- Convenor:
-
Lambros Malafouris
(University of Oxford)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 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 Friday 10 March, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to question the possibilities of drawing as a non-retrospective ethnographic method bridging the gap between observation and description. How can “thinking (and seeing) through drawing” enable this connection?
Paper long abstract:
Describing human life and behaviours is an intense and sensorial project, and in doing so, art and anthropology are not so distant. In the English language, to draw has many meanings, including to attract, move, pull in, and extract, all of them implying a movement towards or in the subject. A fusion or intertwining that is transformative. The drawing process is a mimetic process: when one draws, becomes what one draws.
“What the eye sees is but the result of the (model’s) inner impulse, and to understand one must use something more than the eye. It is necessary to participate in what the model is doing, to identify yourself with it.” (Nicolaides, 1941: 24)
This is Kimon Nicolaïdes, a Greek-American art teacher who theorized about gesture drawing in the first half of the 1900s. In this technique, which involves drawing the model without interruption, without ever lifting the pencil from the paper, speed is the essence (maximum one minute per pose). Hence, thought is minimalized, and the hand takes over. Actually, the whole body, still, but in tension, imagines itself trying to imitate the pose assumed by the model. In these rough lines, movement, observation, and description find a connection, merging with each other.
This paper starts from the drawing perspectival point to visualize and capture movement through the gesture technique and moves to the anthropological perspective to explore its possible applications, challenging the opposition between visual anthropology and written ethnography.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I reflect on the processes involved in producing the forthcoming research video documentary on traditional Teduray music in which women are clearly mimetically represented.
Paper long abstract:
This project began with questioning why Teduray celebratory hand-held gong music is played mostly by them and how this might be related to their work in small scale but intensive agriculture.
More than men, they make their own baskets made of materials from the environment and these remain important means for transporting farm products to the markets and for containing ordinary things in their day to day existence as well as objects in ritual performances. Women play vital roles in the preparation of these extraordinary events, especially in the harvest of first grains, music making and in celebratory dances during weddings. It is not surprising therefore that music mimetically represents them, a number of pieces of which depict the enduring bonds between parents and their children. Women's gait, actions in the social world, even emotions, are also musically imitated.
Paper short abstract:
Considering Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging as a new method for capturing and visualising multimodal aspects of artistry in anthropological study of craft, the researcher aims to look into the significance of this powerful metaphor of a conversation between maker and material in Assam puppetry.
Paper long abstract:
Puppetry is one of the most vibrant cultures in the world. It is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets which frequently resemble some type of human or animal figure. A puppet, controlled by a puppeteer, is an element of a theatre that tells stories about any historical, mythological or folkloric event with speech and music. It is a repository of traditional wisdom, knowledge and social practices. Therefore, puppetry has been used as a means of communication since ancient times.
Puppets, usually lifeless and made by puppeteers using various technical methods and their creative skills, can be brought to life representing a character on stage by connecting together its various components such as head, body and limbs. Depending on the character of the puppets, materials such as bamboo, pani-kuhila, soft wood, thermocol, paper pulp, coconut shell, etc. are used. The direction and flow of movement depending on the size, shape, texture, weight, age, and density of materials give life to each character on stage. The main role of the puppeteer is to listen to objectivity and interact with the materiality of things. Thus, puppetry is different from other performing arts.
Any authentic interaction between maker and material is represented through various sensory modalities such as sound and hearing, visual resonance, feel, touch, and tactility, etc. This paper aims to clarify the meaning of this powerful metaphor of a conversation between maker and material in puppetry of Assam with the help of anthropological and ethnographic methods.