The issue is moot: Decolonizing art/artifact

This article seeks to step back from the long-standing debate between art and artifact—aesthetics and science-- understood as terms that reference central concerns of the quintessentially modern Western disciplines of art history and anthropology. In their landmark edited volume The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, George Marcus and Fred Myers explored the growing convergences exhibited by the concerns and methods of practitioners of the two disciplines, both in the academy and the museum. By training our attention on contemporary artworlds—understood as systems-- they illuminated the exchanges of aesthetic and conceptual ideas and forms that have brought Western and non-Western arts into shared discursive and real spaces. Yet in the quarter century since the book’s publication there has been a noticeable retreat from attempts by the proponents of visual studies and an expanded visual anthropology to actualize disciplinary convergences. The boundaries that separate art and anthropology have not been dissolved. Art historians and anthropologists continue to ask different questions and to support different regimes of value. From the author’s vantage point in a settler society currently directing considerable energies to institutional projects of decolonization the old debates have rapidly been receding as a new ‘third term’ – Indigenous Studies-- intrudes itself on the well trodden terrain. Not (yet) definable as a discipline but, rather, maintaining itself as an orientation, Indigenous Studies nevertheless renders the earlier disciplinary debates moot. Place, rather than time-based, collective rather than individual, holistic rather than either disciplinary or interdisciplinary, Indigenous Studies formulations exert decolonizing pressures on institutions that are rapidly mounting. Using Anishinaabeg: Art and Power, a show in 2017 at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), as a case study, this article shows how an exhibition moved representation away from the art/artifact dichotomy as well as from contested strategies of ‘inclusion’ and pro forma recognitions of ‘Indigenous ontology’ toward a genuine paradigm shift.

«NORTHERN LIGHTS»: VISUALIZATION OF THE NEW RUSSIAN HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

The article is devoted to the analysis of one of modern Russia’s local or group historical narratives, which articulates the mystical connection of the north-Russian population with Finno-Ugric shamanic practices based on runes «Kalevala». The TV series «Northern Lights» (the original script of Victoria Platova) in the genre of a mystical detective discusses one of the ways to deploy a «folk» or popular historical narrative, which is some controversial attitude of the state policy of memory and a conservative turn in historical policy. The relationship of the representations about Finnish roots of Russian ethnos with such unrelated concepts as «escapism» and «Aryan myth» was analyzed. The gradual drift of popular history in mass media is considered from the purely Slavic narrative of origin and ancient mystical practices of the people of north-western Russia to the recognition of Finno-Ugric roots or even the unity of Russian and Finnish peoples of the Russian north. The deconstruction of the series by visual anthropology techniques revealed a constant appeal to the everyday magical practices of the Karelian heroes of the series, who identify themselves as Russians. The inhabitants of the Island, where the action takes place, all the structure of their daily lives and holidays are built around the gods and heroes of Kalevala. The narratives «Finnish roots» in media are considered in connection with the interpretation of dubious results «Russian Nobility DNA Project», the origin of Princess Olha and Old Ladoga, as the source of Russia. The conclusion is reached on the participation of many actors and polyphonicity of modern Russian historical narrative, search for new lines of interface of Russian history and Europe.

The Second Interrupted Revolution. Juan Guzmán and the case of foot-and-mouth disease. A German photographer in the middle of the war in the Mexican countryside.

Through the photographs of foot-and-mouth disease in Mexico, taken by the photojournalist Hans Gütman/ Juan Guzmán in 1947, this terrible pandemic and the inhumane handling it was given are analyzed. The study of this series of images, from the perspective of visual anthropology, reveals interesting contradictions in the development version of the Mexican government, which for the same reason published them in the magazine Mañana up to 5 years after the photographs were taken. Said “official” version defined foot-and-mouth disease as “an evil ghost” that took over the national cattle, “reason why it had to be exterminated” in order to lead Mexico “into economic and social progress”, a version that is tendentious and contrary to reality of the process revealed by these images.

Drawing to Tell Versus Drawing to Intrigue?

The article “Drawing It Out” by Haidy Geismar (2014) in Visual Anthropology Review (Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 97–113) focused on the use of images in early anthropology. The drawings by Arthur Bernard Deacon (1903–1927), which he made during his field studies in Vanuatu, New Hebrides from 1926 until his sudden death caused by blackwater fever in 1927, are the starting point of Geismar’s inquiry. The author discusses Deacon’s drawings and infers the potential of drawing as a methodology for anthropology. Deacon was a young PhD candidate who was sent to Vanuatu from the University of Cambridge. It was his intention to continue the studies of the indigenous culture of the New Hebrides at the time, which had been started by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. In contrast to his expectations, Deacon found a culture in the process of decay. The subject of his study, the indigenous culture, had been threatened by diseases and cultural influences that settlers, missionaries, and traders imported with them since they landed in the middle of the nineteenth century. Deacon described the impossibility of protecting the indigenous culture and critically reflected on his role as an anthropologist (Geismar 2014, p. 102).

Introduction: The makers and the made

Academic disciplines are a help and a hindrance. While they advance knowledge by focusing disciplinarians on a coherent set of related issues, those same boundaries that define and focus, also delimit and inhibit expansion of universal knowledge for the broad benefit of humanity. Such are Communication Design and Visual Anthropology.

A commentary on: Reappropriation of Gendered Irish Sign Language in One Family

Barbara LeMaster’s article “Reappropriation of Gendered Irish Sign Language in One Family” in Visual Anthropology Review piqued my interest with its initial sentence: The native vocabularies of one segment of the Dublin deaf community (i.e., primarily women over 70 and men over 55) contain different signs for the majority of common lexical items examined (LeMaster 1990). From this I learned that there existed different female and male signs in Irish Sign Language. This intrigued me and led me to explore further, despite recognizing that I was probably out of my comfort zone. I would be addressing a topic of social history, through my lens of theoretical and empirical aspects of communication design. Curiously, I rejected a more comfortable choice of an article that uses an approach far more familiar to me: research analyzing the covers of introductory texts on cultural anthropology (Hammond et al., 2009). I am therefore acutely aware that the questions I ask about Irish Sign Language not only stem from another discipline, but also introduce different research methods. I also suspect that some of the issues I raise are covered elsewhere, either by LeMaster or by other researchers. This I regard as a positive sign of considerable overlap between our disciplines. In the following commentary on LeMaster’s article, I start with a brief account of what I consider to be main themes within the article. This is not a comprehensive summary, but sets the scene for discussion points. I then propose some general differences in approach and emphasis between the disciplines of visual anthropology, as represented in this article, and communication design. Although I have situated myself within a particular sector of communication design (in the introduction), I have nonetheless tried to cover a wider field encompassing design practitioners and historians. From more general topics, I narrow down to specific areas that might inform, or be informed by, graphic communication research: the process of language standardization and dictionary design. The final section on signs moves us some distance from LeMaster’s study. However, personally, one of the most exciting aspects of research is forging links between apparently disparate areas of research, which might require a leap in the dark.

Exploring the Boundaries Between Visual Anthropology and Visual Communication Design Research

Researchers and/or designers in visual anthropology and visual communication share the visual aspect or visual study as a common interest. However, their views are different. Visual anthropologists consider the social impact and/or meaning of the visual communication within a culture. They are also interested in ways to present anthropological data by means of visual techniques. Visual communication design researchers create visual communication, and are interested in how participants respond to visual matter in order to enhance the human experience. In a way, they are (partly) producing the visual culture visual anthropologists are reflecting upon. In order to find out how and whether such disciplinary exploration might be fruitful, we were assigned three articles from Visual Anthropology Review within the category “Deaf Visual Culture.” As typographic legibility researchers within READSEARCH this felt familiar, since we have conducted several design studies (published and in preparation)—more specifically, practical legibility research—for the deaf and hard of hearing community. As design researchers in legibility studies, we do see possibilities to build bridges among the disciplines of visual anthropology and visual communication. A remarkable resemblance between the different fields of study within a deaf culture, in our eyes, is the approach of trying to capture legibility/illegibility within language (spoken, signed, and/or written) by means of visual properties. Therefore, we would like to highlight differences and similarities between anthropology versus visual communication, drawing conclusions about why both disciplines should keep a close eye on each other. Implementing insights into their research practices and/or visual communication design artifacts may open horizons within innovative or even collaborative research projects. Both fields, visual anthropology and visual communication, are trying to contribute to a specific common concern in deaf education—namely, the educational context of language practice.

Empathic Projections: Visual Anthropology Design and Acknowledgement

Averting or embracing our capacity for acknowledgement results from what we are willing to take-in what there is to see. In this sense, the photo essay in general confronts us with the limits of our capacities. This essay attempts to examine how it is that the photo essay and its design contend with imagination and acknowledgment. Considering recent editorial initiatives and a redesign of Visual Anthropology Review, and, in greater depth, Feldman and Pérez’s photo essay “Living at the LUX: Homelessness and improvisational waiting under COVID-19,” this essay asks: How does the photo essay—and relatedly, the photograph—in its looks face the possibility of a resistance to acknowledge the reality it depicts?

Amazonian House-ing: A Visual Anthropology Essay

This visual essay documents the house-ing practices of Amazonian river dwellers and urban and peri-urban residents in the face of large-scale development projects. In Altamira (Pará, Brazil), the construction of the third-largest hydroelectric dam in the world, the Belo Monte Plant, has led to the flooding of housing areas along rivers and the displacement of residents into collective urban resettlements. Although the complexities of people’s living did not enter the engineers’ calculations or the public policy agenda, the residents improvised construction materials and aesthetic repertoires to preserve the relationships that constituted their local ecologies. Our visual ethnography aims to re-center the situated purview of the resettled, re-visibilizing the house as an index of ineffaceable livelihood and as an ongoing terrain of contestation and continuous Amazonization. Resumo Este ensaio visual documenta as práticas de house-ing de ribeirinhos e habitantes urbanos e peri-urbanos da Amazônia, confrontados com grandes projetos de desenvolvimento. Em Altamira (Pará, Brasil), a construção da terceira maior hidroelétrica do mundo, a usina de Belo Monte, conduziu ao alagamento de áreas habitacionais e ao deslocamento de seus moradores para novos assentamentos urbanos coletivos. Embora as especificidades do mundo vivido dessas pessoas não tenham entrado no cálculo dos engenheiros, nem na agenda das políticas públicas, os moradores improvisaram materiais construtivos e repertórios estéticos para preservar as relações que constituíam suas ecologias locais. Esta etnografia visual busca restituir a perspectiva situada dos deslocados, dando visibilidade à casa como índice dos modos de viver e como um terreno aberto de contestação e de contínua amazonização. Resumen Este ensayo visual documenta las prácticas de house-ing de los ribereños y de los habitantes urbanos y periurbanos de Amazonia que se enfrentan a grandes proyectos de desarrollo. En Altamira (Pará, Brasil), la construcción de la tercera mayor represa hidroeléctrica del mundo, la usina Belo Monte, provocó la inundación de áreas de vivienda y el desplazamiento de sus habitantes a nuevos asentamientos urbanos colectivos. Aunque las especificidades del mundo vivido por estas personas no entraron en los cálculos de los ingenieros ni en la agenda de las políticas públicas, la gente improvisa materiales de construcción y repertorios estéticos para preservar las relaciones que constituían sus ecologías locales. Esta etnografía visual pretende recuperar la perspectiva de los desplazados, dando visibilidad a la casa como índice de formas de vida y como terreno abierto a la permanente contestación y amazonización.

Echoing the Call for Multimodal Representation

The editor’s introduction to the Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 32, Issue 2, from fall 2016 emphasizes the necessity of anthropology to engage in multimodal methodologies of research and research communication. An expanded view of visual anthropology, and its methodological and analytical contributions to current debates, recognizes and builds on the field’s commitment to a reflexive awareness of the social relationships at stake in the process of making images and an engagement with the politics of representation. It also encompasses an active approach toward learning to see how others see, how technologies of imaging picture the world, and a serious consideration of the technical capacities necessary for communicating ethnographic knowledge through visual composition, editing, and design. (Chio & Cox, 2016, pp. 101–102) The claim that the reflection on images has been neglected compared to the reflection on language, echoing in the introduction of Chio and Cox (216), has been made in the context of the iconic turn in the mid-1990s. In reference to the linguistic turn in philosophy coined by Richard Rorty (1967) in philosophy, art historian Gottfried Boehm (1994, pp. 11–38) described the iconic turn, and Thomas W. Mitchell (1995, pp. 11–34) used the term pictorial turn, observing a significant shift toward communication by images. Both recognized the increasing power of images in society through the digital means of communication, which enables everyone to easily create and disseminate images. Both were aware of the lack of reflection on the meaning of images in Western thought.