Ethnographic installation and 'the archive': Haunted relations and relocations

Phillips, Kwame and Vidali, Debra (2020) Ethnographic installation and 'the archive': Haunted relations and relocations. Visual Anthropology Review, 36 (1), 64-89. (doi:10.1111/var.12197).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This essay examines the haunted relationality of ethnographic archives and anthropology, and the potential for multimodal installations to highlight these tensions while bringing anthropology toward new audiences and new types of collaborations. We argue that experimental ethnographic installations can be used to foreground complex relations among fieldwork, archives, re/dislocation, and aspiration, through nonlinear forms of argumentation and engagement. The particular cases considered are as follows: (1) Vidali’s corpus of material collected in Zambia (1986–90) and (2) Phillips and Vidali’s remixed and relocated “radio program” based on these materials and installed as a multisensorial, multimodal ethnographic exhibition in Washington, DC, Paris, and London.

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