Artery. A podcast on art, authorship and anthropology

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

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and the relational in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Every episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring. Each series offers a nuanced approach to this relationship. Series one (supported by the AHRC) explores how authorship and responsibility are developed and understood in artmaking. Series two investigates the authoring of artwork as a process of relational creativity. Series three focuses on the intersection of authorship and voice. Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London). Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

  1. 08/16/2024

    Florentina Manuel Martínez with Michele A. Feder-Nadoff and Claudia Rocha Valverde

    Florentina Manuel Martínez is a textile artist originally from the state of Veracruz, in the municipality of Chicontepec, in the community of Ateno. She is a Náhuatl language speaker. Currently she is living in Tamaletom (the municipality of Tancanhuitz, in the state of San Luis Potosí, México). Florentina is married to a Tének flyer man of Tamaletom. (Tének is an Indigenous group of Mexico and flying refers to the traditional ritual dance of prehispanic origins.) Florentina has lived in Tamaleton for 18 years and has learned much about the Tének culture.  Michele A. Feder-Nadoff is an artist and anthropologist whose practice and research is concerned with the meaning of making [https://mfedernadoff.academia.edu]. Her longterm ethnography in Santa Clara del Cobre, Michoacán, México began in 1997 initiated by her apprenticeship with a master coppersmith, Maestro Jesús Pérez Ornelas. This led to her founding the non-profit Cuentos Foundation, becoming a Fulbright Scholar and cultural anthropologist, PhD, El Colegio de Michoacán. Her critical aesthetics integrates onto-epistemology, performance, and phenomenology with multimodal and collaborative methods designed to decolonize education, art and anthropology. Her artwork is included in private and public collections worldwide. Recent publications include her edited volume, Performing Craft in Mexico: Artisans, Aesthetics and the Power of Translation, 2022, Lexington (Bloomsbury Press), her monograph An Anthropology of Making in Santa Clara del Cobre: Presence of Absence, 2024, Palgrave, and numerous book chapters and articles. She is the assistant editor of the Journal of Embodied Research and an independent scholar, translator, curator, video-producer, lecturer and a multimodal workshop facilitator.   Claudia Rocha Valverde, PhD in Art History is a professor and investigator at El Colegio de San Luis (COLSAN) in the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Center in Mexico. [https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=aZ-M7XMAAAAJ&hl=es] Currently, Claudia is the academic liaison of the CASA COLSAN Xilitla Project. Her fieldwork is in the region of Huasteca in the state of San Luis Potosi, where she has carried out research on contemporary traditions of pre-Hispanic origins. In particular, she has specialized in how the knowledge of Indigenous Nahua and Tének women is manifested in the history and symbolism of their clothing, which they wear today in ceremonial contexts related to the concept of Madre Tierra, Mother Earth, which reflects the natural environment in which they live. For more (and the Spanish version) click here.

    30 min
  2. 07/19/2024

    Adèle Commins and Daithí Kearney with Kayla Rush

    Musicologist Dr Adèle Commins is Head of Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music at Dundalk Institute of Technology. Her PhD from Maynooth University focused on the music of Irish-born composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. Her recordings include contributions to an album of Irish piano accordion music released by Comhaltas in 2014 and vocal soloist on an album by Irish composer Sr Marie Dunne in 2015. She also contributes music in two local churches. Her recent research includes critically documenting the music of Co. Louth céilí bands from the mid-twentieth century. Her compositions featured in the seminal publications Tunes from the Women (2023) and some have been recorded by Cork-based Ceolta Sí (2020). Ethnomusicologist and geographer Dr Daithí Kearney is co-director of the Creative Arts Research Centre at Dundalk Institute of Technology, where he lectures in music, theatre and tourism. His PhD from University College Cork examined the geographies of Irish traditional music. An All-Ireland champion musician, he has toured and recorded as a musician, singer and dancer with a number of groups including Siamsa Tíre, The National Folk Theatre of Ireland, and performed for President Obama in The White House. He recorded the critically acclaimed album Midleton Rare with accordion player John Cronin in 2012 and continues to tour regularly. He wrote and produced the musical To Stay or Leave (2005, 2015) and his compositions have been recorded by groups including Nuada (2004) and Ceolta Sí (2020). As a composer, he has received commissions funded by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltachts and Cork County Council. Both Commins and Kearney have published extensively on music including contributions to the Companion to Irish Traditional Music and the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland . In 2017 they released an album A Louth Lilt, featuring their own compositions, and produced the documentary The Road to Speyfest in 2016. International tours including North and South America, France, Scotland, Norway and England. They have composed and arranged a number of pieces for the Oriel Traditional Orchestra, of which they are musical directors. In 2024, they were commissioned by Louth County Council to compose the score for a music theatre production Brigid, Lady of Light for the 1500 celebrations of St Brigid in Co. Louth. Dr Kayla Rush is an assistant lecturer in music at Dundalk Institute of Technology. An anthropologist of art, music, and performance, her current research examines private, fee-paying rock music schools in global perspective. She previously held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, supporting ethnographic research with Rock Jam, a private music education organisation in Ireland. Her work has appeared in Borderlands, Liminalities, Feminist Anthropology, Journal of Popular Music Education, and IASPM Journal, among others. She is the author of The Cracked Art World: Conflict, Austerity, and Community Arts in Northern Ireland (Berghahn, 2022). She is also a recognized teacher and practitioner of creative ethnography, with a particular interest in ethnographic science fiction.

    57 min
  3. 06/14/2024

    Ayala Gazit with Rotem Steinbock

    Ayala Gazit is a visual artist who specializes in photography and installation. Born in Israel, she is currently living and working in Berlin. Prior to moving to Berlin she lived in New York city, where she completed, with honors, a BFA in Photography in The School of Visual Arts. Ayala has presented works in art venues around the globe, including in Germany, USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. She is the recipient of numerous awards such as The Tierney Fellowship and The Photography NOW Award at Woodstock, amongst others. Her works cover a wide range of themes, including history, memory, loss, family, and creation, all explored through a special focus on the question of how can the photographic image capture the things that are no longer there. https://www.ayalagazit.com/  Rotem Steinbock is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, working on the intersection between art, immigration, and identity. Her PhD research follows Jewish Israeli visual artists who immigrated to Berlin, focusing on the ways they negotiate, reflect upon, and visually represent their dynamic senses of alterity and belonging. Before coming to Cambridge Rotem completed a B.A. in psychology and sociology and anthropology and an M.A. in anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a B.F.A. at the Department of Fine Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/staff/rotem-steinbock-2019

    51 min
  4. 05/31/2024

    Eliana Otta Vildoso and Nuno Cassola Marques with Frederick Schmidt and Sera Park

    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.

    49 min
  5. 02/09/2024

    Jonas Tinius with Iza Kavedžija

    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.

    57 min

About

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and the relational in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Every episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring. Each series offers a nuanced approach to this relationship. Series one (supported by the AHRC) explores how authorship and responsibility are developed and understood in artmaking. Series two investigates the authoring of artwork as a process of relational creativity. Series three focuses on the intersection of authorship and voice. Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London). Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

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