New York City: May 5th and 6th, 2009*
New York New Horizons Computer Center - 43 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036

Albany: May 8th, 2009
Albany New Horizons Computer Center - 10 Airline Drive, Suite 101 Albany, NY, 12205

*Note: These are one day workshops (8:30am - 4:30pm). Participants choose which one day to attend.

More Info/Registration: http://www.nur-online.com/

Audience: Beginners, anyone interested in mapping their community

Participants will learn to use ArcGIS 9.3 to do the following:
-Create thematic maps
-Participants will learn to create thematic maps of their own data, and display spatial trends in information.
-Address mapping (geocoding)
-Participants will learn to map addresses of their clients, their projects or incidents such as crime and disease.
-Download and Map Census & American Community Survey Data
Participants will learn to extract and map current Census data such as poverty, race, language, population, transportation, education and workforce characteristics.

Participants will also learn to:
-Conduct spatial queries
-Download free shapefiles
-Create well-designed maps

Mapping techniques transferable to all other communities. Exercises are designed for beginners. Intermediate Excel skills required.

Materials
+ Comprehensive workbook (75 pages), which includes the presentation, exercises and reference worksheets,

+ ArcGIS (ArcView 9.3) software 60-day trial CD set,

+ Thirty day free access to new 2005 Tiger/Line geography files (converted to shapefiles) which include streets, zip codes, school districts, voting districts, census tracts and many other useful geographies

+ Thirty day free access to our Analyzing Your Community: Local Demographic Analysis Online Workshop

New Urban Research, Inc. 2301 NW Thurman St Suite S Portland, OR 97210 | 877.241.6576 | www.nur-online.com

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

Abby Loebenberg, DPhil Candidate, ISCA, Univ. of Oxford

I am currently in the fieldwork phase of my DPhil thesis examining the popularity and effect of children’s television and associated material culture on children aged 1-11 from multi-ethnic backgrounds in Westernized contexts, by original ethnographic research in Vancouver, Canada. Particularly, I am investigating moments of transition, material hybridity and liminality in children’s animation as symbiotic with public nervousness about issues of moral danger. I argue that this in turn presents the seed of appeal of these products with the informant children, themselves perceived by society as transitory, hybrid and liminal, as often children of migrants, but especially those with experience of the foster system.

This derives from my MPhil thesis work on children’s television and toys from Japan and its relation to transformational pretend play. The fieldwork further connects ideas of moral danger to notions of safety and adult concern for children by examining children’s use and understandings of ‘traditional’ space categories, public, semi-public and private, particularly in the light of theoretical claims by postmodern spatial theorists (Gupta and Ferguson 1992) of the ‘blurring’ of boundaries by shopping malls, gated developments and particularly the internet (Castells 1989, 2000). In this light, the thesis will make a contribution to the development of an ‘anthropology of childhood’ particularly dealing with the idea of a distinct child culture, as separate from, but containing elements and inversions of the adult world. The results will help in creating an understanding of the development of complexity in older children’s culture by considering the diversities in play from toddler to age 11 and charting the clear contributions of global television cultures to contemporary children’s public and private worlds.

By considering both Alison James’ thesis (1979) that children’s play is not mimetic of the adult world but instead contains and inverts elements of it, as well as Cullingford (1992) and Erikson’s (1963) work on play as a parallel to ritual but constructed without consequence, one would expect that a spatial reading of play in the city to be a reflection of these qualities. Certainly, Sutton-Smith’s (1976) argument that modern toys exert a solitarizing influence on children’s play points to a construction of childhood in line with Sennet’s (1977) reading of the public realm, as well as that of architectural and public space theorists (Such as Jane Jacobs, 1961 and Mike Davis, 1992). Considering particularly spatial arguments for ‘safety’ such as Marcuse (1997), perhaps the most interesting question regarding the anthropology of a spatial version of children’s play would be to ask whether children’s play becomes more anthropologically ‘dangerous’ as it becomes more private.

This construction is semantically different from that of the home as ‘private’ and ‘safe’ and the street as ‘public’ and ‘dangerous’. However, particularly through the reading of toys and play, anthropological dangers and taboos (Douglas, 1966) such as themes of pollution, liminality and gender/identity changes are more likely to be more present as the child moves from the public realm of games and sports through the semi-public realm of consumption and group play such as schools, after-care centres, and shopping to the private and super-private realm of the home and child’s bedroom, or other private area within the bedroom, such as in one of my informant’s cases, the area underneath her (raised) bed.

The challenges to this research primary derive from the notion that the anthropology of children, and moreover children’s television and toys are considered somewhat ‘anti-intellectual’. This derives from a typical view encountered around the idea of an anthropology of childhood, namely that children’s culture is mimetic, insignificant and that all children are, are processes, on their way to adults.

Historically, this sort of notion of children as ‘becoming’ attributes to Freud and psychology in general, that with predominantly laboratory-based methodologies, ethnography fundamentally challenges. Furthermore, it is key to separate judgement on this type of research from one’s own ‘adult’ notions of what ‘culture’ is valid and what invalid, in that it is naturally because child culture contains elements of adult culture that we attribute higher significance to our own condition. Thus, it has been important to theoretically separate this research from ideas of homo ludens (Huizinga:1938), adult recreation and game playing and notions of carnival. This is of particular significance when one notes that the great majority of anthropological research on children, both historically and presently is performed as part of a larger ethnographic study, or otherwise with some other aim in mind, using adults as informants. This means that whilst a large quantity of anthropology deals with children, little considers children’s culture as a distinct entity.

A further point to be considered is the history of the idea of ‘childhood’ in general, namely that as a concept it is bound together with modern society. This is in contrast to the medieval period where children had no separate status, but were integrated into daily work and life routines (Aries:1962). The idea of children as reflective of some “originary state of Eden” (Kline 1993:51), connects them to romantic, Rousseaun ideals of the natural – indeed the term ‘kinder-garten’ (lit. children’s garden) derives from this source. Margaret Mead, (1932) was one of the first notable anthropologists whose work led her to direct research on and with children. Mead was concerned with discovering whether animism was present in play universally, or was the product of a specific cultural environment. The ethnographic results of her work with children began to support a distinction between children’s stories, play and peer structures from those of the adult world. Later work such as that of Allison James (1979) begins to support a theory of distinction between adult and children’s culture, but similarly an interdependence. This is primarily manifest through an inversion of elements of the adult order, but also by the connection between play and ritual.

The key distinction between these two concepts here is that, due to a level of inversion and irreverence, play seems to lack an intrinsic efficacy and “carries a negative weight...treated as unimportant, trivial or unworthy of adult attention” (Mead 1975:160). This is partly why, as part of academic tradition, play is seen as anti-intellectual, but similarly it draws attention to the paradox that children, who are considered to be the ‘players’ of society, are awarded less freedom than adults in terms of the content of their play.

A second important theoretical area in terms of children’s play is the notion of ‘pretendership’, which relates to the ability to transform an object or situation into a signifier of some other phenomenon, but also particularly in the case of television toys it draws attention to the difficult and nervous relationship between adult and children’s society. That this is due to a fundamental, sacred seriousness that is embodied in playing itself where in fact children’s behaviour is only likely to be interpreted as mimetic by adults in that adults perceive their own behaviour and culture as valid as children’s as invalid. Thus, it is the attribution of significance to mimetic play over fantasy and narrative play that creates a sense of nervousness about television and television toys that are somehow perceived as non-educational or violent - rather than the reality that any toy is educational, depending on what the child needs to learn.

Ultimately the toys a child likes will be those that expand the emotional life of the child. It is more a question of adult society than child society, why some children are restricted access to toys that make them happiest. It is particularly repetitive narrative play, based on television series, that adults so despise as ‘un-educational’ or violent. Yet, the types of toys that are involved in this type of play, such as action figures, not only allow the child to accommodate the fearfulness of the world around them in a safe environment of their own making, they introduce a new type of playing similar to that previously observed in Huli children in Melanesia. (Goldman:1998) A form of self-narration with multiple voicings or ‘hetroglossia’ is a key feature of television-based play where one child can index various social roles and explore multi-valent approaches to play under the narrative ‘backstory’ of a television show. The great public criticism of television and play surrounding it is that it is repetitive and somehow impoverished in content, yet research on hetroglossic play and play in general argue that play is always repetitive in some elements, philosopher’s such as Latour and Gadamer argue that the ‘to-and-fro’ nature of play is a fundamental part of all games, and it is through this method that a child learns to understand the pressures of modernity and how to control their own environment.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field

Tomohiro (Tomo) Morisawa, ISCA, Oxford University

Last month I started my PhD in Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Through an ethnography of the production process of anime movies in Japan, my research will look at how socially negotiated ideas of creativity, facilitated by the institution of copyright law, have come to articulate the terms with which animators evaluate one another's work as well as their professional development. Through this project, I plan to engage with the emerging debate in anthropology about the concept and practices of creativity (Liep 2001, Hisrch and MacDonald 2005, Ingold and Hallam 2008) and intellectual property (Strathern 1999, 2006, Brown 1998, 2003, Myers 2005 etc.).

Whereas the analytical potential of creativity as a topic has been rather well discussed, I believe a more ethnographic engagement still finds ample space to be explored. The starting premise of the project is that ethnographic engagement with creativity does not yield much satisfactory result without turning to the legal and economic regime of intellectual property rights (Leach 2007). Both stem intricately from philosophy of John Locke and the Western liberalist tradition of possessive individualism (cf. Macpherson 1962). This point is brilliantly exposed in ethnographies of copyright, which look at how differing conceptions of authorship may prove to be a critical problem in determining ownership (Myers 2005). The ethnographic focus on creativity - the twin concept of authorship - where the local and the international regimes of copyright do not significantly differ i.e. Japan (but see for other examples Geismar 2005a, 2005b) will not only add on to the emerging literatures of creativity and intellectual property in anthropology, but also facilitate a connection between them.

Anime is a Japanese abbreviation for the English word 'animation', which has increasingly come to specifically mean animation movies produced in Japan and consumed worldwide. Currently, the estimated number of anime programmes broadcast on TV networks amount up to 80 per week domestically; the wide availability corresponding with its high visibility within popular cultures and media in Japan. However, the rise in the presence of anime related subculture also led to its polarized reception in public discourses during the past decade, oscillating between anime as the expression of creativity and that as arresting social malady.

Whereas the ideal of creativity in anime is personified in a few master animators such as Miyazaki Hayao, who has come to embody everything Japan aspires to as the master of personal creativity, malicious images of anonymous (more often than not male) consumers who are latent public offenders and social misfits also began to dominate in daily shows and sensational news media. This shift from creative individual to malfunctioning mass also traces a change in public imagination from the side of production to that of consumption. While 'genius' animators produce 'creative' art-like crafts, 'anonymous' consumers destroys the value by turning them into fetish commodities.

The government has promoted the anime industry as Japan's core 'softpower', and the relative success of such anime films like "Spirited Away" and "Pokemon" abroad are shaking up something of its newly defined sense of cultural uniqueness verging on that of superiority. Yet, the daily work the professional animators actually carve out at the studio, as the result of their labour, is anything but spectacular. Rather, it is the banality of it all that may perplex the researcher on the first encounter - a thousand of stop motion drawings which are hard to make heads or tails for non-professionals. By focussing on how animators make use of the concept of creativity in articulating their work and personal ideals I will be able to examine the juncture between creativity, work, and personhood, onto which the larger ideas of national future have come to be staked.

Starting from October 2009, I will conduct a 12 month fieldwork at a yet-to-be-specified anime production studio in Suginami-ku district of Tokyo, where almost one fifth of the entire industry (approx. 80 studios) is concentrated. Ideally, I will work as an assistant to the production-management section of the given studio, which foresees the schedule management of ongoing projects and entails highly frequent face to face interactions with animators. In the field, I will pay particular attention to how references to the ideas of creativity entail the corresponding references to the material forms it is objectified. That is to say, when animators talk about their work, and actually produce their drawings, how personification, objectification, and idealization of creativity all play out in such a way to elude rather than cement the boundaries between them.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Posted to Notes from the Field | Objects and visual analyses | Topics for Discussion

May 1, 2009 at the Telus Centre (Edmonton, Canada)

The Annual Symposium of the Material Culture Institute, based in the Department of Human Ecology (Univ. of Alberta), will focus this year on the human body as artefact.

The human body is developed, changed, and shaped by nature and culture. As a site of experience, expression, and interpretation, the body offers sensation and feeling, but also form and substance that may be inspected and analysed by the self and others.

The symposium shall consider the human body in relation to the material world: bodies are considered as real, physical entities that are manipulated, depicted, and understood as places where interior sensibility meets external form.

For further information, please consult the Institute's website.

Posted by Patrick Laviolette at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

This is the first in a series of exhibition reviews written by students enrolled in Erin Hasinoff’s Exhibiting Cultures: Politics and Practices of Museum Exhibitions at Columbia University. Exhibiting Cultures is one of the two core courses offered in the Museum Anthropology MA Program. In addition to learning the craft of writing reviews, students are curating an exhibition, Out of the Box: Anthropology Collections Unpacked, which will be on display in Columbia’s Low Library from May 11 to June 3, 2009. Check back for more information about the show.

October 31 2008–April 5 2009
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York

Reviewed by Constance Smith, MA Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
crs2150@columbia.edu

In 1979 Judy Chicago's monumental installation The Dinner Party was exhibited for the first time.

Thirty years on, the work has been seen by more than one million viewers and remains controversial for its striking symbolic history of women in the Western world. Chicago set out to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record”, and although now considered by some critics as overly reductive and simplistic, the work has been seminal in inspiring discussion and research on feminism, in the art world and beyond. Since 2007 The Dinner Party has been installed at the Brooklyn Museum, New York City, where it forms the focal point of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

The Sackler Center's latest exhibition directly engages with the discourses stimulated by The Dinner Party. Curated by Maura Reilly and Nicole J. Caruth, Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection presents almost fifty artists – male and female – and includes recent acquisitions and major loans of works by Kiki Smith, Tracey Emin, Tracey Moffatt, and Lorna Simpson. Reflecting the museum's commitment to developing an archive of feminist art, the exhibition encompasses photography, painting, installation, sculpture, video and performance art from the 1970s to today. This span of artists from different generations working in a variety media enables the show to chart historical and contemporary feminisms, and traces the changing concerns of contemporary artists working within the historic framework of feminist art.

The title of the exhibition plays on the notion of 'the master's house'. Museums have historically been a male domain, dominated by grand masters of art history, in which women have featured mostly as the subject of works and not as creative agents in their own right. 'The master's house' also refers to the idea of the home as a traditionally feminine sphere, where a woman's role as carer and nurturer ensured the well-being of the 'master'. By burning down that house, this exhibition seeks to proclaim not just the creativity and independence of women, but the leading role feminist art has played in shaping the wider art world over the last forty years.

Among the featured works are Carrie Mae Weems's Untitled (Man Smoking/Malcolm X), a photograph from the artist's 1990 Kitchen Table series in which Weems depicted herself seated at the same table with various companions and an array of props and backgrounds. In this work she plays cards with an African-American man beneath an image of Malcolm X, weaving African-American politics with allusions to black feminist campaigns such as those of Rosa Parks. Kara Walker also draws on gender and racial issues in Keys to the Coop, 1997, a dramatic black and white linocut of a young African-American girl running with the head of a chicken in her hand. The keys in her hand suggest salvation, but the girl is clearly an anti-heroine.

Sex and sexuality are unsurprisingly prominent in the exhibition, sometimes in very provocative forms. Caroline Schneeman's 1975 performance piece Interior Scroll is remembered through a dramatic larger-than-lifesize black and white still, capturing the artist in the process of removing the scroll from her vagina and reading it aloud to her audience. An i-pod audio-video hub next to the work features an interview with Schneeman, in which she describes waking with the image of the work in her mind, and using it to explore ideas of inner knowledge. The use of i-pod hubs with artist interviews is one of the most successful features of the exhibition, enabling artists to explain their often very theoretical work. In Schneeman's case it is particularly useful, overcoming some of the problems of ephemerality inherent in displaying performance art.

A newly acquired work by Cuban performance artist Ana Mendieta references debates in feminist archaeology over the depiction and reverence of women in ancient societies. Guanaroca (First Woman), 1981, is a photograph of a site-specific carving by Mendieta in the caves of Aguila near Havana, Cuba. The work takes up the much-explored feminist iconography of the fertile goddess (the second place setting in Chicago's Dinner Party, and the theme of a related temporary exhibition nearby) and exaggerates elements of the female body still further. Although in part marking an ancient appreciation of the female form, Mendieta's focus on female genitalia is also unnerving, perhaps suggesting the timeless categorization of women as sexual objects.

The curators of the exhibition emphasize the multiple and historical discourses of feminism, stressing that there is no single look or narrative to feminist art. Part of this agenda is the inclusion of male artists such as Nayland Blake, whose “bunny” sculpture challenges constructions of masculinity, highlighting the impact feminism has had in the reconsideration of male as well as female histories. Feminist activism is often assumed to be limited to Europe and America; the inclusion here of artists from the rest of the world suggests the wider nature of feminist discourses. Particularly powerful are three images from South African artist Berni Searle's Colour Me series. Exploring the intersections of race, colonialism and gender, she transforms her prone body into a display fetish in images resonant of colonial classifications of racial 'types'. Covering her naked body for each image with a different spice – paprika for red, turmeric for yellow and cloves for brown – Searle's work recalls apartheid divisions of the South African population into black, white and colored, whilst the foregrounding of her body implies a fourth multi-racial but still marginalized category: women.

The works featured in Burning Down the House are thought provoking, often dramatic, and occasionally shocking. The juxtaposition of different media, themes, nationalities and generations of artists reflects the impossibility of making reductive statements about feminism, and recognizes the diverse influences historical feminism still has in informing contemporary considerations of women and gender-related issues. Yet in some ways this diversity is also the exhibition's downfall; neither the works nor the curation do much to expand on the introductory panel's dual interpretations of 'the master's house'. Beyond the simple fact of their inclusion in a show on feminism, there is little curatorial attempt to understand how the featured art or artists are breaking down barriers of domestic confinement or macho museum culture. One wonders also whether isolating feminist art in its own wing of a museum really affects the status quo all that much. Wouldn't demonstrating how such art can not only hold its own against the rest of the canon, but has also powerfully informed it, be a more powerful feminist statement?

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Posted to Exhibition reviews

Thinking About 'Things': Interdisciplinary Futures in Material Culture is an international, multi-disciplinary graduate conference taking place in UCD, Dublin, Ireland from 5th-7th May 2009.

For more information:

http://www.tat2009.com/

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

POSITION AS DOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (SKO/post code 1017) within the field of museology is available at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo.

The successful candidate is expected to start the doctoral research fellowship before October 1st 2009. For further information about the department we refer to http://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/.

The successful candidate will be working within the field of museology, enquiring into the changes in exhibition practices in art, heritage and/or museum institutions. Questions to be asked concern mutual influences between exhibition practices and principles in different types of museum institutions, and between museum practices and exhibition modes in the culture at large.

The Ph.D. project will be part of the research project Exhibitionary regimes in transition (henvisning nettside), which has a focus on crucial periods of change in exhibition practices during the last 250 years, with a particular emphasis on the interplay between science and aesthetics. It is expected that the successful candidate will investigate one or more Norwegian institutions. The interpretative scope of the proposed Ph.D project may involve art history, cultural history, history of science, and visual and material culture studies. Studies sensitive to socially differentiating effects of exhibitions practices are particularly welcome. Applicants should submit a project proposal of maximum 5 pages describing the Ph.D. project and how this relates to the research project Exhibitionary regimes in transition.

The position is available for a period of three years.

The successful candidate is expected to affiliate with the existing research milieu or network and to contribute to the further development of this.

If the applicant has worked as a doctoral research fellow previously to being hired at the Faculty of Humanities, that period of time will be deducted from the allotted 3 year period. Candidates who are accepted must participate in the Faculty of Humanities’ researcher education programme (cf. regulations and supplementary provisions for the faculty’s researcher education) and must also engage in the designated research activities on a 100 percent basis. The designated aim of the project is to complete a doctoral dissertation to be defended at a public disputation for the Ph.D. degree.

Requirements:

· A 5 year Master degree, or equivalent, in an area relevant to the topic of the doctoral dissertation.

In assessing the applications, special emphasis will be placed on the quality of the project description and on the assumed academic and personal ability on the part of the candidates to complete the dissertation within the given time frame. The short-listed candidates may be called for an interview at the University of Oslo.

Guidelines for appointments to research fellowships at the Faculty of Humanities may be obtained at
http://www.hf.uio.no/english/research/doctor/index.html.

Associate professor Brita Brenna (IKOS) will supervise the project. It is advised to establish contact with the supervisor before applying.

The University of Oslo has a goal of recruiting more women and immigrants in academic positions. Women and people interested in migrating to Norway are thus encouraged to apply.

The University of Oslo has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results a.o.

For further information, contact:
Associate professor of Museology IKOS: Brita Brenna, e-mail: b.s.brenna@ikos.uio.no.
Research director IKOS: Rune Svarverud, tel: + 47 22 85 69 82, e-mail: rune.svarverud@ikos.uio.no.
Research administration IKOS: Cecilie Lilleheil, tel: + 47 22 84 40 47, e-mail: c.w.lilleheil@ikos.uio.no.

Closing date: 20 April 2009

Ref.no: 2009/4640

Government wage scale: 45-52 (depending on level of expertise, NOK 353 200 - NOK 398 800 per annum)

Submissions:
Applicants must email the following material in doc-, rtf- or pdf-format to stillinger@hf.uio.no/jobbsoknad@hf.uio.no:

- Letter of application describing qualifications

- Project description, including a detailed progress plan for the project (maximum 5 pages, see Guidelines for project descriptions: http://www.hf.uio.no/english/research/doctor/projectdescription.html)

- A list of published and unpublished works

- Curriculum vitae with grades

Educational certificates, master theses and the like are not to be submitted with the application, but applicants may be asked to submit such information or works later.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings

Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge

Press release:

an exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
University of Cambridge

March 18-April 18 2009

Opening event, with lecture by Georgina Beier, on March 17, from 3 pm

**

Mathias Kauage was an exuberant painter and a founding figure of modern art in the Pacific.

Kauage (c. 1944-2003) was born in Chimbu Province in the Papua New Guinea highlands. In the late 1960s he was employed as a labourer in Port Moresby and was inspired by an exhibition of drawings by a fellow-Highlander, Timothy Akis. Like Akis, he was encouraged by Georgina Beier. Together with her husband Ulli, Georgina influentially supported contemporary art, theatre, and literature in Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere.

Kauage’s work evolved rapidly. Early on he drew fantastic creatures inspired by Chimbu myth, but soon progressed to scenes of Moresby town life and political events. Embracing colour, he went on to produce major paintings around Papua New Guinea’s Independence in 1975, aspects of colonial history, and his own experience – not least his meeting with the Queen, who awarded him an OBE in 1998. His later works were often signed ‘Kauage – Artist of PNG’.

This exhibition foregrounds a previously unexhibited group of early Kauage drawings and beaten copper panels, which form part of a generous donation to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology by Dame Marilyn Strathern (William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, 1993-2008), who conducted fieldwork in the PNG Highlands and in Port Moresby from the 1960s onward.

Visitors to the exhibition also get the chance to listen to a rare early recording of Kauage singing and playing Chimbu instruments such as a bamboo flute.

‘Kauage: Artist of Papua New Guinea’ is a revelation of Kauage’s creativity. His unique intelligence and visual inventiveness suggest new ways of thinking about the emergence of ‘modern art’ beyond the West.

On Tuesday March 17, a public lecture and symposium coincide with the exhibition opening. Georgina Beier will speak on Creating his own tradition at 2.30 pm in the McDonald Seminar Room, in the McDonald Institute (off Downing Street, directly adjacent to the Museum). Helena Regius, Ruth Phillips, and Nicholas Thomas will contribute to a panel discussion.

**
The Museum plans in due course to publish a catalogue of the collection, together with Marilyn’s previous donation of textiles from Hara Hara Prints, a screenprint workshop in which Georgina Beier also played a key role (see Strathern, ‘Emblems, ornaments and inversions of value’ in Kuechler and Were (eds), The Art of Clothing, UCL Press 2005). In the context of this project, we would be most interested to hear from anthropologists and others who were in Port Moresby in the 1970s or subsequently, and own original works by Kauage or contemporaries, and/or may be able to help with relevant information.

Enquiries to Nicholas Thomas

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Posted to Announcements and Listings | Exhibition reviews

Andrew Bowsher, D.Phil Candidate at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford University

My research project explores the production, marketing and consumption of boxed-sets of recorded specialist music in Europe and North America. Boxed-sets collect archival materials pertaining to musical genres, eras and artists in elaborate packaging. They run in limited numbers, and are highly sought-after by music fans and collectors, who view them as valuable cultural artefacts and tributes to artistic legacies of cultural importance. Through an ethnographic investigation of practices surrounding these nostalgic goods, I examine the complex creative processes involved in producing these specific commodities, the dynamics of collecting practices, and the specific forms of sociality created through participating in fan culture to question anthropological theories of value creation in commercial marketplaces and consumer lifestyles (Graeber 2001) from a new perspective.

By questioning why boxed-sets are so prized and important to consumers, my methodological and theoretical consideration of anthropological debates creates a perspective for understanding how the value of boxed-sets is produced, negotiated and sustained. My study on boxed-sets questions previous anthropological research into the industries of cultural goods, which has suggested that producers can engender specific consumer reactions to goods through advertising (Moeran 1996), or that producers’ efforts have little impact on consumer behaviour (Miller 1997). By understanding how musical nostalgia and memory are packaged for, utilised by, and become symbolically powerful for consumers of boxed-sets, my research anthropologically analyses cultural industries by novelly researching the sociality of boxed-sets’ consumers, and their relationship with music producers, to anthropologically explore market dynamics, consumer agency and the creation of inalienable, culturally dense valuables (Weiner 1994). My study employs ethnomusicological literature (Frith 1998, Seeger 1986), but adds a pertinent new dimension to anthropology’s study of music by investigating music as a commodity within the context of cross-cultural transmissions and sociality (Hannerz 1987). My research on boxed-sets also critiques current shifts in the anthropological research agenda on consumption from focussing on shopping, fashion, and taste to consumption in the home and commodity disposal.

Methodologically, my research combines the biographical model for studying objects grounded in anthropology (Kopytoff 1986) and the commodity-chain approach developed by geographers. I am currently conducting a multi-sited ethnography that examines the specific social and economic practices surrounding boxed-sets as they move from their production in the US to their consumption in the UK. I will conduct ethnography where boxed-sets are consumed in the UK and North America, in spaces ranging from concerts and conventions to Internet sites and fan literature.

Moreover, in a six-month internship with Revenant Records in Austin, Texas, I aim to gain insights into the multiple creative processes crucial to designing their unique boxed-sets, and to understand how this influences the value that consumers perceive in their commodities. Thusfar in Austin, I have come to realize the importance of authentic aesthetics in the city, and have further realized the trend-setting capabilities of this local music-market in the wider marketplace. It is clear therefore that Austin’s local characteristics impact upon industry-wide concepts of authenticity from production through to consumption, and these factors appear to bear influence upon the viable production of box sets by companies such as Revenant Records. Austin’s magnetism within the global music industry has made it the heartland for many subcultural styles; how this melting-pot of a city has prized musical authenticity and simultaneously nurtured many musical genres and modes of production is something I wish now to understand as part of my research; to understand how the local aesthetic for the ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ has affected the reception of Austin’s products in the global marketplace. My research has therefore benefited from immersion in a local music industry with worldwide influence. I anticipate to finish this research and my D.Phil by the end of 2010.

Any interest, comments or suggestions would be most welcome to this work-in-progress.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field | Objects and visual analyses | Topics for Discussion

Collecting and Gathering: making worlds and staking claims

A one-day interdisciplinary conference and exhibit at the Center for Archaeology, Columbia University, New York City.

Conference ˆ Saturday May 23rd, 2009

Abstract Due ˆ Sunday March 22nd, 2009

Practices, institutions and ideas centered around collections and collecting offer a fruitful area for interdisciplinary enquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Whether in the processes through which collections come to be formed, or the ways in which existing collections are experienced by a variety of publics, the impulse to collect is often key to knowing a wider world, and also knowing oneself. This conference aims to bring a wide variety of critical perspectives to bear on this topic; including anthropological, historical and art historical, literary, architectural and museological. Papers dealing with actual formal collections such as those found in galleries or museums, as well as those interested in less tangible collections - such as collections of facts, observations or ideas - are equally welcome. There are no restrictions with regard to time period, and papers are sought relating to the contemporary world, as well as the recent and ancient pasts.

Papers are solicited on the following and related themes:

The temporality of gathering - how the past and future are grasped and mediated through material substances and practices

Collecting and power - how collecting sets up or maintains power differentials between collector and collected, exhibitor and exhibited

Fixing and making worlds - the bonding of materials, substances, place and people

Histories of collecting - changing modalities and definitions of the collection and of what it is to gather materials, ideas or people in place and time

Collecting as a transformative process - how collecting alters, re-presents or invents the object that is collected and the implications of such transformations

Spaces of collection and collections of spaces - the politics, poetics and meaning of the exhibition space and its architectural framing

This conference is run by graduate students affiliated with the Center for Archaeology and is organized in conjunction with an exhibit on collecting designed by students in the Museum Masters program at Columbia.

Please send a 200 word abstract along with contact information (including name, email, institution affiliation) to Matt Sanger at mcs2178@columbia.edu
Any questions can also be sent to this address.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

India says it helped a businessman buy belongings of Mahatma Gandhi at a controversial auction in New York.

Gandhi said his spectacles gave him "the vision to free India". The watch was given to him by Indira Gandhi. The plate and the bowl were the ones from which he took his last meal before he was murdered, Tushar Gandhi said. "The sandals he made with his own hands," Mr Gandhi said.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | Posted to From the news

Deirdre McKay (Keele Univ) & Padmapani Perez (Leiden Univ)

Francis Ford Coppola’s experiences on the Apocalypse Now shoot in the Philippines were famously a journey ‘up the river’ into the director’s own hour of darkness. His wife, Eleanor Coppola, published her own account of life on the set and made a documentary [1]. She details how, ill and beset by cost overruns on his production budget, Coppola had also run out of creative juice—having no idea what to do for the final scene. On August 24, 1976, Eleanor Coppola wrote:

In the script, Kurtz’s band of renegade soldiers has trained a tribe of local Montagnard Indians to be a fighting team. They live in huts by the temple. Rather than dress up Filipino extras everyday, Francis asked Eva, a production assistant, to go to a northern province where the rice terraces are and recruit a real tribe of primitive people to come live on the set and be in the scenes. I hear she is trying to make a contract with a group of 250 Ifugao Indians….

Two of Edgar’s friends, in costume, with one of the props they built for Kurtz’s temple. (Edgar Dupingay)

The production was successful in recruiting a larger group of Ifugao people to act as extras on the film. They joined the shooting first in Baler, Quezon – the site of the “Charlie don’t surf” scene – and then in Pagsanjan, Laguna – at Kurtz’s “temple.” Living in accommodation around the set, the Ifugao extras constructed props, made handicrafts to sell, and continued their cultural life.

As Coppola puzzled over how to stage the death of Kurtz, Eleanor called him to see some of the Ifugao extras who were conducting a ritual. Coppola watched the ritual slaughter of a carabao (water buffalo) and immediately decided to incorporate what he had seen into the film. If his genius as filmmaker lies in the images he incorporates into his movies, he actually took these images straight out of Ifugao ritual.

The famous final scenes of Apocalypse Now thus show the Ifugao extras hacking apart a carabao. All the Ifugao extras we interviewed in 2002 insisted that this scene wasn't in the script. "That came from us!" Many audiences flinch. Maybe they don't want to think about the origins of meat? Or is it the apparent savagery of the ritual? These are superficial readings and westernized audiences don't see that there is much more to this than meets the eye!

This scene is reminiscent of the old colonial relations reported in the National Geographic of the early 1900s. [2] In the early colonial era, U.S. appointed provincial governors held "cañaos"—large redistributive prestige feasts. In a traditional Ifugao cañao, a carabao or several were slaughtered and the meat was doled out by the feast's sponsor to relatives in order of their importance to the sponsor. The Americans sponsored these feasts to make peace between fractious Ifugao villages and establish colonial hegemony over the redistribution of wealth and justice. Since the Americans had no relatives, in their cañaos the order of precedence was 'up for grabs'—particular Ifugao community leaders vied for the first chance to strike a blow on the carabao, in order to show their affinity with their hosts. Men armed with bolos rushed to the carabao in a running melee until all the meat was taken from the bones, attempting to outdo each other in symbolically claiming kinship with the Americans. Photos of cañaos suggested the carabao slaughter was a 'free-for all,' reinforcing American ideas that Filipinos were primitive and barbaric.

To the Ifugao,
the carabao remained a symbol of colonial power and its slaughter by the Ifugao became the symbolic tax levied on the Spanish as colonial overlord. But the carabao holds a deeper significance in Ifugao ritual. The carabao entered the rice terraces of what is now Ifugao Province when Ifugao people living along the Magat River were displaced by Spanish incursions. The river ran through lowland Ifugao, separated the uplands of Ifugao Province from the neighboring lowland provinces of Isabela and Nueva Viscaya. The Spanish tried to Christianize the population and bring them into reducciones (or mission settlements). The Ifugao abandoned their hunting grounds along the Magat and moved up to the mountains.

The theft of the animals by raiders from the Ifugao uplands was understood as a form of payment exacted from the Spanish for the use of the land the latter had occupied. As one Ifugao elder described it: "First, we just killed the carabao and carried the meat. Then we saw that it could be done to lead the carabao back. That was our pride, to kill many carabaos for meat when there was a death. That's how we were rich, sharing the meat."[3]

To the Ifugao, the carabao remained a symbol of colonial power and its slaughter by the Ifugao became the symbolic tax levied on the Spanish as colonial overlord. Therefore, the prestige and the feast retain an ambivalent quality. Even as the Ifugao accept the gift of meat, they are symbolically assassinating the imperial donor.

In the actual filming of this scene, the natives (as Cambodians) are led in a dance and ritual by Guimbatan, a respected mumbaki (ritual specialist or ‘native priest’). Guimbatan came from Banaue, and the performances retain definitive Banaue Ifugao elements of expression and gestures.

In discussion: Francis Ford Coppolla, Lily Luglug and Guimbatan, the mumbaki (Lily and Gerry Luglug)

Coppola was "in love" with the Ifugao since he was so reluctant to let them leave. Some of the Ifugao even said that they shouldn't show Coppola any more rituals; otherwise they would never be allowed to go home.

The former extras told us that, after Coppola first witnessed the carabao ritual slaughter, he tried to shoot every ritual that the Ifugao performed. Once he asked Roben Bahatan if the Ifugao elders could chant in one of the scenes. Roben said that they would be willing but that the utterance of those chants must always be accompanied by a sacrifice of chickens. So Coppola went overboard and ordered a whole truckload of chickens, which were then distributed to the entire Ifugao group.

Just before the Ifugao left for home, they performed one more ritual. Gerry Luglug saw Coppola throw down his cap and swear, "Shit, why didn't they show us this before? I want that for the film." Lily Luglug, who led the Ifugao extras along with her husband Gerry, Roben, and Benjamin Cappelman remembered forming a similarly impression. It seemed to her that Coppola was "in love" with the Ifugao extras since he was so reluctant to let them leave. Some of the Ifugao people even said that they shouldn't show Coppola any more rituals; otherwise they would never be allowed to go home.

Edgar on set in his warrior costume. (Edgar Dupingay)

In December 1976, the Ifugao extras completed their contract with the production company and returned home. In contrast to their trip down to the set, Lily Luglug made sure they traveled comfortably. They rode in air-conditioned coasters and were escorted by the local police in every province that they drove to. When they reached Dalton Pass – the beginning of the mountains - Gerry Luglug told the police to go home, "Baka kami pa ang mag-escort sa inyo dito" (maybe we had better escort you from here on).

In our interviews, the former Ifugao extras recalled their participation in the film with a mixture of fondness and smugness. Their having been part of the filming is more important to the Ifugao than the film itself. Benjamin Cappelman said, "You feel proud that you're part of the film but first it was just about the money." He recalled that he was paid about $500 a week for managing the Ifugao extras, and the exchange rate then was P7 per $. Prior to the filming, he was earning P350 a month as a teacher.

For Edgar Dupingay, one of the on-screen extra actors, "seeing the movie filmed, it lessened my belief…. In the movie, you are attracted with them, you are believing what is being performed there. But, when I saw it for myself, it lessened my interest. Now, I only take in the history of the movie. Now, I don't believe already—once I have seen it, I know it is not true… In my experience there, at least by myself, I have done what they call filming. I stand in front of a camera and it's even an American film. It's a good experience for myself, when it comes to film. I'm a common person here, but I have experience. I was trained, for a short time, in martial arts for the film and even firing guns. Only we didn't operate the cannon… We learned how to load, to really attack and capture the object. It's like being a soldier without entering the military."

Edgar remembered that he even went to Bayombong, Nueva Viscaya (the nearest cinema) to see the film and was dismayed by how many scenes were missing. "I didn't even see my face there. I was very eager to see Brando with us. That was the scene where Brando investigated Sheen. We were dragging Martin Sheen to him."

Lily Luglug, who led the recruiting of the Ifugao group explained, "It was fun because it helped a lot of people here. They experienced traveling to a far place, there was good food. It was like a vacation for most of them. No hard work! We were pampered. There were truckloads of ducks and chickens. Drinks all over the place, lanzones (a delicious lowland fruit), toilet paper. For me, when I saw the making of the film I lost interest in watching other films. I don't get so excited so much because I know they fake it. It must have been a nice experience for the other women too. They traveled, they were a community together, they liked doing what they were asked to do, and some met future husbands."

All in all, our interviewees suggested that being in a Hollywood film and contributing to its ending was no big deal to the worldly Ifugao, really. It was fun while it lasted, and then life went on as usual and films thereafter lost their luster. No one could have said this better than Benjamin Cappelman. When we first asked him to tell us about his experiences on the set, he replied: "Apocalypse Now? That's Apocalypse Yesterday already!"

-----------------


[1] Coppola, E. 1979 Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now (London: Faber & Faber) and her documentary on the shoot, Hearts of Darkness.

[2] See Worcester, D. "Field sports among the wild men of Northern Luzon" National Geographic 22(3), 1911: 215-267; Worcester, D. "Head-hunters of Northern Luzon" National Geographic 23(9), 1912: 833-930; Worcester, D. "The non-Christian peoples of the Philippines-with an account of what has been done for them under American Rule" National Geographic 24(11), 1913: 1157-1256.

[3] The sacrifice of a carabao is part of rituals to cure sickness and misfortune as well as to honor the dead.

The images are courtesy of Lily and Gerry Luglug and Edgar Dupingay. The text is excerpted from a larger collaborative research study by Deirdre McKay (Keele University) and Padmapani Perez (University of the Philippines Baguio City and PhD candidate, Leiden University).

Versions of it appear in Flip Magazine (2003, v.2, n.3, pp. 29-33, 90-91) and the Filipino e-zine Our Own Voice
http://www.ourownvoice.com/essays/essay2004a-3.shtml.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Notes from the Field

This year, as part of the ESRC's festival of Social Science, the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) is running a series of outreach activities in collaboration with various partners, looking at the connections between people, plants and food. The events are open to everyone. Details of the two Open Days and the screening programme are found below, as well as in the attached publicity material. The events are free but booking is required. To book a free place email:
education@therai.org.uk or phone: 020 7387 0455.

Details of the events:

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF PLANTS Saturday 7th March 11:00am-4:00pm, Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, TW9-3AB.

This is a daytime event where anthropologists and ethnobotanists will demonstrate the (often overlooked) interconnections between the lives of plants and people. Through films, talks, hands-on learning activities and exhibitions, participants will explore how plants affect the lives
of individuals around the world, in medicine, food, materials, and rituals. The event will form part of Kew's 250 anniversary, highlighting its Breathing Life Programme, as well as forming part of the International Year of Natural Fibers. Topical concerns such as conservation, climate change, biodiversity and complimentary medecine will be explored through collaborative research being undertaken by Kew and the University of Kent.

EXPLORING FOOD, CONNECTING COMMUNITIES Sunday 8th March
10:30-4:30, Clore Centre British Museum, Great Russel St. London.

This event aims to raise public awareness of local food projects within th UK and abroad, and foster future collaboration betweeen associated groups of individuals. Presentations given by anthropologists, journalists, and organisations such as Sustain, The Soil Association, and Slow Food UK will accompany information stalls, and hands-on learning activities. A central theme of the event will be to explore how the International Slow Food Movement has inspired local food projects and the ways in which the movement's ideas of local, sustainable food production have been adapted to suit different community needs. The event aims to address questions such as: How have food projects and healthy eating/cooking campaigns helped to generate awareness and shift consumer attitudes? What are some of the difficulties faced by farmers and others involved in food production? How can we address concerns regarding accessibility and affordability? What are some of the problems with our current food production system?

UPSTAIRS@THE RAI FILM SCREENINGS: PEOPLE, PLANTS, FOOD & FILM
(9th-11th March)

Following the two outreach days on the first weekend of March, there will be a series of film screenings and discussion evenings that follow up on the subjects of people, plants and food. These screenings will take place at the screening room in the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Monday 9th March: 6:30-8:30pm
Uncle Poison (1998) Ricardo Leizaola, 60 mins; followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker

Filmed in the city of Caracas, capital of Venezuela, Uncle Poison is an intimate portrayal of a traditional faith healer, set against the backdrop of his community's Easter celebrations . Every day Benito Reyes receives people at his house looking for all sorts of cures. Through the
personal testimony of the healer, this documentary looks at his role as a mediator between the social, natural and spiritual worlds.

Tuesday 10th March: 6:30-8:30pm
Betelnut Bisnis (2004) Chris Owen, 52 min,
Q&A session with Eric Hirsch (Head of Anthropology, Brunel Univ.)

Betelnut is one of the most widely used narcotics in the world. Many families living in coastal areas of Papua New Guinea, where it is grown, have come to depend on betelnut for their livelihood (trading small quantities of the nut up form the coast to sell in thier local markets)
as well as feeding their addiction to the drug itself. For many, the betelnut trade is the only source of cash income to pay for basic needs such as food, school fees and medecine. This is a story of one such family -Lukas Kaima and his wife Kopu- as told by their friend and close
neighbour, Chris Owen, an Australian expatriate.

Wednesday 11th March: 6:30-8:30pm
*Two student films
The Land on which we Stand (2007) Rebecca Payne, 31 min; Granada Centre of Visual Anthropology, Manchester University

This film gives us a glimpse into the life of the Landmatters Co-operative, a community of 11 adults and 4 children living in benders and yurts in rural Devon as they develop a permaculture project. Although the group own the 42 acres of land, it was originally bought for agricultural purposes and they do not have planning permision to use it for residential purposes. The film follows the group as they fight for permission to live on the land in order to create a self-reliant way of living that doesn't depend on fossil fuels.

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (2008) Tate LeFevre, 18 min; NYU

How can a radical activist movement based on limited participation in the capitalist system use the mainstream media to further its goals? This film follows members of the Freegan movement in New York City as they dumster dive, cook feasts with salvaged food and give interview to
Oprah-all while managing their own difficult relationship with the media and each other.

FREE BUT BOOKING REQUIRED: 0207 387 0455, Nafisa Fera,
education@therai.org.uk

Posted by Patrick Laviolette at 1:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

AT THE DEPT. OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

STARTING SEPTEMBER 2009

Please inform undergraduates and other potential students about this new MA programme for which further details can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/digital-anthropology

The new MA is based in the Material and Visual Culture group at UCL. It reflects the fact that more and more of our projects, both students and staff, have been focused on the impact of new digital technologies, and this is something we expect to see increase still further in the future. Recently we were joined by Graeme Were (museums and collections) who has been working on digitalisation projects for museum collections, and Paul Basu (appointed to the Institute of Archaeology) who has an extensive new project on digital curation. Both of them were originally trained in our group and will lecture on the new MA. Also Paolo Favero joined us on a temporary basis and has been working on the digital city in Delhi and the impact of Flickr. We have been enabled by UCL to strengthen this team with the appointment of a permanent member of staff dedicated to this MA (see advert below). All of this suggested a movement in the direction of digital technologies as a research topic. Further as you will see in the details on our site we have a wide range of digital PhD projects from brain training games to mobile phones in Romania to more museum related projects.

We hope that the new MA in combination with this new research will help make UCL a centre for such digital anthropology projects and complement our strengths in more traditional material and visual culture such as photography, consumption and heritage. This does not replace the current MA in Material and Visual Culture which will continue.

Digital technologies have become ubiquitous. From Facebook, Youtube and Flickr to PowerPoint and Second Life. Museum displays migrate to the internet, family communication in the Diaspora is dominated by new media, artists work with digital films and images. Anthropology and ethnographic research is fundamental to understanding the local consequences of these innovations, and to create theories that help us acknowledge, understand and engage with them. Today’s students need to become proficient with digital technologies as research and communication tools. Through combining technical skills with appreciation of social effects, students will be trained for further research and involvement in this emergent world.

This MA brings together three key components in the study of digital culture:

1. Skills training in digital technologies, including our own Digital Lab, from internet and visual arts to e-curation and digital ethnography.

2. Anthropological theories of virtualism, materiality/immateriality and digitisation.

3. Understanding the consequences of digital culture through the ethnographic study of its social and regional impact.

Bursaries
There is a £5,000 annual bursary specifically for this and the MA in Material and Visual Culture, as well as 3 x £1,000 bursaries for all anthropology MA programmes. All those who have submitted an application by 30 June 2009 will automatically be considered and no additional application form is necessary.

The programme is suitable both for those with a prior degree in anthropology but also for those with degrees in neighbouring disciplines who wish to be trained in anthropological and related approaches to digital culture. There is scope for those with specialist interests to work closely with designers, curators, communication specialists as well as our own digital studio. In addition to its importance for careers such as media, design and museums, digital technology is also integral to development, theoretical and applied anthropology.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings

UCL Department of Anthropology

Applications are invited for a permanent lectureship in Digital Anthropology. The successful applicant will be responsible for, and will teach within, our new MA programme in Digital Anthropology and contribute to general teaching in Material and Visual Culture. They will carry out research in Digital Anthropology and contribute to normal administrative duties within the UCL Department of Anthropology.

Applicants should have a PhD and begun researching in the field of Digital Anthropology. Applications from qualified candidates specialised in any area of the world are welcome. Further particulars are available on http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/main/index.htm.

This appointment is available from 1st August 2009 and the salary will be on the UCL scale Grade 7 in the range: £32,458 - £35,469 pa plus £2,781 pa London Allowance.

A UCL application form may be downloaded from the following link
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/docs/download_forms/job_app.doc.

Applications consisting of the application form, a CV, the names and contact details (certainly email) of three referees and a cover letter describing the candidate’s research interests and teaching expertise should all be sent electronically to the Departmental Administrator, Mrs Alena Kocourek, email: a.kocourek@ucl.ac.uk .
Closing date: 1st April 2009.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Announcements and Listings

Paris, Musée du Quay Branly, 11-12 March, 2009.

Organisers: Caterina Pasqualino (CNRS)
Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo)

A.T. Domenge et P. Doble
Performance de M. Barceló et J. Nadj, 2006

A major international symposium on the intersection between contemporary art, anthropology, and performance, co-sponsored by the French-Norwegian Research Foundation and CNRS.

Among the highlights are visual anthropologist Lucien Taylor, film-maker Marthe Torshaug, artist (film-maker & photographer) Craigie Horsfield, artists Miquel Barcelo and Barthélémy Togo, as well as anthropologist George Marcus, and performance theorist Richard Schechner.

Further enquiries on the website

Registration to Caterina Pasqualino:

Posted by Patrick Laviolette at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Conferences and other events

I wanted to draw your attention to Collective Access, an open source collections management program that can be modified and made to fit any kind of collection. It's a great resource for democratizing the process of making collections digital, moving away from proprietary software packages, and is great for rethinking and making flexible ways of iorganising knowledge around material/visual/digital objects.

Posted by Haidy L Geismar at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Posted to Good Links