Ethnographic Terminalia: An Introduction

Abstract

Ethnographic Terminalia is a collective project that brings together art and anthropology within the gallery space. This article traces the origin of the project, its past and current exhibitions, and situates for the reader the scope of how various projects from installations, to sound works, sculptures, photography, film, community-based works, material culture, and performance transcend the borders of art and anthropology. The essays that follow in this issue are contextualized in this essay. [art, curation, ethnography, exhibition, gallery]

Visuality Without Form: Video-Mediated Communication and Research Practice Across Disciplinary Contexts

“…These are (a) research in the form of ethnographic films (as visual products of research and representations of it), (b) research on ethnographic films, (c) research on visual images and artifacts produced by others, and finally (d) visual research on visual images produced by anthropologists. A more recent dimension requiring a different definition of the visual artifact emerges in visual anthropological studies that center on the creation and analysis of exhibitions, art installations, and written reviews of exhibitions and performances (see Brodine et al, 2011). These different foci divide the field in some ways.…”

Evoking Imaginaries: Art Probing, Ethnography and More-than-academic Practice

“…It is also a beginning, its own place, a site of experience and encounter. (Available at: http://ethnographicterminalia.org/about) Since 2009, The Collective, based in Canada and the USA, has dealt with the ways art can be related to anthropology (Brodine et al, 2011). They have organised several exhibitions and workshops, and on a yearly basis they have done exhibitions in collaboration with the yearly congress of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).…”

Visual ethnographies of displacement and violence: land(e)scapes in artists’ works at Thupelo Artists’ Workshop, Wellington, South Africa, 2012

“…Recent gallery exhibitions, such as 'Ethnographic Terminalia' (Brodine, Campbell, Hennessy et al 2011;Campbell 2011;Errington 2012) and 'Secrets Under the Skin' (Havana, Cuba 2010/Anchorage, Alaska 2011), 1 have deliberately worked across categories of anthropology and art to merge the disciplines within a material, visual domain.…”