From Ethnographic Terminalia 2011: Field, Studio, Lab. Photo by Rachel Topham.
Projects in Ethnographic Terminalia 2011 took up the theme: field, studio, lab. These three locations–the field, the studio, the lab–comprise both their own communities of practice, and form sites of inquiry and production for artists and anthropologists. Field, studio, and lab are not only places where knowledge is produced, or ethnographic data gathered, but are spaces of everyday life and local cultural production; they are generative sites of encounter, negotiation, conflict, celebration, failure, disappointment and revelation-all of which can unsettle (or ossify) discursive, disciplinary, and methodological boundaries.
Panamanian artist Humberto Vélez anchored the 2011 exhibition with a documentation of his collaborative work, The Fight. In Ethnographic Terminalia 2011, Vélez’s work was exhibited alongside work selected by the curatorial collective, and works produced by our local partnering curator, Concordia University’s Center for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the aftermath of Violence (CEREV).
Organized as a para-site to the annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the gallery show took place in Montréal, Canada, at Eastern Bloc Centre for New Media and Interdisciplinary Art (15-19 November 2011). Now in its third year, Ethnographic Terminalia represents a diversity of material, conceptual, and creative engagements with art and anthropology, capturing a multiplicity of mediums where anthropology and art intersect. These include: sound, drawing, sculpture, photography, printmaking, video, film, internet and multi-media, and engage both gallery spaces and site-specific locations.
Email queries to: ethnographicterminalia@gmail.com
Ethnographic Terminalia:
2011 Principal Curators:
Kate Hennessy, School of Interactive Arts + Technology (SIAT), SFU (Vancouver, Canada)
Fiona P. McDonald, University College London (London, England)
Trudi Lynn Smith, York University (Toronto, Canada)
Partnering Curator:
Erica Lehrer, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)
2011 Co-curators:
Maria Brodine, Columbia University (New York, USA)
Craig Campbell, University of Texas at Austin (Austin, USA)
Stephanie Takaragawa, Chapman University (Orange, USA)
2011 Exhibition Assistant:
Rachel Topham
Ethnographic Terminalia would like to thank the following groups and individuals for their assistance: Ian Kirkpatrick, Amber Berson, Lex Milton, Neil Starkey, Eliane Ellbogen, Emma Geldart, Solen Roth, Mississauga New Credit First Nations, Josyln Osten, Emelie Changgur and Humberto Vélez.
Our sincere thanks to our funders and partners: CEREV Workshop, Concordia University; Canada Research Chairs; Making Culture Lab at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University; the American Anthropological Association’s Community Engagement Fund, the Society for Visual Anthropology, and the Council for Museum Anthropology.
