*postings from 2010*

From last class, I asked that you prepare a half-page description of your latest ‘obstruction’ (16×16 installation of your intermedia project).  Please send this to me by November 5th (so I can share them with the rest of the class).

Witnesses

You should be finished reading Ranciere’s The politics of aesthetics and have begun to read The Emancipated Spectator.  I’d like you to also consider submitting an article of particular interest to you (and relevance to the class) as a tip of the hat to the planned but abandoned “Theory Surge” section of this course.  We may read one or two of these articles by the end of the semester.

November 3, 2010: Drive down to Houston

• 1:00 – 1:30pm:    Meet at the Menil Gallery
• 1:30 – 3:00pm:    Explore the gallery as a group
• 3:00 – 4:00pm:   Menil Archive tour
• 5:00 – 7:00pm:   Free time . . . go for dinner?
• 7:00 – 9:00pm:   Art & Activism reception

November 10

• Final discussion of 2nd Obstruction
• Kobena Mercer and Ranciere

November 17

• I’ll be at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association
• This will be a good opportunity to watch True Meaning of Pictures and to consult with your classmates about the progress of your final project.

Links & other stuff

From Elizabeth (Lee):

Asteroid discoveries 1980-2010
http://www.arm.ac.uk/neos/1980-2010/
The year and asteroid count are in the lower left corner and tick by in “real” time.  Watch for Jupiter along the sides of the video.

Book review of “the trashing of margaret mead”
http://savageminds.org/2010/10/13/the-trashing-of-margaret-mead/

From Chelsi:

http://www.garthclark.com/Artist-Info.cfm?ArtistsID=87&Object

The plan for this class is to meet at Cafe Medici at 9am.  The location of this cafe is located at 2222 Guadalupe (across from the Harry Ransom Center).  We’ll meet and discuss Nikki’s story board before heading over to the HRC for 10am where we’ll do a tour of the exhibition “Discovering the Language of Photography: The Gernsheim Collection.”

Readings

• Clifford, James. 1981. On ethnographic surrealism. Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 4: 539-564. linked download.
• Clifford, James. 1991. Documents: A decomposition. Visual Anthropology Review 7, no. 1: 62-83.  download: clifford1991.

Activities

• This week we’ll be doing individual consultations to discuss your final project and your skills plan.  These consultations will be organized by appointment.
• You should be updating your Tumblr site (I’m watching you!) or suggesting an alternative (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) to allow fellow class mates to follow your progress or refer to your project.

Planning for September 29

• Read, Aesthetics I:
  • Stewart, Kathleen. 2003. Arresting images. In Aesthetic Subjects.
  • stewart2003
• Review:
  • Marcus, George. 2009. Traffic in art and anthropology: How fieldwork in Theatre Arts might inform the reinvention of fieldwork in anthropology. In Aesthetics and Anthropology.
  • Laister, Judith. 2009. Acting in heterotropia. Other, third and real spaces in public art and theory. In Aesthetics and Anthropology.
• Present:
  • Final version of your ‘documentary’

Here is the Buchler article that was missing from the readings this week: buchler2004

Readings for next week

Visual Anthropology III

Marcus, George. 2009. Traffic in art and anthropology: How fieldwork in Theatre Arts might inform the reinvention of fieldwork in anthropology. In Aesthetics and Anthropology. marcus2009

Laister, Judith. 2009. Acting in heterotropia. Other, third and real spaces in public art and theory. In Aesthetics and Anthropology. laister2009

* not required:

Greverus, Ina-Maria. 2009. Touching life: Anthropological encounters with aesthetics. greverus2009

Tasks for next week

• Skills plan for your intermedia project
  • What technical skills do you need to gain to finish your project?
  • How will you go about doing this?
  • Be as pragmatic and straightforward as you can be.
• Storyboard for your Documentary
  • Be prepared to present it in class.  Remember this is Hollywood, you’ve only got thirty seconds, baby.  Really, though, the better the presentation, the better the feedback.  Which means clear and succinct.  You should have the theoretical/historical/ethnographic arcs fairly clear at this point.  I’d like us to be able to talk as much about aesthetic choices, decisions, and resolutions.
    • What are the key points?
    • What essential details need to be present?
    • etc.

Readings for Sept. 15: Visual Anthropology II

Buchler, Pavel. 2004. Making nothing happen: Notes for a seminar. in Visualizing Anthropology: Experimenting with Image-Based Ethnography.

Grimshaw, Anna and Amanda Ravetz. 2004. Introduction. in Visualizing Anthropology: Experimenting with Image-Based Ethnography.

Grimshaw, Anna. 2004. Eyeing the field: New Horizons for Visual Anthropology in Visualizing Anthropology: Experimenting with Image-Based Ethnography.

Grimshaw, Anna. 2005. Reconfiguring the ground: Art and the visualization of anthropoogy. In Anthropologies of Art, ed. Mariet Westermann, 195-220. Clark Art Institute, July 8.

Download Sept.15 reading package here:sept15

Anthropology of the Visual, Part I

Market From Here, 1997

This week I’m asking you to read some material that will help to contextualize two streams of work that will be useful for our intermedia inquiry:

• Visual Anthropology
• Anthropology of Art

Please read the following articles for our class on September 8th.

1. Hockings, Paul. Ed. 1995. Principles of Visual Anthropology. 2nd ed. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Preface, Forward, and Introduction
2. Bateson, Gregory. 1995. Style, grace, and information in primitive art.  In The Anthropology of Art: A Reader.
3. Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1995. Split representation in the art of Asia and America.  In The Anthropology of Art: A Reader.

You can download them as a zipped file here: 19 mb zipped folder

For the September 8th class we’ll also be explicitly discussing the “Market from Here” installation (from our first readings, Calzadilla and Marcus conversation).  Please also bring materials and proposals for you intermedia project.

Also, please go to the Tumblr.com website and register for an account.  We’ll talk about this in class but it would be great if you’d all already figured out a little bit about it and maybe given it a little trial run.

-Craig

Market from Here