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- Convenors:
-
Oliwia Murawska
(Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck)
Paolo Raile (Sigmund Freud University)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
In this panel, we would like to explore the drawing as a method of ethnography and ask to what extent sketching is a suitable means of depicting the realities of anthropocene everyday life. How can we rethink our research fields with and through drawing in a new and fundamentally different way?
Long Abstract:
With the posthuman turn, which addresses the Anthropocene, the horizons of art and science are merging to overcome the limits of what can be thought and said. Drawing enjoys attention in this context, as it produces new forms of knowledge about and engagement with damaged environments (Casey/Davis 2024).
In ethnography, drawings can serve to capture the affective dimensions of everyday life and to engage with research fields empathically, creatively and beyond language. As they emerge spontaneously and in their own temporalities, sketches can depict experiences, moods, atmospheres, non-verbal and non-human communication, and initiate collaboration and encounters with interlocutors. As part of the analysis, drawings can help to organise the empirical material and to visualise thoughts and relations. As a means of representation, drawings such as comics are inclusive, as they can reach people beyond academic contexts and overcome language and age barriers; they also encourage participation, affection and interpretation that varies depending on the recipient.
What role do drawings play in collecting, analysing and representing ethnographic material? What are the potentials, limits and dangers of sketching everyday life in the Anthropocene? How can we think our research fields with and through drawing in fundamentally different, artistic and collaborative ways to respond to the lines of life (Ingold 2016)? The panel invites those who use drawing as ethnographic object and method and would like to discuss the role of drawing in ethnography from a contemporary or historical perspective.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores sketching as a process of becoming-with the world, that is imaginative, risky, and collaborative. In unstable and volatile places it can be a kind of horizoning work (Petryna 2018), where habitable futures are explored.
Paper Abstract:
This paper explores how ethnography can be guided by the sketches of others, against the back- and fore-ground of the Anthropocene. My interest here is more specifically on community groups who visit, attend to and care for their surroundings through sketching. These are sketches by others about others in turn, including humans and non-humans, buildings, infrastructures and environments.
How are boundaries between these subjects made or unmade in people’s sketches, both in single drawings and over time as they travel to different locations? What does it mean for sketches to be partial and open-ended, and yet part of a community narration of an unstable place?
By drawing on theories of the Anthropocene, I propose sketching as a process of becoming-with the world, that is imaginative, risky, and collaborative. When living with volatility (Krause and Erikson 2023), sketching can be a way to find meaningful horizons of thought and action (Petryna 2018). To develop this argument I draw on participation with community sketching at an urban coastline, where decisions to ‘hold the line’ or manage realignment are being made in the face of future sea-level rise.
Paper Short Abstract:
Drawing is an extension of thought, a contribution to acquiring and producing knowledge. This article presents a project carried out in a Portuguese school where ethnographic methodologies were the starting point for drawing and then illustrating.
Paper Abstract:
In the context of Complementary Art Education (CEA), based on encouraging spontaneous action, facilitating free expression, experimentation and allowing communication to be explored, has been proposed to carry out projects where interdisciplinarity can be a central resource. CEA is a contribution to intellectual formation, development of knowledge and skills, a stimulus to the senses, to imagination, to a process rather than a final product, inserted in a school environment that works development of sensitivity and expressiveness and bringing together the socio-affective, cognitive, psychomotor and communication components, rather than just aiming for certain learning outcomes. Also contributed to critical reflections on creativity, as well as development of a critical and self-critical sense in problem-solving, since it works using design methodology. Drawing is another fundamental resource.
In association with the celebrations of the April 25 in Portugal, a project was designed based on ethnographic methodologies, namely the description and interpretation of a social memory, on fieldwork and participant observation for data collection, using interviews.
The aim was detailed descriptions, explained in form of drawings and visual compositions. The students acted as young ethnographers, bearing witness to a past where the intermediary was drawing, seen not only as a capacity for expression or interpretation, but also as a reaction, reflection, symbolic representation of perception and construction of knowledge. This connection was a contribution to personal development, cognitive and sensory-motor level, providing new perspectives, densities and ways of seeing society in a critical and reasoned way, enhancing the development of an innovative pedagogical project.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores drawing as a mode of visual storytelling that uncovers the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans in the Anthropocene. Drawing inspiration from “silent books,” I reflect on how ethnographers can represent non-human perspectives without text.
Paper Abstract:
In this paper, I explore the role of drawing as an alternative mode of visual storytelling, particularly in the context of multispecies ethnographies. In 2023, I worked on a film project about eucalyptus in Sardinia. This experience confronted me with the challenge that plants and non-human entities do not “speak” in the conventional sense. Yet, they do communicate, both with each other and with humans, through a range of subtle, embodied interactions. Drawing from this experience, I reflected on how we, as ethnographers, “see” non-humans and how we might represent their stories without relying on text. Drawing inspiration from the so-called “silent books”—which convey stories purely through images—I experimented with different ways of portraying non-human perspectives and interrelations (Hustak and Myers 2012; Hartigan 2017).
I contend that while audiovisual ethnographic representations fundamentally rely on written-based language, drawing offers a unique way of engaging with the non-verbal narratives of non-human species.
As an ongoing and dynamic process, drawing serves as a powerful tool for visualizing the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans. Through this approach, ethnographers can uncover and represent the complex patterns of the “pathy” Anthropocene (Tsing, Mathews, and Bubandt 2019), revealing how past and present collaborations between human and non-human agents are deeply embedded in the landscape (Mathews 2022).
Drawing, therefore, becomes not just a method of representation but a means of making visible the subtle, often overlooked relationships that shape our world.
Paper Short Abstract:
The use of drawing to explore community narratives. A case study of a drawing practice that involves walking, listening, and responding to stories. Now focusing on aging, an artist's drawings visualise internal sensations, raising questions about drawing's role in understanding somatic experience.
Paper Abstract:
The artist Garry Barker uses drawing to engage with community issues, blending fine art and anthropology. His work was showcased in 2018 at the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Art, Materiality, and Representation conference, where he led a panel on using drawing to explore urban realities. Initially developed through his involvement with the community organisation Newton Futures, Barker’s drawings documented narratives and facilitated collective reflection. His research culminated in a book chapter, Drawing as a Tool for Shaping Community Experience into Collective Allegory, analysing how drawing evolved into a practice informed by walking, listening, and engaging with individual stories.
Now in his seventies, Barker’s focus has shifted to aging and “interoceptive” experiences—internal sensations and feelings. His work explores how shared experiences of aging reshape community narratives, shifting concerns from public spaces to personal health. Drawing remains a vital tool for visualising these lived experiences and fostering empathetic engagement.
While drawing offers transformative potential for creating visual narratives that transcend cultural barriers, its subjective nature introduces challenges, including personal biases and ethical concerns of representation. Despite these complexities, Barker’s collaborative approach demonstrates how drawing can adapt to evolving personal and social contexts, providing new pathways for understanding and action.
Paper Short Abstract:
This presentation explores the potential of drawing as both a method of representation of ethnographic material and a mode of inquiry in the context of an (auto)ethnographic PhD project. Using drawing to map the process of writing an article-based dissertation, I engage with themes of motherhood, migration, bureaucracy, and identity, as well as the embodied challenges of academic work during a time of global and personal upheaval.
Paper Abstract:
This presentation explores the potential of drawing as both a method of representation of ethnographic material and a mode of inquiry in the context of an (auto)ethnographic PhD project.
My doctoral research, consisting of four articles on marriage migration to Germany, investigates the lived experiences of migrant women and binational couples navigating bureaucratic constraints. The process began when my child was six months old. The active phase of field data collection coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. It later continued amid the Russo-Ukrainian war, bringing new layers of complexity. My work was deeply shaped by my positionality as a Russian researcher writing about, among others, Ukrainian respondents within a German academic setting. Drawing became a vital tool for self-expression, enabling me to visually articulate my experiences of being a migrant, a scholar, and a mother, while grappling with issues of identity, belonging, and ethical responsibility.
Inspired by the French feminist comic artist Emma, particularly her book The Mental Load (2018), and German illustrator Nora Krug (2018; 2023), I used drawing to organize and reflect on the intersecting demands of academic life and care work. The chapters "between" the personal meta narrative represent the outcomes of my work — four articles addressing the themes of border externalization, subjectivization, migrant resistance, and online misogyny. In this presentation, I will share how sketching not only documents the doctoral journey but also serves as an analytical lens to rethink ethnographic writing, feminist methodologies, and the broader challenges of working in academia during the Anthropocene.
Paper Short Abstract:
Using my current research into how drawing can help us understand loss in the ill, elderly and dying as its focus, this paper will discuss the ethical problems of such a study. Collecting drawn ‘data’ through a series of unstructured, conversational, quasi-portrait-based interviews with two women both of whom are living at home – one of whom is 105 and the other in her 80s and living with dementia - I want to interrogate the moral appropriateness of this kind of drawn research.
Paper Abstract:
Using my current research into how drawing can help us understand loss in the ill, elderly and dying as its focus, this paper will discuss the ethical problems of such a study. Collecting drawn ‘data’ through a series of unstructured, conversational, quasi-portrait-based interviews with two women both of whom are living at home – one of whom is 105 and the other in her 80s and living with dementia - I want to interrogate the moral appropriateness of this kind of drawn research. Referring to the writings of the ethnographers Causey (2017) and Taussig (2011), the artist-critic Berger (2007) and reportage illustrator Netter (2024) and their ideas around drawing as “seeing”, “witnessing”, “embodiment” and “presence”, I will question explore the benefits to the sitter from such notions. Similarly, essays by Eaton (2020), Bell (2020), Hammer (2020) and Sontag (1979), will underpin my inquiry into the balance of power between artist and subject - looking specifically at issues around ‘the gaze’ in a post-colonial world, how to safeguard against the promulgation of drawn ageist stereotypes and, with reference to Cleeve et al (2021), ultimately, whether such drawn portraiture can stimulate its viewer’s perception of another’s feelings.
Paper Short Abstract:
In this paper I will consider the significance of ‘drawing’ for Indigenous communities of the Upper Rio Negro in Northwest Amazonia. This region has extensive historical, cultural and social exchange networks and an inclusive worldview, cosmovision, which represents a systemic understanding of the universe. In Indigenous cosmovision, drawing can be both a literal and metaphysical proposition, which includes patterns on objects, rocks, the body, as well as visions obtained through dreams, ancestors or ceremonial practices. I propose to critically review my findings from a recent drawing workshop with Indigenous artists on the Rio Tiquié and pose some of the questions that arose on the transmission of knowledge, the technology of paper, and ethical engagement through drawing practice.
Paper Abstract:
My practice based doctoral study focuses on historical ethnobotanical collections housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and I am studying the plants used in the fabrication of these objects. As an artist, my approach is through drawing as well as collaborative art practice with artists and knowledge holders from Indigenous communities in the Upper Rio Negro region of Northwest Amazonia, from where these collections originate.
Indigenous communities in this region have extensive historical, cultural and social exchange networks, in which plants and objects hold important roles (Fernando Santos-Granero 2013). Regarding the theme of the Anthropocene and its ensuing call for new imaginaries, Indigenous peoples' histories of adaptation have an important role in teaching humanity how to adapt to disruptive ecological changes.
My research is concerned with the interconnection between people, plants and things, and looks at the role of drawing in narrating this knowledge. In Indigenous cosmovision, drawing can be both a literal and metaphysical proposition, which includes patterns on objects, rocks, the body, as well as visions obtained through dreams, ancestors or ceremonial practices.
In this presentation I will show drawings; both my own (reflexive interpretations of the material I observe) and those made by Indigenous artists during recent workshop on the Rio Tiquié. I will critically review the discussions held during that workshop, which centred on drawing as a way of supporting the transmission of Indigenous knowledge, the ‘technology’ of paper, and examples of equitable engagement with international collections holding Indigenous material belongings.
Paper Short Abstract:
We reflect on our process of creating a semi-fictional graphic narrative based on ethnographic research with hijras, an Indian community of transgendered ritual specialists. “Unwriting” academic arguments through illustration, we produced a form relatively easy to circulate outside academia.
Paper Abstract:
Our paper reflects on our process of creating a semi-fictional graphic narrative based on ethnographic research with hijras, an Indian community of transgendered ritual specialists, and on “unwriting” academic theory and archival documents through illustration. Narrativizing queer identities in India is a fraught exercise, often reproducing a landscape of Orientalist tropes. In the colonial period, British anthropologists and police wrote prolifically on hijras, courtesans, thugs, and other supposedly “Criminal Tribes,” in genres ranging from forensic science to sensationalist fiction. Contemporary definitions of sexuality and gender emerge from this colonial legacy, so turning to the colonial archive to “recover lost voices” or publishing “hijra life histories” can inadvertently reproduce the terms of coloniality. Indeed, in recent years, hijra activists and their allies have turned to poetry, fiction, autoethnography and performance, precisely to contest the authority of the foreign “anthropological gaze.”
Inspired by the creative productions of transgender activists in India, as well as the impulse to examine the dialogic relationship between fiction and fact in the colonial archive, we created a graphic narrative about the history of Criminal Tribes legislation. Bringing together historical fragments and using the affordances of the comic genre, we staged hypothetical encounters between East India Company officials, hijras, Mughal emperors and upper-caste elites. Rather than draw directly on archival documents, we imagined the scenes of their production, creating composite characters and humorous dialogue. We are currently translating our 12-page comic into Tamil, exploring how alternative genres can facilitate more co-creation between anthropologists and their interlocutors.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper draws on the collaborative explorations of three practitioners from the disciplines of interior architecture, choreography, and site-specific dance. The research explores how movement as an expanded form of drawing disrupts and enlivens architectural drawing and spatial design. As a group we use movement practices, architectural materials and tools, as well as new digital technologies, to draw with our bodies. This is done through choreographic processes attuned to everyday modes of inhabitation and to the entanglement of ourselves with materials.
Paper Abstract:
This paper draws on the collaborative explorations of three practitioners from the disciplines of interior architecture, choreography, and site-specific dance. The research explores how movement as an expanded form of drawing disrupts and enlivens architectural drawing and spatial design. As a group we use movement practices, architectural materials and tools, as well as new digital technologies, to draw with our bodies. This is done through choreographic processes attuned to everyday modes of inhabitation and to the entanglement of ourselves with materials.
In this work, drawing activates a con-versation; a way of engaging with and knowing the world through movements attuned to settling into a sense of being. In addition, drawing is employed as a method for thinking through difference and of being present with others and the entanglement of everyday phenomena. In this sense, drawing and movement enable our inhabitation and a gathering of thoughts, ideas, visual and sensual experiences, materials, movements, gestures, to understand how we interact with a site. We engage with ephemeral, mobile substantiations and fleeting contacts with each other and the surfaces, skeins and materials of the buildings we visit to develop new modes of drawing practice within architectural design that are informed by our bodies.
Informed by feminist new materialisms (Barad, Haraway, Braidotti), site-dance praxis and theory (Akinleye, Taylor, Brown), dance improvisation (De Spain, Duck, Midgelow), and architectural drawing practices (Perez-Gomez, Evans) the paper reflects on iterative dialogues that have been developed through inhabiting buildings; corridors, moving through thresholds and dancing with an atrium.
Paper Short Abstract:
Taking drawing as an epistemology on its own (Jain, 2021) this (ethno)graphic article/presentation explores (1) the geographies of vulnerability of Filipino domestic workers within - and beyond- Hong Kong; (2) the role of the gendered migrant body in the urban fabric; and (3) their vernacular modes of dwelling and resisting. This visual work is the result of the assemblage of (1) Fieldwork drawings [the root], (2) Analytical drawings [the core] and (3) Complementary drawings [the context] which allows for exploring their full analytic, metaphoric and atmospheric-favored potential as a tool in academic research.
Paper Abstract:
Since the 1970s Hong Kong has been a primary destination for Filipino female migrants, however, despite decades of organized collective struggle the so-called foreign domestic helpers remain largely exposed to tough living and working conditions. These women are forced by law to live with their employers, increasing their vulnerability and having to work very long working hours. Moreover, most of them do not have a bedroom or private space in the house. As a result, on their day off, they all go out driving to an intensive occupation of the public space across the city.
Based on a twelve-months multimodal ethnography and taking drawing as an epistemology on its own (Jain, 2021) this (ethno)graphic article/presentation explores (1) the (physical and symbolic) power (dis)continuities between the public and private spheres, serving to sketch geographies of vulnerability within - and beyond- HK; (2) the role of the gendered migrant body in the urban fabric; and (3) Filipino women’s vernacular modes of dwelling and resisting in Hong Kong.
Although unified in terms of style the proposed visual work is the result of the assemblage of different types of drawings, including: (1) Fieldwork drawing [the root], (2) Analytical drawing [the core] and (3) Complementary drawings [the context]. In the whole this (ethno)graphic article/presentation allows for exploring the full analytic, metaphoric and atmospheric-favored potential of drawing, thus demonstrating its meaningfulness as a primary tool in academic research, and therefore going beyond hegemonic text-centric methodological and representational models.