The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access
Open Access Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Restricted Access Subscription Access

Across Artistic and Ethnographic Practices: The Study of a Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue


Affiliations
1 Edinburgh College of Art, United Kingdom
     

   Subscribe/Renew Journal


The shifting axis of art from a "medium specific practice" towards a "discourse specific" one marks the expansion of the field of art towards culture (Foster 1996, 199) and consequently the emerging dialogues with disciplines that study culture. In 1996, art critic Hal Foster defined the shifting position of the art within the expanded field of art as "ethnographic turn," which primarily manifested itself in the peculiar appropriations of ethnographic methods and tropes by artists. Meanwhile, the practitioners of ethnography seem to be willing to open their disciplinary boundaries to the undisciplined means artistic practices deal with cultural issues (see Marcus 1995, 2008; Schneider and Wright, 2006, 2010). In this paper I explore the dialogue between these distinctive practices of inquiry by teasing out the parallel trajectories as well as the incommensurable differences that stand as resistance points between the practices of art and ethnography, in order to investigate the possibility of a new kind of inquiry that could emerge at this juncture.

Keywords

Artist/Ethnographer, Transdisciplinarity, Ethnographic Turn.
Subscription Login to verify subscription
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.

  • Brunner, Edward M. The Anthropology of experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

  • Demos, T.J. "The Ends of Exile: Towards a coming Universality?" In Altermodern: Tate Triennial. London: Tate Pub. ; 2009. 73-85.

  • Downey, Anthony. An Ethics of Engagement: Collaborative Art Practices and the Return of the Ethnographer. Third Text 23(5). 2009. 593-603.

  • Enwezor, Okwui. "Bio-politics, Human Rights, and the Figure of "Truth" in Contemporary Art." In The green room: reconsidering the documentary and contemporary art. Berlin: Sternberg Press ;, 2008. 62-103.

  • Farnell, Brenda, and Robert N. Wood. "Performing Precision and the Limits of Observation." In Redrawing anthropology materials, movements, lines. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Pub. Company, 2011. 91-115.

  • Foster, Hal. The return of the real: the avant-garde at the end of the century. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996.

  • Hammersley, Martyn, and Atkinson, Paul. Ethnography: principles in practice. London: Tavistock, 1983.

  • Ingold, Tim. "Materials Against Materiality." Archaeological Dialogues 14, no. 01 (2007): 1.

  • Ingold, Tim. (ed). Redrawing anthropology: materials, movements, lines. Farnham: Ashgate. 2011.

  • Ingold, Tim. Lines: a brief history. London: Routledge, 2007.

  • Ingold, Tim. Making: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. London: Routledge, 2013.

  • Kosuth, Joseph. "The Artist as Anthropologist." In The Everyday: Documents of Contemporary Art. Stephen Johnstone(ed). Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2008.

  • Kristeva, Julia. "Institutional Interdisciplinarity in theory and in practice: an interview." In The anxiety of interdisciplinarity. London, UK: BACKless Books in association with Black Dog, 1998.

  • Kwon, Miwon. One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004.

  • Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

  • Marcus, George E. "Affinities: Fieldwork in Anthropology Today and the Ethnographic in Artwork." In Between art and anthropology: contemporary ethnographic practice. English ed. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2010. 83-94.

  • Marcus, George E. and Myers, Fred R. The traffic in culture: refiguring art and anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

  • Morley, David. Media, Modernity and Technology: The Geography of the New. London: Routledge, 2006.

  • Ranciere, Jacques. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010.

  • Rapport, Nigel. Transcendent individual towards a literary and liberal anthropology. London: Routledge, 1997.

  • Rogoff, Irit. "Irit Rogoff: What is a Theorist? KEIN.ORG. collaborative media production. http://www.kein.org/node/62 (accessed May 12, 2013).

  • Schneider, Arnd, and Christopher Wright. Between art and anthropology: contemporary ethnographic practice. English ed. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2010.

  • Schneider, Arnd, and Christopher Wright. Contemporary art and anthropology. English ed. Oxford: Berg, 2006.

  • Van Manen, Max. "Transdisciplinarity and The New Production Of Knowledge." Qualitative Health Research 11, no. 6 (2001): 850-852.


Abstract Views: 259

PDF Views: 0




  • Across Artistic and Ethnographic Practices: The Study of a Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue

Abstract Views: 259  |  PDF Views: 0

Authors

Harika Esra Oskay
Edinburgh College of Art, United Kingdom

Abstract


The shifting axis of art from a "medium specific practice" towards a "discourse specific" one marks the expansion of the field of art towards culture (Foster 1996, 199) and consequently the emerging dialogues with disciplines that study culture. In 1996, art critic Hal Foster defined the shifting position of the art within the expanded field of art as "ethnographic turn," which primarily manifested itself in the peculiar appropriations of ethnographic methods and tropes by artists. Meanwhile, the practitioners of ethnography seem to be willing to open their disciplinary boundaries to the undisciplined means artistic practices deal with cultural issues (see Marcus 1995, 2008; Schneider and Wright, 2006, 2010). In this paper I explore the dialogue between these distinctive practices of inquiry by teasing out the parallel trajectories as well as the incommensurable differences that stand as resistance points between the practices of art and ethnography, in order to investigate the possibility of a new kind of inquiry that could emerge at this juncture.

Keywords


Artist/Ethnographer, Transdisciplinarity, Ethnographic Turn.

References