Individuals who resort to injecting within public settings are typically homeless with long term dependency issues and entrenched injecting lifestyles. This exhibition does not aim to glorify or demonise injecting drug use/rs, but instead portray the environmental settings of drug dependency and homelessness. However, the exhibition is primarily an attempt to raise awareness of the harms associated with public injecting drug use via visual media. A further aim is to demonstrate the way in which applied visual methods may provide service relevant data that have the potential to motivate development and/or intervention within local settings.
Steffen Köhn (Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
A Tale of Two Islands is a 2-channel-video installation I´d like to exhibit at IUAES. It is accompanied by a paper I proposed for the workshop "Anthropological Visions. Atlases of Difference, Multimedia Arcades and Non-linear Arguments"
Paper long abstract:
Two Islands divided by history. On March 31st 2011 the small island Mayotte in the Indian Ocean officially received the status as the 101st department of France. Since that day, a new external frontier of the European Union separates Mayotte from Anjouan, its African sister-island belonging to the Union of the Comoros. Both Islands were for a long time part of the French colonial empire. In the wake of the African decolonization movement of the 1970s, referendums were organized on both islands. While Anjouan declared its independence, the overwhelming majority in Mayotte voted for remaining a part of France. Since then, Mayotte profits from French investments into its infrastructure, education and health system, while Anjouan looks back onto a history full of coups d'états, political turmoil and economic depression. Many Anjouanais thus try to clandestinely reach their neighbour-island in nighttime crossings with small motorboats, so called Kwassas.
The 2-channel-videoinstallation "A Tale of Two Islands" describes the postcolonial spaces that originate from this complex political situation. Documentary encounters filmed in the ports of the capitals of both islands unfold in precisely composed tableaux.