unFramed 25° : grieving and mourning as an art practice

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Arte Individuo y Sociedad, 2019

This paper analyzes some ritual and performing phenomena from different cultures, by using a unifying pragma-semiotics approach, especially the speech acts theory. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1995) refers to the rites as a " paralanguage ". In our opinion, his taxonomy of ritual praxis is reducible to the dichotomy constative/performative introduced by John L. Austin (1962), that he later reconsiders and transforms into the trichotomy locutionary/illocutionary/perlocutionary. In Austin's opinion, the speech acts theory is part of a theory of action. We aim to explain that this is confirmed not only in the very linguistic act of utterance, but also in the multimodal expression (movement, gesture, word, incantation, costumes, accessories) specific to some ritual(ized) social contexts, particularly ritual performances. Like verbal performative utterances, ritual(ized) gesture and movement may have real and immediate efficiency, which means that it may produce a real-world change, from the participant's viewpoint. Without a ritual context, the choreo-dramatic expression loses its pragmatic function – that of " modification " of the real (Lévi-Strauss, 1995). However, it manifests a different one, essentially " aesthetic ". From our point of view, the illocutionary ritual act is thus replaced by a " fictional act " , a category which was previously described by both John R. Searle (1982) and Gérard Genette (1991).

The practical and imaginative possibilities offered by art works and art strategies have always been interesting for anthropological research. Analyzing an artistic endeavor that understands the dead as social software, the article investigates contemporary conceptualizations of death and grieving within modern informational economies. This article ethnographically considers the etoy “Mission Eternity Project” which, among other artforms, has created a mobile sepulchre to investigate and challenge conventional practices of the disposal of the dead and of memorialization. The article seeks to generate terms for discussing how new artistic, digital and forensic technologies can reconfigure the more ordinary ways of dealing with the dead. The analysis is significantly informed by my previous anthropological work on practices of the collection, classification and DNA analysis of dead bodies in postconflict Serbia and Tasmania. Keywords: memorialization, disposal of dead bodies, classification practices, informational economies, new media art, etoy’s Sarcophagus, anthropology of death and dying.

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal for Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2021

Funerary lament and ritual weeping are multi-sensorial public expressions of grief that are often referred to as examples of cultural continuity in and across the Mediterranean. In the 1950s, anthropologist Ernesto de Martino and his team assembled a unique set of photos and sound and film recordings on lament in Southern Italy in an attempt to verify that contemporary forms of mourning did not just resemble ancient funerary laments but were actual relics thereof. Departing from these audio-visual materials, this essay traces recurring patterns and sequences of images and sounds related to lament in Southern Italy, arguing that the (female) body of the performers becomes the main medium of iconographic and choreographic reproduction by way of re-enacting and imitating lament in staged settings. Rather than studying the phenomenon of lament in itself (or its decline) or commenting on the continuity thesis, I focus on the mediatised transmission of corporeal expressions of lamenters by drawing on Aby Warburg’s concept of the “migration of images” (Bilderwanderung). I include artistic approaches and modes such as re-enactment, performance, and montage in my ethnographic study of ritual mourning and show that there is a repertory of ecstatic gestures transferred through command performances that is not concerned with “authentic” documentation. Instead, these gestures are there to be performed, individually reappropriated, and revived in situations of crisis to the present day.

2021

Death can be understood as a socially transformative process which is to be regulated by funerary practices. The material results of these intentional and structured actions – often conceptualized as rituals – are, among others, burial sites, graves and their contents. In this context, objects are often used to support the transfor- mational processes. Material culture can therefore be understood as a form of communication. Its functions and meanings are not static but depend on the context and can form a complex relationship with ideologies and actions. Human remains, too, are a part of this material culture, as they can be used as objects within burial practices and become means of expression. Archaeologically, only the materialization of burial rituals can be recorded by analyzing human remains and other objects found in the context of burials. The corresponding functions and meanings must then be interpreted using historical, ethnological, and sociological analogies. From a religious studies perspective it is possible to perceive how the bodily remains of a deceased person can become the focus not only of veneration or remembrance, but also of self- focused religious development. These studies, however, due to their abundance of options, often neglect the material culture, which is the main focus of archaeological research. An interdisciplinary dialogue between archaeological sciences and religious studies will therefore open opportunities for both sides to learn from each other and come to new perspectives. The aim of this workshop is to look at the significance of objects as they are created in the interaction of human beings and materials. In order to understand the functions and meanings of burial practices and burial sites, objects should be approximated to the physical as well as the social context they are part of. Social sciences and the humanities can witness historical and contemporary burial rites with additional tools, such as narratives and ethnological participation.

Image Narrative, 2011

This article explores the dynamics of the 'spectre' or 'spectral body' of the auteurist figure of Agnès Varda, as a means of discussing the ethical practices of mourning and memorial in two of Varda's recent moving image works. It further elaborates on the motifs of 'spectral bodies' and 'temporalised spaces' to negotiate memorial practices between and across film viewing, filmmaking and the filmmaker. It does so using two interrelated projects by Varda; one in the realm of the plastic arts (her exhibition of 2006 entitled L'Île et elle, with a particular focus on the installation Les Veuves de Noirmoutier (The Widows of Noirmoutier, 2005) and the other in film format for cinema distribution, her most recent film, Les Plages D'Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès, 2008). Drawing upon Jacques Derrida's notion of the spectral return, or revenant, specifically in audiovisual media, I examine the processes of spectral embodiment and motile mourning at work in these autobiographical projects. The article concludes by reflecting upon the ethical possibilities of productive nostalgia and repetitive mourning, and how these gestures and sites of longing and bereavement offer an open and ludic space for shared flows and communities of affect and memory between filmmakers, artworks and audiences. Résumé: Cet article explore la dynamique du 'spectre' ou du 'corps spectral' chez la réalisatrice Agnès Varda dans le cadre d'une réflexion sur les pratiques éthiques du deuil et du souvenir dans deux de ses récentes productions. Il creuse aussi les deux motifs du 'corps spectral' et de l''espace temporalisé' pour analyser le fonctionnement de la mémoire entre (et à travers) visionnement, réalisation et personnalité de l'auteur. Pour ce faire, il s'appuie sur deux projets de Varda qui sont intimement liés: un projet dans le domaine des arts plastiques (une exposition de 2006, L'Île et elle, dans laquelle on mettra l'accent sur l'installation Les Veuves de Noirmoutier, 2005), et un projet diffusé de manière plus classique dans les salles de cinéma (son dernier film, Les Plages D'Agnès, 2008). Je m'inspire de Jacques Derrida et de son concept de retour du spectre (ou du revenant), plus spécifiquement dans les médias visuels, pour examiner comment le spectre prend forme et corps et quel type de deuil est à l'oeuvre Image & Narrative, Vol 12, No2 (2011) 32 dans ces projets autobiographiques. L'article se termine par une réflexion sur les possibilités éthiques de la nostalgie productrice et du deuil répété, ainsi que sur la manière dont les gestes et lieux de la perte et de la nostalgie créent de nouveaux espaces, à la fois ouverts et ludiques, où des flux et des communautés d'affects et de souvenirs entre réalisateurs, oeuvres et spectateurs peuvent voir le jour.

"World is experienced both through worldly and bodily expressions. Emotions are embodied, deeply rooted in the corporeal and sensual experience, and directly communicated through gestures and vocalisations. This session aims to reconstruct with a transdisciplinary approach the materiality of gestures in the Roman world. Thanks to the study of the archaeological record, it is possible to identify the "techniques of the body", through which emotions are perceived, enacted, shared and communicated. Objects are not merely neutral things, but a channel which allows us to detect the agency behind the gesture and (even through the repetition and intensification of an act, i.e. ritual) its use of media in order to interact with the socially structured environment and networks it belongs to. Speakers - chosen among the international specialists - are challenged to test this paradigm on the field of Pompeii, focusing on the material culture concerning sanctuaries, domestic religious practices and funerary rituals."

Sociology Study, 2020

“A space for tears” explores the relations of the phenomenon of absence and performance and their implications for both art and life practices. The connections are uncovered through the exploration of the forms and modalities of absence, the positionality of absence as a constitutive element of performance, the affinity of absence and the questions of embodiment and the interconnection death and mourning ritual with performance. The driving force of this research is the need for (re)establishing a healthy relationship with absence, which would not be confined exclusively to the artistic realm. The paper is conceived as a hermeneutic study in a polemic tone, utilizing theoretical and literary works of poetry and prose as well as folk literature as equal sources. The plurality of sources and especially their form and origin ties in with the expansion beyond art practices, which bids to consider alternative repositories of knowledge. Capturing and keeping the fluidity and ambivalence of the researched topics is a key feature of the research, which remains thoroughly visible. The study keeps the weave of conclusions open, ready to be correlated with practice.

PhD Goldsmiths University, 2024

As Live art is available for sale and acquired by public and private collections, this thesis questions what property adds or does to the opening event of art’s occurrence and what relationalities it generates or perpetuates. For something exteriorised to be available for commercial exchange, I argue it first needs to be made a legal and private thing, appropriated and constituted as an object of one’s own by an artist. I attempt to unpack what is at stake then, if anything, in the capture of gestures, of a relation in the world in and through the body, by the artist as property-holder; and what modes of relating can take place outside this regime of APPROPRIATION. I approach these questions from a historical, existential and legal perspective as I look at three particular artists and approach their work in an ekphratic manner. La Ribot’s Distinguished pieces, in production since the early 1990s, are the focus of the first part of the thesis. Here, I intuitively approach the question of the becoming body and the becoming property of the bodily gestures, as the condition for the construction of saleable choreographies. The middle section is occupied by Tino Sehgal’s success story and the accommodation of the “constructed situations” within the visual art logic. I consider here the legal and performative technologies at work in the making of the artist and his work. From an exigency to think of a relation otherwise, the last part of this research listens to the mute- ilations and screams in l. Nóbrega’s actions and explores the possibilities of un-doing or un- wanting the work of art, as object and property. This refusal will demand a radical repositioning of the artist and the self, and so I finish by presenting strategies of withdrawal and rethinking a m-other relation to gesture.

Paragrana, 2014

The aim of this article on gestures and rituals is to investigate their corporeality and their mimetic and performative character. I want to show how gestures and rituals are developed in the different fields and contexts as a mode of self-expression and a means of representing something which would otherwise remain invisible. I shall focus on the how of gestural and ritual representation and expression. Starting from the assumption that gestures and rituals are highly context-dependent, the article will investigate the social contexts in which they occur and show how intentions and feelings are condensed in them and what significance they therefore have for social and cultural relations. The underlying assumption is that gestures and rituals are influenced firstly by collective ideas and practices, secondly by institutional conditions and traditions and thirdly by individual conditions. Mimetic processes play an important role in education, socialization, and human development (Gebauer/Wulf 1995, 1998; Wulf 2013) as well as in constituting community life and the social in general. This can be shown with reference to the creation, maintaining, and modification of gestures and rituals, which are of greater significance for the cohesion of modern societies than is often expected. Nowadays, social and educational conditions are so complex and difficult to understand that some people deplore the frightening complexity of the situation. The traditional support for orientation has disintegrated, both in the field of "Weltanschauungen", in which the "great stories" (Lyotard) have lost their integrating power as well as in the "Lebenswelt" of the individual, in which he or she has to lead his or her "own life". Yet in spite of this, neither societies nor individuals can do without some kind of orientation and order. Social practices are needed, especially in economically, culturally and ethnically mixed societies, in which the variety of the social world and of individual self concepts are to be expressed and represented. For this purpose, appropriate mise-en-scène, styles, emblems, fashions and symbols are required. But what kind of social actions and social representations create social order and social structure? To a large extent, social actions create forms of expression and ways of structuring the social. Daily actions based on routines and customs play an important role in the production of social representation and social order. The fact that people often are not aware of the importance of routines and customs for social relations makes these routines and customs even more effective. This lack of awareness favors the incorporation of social customs and societal structures since a "hidden" knowledge develops which tells people how social rela