Author: Daisy Greetham

Categories
Art film

Leviathan: An Essay on the Sensorial Turn of Visual Anthropology

The present perspective of anthropology is one more multi-disciplinary, more experimental and challenging, than its text-based, single-narrative past. Visual anthropology in particular, as a subdiscipline, provides new ways to approach and produce ethnographic studies and anthropological knowledge that are much more creative and inventive, blending cultural exploration with the artistic avant-garde. Within this subdiscipline, the applications of sensory filmmaking to ethnography are creating new representations and cinematic affect, as anthropologists experiment with visuals and soundscapes to produce new narratives and portrayals. 

One such example in visual anthropology is the work of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel. Both established anthropologists, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor are large contributors to Harvard’s Sensory Ethnographic Lab (SEL), a facility that promotes this kind of creative innovation in anthropology, aiming to generate new perspectives and modes of exploration. As well as working with the sensory, the pair seem often to play with observation and the lenses of objectivity and subjectivity in their co-created works, with projects such as Caniba (2017), an experimental display of convicted cannibal Issei Sagawa, and De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022), an artistic exploration of the human body, attracting such discussions on narrative and affect. Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s most avidly discussed project does not stray from this approach and confronts its subject matter with such experimentation that it has been recognised and commended outside of its discipline, in the greater world of cinema. This project is Leviathan (2012), a cinematic ethnographic study of the commercial fishing industry on the great and treacherous Northern Atlantic Sea. 

At 87 enervating minutes, the ethnographic film expresses to its audience the gruelling and dangerous occupation of fishermen on a Massachusetts fishing boat, playing into the nauseating sensations of the cold, perilous life at sea through acrobatic camera work, long-lasting shots and comfortless diegetic sound. Its experimental delivery and content helped it bridge the gap between consumers of anthropology, and the audience and critics of art and film. This essay will discuss Leviathan as an anthropological work of sensorial approach, exploring the methods and intentions of the filmmakers in creating an ethnography of commercial fishing in such a way. Separated into how and why, this paper will use theory and literature to analyse Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor award-winning piece and its success as a sensorial and anthropological audiovisual investigation. 

How Castaing-Taylor and Paravel Take a Sensory Approach

With camera-work alone, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel create a highly sensory work that displays the dangers of this occupation. Throughout the hour and a half piece, the constantly moving, unordered erraticism of the camera in scenes is nearly motion sickness-inducing, chaotically fixating yet untethered. This is because of the filmmakers’ use of GoPro cameras for such scenes, attached to chains, propellers, fishermen’s helmets, or loosely placed among dead fish or the slippery decks (Connor, 2019), in order to capture chaotic and destabilising moments aboard. This choice of camera work differs from the pair’s previous, more static films such as Sweetgrass (2009), in a way that reflects the atmosphere and conveys their exploration in a more accurate way than tripod-mounted shots of previous works would. The ability for these small cameras and their unrestrained movement to close in on objects and textures – fish parts, rusted metal, bloody seawater – further evokes sensory experience for its spectator. As David MacDougall writes in The Corporeal Image (2006), “In exaggerating proximity, the close-up brings to the cinema a quasitactility absent in ordinary human relations,” (MacDougall, 2006, p.22), and considering this, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s free-moving cameras allow for a tangible quality that further reflects the environment of the trawler in detail, and animates ethnography in new, stimulating ways. What’s more, each shot is long-lasting, all at least two minutes long (Unger, 2017, p.6), allowing an audience to really perceive the senses and textures of the shots in all their detail. This style of filming not only creates a sensorial affect for the audience, who naturally embody the film’s “unmoored, discombobulated” feeling (Westmoreland, Luvaas, 2015, p.2), but allows the nature of this environment and profession to remain undirected. At the 33rd minute, we watch a close-up sequence of a Petrel attempting to feed from the last catch, the shot is shaky and blurred, focused from below, capturing the animal’s wings and neck as it reaches for fish carcasses; in any other method of filming, this shot would likely be unsuccessful, recording something much less than the natural process of this undisturbed animal in action. This method of filming creates a de-intentionalised cinematography of sorts, an uncontrolled, sensorial natural enactment of the chaotic life Paravel and Castaing-Taylor try to convey, the interactions of natural and man-made processes, the colossality of the North Atlantic, unperturbed by choreographed approach. In its erratic, observational manner, “the film takes the shape of the system it describes” as Eamonn Connor writes (Connor, 2019). These chaotic, violently lulling scenes are coupled with portraiture of the fishermen, slightly more motionless, intimate vignettes of the life aboard that are humanising yet unconflicting from the harshness of the ship’s exterior. Here, these shots add to the sensorial experience, making the viewer once again unaccustomed to the ever-moving torrent depicted outside. These filming methods used by Paravel and Castaing-Taylor are one of many ways they have taken a sensory approach to ethnography, creating an embodiment of the dangerous environment these workers have to face in industrial fishing, as well as the uninterrupted nature that merges with humanity here. The camera work in Leviathan is “about movements and experience—affects, including non-human affects.”, as Andrew Murphie writes (Murphie, 2014, p.13).

The anthropologists also use sound in their film as a sensorial element that recreates the somewhat horrifying bodily experience of this life on the trawler. Using only diegetic noise, Leviathan’s sound design consists of crashing waves, naturally colossal in their volume, scraping metal from fishing equipment, howling winds, and occasionally the muffled chatter of the men aboard. Edited and composed by fellow SEL pioneer Ernst Karel, the team create a soundscape in this piece that, like its visuals, is all at once disorienting and palpable. Using the recorded sound from the GoPro microphones and later amplifying these with added audio, from sound libraries, that only heighten the audio, Karel distorts and alters the sound effects to create a “subjective sonic environment that is both “concrete”- deriving from the diegesis of the film – and “expressive” as it is manipulated for effect and metaphorical meaning.” (Unger, 2017, p.13). Sometimes silent, sometimes multi-textured, Leviathan’s sound is always jarring and discordant, unpleasant to the point of unnerving in it’s depiction of this job and environment, not unlike the kind of soundscape created for a horror film, with similar bodily affect induced. Though manipulated and expressed by Karel, textured metallic groans and auditory moments of engulfing water reflect the regular experiences of the job, that contrast vastly to the ones of an audience in a theatre, or home setting. Here, the film appears to display a sensory experience true to life on the boat, and it contrasts with the sensory experience of its screening location (in most cases). This sonic experience creates a depth to the ethnography, immersing the audience further into the circumstances Castaing-Taylor and Paravel try to present. Here, the team do as Steve Feld said of Colin Turnbull’s use of sound, which is “ask what it means to live and feel as a person in this place… (their) recordings signal that the concept of  ‘‘habitus’’  must include a history of listening.” (Feld, Bennels, 2004, p.462). This listening journey is drastic and extreme, cacophonous and unpleasant – edited or not. Leviathan’s soundscape also encapsulates the film: beginning before the picture becomes clear, and continuing over the rolling credits, creating a sonic environment that “exists and extends beyond what the camera can capture, and therefore, what the viewer can see” (Unger, 2017, p.13). This becomes a particularly ethnographic approach to the senses, in that it expresses a continual truth of the environment, that is not formulated only for an 87-minute showing, nor a pair of filmmakers, but for the life and experience they both depict. In this last 5 minutes and 15 seconds of audio, the audience sensorially encounters a tinny eeriness, that haunts the surrounding screening environment as a reminder of this formidable landscape as far as Castaing-Taylor, Paravel and Karel can stretch it out.

As the soundscape remains only diegetic and obscured, and the visuals are often dark and unfocused, the narrative of Leviathan remains predominantly unled. Driven only by content, temporality only shown through alternations of dark and light skies, the film’s narrative is almost a non-narrative, veering far from most traditional ethnography, and even cinema. No main characters, distinct dialogue or clear chronology mean the message and investigation of the project is conveyed only through the senses it evokes – feelings of disorientation, suffocation, fear at the colossus create a discernable display of the extremes of commercial fishing and the life lived to undertake the occupation. Castaing-Taylor says about the footage that its “opaqueness” catalyses imagination in its audience (Lim, 2012), acting almost as a device of deeper understanding in its non-narrative; the audience conceives the environment better by being stripped of explanation, by relying on the senses instead of interview or voiceover. In this way, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s use of non-narrative heightens the sensorial experience of the film, generating embodiment, and thus instigating a better understanding of Leviathan’s meaning. 

Why Castaing-Taylor and Paravel Take a Sensory Approach

As some have been discussed previously, there are several ways that Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s sensory approach benefits Leviathan as an ethnography, and benefits it also in the world of cinema, as a piece recognised for its experimentation. One key benefit that this sensory approach engenders is ‘spectatorial subjectivity’, a phrase Westmoreland and Luvaas use to describe a result of the filmmakers’ methods. The reliance of the audiovisual piece on sensory reaction in its lack of expository sound and narrative opens it up to the same subjectivity a lot of Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s co-created works produce. Through corporeal sensation, Leviathan depicts something interpretive, a knowledge of this world of industry fishing that is dependent on the viewers’ “ability to submit themselves to an experience of alterity that denaturalises human perception and means letting go of the sovereign self” as Eamonn Connor describes it (Connor, 2019). The co-creators ask something of their audience in this sensory approach; they require a near-abandonment of the human perspective for one that is greater by focusing on the non-human aspects of this enterprise, fixating on the crashing waves, on decapitated fish. So forth, the documentary looks beyond the men aboard to the environment that surrounds them, and the horrifying effect commercial fishing has on that, in its “sonic evocation of site itself rather than privileging the individuals who live and work at the site” (Unger, 2017, p.5). Although the spectacle is a bodily experience, it is also made bigger than the body in its subjectivity. Irina Leimbacher conveys this point in The World Made Flesh (2014): “Leviathan simply extrapolates ‘sensory’ from the human body to the body of the world itself—to the bodies of matter, nature, economic exploitation,” (Leimbacher, 2014, p.39). Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s methods of subjectivity and sensoriality create sympathetic consideration not only for the fishermen, but the nature that converges with them brutally in this capitalist action.  


In terms of traditional cinematic theory, Leviathan can be seen to reflect a level of realism that extends its meaning and purpose as an anthropological film. In their sensory approach, the SEL filmmakers open their film up to an audience in a manner of embodiment, and the previously mentioned subjectivity the films camerawork creates, make the piece less configured and somewhat more depicting of the site’s reality, especially in the omniscience of it’s cameras everywhere in and around the boat. In Heretical Empiricism (1972), Pasolini suggested that the mode of realist documentary obscures its own falsehood successfully through its sensorial qualities; “This means that the camera is not felt, and that what counts is the real action” (Pasolini, Lawton, Barnett, 2005, p.216). Castaing-Taylor and Paravel maintain this concealment in their experimental methods, drawing their audience into feeling and experiencing the environment (‘real action’) rather than just watching it. In its motion sickness, its submergence, its hair-raising metallic clashing, Leviathan sutures its audience to the screen and its content: the site of this trawler in the North Atlantic. In Bazinian theory, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s piece is less of a representation of reality than a piece of reality itself, in its unorthodox and widespread capture of life from non-fixed camerawork and non-narrative. This Bazinian reality is invigorated more by the sensory approach, conveying the experience it reproduces beyond the screen, and although the film’s soundscape is manipulated, it conveys more of a reality and experience than a narrated, commentative sound design would, and thus remains more true. Leviathan has the observational and realist intention of polyperspectivity and corporeality that is “neither attuned to nor motivated by any logic of narrative comprehension.”(Landesman, 2015, p.15), and this plays into its purpose as a study with ethnographic and anthropological foundation, a discipline and study that is observational in principle.

In Leviathan, the use of a sensory approach also attains a dedication to ethnography and, to an arguable extent, ethical documentary. Since its beginning, ethnography has had a vexed relationship with its subjects and an undeniable root in colonial exploration. This problematic foundation means that in order to be ethical, ethnographic and anthropological studies require conscious and outspoken contrast from the typical orientalised angle. In the documentarians’ unorthodox techniques, Leviathan attempts to scorn this colonial orientalisation, while dedicating itself to an ethnographic approach. A key tool the film uses to do so is its embodiment. In the aforementioned use of GoPro cameras, attached to the fisherman and to the trawler’s equipment, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor distance their visuals from a disembodied, authoritative gaze, and instead place the audience into the perspective of the interlocutors. Eamonn Connor likens this sensorial camerawork to Donna Haraway and Karen Barad’s concept of diffraction, a research methodology that challenges the hierarchical relationship between researcher and researched along with other methodological binaries (Fox, 2023) of which the filmmakers’ methods can be seen to disrupt in a way that does not disavow or disrespect the way anthropology has done in the past. “The film takes the shape of the system it describes; its discursive practices are materially enacted,” Connor writes of Leviathan’s sensorial approach, “The cameras move in accordance with the flows and currents of the marine ecology in which they are submerged and attest to the idea that knowing and being are entangled material practices” (Connor, 2019). This description of the film’s carefully curated methodology and process attests to Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s commitment to the work as ethnographic, as research, and not just documentarian. In Faye Ginsberg’s significant work Decolonising Documentary On Screen and Off (2018), she also recognises Leviathan’s dedication to ethnographic practice in its sensory approach, writing about its recording methods that “Such affordances have been used to enhance the ethnographic sensibility of “being there” in its most physical and most haptic sense as was made dramatically evident” (Ginsberg, 2018, p.41). Despite this agreeance, she also criticises the extent of the film’s ethics and accountability. In the article, Ginsberg writes of the necessity for “relational documentary”, a term that describes the kind of non-fiction media that considers, with regard, its subject and the ethics of telling their stories (Ginsberg, 2018). Regarding this, she writes of Lucien Castaing-Taylor, and the SEL in general, “What all this work neglects to stress, however, is any sense of accountability for the ethical/political relationships that ethnographic and other documentary filmmakers co-construct with the subjects whose lives are central to their films” (p.42) This question of accountability is a valid one, as the filmmakers appear, aforesaid, to focus beyond the human element of life on the trawler, evoking the site itself more than the fishermen that work and live there. Considering Ginsberg’s argument, one cannot entirely say that this ethnography is decolonial, but in their GoPro aesthetics, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor create a relationship of shared authorship with their subjects that argues the point that Connor makes, creating collaboration in every key element of the film’s production, condemning a classical exertion of otherness. The ethical approach of the film is a contested argument, but an argument nonetheless. Regardless, Leviathan’s sensory methods can be seen to contradict traditional, problematic, unethical approaches to an ethnographic subject and so remain a valid reason for this experimental application.


To conclude this analysis of method and reason, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s documentary Leviathan is a practice-based anthropological piece, that is sensorial in its experimental approach. Through multiperspective camerawork in the form of untethered and attachable GoPros, temporally-suspended structure and complex, non-narrational sound design, the film creates a bodily experience in its spectators. The corporeality of Leviathan is formulated in order to express the danger and hardship of its subject: commercial fishing. In the darkness, colossality and eeriness expressed by its visuals and sound, the ethnography depicts how gruelling work aboard this Massachusetts-based fishing trawler is. It also conveys the harsh effects this world has on the surrounding nature and ecologies, going further than fixating on humanity aboard, to embody aspects of the non-human throughout. The piece becomes an ethnographic horror film of sorts in its sensorial conveyance, condemning the damage and harshness of the industry, consumerism and, more generally, the fallout of the Anthropocene. As members of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s dedication to ethnography is furthered by the sensory approach they take, allowing the film to express its message while remaining observational and also interpretable. In its effect on audiences, its tangible and experiential spectatorship, Leviathan becomes an argument for a better visual anthropology, one that is exciting and experiential, one that conveys ethnography as art. This audiovisual work has also become successful outside of an audience of anthropologists, gaining critical acclaim as an experimental piece of cinema. With this in mind, the film becomes even more of a rationale for the use of sensory approach in practice-based anthropology, and in documentary cinema in general.

Categories
Art

The Contemporary Symbiosis of Anthropology and Art

Contemporary art and its practices have evolved, expanding in awareness of the world and its audience. Modern art breaches the borders of other sympathetic disciplines as artists adopt new methods of researching and creating. One such discipline is anthropology; as art has connected with its own social and cultural contexts and impacts, artists have adopted anthropological methods and more empirical processes. 

As a holistic social field of study, anthropology observes the interconnection of a focus with all that surrounds it – nothing exists within a vacuum. In terms of methodology too, this consideration of intersectionality means contemporary anthropology takes an observational approach towards research, which considers the interlocutors and the very process of investigation. This is the approach that contemporary artists have begun to adopt, especially in the case of participation, a key anthropological method, that has existed in contemporary art too since the 1990s as an element of ‘relational aesthetics’ (Bourriaud, 1996) – a genre that explores human relations and social contexts in art, one that titularly recognises the interrelational manner of anthropology.

Anthropology, too, has been affected by its entwinement with art. Becoming more interdisciplinary and multimodal, subfields such as visual anthropology are clear evidence of contemporary art’s entanglement. Artistic processes such as painting, drawing and sculpture can be considered artistic research methods with their use in inciting enquiry and can challenge the research modes of traditional anthropology, shaping a new contemporary that borrows from the visual and sensory styles of artists.

The growing entanglement of the two disciplines is evident in contemporary spaces, as this essay will explore by looking at the examples of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (Pad Thai) (1992) and Ruangrupa’s project for Documenta 15 to explore anthropology’s use in art. To explore how artistic research methods have decentred anthropology, Kyra Sacks’ Drawn in The Field (2020) and Susan Ossman’s essay on her use of painting in visual anthropology (Making Art Ethnography (2010)) will serve as examples of the alliance between anthropology and art. Animated by these cases, this text will delve into the methodologies of both disciplines and their multifaceted functions, portraying the ways that contemporary art and contemporary anthropology exist in alignment and assist one another towards a more fluid and expanded scope of reflection, one ever-necessary in denigrating hegemonic power relations between the viewer and the viewed, the creator and the audience, the self and the other. 

Anthropological Methods As Contemporary Art Practice

Rirkrit Tiravinija is a contemporary Thai artist whose work often revolves around installations and audience participation. Focusing on the experiential rather than painting or sculpture, Tirivanija’s work is “fundamentally about bringing people together.” (Tomkins, 2005). One such example of this is the artist’s renowned 1990 work Untitled (Pad Thai), one of a series of installations that involved turning the gallery – in this case, New York’s Paula Allen Gallery – into a kitchen that cooked and served food, inviting the gallery-goers to eat and share the space communally. As is evident from the title, this example featured several Thai men and women, including Rirkrit himself, cooking and serving pad thai, integrating Thai ingredients and customs into his work and the exhibition. Despite its seeming simplicity, this artwork is grounded in several social, cultural and political intentions. As a Thai artist, Tiravinija uses the piece to remark on the Western colonial tendency of museums to isolate objects from their social and cultural contexts, and thus he recontextualises these orientalised objects by using them in an attempt to decolonise the gallery space; “In contrast, enjoying a meal is a way to really engage with and understand the other” as the artist spoke of the piece (Newell-Hanson, 2022). Often deemed the ‘Poster Boy of Relational Aesthetics’ (Perreault, 2011), Tiravanija’s Pad Thai is also a means of social interaction in the gallery space, a call for participation between the artist, the artwork, the audience and the space in which it resides. For the artist, the very serving, offering and eating of the food is the art; as Renate Dohmen writes, “It is the convivial consumption of the pad thai…that constitutes the artwork” (Dohmen, 2011, p. 35). This intention endeavours to reframe the sociality of art and art spaces, to “cross physical and imaginary boundaries” (Tiravanija, 2023), the way that relational aesthetics aspires to in its focus on the exchanges between artist and audience and the social relations that exist in art. 

Both Pad Thai’s relational aestheticism and decolonial critique are evidence of anthropology’s place among art. While decoloniality is more of an anthropological idea than a method, the contested objects Tiravanija conveys in the piece resemble the critique of orientalism and colonialism that contemporary anthropology has actively and methodologically adopted in an attempt to reshape its own problematic and displacing past. By activating the decontextualised and immobilised objects of the Western museum, Tiravanija “Looks beyond the colonizer’s perspectives”, “recognize(s) and confront(s) the discipline’s colonial legacies” and reflects upon colonial restraints just as A. Lynne Bolles writes that decolonial anthropology does (Bolles, 2023, p. 519-522). Furthermore, the artist uses anthropological methods of participation and collaboration in his adoption of the “artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space” that Nicolas Bourriaud refers to as relational aesthetics in his seminal 1996 book that defined the genre (Bourriaud, 1996, p. 113). Participation is a key anthropological method that ties in with the observant nature of the empirical discipline, and in assuming the same participatory method in this art piece, Tiravinija invites his audience to exist as part of the work, a collaborator instead of just its viewer. Furthermore, with its invitation and service, the distribution of food to the audience resembles gift exchange, a component of relational aesthetics that also comes from anthropology. Here, the anthropological notion of the gift in relational and participatory art such as Pad Thai shows how the two fields are “inextricably related” (Sansi, 2017, p. 87). The artist’s cooking and serving of food in the exhibition space engages with the ‘deep anthropological practice of listening with our ears and with our hands,’ (Rizmi, McGranahan, 2016) in the participatory and observant style that Tiravinija adopts, and it becomes evident that anthropology has had an influence on art with this work as an example.

Ruangrupa’s work for Documenta 15, too, is an example of anthropology’s influence on art practices, as the group adopted similar anthropological and ethnographic methods for Lumbung (2020). For the quinquennial art exhibition Documenta, held in Kassel, Germany, the Jakartan art collective curated the fifteenth instalment with community and collaboration in mind. Documenta 15 was centred around the concept of Lumbung, a rice barn that stores communally-produced rice as a shared future resource, focusing on the biennale as a centre of resources in this same way. As a collective rooted in collaboration and holistic social and personal art practices, Lumbung’s focus on an “alternative economy of collectivity”, “equitable distribution” and “shared resource building” (Documenta Fifteen, 2022) aligned with the group’s core values and provided the projects curatorial and thematic approach. The concept of Lumbung was also its practice; using collaboration, community and conversation to evolve and change through artist interactions, building works that do not exist independently but as a collective. This curatorial approach and practice elicited a fluid and changing collection throughout its 100-day instalment; “the venues are constantly changing: they are places in which to meet, discuss, and learn. Exhibition buildings become living rooms, and together the artists decide how to use each venue.”(Documenta Fifteen, 2022). Lumbung forms an interdisciplinary, cooperative practice that transcends traditional art in the way Ruangrupa always champions, anchored in communal values of friendship, generosity and regeneration.

Much as Tiravinija’s cooking and consumption of Pad Thai constituted the artwork, Ruangrupa’s curatorial method became the art itself, blending with the collectivity of the works and artists themselves to become an amalgam of art and practice. Ruangrupa’s project rethinks relationships, forms of exchange and participation, making sharing its practice. This case is evidence of anthropology’s further entanglement with art in its reconsiderations and reflections on practice and methodology. One way in which Documenta 15 channels anthropological methods is in its devotion to ‘deep hanging out’: coined by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, this method consists of one immersing themselves in a group or community on an informal level, observing from among them. As curators, Ruangrupa involves itself deeply with its artists, making art of the communal conversations and exchanges, as they continue past production, into the gallery spaces and exhibition. The group channels anthropology also in Lumbung’s focus on participation, just as Tiravanija does, cultivating a community in the name of art and observing how it grows and changes with collaboration, exploring the sociality of art. Ruangrupa seeks to create partnership and collaboration in every step of Documenta 15, banishing hierarchical power relations and promoting a polyphonic, collective space the way that Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban writes of collaboration in contemporary anthropology (Fluehr-Lobban, 2008, p.175). This project for Documenta 15 encapsulates more than just art, and leans towards anthropology in its focus on exploring sociality, cultural cultivation and community; by making sharing its key practice Lumbung transcends art practice and becomes a greater cultural platform and community that continues past the 2022 exhibit.

Both Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Pad Thai and Ruangrupa’s Documenta 15 curation show the ways that anthropology has influenced and integrated with contemporary art practices. As art has become more interdisciplinary, multimodal and more affected by social and cultural contexts, it has adopted anthropological methods and concepts to explore sociality and community. These two examples almost become ethnographies and anthropological works themselves in their adoption of practices and ideas, exploring the gallery spaces as more than just showrooms and exploring relationships between curator, artist and audience as more than just hierarchical interactions.

Artistic Research Methods in Anthropology 

Susan Ossman followed the interdisciplinary turn of anthropology in the 1990s, studying and practicing visual anthropology. In the essay anthology Between Art and Anthropology (2010), Ossman wrote about art as ethnography and painting as an ethnographic practice, an idea her own work has explored, but still one that, she writes, remains “pointedly ignored” as a contribution to developing anthropological knowledge (Ossman, 2010, p.127). Using examples of her own paintings the visual anthropologist looked at the art form’s potential as an abstract and interpretive reflection of a place, culture or community. One such example is her piece Hills of Chaouen (1990), a triptych that portrays the region of Chaouen in Morocco, by reflecting the place’s landscape and weavers. This idea that Ossman explores is also supported by anthropologist Zoe Bray, who argues in her article for Visual Anthropology Review (2015), that painting shares with ethnography the same “empathetic and sensitive process of long-term observation and contextual interaction” (Bray, 2015, p. 119) that allows anthropologists to create ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973). Ossman continues, writing that Hills of Chaouen’s reception highlighted a different value of paintings to anthropology; the work took a new form when perceived, acting as a screen that projected reactions and positionalities, such as her Morrocan friend’s interpretation of the painting as a statement about the Iraq war. In this example, the subjectivity of a painting allows for what it reflects to evolve, for its reception to change and for it to stimulate discussions of positionality and politics. This art form can provoke engagement with the field, opening spaces for conversation and dispute. Ossman’s writing supports this, as she likens a painting to a field note:

“It can focus attention on certain objects, regularities or connections. Once it is hung in public, it can stimulate exchanges about aesthetics, or politics. It can become a projection or a double of the ethnographer.” (Ossman, 2010, p.134)

Here, painting becomes a representation of both the interlocutor and the ethnographer, as well as a methodology in and of itself.

Ossman’s exploration of painting as a potential ethnographic practice shows the research technique to be valuable to contemporary, interdisciplinary anthropology. The fluid and observational nature of painting resembles the same quality of ethnography, but more vital is the way that this methodology affords the field and interlocutors a point of discussion just as Ossman’s Hills of Chaouen did. The subjectivity of paintings can facilitate evolving reflection, they can be rethought just as traditional anthropological texts have been and can be received differently in different spaces just as similarly. Ossman’s use of the artistic research method makes perfect sense in this consideration and works as a rationale for more frequent use as visual anthropology remains merely emergent even a decade after this publication.

Among many recent examples, Kyra Sacks’ Drawn in The Field (2020) shows a turn in fieldwork research toward sketching and drawing in anthropology. As a visual artist and social anthropologist, Sacks walks the line between the two disciplines in a lot of her work, as is shown in Drawn In The Field; a reflection on her use of drawing as an anthropologist and a display of her fieldwork sketches for an ethnography of the refugee crisis in Lesvos, Greece. In her own words, combining ethnographic fieldwork with sketching “managed to contain an embodied experience that could later be unpacked” (Sacks, 2020). Evident in her writing and the pages of her monochrome drawings and notes, Sacks’ use of sketching rather than only writing creates a less rigid and prosaic rendition of events observed, one more emotive and engaging, that better reflected the crisis she was witnessing and investigating. Sacks also conveys the tangled chaos of what she was observing; too difficult to unravel with only words that she felt “only decreased the totality of the experience instead of doing it justice” (Sacks, 2020). Drawing provided a better account that encompassed more. Renowned anthropologist Michael Taussig shares this view in his seminal text I Swear I Saw This (2011), a descriptive rationale for the use of drawing in anthropology. Taussig writes that sketches “provide a welcome pause to the writing machine whereby another philosophy of representation and meditation takes over” (Taussig, 2011, p.25), benefitting the anthropologist and their fieldwork by way of reflection and escape from the unvaried manner that fieldwork notes can adopt. Agreeing that reliance on writing can “fall short” (Sacks, 2020), Sacks suggests that drawing in the field can also be used for connection more than just recording. The anthropologist’s use of art provided an exchange for interlocutors, becoming a multifaceted research method as she offered drawings and portraits in return for people’s stories. As well as this use of art, the anthropologist’s presentation of her Lesvos ethnography conveyed the same openness as she talks of in her notes “Allow(ing) the reader to unpack it further and mak(ing) the urgency of the situation tangible” (Sacks, 2020).

Kyra Sacks’ use of sketching and drawing in her ethnography of Lesvos provides an example of artistic research methods used in anthropology and argues their place and value in a more multimodal version of the discipline that benefits from the openness, fluidity and embodiment that drawing can provide to fieldwork notes. 

While there is some similarity between Susan Ossman’s and Kyra Sacks’ use of art forms in anthropology, Ossman’s rationale for painting in ethnography refers more to its use in opening spaces for discussion, while Sacks’ sketches facilitate a less rigid and more embodied expression of fieldwork to be used in ethnography. In both cases, the argument for an anthropology that embraces multimodality and artistic methods is convincing, and while some anthropologists and ethnographers have embraced such techniques, there is still room for the discipline to grow. Using the methods and practices of art, such as sketching and painting, challenges anthropology to become more fluid, integrative and multidisciplinary.

                                                            

                     

The instances of anthropology’s influence on contemporary art and art’s influence on anthropology provided in this essay are a few of many examples that show the two disciplines’ entanglement in recent decades. Tiravanija’s and Ruangrupa’s works provide evidence of art’s ontological turn towards anthropological knowledge and acknowledgement of social and cultural contexts; Lumbung blurs the lines between curation and art as well as the lines between the collective and the individual; Tiravanija’s Pad Thai addresses the colonialism of the gallery space and works to dismantle it through collaboration, participation and gift exchange. In their multimodal approaches, they both adopt ethnographic methods and almost become ethnographies as the interactions and observations they instigate constitute the artworks themselves. Both of these artists and pieces are compelling examples of interdisciplinary and multimodal contemporary art that work to expand the social and cultural dimensions of art. Although they were created over 30 years apart, the artworks equally take steps toward a reconstructed art discipline, evidently influenced by contemporary anthropology, and both equally promote its further involvement.

Susan Ossman’s and Kyra Sacks’ use of art processes in their anthropological work establishes the necessity of its consideration in contemporary anthropology; a version of the discipline that is more fluid and multimodal, one that embraces the protean nature of culture and humanity, and thus recognises the confinement of textual field notes and presentations. In their own ways, Ossman and Sacks portray the multifaceted capabilities of artistic research methods; the former addresses the value of painting in reflecting upon the field and in provoking discussion, referring to a displayed painting almost as a screen that can be projected onto. The latter anthropologist writes about the importance of drawing and sketching in fieldwork to capture the field more entirely, channelling emotion and embodiment more than written notes do. In both examples, the value of imagery to anthropology is clear and suggestive of a more encompassing methodology that should be used. While the two advocates refer to themselves as both artists and anthropologists, their convictions are inclusive of all anthropologists and promote the approach as something that should be used throughout the discipline. As contemporary anthropology continues to shape, Ossman and Sacks are examples of art’s important consideration in challenging the static and traditional elements that remain embedded.

                                                                                                                     The growing interlacement of anthropology and art over the last few decades is a necessary reassessment of inflexible approaches that artists and anthropologists alike can remain within. As the two disciplines grow in their contemporary phases, they require an awareness of their contexts, impacts and traditionality, factors that examples like the ones referred to in this essay work to reframe and reconsider. In the current climate, it is crucial to challenge the hierarchical and colonial relations of all disciplines, and in breaking boundaries and self-reflecting, artists and anthropologists can work towards undoing such power relations and structures that are prominent in the cultural and social contexts within which they exist.

Bibliography

Bolles, A.L. (2023). Decolonizing Anthropology. American Ethnologist, 50(3), pp. 519–522. (online) Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13199. [Accessed April 7 2024]

Bourriaud, N. (1996). Relational Aesthetics. Les Presse Du Reel, France. p. 113

Bray, Z. (2015) Anthropology with a Paintbrush: Naturalist-Realist Painting as “Thick Description”, Visual anthropology review, 31(2), pp. 119–133.

Documenta 15. (n.d). Documenta 15 Website. (online) Available at: https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/ [Accessed April 7 2024]

Documenta 15. (2022). [Exhibition]. Fridericianum Museum, Kassel.

Dohmen, R. (2011). Towards a Cosmopolitan Criticality? Relational Aesthetics, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Transnational Encounters with Pad Thai. University Of Louisiana. (online) Available at: https://openartsjournal.org/issue-1/2013s05rd/ [Accessed April 7 2024]

Fluehr-Lobban, C. (2008). Collaborative Anthropology as Twenty-first-Century Ethical Anthropology. Collaborative Anthropologies, vol. 1, p. 175-182. Project MUSE.

Geertz, C. Darnton, R. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. 3rd edn. New York: Basic Books.

Newell-Hanson, A. (2022) Rirkrit Tiravanija Cooking Pad Thai WIth His Students. The New York Times Style Magazine. April 21. (online) Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/t-magazine/rirkrit-tiravanija.html [Accessed April 9 2024)

McGranahan, C. Rizvi, U. (2016). Decolonising Anthropology. Savage Minds. April 19. (online) Available at: https://savageminds.org/2016/04/19/decolonizing-anthropology/ . [Accessed April 7 2024]

MoMa PS1. Tiravanija, R. (2023). Rirkrit Tiravanija’s untitled 1990 (pad thai). MoMA PS1 Calendar. (online) Available at: https://www.momaps1.org/events/318-rirkrit-Tiravanija-s-untitled-1990-pad-thai  [Accessed April 7 2024]

Ossman, S. (2010). Making Art Ethnography: Painting, War and Ethnographic Practice. Between art and anthropology: contemporary ethnographic practice. (1st ed.). Routledge. pp. 127-134. 

Ossman, S. (1990). Hills of Chaouen. [Oil on canvas]. Collection of Rabia Bekkar, Paris

Perreault, J. (2011). Rirkrit Tiravanija: fear eats the soul, Artopia: John Perreault’s Art Diary, 4 April. (Online) Available at: http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2011/04/rirkrit_ tiravanija_fear_eats_t_1.html [Accessed April 9 2024]

Sacks, K. (2020) Drawn in the field. entanglements, 3(1):7-30. (online) Available at: https://entanglementsjournal.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/drawn-in-the-field.pdf [Accessed April 7 2024]

Sansi, R. (2015). Participation and the Gift. Art, Anthropology and the Gift. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 87-111.

Tiravanija, R. (1990). Untitled (Pad Thai). [installation]. Paula Allen Gallery, New York


Tomkins, C. (2005), Shall We Dance? The New Yorker. October 17. (online) Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/17/051017fa_fact_tomkins [Accessed April 9 2024]

Categories
film

Scene Analysis: The White Voice in Sorry To Bother You (2018)

The White Voice Scene  (13:05 – 15:04)

“It’s not really a white voice, it’s what they wish they sounded like.”

Boots Riley’s 2018 film Sorry To Bother You is one of a few films approaching a new genre of Black dark comedy horror that combines a nod to blaxploitation aesthetics with themes of capitalism, white privilege and white supremacy. The film is a psychedelic sci-fi journey into a dark world of white capitalism, through telemarketer Cassius Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield) who becomes engrossed in the promise of success that his exploitative job offers him, despite the protests and unionisation that surrounds him. In his promotion, Cassius uncovers the terrifying truth behind his workplace’s corporation and its CEO, which involves warmongering and a bio-engineered form of modern slavery. Through his greed, Cassius becomes a cog in this system, and only after seeing the extent of its damage, joins his friends in protesting it. This film combines the discussion and presentation of important American politics with Afro-surrealism, addressing the racial injustice and hegemony of neoliberalism while uplifting black culture and art.

One particular scene that presents the film’s discussion of white supremacy and privilege comes at minute 13 – the ‘white voice’ scene. Still fairly new to the job at this point, Cassius is struggling to succeed in telemarketing. When he’s hung up on after introducing himself, an older Black man, Langston (played by highly commended actor and political activist Danny Glover), in the stall next to him begins to laugh. “Lemme give you a tip. Use your white voice” he says. Cassius’ attempts to be well-spoken and pronounced have failed thus far, and seeing his state of confusion, Langston continues; “It’s, like, sounding like you don’t have a care. You’ve got your bills paid, you’re happy about your future”. His description continues, and he demonstrates this ‘white voice’ with a high-pitched, cheery voice that mismatches his own – clearly dubbed by another actor. 

This display and explanation of the ‘white voice’ demonstrates a key concept for the film; it is the reason Cassius reaches success and promotion and gets as far as meeting and becoming involved with the corporation and its CEO Steve Lift. By adopting this white voice Cassius wavers his morality for greed. This particular scene denotes the symbolism of the white voice for the film but also reflects the real-world concept of passing. Bernard Beck describes this concept and practice, ‘African Americans who “pass” are able to take advantage of the improved life chances known as “White skin privilege.” But they often pay a heavy price.’ (Beck, 2019). Much like passing, the white voice facilitates opportunities by fooling white people, and thus white systems, into believing that these individuals are one of them, revealing the premise that only white people can be successful in a dominant white system and environment. In its intangibility, the white voice signifies the symbolic violence and the immateriality of white supremacy. Passing is conveyed as something difficult to perfect; especially as Cassius believes he “talks with a white voice anyway” in his politeness and argot-less tone, something the old man tells him is just ‘talking proper’. This exchange reflects how specific the characteristics of successfully assimilating are, something reminiscent of the Shibboleth; the particularities that distinguish a member from an outsider. This is further presented by the use of a white actor’s voice dubbed over Danny Glover’s, which suggests Riley’s belief that truly passing and adopting white privilege and culture can never truly be achieved by Black people. What’s more, the predominant ‘white voices’ in the film, Cassius’ and Mr. ______ (purposely anonymised in the film to add to his dishonest character), are played by two well-known middle-class and ‘nerdy’ type-cast actors David Cross and Patton Oswalt. In a promotional comedy ‘bit’ for the film’s release the two ‘white voice’ actors spoke about their roles in the film, satirically talking about how hard it was to perfect their white voices, Oswalt jokes that he had to ‘Culturally dis-appropriate’ in order to perfect the part (ANNAPURNA, 2018). Using such well-known voices for the characters, which are almost caricatures of whiteness, further present how separated and different men and women like Cassius and Langston are from their white, privileged customers. 

This overdubbed voice and the music that accompanies nearly every time it’s used is purposely unnerving, touching on the uncanny. As Alice Maurice writes, ‘Here, the white voice activates that ‘strange and vertiginous experience’…with the white voice taking over like the ‘living corpse’ integrated into the film.’ (Maurice, 2022). This depicts Cassius’ assimilation as immediately wrong, and as the start of something morbidly dark; Cassius’ use of the device eventually leads to not only his own ruination but the ruin of others too.

The white voice is not only a device used by Boots Riley to depict the social inequality between cultures and races in America; Spike Lee released Blackkklansman, another film that uses the white voice, the same year. In his film, Lee uses the white voice as a way for a Black FBI agent, Ron Stallworth, to get closer to leaders of the KKK in order to take them down. As opposed to Riley’s use of the device to show assimilation, Lee’s use is more about infiltration – a Black man using the white conformity required of him to dismantle a section of white supremacy. The same year as both films’ release, Riley tweeted an essay about his disapproval of Lee’s film, accusing him of sugarcoating a true story that is nowhere near as revolutionary as it seems. ‘The real Ron Stallworth infiltrated a Black radical organization for years… sabotag(ing) a black radical organisation whose intent had to do with at the very least fighting racist oppression.’ (Riley, 2018). With this in mind, you could consider the unsettling feeling that Riley creates when the white voice is used to extend to it’s use in Lee’s film and the real-life case, as even in its good intention it harms America’s black population.

Riley’s use of the ‘White Voice’ in Sorry To Bother You, introduced and described in this scene, displays the social inequality between cultures and races in America, and highlights the white privilege that actively exists in Western Society. The white voice becomes a device within the film that reminds the viewer of the necessity, yet immorality, of cultural assimilation in order to be successful in the racially hegemonic society of the United States.

Bibliography

ANNAPURNA. (2018). ‘SORRY TO BOTHER YOU | The Art of The White Voice’. Youtube. (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJIBBGLKUA8&ab_channel=ANNAPURNA 

Beck, B. (2019), ‘The Next Voice You Hear: BlacKkKlansman, Sorry to Bother You, and Crazy Rich Asians,’ Multicultural perspectives (Mahwah, N.J.), 2019-01-02, Vol.21 (1), p.19-22

Maurice, A. (2022) ‘Use your white voice’: race, sound, and genre in Sorry to Bother You, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 20:1, 88-100, DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2021.1968710Riley, B. (2018).’Ok. Here’s are some thoughts on #Blackkklansman’. Twitter. (online). Available at: https://x.com/BootsRiley/status/1030575674447212544?s=20

Categories
Pop Culture

Miss Anthropocene: The Feminine Planetary Escapism

Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene holds a mirror to Elon Musk’s Mars Mission

Songwriter, vocalist and producer Grimes (Claire Boucher) has floated in and out of the limelight for the last decade now, no more so than since her public relationship with celebrity billionaire businessman and investor Elon Musk. While some might have thought this an odd pairing, teased and ‘memeified’ especially with the birth of their first son named X Æ A-12, looking in depth at both figures’ projects in recent years reveals certain parallels between their philosophies.

Among certain ventures into the mixing of A.I and art, Grimes’ most notable work in recent years is the album Miss Anthropocene, released right before COVID reached pandemic level and just a few months before Musk and Boucher’s first child was born. Her first LP for 5 years, the work reimagined the artist as a heavy metal popstar, straying on a tangent from her typical ethereal hyper-experimental discography of previous albums. A concept album, Miss Anthropocene, depicts through it’s tracks a villainous ‘anthropomorphic goddess of climate change’1 as well as themes of A.I. reign and other human destructions. The titular character, whose name combines femininity and misanthropy in wordplay, is a villainous personification of environmental apocalypse, that sees global warming as a good and necessary event for humanity2. In feminising this character, and using it also to attach themes of sexual violence and gender to the villainy of climate change3, the LP comes across as an ecofeminist project. In a string of Instagram posts, Grimes revealed the meaning of the album and it’s tracks, including a letter from Miss Anthropocene that reads lines such as ‘Be who you are, embrace your demise,

For you are the architect of it’2, and a post that attached a different villainous demon or deity to each song. More and more the album becomes swallowed by it’s carefully orchestrated, yet somewhat messily-delivered concept. 

The songs are good, despite barely competing with previous albums like Visions, and ever experimental, Grimes creates soundscapes in these tracks that captivate, and feel almost cinematic. Lyrics that portray the sought theme throughout the album are sparse; ‘Unrest is in the soul, we don’t move our bodies anymore’3 is one of the more poignant lyrics, repeated throughout the song Darkseid as a message about bodily detachment from the world. Lyrics like this that portray the albums theme get lost among the more dominant sounds of futuristic instrumentals and backing vocals, leaving this message about climate change and global warming almost trivialised. 

Grimes’ artistic message about human extinction and climate change also reflects the philosophies of Elon Musks projects in recent years. As CEO and chief technical officer of SpaceX, Musk has been at the forefront of the strive to colonise Mars. Most of Musk’s narrative on ‘The Road To Making Humanity Multiplanetary’4 is focused on the long-term survival of humanity in the face of global warming and climate change5, inciting a somewhat apocalyptic anxiety about the future of planet Earth and the Anthropocene. Musk’s fears and ventures here, relay a similar message to Grimes’ album, about the crisis of Earth at humanity’s hands, our responsibility for planetary emergency. What they also advocate is escapism; creatively or scientifically the two projects and their creators promote what Joanna Zylinska calls ‘an escape to heavens in the form of planetary relocation’6. Musk’s position, especially, plays into the gendered reverberations of this recent planetary escapism conversation; as a man celebrated for being brilliant yet socially awkward, rich and clever yet difficult, Elon adheres to a new hierarchical cultural archetype of geek maleness that exists among his peers of Silicon Valley and their celebrity. CEOs and Billionaires of these male-dominated tech and science industries are fighting each other to become the new saviours of humanity, be it through A.I, new eco-friendly technologies or space excursions 6, and with this, a new level of masculinity is born and practiced. Not only does geek masculinity course through this era of technology-dominated culture and it’s leaders (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin belong amongst Musk in examples), but there is new egomania and inflation added to it with this talk of tech-dependent salvation.

Musk’s mission for an interplanetary humanity is further gendered, and racialised, by its very aim in colonising the planet, by the projects undoubted assumptions of conquest, dominion and succession – the patriarchal urge to colonise7. And while this mission is based off the need to save humanity from the collapse of Earth, it is men like Musk that are responsible for it’s collapse in the first place: CEOs and founders that have mobilised the very excess of goods, excess of emissions and carbon, excess use and thus depletion of the Earth’s resources, that are leading to the end of the Anthropocene that Grimes sings about. Zylinska calls this group the ‘ultimately redeemed Man, who can conquer time and space by rising above the geological mess he has created.’6

Grimes, too, does not truly address her positionality, and devalues Miss Anthropocene’s concept further in her hypocrisy. With a current estimated net worth of $12 million8, and her long-term involvement with the second wealthiest man in the world9 (be it romantically or just through their three shared children), Grimes exists above us mere mortals, within a bought freedom that would allow her to escape the very apocalypse she sings about. The artist’s celebrity status and standing among such neoliberal pioneers erases any sincerity that the album might have put across, and reclaims it as a propagandistic rationale for the same planetary escapism that Musk is assisting in. In a way Boucher feels like a new tool for the futuristic capitalism that the figures of Silicon Valley are trying to sell, hiding the same patriarchal, industrial reign behind a shield of what seems like ecofeminist art.
Miss Anthropocene is Grime’s manifesto for planetary escapism, and whether intentional or not, it is the creative, passive, ‘fun’1 promotion for Elon Musk’s mission to colonise Mars, a project shrouded in imperialism, patriarchy and neoliberal hegemony. The album may stand alone as a great futuristic work of eco-feminist themes, but it can’t be disentangled from its maker and message. It becomes a perfect example of celebrity culture’s ability to distract and discipline it’s audience while instilling the hegemonic values of the ruling class.

  1. – Perry, K. (2019). Grimes is ready to play the villain. Crack Magazine, [online] 29 Apr., pp.32–41. Available at: https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/grimes-is-ready-to-play-the-villain/ [Accessed 6 November 2023] ↩︎
  2. – Grimes. (2020). I, Poet of destruction. Instagram [online]. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8YA2w_HMGz/. [Accessed 6 November 2023] ↩︎
  3. – Genius. (2023). Miss Anthropocene by Grimes. [online] Available at: https://genius.com/albums/Grimes/Miss-anthropocene.  [Accessed 6 November 2023] ↩︎
  4. – SpaceX (2020). Mars & Beyond. [online] SpaceX. Available at: https://www.spacex.com/human-spaceflight/mars/. [Accessed 6 November 2023] ↩︎
  5. – Hutchinson, H. (2020). Climate change – is Mars the answer? [online] Available at: https://www.investec.com/en_gb/focus/harolds-herald/climate-change-is-mars-the-answer.html#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%20has%20suggested%20that  [Accessed 6 November 2023]. ↩︎
  6. – Zylinska, J. (2018) The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse. University of Minnesota Press. ↩︎
  7. – Bianco, M. (2018). After pillaging Earth, the patriarchy looks to colonize Mars. NBC News [online] Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/patriarchal-race-colonize-mars-just-another-example-male-entitlement-ncna849681 [Accessed 6 November 2023]. ↩︎
  8. – Krishnamurthy, C. (2023). Grimes sues Elon Musk over parental rights of their third ‘secret child’. HITC [online]. Available at: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/10/04/grimess-net-worth-in-2023-explored-as-shes-suing-elon-musk-over-parental-rights/ [Accessed 6 November 2023]. ↩︎
  9. – LaFranco, R. Peterson-Withorn, C. (2023). World’s Billionaires List. Forbes. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/. [Accessed 6 November 2023]. ↩︎
Categories
Uncategorized

The Entropy Of The City

Berlin as a Palimpsest

I feel as though there is a chaos to Berlin, a cultural and architectural entropy about it’s various states of being, where the past meets and conflicts with the present and the future. 

Andreas Huyssen described the city as a palimpsest; its own text, where buildings and streets are ‘superimposed’ over old, showing traces of earlier forms. But walking through the centre, it feels, to me, that some parts of the text have been redacted, leaving absence. Just beyond where U Stadtmitte separates the traffic, south towards Checkpoint Charlie, there is such an absence of space, an absence of life; only cold or empty buildings, littered with Einstein Kaffees and fast food chains. Here, everything boring feels permanent, and anything interesting (Charlie’s beach, Die Mauer Panorama) feels temporary. It is a chaos that leaves Berlin fragmented.

This superimposition makes new of old; dolled up warehouses become the city’s finest galleries and clubs. Elsewhere, though, it feels like a messy cut-and-glue job, as a rusting memorial plaque that reads of German Soldiers hung by ‘inhuman SS bandits’ is forgotten about entirely by the world, as it lies next to threshold of a true commercial attraction: McDonalds. Friedrichstraß remains like this, a constant conflict between shiny, glass modernity and haunted ornamentality, competing forces of old and new.

Throughout central Berlin, structures of the past are inhabited by the present, in a way that exudes the entropy of the city’s culture. I think of Kaufhaus Jonaß, that stands on the corner of Prenzlauer Allee. As the first credit department store in Berlin, turned to the Hitler Youth headquarters, then to the Marxist-Leninist institute, the building now stands as Berlin’s Soho House: an exclusive, private members club and hotel to the rich and famous. The place now, as I have seen it, perfectly manicures and curates a replica of it’s past, yet it’s patrons, cocktail in hand, are unaware of the foundations of amnesia that lie beneath. As I have looked out on it’s balcony, only a visitor, I have seen what they see; no roads below, no disparity, only the sky, and the buildings that compete in height. Kaufhaus Jonaß is a projection screen, a shell filled by each ideology that has consumed Berlin; Capitalism, National Socialism, Communism, and now Neoliberalism. It is a blank slate to be drawn on, a grade II listed mirror that reflects the times, in the greatest extremity. And it is not the only one of its kind.

I have stood and watched this city, I have walked it’s pavements. Its culture is alive, but contradictory, its districts are the same. If Berlin is a palimpsest, it is one that is disorderly, as its streets reflect a muddled identity of all its pasts and none of them at the same time, emulating what it wants to be and what it once was. In entropy, the disorder of the city becomes it’s decline.

Categories
Subculture

Cross Platform Project: Notes On The Modern Cinephile

An Investigation Into Celluloid Loving and Its Qualms in the Digital Age

Link To Site

Categories
Subculture

Documentaries On Subculture

A list of subculture documentaries that highlight the communities largely contributing to our arts and culture.

Subcultures have been a vital contributor to the arts over the last century. Communities built from alternate beliefs, marginalisation and society’s negligence exist within wider cultures and can sometimes imprint on a generation or wider audience, through film, fashion and fine art.

Documentaries are a brilliant introduction to subcultures and cultural history, expressing  ideas and experiences more evocatively than other mediums. While we’re in lockdown and unable to travel, why not watch some of these outstanding documentaries as an escape from your own world in isolation.

Paris Is Burning (1990)

Jennie Livingston’s documentary on Harlem’s ‘Ball’ culture is as relevant as ever in 2020, as western mainstream becomes just a little less heteronormative. Paris Is Burning documents the marginalised community that fabricated our beloved Drag culture – LGBTQ+ Latinx and African American dancers battling it out for glamour and glory through vogue dancing. Livingston’s following of individuals from the scene makes the film heartbreaking, intimate and joyous all at once, as we see the hardships this group had to face and the escapism that vogue provides. 

As a disclaimer, it’s important when watching this film to recognise political aspects that have been glossed over in the documentary – an editorial aspect that received controversy after the film’s release.

Dogtown And Z-Boys (2001)

Stacy Peralta’s documentary narrates the evolution of skateboarding: Mid-70s California was the start of a rescued and rebooted skate scene when a group of surfers moulded it into what it’s known as today. With interviews and old home footage, Peralta’s film documents the skate group (Z-Boys) and their extreme and impressive techniques that sparked a renaissance now commercially acknowledged. The cult classic is perhaps the best film on skateboarding ever made – it’s a great watch whether you own a board or not.

Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (2005)

Sam Dunn, anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, tells the story of metal music, from its 1970s British origins to the more commercial, multifaceted genre it is today. Featuring interviews with legends such as Alice Cooper, Lemmy and Rob Zombie, the film looks at the bands, the fans, the influences and the social impacts of the subculture, particularly highlighting it’s battles with religious and conservative communities and the evil, anti-social connotations often associated with the genre. It’s an interesting film to watch for any music lovers.

The Story Of Skinhead (2016)

Legendary musician and filmmaker Don Letts tells the important history of skinhead subculture, originating far before it’s radical right connotations. The subculture began in working class Britain in the 60s and came from the unity of Jamaican and British youth, caused by a love of ska and reggae and dissociation from hippie culture. Letts narrates it’s beginnings and it’s fall into racism from a first-hand account, featuring interviews with artists and fellow fans of the original subculture.

Rize (2005)

Famous fashion photographer David LaChapelle’s debut documentary, Rize, follows a community in the South Central neighbourhood of LA. This community, so greatly impacted by gang violence and systemic racism, sought refuge and distraction through a dance style called Krump – a competitive combination of fighting and hip-hop. The documentary looks at it’s creator, Tommy “The Clown” Johnson, and the dancers in the community, as they use this incredible style as an alternative for violence and crime. LaChapelle’s cinematography and the insane skill and style of the dancers makes for a stylish insight into a marginalised subculture that’s now more recognised by the mainstream danceworld.

The Filth And The Fury (2000)

Julien Temple’s portrait of punk rock shows unreleased footage and rare uncut film from Sex Pistols performances and interviews, sculpting a detailed rockumentary on England’s most renowned subculture. Including interviews and topical clips featuring everyone from Vivienne Westwood to David Bowie, the film unearths more about the band and it’s manifesto than ever before, yet somehow becomes more about social history than musical history. As a caption of a vital part of England’s past, this documentary is amust watch.

Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten (2014)

Steering away from just western subculture films, another documentary to add to your must watch list is John Pirozzi’s film on the Rock & Roll scene in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian genecide. Heart-breaking and eye-opening, the film shows a scene that brought western culture and tradition together for a generation, introducing record shops, clubs and new fashion to young people, but at the cost of life and freedom, as war and political zealotry ruthlessly destroyed it not long after it began. Pirozzi talks to surviving fans and artists about the period, with a focus on the music almost lost and forgotten now. It’s a tragic yet somewhat hopeful new insight into Cambodia’s history and art.

Subcultures are an important part of society and art, and it’s important to learn about and credit their contributions to the mainstream culture of the 21st century. Hopefully this list will broaden your perspectives while the world in lockdown feels a little bit smaller, teaching you more about communities and arts below the radar of mainstream culture, or just surfacing.

Categories
Subculture

The Value of Dance in Minority Cultures – Newspaper Version

The article Vogue: The Value Of Dance In A Minority Culture is a summarised, commercial approach to an essay I created focusing on the values dance holds for marginalised groups. The essay consists of an exploration into identity, community and other issues, and features an interview with Vogue dancer and LIPA lecturer Darren Suarez.

Read the zine hereread
Categories
Art

Art For Society 1978: A Reflection

In 1978, Margaret Richards proposed the idea of an art exhibition with works of a social or political purpose. The third of it’s kind at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and only the second survey of contemporary socially committed art since the war, the exhibition aimed to challenge the almost dogmatic opinion that art did not mix well with politics or commitment to social change.

The exhibitions measure of success was stated:

‘If the exhibition is successful it will cause at least three things to come about: that reaction to the exhibition will be so strong as to cause other exhibitions to focus more precisely on aspects of social practice in the arts; that a much stronger body of contemporary and historical research will become available which will recognise that artists have seen their responsibility to society as an integral part of their art, and finally that museums and galleries, arts funding bodies and others not only recognise the contribution being made by artists in this way, but will support them and their work.’

Martin Rewcastle and Nicholas Serota

Over 40 years later, the subject of politics is commonly presented in post-modernist art and often forms the basis of artistic discussion. Societal issues such as gender, the environment, fascism and racial issues are just some of the topics captured by art in the 21st century. Because of this change to the focus of art in recent decades, looking at this exhibition documenting the combination of society and art historically, allows us to see how both society and art have developed since. This is a review of the galleries predictions from the perspective of the UK art world 40 years later.

Exhibitions Which have Focused on Society Since 1978

2 years after the exhibition, began a decade significantly and unpredictably marked by sociopolitical occurrences – Thatcher’s Britain, the Berlin Wall, the miners strike, HIV, gay liberation and the Falklands War to name a few. With these occurrences came cultural impact, which also meant an artistic resurgence that focused more on political topics.

The Tate Liverpool’s 2014 exhibition ‘Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980’s Britain’ is a prime example of this resurgence, as it is a curation of 1980’s society-focused art, conforming to a theory of cultural change: ‘Vocabulary of Society and Culture’ by Raymond Williams. Other 1980’s exhibitions that reflected these political topics, or ‘aspects of social practice’ as suggested by Serota and Rewcastle include ‘Issue: Social Strategies By Women Artists’ of 1980 and the touring American ‘Tim Rollins + K.O.S’ which was exhibited in the UK for 4 months.

Through the following 3 decades politically-centred exhibitions became more popular and common. The 1997 YBA-created, Saatchi-owned exhibition ‘Sensations’ was proof of the possible success of controversial art, as the Royal Academy recorded 3,000 visitors daily during the duration of it’s residency. This public excitement encouraged more and more exhibits of controversial art – whether the disputes were over sociopolitical messages or simply the profound appearance of such works.

Nowadays there are a plethora of exhibitions solely focusing on activist art and socio-focal themes. In fact, when asked about post-modern art, 60% said they, above all, considered the purpose to be a socio-political message. To relate to the predictions of Art For Society, whether caused by the gallery or just in junction with it, more and more UK exhibitions have focused on social and political practice since 1978 with success and popularity.

The Recognition of Artists Who’s Practice is Informed by Social Issues

Increasingly, UK artists have used their talents to portray their social and political beliefs and moral stance, and have received celebration and recognition for their integrity and creativity. Below is a list of UK socio-focal artists that have been acknowledged since the Art for Society exhibition in 1978.

Helen Chadwick was a British sculptor, active from the 1970s to her untimely death in 1996. The subject of Chadwick’s work was mostly corporeal, profoundly and unconventionally commenting on patriarchy and the values of feminism. In 1987, she became one of the first women to be nominated for a Turner Prize, rightful validation of her recognition as a forerunner for a new neo-conceptualism – more shocking and unorthodox and statement-making art than works before that were later to be associated with the Young British Artists movement, a movement coaxed by Chadwick and like-minded creatives of the UK.

Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA is a British Nigerian multimedia artist, known for his commentary on colonialism, post-colonialism and cultural identity. Shonibare typically remarks the economic and political relationship between Africa and Europe and such works are internationally known. Yinka was a Turner Prize nominee in 2004 and has since been awarded MBE and CBE decoration proving the national recognition of his talent and works. In 2013, Shonibare was elected a Royal Academician, which also shows his sociopolitical work is recognised, accepted and a part of an Artistic Institute.

Tracey Emin CBE, RA has been deemed the ‘bad girl of British art’ due to her unconventional behaviour and controversial works. A pioneer of the YBA movement, Emin’s sculptures, installations, paintings and videos are thought-provoking and often sensuous, typically reflecting her opinions and ideals, some of which were bred of her personal experiences with rape, abortion, sexism and substance abuse. Tracey Emin has achieved CBE decoration and Royal Academician status, showing institutional acknowledgement of her work. She also represented Great Britain in the 52nd Venice Biennale – a well known international art festival.

Banksy is an anonymous graffiti artist and political activist, internationally known for his cynically comedic works that comment on capitalism, politics and humanity in the canvas of the public streets. Banksy’s documentary, ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ was nominated for an Academy Award and a BAFTA. Due to the unannounced nature of his pieces, when found they receive international televised attention.

Support For Artists And Their Work Through Public Institutions

Rewcastle and Serota’s proclamation stated that museums, art funding bodies and other public institutions wouldn’t just recognise sociopolitical artists but would also support them, if the Art For Society exhibition was successful. The following are examples of institutes that provided such support.

The Turner Prize is a British art prize established in 1984 (6 years after the exhibition) that is aimed to encourage a wider interest in contemporary art. Several winners in the past have submitted sociopolitical centred art, such as Grayson Perry, Gillian Wearing CBE and Jeremy Deller. The support the award provides for the artist is public recognition and financial gain, as the award is £25,000 and the ceremony attracts publicity and televised attention. The chairman of the Turner Prize jury until 2007 was Nicholas Serota himself, who wrote the preface of Art For Society and created the measures of success this article is about. Seeing as Serota was the chairman from the establishing year of the award, the Turner Prize could be seen as a direct association influenced by the exhibition, as it is a body of recognition and support for artists, including those that employ social and political messages.

Royal Academy – Among the UK’s public institutes of art, the Royal Academy of Arts is an example that recognises and supports sociopolitical artists. Currently their list of Royal Academicians include the previously mentioned Yinka Shonibare, Gillian Wearing, Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin, all of which influence the vision and future of RA. The RA have had a history with controversial art: it was, of course, the venue of the Sensations exhibition of 1997 – quite a gamble for an establishment so favoured and well known.

Goldsmiths, University of London – For over half a century, Goldsmiths University has had a reputation in the fields of humanities and the creative arts, but in 1988, an art movement was formed from a new generation of Goldsmiths students, nurtured by the institute – the Young British Artists. As previously mentioned, this era of British art was born out of controversy, sociopolitical and comedic messages, and atypical material use. The school played an essential role in the movements development – Michael Craig Martin and Ian Jeffrey* were just two of the tutors that were integral to the YBA’s first exhibition ‘Freeze’. Since that period, Goldsmiths has continued to pride itself on it’s notable alumni and still provides support and encouragement for controversial creative art.

*Ian Jeffrey wrote an essay for the Art For Society exhibition, on photography and disclosure, showing his recognition of sociopolitical art and photography – this could have been an influence on the YBA.

To summarise this long and winding article, in 1978, the Educational Officer and the Director of Whitechapel Art Gallery created a declaration of aims for an exhibition of social and political purpose. Whether it was a contribution or an attribution, the decades following the show were filled with an increasing amount of acceptability of sociopolitical focused art and support for their creators. In the current climate, sociopolitical messages are almost expected of post-modern art, as the subjects of politics and art have become more interlaced in cultural conversation.

Categories
Subculture

Vogue: The Value of Dance in a Minority Culture

Vogue may have been a single by Madonna, released in 1990, but the track has a large back history worth more than the platinum single.

Vogue was a dance style started by LGBTQ African American and Latino American groups of Harlem in the 1970s, as a way to seek refuge from the poverty, crime and prejudice they faced. It was part of a larger subculture called Ball Culture, started in New York the 1920s.

Vogue as a dance style was developed from the magazine ‘Vogue‘; dancers would imitate the poses of models from covers of magazines or catwalks, displaying their desire to be as glamorous and famous as the cover girls. The whole culture derived from a longing for glamour and fame that, at the time, was extremely difficult for these minority groups to achieve – the ball scene allowed them to live their fantasies, which is why the dance was so valuable to this minority culture.

‘Balls to us is as close to reality as we’re gonna get to all that fame and fortune and stardom and spotlight‘

(Paris is Burning, 1990)

The scene became a safe space for the youth of marginalised Harlem to be free and expressive in the sense of their personalities and sexualities, away from the mainstream society that constrained their right to be who they wanted to be.

Identity

One of the things that dance has created in minority cultures is an identity, in the sense of recognition both to themselves and others.

A lot of accounts of people in ballroom culture suggest that in the heteronormative environment of the US in the 1970s and 1980s, some found it difficult to embrace their sexuality in the more heteronormative world. In Paris is Burning (Livingston, J, 1990), the film that documented the ballroom scene of New York in the 80s and 90s, David Xtravaganza told Livingston ‘you feel 100% right being gay’ in relation to vogue balls. This shows that the dance was a way for the community to feel self-assured: seeing people and being with people that likewise didn’t conform to heteronormality could dispel any doubts that the way they lived and who they loved was anything less than okay.

The sense of identity also relates to the way dance has created a doorway for these minority cultures into the mainstream American and European society

In Vogue, a lot of this was through Madonna and her track ‘Vogue‘ released in 1990 on the album ‘I’m Breathless‘. The live performance of ‘vogue‘ on the 1990 MTV awards was a good representation of the people of Ballroom culture; minority cultures were well portrayed and elements of vogue were used in the performance, which was actually choreographed by Jose Gutierez and Luis Camacho – two vogue dancers that were established in the vogue scene. Following her blonde ambition tour, Madonna released a tour video called ‘Truth or Dare’ which documented the star and her crew’s life over the tour. The movie showed the openly gay dancers (5 of the 6 main dancers) in a way that was not often shown to the public, especially in a time of heteronormativity. This movie ended up becoming very influential to the larger LGBT community of the US and Europe.

‘Being gay was to be ‘the other’ and be subversive and perverse and all of a sudden there was this message that you can be gay and happy and successful‘

( Strike a Pose, 2014) – Kevin Stea (one of the dancers) reflecting on the movie’s effect.

Through the song, tour and movie, Madonna created a demand for the dance style and a window into the minority community in the commercial entertainment world; vogue reached Japan and Europe in the 1980s.

This arguably contributed the beginning of the less hetero- and gender normative environment of our western society today. Vogue can now be found throughout Europe Japan and the US, with European vogue houses, lessons open to anyone and an appearance in most social media forms.

‘People in Europe got to know voguing via YouTube; YouTube started in 2005, I returned to Paris in 2006 and by 2007-8 there you were seeing it in European dance competitions.‘

(Rayner, A, 2017) – Laissandra Ninja.

This was so for dancer and choreographer Benjamin Milan, who discovered the ballroom scene and voguing via youtube in 2009, when the european vogue scene was much smaller. Milan then moved to New York for a year to learn the style from ‘the masters of the art form‘.

‘I find great value in voguing as it helped me to connect with myself, my sexual identity and to know that it was ok to be different‘

(Milan, B, 2018)

The style has clearly found a place within commercial dance and entertainment, and so has the minority community along with it, which is not forgotten even now in the 21st century. The identity created is now a way for other people in similar situations and communities to feel the same self-acceptance and confidence, whether directly from ballroom culture and the vogue, or through musicals like ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie‘ and movies like ‘Saturday Church‘.

There is some debate however around the use of vogue in the commercial world: British choreographer and founder of House of Suarez, Darren Suarez told me about the annoyance of the ‘hierarchy’ of voguers as commercial dancers are taking the voguing jobs after just a few masterclasses.

‘Most dancers want to learn it because it’s very current at the moment. There is no time to envelope yourself in it, to go and become enriched in it‘

(Suarez, D, 2018)

Suarez spoke of the way vogue has evolved but has also become disjointed over time, due to its popularity; its uprise has encouraged the community to grow but has also meant the dance style has been exploited for commercialised dancers and choreographers to gain ‘originality’ without the correct knowledge of the style’s background.

Community

Historically, social dances have been a way to create community, continuing throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The category relates to sociability and socialising, as well as forming a place for people to meet and connect.

With vogue, these dancers of Harlem were not only LGBTQ in a heteronormative America, they were also victims of social exclusion and marginalisation. In the same way that this group had created an identity, they also created a community for themselves in which they could have support and protection.

In Ball culture, the groups that dancers would train with and represent were known as houses, with the leaders of these groups refferred to as fathers and mothers. This metaphor in the context of the struggle these people faced was not a coincidence: for a lot of them, their actual parents had rejected them because of their way of living, and so the men and women who took on caring roles as leaders of their houses, were a way of filling the void. In Paris is Burning (1990), Pepper Labeija explains the extent of rejection these ‘children’ experienced:

‘A lot of these kids that are in the balls, they don’t have two of nothing, some of them don’t even eat’ 

Many dancers involved in ball culture earned money from escorting and stealing in order to pay for outfits and food, as some admitted in Livingston’s documentary. But still homeless and penniless, these groups provided support and companionship as well as protection from racism and homophobia that was common in New York in the 70s and 80s.

As these dance styles have become more known and common, they still act as a source of community for dancers – communities with the same values, as well as more creative values too.

Benjamin Milan told me ‘Vogue helped me find a community of like minded people where I felt creatively challenged and inspired‘ (2018)

Now, people still use the community of balls and houses as a way to artistically express themselves, to belong to a like minded group and to get away from the constraints of society that have not yet cleared all together. But they also use these competitions and houses as a source of inspiration and creative development, many dancers and choreographers like Milan then interpret the style and present it in their works, therefore spreading the dance styles further and developing them.

Using the LGBTQ community of 1980s Harlem as an example, Dance has become a vessel for culture, community and social escape. Dancing has aided the rise and creation of music genres, fashion and overall culture many times and allows marginalised people to be accepted where they are a minority.

Dance has been used as a support system, providing a sense of belonging and a distraction from social injustice and crisis. It has also supported participants of subculture, by giving a voice and sense of place in society, as mainstream culture slowly embraces their art.

The globalisation of such styles influences commercial art and dance thus intertwining subcultures into the commercial western art scene. Some may believe that the influence of the art of minority cultures on mainstream western society is stealing, as sometimes the art is used, repeated and globalised and the subculture or minority culture is forgotten and those who participated in or created the genre reap little financial gain.

Subculture is however, always evolving and the communities and support mechanisms created for the fringes of society can still find the same values through dance, club culture and developing improvement and regeneration schemes. Dance remains an alternative means of escapism and a way to cope with hardships, as opposed to more harmful, less developing distractions such as crime and drug abuse.

In summary, dance holds value and opportunity for minority cultures that other means of support do not through a sense of identity and community.

If you’re interested in the contents of this article, official clips of the documentaries Strike A Pose, Paris is Burning and Truth Or Dare are available on youtube.

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