Short Abstract:

This panel invites contributions to an anthropology of collage (in relation to and as against assemblage and montage). It is proposed that collage (digital and analogue) as both material and method offers with difficult subjects.

Long Abstract:

This panel invites contributions to an anthropology of collage (in relation to and as against assemblage and montage). It is proposed that collage (digital and analogue) as both material and method offers radical approaches to construction and fieldwork especially with difficult subjects and collaboration. Collage continues to be undertheorised whilst many anthropologists and artists use it as ubiquitous technique. Issues of justice, ecology and identity can be well served by using functions of collage: for example deliberate appropriation, cut-up, layered and juxtaposed components, elements of the surreal, absurd and disjunctive use of recycled, waste or previously less visible shaping. Collage has been noted in its use for therapeutic and community empowerment and activism (Farebrother, 2009; Kanyer, 2021) and to be effective in revealing the operations of ‘undercommons’ knowledges (Stefano and Moten, 2023). Collage has arisen at times of war, pandemic, collapse and trauma (Banash, 2013; Etgar, 2017; Flood et al 2009). Collage can be cheap to produce, require minimal expertise and therefore can be realised between multiple collaborators and co-authors. This is also why it is often not taken seriously or used as simple ‘decor’, but it can also reveal assumptions, undermine persistent stories and establish new historiography. This can be a way of building community, rethinking cultural ancestry and acknowledging equality of different sources of information and knowledge. Material processes can be seen as collaging events and used to point to relationships with the non-human and environmental infrastructure. Collage is a “bordering” mechanism uncovering movement and networks of displacement.

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