The boundaries between anthropological and artistic research and practices are sometimes remarkably blurred. In this seminar, based on pre-selected case-studies from South Asia, we want to look at such themes that are of interest both to anthropologists and artists: urbanisation and public art, transnational migration, environment and climate change, and a variety of strategies to construct and analyse ‘Otherness’. Our focus will be primarily on India.
In this context, the notion of transculturality and critical transregionality allows to elaborate on video art, photography, street art, painting or multi-media production. The seminar is research-intense, and will be based on group work, plenary discussions, project-based research, and a tutorium (extra cps). It is structured into a first part focussing on concepts (readings and discussion work), followed by concrete case-studies and the development of an exposé for a project. Students will learn how to engage with and build their own databases, create visual essays, use ethnographic methods. For their research, students will be provided with various visual material (e.g. art works, artist interviews, documentary footage, etc.) in an image database and furthermore with the digital image annotation tool, HyperImage (HRA). With supervision by tutors (participation is mandatory) students get introduced to the technical elements in HyperImage to work on their projects and to combine writing and visual data in their argument.
Cathrine Bublatzky 