22/03/2016 Conference report: RAM 2015 ­ AA

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CONFERENCE REPORT: RAM 2015

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ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY: NEW APPROACHES, NEW

RELATIONS 

Top row (L - R): Fabiana Severo, Paolo Colosso, Cauê Krüger, José Bento Ferreira 
Middle row (L - R):  Felippe Cardozo Ciacco,  Marcela Soares da Silva, Lígia Dabul, Alex Flynn, Jorge Juarez Li, Dayana
Zdebsky de Cordova, Laure Garrabé, Daniel Dinato
Bottom row (L - R): Simone Dubeux, Bruna Fetter, Maria Eugenia Miranda, Jeanine Geammal   

From the end of November to the rst week of December 2015, Montevideo witnessed an intense tra c, not of vehicles
(which would be quite unusual in this calm metropolis), but of anthropological discussions and debates at the eleventh
Anthropology Meeting of Mercosul. Entitled ‘Anthropological dialogues, practices, and visions form the Global South’,
RAM 2015 presented 21 symposiums, 40 round table discussions, 128 panels, and 5 mini-courses. One of these panels,
twenty years after Marcus and Myers’ ground-breaking collection, ‘The Tra c in Culture’ (1995), focused on contemporary
art and anthropology, seeking to discover a nities between anthropology’s way of thinking and that of the art world,
renegotiating the relationship between art and anthropology. With the title, ‘Art and Anthropology: New approaches, new

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relations’, the panel put forward a range of concerns, stimulating a high level debate and engaging researchers from
Brazil, Peru, Chile, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Italy, to put forward contemporary anthropological concerns in a
panel quite di erent from the classical approach to the anthropology of art.

Coordinated by Alex Flynn (University of Durham, UK) and Dayana Zdebsky de Cordova (Universidade Federal de São
Carlos, Brazil), the proposal was not only to apply “new anthropological theories to ethnographic situations characterized
by artistic production, but to foment new anthropological theories through involvement with conceptual approaches that
support actual artistic production in its di erent expressions” (Flynn and de Cordova, 2015). Works focused on theories of
sociality in art inspired by James Elkins (1996), Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) and other authors interested in the transformative
dimensions created by art; post-fordists artworks structures (Boltanski e Chiapello 2005), the emergence of new markets,
social movements, artivism, protests, and new politic subjectivities were welcomed in each of its six sessions.

The rst session, “Circulation and practices”, combined analysis of indigenous painting, Chilean documentary and creative
economy highlighting trajectories, market sectors, decision making and brokers. Maria Eugenia Miranda of the
Universidad Ricardo Palma
 , Peru, analysed the past two decades of bora and huitoto paintings from Peruvian Amazon, in
the works of Víctor Churay, Brus Rubio, Santiago Yahuarcani and Rember Yahuarcani, and underlined the importance of
anthropologists as mediators between artists and art worlds. Maria Paz Peirano of the University of Kent, UK, spoke about
the trajectories of Chilean documentary cinema at festivals since the renewal of 2010, focusing on production, exchange
and cooperation networks, and the articulation of political and artistic subjectivities. Louise Scoz of the Federal University
of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, presented an on-going ethnographic research enquiry of so-called ‘creative economies’
based on startups, investigating the political issues emerging from art, creativity and innovation with reference to
economy, technology and markets.     

The second panel, entitled “Art and politics”, was opened by Alex Flynn, who employed Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics
as a dialogical way to place contemporary art and anthropological theories of sociality into productive dialogue.
Bourriaud’s micro-utopias and Nestor García Canclini’s notion of imminence (Canclini 2013) were employed with a
renewed focus on the Maussian theory of the gift, exercised by Flynn’s ethnography of the Landless Movement’s
“mystics” and the contemporary artivism arena in São Paulo. The performances analysed presented shared experience,
sensitive and ethical metamorphosis, based on ambiguity and intentional lapses of signi cation. This brought forward
re ections on political subjectivity, democracy, knowledge and artistic production. Jeanine Geammal of the Escola de
Belas Artes of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, re ected upon the category of the artisan at Cariri, a small
city in northeast Brazil that hosts an artcraft and cultural centre called “Master Noza”. Refusing to employ rei ed concepts
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of “art”, “artcraft” or “popular art” she analysed objects and images in their own materiality and agency through the theory
of Didi-Huberman, and the concepts of “memory and survival”, of Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin. Ligia Dabul of the
Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil, addressed the invisibility of popular contemporary art practices, exploiting the
tension between peculiar art world processes, involving production, value, selling, notions of beauty and worldviews.
Jorge Juárez Li of the Ponti cia Universidad Católica of Perú exposed the trajectory of photo group LimaFotoLibre, since
its rst marginal urban interventions up to its acceptance in reputed galleries and art museums. The negotiations,
articulations and circuits of LimaFotoLibre’s presentation of the capital of Peru were combined with an analysis of the
theme, style and photographic composition in a dense ethnographic process.

On the morning of October 2, the panel opened with a session devoted to “epistemological paths”. Pedro Cesarino of the
University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, put forward a provocative presentation on comparison, connection and translation of
di erent ontological regimes. This theoretical focus was based on analyses of such exhibitions as ‘Magiciens de la terre’,
‘Primitivism in 20th Century’, ‘Animism’, ‘Histoires de voir’ and ‘Histórias mestiças’. This session counted on two further
members of USP. Daniel Dinato’s presentation was also an attempt to re ect upon notions of “ontological con icts”
instantiated by contemporary art installations and performances based on Viveiros de Castro’s notion of equivoques,
perspectivism and subjects. While Paolo Colosso focused on urban contradiction both in its exploitation and domination
aspect and in its possibilities of innovation, inspired by the Situationists’ works and practices and Henri Lefebvre’s
theoretical framework. The urban spaces for Paolo were seen both as theme, support and use value to other political and
aesthetical possibilities to make “une autre ville pour une autre vie”.

After an intense morning on questions of epistemology, the afternoon session focused on “Space and circuits” and the
topic of contemporary art fairs, collecting, and markets. Bruna Fetter of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil,
suggested that the overshadowing of biennales by art fairs is a wider symptom connected to changes pertaining to the
contemporary art world, impacting on art marchands, critics, dealers and collectors. She approached the “ecosystem” of
such events through three perspectives: as a legitimation and distinction process, a business platform, and as a very
speci c social network. Dayana Zdebsky de Cordova of the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, proposed a more
internal and ethnographical approach to the same universe. She emphasized the impact of contemporary theory and
research inside the art system itself, what articulates specialists both as re exive and as strategic agents, simultaneously
analysing and producing the eld’s needs. Simone Carneiro da Cunha of Ponti cal Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, discussed the complexity of the cultural production of music, from its creative procedures to the technical,
recording and copywriting processes through an analysis of the career and trajectory of the musician, producer and editor
Egberto Gismonti.
 
The last day of the conference started with an e ervescent discussion of “the artist as anthropologist” abridging a
multitude of contributions. José Bento Ferreira of the Ponti cal Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil, assumed Hans
Belting’s and Marie-José Mondzain’s framework to analyse the works, interpersonal relations and gifts created by the
artist “Silvia M” in her o -stream cultural processes in São Paulo. Lorenzo Bordonaro of the Federal University of Sergipe,
Brazil, mobilised his experience as an Italian visual artist/activst to create, in collaboration with youth immigrants in
Lisbon, an intervention in public space that exposed the policy of eviction occurring in the city’s neighbourhood. Flavia
Gervásio (UNIRIO) and Anna Thereza De Menezes of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, presented an analysis
of the investigation, eld research and resultant works made by artists Paulo Nazareth, Ícaro Lira and Jonathas de
Andrade, casting light on concepts of alterity and identi cation as put in motion by these practitioners.
           
The nal session was devoted to issue of “Research and artistic process”. Cauê Krüger of the Ponti cal Catholic University
of Paraná, Brazil, presented a rich overview of the Brazilian anthropology of theatre, going beyond the contribution of
performance studies, to ethnographically address an artistic and intellectual research process undertaken by the
Companhia Brasileira de Teatro. This “Project Brazil“ involved eld research, academic reviews and conferences resulting
in a performance characterized by contemporary dramaturgy, post-dramatic theatre and relatedness as theorized by
Ryngaert, Lehmann and Bourriaud, illustrating the academic modus operandi of contemporary theatre. Marcela Soares da
Silva of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, connected the discourses and memory about a downtown area in
São Paulo, known as Praça Roosevelt, and the processes of revitalization, theatrical settlements and also performances
that have created a particular sensitive and political appropriation of urban areas. Fabiana Severo of the same university
started her ethnography about electroacoustic music by taking a specialized course on the subject. Once “admitted” to
this restricted circuit, Fabiana researched three university music groups in their creative, technical production, circulation
and consumption of this music style, mobilising the theory of Latour’s network and Seeger’s ethnomusicologic research.
           
“Art and anthropology: new approaches, new relations” was not only a fertile space to discuss contemporary art, visual
culture, ethnography, alterity, cities and power from di erent frameworks and perspectives, as a research event it also
sought to integrate artists and social science researchers to a multidisciplinary conversation. Pointing to the signi cant
growth of importance of this eld to contemporary Latin American discourse. The high level theoretical debates also were
accompanied by detailed eldwork and ethnographic expositions that were not limited by the possibilities of the written
text. Inspiring intellectual, methodological and interdisciplinary exchanges occurred and will certainly result in new
productive discussions and publications. Let the tra c continue! 

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 22/03/2016 Conference report: RAM 2015 ­ AA
Cauê Krüger is a Lecturer at the Ponti cal Catholic University of Paraná, Brazil

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