Beschreibung
“Aesthetics and Anthropology” is a collection of contributions by an
international and interdisciplinary team of authors from the fields of
anthropology, performance studies, curatorial studies and the arts.
The title refers to the paths that lead to the in-betweens and the
beyonds of aura and trace in the representation of life that is performed
in aesthetic reflexivity. Aesthetic reflexivity refers not only to the
authors’ attempts at an interdisciplinary encounter with one another, but
also to their encounter with the readers, and with the recipients of an
intended message in an aesthetic dialogue.
Our approach is innovative in that it looks upon aesthetics as a “topos
of the living”. We seek to capture the present discourse of ethnographic
and aesthetic disciplinary “turns” with the intent of bringing them
together in theory and practice. Here, academics and artists approach one
another’s respective forms of representation in a “Gesamtkunstwerk” of
texts and images.
The book presents experimental approaches and interdisciplinary “turns”,
and hoped-for interactions between anthropologists and artists, and
recipients of aesthetic encounters. We believe this is presently the most
innovative pathway to interdisciplinary encounters with aesthetics. You,
the readers, meet us, the artists and authors of an aesthetic
reflexivity. Are we tricksters in an aesthetic turn toward performing
life and reflecting performed lives in the in-betweens?
