TRACES... Thinking Objects Through Remains
Imprints - Ruins - DNA - Waste - Relics - Manuscripts - Images -
Dust
- Ashes - Shadows & Ghosts - Memory - Weather - Materials &
Substances.
UCL, Department of Anthropology, Friday,
04 June 2010
Daryll Forde Seminar Room, 2nd floor
This
workshop is sponsored by the Journal of Material
Culture.
The Department of Anthropology at UCL/Material
Culture and the Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies will
host a one-day workshop on the theme of 'TRACES: Thinking Objects Through
Remains' that will be hosted by the Department of Anthropology at UCL (Daryll
Forde seminar room), on 04 June 2010.
TRACES aims to explore people's
lives through fragments of their material world and therefore through the
processes of reconstruction of knowledge associated to them. Material and
immaterial traces are, on the one hand, a metonymic, indexical presence, as in
the fragment or particle that recalls a previous whole no longer in existence.
Yet as an imprint, inscription, incision or aperture the trace is also an
absence. Further, 'trace' may also be read as a metaphor, a figure of thought, a
device of deconstruction rather than a material presence/absence. Traces as
evidences of human/non-human actions draw upon the dialectic between the visible
and invisible, the past and the present. They objectify particular spatial and
temporal qualities and their variabilities such as temporalities, ephemerality,
durée, instantaneity, which are cross-culturally defined and interpreted in
multiple ways. Hence, the workshop will aim to investigate the constructions of
knowledge and processes of interpretation about people's lives and bodies
through material remains.
By considering themes such as ruins, DNA,
imprints, waste, weather, images, dust, ashes, shadows and ghost, relics,
memory, palimpsests, materials and substances, we would like to explore how
worldwide cultures of the past and of the present interpret material and
immaterial traces as processes of knowing about the world.
We seek to
address the questions such as, but not limited to:
- What do traces mean to people?
- How is time expressed and recovered through traces?
- How do we interpret them?
- To what extent can traces tell us about actions, object biographies and people's identities?
- What can traces tell us about objects and people?
- What are the methods and techniques to identify traces and recover objects and subjects
This workshop is co-organized by Laurence Douny (l.douny@ucl.ac.uk) and Jan Geisbusch (j.geisbusch@ucl.ac.uk), both at UCL.
With the participation of:
Lucia Burgio
(The Science Lab, Victoria & Albert Museum)
Mamadou Cisse (Language
Sciences & Communication, University of Cheikh Anta Diop,
Senegal)
Laurence Douny (Anthropology, UCL)
Jan Geisbusch (Anthropology,
UCL)
Nelson Graburn (Anthropology, University of California,
Berkeley)
Gabriel Moshenka (Institute of Archaeology, UCL)
Daniel Neyland
(Department of Organization, Work & Technology, Lancaster)
Dylan Trigg
(Department of Philosophy, Sussex)
ABSTRACTS:
Heritage science and artefacts
Lucia Burgio (The
Science Lab, Victoria & Albert Museum)
Traces: Scientific Analyses
in Cultural Heritage
Heritage science in a national museum is a
complex field involving the analysis of art objects with the purpose of
understanding their place in history, their provenance and manufacture as well
as helping their conservation, dating and authentication. Such analyses often
provide tantalising glimpses of human history and challenge our current accepted
knowledge. Museum objects are themselves mere traces of the past, as the context
of their reason to be has often been lost and needs to be reconstructed and
interpreted. Their scientific analysis can provide a link with their original
true purpose and reveal aspects of the daily life of the society they were
created by, as shown by the investigation of the palette of the Nativity
miniature painted by the French court painter Jean Bourdichon at the end of the
15th century. Metallic bismuth, a very rare find, was discovered on this and
other miniatures by the same artist, showing that a trade route for unusual
minerals existed between France and Germany. On the other side of the world, in
Japan, the accepted knowledge is that only the urushi sap from Japanese-grown
Toxicodendron vernicifluum trees could be used for the making of lacquer
objects. Recent analyses at the Getty Institute have detected traces of various
materials suggesting that the best lacquer for 17th century export items was
actually imported from other regions in South East Asia.
Inscriptions and knowledge
Mamadou Cisse
(Language Sciences & Communication, University of Cheikh Anta Diop,
Senegal)
Hidden West African Heritage: Wolofal
Manuscripts
The use of Arabic script for the transcription of West
African languages goes back to the 11th century. In Senegal, the written form of
Wolof in Arabic script is known as Wolofal. Today, it is used for religious
purposes, in poetry and prose, but also on a daily basis by traders, craftsmen
and farmers. Ancient Wolofal manuscripts are particularly difficult to access
when they belong to Senegalese Marabout families who consider them as a source
of power and a symbol of wealth. This paper considers Wolofal manuscripts as
traces of an ancient knowledge that have long been ignored by political powers.
It explores the role of materiality in shaping social memory and conserving it.
Weather
Laurence Douny (Anthropology,
UCL):
Rains, Winds and Sandstorms: Towards a Dogon Conception of the
Weather (Mali/West Africa).
This paper looks at some African
conceptions of the weather through an examination of material traces, permanent
and ephemeral, left by the passage of wind and rain on the natural and
architectural landscapes of the Dogon people of Mali (West Africa). This paper
attempts to provide some insights into the ways indigenous people think and
conceptualise their environment as well as society through aerial phenomenona
that occur at the end of the dry season, at the turn of the rainy season. I
shall describe this in terms of a cosmology in which visible and invisible
worlds, those of the living and of the dead, the land and the sky, and, finally,
nature and culture, all gather.
Relics and
forensics
Jan Geisbusch (Anthropology, UCL):
C.S.I.
Vatican: The Matter of Truth, the Truth of Matter
Successful TV
series such as C.S.I (Crime Scene Investigation) and news reports on old
criminal cases reopened after scientific advances unlocked new trails have
kindled a popular interest in forensics. Similarly, novels such as Dan Brown's
Da Vinci Code and a multitude of quasi-scientific books on topics such as the
Holy Grail or the Turin Shroud fuse science with religion in a way that locates
spiritual truth in material traces: DNA, C14 counts, pollen, and other residual
substances. Such strategies raise epistemological questions over the nature of
evidence and truth, but they also seem to challenge the immaterial nature of the
sacred that is still often taken for granted. While such a move could be
regarded as an exercise in progressive, rational deconstruction, it may at the
same time, curiously, serve to reassert religious authority: as incontestable
material fact, the sacred may seek to exempt itself again from the vagaries of
social and historical constructionism.
Imprints
Nelson Graburn (University of
California, Berkeley & London Metropolitan University)
Iniit, tumiit,
ajjiit - Traces, Marks and Footsteps in Inuit Cultural Knowledge
The
Canadian Inuit lived in the least inhabited and most wide open of all the
world's regions. Yet, they were known for the abilities to find their way across
trackless flat lands, whiteouts and huge bays, as well as to make geographical
maps and remarkable 2- and 3-dimensional arts. This paper focuses on the Inuit
mastery of abstract traces and metaphoric representations rather than material
vestiges. For instance iniit are the (empty) tracks where a sled has
been and iniksaq ('potential for a track') means (empty) space.
Tumiit means (empty) footprints, an important means of finding game and
avoiding dangers. This paper considers Inuit concepts of relatedness,
(in)equality, representation and signs (nalunaikutaanga = that which
de-confuses it, makes it obvious), in terms of humans, animals, the land and
art. It also attends to the problematic of the translation of materiality,
non-materiality and objectification in Inuit conceptual experiences.
Trace = make a plan or diagram, to draw
animal reins, to pull a
carriage
follow a track
draw, drag (pull)
track, tractor
vestige,
mark (titak) (c. 1600)
treat, trachten
contract = draw
together
portrait = bring/draw forth
Trauma, violence and
war
Gabriel Moshenska (Institute of Archaeology,
UCL)
Traces of Bombing in an Urban Landscape
This paper
examines the traces that more than a century of bombings have left on London.
These range in scale from the microscopic to the topographic; in date from the
1880s to the present. They have shaped and continue to shape the modern
metropolis and the lives of its residents in innumerable ways.
I have
divided these traces into three closely connected categories: firstly, physical
marks such as shrapnel damage, warning posters or new buildings built on the
ruins of old ones, and sometimes deadly left-overs, such as the hundreds of
unexploded bombs beneath the city dating back to the Second World War, which
continuously emerge during construction work. Secondly, mnemonic traces both
physically and socially inscribed; and thirdly, most nebulous of all, absences.
These last are the most problematic category, including both things that were
lost or destroyed in bombing and things that were never built at all, such as
certain air raid shelters and war memorials.
The paper includes a case
study focusing on the Bloomsbury area, showing how many traces of bombing can be
found in this small landscape including damage from both World Wars and the War
on Terror, historic bombing such as the Victorian "Dynamite Outrages", a missile
crash site, and the birthplace of the Atomic Bomb. The last part of the talk
will examine the different ways in which people experience these traces of
bombing and weave them into personal, meaningful narratives.
Images and CCTV
Daniel Neyland (Department
of Organization, Work & Technology, Lancaster)
Accounts of the World
and Worlds of the Account: Governing Mundane Aspects of Everyday
Life.
Accounting for everyday life might seem to provide for a broad
range of object-oriented traces. Households' disposal histories collected weekly
from their recycling boxes might form such a trace (captured under the rubric of
waste management and the need for more recycling), or an individual's movement
along a street might provide for a mundane history of sorts (stored and
retrievable through CCTV technology) or a car journey of a particular speed over
a particular distance might be used as an evidential base for minor prosecution
(via a speed camera). However, it is too easy to assume that the production,
management, storage and retrieval of accounts of mundane aspects of people and
objects in everyday life are a straightforward matter; that trace accounts of
the world can simply and straightforwardly be replayed. Instead, this paper
argues that one needs to step away from the idea that traces provide an account
of the world to look in greater detail at the ways in which traces are produced
via the world of the account. The paper will use three brief examples (of waste,
walking and driving) to argue that it is in the world of the account (its
production, invocation, management, mobilisation, challenge and collapse) that
traces of objects and their people are made.
Ruins and
hauntings
Dylan Trigg (Sussex):
The Ghost in Me: Toward
a Phenomenology of the Doppelgänger
Why do the dead return? It has
been customary to respond to this question in one of two ways. First, ghostly
apparitions-ranging from benign phantoms to ominous spooks-have tended to be
treated as a defect in imagination, the implication being that such phenomena
are merely a projection of the contents of consciousness on the world. The
alternative trajectory has been to reduce ghostly matter to a "blockage" in
memory. In such a reading, to "see" ghosts would mean to unconsciously remember
that which is dead but has yet to move on, with the experience of being haunted
traceable to a debt the dead still owe to the living.
In this paper, I
will formulate a way to commune with the dead which seeks to avoid reducing
ghostly phenomena to an offspring of psychic activity. I will do this via the
lived body. Two thoughts will be pursued. On the one hand, with recourse to
Merleau-Ponty, I will argue that our embodied experiences are never
unequivocally "mine," but forever doubled by an anonymous presence, a trace of a
pre-personal body folding into my personal body. Drawing out this theme of
doubling, I will develop a phenomenological theory of the Doppelgänger, which
attends to the ambiguity of the body as being an object possessed and subject
possessing. Phrasing the space between subject and object a site of abjection, I
will conclude by aligning the immateriality of the ghost with the materiality of
the lived body.
WEBSITE LINKS:
University
College London - Department of Anthropology
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/
Journal of Material
Culture
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsProdDesc.nav?prodId=Journal200859
Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture
http://www.mhm.ucl.ac.uk/
Material World Blog
http://www.materialworldblog.com/
WORKSHOP
PROGRAMME:
Registration:
09:00 -
09:30
Morning session:
Chair:
TBC
09:30 - 09:45 Welcome and introduction (Laurence Douny &
Jan Geisbusch)
09:45 - 10:25 Nelson Graburn (Berkeley) - Traces,
Marks and Footsteps in Inuit Cultural Knowledge
10:25 - 11:05
Laurence Douny (UCL) - Rains, Wind and Sandstorms: Towards a Dogon
Conception of the Weather (Mali/West Africa)
11.05 - 11.30 Coffee
break
11:30 - 12:10 Gabriel Moshenka (UCL) - Traces of Bombing in an
Urban Landscape
12:10 - 12:50 Daniel Neyland (Lancaster) -
Accounts of the World and Worlds of the Account: Governing Mundane Aspects
of Everyday Life
12:50 - 13:00 Conclusion
13.00 - 14.30
Lunch break
Afternoon session:
Chair:
TBC
14:30 - 15:10 Dylan Trigg (Sussex) - The Ghost in Me:
Towards a Phenomenology of the Doppelgänger
15:10 - 15:50 Jan
Geisbusch (UCL) - C.S.I. Vatican: The Matter of Truth, the Truth of
Matter
15:50 - 16:20 Coffee break
16:20 - 17:00 Mamadou Cisse
(Dakar) - Hidden West African Heritage: Wolofal
Manuscripts
17:00 - 17:40 Lucia Burgio (Victoria & Albert
Museum) - Traces: Scientific Analyses in Cultural Heritage
17:40
- 18:00 General discussion and conclusion
18.00 - 20.00 Drink
reception
COSTS:
The workshop is free of
charge, but please note that places are limited to 40 seats.
Please
confirm your participation to Jan Geisbusch (j.geisbusch@ucl.ac.uk) or Laurence Douny (l.douny@ucl.ac.uk).
LUNCH:
UCL possesses several cafés located on the main campus such as
the Print Room Café, the Bloomsbury theatre café as well Gordon café. Please
visit: http://www.uclunion.org/bars-cafes/cafes.php
Many
restaurants and cafés are located on Torrington Street and Tottenham Court Road,
which are all in easy walking distance from the department of Anthropology.
For a map of the area, please visit: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/ucl-maps
ACCOMMODATION:
Participants are responsible
for all charges associated with their accommodation. The area around UCL has
numerous B&Bs and small hotels within walking distance. You may want to have
a look at this list:
http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/projects/icecar/hotel.html
Detailed information about UCL can be found on its website at
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/
MAPS
AND DIRECTIONS:
The workshop will take place at the UCL
Anthropology Department, 14 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW. A map of the campus
is available online at
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/about-ucl/location/maps
The room
will be displayed at the entrance.
The nearest underground stations are
Euston (Northern line and Victoria line), Russell Square (Piccadilly line), and
Warren Street (Northern line and Victoria line). Other underground or train
stations within walking distance are King's Cross/St Pancras, Euston Square, and
Goodge Street.
For an underground map click here:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround/1108.aspx
For
information on travelling into London from various airports:
http://www.visitlondon.com/
or http://www.ukguide.org/
For transport within London:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/
