Beyond Skin: Layering and Networking in Art and Archaeology

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knappett Carl

This article puts forward two modes through which cognition and agency exist beyond skin: ‘layering’ and ‘networking’. These bodily and artefactual processes are broadly equivalent to two fundamental social practices defined by Chapman (2000) — accumulation and enchainment, respectively. While the aim of the article is to develop theoretical frameworks for application in archaeological settings, the themes encountered have wider relevance to material culture as a whole. Examples are taken from modern and contemporary art, notably the work of Marcel Duchamp and Antony Gormley.

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-359
Author(s):  
Christoph K. Streb ◽  
Thomas Kolnberger ◽  
Sonja Kmec

This article uses a novel quantitative methodology to examine sepulchral material culture. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of social spatialization and art as agency, the authors contend that variations in grave designs and materiality cannot simply be explained in terms of changes in fashion and mentality. Other factors also need to be taken into account. Using a digital data collection tool, the Cemetery Surveyor Application (CSA) developed at the University of Luxembourg, they compile a set of data encompassing all the material aspects of each grave in a cemetery in Luxembourg (Western Europe), the setting of their case study. The graves are dated from the 1850s to 2015. |The authors compare the chronological evolution of the most recurrent material features with a GIS-based spatial analysis of the same features. The results of the spatial analysis not only largely confirm the chronological study, but also allow them to be more precise (dating is often problematic) and include undated graves (a third of the sample). The digital data collection tool also allows them to compare cemeteries and to highlight variations in these that cannot merely be imputed to chronology, but also to spatial proximity and material agency.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
Glaucia Guimarães ◽  
Nilda Alves ◽  
Raquel Goulart-Barreto

Based on hints gathered in documents and observations, the aim of this work is to reveal emancipatory meanings present, though invisible or not fully realized in regulatory processes, as well as to understand knowledge and ideas impregnated in the daily practices of social agents. In order to valorize edge knowledge and social practices, this work is grounded on Boaventura de Sousa Santos, especially on his formulation of a two-fold Sociology: one related to the social experiences that have not been recognized yet as valuable and the second related to the expansion of possible social experiences. The movement corresponds to the construction of an archeology of already developed social experiences, though not visible or recognized by the existing theoretical frameworks, so as to reveal both kinds of experiences: the recognized ones and the possible ones. By means of experiences developed by ordinary people, the aim is to get to know and socialize experiences conducted in boundary scientific works in several social areas to make it possible to gather hints to the production of alternatives to hegemonic ideas and to the maintenance of traditions abandoned by modern sciences. Based on what can be called «Sociology of absences», experiences can be valued, publicized and used to convey hidden meanings, to exploit possible ways to deal with posed questions and to legitimate new forms of thinking. Based on these assumptions, we present a reflection on an experience in the social field, regarding possible conflicts and dialogues between forms of knowledge. In this case, we treat the pedagogical experience with video and TV programs, developed by teachers and experts on education and communication in the official schools of Rio de JaneiroCity, being the latter put in charge of helping the former in their pedagogical practices. By means of the hints gathered, sometimes taken as unimportant, it was possible to identify in the teachers´ speeches and actions, particular ways to work works with video and TV programs that, far from being characterized by lack of knowledge, were plenty of alternative logical thinking and could lead to the production of creative and emancipatory practices. In short, what could be seen as meaningless could also be regarded as emerging knowledge. Com base em indícios resgatados em documentos e observações, o objetivo deste trabalho é revelar sentidos emancipatórios existentes, mas invisíveis ou ignorados, em meio aos processos regulatórios, bem como compreender os saberes, as idéias que impregnam as práticas cotidianas desenvolvidas pelos sujeitos sociais. No sentido de valorizar os conhecimentos e as práticas sociais marginais, fundamentamo-nos em Boaventura de Sousa Santos, que propõe a sociologia das ausências e a sociologia das emergências. Na primeira, o movimento é o de expandir o domínio das experiências sociais já disponíveis, contudo negligenciadas, enquanto na segunda é o de expandir o domínio das experiências sociais possíveis. Propõe uma arqueologia das experiências já existentes, mas invisíveis, no intuito de revelar as experiências do mundo, tanto as disponíveis como as possíveis. Trata-se de revelar e difundir experiências vividas por pessoas comuns, de conhecer e propalar experiências construídas em trabalhos científicos marginalizados e de encontrar e anunciar conhecimentos/experiências nos mais diversos campos sociais, no movimento de constituição de alternativas à lógica hegemônica e, ao mesmo tempo, de manutenção de tradições marginalizadas e desperdiçadas pela ciência moderna. Por meio da sociologia das ausências, estas experiências são resgatadas e divulgadas para se tornarem possíveis encaminhamentos das questões enfrentadas, para se constituírem em outros sentidos para a transformação social ou, ainda, para propor novas formas de pensar. Apresentamos uma reflexão sobre experiência no campo social de conhecimentos que, segundo Santos, trata de conflitos e diálogos possíveis entre diferentes formas de conhecimento. No caso deste trabalho, a tentativa é a de resgatar a experiência pedagógica no uso de vídeos de alguns dos professores da Rede Municipal de Educação do Rio de Janeiro, ignorada pelos próprios professores e por especialistas nas áreas de educação e comunicação, sendo os últimos produtores de vídeos educativos para auxiliar a prática pedagógica dos primeiros. O exercício de ler indícios e pistas, muitas vezes insignificantes, mas reveladores, presentes nas falas e ações dos professores, indicou que, longe de ausência de saber, os modos peculiares de utilização de TV e vídeo revelam outros saberes e outra(s) lógica(s). O que pode sugerir ação isolada e desprovida de conhecimento, também pode ser compreendido como pista para uma prática e um saber criativo e emancipatório.


Author(s):  
Irina Marchesini

This article explores the phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet era found in contemporary Russian society and manifested both in contemporary art, such as in the installations of Il'ja Kabakov, Sergej Volkov, and Jevgenij Fiks, and in modern literature, especially in the prose of Andrej Astvacaturov. Such regret for a bygone past primarily mourns not the apparatus of the Soviet state, but the routine and the quality of familiar daily life. Insights from the fields of visual studies and trauma studies undergird this exploration of the relationship between a work of art's visual composition and its representation of toska, memory, and material culture in the Soviet era. By juxtaposing artwork with literary prose, we reveal the significant role had by 'reflective' toska-nostalgia (as defined by Svetlana Boym, 2001) in the formation of post-Soviet identity.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Citra Smara Dewi ◽  
Yuda B Tangkilisan

This study focuses on the role of the National Gallery of Indonesia (GNI) in maintaining multiculturalism through the policies implemented, namely initiating the activities of the Pameran Seni Rupa Nusantara (PSRN). The PSRN exhibition is one of the GNI’s most important programs because it gives space to the artists of the archipelago - not just Java and Bali - to present works of modern-contemporary art rooted in local wisdom. As a nation that has the characteristics of pluralism, the spirit of multiculturalism in art has become very significant, especially in the middle of the Disruption era which is ”full of uncertainty”. Earlier studies have suggested that the aesthetic concept of Indonesia was based on Indonesian cultural diversity, but these studies do not specifically address GNI policies. This article uses qualitative research with a historical method approach together with a material culture analysis approach. The results of the study show that GNI as the State Cultural Institute plays an important role in maintaining multiculturalism through exhibition events involving roles and figures. Keywords: The National Gallery of Indonesia, Cultural Policy, Pameran Seni Rupa Nusantara, Multiculturalism


Author(s):  
Christopher Loveluck

This chapter uses material culture, textual sources, and associated social practices to explore how cycles of time and memory influenced the development of coastal societies and their expressions of identity in northwest Europe, between c. 500 and 1050. There are three themes. First, how memories of earlier material culture traditions and social practices were used to create new identities in eastern and western maritime Britain, between c. 450 and 600. Second, how cycles of maritime orientation on the part of coastal societies in England and Denmark varied between c. 650 and 1000, despite situation next to the sea, maritime resources, and communications. And third, how social practices, representation, and memory were used in major port towns of Flanders and England, in emulative and competitive relations between seafarer-merchant-patricians and older landed elites, between c. 900 and 1050.


2021 ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Stephen Rose

Bach’s music is often interpreted as transcending the material conditions of everyday life. This chapter, by contrast, argues that Bach scholarship could be enriched via approaches taken from the study of material culture. It places Bach within the vibrant consumer culture of early-eighteenth-century Leipzig, exploring his postmortem inventory and his keyboard publications in the context of how the town’s bourgeoisie used material goods to show their status and identity. It investigates Bach’s printed and manuscript music in terms of the social practices surrounding these material artifacts. Finally, the chapter relates Bach’s working practices to debates about the interplay of human and material agency. It discusses how he experimented with the material characteristics of instruments such as organs, and analyzes his compositional practice as an interaction between player-composer and contrapuntal materials.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
Xia Kejun

I argue that in China, ink is not only a special material with a historical connection to literati art, but also philosophy-in-practice. It confronts the limitations of expression, and forms the idea of Black (deep and in a state of becoming) and Blank (white and empty). This is a dipolarity or dualism within the disposition of art. I discuss how ink art is a new method, and give it diagnostic value in relation to contemporary practice. China’s contemporary ink artists seek to resolve the paradox of working with both conceptual art and the specialism of painting as an art through letting the natural elements of ink express themselves sufficiently, by letting nature create itself, in order to combine techne and nature. This ‘blank-blank art’ is an example of dipolar thinking, or yinyang thinking, and therefore is distinct from the modern or contemporary art which is predominantly monopolar or binary. Considering ink art as method offers a new direction which opens a space of ‘between-ness’, evoking the forgotten dream of Marcel Duchamp, which he named the ‘infra-mince’.


Author(s):  
Rodrigo Banha da Silva ◽  
André Bargão ◽  
Sara da Cruz Ferreira

Early Modern Archaeology is becoming a nodal área of study in Portuguese Archaeology, due to the increasing numbers of excavations, as in terms of publication of sites, contexts and material culture. Nevertheless, this progress doesn´t display a refined preoccupation on methodology and theoretical frameworks. The authors address this issue focusing its interest on artefact assemblages and categories quantification and its narrow relation to context functional profile, noteworthy two of the fundamental basis allowing historical and anthropological inferences.


2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Peter Hahn

In the last two or three decades, material culture as a topic of scientific study has experienced a real boom. Focusing on everyday objects, their contexts and meanings, material culture studies offers important approaches for several disciplines within the humanities. The aim of this new wave of research is to improve the understanding of social practices in a wider sense and thereby contribute to the understanding of societies themselves. Given this ambitious goal, and the wide range of disciplines engaged in studying material culture, the new approach will only have a future if interdisciplinary debates are initiated and succeed in making reciprocal benefits. In particular, the complementarities of different disciplinary methodologies should result in useful synergies. If material culture studies is seen only as a domain within anthropology (or any other discipline) then we risk it coming to a dead end (Bertrand and Jewsiewicki 1999, 181; Hahn 2005, 12). This is the larger context in which I see the relevance of the present essay and, before going into details, I would like to express my support to the ideas expressed by Garrow and Shove.


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