Steps Towards the Plateau

迈向高原

• 批准号: AH/E005608/1
• 负责人: Jeremy Millar
• 金额: $ 33.56万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2007 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FE005608%2F1
• 关键词: Steps; Towards; Plateau

'Steps Towards the Plateau' has developed out of my fascination with the relationship between art and documentary practices, in particular those found within visual anthropology. The starting point for the project is the fieldwork undertaken by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali in 1936/39, perhaps the first major utilisation of film and photography within anthropological practice (totalling some 25,000 photographs and 20,000ft of film), and certainly one of the most influential. In part this fieldwork was funded by the Committee for Research in Dementia Praecox, as schizophrenia was then known, which was concerned with the high levels of diagnosis in America (in the mid-1930s, 25% of hospital beds were occupied by patients so diagnosed) and sought to initiate new forms of child-rearing in order to reduce the number of people developing the condition. As Balinese culture was considered to be 'schizoid', in Bateson's words, it was thought a study of how the Balinese coped with this 'condition' would help develop child-rearing methods that could be adopted in America, reducing the incidents of schizophrenia. One might suggest that this was more an attempt to bolster American self-identity than to understand the identity of another culture. This project takes the historical fieldwork of Mead and Bateson as a starting point from which to consider a number of broader questions, perhaps most importantly, how do different cultures interact, or attempt to understand one another? The often troubled relationship between America's sense of itself, and its sense of others, is obviously of great contemporary relevance, in relation to the 'War of Terror'; this is particularly the case with regards to Bali / an increasingly 'Westernized' but predominantly Hindu state within the largest Muslim country in the world, and victim of a number of terrorist bombings in recent years. Bali finds itself at the intersection between sometimes violently divergent cultures and beliefs, and in attempting to engage with this country, I hope that this project will suggest some new means of cultural interaction based upon mutual respect rather than forceful imposition. The work of Mead and Bateson shows us some possibilities of cultural understanding, but makes us aware of the difficulties also, difficulties that will be made explicit within the project itself. The outcome will be a series of related artworks / perhaps consisting of an artist's film, photographs, writings, and a re-display of part of the collection at the Pitt Rivers Musuem / and a publication that will be founded upon actual anthropological research, albeit a research that will be led by my own artistic practice rather than by the more usual demands of the discipline. Of course, certain methods will be adopted from anthropological research / such as fieldwork, and interviews / not only to revisit (to some extent) Mead's and Bateson's original research, but also to examine the influence that it has had subsequently in a number of fields, in particular philosophy; however, these methods will be examined self-critically, with careful consideration to what it is that they conceal, as much as reveal. This is an approach that I have developed successfully in recent years, using comparable episodes in art history, and philosophy, as a starting point to create works which combine intellectual / even scholarly / enquiry within a fictional, and often poetic, framework and sensibility. This allows me to create a space within another discipline in which I can situate and then develop my own practice, to the mutual benefit of both.

《迈向高原的脚步》是我对艺术与纪录片实践之间关系的迷恋，特别是在视觉人类学中发现的关系。该项目的起点是玛格丽特·米德（Margaret Mead）和格雷戈里·贝特森（Gregory Bateson）于1936年至1939年在巴厘岛进行的实地考察，这可能是人类学实践中第一次主要利用电影和摄影（总计约25，000张照片和20，000英尺的电影），当然也是最有影响力的一次。在一定程度上，这项实地调查是由早发性痴呆研究委员会资助的，因为精神分裂症当时被称为精神分裂症，该委员会关注美国的高诊断率（在20世纪30年代中期，25%的医院病床被诊断出的患者占据），并试图启动新的育儿方式，以减少患这种疾病的人数。用贝特森的话说，由于巴厘岛文化被认为是“类精神分裂症”，因此人们认为研究巴厘岛人如何应对这种“状况”将有助于开发可在美国采用的育儿方法，减少精神分裂症的发生。有人可能会说，这更多的是为了加强美国人的自我认同，而不是为了理解另一种文化的认同。这个项目以米德和贝特森的历史实地考察为起点，考虑一些更广泛的问题，也许最重要的是，不同的文化如何相互作用，或试图理解对方？美国的自我意识和它的他人意识之间经常出现的麻烦关系，显然与“恐怖主义战争”有关，具有很大的当代意义;这尤其是关于巴厘岛的情况，巴厘岛是世界上最大的穆斯林国家中一个日益“西化”但主要是印度教的国家，近年来是一些恐怖主义爆炸的受害者。巴厘岛发现自己处于有时极端不同的文化和信仰之间的交叉点，在试图与这个国家接触时，我希望这个项目将提出一些基于相互尊重而不是强行强加的文化互动的新方法。米德和贝特森的作品向我们展示了一些文化理解的可能性，但也让我们意识到了困难，这些困难将在项目本身中表现出来。其结果将是一系列相关的艺术作品/可能包括艺术家的电影，照片，写作，并在皮特河流博物馆重新展示部分收藏品/和出版物，将建立在实际的人类学研究的基础上，尽管研究将由我自己的艺术实践而不是学科的更常见的要求。当然，人类学研究的某些方法会被采用，例如田野调查、访谈等，（在某种程度上）米德和贝特森的原始研究，但也要检查它后来在一些领域，特别是哲学的影响;然而，这些方法将被自我批判地检查，仔细考虑它们隐藏的是什么，就像揭示的一样。这是我近年来成功发展的一种方法，利用艺术史和哲学中的可比情节作为起点，创作作品，将联合收割机知识/甚至学术/探究结合在虚构的，通常是诗意的框架和情感中。这使我能够在另一门学科中创造一个空间，在那里我可以学习，然后发展我自己的实践，对双方都有利。

项目成果

M/W

分子量/重量

• 发表时间: 2014
• 作者: Polit, P

'Given'

“给予”

• 发表时间: 2009
• 作者: LeFeuvre L