Connecting Art and Anthropology Workshop

After a brief discussion the group decided to go for a walk and talk over ideas. Walking up the hill from the Birchcliffe Centre they discussed what they had learned during Connecting Art and Anthropology, the value of encountering new work and of being put in an unfamiliar situation.

Continuing the walk they encountered four people in succession – another workshop participant (Anna Grimshaw), a workman directing traffic, a man in his garage and someone building a house. To each they stated that they were ‘looking for an idea’. Various conversations ensued, videoed by Jos van der Pol.

After returning to the Birchcliffe Centre, there was a discussion about how the walk was a methodology common to both artists and anthropologists. The editing of the video footage was then undertaken, led by Jos van der Pol, while Mary Bouquet worked on an analytical structure of the landscape the group had walked through and the people they had met. There was discussion about what it might mean to do ‘speed anthropology’.

The presentation of what the group had done together involved first showing the video and then presenting diagrams.

The presentation provoked intense discussion and heated emotion about whether the Group 1 were parodying their respective fields and the ethical implications of what they had presented and produced. Several people commented that perhaps as an ‘audience’ those of us not involved had forgotten that their analysis was not being put forward as a work of art or anthropology, but as a gesture based on the process of working together. Liesbeth Bik commented that what was interesting was the form adopted by the group – to look for an idea – which could be understood in a number of different ways in the context of the idea of connecting anthropology and art.