Workshop with Stephanie Spray

Posted on April 15, 2015 by metafactory

Stephanie Spray is a visiting fellow with the Intermedia Workshop (with support from the South Asia Institute). She is an award winning documentary filmmaker, currently finishing her PhD through the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory in Anthropology at Harvard University. Her latest directorial project is titled MANAKAMANA.

In the workshop Stephanie will discuss her film Manakamana and her work in Nepal with a community of itinerant musicians called the Gandharba as well as her practice as an anthropologist and filmmaker.  Sponsored by Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas in Austin.

You can learn more about her work at her website: http://www.stephaniespray.com

Tuesday, April 21st. 2015. 3pm-5:30pm
Studio 4D (CMB 4.122)

http://moody.utexas.edu/about/facilities/cmb/cmb-4122-rtf-studio-4d

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Imagining Manipur

Posted on March 28, 2015 by metafactory

Installation by Jogendro Singh Kshetrimayum.

imagining Manipur

There are 387 photo images all together, 273 of which were generated by the image search of “Manipur” on Google (generated during the months of April and May 2014). The remaining 114 images are from my field visits to Manipur in 2009, 2011 and 2013. The photos are all in 4X6 prints. The images from the ethnographic fieldwork are merged, without any distinct boundary, with the images generated by Google search engine. The area enclosed by the seven vitrines is a reflection of the ‘work space’ where I struggle to write about Manipur. There are papers, articles, drafts, corrections and rejections. The copies of The Sangai Express, locally published in English and Manipuri, were collected during the field visits. The piles of American Ethnologist and American Anthropologist, stacked up or spread out, are indices of the production of ‘anthropological knowledge’ and its uneven distribution. In one of the shelves of the first vitrine to the left, there is a receipt of the books on Manipur that I checked out from the Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL). PCL has more than 300 books and documents on Manipur in its collection. Some of them are hard to find in the libraries of Manipur.

The reflections on the glass panels create some interesting effects for the images – some of which were happy accidents and some deliberate. The exhibition is part of the final project in Craig Campbell’s Intermedia and Aesthetics (Spring 2014).

 

Jogendro Singh Kshetrimayum
Graduate Student Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
jogendro@gmail.com
Venue: Next to SAC 4.114 – 4.120
Time: Spring 2014 – Summer 2014

 

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Ex-Situ Workshop in UK

Posted on March 12, 2015 by metafactory

structures3bEx-Situ co-organizer and Dept. of Anthropology affiliate, Yoke Sum Wong (Lancaster University) has organized a symposium and writing salon for this May.

Download programme.pdf

STRUCTURES OF FEELINGS A SYMPOSIUM AND WRITING SALON

15 MAY 2015

The title of this meeting is inspired by Raymond Williams’ Structures of Feeling essay (1977) in which we explore “a kind of feeling and thinking which is indeed social and material, but each in an embryonic phase before it can become fully articulate and defined exchange.”

It is this embryonic phase that we give attention to in the experiencing of architecture as immaterial and material and as we navigate its configurations – negotiating towards the affective consciousness of spatial form/s that is at once social and personal – emergent and emerging – in an ‘interrelating continuity’. How do spatial forms contribute to, as Susan Lepselter writes, an ethnography of emergent feeling? How do we feel architecture and world it – taking worlding as a way of apprehension and comprehension – giving it a structure that we make (non)sense of.

The bridging of thought and feeling, the sensations that we encounter in built environments – despair, happiness, joy, fear, dread, hope, disgust nostalgic, warmth and so on – are often evoked instantaneously before we begin to stitch the narratives together or to grasp why we are attuned to the spaces the way we do. Another way of framing it is through Kathleen Stewart’s ‘atmospheric attunements’ which “attend to the quickening of nascent forms, marking their significance in sounds and sights and the feel of something’s touch or something penetrating…[turning] a potentiality into a threshold to the real.”

The structure of this gathering is based on the writing workshops held at The University of Texas, Austin, and the Ex-Situ Workshop in Marfa, Texas. As opposed to the conventional academic paper, we seek the “embryonic” eg. creative short pieces that reflect the theme (broadly) and are no more than 750 words or a presentation piece of no more than 15 images or 10 minutes of video/audio productions. We also welcome all forms of experimental work.

At present, the call for participation is internal and we hope to hear an expression of interest by 31 March. Instead of an abstract, we seek an idea, a theme, an image.Our aim is to have three presentations per hour to provide time for discussion.

Please respond to y.wong@lancaster.ac.uk or adam.kaasa@rca.ac.uk

download the poster: structures3

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Director Joshua Oppenheimer in Discussion

Posted on March 8, 2015 by metafactory

627-627x336Joshua Oppenheimer, Oscar nominated director of The Act of Killing (2012) and Look of Silence (2014), will be at the University of Texas, Austin for a public discussion on his practice as a documentary filmmaker.  This discussion will cover a wide range of themes led by faculty members from Anthropology and Radio Television and Film with time for the audience to ask questions of Oppenheimer.  Some of the themes we will explore include documentary aesthetics, ethics and collaboration in filmmaking, approaches to cultural difference, the promise of documentary in the aftermath of violence.

Joshua Oppenheimer is a multiple-award winning documentary filmmaker and recipient of MacArthur Genius Award.

Thursday, March 12th.

3:30-6:20 pm.  Screening of the Act of Killing (director’s cut)
7-9 pm.  Discussion with Joshua Oppenheimer

Location: Belo Center for New Media (BMC) 1.202

Free and open to the public

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Intermedia Fellows

Posted on January 26, 2015 by metafactory

The Intermedia Workshop is pleased to introduce two fellows for January 2015. Stephanie Spray (visiting from Harvard University) and Samuel Cepeda (visiting from Tecnológico de Monterrey).  Stephanie and Sam will be making use of the workshop, attending departmental activities, and sharing their work in screenings and workshops.

Stephanie Spray joins us with support from the Department of Anthropology and the South Asia Institute.

Samuel Cepeda joins us with support from the Department of Anthropology and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies.

 

Screen Shot from Spray's Manakamana.

Screen Shot from Spray’s Manakamana.

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Intermedia fellow: Samuel Cepeda

Posted on January 26, 2015 by metafactory

01_Clods_h_NN_52x35cmsSamuel Cepeda [samcepeda.com] was born in Nuevo León, México. He’s a media artist and has been doing research and teaching since 2000 in private and public universities in México. He is currently a full time artist and researcher working on his dissertation at Tecnológico de Monterrey in the PhD program of humanities studies in science and technology. He has also worked for media companies as Televisa, ReporteIndigo.com and About.com (a NY Times company), creating old and new media content for massive distribution. His work is mainly engaged with the boundaries between science & technology, visual studies and anthropology; often questioning the social and scientific ways of building realities, trying to broaden the vision of any reality we could be used to.

Screen Shot 2015-01-20 at 12.21.58 PMAt UT austin, trying to expand his research experience in Digital Visual Artist networks, Cepeda will participate in our academic community by attending workshops, public lectures and meeting informally with students and faculty at the Intermedia Workshop,
Anthropology Department, College of Communications and College of Fine
Arts.

mailbags_(2005)_120x85

Feel free to contact him:

http://samcepeda.com
t – @elfusible
fb/samcepeda
g+ samuelcepeda

01_How_human_can_digital_be_135x90

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Multispecies Tailgate

Posted on October 11, 2014 by metafactory

Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Multispecies Tailgate party at Monkeywrench Books.

Images courtesy of Jimmy Beveridge.

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Multispecies Tailgate

Posted on October 3, 2014 by metafactory

A Discussion On Survival & Syncretic Biocultural Lifeways

Monkey Wrench Books 110 East North Loop. Austin, TX.
Sunday, October 5th 6:30-8:30 pm. 2014

Featuring readings and discussions of four just released books:

Aesop’s Anthropology: A Multispecies Approach, by John Hartigan
Agitating Images: Photography against History in Indigenous Siberia, by Craig Campbell
The Multispecies Salon, edited by Eben Kirksey
Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging False Promise of Genetic Science, by Kim Tallbear.

TAILGATE01v1

These authors are innovating new ways to work with images, to think about indigeneity, and to recognize the nonhumans that shape our daily lives. A lively discussion will ensue. We’ll be making of Acorn Mush with some words about survival and syncretic biocultural lifeways. Scott Webel (Museum of Natural and Artificial Ephemerata) will be presenting on local figs and the multispecies community of consumers that converge on the tree. Tamara Becerra Valdez (Folklorica) will share excerpts from her workshop on wildcrafting and Craig Campbell will report on pecans and the urban foraging scene.

Poster: 2014 Multispecies Tailgate

TAILGATE01v2

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New affiliate

Posted on September 26, 2014 by metafactory

The Intermedia Workshop is pleased to introduce a new affiliate visiting from Pakistan: Baroosh Ahsan.

Baroosh Ahsan born in Pakistan, has done her MFA in Photography and video production from Fatima Jinnah Women University. She is currently working at Fatima Jinnah Design department. She had also worked with different institutions for establishment of photography department and developed courses for them. She had done exhibited her work inside Pakistan. She had worked with different organizations for helping youth at different levels. Her work is focused on artistic side of nature. Her work related to old trees had helped people realize the damage it’s causing to natural beauty around Rawalpindi, Pakistan, due to deforestation and negligence.

Photo Credit: Baroosh Ahsan.

Photo Credit: Baroosh Ahsan.

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Slow Ethnography

Posted on August 27, 2014 by metafactory

Artist-ethnographer Zoe Bray will demonstrate her ethnographic-painting technique over three days while she creates a portrait of Anthropologist Kathleen Stewart at the Blanton Museum of Art. The demonstration will be followed by a round-table discussion of time and duration, as well as uncon- ventional ethnographic tools and texts in ethnography and humanities research. Featuring Zoe Bray (Center for Basque Studies, UNR), Craig Campbell (UT, Anthropology), Ward Keeler (UT, Anthropology), Fiona P. McDonald (Anthropologist/Researcher, New Knowledge Organization, NYC), Sonia Seeman (UT, Ethnomusicology) and Kathleen Stewart (UT, Anthropology).

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Zoe Bray painting NYU professor Fred Myers. October 2013. American Museum of Natural History, NYC. Photo: Roderick Mikens

Ethnographic-painting demonstration

From 1-4pm in the main atrium of the Blanton Museum of Art, Zoe Bray will be creating a portrait of anthropologist, Katie Stewart.

September 5th – 7th, 2014 1:00-4:00pm
Blanton Museum of Art

Slow Ethnography Roundtable

Monday, Sept. 8th, 2014
5:30pm – 7:00pm
Glickman Center (CLA Building) 1.302B

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Zoe Bray painting NYU professor Fred Myers. October 2013. American Museum of Natural History, NYC. Photo: Roderick Mikens

compactUT-02Presented by the Intermedia Workshop with support from the Blanton Museum of Art. This event is co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute through the Viola S. Hoffman and George W. Hoffman Lectureship in Liberal Arts and Fine Arts. Also thanks to the department of Anthropology, and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. We are also grateful to the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada Reno for their support.

We recognize the curatorial collective, Ethnographic Terminalia, for their original collaboration with Zoe Bray in September, 2013.

panel03

Zoe Bray painting NYU professor Fred Myers. October 2013. American Museum of Natural History, NYC. Photo: Fiona P. McDonald

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