Week2 Anthropology

In this week’s study, I was interested in a few key words in the red group’s study literature: inner relations, gifts, ontological turn, naturalism and separation.

The term gift is interesting. Gift in anthropology: a process that produces hierarchy, rather than describing gift as a constructed relationship that establishes connections between individuals that already exist . So in viewing art curation are we not also being given by the curator’s art? Does this relationship tend to be intrinsic (based on the existence of theory and practice as a relationship) and do we receive this gift and change ourselves? Or does the giver change at the same time? And what do I need to do with this relationship as a curator? This gave me new food for thought.

Sansi, R. (2015). Introduction: After the Ethnographic Turn. In Art, Anthropology and the Gift (pp. 1–19). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

In the Green Group’s presentation, they gave some examples of contemporary art practices of participant-observers, which I think is very similar to community art, but I found that, at the moment, most exhibitions are interpreted from the perspective of the observer, and all the outputs are based on observer research, but is this research really correct, are the needs of the observed or the current situation really Is there any insight from the observer, is there any cultural colonisation of the observed after the observer has been deeply involved in their community or curatorial exchange? Is this relationship the right one? This has given me a lot of food for thought, is this connected to the intellectual exposure in curatorial classes?

I don’t have a clue at the moment, but hopefully I will make some progress in the next week.