Para-Sites and Para-Ethnography at the Multispecies Salon

Image: Wolbachia bacteria parasitizing cells.

Para-Sites and Para-Ethnography at the Multispecies Salon

Ethnographic para-sites, in the words of George Marcus, “blur the boundaries between the field site and the academic conference.” Para-sites are places “where ethnographers work at sites of knowledge production with others, who are patrons, partners, and subjects of research at the same time.” These spaces can help generate unexpected ways of speaking and thinking with “moderately empowered people” who are implicated in great social transformations (Marcus 2000: 5).

The Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM will be an ethnographic para-site at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans—where anthropologists and their interlocutors will come together to discuss matters of common concern (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010). Swarming is the tactic, rather than the theme, of this show.  Recognizing the collaborations inherent in most anthropological endeavors (Marcus 2006), the organizers of the Multispecies Salon seek to partner with a multitude of para-ethnographers in New Orleans. 

Art will serve as a companion and catalyst practice to ethnography at the Multispecies Salon.  Blurring the boundaries between bioart and ecoart, this exhibit will explore human entanglements with multiple species.  Bioart is a “tactical biopolitics” (da Costa and Philip 2008).  In other words, bioart involves derailing or exposing systems for managing “life.”  Actual organisms, including biological parasites and live bacterial cultures, will be the media of some artworks in the Multispecies Salon.  While bioart is composed of living organisms, ecoart usually involves the traditional materials of sculpture, photography, and painting.  In a foundational text of the ecoart movement, Suzi Gablik writes: “The ecological perspective connects art to its integrative role in the larger whole and the web of relationships in which art exists.”  In short ecoart takes “art for non-humans seriously” (Bower 2009).  Crowd-sourcing our observations of this art exhibit, we aim to collaborate with a swarm of para-ethnographers.

Para-ethnographers work in distributed knowledge systems that encompass multiple-locales (Marcus 2009: 188).  The root of the word para means “auxiliary”—as in para-medics, professional staff who perform critical medical functions in ambulances and on the front-lines—or para-legals who are qualified to perform legal work through their knowledge of the law gained through education or work experience.  The organizers of the Multispecies Salon are looking to partner with para-ethnographic experts who might bring knowledge of specific distributed systems to the table.  At a moment when art institutions are inviting so-called “amateurs” to show work in exhibitions (Roberts 2007), the curators of the Multispecies Salon also invite all gallery visitors to take their turn as ethnographically-informed art critics. 

TO GET INVOLVED
The Multispecies Salon Orientation Session for Para-Ethnographers
10am, Thursday, November 18
Kawliga Studios
3331 St. Claude Ave. (New Orleans, LA 70117)

Coordinated by Craig Schuetze (cschuetz@ucsc.edu)
and Nick Shapiro (nicholas.shapiro@anthro.ox.ac.uk)

BRING YOUR CAMERA OR DIGITAL RECORDER TO THE GALLERIES--LOOK FOR COMPUTER UPLOADING STATIONS

The Multispecies Salon 3 will be held in two galleries in the Saint Claude Arts district of New Orleans--about five minutes by car or taxi from the conference hotel of the 2010 Meeting of the American Anthropological Association Meeting in New Orleans.

Life in the Age of Biotechnology
Kawliga Studios (point A, below map)
3331 St. Claude Ave., New Orleans, LA 70117.

Hope in Blasted Landscapes
The Ironworks (point B, below map)
612 Piety Street, New Orleans, LA 70117.

Exhibit runs from Saturday, November 13 through Sunday, December 5
Gallery hours:  Saturdays and Sundays, 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Calendar of events and more maps online: http://www.wix.com/multispecies/multispecies

FURTHER READING
da Costa, Beatriz, and Kavita Philip. 2008. Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Gablik, Suzi. 1991.    The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson.

Kirksey, S. Eben, and Stefan Helmereich. 2010. The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography. Cultural Anthropology 25(4):545-687.

Marcus, George E. 2000. Para-Sites: A Casebook against Cynical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marcus, George E. 2009. Multi-sited Ethnography: Notes and Queries. In Multi-Sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis, and Locality in Contemporary Research. M.-A. Falzon, ed. Pp. 181-196. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Roberts, John.     2007.    The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade: Verso.