News – Work of Art in Contemporary Japan

‘Worlds Within’ Exhibition in the ARB

The exhibition ‘Worlds Within’ closes today. Thank you to everyone who visited! 2 June 20023 – 7 July 2023 Allison Richard Building, Cambridge Kaori Yoshikawa | Makoto Morimura | Marie Nohara | Shin Ikeda | sonsengocchabacco | So Shimada | Hajime Wada Artworks often afford glimpses into the inner worlds of others: the forms and textures that populate artists’ minds. While some of the artists in this show describe their creative process as an imperfect replication of these inner landscapes, others emphasise the material qualities of the objects they make, and how these gradually percolate into their consciousness along with the ideas they receive from the world around them. The outcome may be unexpected, and […]

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023Uncategorized

Roundtable Discussion: ‘Authorship and Responsibility in Art’ at the RAI

In April 2023 Rob Simpkins and I (Iza Kavedžija) had a pleasure to participate in a roundtable discussion at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. https://www.therai.org.uk/events/events-by-month/eventdetail/837/-/roundtable-discussion-authorship-and-responsibility-in-art Who, ultimately, is responsible for making a work of art? What does it mean to be recognised as its creator? While ‘agency’ in the context of the art object might well be understood as distributed, ‘authorship’ is most often conceptualized as firmly centred on a bounded individual or group. To celebrate the recent launch of the Artery podcast, this roundtable discussion will explore questions of responsibility in the making of art, and the nature of variation in the conceptualisation of the artistic person. Speakers: Natalie Morningstar, University of Kent […]

April 18, 2023April 18, 2023Uncategorised

Experiences of Inner Life

What forms can the inner life take? How is it shaped through specific forms of embodied practice? While one’s inner life need not be understood as separate from one’s body or senses, and the ‘outer world’, certain experiences are strongly felt to be private and inaccessible to external observers. Even if the inner life is ultimately ‘illusory’ (as Merleau-Ponty reminds us), it remains personally meaningful for many. In July 2022 we held a workshop on Experiences of Inner Life. Please find the details here.

August 5, 2022Uncategorised

Experience, Voice and the Limits of Narrative?

Yesterday I took part in a very stimulating discussion at the RAI Mobilising Methods in Medical Anthropology conference (18-12 January 2022), in a roundtable entitled “Voicing or ventriloquising? Debating the idea that voice is a limiting concept for methodologically inclusive Medical Anthropology” organized and convened by colleagues from the University of Cambridge- Kelly Fagan Robinson and Rosie Jones McVey. It was a real pleasure to discuss the limits of voice and non discursive forms of knowledge and experience with Tim Loh (MIT) and Andrew Irving (University of Manchester). I hope the conversation will continue – vocally or otherwise.

January 20, 2022Uncategorized

New book: creativity and wellbeing

‘The Process of Wellbeing: Conviviality, Care and Creativity’ has been published by the Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108935616

December 7, 2021December 7, 2021Uncategorized

‘Authorship in Art’ Lab held at the ASA21

In March 2021 Rob Simpkins (University of Sheffield) and I (Iza) organized a lab at the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK online conference on Responsibility, hosted by the University of Aberdeen. The aim of the lab was to develop a comparative ethnographic approach to ideas of artistic authorship and responsibility. Participants jointly planned and prepared questions for a collaborative podcast series of interviews with artists which explore their understandings of artistic personhood. We are now recording and editing the podcast with our fantastic lab participants – watch this space!

July 6, 2021October 26, 2021Activities

Decameron Relived

It is my pleasure to announce that Decameron Relived launched today on Cultural Anthropology. As anthropologists we often tell stories in our work to introduce a setting, to illustrate a point, to “try to grasp the fragments of the real world” (Fassin 2014, 41), or to give readers a sense of what it feels to live a life in a particular kind of way. Often, our stories take the form of ethnographic anecdotes and aim to capture the truth with fidelity (Byler and Iversen 2012; Jackson 2017, 46, 48). Decameron Relived is inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s classic collection of stories, set during the outbreak of the Black Death. The framing of the narrative rests on […]

October 20, 2020October 26, 2021Activities

Inner life and techniques of imagination

Cognition and Culture group at the University of Exeter invited me to give a short presentation on my work in progress. It was a great pleasure to receive many insightful comments and questions after my talk on ‘Inner life and techniques of Imagination’.

October 15, 2020October 26, 2021Activities

Walking stories – methods on the move

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the RAI2020 Anthropology and Geography conference and to present in a panel in the methods section. The panel, convened by Elizabeth Rahman and Shonil Bhagawat, entitled Walking stories: doing and making out and about explored ethnographic methods on the move. This was a fantastic opportunity to reflect on the methods that encompass narrative and discursive practices (including storytelling and narrative interviews) with the various form of movement and walking.

September 25, 2020October 26, 2021Activities