ANTART FieldWorks #1: Christine Moderbacher

In our first talk of the series, anthropologist Christine Moderbacher presents the ongoing project “Moving Ants on a Painted Tree”, made in collaboration with the artist Iris Blauensteiner. Reflecting one of the central ideas of the ANTART Network, “Moving Ants on a Painted Tree” is a project that seeks to advance the dialog between art and anthropology through combining ethnographic field research and artistic tools of representation. However, in practice, the two researchers/artists also reached limitations and faced difficulties that often remain unspoken. Christine Moderbacher will discuss these challenges and unfold the at times different approaches, reflecting on how art and anthropology diverge and converge. (The project “Moving Ants on a Painted Tree” is supported by Viertelfestival, Otto Mauer Fonds, Gemeinde Berg, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle.) Christine Moderbacher is an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. Completing her PhD at the University of Aberdeen in 2019, she is currently working at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. Her documentary films are shown in international film festivals and received a number of prizes.

Om Podcasten

For anthropologists and artists “doing fieldwork” in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, or performing arts are at the heart of their work, extending the established anthropological interest in writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. This exhibition presents works by anthropologists and artists who break disciplinary boundaries, and whose practice foregrounds experimental, and open approaches to the theme “field/works”. This series is curated by Jen Clarke and Maxime Le Calvé. We intend to provide a new space for discussion around and across the thematic of the virtual exhibition "Field/Works": https://antart.easaonline.org/ All members of ANTART (EASA) are all invited to attend. If you wish to participate in a particular talk with a short paper (5 minutes) which would resonate with the topic or — even better — with the artwork presented in that talk, please get in touch with us.