- Convenor:
-
Lambros Malafouris
(University of Oxford)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel, drawing on research and using examples from the 'HANDMADE - Understanding Creative Gesture in Pottery Making' project (sponsored by the ERC), will be exploring the potential of a new methodology, i.e., Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging for the anthropology of craft and creativity.
Long Abstract:
It is often claimed, both by anthropologists and skilled practitioners, that making is a dialogue between maker and material. How can this dialogue be captured, followed and understood from an anthropological perspective? This panel, drawing on research and material from the 'HANDMADE - Understanding Creative Gesture in Pottery Making' project (sponsored by ERC), will be exploring the potential of Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging for the anthropology of craft and creativity. Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging is an evolving methodological apparatus designed to facilitate the heightened sensitivity needed for the anthropological study of craft through the assemblage and juxtaposition of multitude view points on the process of making. This perspectival juxtaposition is made possible by a combination of multimodal visual captures (i.e., photography, video, drawing and mobile eye-tracking). Each of these multimodal visual captures affords a specific spatio-temporal perspective from which to identify and observe morphogenetic events of interest (e.g. creative gestures and modes of enactive signification) as well as follow their memory traces. Multimodal visual captures are set and employed in the context of multi-sited participatory observation. Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging should not be confused for a method targeting primarily the 'visual' aspects of making. Quite the contrary, it is a method designed for 'capturing' and 'visualising' multimodal aspects of creativity and skilled practices (including skilled vision) what often remain invisible or are hard to observe otherwise. The basic idea is that the juxtaposition of different media enables the discovery of connections that are often obscured when seen from a single perspectival point.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 March, 2023, -Maria Danae Koukouti (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
The Enactive Gaze, is a short film produced for the HANDMADE project. It explores the multimodality of seeing and skilled vision in pottery making. I discuss the methodological and theoretical challenges of film making as performance and mode of visual representation in the anthropology of craft.
Paper long abstract:
To actively observe through the lenses of a camera, means to go beyond recording and documenting, allowing the camera to ‘capture’ events in a dynamic interaction and constant negotiation with its environment (potters, clay, camera operator, research members, other media etc.). Following the methodology of Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging, ethnographic film aims to present a visual exegesis of events, participating actively in the search for knowledge. In this way, filming is not about the process of clay-making but part of it. As such, the film acquires some qualities of the process: it becomes open-ended and transformative, communicating sensations beyond seeing, ‘closing up’ on the kinaesthetic experience of the creative gesture.
Rory Carnegie (Attached to HANDMADE Project , Oxford University)
Paper short abstract:
In this photo essay I want discuss from the point of view of a professional photographer, rather than an anthropologist, some of my experiences as an active participant in the HANDMADE project.
Paper long abstract:
In this photo essay I want discuss from the point of view of a professional photographer, rather than an anthropologist, some of my experiences as an active participant in the HANDMADE project. I want to reflect on what, if anything, may change in my approach to photography and my usual practice of photographing when they become part of a research-driven collective process of attending to the sensory experiences, body techniques and gestures associated with skilled material practices. Is there a difference when a photo is taken in relation to an exhibition about craft and when it is taken in order to understand or raise a question about craft? I will be focusing in particular on a series of event-specific photographs of the potters’ performances and actions in which we have been trying to capture specific ‘moments’ in the process of making. I will also use some characteristic photographs to offer some personal recommendations on how best to harness the ability of photographing to materialise and communicate process by condensing time and movement and avoiding the aesthetic mystification of craft and the processes of making.
Miranda Creswell (Institute of Archaeology University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
I will present and talk you through a series of drawings produced over the course of the last two years in the context of the HANDMADE project.
Paper long abstract:
I will present and talk you through a series of drawings produced over the course of the last two years in the context of the HANDMADE project. I will discuss, from the perspective of the artist, how I see the role of drawing as a means of anthropological observation. In addition, I will reflect on the effect that my prolonged immersion in the field as part of an ethnographic team had on my perception of drawing as an artistic practice. I will also discuss the use of drawings as a medium for facilitating inter-group discussions and collaboration. Last, I will also share some reflections on the value of drawing in expressing, translating and communicating various aspects of skilled practices.
Wendy Ross (London Metropolitan)
Paper short abstract:
Based on my experience of applying this technique in the context of the HANDMADE project I will be discussing how I see, as a psychologist, the potential that mobile eye tracking has for the cross-disciplinary study of embodied skilled material practices.
Paper long abstract:
The development of mobile eye-tracking allows experimentation with different types of eye movements ‘in the wild’ while action happens in real time. Based on my experience of applying this technique in the context of the HANDMADE project I will be discussing how I see, as a psychologist, the potential that it has for the cross-disciplinary study of embodied skilled material practices. In the context of the HANDMADE project mobile eye-tracking was used, in conjunction with other visual methods, to capture movement and to understand how the eye of the potter touches the clay. Mobile eye-tracking allowed the tracking of the eye’s pathway (made of fixations and saccades) in relation to the pathways of the hand. This can help anthropologists understand the temporality of making and the correspondences between sight and touch.