Connecting Art and Anthropology Workshop

CAA participants were invited into the Chapel space at the Birchcliffe Centre where Group 2 had been meeting. Two rows of folded blankets were arranged on the floor. On each blanket was an A4 piece of paper bearing the words "Address your questions to Daniel/Anna" Daniel and Anna were sitting back to back in the middle of the rows of blankets. Participants sat on the blankets, writing questions on strips of paper and passing them to either Anna or Daniel.

Wednesday 2.30 pm

Presentation to all seminar participants

Soumhya Venkatesan

Just choose one of these spaces.

Jos van der Pol

[Looking at the placements arranged for each participant]

So we have to write something down?

Daniel Peltz

Do you feel like introducing it Anna?

Anna Grimshaw

How do you describe it? Where do we begin?

Daniel Peltz

I guess for me maybe I have to go back a couple of years then to when I first met Amanda. But I'm not really sure there are really beginnings and endings. Do you believe in that notion?

Anna Grimshaw

No. Where do you think we began?

Daniel Peltz

Why is the question of beginnings important to you?

Anna Grimshaw

Because I feel something began by moving ourselves.

Daniel Peltz

The notion of a retreat always has that element to it. When we went up to the barn there was a feeling that there was something at risk by engaging in this kind of discussion that doesn't usually take place in an intimate setting and transposing it to another place.

Anna Grimshaw

And was it risky?

Daniel Peltz

Was it risky?

Anna Grimshaw

Uh hu.

Daniel Peltz

I'm not sure. It feels like it is now.

Anna Grimshaw

Does all work have to start somewhere?

Daniel Peltz

I suppose not. I mean if we're not investing in beginnings; but again, as I said, we're trying to bring this beyond abstraction right? So I'm not really sure. I mean is it important to you that your work starts somewhere?

Anna Grimshaw

No, I'm never sure where something starts. But I'm wondering whether at the presentation we just had, something was begun that wasn't clear…

Daniel Peltz

Yeah, that's a sentiment that when we get to the end … beginning it makes me wonder about time duration, if we make any difference, if that beginning were two months or two days from the ending. But it seemed important that the group had fun together. It was fun too as well as being risky.

Anna Grimshaw

Is it worth taking at risk?

Daniel Peltz

I don't know. I like to think we all have a lot invested in this, so sometimes it seems worth it and sometimes it doesn't. I mean at the beginning you need a lot of licence I guess to take risks even if it's not worth it.

Anna Grimshaw

Are you feeling nervous?

Daniel Peltz

In my stomach, a bit, yeah.

Anna Grimshaw

What do you think that is about?

Daniel Peltz

At first we were talking about beginnings, now I'm not sure. I think maybe we're trying to figure out what this event tastes like. What does it taste like to you?

Anna Grimshaw

Very hard to sum it up. So many different moods and different relationships and dynamics…it seems to have catalysed into something much more risky and more likely to cause misunderstanding.

Daniel Peltz

I can feel your spine. Chiropractors would maybe call it L7 and 8. Do you feel like people are using us to ask their questions?

Anna Grimshaw

I'm not quite sure.

Daniel Peltz

I hope that they ask more.

Anna Grimshaw

What about a vodka tonic?

Daniel Peltz

That's a nice addition.

Anna Grimshaw

What do you think happened at the presentation just now?

Daniel Peltz

I'm not sure. My stomach knows but I don't know yet. Like when you start working on a project and you're really excited about it and it's really far too early to show it. I think Amanda summed it up a bit in talking about the experience of the group and the dynamic. It was the intimacy of the five that the fifteen or sixteen didn't have and somehow coming back to the sixteen, parental dynamics kick in.

Anna Grimshaw

Where do you want to go from here?

Daniel Peltz

Maybe fun. We can return to this idea of fun. It took a while for us to have fun together. Is there such a thing as "the fun of sixteen" or only the "fun of three or five?" And why is fun so important? It seemed really important to everyone; all of a sudden fun started to happen and all of a sudden questions came up like is work fun.

Anna Grimshaw

Did we have fun or when did we begin to have fun?

Daniel Peltz

Or pleasure. I mean your L8 is giving me a lot of pleasure.

Anna Grimshaw

And anything else?

Daniel Peltz

Would you say something about shearing?

Anna Grimshaw

The shearing scenes in the film, were they fun?

Daniel Peltz

Well, they were very vulnerable, for the sheep at least, but I felt for everyone… they took me a long time to recover. I think it was a trauma that was felt by the audience as well as the animals and it made me think about the men too and how they process that trauma. Maybe that music that we're hearing isn't really a juxtaposition to their action, but it's a way of enunciating the trauma they're experiencing.

Anna Grimshaw

Didn't you think the wool was beautiful?

Daniel Peltz

I was more drawn to the pattern produced by the shears in the animal. It seemed somewhere between inside and outside the animal.

Anna Grimshaw

Can you imagine shearing a sheep yourself?

Daniel Peltz

I shear my head once every couple of months. Could you imagine doing that?

Anna Grimshaw

No, it seemed a very masculine thing to do, very male to me.

Daniel Peltz

Have you ever shorn anyone, like shaved them?

Anna Grimshaw

No, I haven't, but I can imagine feeling the wool coming off the body of a sheep.

Who do you wonder about in the group?

Daniel Peltz

Right now about Mary, obviously.

Anna Grimshaw

Why?

Daniel Peltz

Well, I'm worried I might have hurt her feelings.

Anna Grimshaw

So what do you think should be done about that?

Daniel Peltz

I'm trying to.

Anna Grimshaw

Who else in the group?

Daniel Peltz

Am I thinking about? Jos van Der Pol came to mind because he was taking our picture.

Anna Grimshaw

What was unusual about that?

Anna Grimshaw

Do you think anthropologists make good friends?

Daniel Peltz

I used to think so. I think what was unusual about it was I was just thinking about whether it was a way of handing me a question. We've been talking about the food in our individual meetings and I was talking about it with a couple of the other people here. About how this whole notion connecting art and anthropology could be understood by a more sophisticated relation to the vegetarian non-vegetarian divide. Do they need to be separate plates for example, couldn't we make multilayered dishes? Where the top layers vegetarian and the bottom layers not, so instead of saying 'vegetarian' its just says don't dig too deep.

Anna Grimshaw

So do you think if the food had been better we would have had a different conversation?

Daniel Peltz

Do you think the eaters should kill the animals they eat?

Anna Grimshaw

Do I think?

Daniel Peltz

Should meat eaters kill the animals they eat?

Anna Grimshaw

Well, it would change their perspective.

Daniel Peltz

Since you asked, is there anyone here you would like to say something to?

Anna Grimshaw

I'll have to think about that.

Anna Grimshaw

Are you ready to go home yet?

Daniel Peltz

I'm a long way from home, my next trip isn't home, but this could be home maybe.

Anna Grimshaw

You would like to stay longer?

Daniel Peltz

I'm not ready to leave. Can you feel what kind of question is coming next?

Anna Grimshaw

No idea.

Daniel Peltz

Ok, what's on my mind is whether artists and anthropologists are patients.

Anna Grimshaw

Patients?

Daniel Peltz

Maybe "patients" or "patience".

Anna Grimshaw

Anthropologists like to think of themselves as "patient." In that they are always waiting for things to reveal themselves. Are artists patient?

Daniel Peltz

What do you think - based on your observations over the last couple of days?

Anna Grimshaw

I've heard a number of times that artists are more egotistical. That suggests that maybe they're less patient. More anxious to take the initiative. Might that be true?

Daniel Peltz

Is there such a thing as a patient ego?

Anna Grimshaw

Probably not. What do you think?

Daniel Peltz

I don't know. I keep thinking it's possible that there are benefits from this dialogue we're having. This dialogue between art and anthropology. It's also possible that it's dangerous. Do you think there's any danger in this whole three days?

Anna Grimshaw

Well, I think there's a sense of danger in the presentation we just had. I'm not quite sure what it was.

Daniel Peltz

Where would you locate that?

Anna Grimshaw

I think in the sense of people not understanding a work. Sharing an understanding of a work and how uncomfortable that can be. And how exposed it can make people feel. That maybe artists think that is the purpose of a work. Is that the case?

Daniel Peltz

I think that artists are much more comfortable with the idea of their work provoking discomfort - if you can say it that way - than, than anthropologists; I mean they're given licence for that to be an aim of the work. In fact the majority of celebrated works can be viewed in that way.

Anna Grimshaw

Is there a question you'd like to ask of an anthropologist here? And what would it be?

Daniel Peltz

I was hoping you would just let me say "yes".

Anna Grimshaw

And what would it be?

Daniel Peltz

I have so many questions. Well, I mean I think I tried to ask it earlier, about what's really at stake for you in doing this kind of work and where is it that it enriches your life and makes you feel alive and something you have to do, and what's the methodology that you use to get to that space. Because it seems like such a complicated practice. I mean art is complicated enough as it is when you do it with other people, but it just seems like such a complicated practice.

Anna Grimshaw

Do you think anthropologists have a sense of humour?

Daniel Peltz

I hope so.

Anna Grimshaw

Do artists?

Daniel Peltz

Not all!

Anna Grimshaw

Is performance perverse?

Daniel Peltz

Is knowledge a chemical process?

Daniel Peltz

Do you think it's important that we come to a solution. That we feel some consensus? Or for us just to juggle some different questions in terms of outcomes?

Anna Grimshaw

Can one just stop, just as one doesn't necessarily begin, can one just stop?

Daniel Peltz

It might be the most productive and the most uncomfortable. But it would require a certain amount of bravery.

Anna Grimshaw

Shall we stop?

Daniel Peltz

Sure.

Daniel Peltz

Can we have a couple of volunteers to come and read these questions in whatever order you like? Maybe three people.

Just one more, we have two people.

Start?

[Chris, Bryony and Lesley read the questions]

Was that a risk

Was a risk worth taking, of intimacy here?

Who do you wonder about in the group?

Can you feel what kind of question's coming next?

What does this taste like?

Is it time to stop?

What happened at that presentation?

Is there any danger in this whole three days?

Where do you want to go from here?

Are there more things to do together?

Do you think it's a good thing to come to a solution?

Come to a consensus or just to juggle the big questions?

Is knowledge a chemical process?

Will you leave this seminar and be optimistic?

Beautiful wool

Vodka tonics

Are people using us to ask their questions?

All work has to start somewhere

Do you think meat eaters should kill the animals they eat?

Are there different senses of humour? Could that become a big problem?

Are there really beginnings and endings?

Why is fun important? Is work fun?

Would you say something about shearing?

What are you talking about, exactly?

How is this feeling different? Are you jittery?

Would you like to come on a residency with artists and anthropologists? Or is it too soon to say?

Do you think artists and anthropologists are patient?

Is performance perverse?

Is there anyone here you would like to say something to?

Rosalind Nashashibi

Just to make it known, that's the end of what we planned and we'd like to open it up in a different way to discussion.

Chris Wright

Tell me about vodka and tonic.

Soumhya Venkatesan

It's good. There's more, it's here on the table.

Rosalind Nashashibi

It was because in a way, well, I had something we wanted people to partake in because we've done it loads of times and you haven't done it before and also because there was some tension in the last discussion so we thought people might relax and also because it's the last day and we just…

Chris Wright

Did you work with two artists as well as an artist and anthropologist?

Soumhya Venkatesan

No, there was always an artist and an anthropologist.

Rosalind Nashashibi

There was a lot of discussion, I mean everything was decided …we paired up and those two paired up.

Soumhya Venkatesan

We did it by lots to see who would do this session.

Rosalind Nashashibi

But we had lots of models before this one.

Anna Grimshaw

Do you think it would have been different if it had been two artists and two anthropologists?

Chris Wright

Yes, I'm interested in… you devised a space here, a set up where you could have had all the artists on that side, all the anthropologists here, where only the artists could give questions, I mean…

Rosalind Nashashibi

It didn't occur. I think it did occur, although we never said it that we wanted an artist and an anthropologist to do it. But what we were mainly thinking about it in terms of a three rather than a two.

Daniel Peltz

And repeating that structure, so that's more about a generalised third.

Chris Wright

What was interesting, given that I missed something at the beginning, was that I immediately saw that you were passing questions over, but then trying to time your question – the traffic was – you were being directed but also it was a two-way process. So by the time I'd written a question it was going to be hard because you'd gone on to the next thing. You were trying to write very fast questions and do it very quickly.

Rosalind Nashashibi

It didn't occur that did it? I think we were trying to figure out when they would like to ask a question.

Chris Wright

From my experience. It got very invested in supporting you trying to keep you going.

Daniel Peltz

When the two of you were doing it, there was a sense of being completely engaged. Also we did have a sense of having to adapt.

Soumhya Venkatesan

The idea of people in a conversation that you can guide but they will also choose at which point they will answer, so it becomes this 'threeing' workshop. The threeing process we decided not to respond to, but the three workshop we can talk about.

Rosalind Nashashibi

We can say that it's a secret society.

Daniel Peltz

At the moment I feel a little […] because I think there's something about the dynamic of like break-off groups that became a little like the […] of all this fun and excitement, cloistered I felt like.

Rosalind Nashashibi

We have visuals for the CHS.

Daniel Peltz

The CHS is a…The headquarters of the CHS. It's a phenomenon.

Rosalind Nashashibi

While he's showing you that I can tell you a bit about the threeing workshop.

Daniel Peltz

It stands for cathedral hygiene services.

Rosalind Nashashibi

So it's no longer a secret society?

Rosalind Nashashibi

The idea of a secret society was the fun of using language in the anthropologist's domain and…the idea of threeing was maybe something I first read about online but it came from the 16 Beaver group because they had every Monday night… an artists group, one of their Monday nights in New York, people come and give talks. They had somebody giving a threeing workshop and I was fascinated by this. Its basically about the idea that a relationship of three should be given more credence over the two's that we normally divide the world into and this was a workshop where this person was, instead of… he would help people and be able to deal with the three relationship which we don't deal with very well but that comes up a lot in our lives as a very powerful symbolic relationship and I think that it came to us to do a threeing workshop because of the figure of the artist or the anthropologist as somehow outside but inside a structure that already exists perhaps so that it would be the third.

Anna Grimshaw

And we had also been struck by the John Marshall film that Lucien showed, that there's this choreography between the two subjects in the film and the filmmaker as a subject and we were interested in ways in which that played out and we could try and work with that here in the group in which there are two people in the dialogue but there are these other questions that people interject.

Chris Wright

What would you see as the third party in the art anthropology dialogue then?

Anna Grimshaw

That we just had?

Rosalind Nashashibi

This one?

Chris Wright

Three seems to be replicated.

Rosalind Nashashibi

It's kind of the world

Daniel Peltz

We were suggesting that perhaps without even knowing what it was that it was a third term

Rosalind Nashashibi

Art and anthropology AND…

Anna Grimshaw

And whether we allowed all the voices of the audience into this relationship it would redefine the terms of the relationship somehow getting away from these two boxes art and anthropology. Looking at that as a way of thinking about how to explore what happened here in the last few days…thinking of it as a gesture, thinking about different kinds of representations.

Chris Wright

Its interesting in terms of what I'm responsible for teaching sometimes, which is fieldwork methods, so you have to do something, for example interview techniques so obviously… role playing with students, you're the shepherd and this person is trying to buy the sheep, you don't want to sell the sheep so you tell the person you've got to talk to each other.. so its not something either of them can win because you've set it up as a no-win situation and there are things about what you've done here that would be quite useful. You tell somebody you've got to devise a set of questions, and they're just going to answer yes to that and you don't want a yes answer, you want stories so how are you going to rephrase that question to make…

Rosalind Nashashibi

Well I suppose that's got to do in a way with the third, as an agent who finally directs

Lesley Young

Because we were thinking about who'd made a phone call, who'd read a newspaper, who'd had a discussion externally

Chris Wright

One of the things I used to talk about a lot is this third party, it's not me and you, it's like all three of us having this conversation.

Amanda Ravetz

It had a real circular flow about it, so it had this sense of circulating and the questions, you didn't get stuck on questions, it wasn't about answering the questions, it was about a level of digesting. And then something else comes along, so a question is always shifting, its always a shifting context. I thought it was really beautiful, I don't know how it relates to art and anthropology, I don't really care.

Chris Wright

Is it like, the other anthropologists here, if you listen to tapes you've recorded in the field, trying to transcribe them, maybe not, but you actually listen to that process of you talking, it's a very revealing thing to go back to those things, starting to ask this guy about his great uncle, but somehow we get onto parrots, that process.

Anna Grimshaw

It's about generating a conversation rather than a dialogue and I think that's partly what - that the problem with art and anthropology is this sort of dialogue rather than a conversation that is open-ended and could go in any direction.

Daniel Peltz

One thing we were curious about was as you talk about that experience of looking back, and thinking about this notion of the gap, and this is like a very crude visual of the gap, right, so what we're looking at is text but what we're really looking at, as well, is spaces between the texts, so as we hear that we're piecing together what happened, what isn't there.

Rosalind Nashashibi

What about the people who didn't do a question, would they like to say something about why they didn't?

Paul Rooney

For me it was… I kind of...the probability thing. Anna quite quickly built up a pile of questions.

Rosalind Nashashibi

More like supporting the person?

Paul Rooney

There was an overload of

[…]

Anna Grimshaw

Did that make you feel outside the conversation or a participant?

Paul Rooney

I thought I'll … wait, I'll enjoy

Rosalind Nashashibi

That's true when you write, you miss what's being said.

Erika Tan

I almost didn't write a question but I realised that if I didn't I'd never find out what they were doing.

Rosalind Nashashibi

What they were doing?

Erika Tan

Yeah, whether they were reading the questions at all.

Soumhya Venkatesan

Did you?

Erika Tan

That was interesting because actually they had asked the questions; there wasn't that much distortion from the question that came in.

Lesley Young

When we were doing it we were five, so Ade joined in and it often got quite personal and there was one of the earlier structures we used which involved the dark and it was a trio looking at each other and it was kind of complicated. Sitting back to back is important but also many more questions meant it didn't become so personal, or reflections on individuals, this was the most "general" we managed – in an interesting way.

Amanda Ravetz

That's interesting because last night I was thinking there are all these subterranean questions here that I could almost sense last night, and how could I…might I make an intervention about that, maybe play the truth game, and then I kind of dismissed it quite quickly, it would take so long to do that.

Soumhya Venkatesan

I think it was the audience that allowed that because with five people it really did get personal.

Rosalind Nashashibi

I found it very informative when it was personal, at other times I found it really uncomfortable, but we had points at which after doing it several times it always became counselling, there was no way of it not being counselling because even though there's a third, there was no third party that we could talk about and we did a little bit, talk about other things seen in the group, but then it always came back to, the questions would come back to people questioning each other about their feelings about that, so it was interesting to see that a conversation about two with very little outside knowledge that they share in term of peoples situations, was going to become counselling. And we had to go with that.

I don't know if that's what was in other peoples minds, somebody said about 'were artists and anthropologists patients'.

Soumhya Venkatesan

Its funny because this term is used very specifically by [Alfred] Gell in one of his books – of the patient, so I thought my god!

Amanda Ravetz

There was also the thing that sitting here I could have made some kind of intervention if they got stuck and ask a different kind of question so pick up on when it was getting a bit difficult or when they wanted to be moved on.

Chris Wright

Well it creates a sense of responsibility. We all had a share in that responsibility.

Soumhya Venkatesan

But initially we had it in a rough circle and you could only see one person's face.

Rosalind Nashashibi

The poor person in the middle had to stare at somebody as well.

Soumhya Venkatesan

Yeah.

Rosalind Nashashibi

We were doing that when we decided they probably weren't feeling mobile because when we were doing it we were sitting here and thinking jees, the others were sort of static, so we figured out in the end that people probably wouldn't, that's why we tried to.

Soumhya Venkatesan

We too

Lesley Young

Some people were doing passing.

Soumhya Venkatesan

You passed a question didn't you?

Lucien Taylor

Just because I was – this was another one.

Rosalind Nashashibi

Read it!

Lucien Taylor

I hadn't written anything and it came back with yes and no

Amanda Ravetz

We do need to…

Lucien Taylor

I wrote yes, no, […] for me the mediating term in art and anthropology, or the reason why the juxtaposition of art and anthropology didn't generate any unease in me, and maybe for the wrong reasons, is because the third term is the world, and I feel like I'm living in cloud cuckoo land or never-never land, because when I'm doing my work, I think of it…I don't identify as an artist or an anthropologist. And clearly, that's different from many of us. You were talking about the frustration of getting your work out of certain contexts?

Chris Wright

I think its being put into those contexts rather than suddenly being one or the other.

Lucien Taylor

But you think about it as framing your own understanding of the world. And I just think it's so odd.

Rosalind Nashashibi

But you think about yourself as a filmmaker. And yeah, we had this discussion about you, didn't we? Because different people have come up, obviously, in these discussions and I can't remember how it came about; oh yes, it was about this idea that came up the first day about do anthropologists feel frustrated about the outcomes and about being restricted and I think you were saying, Lucien didn't seem particularly frustrated about having to be pigeonholed, about films as one thing or another and I said that's because he's in a film studies dept., and in a way, film is this great overall term that it doesn't make you define your aesthetic or moral or ethical position whereas art and anthropology does that more, maybe because film is mass and high art and all these different things.

Lucien Taylor

It's just because when I'm working I don't think of having a hat or a cap or a professional identity. When I assume I have an identity its just to pay the mortgage, its purely utilitarian, its not part of my sense of self at all except…

Rosalind Nashashibi

Why is 'filmmaker' not one of those?

Lucien Taylor

Filmmaker might be, but I don't have anything invested in being considered to be an artist or an anthropologist. And when I'm in the work, not outside the work, I don't even think of it as work, or even a film or video. But I am invested in this thing of film or video, especially with my students. If they refer to their videos as films.

Amanda Ravetz

Shall we go back?

All

Thank-you.