- Admin
- Nov 20, 2020
- 8 min read
So, week 1 of the Anthropology, Art and Perception module as part of the Mres at the University of St. Andrews. What is the course about? I would be lying if I said I had a complete grasp of what anthropology was before I started the course. What drew me in initially was the notion of understanding and studying human behaviour as up until now this is what my creative work had been occupied with, albeit seen through a creative, abstract and interpretative lens.
I've come to this course with particular ideas and themes in mind based on my past experiences and academic background. I understand though, knowing my nature, that those ideas are bound to morph, skew and develop over the year. I am flexible and always open to new ideas, the one thing that I love most about learning is the challenges that these new ideas bring and the welcoming flipping of my preconceived ones on their head.
In all honestly another reason I came to the course is because I felt a little stuck with my creative work. For me there has been something missing in my creative practice. I have always been interested in tackling social, political and cultural issues through my work. It has become increasingly evident to me though, that I have been unsure how to approach these subjects, and the humans affected in a way that feels meaningful to all parties involved. Finding it tricky to see how my creative work has any real world benefit or impact on the subjects it deals with. I've been interested in working out how to make my work more accessible, relevant and useful to the people it engages with. It feels imperative that I make work with people not about them. I've also been banging on about doing a PhD for a long time so this course is an opportunity for me to focus my attention on learning how to research academically whilst engaging with a new discipline that will hopefully compliment and bolster my previous learning.
So with all that in mind, in my first introduction to the course Dr Emily Stevenson, visual anthropologist and course conveyor, explains that this Mres will teach us practical ways to apply anthropological theory using sensory approaches that sit at the intersection of art and anthropology. Like walking, listening, learning, looking, collaborating etc. And also teach us how to conduct research in an embodied way that is attuned to varied ways in which people perceive and experience the world. Asking us to think deeply about the role of our senses and perceptions in visual and material culture.
First Lecture - Sensuous Anthropology
The key understandings in this first week where that “there is no such thing as a lone researcher,” and that "collaboration is at the heart of anthropology.” Dr Emily Stevenson.
I found it extremely interesting to discover that anthropology met crisis during the 1980s and 90s, when concerns over representation and the rights to represent other people were raised in the seminal work 'Writing Culture' (1986) by James Clifford and George E. Marcus. Anthropology and its colonial past was a major sticking point for me in my early understandings of the discipline, so the fact that conversations about authority and objectivity were addressed early on in the module was refreshing. Indeed the politics of representation is noted in the lecture as one of the most prominent crossovers between art and anthropology. And, that our representations of people and our research as anthropologists should be taken subjectively, rather than as objective truths.
Reading - Noted quotes:
“the senses like windows…not in their transparency but in their ability to frame.” Constance Classen – Foundations for An Anthropology of The Senses (p. 402)3
“This is what we mean when we refer to ethnography as a methodology of inquiry into “collaboration” or “co-creative” knowledge making. Dara Culhane – A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies (Chapter 1, Imagining: An Introduction p.3)
Roger Sansi on artist as social practitioner “stepping outside the gallery.” To have social and political effect. Dara Culhane – A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies (Chapter 1, Imagining: An Introduction p.7). Something I have believed firmly over the last few years!
On dual participation. “We know what we know about ourselves and others, in and through relationship. We make each other up." Dara Culhane – A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies (Chapter 1, Imagining: An Introduction)
Thoughts when reading: Karen Nakamura: Review Essay in American Anthropologist – Making Sense of Sensory Ethnography: The Sensual and the Multisensory
Artist as ethnographer
When thinking about artists as social practitioners is there a fine line between capitalising of the stories of participants and a real wholesome and useful collaboration which offers mutual benefit?
‘False friendship?
Research participants demand for equal benefits and rights to agency (p. 6)
The performance of ethnography; body language, the way you act, how you are received.
The importance of silence in ethnographic film. Without narration or the opinion of the narrator. This allows the viewer to see their own truth in the story and also makes the depiction, less about the researcher and more about the peoples being studied. Allowing the power of the image and its ineffable qualities to come through.
INSIGHTS & TUTORIAL NOTES
Why should anthropologists pay attention to sensory experience?
To pay attention to the senses allows for a more panoramic view of experience. So much can be said without words, as animals we are developed to be sensory dominant. Language is the youngest of our tools, the use of words is still in the dawn of its day.
When thinking about the differences and commonalities between art and anthropology:
Anthropology is concerned with fieldwork. There is a necessity to be immersed in the ‘field’. The same could be true I guess for the arts although it wouldn’t necessarily be called the 'field' in the arts. Perhaps your research area, your subjects of inspiration, of critique, of analysis? Your point of departure? I do believe it is extremely important to be immersed in the experience and knowledge of others but I believe that what will be produced as a result of a collaboration will only be an interpretation or artists perspective of a scenario and never an objective truth.
The same scenario can be read differently depending who is observing. Disparities between subjectivity and objectivity when considering experience through the senses. 'Post-Truth' and this idea of re-framing what we consider truth.
Can one ever really know the reality of another person or culture when we are conditioned by our own? I am an avid reader of Carl G. Jung, his writing on the validity of inner experiences that cannot be verified is something that he addresses in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which I read over the summer... I am interested in returning to these ideas and considering them in future work.
According to opinion in the Dara Culhane article, there has been historically a hierarchy of the senses with sight and hearing considered ‘civilised’ and masculine and touch, hearing, smell being referred to as ‘lower’, feminine or ‘animalistic’. Various cultures across the world consider there to be a differing number of senses. The idea of a sixth sense is not uncommon, usually is it referred to as intuition or ‘gut feeling’. I wonder to what extent intuition can be considered as a sense? An avenue I can pursue in future work?
The Ice Breaker
For session one we were asked to select an object to share with the group as a way of introducing ourselves and our interests.
A Picture of ‘Aunty Jean’
Aunty Jean is my grandad’s cousin. I never actually met her and she is dead now. I have owned the portrait since December 2019 and part of what is interesting about it and speaks lot to my interests is how I came to own it.
A couple of years ago when I was working on a project called ‘How the Land Lies’, which investigated gentrification, through research I became aware of the fact that gentrification usually has a more negative impact on people of lower socio-economic status. The term gentrification means to renovate a place or district so that it conforms to middle-class tastes. In this renovation, it isn’t uncommon for new establishments to pop up in poorer areas like trendy bars, cafes and art galleries. Which is great! But in doing so these establishments often alienate the long standing, often working-class residents of that community by pricing them out or designing spaces deemed, ‘not for them’.
Being from a lower socio-economic background, this got me thinking about access. In a casual conversation with my mum, knowing the she liked and engaged with art but never went to galleries. We never visited art spaces when I was a kid. I asked why she didn’t go. Her response was that as a single parent bringing up two kids what was most important was putting food on the table. Going to galleries was the last thing on her mind, plus those places were “not for her.” Anyway, this really stuck in my mind. I realise there is a certain intimidation and unspoken etiquette that comes with those spaces. But I was determined to get my mum into a gallery!
An opportunity arose a few months ago. I was in Glasgow visiting my mum went we walked past a photography gallery, Street Level Photo Works. They had an exhibition on by Italian photographer Oscar Marzaroli, he has a strong socialist view as is most famous for documenting the lives of the working classes and the slum areas of Glasgow. My mum was really engaged in the photography and when we came to selection of photos from Paddy’s market in the Briggate, an old famous flea market in Glasgow, she exclaimed “there’s ma Aunty Jean!” There was a picture of her Aunty Jean as part of the exhibition. In a way it was like seeing herself in the gallery, we spoke to the curator who was really interested in her story and wrote a little bit about her on their Facebook page. I felt like broke an invisible barrier to accessibility for my mum. In seeing the picture my mum confessed that she had one just like it at home. My uncle has owned it before her but gave it away because he feared it was haunted. The picture had been in a box for years, I asked for it because it's a great picture and it felt like an important symbol of my female ancestry and in some ways represents a version of womanhood that I am interested in.
Although I had never met her, when I was drawing this picture I realised that the lines on her face felt familiar. I had traced them on my own when drawing self portraits in the past. I can see my face in hers.
What's on the shelf?
'Aunty Jean'
A homemade birthday card
An empty Wonder Woman lipstick box
Three broken mugs all glued back together again but not well enough to drink out of
One ceramic elephant from Thailand (from family of three)
A painting by my sister who has autism
An empty limited edition beer bottle brought back from a hen do in Barcelona
An abstract photograph of Newcastle Civic Centre
An origami star box made from a nightclub flyer, 15 years ago, by then friend now partner
A homemade knitted rabbit from my partner's mum
Costume jewellery on an empty St. Germain liquor bottle
Wooden drawing mannequin I realised I had never actually drawn until the above picture
Photos of partner and I from festivals
Photo of partner as a child with his mum
Photo's of partner as a child with his Nan
One burnt down cracklin' candle