Written component 2
During my practice last week, I found it is inevitable to associate eating with culture and self-awareness. Such as research base on typical communities, races, or countries that have particular eating rituals, ingredients, or recipes. However, the “differences” of characters resolve when I blur the eating images from multiple coordinates and place them together. They are sharing the same action —— eating. This process allowed me to realize not the superficial cultural symbols but their bodies. The similarity made me think that perhaps the biological and cultural functions of the body can be separate (Emmelhainz, 2018).
The ontology concept in anthropology can use as evidence. Here is my understanding of ontology: This is a chicken. What we should observe is why the chicken exists and why it uses as our food? Should not be why India makes curry chicken, while Thailand has coconut chicken? Are KFC and McDonald’s fried chickens both considered as fried chicken? Why are turkeys and black-bone chickens all under the type of chicken?
In the article Anthropology of Ontologies by Eduardo Kohn (2015), he mentioned a concept named ontological poetics. He cited Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s experimental ethnographic documentary named “Leviathan” (2012), which observes a fishing boat to frame the fishing industry. Cameras are installed at different locations on the ship, disrupting any single human perspective or narrative. The result of this is a disturbing self-disintegration (Khon, 2015). This documentary does not give any storyline and conclusion, only has chaotic and fragmentary records. Compare with the traditional montage, the narrative relies on a causality chain between frames. The Audience will fill the gap between images to coherent the action use their logical thinking. They used to build up these bridges in accordance with the human narrative which could also describe as the conjecture of meaning. Kohn believes dissolves the conceptual structures that connect us, and transforms them into unexpected realities or powers that emerge from the depths, and explores more essential connotations (Kohn, 2015).
This concept also echoes the viewpoint of visual anthropologists Grimshaw and Ravetz, they claim a way to ”dislodges the disembodied linearity of linguistically based models of interpretation”. that is, by using the visual embodied, sensory, and materially fundamental dimensions (Grimshaw and Ravetz, 2005). To beyond the traditional perspective that normally uses people’s inherent logical thinking to limit the possibility of studying eating itself. Using vision or sensory to do the recognition, then may able to obtain what Stafford calls “intelligence of sight“ (Stoller, 1997). It encourages me to understand visual disintegration in an instructive way. The images all share something like the mathematical code that is difficult to interpret (Vermeulen,2015), and restore the perception that human beings originally possessed. No longer pay attention to the performance of the form, or sum up our belief. Rather to reflects on the finally presented atmospheric imagery that is hard to generalize in words and only exists in the visual sense.
As I tried to add the unpredictable randomness, collage the cultural symbols that will appear during eating onto the same figure. The repeated production of random eating figures will no longer allow the audience to imagine. It will disassemble the superficial cultural image when they’re eating will have, and also expresses the political value of “similarity” while paying attention to the body action itself.
‘I change material by repeating it unchanged. The message is the behavior of the material in response to the frequency of its repetition.’
Peter Roehr (1944-68)
The works of artists Peter Roehr can use as evidence, his practice base on the principle of montage. He organized the infinite repetition to a single image from the commercial advertisement and finally eliminates the original commercial message (Ortuzarprojects, 2018). Overall, visually split the traditional narrative structure and decompose the superficial symbols, could achieve the purpose of observing the object (behavior) itself. And will eventually open a new perspective that let me study the eating action from the human body itself.
Reference
Emmelhainz, I. (2018) ‘Dragging (My) Shadows on a Circle: On Anger, Vulnerability, and Intimacy’, e-flux Journal, #92. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92/204505/dragging-my-shadows-on-a-circle-on-anger-vulnerability-and-intimacy/ (Accessed: 10 May 2021).
Kohn, E. (2015) ‘Anthropology of Ontologies’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 44:311–27, pp. 311-323.
Leviathan (2012) Directed by Castaing-Taylor, L. and Paravel, V. [Documentary]. US: Cinema Guild.
Grimshaw, A. and Ravetz, A. (2005) Visualizing Anthropology. UK: Intellect Books. pp. 1-6.
Stoller, P., Sensuous Scholarship, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. in Grimshaw, A. and Ravetz, A. (2005) Visualizing Anthropology. p6.
Vermeulen, T. (2015) ‘The New “Depthiness”’, e-flux Journal, #61. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/61/61000/the-new-depthiness/ (Accessed: 10 May 2021).
Ortuzarprojects (2018) PETER ROEHR: WHERE YOUR DRIVING TAKES A TURN FOR THE BEST. Available at: https://www.ortuzarprojects.com/exhibitions/peter-roehr?view=slider (Accessed: 10 May 2021).
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Visual Experiment