Artery. A podcast on art, authorship and anthropology Artery. A podcast on art, authorship and anthropology

Eliana Otta Vildoso (Lima, 1981) holds a degree in art, an MA in Cultural Studies from the Universidad Católica del Perú, and a PhD in Practice from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. She co-founded the artist collective Bisagra in Lima and the ecofeminist collective Mouries in Athens. She coordinated the curatorial team for the permanent exhibition at Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social. She has taught at the Art Faculty of PUCP, Corriente Alterna and Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes. She lives and works between Vienna and Athens. 
Website: eliana-otta.com
https://drivingthehuman.com/prototype/virtual-sanctuary-for-fertilizing-mourning/
Instagram: eliana.otta



Nuno Cassola Marques (Aveiro, 1984) holds a degree in Fine Arts and an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the University of Porto, Portugal. He co-founded and co-curated the first edition of the Wadi Rum film festival, and co-founded the community kitchen Khora in Athens, which continues to serve 1200 meals a day to people in need. In addition to his activism, he works as a cinematographer and filmmaker. He lives and works in Athens. 
Website: www.nunocassola.com




Interviewers: 
Frederick Schmidt is currently completing his PhD in Social Anthropology at Cambridge with the title “Un-Contemporary Arts: Norms and Forms in a Greek Art School”. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Athens (2020-2022), his PhD concerns the imbrication of private and public educational institutes in the landscape of artistic education in Athens, and makes the case for a reappraisal of formalist methodologies in visual anthropological research.



Sera Park is Associate Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Her PhD (University of Cambridge, 2022) examined the collective mourning and activism that emerged in the aftermath of the Sewol Ferry Disaster in South Korea. Her research interests include social movements and activism, the affective and moral dimensions of social life, and death, mourning, and memorialization. 

Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė  is a Research Associate at the Department of Psychology and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.
Her research interests are in aesthetics, metaphysics, experimental philosophy, and philosophy of cognitive science. She currently works on the project “Higher Values: Aesthetic Experiences, Transcendence, and Prosociality” with Prof. Simone Schnall and Dr Ryan Doran.
Her doctoral work focused on the philosophy of music and the ontology of musical works. As part of her doctoral research, Elzė conducted experimental philosophy studies in musical ontology. She has also investigated other topics in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, such as the folk concept of art, judgments of the identity of artworks, and intuitions on AI-created art.
https://mikalonyte.com/
https://twitter.com/ElzeSigute


Edoardo Chidichimo is a social anthropologist and computational neuroscientist who is interested in all things social. Combining anthropology, AI, mathematics, and philosophy, Edoardo seeks to address sociality in the broadest way, confronting disciplinary niches and pushing toward an integrated study of interpersonal human behaviour and cognition.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ec750
Profile: https://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/member/ec750

Xasan Daahir Ismaaciil (‘Weedhsame’) is a Somali poet currently based in Hargeysa, Somaliland. Mentored by the beloved late poet Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaarriye’, his work includes hundreds of poems and song lyrics on themes including politics, migration and love. He is widely considered one of the most influential poets of his generation. Trained as a mathematician, Weedhsame currently teaches Somali language and literature at the University of Hargeysa and works as a statistician for the Ministry of Education. Some of his work has been translated by the Poetry Translation Centre, and is available here: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/poets/xasan-daahir-weedhsame


Christina Woolner is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge. Her research broadly explores how forms of popular art and practices of “voicing” are entangled in processes of sociopolitical change, especially in the wake of violence. For the last decade she has been studying the political and affective dynamics of love songs and political poetry in Hargeysa, Somaliland. Her first book, Love Songs in Motion: Voicing Intimacy in Somaliland recently came out with the University of Chicago Press. Information about the book, alongside supplemental audio-visual material, is available on the book’s companion website: www.lovesongs.christinawoolner.com.

Jonas Tinius is a sociocultural anthropologist, and currently scientific coordinator and post-doctoral researcher in cultural anthropology in the ERC project Minor Universality: Narrative World Productions after Western Universalism based at Saarland University. He completed a PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, before joining the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He co-founded the Anthropology & the Arts Network of Anthropologists (EASA) with Roger Sansi. His publications include Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial (with Margareta von Oswald, Leuven 2020). 

www.jonastinius.com

State of the Arts book: https://www.cambridge.org/it/universitypress/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/drama-and-theatre-general-interest/state-arts-ethnography-german-theatre-and-migration?format=HB

Iza Kavedžija is an Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She is specialising in Japan, with primary research interests in art and creativity, the life course and aging, and health and wellbeing. She is currently leading an AHRC-funded project entitled ‘The Work of Art in Contemporary Japan: Inner and outer worlds of creativity’.

https://worldsofcreativity.socanth.cam.ac.uk/
https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-iza-kavedzija

Permissions obtained for the use of all samples featured in this episode.

寂空 (JACK) is a shamisen musician and frontman of the band The Shamisenists. His approach to composition is one of continuous movement across boundaries, inspired by his own travel to different parts of the world. As a result, his music often exhibits a diversity that escapes categorization. Jack performed at the Rugby World Cup official reception at the Yokohama Arena in 2019. In 2022, The Shamisenists were the sole Japanese band to perform at the celebrated MOTOCULTOR festival in France. In 2023 Jack performed at Fuji Rock, the biggest music festival in Japan. He is the recipient of multiple awards and honours, including an Indian Foreign Minister’s Award for his arrangement of the Japanese version of Gandhi’s beloved devotional song. 

https://www.instagram.com/shamisenist_jack/

Jack’s words in this episode were translated by Robert Simpkins and narrated by Oscar Wrenn. Oscar is a PhD researcher based at Kobe University in Japan, studying everyday agricultural practice in depopulated rural landscapes.

Robert Simpkins is a social anthropologist and coproducer of the Artery podcasts. His research interests focus upon the intersection of sound, space, creativity, and the production of self.

Permission obtained by Transist Records and the creators of the music for tracks featured in this podcast episode:

LOTUS / The Shamisenists [re:tokyo]
Modernized Flight / The Shamisenists [re:tokyo]
URVIBE_feat. Yokotasax / The Shamisenists [PLAY!]

Permission also granted for use of the impromptu shamisen performance recorded during the interview, and featured at the close of the episode. 

Tamaki Ueda, aka Banetoriko, is a Japanese noise music artist who was born in Nara, moved to Los Angeles, and finally established herself in Osaka. Her music, composed with a self-made metal instrument named Banetek, is inspired by yokai, the supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore to whom she has dedicated a great part of her life. Her last album, Yorioto Hogiokuri, which could be translated as “Celebrating and sending off the summoned sound”, came out in 2022.

https://banetoriko.net/ 

Luca Proietti is a PhD candidate in Japanese Studies at SOAS, University of London. His research interests are related to performing arts, media, and cultural studies, focusing on their relationship with society and culture. He is involved in a research project on Japanese noise music, focusing on its cultural and social engagement and exploring its historical continuity with Japanese traditions.