Munich, Germany – Only seldom do constitutional debates take the streets. However, these bureaucratically heated disputes–regularly discussed in the secluded spaces of courts–sometimes catch media attention and stir political debate. After the implementation of stark public health measures to fight against the expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Germany, a mounting controversy has opened up in the last weeks. Federal states like Bavaria have issued public space use guidelines to prevent the virus to spread: these recommend not only a safety distance of 1,5m, but also include bans affecting many institutions and big shops, which have closed or been reduced to essential-mode only; in the streets and parks groups of only 3 people are allowed, with the sole exception of larger groups living in the same household. When appreciated in a comparative gaze, these measures are far less strict than most of the neighboring EU countries. However, different political factions in Germany consider that they affect the rights of free protest and the freedom of assembly.
In the last weeks there have been scattered protests all over the country, having some support across the political spectrum, against what some have called a ‘Demoverbot’ (ban of demonstrations). Some wonder: What should go first, fundamental rights or health? The debate, of course, takes different connotations, left or right. And there are different expressions related to it. Some weeks ago, a man was photographed in Karlsruhe carrying a makeshift book copy of the Constitution tied to his back. On May Day several ‘Spontis’ (spontaneous demonstrations) took the streets in the popular districts of Berlin in protest for the ban. Walking by the Isar – Munich’s river – some days ago, I found another modality: a graffiti fight painted on the pavement in a bike lane from the green spaces running parallel to the water in the Glockenbachviertel’s embankment. A collision of political views in yellow and white. In yellow someone had painted a statement whereby ‘Corona’ came to stand as the ‘Demoverbot’ in itself. In white, someone felt compelled to correct this: ‘Corona’, that person thought, is a ‘virus’, whereas ‘capitalism’ would be ‘the problem.’
[FR] Munich, Allemagne – Il est rare que les débats constitutionnels se déroulent dans la rue. Malgré tout, il arrive que ces disputes bureaucratiques de haute volée — habituellement réservées aux espaces confinés des tribunaux — attirent l’attention des médias et suscitent un débat politique. Ces dernières semaines, après la mise en œuvre de mesures de santé publique draconiennes pour lutter contre l’expansion de la pandémie de SRAS-CoV-2 en Allemagne, une controverse grandissante a émergé. Des États fédéraux comme la Bavière ont publié des directives sur l’usage de l’espace public pour empêcher le virus de se propager : celles-ci recommandent non seulement que soit respectée une distance de sécurité d’1,5 mètre, mais comprennent également des interdictions touchant de nombreuses institutions et de grands magasins, dont la plupart ont fermés ou ont été réduits à un service minimum ; dans les rues et dans les parcs, seuls les groupes de 3 personnes sont autorisés, à l’exception des collectifs pour peu nombreux qui vivent sous le même toit. Lorsqu’on les compare, ces mesures sont beaucoup moins strictes que dans la plupart des pays voisins de l’UE. Cependant, différentes factions politiques en Allemagne considèrent qu’elles affectent les droits de manifestation et la liberté de réunion.
Au cours des dernières semaines, quelques manifestations ont été organisées dans le pays, avec un certain soutien de l’ensemble du spectre politique, contre ce que certains ont appelé un « Demoverbot » (une interdiction de manifester). On s’interroge : qu’est-ce qui devrait passer en premier, les droits fondamentaux ou la santé ? Le débat, bien sûr, prend différentes connotations, à gauche ou à droite. Et différentes expressions y sont associées. Il y a quelques semaines, un homme a été photographié à Karlsruhe avec un exemplaire de la constitution fait maison attaché dans le dos. Le 1er mai, plusieurs « Spontis » (cortèges spontanés de protestation) sont descendus dans les rues des quartiers populaires de Berlin pour contester l’interdiction. En me promenant le long de la rivière Isar-Munich, j’ai découvert il y a quelques jours une autre modalité d’expression : un combat de graffitis peints sur une piste cyclable du Glockenbachviertel, au niveau des espaces verts qui longent l’eau. Une confrontation de points de vue politiques en jaune et blanc. En blanc, quelqu’un avait peint une équation dans laquelle le « Corona » se substituait au « Demoverbot ». En jaune, quelqu’un s’est senti obligé d’en rectifier les termes : Le « Corona », selon cette personne, est un « virus », tandis que le « capitalisme » serait « le problème » (kindly translated by Jérôme Denis)
Publication and rationale
This short picture & text is a guest contribution to Scriptopolis (11 May 2020), the wonderful archive documenting material approaches to writing phenomena curated by Marie Alauzen, Jérôme Denis, David Pontille & Didier Torny.
Although the brief accompanying text provides contextual info on the picture, some relevant phenomena (like the 9pm clapping & the vast support of the measures) are obviously missing in this attempt at charting out landscapes of protest in German cities under Corona public health regulations. However, I wanted to document this to reflect how different liberal versions of ‘exposure’ might be emerging…
Interestingly, there are also newer landscapes of protest operating with an idea of ‘shared protection’: Disability rights movements like AbilityWatch have been exploring forms of demonstrating ‘at a distance’, particularly at a time when they feel even more exposed by a re-enactment of eugenic-like measures in health care using the hashtag #UNsichtbar. +info here: https://maiprotest.de/
Come what may, and beyond the more or less spectacular display of street protests, a looming question seems to linger: even if might sound like a minor issue, a too-civil concern, appreciating the constitutionality of these measures has become also a debate between jurists, given that they might have a jurisprudential value – hence, exploring their juridical and scientific grounding becomes quintessential, since they might be having a future impact.
Felix Bohr, Uwe Buse, Anna Clauß, Markus Feldenkirchen, Barbara Hardinghaus, Wolfgang Höbel, Guido Kleinhubbert, Martin Knobbe, Julia Koch, Dialika Neufeld, Christopher Piltz, Max Polonyi, Andreas Wassermann and Alfred Weinzierl (1 May 2020). Germans Split Over Lifting of Lockdown. Der Spiegel.
Maik Baumgärtner, Felix Bohr, Roman Höfner, Timo Lehmann, Ann-Katrin Müller, Sven Röbel, Marcel Rosenbach, Jonas Schaible, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt und Steffen Winter (8 May 2020). Sturm der Lügen. Der Spiegel.
Saturday, 26.10.2019: Conference A conference in the exhibition will be focusing on the concept of open form and how it travels between design, architecture, politics and anthropology. Ignacio Farías and Tomás Criado will give a short input on games as a form of urban research.
Sunday, 27.10.2019: Playing The Stadtlabor team that worked on the games will be hosting the exhibition and playing and explaining the games to the visitors
Picture by Francisco Montoya, 2019 [CC]
More information (German & English)
DE | Spiele als Stadtforschung
Als Stadtlabor entwickeln wir konzeptuelle, spekulative und materielle Werkzeuge, wie etwa Spiele, um auf die aktuellen Krisen des modernen Urbanismus zu reagieren. Trotz oder gerade aufgrund ihrer spielerischen Dimension befähigen uns Spiele, die Art und Weise zu verändern wie wir Themen in Frage stellen, Wissen teilen, Bewusstsein schaffen, kritische Öffentlichkeiten generieren, Zukünfte imaginieren und Fürsorge erlernen.
Die von uns entwickelten Spiele sind keine finalen Produkte, sondern offene Prototypen. Sie sind Ergebnis und Methode unserer Forschung und Werkzeug, um Stadtentwicklungsprozesse gemeinsam zu gestalten. Als solche sind sie offen für Veränderung und Versionierung, damit ihre spezifischen Sprachen, Logiken, Spielweisen und Effekte an spezifische Situationen und unterschiedliche städtische Akteure angepasst werden können.
Unsere Explorationen rund um Spiele begannen im Kontext eines einjährigen ethnographischen MA-Studierendenprojekts The Only Game in Town?, das die aktuelle Krise des Berliner Wohnraums und Immobilienmarkts analysierte. Inspiriert von der Geschichte des Spiels Monopoly – registriert im Jahr 1904 von Elizabeth Magie als The Landlord’s Game und konzipiert als pädagogisches und politisches Instrument, um über die Gefahren von Landmonopolen aufzuklären – haben wir uns vorgenommen, Spielprototypen zu entwickeln, um unsere Forschungsergebnisse zu teilen.
In Zusammenarbeit mit dem ZK/U haben wir drei Spiele entwickelt: (1) House of Gossip problematisiert die drohende Verdrängung von Mieter*innen aus ihrem Wohnraum; (2) in Sue Them All setzt sich ein Kollektiv für gerechte Wohnpolitik ein; und (3) das Kiez Mind Archive schafft einen performativen Raum der Wissensproduktion. In diesem Prozess stellten wir fest, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Spielen auch unseren Bezug zur Wissensproduktion verändert: vom Beschreiben zum Eingreifen, von Repräsentation zur Konstruktion von Wirklichkeiten, und damit auch zu einem Experimentieren mit der Bedeutung von Politik und Kritik bei der Entwicklung und Nutzung von Spielen.
EN | Games as urban research In the Stadtlabor for multimodal anthropology, we are developing conceptual, speculative and material tools, such as games, to respond to the current crises of modern urbanism. In spite, or even because of their ludic dimension, games are capable to alter the ways in which we discuss issues, share knowledge, raise awareness, make urban problems public, imagine futures, and learn to care.
The games we have developed are not final products but open prototypes. They are result and method of our research, and work as devices to intervene in urban development processes. As such, they are open to be transformed and re-versioned, so that their specific languages, logics, gameplay, and effects could be adapted to specific situations and concerns of various urban actors.
Our exploration around games started in the context of a one-year ethnographic MA student project The Only Game in Town? analysing the contemporary crisis of housing and real estate markets in Berlin. Inspired by the history of the game Monopoly–registered in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie as The Landlord’s Game and conceived as an educational and political tool to reveal the dangers of land monopolies–, we then set to prototype games as a means to share our research results. In collaboration with ZK/U, we have produced three games: (1) House of Gossip problematizes the threat of displacement of tenants from their homes; (2) in Sue Them All a collective advocates for fair housing policy; and (3) the Kiez Mind Archive creates a performative space of knowledge production. In the process, we discovered that developing games also impacts how we could do research: from describing to intervening, from representing to performing (and breaching) reality, thus experimenting with what politics and critique might mean whenever we prototype and play.
Testing games at Open Form Exhibition, 2019 [CC]Hackaton with Invisible Playground, 2019 [CC]Neighborhood festival KMA, 2019 [CC]
Games: Open Documentation
House of Gossip
House of Gossip is problematising the threat of displacement of tenants from their homes. The opaque information during a house selling process leads to rumours among the tenants. Through improvised encounters and the exchange of rumours the players are trying to ally with each other and to fight for their interests.
Sue Them All
In Sue Them All, a collective advocates fair housing policy. The aim is to bring inadmissible leases. Individual and collective interests are coming together. Whether you pursue a competitive or cooperative strategy, change your tactics during the game or compromise is up to you.
Kiez Mind Archive
You move through the district with an open task. It creates an associative game with the everyday and the unknown. Through your photographic interpretations you create an alternative visual archive of the neighbourhood.
Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology
DE | Das Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology ist eine Forschungsplattform, in der Anthropolog*innen, die an aktuellen Stadtthemen interessiert sind, multimediale Formate der Wissensproduktion und -intervention in Zusammenarbeit mit städtischen Akteuren erkunden und wird vom Lehrstuhl für Stadtanthropologie der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin geführt. Mitglieder, die an der Entwicklung der Spiele beteiligt waren, sind: Diana Mammana, Tan Weigand, Lilian Krischer, Lena Heiss, Leonie Schipke, Indrawan Prabaharyaka, Marie Aline Klinger, Tomás Sánchez Criado und Ignacio Farías.
EN | The Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology is a research platform, where anthropologists interested in contemporary urban issues explore multimedia formats of knowledge production and intervention in collaboration with other urban actors and is run by the Chair of Urban Anthropology at Humboldt University of Berlin. The members who participated in the development of these games are: Diana Mammana, Tan Weigand, Lilian Krischer, Lena Heiss, Leonie Schipke, Indrawan Prabaharyaka, Marie Aline Klinger, Tomás Sánchez Criado and Ignacio Farías.
Meetings are, together with papers and books, perhaps the quintessential mechanism for the circulation of academic knowledge. And yet, despite their relevance, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: paper presentations, round tables, etc. Nevertheless, anthropology has recently recognised the need to explore other ways of sharing our knowledge and thinking together. The lab call that EASA has made in the last conferences evinces an interest that we at the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation (#Colleex) network also share.
In our case, we strongly believe that formats to share and think together should be considered as part and parcel of a discussion on ethnographic experimentation. In our work we have been exploring these venues using the rather loose term open formats. What are they? And, most importantly, what can an open format be? In this sense, this documentation project has a twofold goal. First, we aim at bringing for discussion the relevance of experimenting with meeting formats as pedagogical spaces for the apprenticeship of ethnographic experimentation. Second, we argue for the need to document these ‘experiments in meeting’ so that they may travel, be learnt and reproduced elsewhere.
1. Meetings as academic encounters, and venues to re-train ourselves
Adolfo: We meet to share knowledge and learn: at large conferences or intimate workshops, in the classroom with students or in seminars with colleagues. A screen, somebody standing, a series of slides over 10, 20 … even 30 minutes! Sometimes the speaker sits rather than stands. And then, questions at the end. This arrangement applies to most of the meetings we have had and are likely to have over our academic career. We meet to learn, but perhaps, and this is our point, we should learn to meet. Because meetings are, together with papers and books, quintessential in the circulation of academic knowledge. And yet, despite this, we usually resort to the most conventional formats: panels of paper presentations and round tables. We want to explore new ways to get together.
Meetings are extended bureaucratic forms, organisational techniques and forms of relationality across all kinds of collective and organisational contexts. Defined in space and time, meetings always point to a larger context. This is the argument made by Hannah Brown, Adam Reed and Thomas Yarrow (2017) in a special issue devoted to the topic. Thus the relevance of meetings has to do with the effects they produce beyond. To quote Brown et al.: “[meetings] contain and animate social worlds outside the spatially and temporally demarcated arenas through which they take place” (Brown et al. 2017: 12).
There is always something at stake beyond then: interests, contexts and agendas that shape a meeting and will be affected by it. Marilyn Strathern has argued that meetings, as organisational events, constitute miniaturise versions of the collectives they are embedded in: “meetings mimic larger apprehensions of a scaled-up object” (2017: 197). In a period of transformation that seems to call to experiment with new forms of producing knowledge, I would say that we need to mimic in our meeting methods this experimental impulse.
Tomás: At the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation we are trying to open up venues to rethink the norms and forms of ethnography, and more specifically, the ways in which we do and narrate fieldwork. Hence, since we started out almost two years ago now, we have tried to foreground the particular social and material interventions, the devices and the spaces, the discourses and the practices, through which forms of fieldwork beyond the canonic participant observation could be examined in closer detail.
Seeking to explore alternative meeting formats, we organised our first workshop in Lisbon last year. We devoted half of the programme to an exploration of situation-based, art-oriented, multi-sensory, spatial and audio-visual and other work that we called ‘open formats’. In this alternative meeting mode to the regular paper presentation, we not only experimented with fieldwork and how to learn to do it differently. Also, open formats became reflexive situations whereby what it might mean to experiment could be centre-staged, highlighted, examined, and debated. But as we would like to discuss today, our interest in ‘open formats’ goes beyond a mere playful exploration in a workshop. This is why we are suggesting to meet today in order to learn how to meet in many different alternative ways: Meeting in order to learn how to do fieldwork otherwise, meeting to appreciate what it means to experiment in fieldwork and what it brings. In fact, we believe that we should devote time and space to understanding open formats as interesting learning and fieldwork devices, and to making them relevant for teaching and research…
An image of one of the open formats organized in the 1st Colleex Workshop (Lisbon, 2017) (Vitor Barros).
Adolfo: One source of inspiration has been the realisation, captured by Michael J. Fischer, that “life is outrunning the pedagogies in which we have been trained” (2003: 37). Or, to put it differently, engaging with forms of ethnographic experimentation has made us realise that conventional ethnographic training–or, to be more specific, the canon expressed in many handbooks and manuals of ethnography–is not adequate to the challenges fieldwork poses today. A second source would be our own very ethnographic engagement: some of us at Colleex we have learnt from our epistemic partners in the field, such artists and activists, alternative ways to come together. This doesn’t just mean that they have shown us specific meeting formats but that we have learn to inhabit in sophisticated ‘how-to’ meeting cultures: ones that mobilise an ecology of practices whose key goal is to get us together to engage in forms of joint research. From our partners we’ve learned about composing ambiences for discussion, arranging spatial layouts, deploying varied technologies for record keeping and documentation, unfolding practices of care… That is, practices whereby ethnography becomes an art of learning to relate–meet, tell, forge relations– in order to relate–that is, to keep on meeting, telling, and forging relations– .
Eeva: We agree that heterodox and improvisational formats also generate academic value, and that they could and should be supported further through documentation. And so we thank EASA for the way it is seeking to break out of such constraints through, for instance, labs. EASA has been trying to raise awareness and give some relevance in the programme to labs. To us, labs are not just ‘blah’ they are not a mere playful format, but fundamental sites where the renewal of learning and ethnographic fieldwork might be attempted in a miniaturised time and space. Hence, this lab focuses on how labs matter. This is, then, a lab on how labs operate, a lab of labs…
Anna: In that sense, and putting open formats centre-stage, perhaps we should outline some different modes in which open formats happen. I can think of three modes: (a) meetings in which we convey our knowledge through open formats; (b) meetings in which we generate knowledge through open formats; or (c) meetings in which we show experimental fieldwork devices through open formats. Of course they aren’t as distinct from each other as this, but we need to disentangle their different moments: (a) knowledge-production happening before the format takes place, (b) knowledge being simultaneous or reciprocal with regards to the format, and (c) knowledge being derived from the open format. Meetings of academic content combine these by sharing knowledge from the field and generating more knowledge around it in the meeting. By analogy with paper presentations, later developed into articles or fully written-up papers, what would be the most finished form of an open format? How can we translate this step of the process where knowledge becomes more integrated into open formats? How could we generate the situational knowledge we could to take beyond the situation, and how could it be shared? What role would documentation play in this? And, also, what kinds of documentation are we talking about?
Eeva: We recognize a need for more adequate accounts of fieldwork than tropes and modes that build on ‘participant observation.’ We share an imperative to verbalize or articulate in more-than-textual terms but also to embody the formats and devices through which we encounter and engage the world. We also recognize the need to give some structure and even a little order to the space we as #colleex are occupying, and which we hope enables further developments in heterodox forms of research. There are multiple voices and divergent projects in this space, not just the wider network, but even among ourselves as convenors. (We don’t want to kill the network or limit ourselves by trying to agree on everything, let alone reach consensus.)
But if we are to practice new ethnographic modes and have them recognized and valued, we do need to take a position on what experimental fieldwork might constructively be guided towards and why, and this is where documenting and discussing the ways in which we do it, or drawing inspiration from one another to attempt newer ways, plays a fundamental role. Though of course any attempt at articulating this in any genre is likely to be somewhat hesitant, always contingent and probably relational. It’s not reform so much as a recognition of already productive work and thinking that’s needed. This won’t be easy in the university’s profit-oriented institutional set up, but a drive to push along these lines is definitely there. In places it’s already possible to work without reducing ethnographic insight to text or things like ‘key performance indicators’, plus it’s clear that the extremely serious can easily and productively dovetail with the playful. What we now need is a lively, possibly provisional, documentation format that can travel and contribute to pedagogy.
Adolfo: A reflection on how and why to do this, is an integral part of our work about ethnographic experimentation, as a specific ethnographic modality beyond participant observation. But beyond just talking about it or giving it value, the challenge ethnographic experimentation poses is that it requires different forms of ethnographic training. This argument links to a debate on the transformations of fieldwork in the contemporary and the need to re-equip our discipline (Rees 2008). Paul Rabinow, Chris Kelty and Kim Fortun for instance have explored other forms of learning with their students and young researchers (Rabinow 2011, Marcus 2013, Kelty 2008, Fortun 2008). The volume edited by George E. Marcus and James D. Faubion (2009), Fieldwork is not what it used to be, is exemplary in this sense. It makes a strong case for the need to renew pedagogies in the anthropological profession if we want to measure up to the challenges of the contemporary. Specifically the PhD is an exceptional learning moment or space to experiment with the possibilities of ethnography, as Marcus has argued: it constitutes a threshold where the limits of the norm and form of field work are negotiated (Marcus 2009). This has led to rehearsing formats borrowed from other disciplines, such as the ethnocharrette or the design or art studio. In a similar vein, Paul Rabinow has explored what he designates labminar, a space of academic exchange that remediated–that, is, changed from one media to another– the meetings of the laboratories he studied. In these spaces Rabinow, together with his students, explored the possibility of “new forms of inquiry through ways collaborative guided by an ethic of care” (2011: 142).
An image of one of the 1st Colleex Workshop (Lisbon, 2017) (Vitor Barros).
2. On the importance of archiving documentation of meetings and open formats
Adolfo: If ethnography is moving beyond the solitary to the collaborative, shifting away from the visual to multi-sensory, being captured not just textually but in other mediums, how are these conveyed? Can and should they be captured and re-moved to other locations?
Tomás: Perhaps we need to reflect on how to document, how to tell, how to narrate all these experiences, beyond the very situations in which they happen… How to make them travel?
Anna: And how can the multi-sensory experiences be documented or made relatable at all? For instance, open formats in mode (c) as I introduced it earlier – that is, as meetings in which the production of knowledge derives from the very open format itself – entail a particular form of documentation. And the documentation of fieldwork encounters and experiments is different, I think, from the documentation of the open formats with which we either seek to produce knowledge (b) or to just transmit knowledge (a).
Tomás: What if we gathered the documentation of open formats into something like a collection… Would this help to discern different approaches to ethnographic experimentation, or serve as inspiration to practice more experimental forms of ethnography?
Eeva: Assuming this is desirable, and that documentation should be easily accessible, what should we call this thing? Not a handbook… An inventory or list, taxonomy even? An archive? A library of how-to manuals or toolkits, even a protocol? A recipe collection or a cookbook?
Tomás: There are implications in calling it an inventory or a cookbook. Both are nice terms, but they connect to different powerful imaginaries and aesthetics that could have a potential impact on the output…
Eeva: Terminology always carries baggage. The term cookbook is perhaps most open and tolerant of gaps. Inventory is perhaps the most rigid and colonizing word we might use. This is certainly so if it consists of standardised entries to be completed in each case, and assuming some underlying structure that is infinitely transferable from context to context.
Tomás: I think there are also different notions of these terms, and I am not that sure that an inventory is colonial per se… It certainly brings to mind an imaginary of knowledge as taxonomy and logistics. Is that the connotation that we want? If we’re talking about a gathering of open formats, their very openness suggests more the idea of recipes people can alter, transform, adapt, that the openness doesn’t just refer to the types of meetings being experimented, but also the types of documentation being attempted, not to speak of the openness of their subsequent uses?
Anna: I think if we use the word cookbook it will need a very clear explanation of our understanding of recipe, that it is a mix of things whose outcome can vary. My first association with recipe is still the “take a+b, get c” type of thing, and I don’t think that’s what we mean. Maybe we could even be more open with our metaphor and use something that is more abstract and doesn’t yet have that connotation, I’m thinking carousel (for dynamics) or something that is a an open collection, not a box and not an a+b=c connotation.
Eeva: Metaphors and words do matter. Still, as texts and in texts, these vocabularies can all be read as if they were fixed, but they can also all be invitations to improvise and work on them further. One of the key motivations for documenting any research is to share experiences and inspire further adaptation. I think what we are calling for is ways of expanding our academic (and other) imagination. At the same time, some people might be reading documents to get going, to learn something totally new, in which case a step-by-step set of instructions might be handy. Documentation as a way of giving an account (whether as a story or financially) is also simply an invitation to engage and respond, to continue. In the case of #colleex, it’s a kind of reconstructed epistemic practice we’re looking for, that cares for the ethnographic in all its dimensions: as interpersonal engagement, fieldwork, description, theory and combinations of them all.
Tomás/Adolfo/Anna/Eeva: Hence, in this spirit, we are meeting today to show you our first steps in attempting how and why to document, something that started after our workshop in Lisbon. In what follows, we will show previous documentation of several open formats. But our aspiration would be to think beyond these first baby steps, and to invite you to join us in meeting to further discuss how we might imagine to document the inventiveness of open formats, and what for? What should be the appropriate genres, archival modes, styles? And, after discussing this, we would also like to propose engaging in a process of documenting the experimental ethnographic practices and accounts of open formats in the conference’s labs: where we think this might be a bit more explicit. But we also reckon that not every lab has to be necessarily experimental, and maybe experimentation in and around open formats might also be discussed in presentations across the conference.
Our proposal would be to display such a documentation in our digital platforms, so that we could open up a further discussion and a learning space on how to train ourselves to undertake experimental ethnographic modes. For this, we could use the hashtag #colleexperiments to collect the documentation gathered by all of us. It is our hope that the reflections and the hands-on work in this lab, could pave the way to something like the alternative to the handbook we discussed beforehand. Perhaps, in doing this we could collectively imagine how to make such a cookbook?
An image of one of the open formats organized in the 1st Colleex Workshop (Lisbon, 2017) (Vitor Barros).
References
Brown, H., Reed, A. & Yarrow, T. (2017). Introduction: towards an ethnography of meeting. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(S1): 10-26.
Faubion, James D. & George E. Marcus (eds.). 2009. Fieldwork is not what it used to be. Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Fischer, Michael M. J. 2003. Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Fortun, Kim. 2009. “Figuring out ethnography”, in James Faubion y George Marcus (eds.), Fieldwork isn’t what it used to be: 167-183. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kelty, Christopher et alt. 2008. “Fieldwork after the Internet. Collaboration, coordination and composition”, in James Faubion and George Marcus (eds.), Fieldwork isn’t what it used to be: 184-206. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Marcus, George E. 2009. “Introduction. Notes toward an Ethnographic Memoir of Supervising Graduate Research through Anthropology’s Decades of Transformation”, in James D. Faubion and George E. Marcus, Fieldwork is not what it used to be. Learning Anthropology’s Method in a Time of Transition:1-34. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Marcus, George E. 2013. “Experimental forms for the expression of norms in the ethnography of the contemporary”. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory3(2):197–217.
Rabinow, P., Marcus, G. E., Faubion, J. D., & Rees, T. (2008). Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary. Durham: Duke University Press.
Rabinow, P. (2011). The Accompaniment: Assembling the Contemporary. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Rees, Tobias. 2008. “Introduction”, in Paul Rabinow, George Marcus, James D. Faubion y Tobias Rees (eds.), Designs for an Anthropology of the Contemporary: 1-13. Durham, London: Duke University Press
Strathern, M. (2017). Afterword. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(S1).
Realizado con materiales del proyecto de documentación en video Vidas fuera de catálogo* (2013-2015) por Arianna Mencaroni, con la colaboración del resto de En torno a la silla (T. Sánchez Criado, A. Díaz, R. Vilatovà, N. Gómez, X. Duacastilla, M. Alonso, N. Gómez, P. Rovira & A. Centeno)
* Proyecto “VIDAS FUERA DE CATÁLOGO. UN RECORRIDO A LO LARGO DE UN PROYECTO AUDIOVISUAL INACABADO | VIDAS FUERA DE CATÁLOGO. A JOURNEY THROUGH AN UNFINISHED AUDIOVISUAL PROJECT”, presentado en BIDEOTIK 2017 (Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao)
‘Re(u)sar desde la diversidad funcional‘, trabajo en equipo de En torno a la silla para la exposición organizada por MAKEA en el Espai Txema BioBuil(L)t de Barcelona.
* Video-documentación mostrada en el programa La Aventura del Saber (La2, 13 Abril 2015, 30′)
Alida Díaz, Arianna Mencaroni, Rai Vilatovà, & Tomás Sánchez Criado, con la colaboración del resto de En torno a la silla, participamos del 15 al 31 de octubre 2015 en la exposición REHOGAR 7 · Diseño Abierto y Reutilizaciónorganizada por MAKEA en el Espai Txema BioBuil(L)t de Barcelona.
Esta edición de REHOGAR presta especial atención a las “Habilidades y Compromisos” de las personas, profesionales, comunidades y redes que activan procesos de transformación de su entorno, y posibilitan su reproducibilidad y adaptabilidad a otros contextos. Transformaciones que se hacen posible mediante técnicas de Reutilización y metodologías de Diseño Abierto, un diseño que crece y evoluciona porque puede ser mejorado por y con otras.
REHOGAR explora un amplio abanico de transformaciones a través de una selección de más de 30 propuestas con un ADN abierto y compartible, dando cuenta de los procesos, las prácticas y las herramientas que facilitan la transformación social de la vida cotidiana […]
Más allá de los posibles estilos de vida o target de consumo que puedan generar esta selección de propuestas queremos ahondar en esas otras formas de vida, que piensan haciendo y buscan una transformación del actual sistema productivo, los hábitos de consumo y por ende de la sociedad, de una manera lúdica y constructiva.
En torno a la silla es un colectivo de diseño y autoconstrucción de objetos y situaciones desde la diversidad funcional.
En todo lo que hacemos re(h)usamos; es decir, volvemos a usar o hacer uso de las cosas hasta convertir esto en un hábito, en un uso (reusar) y, a la vez, haciéndolo, rechazamos ciertas cosas y ciertas costumbres que no aceptamos, que no consentimos (rehusar).
Así, reusamos habilidades y saberes, rehusando capitalizar conocimientos y jerarquizar experticias…
reusamos materiales y herramientas, rehusando distribuirnos en diseñadores, usuarios o manitas.
reusamos afectos y vínculos, rehusando la rehabilitación de nuestros cuerpos en soledad.
reusamos dibujos, necesidades, deseos y argumentos, rehusando pensar desde el catálogo y la normalidad impotente e inalterable.
reusamos casas, calles, bares, luchas, memorias, rehusando someternos a mercados, estándares, obsolescencias, consumismos banales, relaciones de explotación y leyes de mercado.
Para la ocasión se seleccionaron algunos objetos y sus relatos, como los vídeos –16:9 (HD)– de la Primavera Cacharrera:
REHOGAR 7 tenía algunos eventos asociados, como la presentación COMUNIDADES RESILIENTES (que tuvo lugar el 29 Oct. 2015, 18.00 – 19.15h) donde nos invitaron a participar junto con: · Re-cooperar / Jaime Galán · Fem Plaça / Lucia Vecchi · Open Source Public Space Devices / Paco González, radarq.net
