Abstract
Doing nothing: Anthropology sits at the same table with contemporary art in Lisbon and Tbilisi
By Fransisco Martines, Aalto University, Finland
In this article, doing nothing is presented as both an artistic output and a mode of research, which helps to enhance the effect of an embodied presence, re-embed ourselves into a setting, and allow a sense of slow time that seems to be missing from our everyday life. Here anthropology and contemporary art merge in a form of ethnographic installation by sitting in semi-public spaces of Lisbon and Tbilisi for 35 hours without any laptop or mobile phone. Through the repeated effort of doing nothing, the author reminds us that observation is a tiring process and shows how different roles in the field activate the ethnographic material differently. Doing nothing is thus a form of intervention, a slow time being in front of others, which enables a break of consciousness, suspends politics of relevance, and leaves space for serendipity and embodied imagination.
Author keywords
Ethnographic Installation, Art and anthropology, Urban ethnography, Experimental methods, Conceptual fieldwork, Performative site noting, Pessoan anthropology