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34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Manchester Metropolitan University
Both created and discovered: the case for reverie and play in a redrawn anthropology
This research examines questions of play and reverie in the context of Ingold’s proposed ‘graphic anthropology’ which seeks to unite observation, movement and description (Ingold 2011). Emerging from Ravetz’s membership of the network “Art, Architecture and Anthropology” University of Aberdeen (funded by The British Academy), it considers and tests “thinking through making” a methodology recognised in artistic research but less so in mainstream anthropology. Assembling the writings of Jean Rouch,; the drawing experiments of Marion Milner; and the psychoanalytical theories of Winnicott, the research develops the hypothesis that
certain states of awareness are a crucial but overlooked aspect of the ability to respond to anthropology’s object of study - contingent and crescent worlds that are ‘always being made’. The argument is tested using visual ethnography carried out in Dhal ni Pol in Ahmedabad (part-funded by the British Council and resulting in the
video Entry) which aimed to generate states of heightened reciprocity, while desisting from ‘strip[ping] the unknown of all that is strange’ (Taussig 2008). The research concludes with the suggestion that reverie and play are necessary conditions for the unification of movement, observations and description aspired to by a redrawn
anthropology. T he film Entry, reported on in the second half of the chapter, is publicly available at http://vimeo.com/19328902 and was screened at the annual conference of SIEF (Society of International Folklore Studies) in Lisbon April 2011; as part of the
Ahmedabad International Arts festival (AIAF) in 2010; and at the Made for Manchester show at Manchester Craft Centre as part of Asia Triennial 2011. The book is reviewed by Phillip Vannini in Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 2012: who writes “Amanda Ravetz’s art-trained hand stands out vigorously, however, as an example of the more-than-representational power of sketching".
