Continued from Part I of II.
Mnartists.org is an online collective of Minnesota-based artists with a wide range of experience and talents. The works below are featured in the Anthropology in the Arts Tour at mnartists.org that I curated at the site earlier this year. Each piece was selected for its particular engagement in the study of the human condition, and for its unique ability to span the distance between art and anthropology.
Use the slides and questions below to guide your own reactions to the featured pieces. Take a moment to reflect on your own personal intersection between art and culture.
Slide 1: Living room at 1064, John Helmer Wulkan
The material culture of personal space. The anthropological lens must penetrate through multiple layers of information.
What personal objects represent you? Make a list of items that you feel represent who you have been or who you are today.
Slide 2: Family Mind Map Table, Carmen Tomfohrde
A fusion of material culture and personal space with the cognitive or schematic aspects of family life.
What household item best represents your family? Draw a mind-map that illustrates some of the major themes, interests, ideas, and relationships in your family.
Slide 3: Liminal Personality #2, Elliott Durko Lynch
An alternative entry point into the stream of experience and transition.
What kind of sounds are most prevalent in your household? Make a list of messages you'd be most likely to hear on your voicemail or answering machine.
Slide 4: Into the Subway, Tucker MacNeill
A brief, sectional slice of the experiential stream, evocative of individual sensory and narrative experience.
What words or images would you use to describe your daily experience? Draw a picture that illustrates whether your life is experienced as fast or slow, light or heavy, strong or weak, etc.
Slide 5: Quartet Forming, Susannah Bielak
Synecdoche and complexity. A glimpse at the structural interaction between individual and collective behavior.
How does movement in different social situations determine what kinds of interactions you have? Draw a diagram of movements in a typical social setting (for example, at the playground, at a coffee shop, in the work place).
Slide 6: Bazaar 3D, Edwin Beylerian
Conceptual image of globalization, cultural drift, distortion, and fusion in virtual worlds.
What cultural images dominate your daily experience? How do these images fit together?
Slide 7: a face in the crowd, bev miller
The impact of perspective and interpretation. The object of study is reflected, filtered, and shaped through the eyes of the viewer.
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