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The NYU Install will be removed at some point in the next few weeks.
MAY 4-6, 2O12
219 AARON BURR HALL
Princeton University
OBJECTS OF AFFECTION: TOWARDS A MATERIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS
Interdisciplinary Conference
http://objectsofaffection.wordpress.com/
Keynote on May 5:
The New Aesthetic: Objects that Matter
PATRICIA TICINETO CLOUGH
(The Graduate Center and CUNY's Queens College)
Continue reading "Objects of Affection - Programme Details" »
A nice reminder that one of the 20th Century's most celebrated modernists anchored her approach to abstraction in a deep engagement with the material world:
I handled pieces of Jade—They told me it was Jade—I would not have thought what it might be—I only knew that the surfaces were fine and smooth and cold…the pleasure in the thing its self is some what dulled when you begin to wonder how that particular shape can symbolize the earth and that idea seems to take away from the pleasure one feels—just in the thing its self—So—looking up—a row of round shapes catches ones eye—round—flat—and a round hole in the center—the circle serves to fascinate—you take it in your hand…you are told that these symbolize heaven—that idea does not disturb—for the sun seems round—if you have ever stood on the prairie at night—alone and put your head way back till you look straight up so that you half way see all the horizon at once—a circle unbroken by trees or hills or houses—the heavens seem a marvelously round trembling living thing—you would like to go deep into the colors of these round shapes and be lost….
-- From a letter by Georgia O'Keeffe describing her 1922 visit to the Asian collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[Quoted in this recent article in the New York Review of Books.]
THE JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY announces the opening of a new exhibition which uses the history of Hans Sloane’s voyage to Jamaica in 1687 to 1689 to raise new questions about the intersection of science and slavery in the early modern Atlantic world. The exhibition is guest-curated by former JCB Fellow, James Delbourgo.
The display of books, book illustrations, prints, and maps will be on view in the MacMillan Reading Room at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, Providence, RI, from May 1 through August 31, 2012, and can be seen in its entirety online at: http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library//sloane/.
In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition, James Delbourgo will give a public lecture on “Animal Magic in Sloane’s Jamaica,” May 3, 5:30 p.m., in the MacMillan Reading Room, The John Carter Brown Library.
About the curator: James Delbourgo is Associate Professor of History of Science and Atlantic World at Rutgers University and consulting advisor to “Reconstructing Sloane,” an ongoing collaborative research project between the British Museum, British Library, and Natural History Museum in London.
For more information about resources and programs at the JCB, see http://www.jcbl.org.
7 September 2012
University College London
Conference organisers: Sarah Byrne (Institute of Archaeology, UCL) and Kaori O'Connor (Anthropology, UCL)
Please submit a paper title and 200 word abstract by 14 May 2012 to Sarah Byrne (s.byrne@ucl.ac.uk)
This one day conference is organised by the newly established UCL Pacific Islands Research Network responds to the widening interest in the political, economic, cultural and health dimensions of feasting, food production and famine in the Pacific. The conference aims to provide a platform for more engaged dialogue between archaeology, anthropology, history, ecology, economics, epidemiology, health and medical studies, and food studies and the social and historical sciences more broadly. We welcome papers that address issues of food relationships in the Pacific, especially those that draw off interdisciplinary perspectives.
Papers from this conference will be published in a book on Food Culture in the Pacific: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
Continue reading "CFP: Feast and Famine: Exploring Relationships with Food in the Pacific" »
Empson, Rebecca, 2011. Harnessing Fortune: Personhood, Memory and Place in Mongolia. Oxford University Press.
Daniel Miller, UCL
One of the issues in teaching material culture studies under the auspices of an anthropology department is explaining what is, at least in my case, a very conservative attitude to ethnography. I have always insisted that my PhD students understand and undertake what could be called classic ethnographic research as the basis for their PhD. The research must be based on working with a specified group of people for at least a year, being as much engaged with their every day activities as possible. In my case I have always insisted that even in the digital field this had to be as much an off line as on line experience. But to persuade people of this it helps if one has to hand exemplary ethnographies that really do demonstrate the `added value’ of sustained ethnographic study. There are of course classic studies, of which my bedrock has always been Munn’s Fame of Gawa but one also wants to see current exemplifications that tackle the often far more dynamic situations of the contemporary world.
Rebecca Empson’s 2011 monograph Harnessing Fortune works a treat for these purposes. Empson was a student of Caroline Humphrey at Cambridge, who has consistently produced key papers in material culture studies throughout her career. As with Humphrey, Empson also works with the Buriad (Buryat) peoples of Mongolia. If Annette Weiner described her work in terms of "Keeping while Giving", Empson is more focused on Keeping while Separating. The economy of herding requires considerable mobility of various kinds and separation both cyclical and developmental is essential in the region. But these populations have complex means for retaining certain elements of persons, horses and other features that are moving on, thereby securing the element of fortune that was associated with their initial presence and possession. The study is thereby able also to show how accumulation and indeed possession operate alongside the fluidity of mobility.
The monograph has a broad range of concerns including the sense in which people are retained within other’s bodies as in rebirth, and the hidden dimensions of relatedness that revolve around shamanistic practice. For scholars specifically interested in material culture chapters two to five are the most valuable. Chapter five, for example, has a fascinating discussion of mirrors as revelations of that which otherwise cannot be seen, and chapter two provides much of the analysis of the retention of fortune using retained material forms. But the heart of these more material aspects of this book is found in chapter three. This is concerned firstly with the household chest but most especially with the photographs, both those displayed on the outside of these chests and also in albums within. Careful attention to every aspect, from the juxtaposition of montage, to the formality of pose, to the ethnographic sense of when and in front of who photos are either displayed or hidden all become part of the analysis of how material forms and images are able to constitute and retain relationships even when person of property is otherwise absent and separated.
Showing how photographs stand in the stead of, but also greatly extend the role of genealogies, many of which were previously destroyed for political reasons, has been very helpful to me in trying to think of how to work with the change from older genres of photos to the visual aspects of Facebook which is something I want to work on more in the future. In each of these iterations one can see how other networks of relatedness move beyond but also appropriate ideas of obligation that derive from kin relationships. In an Appendix she provides the illustrations and more detailed analysis of seven households. In her final chapter there is dramatic shift to the issue of arson, which reminds us that there are still more devastating loss of presence in the world beyond wiping out ones online presence.
As well as the dense ethnography, Empson also clearly places her material in relation to theorists such as Gell and Strathern, helpfully concentrating on the differences between the implications of her study and previous discussions of agency and relatedness. The book is the product of several fieldtrips conducted both for PhD and later Post-Doctoral research and has that aura of confident knowledge of her ethnographic context that comes with this intensity and longevity of fieldwork. The writing is unpretentious and effectively engages readers with the empathetic experience of that fieldwork. As with most good monographs the end result is not grand theory, but a clear sense that the particular material cosmologies of these people demonstrate possible ways of using material and social relatedness that were not captured by our prior theoretical discussions which now have to be re-thought and nuanced in the light of this new evidence. Which is exactly what a good ethnographic monograph should do.
I just wanted to bring your attention to the website of this company (http://www.materialconnexion.com), which may be of interest to some of you.
When I first stumbled upon it, it took me a good while to understand what this was all about. After some time, I realized what the company offers is consultancy about materials. The interesting thing is that they have created a huge database where you can browse through all the new materials that are being created. The best thing is that they also have a physical library where you can browse through the "physical references" of all those materials.
Hope you enjoy it!
PS: You can also sign up for their monthly newsletter, which sends you update with new materials.
[image from The Globe and Mail]
Recently, Canadian art collector and philanthropist Michael Audain acquired a carved Nuu-chah-nulth club that Captain Cook had collected at Friendly Cove on Nootka Sound, British Columbia on his Third Voyage in 1778. In March, Audain donated the rare object to UBC's Museum of Anthropology in a televised ceremony. This was the last known piece from Cook's collection to have been in private hands (the Globe and Mail reported it to be worth around $1.2 Million). Global News, the Vancouver Sun, CBC radio, and CBC TV news coverage all celebrated the club's "repatriation" to Canada, noting that now the club was "back home" (at least, back in the now-Province and Nation from which it originated if not quite the First Nation). Both Audain and Donald Ellis, the Toronto and New York-based dealer who arranged the sale, expressed a long-standing interest in securing for Canada a piece of the historic Cook collection. In the CBC radio interview, Anthony Shelton, director of the UBC Museum of Anthropology, highlighted the capacity for objects like this--most likely acquired by Cook as a gift or in trade--to circulate globally and forge connections across disparate peoples and cultures. As the Mowachaht-Muchalaht Council of Elders declared in 1997:
Many of the early visitors were anxious to take home our gifts as souvenirs of their time among us. As part of our diplomacy, we presented carved images of our great ancestors to representatives of European governments visiting our territory. These ancestors are now living in your great treasure houses, which you call museums. They are our representatives in your cities and capitols. They are your acknowledgement of our diplomacy and the greatness of our nation. They are our boundary markers showing the extent of our influence throughout the world [from UBC MOA's website]
Terms used to describe the club in the press:
- "An elegantly carved, yew wood club...both a work of art and a historical relic." [Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail]
- "Misattributed in some historical documents as a 'curious war instrument' from the 'Sandwich Isles' (Hawaii)." [UBC MOA press release]
- “It is the singular most important object I have handled in my 35-year career.” [Donald Ellis]
- “I was shown a provenance which goes back through 11 owners, all the way back to Elizabeth Cook, the widow of James Cook … so there’s no question that it’s authentic. We know exactly who’s owned it for all that time.” [Michael Audain]
- "An envoy or ambassador for the Nuu-chah-nulth people themselves" and “An extraordinary, exceptional object with a tremendous amount of power and presence.” [Anthony Shelton, director of UBC Museum of Anthropology]
- "It is not an object, it is a reflection of a people's history, and the spirit of our people moves through there. If you look at that hand, it's like the hands of our ancestors are connected." [Deborah Sparrow, Musqueam First Nation]
- “For a lot of us that live in the community these aren’t just objects. These were used by our people. It’s a connection to them.” [Margarita James, a representative of the Mowachaht-Muchalaht people, the descendants of those with whom Cook met and traded]
- hawilmis, or "chiefly treasure" [in the language of the Nuu-chah-nulth]
See also the UBC Museum of Anthropology blog for more coverage.
‘Materialities: Economies, Empiricism, & Things’
Organising committee: Fiona Allon, Prudence Black, Catherine Driscoll,
Elspeth Probyn, Kane Race & Guy Redden.
Hosted by the Department of Gender & Cultural Studies, University of Sydney
Dec 4th-6th (pre-fix pre-conference Dec 3rd)
Cultural studies has a long history of investigating material practices – indeed it was a founding tenet of British cultural studies – but recently a new turn or return to materialism seems to be emerging in the field. What this materiality now means is still open, but we suggest that it flags a renewed interest in questions of how to study cultural objects, institutions and practices (methods), what constitutes matter and materiality (empiricism), and how things (humans and non-humans) are being reworked at a time of global economic, environmental and cultural flux.
Our keynotes haveall directed critical attention to these questions – to the more-than-human, to new philosophies of matter, to the gendered material and economic circuits of media, and to ‘the heavy materiality of language’. We have invited them to help us in reinvigorating what cultural studies can do today. They include: Ross Chambers (Michigan), Katherine Gibson (UWS), Lesley Head (UoW), Bev Skeggs (Goldsmiths, London), and Sarah Whatmore (Oxford).
Continue reading "CFP: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Annual Conference 2012" »
[image found here]
A recent article by Vadim Nikitin on nostalgia in Russia for the USSR called my attention to a number of current projects and publications that focus specifically on fond reminiscences of the unique material culture of Soviet life:
The multivolume glossy, expensive books arising from the Namedni project, the latest of which was published in November, feature a grab bag of large color photographs, news clips, interviews and narratives about every year from 1961 to 2005. For instance, 1962 spans physicist Lev Landau winning the Nobel Prize, the launch of milk in plastic bags, the Cuban missile crisis and the Soviet debut of the Hula-Hoop. The books target readers who lived through Soviet times as well as those who, like me, were too young to have experienced the Soviet Union and want to know more about their parents' generation.
The volumes are a runaway success despite their high price, and this reflects a growing trend. In the past year alone, at least three other books showcasing Soviet material culture have caught the popular imagination, even on the other side of the old Iron Curtain. Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design, edited by Soviet-born American writer Michael Idov and featuring contributions from the likes of bestselling writer Gary Shteyngart, is a breezy English-language meditation on such Soviet staples as folding cups, Lomo cameras, fishnet shopping bags and rustic cars. Olga Dydykina's coffee-table volume We Lived in the USSR is a kind of Dorling Kindersley travel guide to the Soviet Union, with hundreds of photos and a dictionary of Soviet-era expressions. And Frédéric Chaubin's Cosmic Communist Constructions celebrates forgotten examples of late-Soviet architecture. What these books have in common is a tone of what Russian-born American scholar Svetlana Boym termed "reflective nostalgia," the kind that "lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time."
Here are some links for the projects and publications mentioned in the article:
Namedni:
- on Amazon
- on Wikipedia
- on YouTube
Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design:
- on Amazon
- on a blog post (with images)
Cosmic Communist Constructions:
- at Taschen
- on Amazon
- on WeHeart (with images)
Svetlana Boym's website with media projects and publications
One of the first explorations of this phenomena to make popular headlines in Western Europe and America was the 2003 German film Goodbye Lenin, which told the story of a patriotic East German woman who slipped into a coma just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and whose son tries hard to protect her from the new world order once she awakens a few months later. One of his main strategies is to meticulously surround her with the rapidly vanishing products to which she has grown accustomed before they are replaced by commodities from the West. (My own relatives, who grew up in East Berlin, report similar post-1989 demand for the few brands of coffee, jam, and cereal that they had grown up with in the face of proliferating but unfamiliar choices, and as a kind of quotidian protest against rapid gentrification by Wessies.) Also noteworthy was last year's exhibition of contemporary artists in The New Museum's show "Ostalgia", which showcased diverse and highly ambivalent relations with the visual, material, economic and political cultures in Soviet times.
And finally, here are some recent academic takes on the topic (thanks to Bruce Grant at NYU):
- Dominic Boyer, Dominic (2006) "Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany." Public Culture Spring 18(2): 361-381
- Berdahl, Daphne (1999) “(N)Ostalgie” for the present: Memory, longing, and East German things." Ethnos 64: 192-211
- Bunzl, Matti and Daphne Berdahl (2010) On the Social Life of Postsocialism: Memory, Consumption, Germany. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Todorova, Maria and Zsuzsa Gille (2010) Post-Communist Nostalgia. New York: Berghahn Books.