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- Convenors:
-
Maija Mäki
(University of Turku)
Jaana Saarikoski (University of Turku)
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- Format:
- Workshop
- Stream:
- SUSTAINABILITIES
- Location:
- Room H-204
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 14 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This is an experimental workshop where we explore the materiality of the academic life by creating personal and affective art pieces using recycled artifacts. We invite the participants to co-create a pop-up exhibition from the materials we have found in the conference destination.
Long Abstract:
Creating artifacts by one’s own hands generates thoughts, feelings and memories. In this workshop, we create an intuitive and encouraging atmosphere for thinking and discussing outside the blue light of the computer. We ask the workshop participants to create art pieces while telling us the memories and experiences about their academic life and research journeys. In the workshop, we use abandoned items and rubbish from the conference site. Using DIY (do-it-yourself) method the academic garbage will reform and reconnect with new meanings and interpretations. The workshop composes reflective and creative space that is shared with the group of participants. Doing research by hands allows us to make new kinds of questions and new kinds of notions of our research field.
This is an experimental workshop where the participants explore the materiality of their academic life, research aims and concepts, by creating personal and affective art pieces out of recycled artifacts. We invite the workshop participants to come and co-create a pop-up exhibition from the materials we have found in our conference destination.
The workshop is based on our ethnographic and artistic work at Tuorla observatory, Southwest of Finland, in ”Time machinists” -group starting 2018.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 14 June, 2022, -Gerður Halldóra Sigurðardóttir (University of Iceland)
Paper short abstract:
As a folklorist working within Old Norse Studies, I feel myself in between fields. As a neuroqueer, disabled scholar I feel I work on the periphery of academia. Negotiating these liminal spaces feels like making a patchwork of found objects, which would lend itself well to this experimental panel.
Paper long abstract:
As a folklorist working with elements of textual studies, archaeology and performance studies, mostly within Old Norse Studies, it sometimes feels like I exist in a liminal intersection between the fields. As a neuroqueer (autistic and with attention differences) and disabled scholar dealing with long-term mental and physical illnesses, I additionally experience myself as being on the periphery of academia, not able to fully participate and engage in an academic career, but neither able to fully tear myself away, and thus hanging on the edges of the academic world, still working on my master’s thesis after more than ten years, but also having an article published in a peer-reviewed journal, as well as having presented at myriad conferences.
Negotiating these betwixt-and-between spaces often carries with it a feeling of making a patchwork of found objects, an assemblage from diverse and perhaps at times seemingly incompatible elements. This feeling is enhanced even further by my enduring interest and (admittedly somewhat haphazard) experience in practices that employ recycling, in making things out of discarded and at first glance, useless objects.
Knitting those two things even tighter together, the academic patchwork as well as bringing new life to unwanted objects, within the setting of an academic folklorist conference, would, I believe, lend itself well to the fabulous experiment proposed in this panel.
Tenno Teidearu (Estonian National Museum_University of Tartu)
Paper short abstract:
As a young ethnologist and a researcher of material culture, I am interested in cultural affordances of materiality and materials, practices of repair, and the intersection of anthropology and art.
Paper long abstract:
This workshop is inspiring because of its hands-on approach to materiality, which has great potential for challenging and inspiring academic thinking. I am interested in rethinking materiality and materials in a DIY project. Tangible interaction with things may open up new ways of understanding their meanings and significance.
Some initial questions:
How can art and anthropology (or ethnology) supplement each other?
What is arts-based research?
What new ways of thinking making/crafting can provide or afford?
How to understand materials and their affordances?
What cultural meanings properties of materials have?
Jaana Saarikoski (University of Turku) Maija Mäki (University of Turku)
Paper short abstract:
We discuss our process of making a sculpture series using ideas from the intangible and material cultures and discarded materials from Tuorla Observatory, Finland. We will be viewing our documentary art film (15 min) about the sculpture project, material culture and affects.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, we discuss our process of making a sculpture series using ideas from the intangible culture and discarded materials from Tuorla Observatory, Finland. We have been documenting the oral history, the everyday objects and the historical equipment of the observatory since 2018. In 2021, we did an experimental art project based on free association and the knowledge we had gained on the observatory.
We will be viewing a 15-minute long documentary film that we have made about the sculpture project. Just like the astronomers at the site of our research topic, Tuorla observatory, we wanted to make our own equipment for research. The sculptures we made are imaginary ethnological field equipment for taking affect samples and analysing them. In the film can be seen how the sculptures were made and used in the field at the historical city centre of Turku, Finland.
The film is discussing the material culture and affects. In this occasion, we are using it as an example for how we processed our knowledge on our research topic by working with our own hands. In this workshop, we hope to open interesting conversations on the hands-on methods for deepening the understanding about one's research topic. Can the practical and creative approach help the research? Do thoughts find clarity through putting one's hands in the materiality and the material practices of your topic?