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- Convenors:
-
Isabel Bredenbröker
(Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Philip Owusu (University of Ghana.)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Images of the living and dead
- Location:
- Room 1221
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
Works from the fields of art, anthropology and at their intersections face sensibilities when speaking about forms of life (and beyond) which belong to other worlds and cultures. With their different ethical codices, how may anthropology and art best benefit from one another?
Long Abstract:
The painting ‘Open Casket’ by Hanna Schutz, which depicts Emmett Till’s disfigured face became the subject of a fierce controversy at the Whitney Biennale in 2017. Artists and activists called for a removal or even destruction of the work, using the protest slogan ‘Black Death Spectacle’. This panel invites contributions that address difficulties and sensibilities that works from the fields of art, anthropology and at their intersections face when speaking about forms of life (and the beyond) which belong to worlds and cultures other than of the person researching or creating. Death serves as an extreme case of being ‘other’ to life. Yet, there are many forms of life that will inevitably be different to the perspective from which the researcher or artist can speak. Awareness of intersectional perspectives is crucial to make informed decisions regarding ethics in research and art. Ethnographic and artistic works that speak about vulnerable subjects and bodies have to assess their ethical obligations in the making and display of these works. Papers may address concrete research processes, present films and artworks, speak about contextualization and display of museum objects, or address so-called ‘traditional’ artistic forms from Africa and Europe which are ontologically charged. The panel invites a discussion about how anthropology and art, with their different ethical codices, may collaborate and learn from one another in order to produce relevant and powerful, yet non-intrusive and non-harmful works that speak of things that seem to evade representation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
The filmmaker Maya Deren and the photographer Leonore Mau both worked on Vodou in Haiti. Some of the photographs they took are perceived as problematic today. What form of engagement and connection do justice to the work of Deren and Mau, the people they photographed and artistic freedom today?
Paper long abstract:
The research project “Camera and Cult” focuses on the films and photographs of Maya Deren, a pioneer in exploring a creative connection of art and anthropology, and the German photographer Leonore Mau. The project is a collaboration of an art historian and an artists’ collective.
Both Maya Deren and Leonore Mau researched and documented Vodou in Haiti at different times. Some of the photographs they took are perceived as problematic today: they show poverty, violence, distorted faces in trance etc. While an art historian can discuss these issues in a text, for European artists working today on the topic of Haitian Vodou and directly with Deren’s and Mau’s art works is more challenging; there are practical and ethical problems and power relations to consider, also traveling to Haiti like Deren and Mau did is now questionable for many reasons.
In a way, the situation is quite paradox: Deren and Mau lived in a time when demand of images of other cultures was high, they were free to travel and traveling gave them freedom. While both were sensitive in their approach, both ultimately did not question that they had the right to take pictures of rituals. But at the same time, we as part of an academic research team have privileges they didn’t have.
Which approaches make sense today? We could for instance resolve to fiction and explore virtuality. We could do homework instead of fieldwork, go to the archive and reflect on the European ritual of artist’s travel and the encounter with the “other” as a decisive factor for artists and anthropologists. We could refrain from travelling ourselves, and instead invite Haitian artists here. Still, problems remain. In archival work the question of problematic images is not solved (nor are copyrights!). And when inviting artists here, the terms of engagement are still mainly set by us. What form of engagement and connection do justice to the work of Deren and Mau, the people they photographed and artistic freedom today?
Paper short abstract:
Our proposal relates the work Mangue (1929) by Brazilian painter Di Cavalcanti to the barbaric murder of 8 people in a Brazilian slums, to inquire about the responsibility of art in the acceptance and uncritical propagation of representations used to dehumanize black men and women.
Paper long abstract:
On November 22, 2021, eight bodies were found in the mangrove of a Brazilian slums. According to the press, the deaths are linked to clashes with the police. This fact, while revealing the confrontations of urban violence, the unequal way in which Brazilian society was structured and the long networks of Necropolitics, is also due to a series of symbolic violence according the way black men and women are represented in Arts. This article, the result of our doctoral research, visits the work Mangue (1929) by the Brazilian painter Di Cavalcanti to investigate to what extent the way in which the bodies of black women are represented there are in dialogue with the eugenics values of his time, the who guided the photographs taken by the South African lady Saartjie Baartman. We take the contributions of authors such as Frantz Fanon and more recently, Achille Mbembe and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí to examine the scope of this painting, as a tool of Colonialism, both for the importance of the painter in the Brazilian art market and for its reproduction in school textbooks. An image that participates in the country's Visual Culture and that, therefore, acts in the propagation of the symbolic violence that defined the bodies that could be exposed and brutalized. We will investigate the place of this debate in contemporary visual art in Brazil and discuss the strategies adopted that enable the decolonization of the gaze.
References
At least 8 bodies are found in São Gonçalo. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2021/11/apos-acao-do-bope-ao-menos-7-corpos sao-encontrados-em-sao-goncalo-rj.shtml FANON, Frantz. Black skins, white masks. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2008.
OYEWUMI, Oyèrónkẹ́The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse. University of Minnesota, 1997.