On ne compte plus aujourd’hui les appels à repenser l’innovation. Il y aurait urgence écologique.... more On ne compte plus aujourd’hui les appels à repenser l’innovation. Il y aurait urgence écologique. Et certains n’hésitent pas à prédire la fin du monde à moins d’une rupture radicale de nos modèles de croissance. Alors que chaque nouvelle génération de téléphone ou d’ordinateur est célébrée comme si elle constituait un progrès décisif pour l’humanité, le low tech à l’inverse, cet ensemble hétérogène de techniques, de modes de composition alternatifs, définis tantôt négativement (pauvreté ou économie des moyens) tantôt positivement (faire beaucoup avec peu de choses, faire avec ce qu’on a, faire plus local et plus participatif, etc.), viendrait partout ébranler la toute puissance du high tech. Avec lui, ce ne sont pas seulement une autre lecture des techniques et d’autres façons de concevoir qui se donnent à voir, mais des populations entières d’hommes et de procédés, dont le rôle a bien souvent été sous-estimé, de l’Inde à l’Afrique en passant par l’Asie. L’objectif de ce numéro n’es...
Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World investigates arts and aesthetics in their widest sense... more Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World investigates arts and aesthetics in their widest senses and experiences, from a variety of perspectives branching from the metaphysical to the political. Moving beyond art as an expression of the inner mind and invention of the individual self, the volume bridges the gap between changing perceptions of contemporary art and aesthetics, and maps globalising currents in a number of contexts and regions. The volume includes an impressive variety of case studies offered by established leaders in the field and original and emergent scholarly talent covering areas in India, Nepal, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Rwanda and Germany as well as providing transnational or diasporic perspectives. From the contradictory demands made on successful artists from the south in the global art world such as Anish Kapoor, to images of war and puppetry created by female political prisoners, the volume compels creative and political interpretations of the ever-changing ...
The permeability of the boundary between religion and politics in India has already been highligh... more The permeability of the boundary between religion and politics in India has already been highlighted in many studies. In reality, ever since Independence, the separation established by the Indian constitution between these two central domains of social life has always been rather tenuous. But it is only during the last two decades that a large-scale movement openly questioning the principle has emerged. In effect, political parties appealing to Hinduism have been making a concerted attempt to turn it into the more or less explicit basis for a national state culture. which would replace the purely secular ideals prevailing until now.' The separation between religion and politics is not, however, the most decisive factor in defining our modernity. A more fundamental distinction is the one which has been progressively drawn between beliefs in all their variability on the one hand and, on the other, the scientific approach, which in contrast bases its legitimacy on both its universa...
In recent anthropological debates, it is accepted—sometimes rather hastily—that ‘naturalism’ repr... more In recent anthropological debates, it is accepted—sometimes rather hastily—that ‘naturalism’ represents the prevalent ontology within Western modernity. The ethnography of the contemporary world does not necessarily require us to contest this statement in a fundamental way; but it does compel us to put into perspective the scope of such a claim. This is particularly true if we consider what is taking place in the domain of humanoid robotics and the way in which the actors in this field explicitly seek to challenge certain ontological presuppositions that supposedly characterise our era. After briefly introducing the stakes of such a debate, I will demonstrate why an unprecedented experiment with a humanoid robot in the collections at the Musee du Quai Branly offers the opportunity of an ethnographic study to reflect upon the role that ontological presuppositions play in the way in which the visitors comprehend the robot and, more broadly, their environment.
The concept of darshan-which is usually translated by words like 'vision' or 'gaze'-has come to o... more The concept of darshan-which is usually translated by words like 'vision' or 'gaze'-has come to occupy a central place in studies of the visual culture of India., Its status is attested by the importance it is given in the work of scholars like Diana Eck, 1 and Lawrence Babb 2 whose works deal with aspects of Indian culture and society where darshan is used by the people themselves; that is mostly, in religious contexts. The importance of the concept of darshan is also shown in its use nowadays by scholars of the visual culture of India, where the word is not used in everyday speech. This is particularly the case in mass-media and popular culture studies; darshan is often used in this context to explain cultural differences in the way people may use photographs and popular prints or look at cinema in India. (Christiane
Is it possible to imagine that one may feel morally right to kill and decapitate an old man in th... more Is it possible to imagine that one may feel morally right to kill and decapitate an old man in the middle of the night who is completely defenceless andwho had been particularly kind to you when you were a child?According to cultural relativism, this a distinct possibilityif you belong to a culture where such behaviour is effectively acceptable and you have been socialised in it and interiorised its values.But if you strongly believe in the universality of moral values, you will no doubt consider that any one who is not perverse would spontaneously find such behaviour completely abhorrent, whatever his or her culture, his or her educationand the sort of legitimacy which may be claimed for such an act.Finally, if you are following some of the recent researches taking place in the anthropology of morality, you will probably judge that both perspectives are not necessarily contradictory; you may consider that much depends, from a methodological point of view, on the level of analysis t...
On ne compte plus aujourd'hui les appels a repenser l'innovation. Il y aurait urgence eco... more On ne compte plus aujourd'hui les appels a repenser l'innovation. Il y aurait urgence ecologique. Et certains n'hesitent pas a predire la fin du monde a moins d'une rupture radicale de nos modeles de croissance. Alors que chaque nouvelle generation de telephone ou d'ordinateur est celebree comme si elle constituait un progres decisif pour l'humanite, le low tech a l'inverse, cet ensemble heterogene de techniques, de modes de composition alternatifs, definis tantot negativement (pauvrete ou economie de moyens) tantot positivement (faire beaucoup avec peu de choses, faire avec ce qu'on a, faire plus local et plus participatif, etc.) viendrait partout ebranler la toute puissance du high tech. Avec lui, ce ne sont pas seulement une autre lecture des techniques et d'autres facons de concevoir qui se donnent a voir, mais des population entieres d'hommes et de procedes, dont le role a bien souvent ete sous-estime, de l'Inde a l'Afrique en pas...
Propaganda and art history do not separate as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and many ot... more Propaganda and art history do not separate as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and many other art historians (such as Emile Mâle, Ernst Gombrich , or Kenneth Clark) have not hesitated to put their knowledge in the service of propaganda for their homelands when circumstances required doing so. At a more fundamental level, the problems of analyzing propaganda force us to investigate some of art history's key postulates. This article focuses on the very beginnings of documentary films in the British Empire and India.
Carlo Severi, directeur d’etudesDenis Vidal, directeur de recherche a l’IRD Alfred Gell a recemme... more Carlo Severi, directeur d’etudesDenis Vidal, directeur de recherche a l’IRD Alfred Gell a recemment attire l’attention sur le fait que les artefacts qui se trouvent dans nos musees classes sous le label « art primitif » ne sont pas seulement des temoignages d’un instinct universel qui presiderait a la creation artistique. Bien que dependants d’une esthetique indigene, beaucoup de ces objets sont, dans les societes ou ils ont ete concus, traites comme des etres vivants, le plus souvent a l’int...
Propaganda and art history do not lie as far apart as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and... more Propaganda and art history do not lie as far apart as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and many other art historians (such as Emile Male, Ernst Gombricht or Kenneth Clark) have not hesitated to put their knowledge in the service of propaganda for their homelands when circumstances required doing so. At a more fundamental level, the problems of analyzing propaganda paradoxically force us to investigate some of art history's key postulates. This is shown by focusing on the very beginnings of documentary films in the British Empire and India.
Universitas-monthly Review of Philosophy and Culture, 2011
Since the 1980's, the reflection concerning meeting of cultures, cultural transmission, and i... more Since the 1980's, the reflection concerning meeting of cultures, cultural transmission, and inter-culturalism usually concerns domains all linked with post-colonial, trans-national, and cultural diasporas questions, but also exile, hybridity, etc. In such a context, the methodological approach of contemporary art is mostly founded on sociology and history of art methods. The paper thus proposes an aesthetic approach of this problem, through the practical study of what we have chosen to call the "new figures of universal artists." It seems interesting to study these artists that refuse, even in an indirect way, an appreciation of their art based on an identity, or on a specific culture, approach. Their attitude as well as their creativity forces us to re-examine the validity of usual appreciation categories and of art evaluation. More than that, a number of them express on their artwork and on artistic creation even more pioneer ideas than any avant-garde theories. Ther...
In this work, we study how learning in a special environment such as a museum can influence the b... more In this work, we study how learning in a special environment such as a museum can influence the behavior of robots. More specifically, we show that online learning based on interaction with people at a museum leads the robots to develop individual preferences. We first developed a humanoid robot (Berenson) that has the ability to head toward its preferred object and to make a facial expression that corresponds to its attitude toward said object. The robot is programmed with a biologically-inspired neural network sensory-motor architecture. This architecture allows Berenson to learn and to evaluate objects. During experiments, museum visitors’ emotional responses to artworks were recorded and used to build a database for training. A similar database was created in the laboratory with laboratory objects. We use those databases to train two simulated populations of robots. Each simulated robot emulates the Berenson sensory-motor architecture. Firstly, the results show the good performa...
« We must consider not only beholder's symptoms and behavior, but also the effectiveness, efficac... more « We must consider not only beholder's symptoms and behavior, but also the effectiveness, efficacy and vitaitty of images themselves; not only what beholders do, but also what images appear to do; not only what people do as resuit of their relationship with imaged form, but also what they expect imagedforms to achieve, and why they have such expectations at ail » [David Freedberg]. Qu'il s'agisse d'images de facture traditionnelle ou de formes d'imagerie plus nouvelles ou plus singulières, une partie importante de la production visuelle est mise aujourd'hui au service de diverses formes d'identité collectives ou indivi¬ duelles dans le monde. L'objectif de ce numéro est de proposer, à partir d'études de cas menées en Afrique, en Asie et en Amérique du Sud, un ensemble de réflexions et d'analyses sur le rôle que jouent, à notre époque, diverses imageries pour illustrer ou propager des logiques identitaires qui peuvent concerner des per¬ sonnes aussi bien que des lieux ou des communautés. Un domaine de recherches longtemps négligé Si l'on excepte quelques rares recherches, généralement consacrées à des formes d'imagerie valorisées pour leur qualité artistique, c'est seulement depuis une date récente que l'on a commencé à s'intéresser sérieusement au rôle joué, ailleurs qu'en Occident, par les formes de représentation visuelle associées plus spécifiquement à la modernité (photographie, cinéma, images virtuelles, etc.) et au rôle que ces dernières peuvent jouer dans la définition des identités '. Ainsi, par exemple, l'étude de l'activité des photographes africainsqu'il faut distinguer soigneusement de l'histoire de la photographie en Afriqueconstitue Chercheur en anthropologie, IRD, Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (EHESS). 1 La raison de ce nouvel intérêt est due, entre autres facteurs, à une meilleure prise de conscience du rôle joué par l'imaginaireet l'imaginaire visuel, en particulierdans la définition des identités. L'ouvrage de référence dans cette perspective est celui de Benedict Anderson [19831 à propos de la construction de l'identité nationale en Indonésie; pour des développements plus récents dans cette perspective, voir, par exemple, Hjort, Mackenzie [2000].
On ne compte plus aujourd’hui les appels à repenser l’innovation. Il y aurait urgence écologique.... more On ne compte plus aujourd’hui les appels à repenser l’innovation. Il y aurait urgence écologique. Et certains n’hésitent pas à prédire la fin du monde à moins d’une rupture radicale de nos modèles de croissance. Alors que chaque nouvelle génération de téléphone ou d’ordinateur est célébrée comme si elle constituait un progrès décisif pour l’humanité, le low tech à l’inverse, cet ensemble hétérogène de techniques, de modes de composition alternatifs, définis tantôt négativement (pauvreté ou économie des moyens) tantôt positivement (faire beaucoup avec peu de choses, faire avec ce qu’on a, faire plus local et plus participatif, etc.), viendrait partout ébranler la toute puissance du high tech. Avec lui, ce ne sont pas seulement une autre lecture des techniques et d’autres façons de concevoir qui se donnent à voir, mais des populations entières d’hommes et de procédés, dont le rôle a bien souvent été sous-estimé, de l’Inde à l’Afrique en passant par l’Asie. L’objectif de ce numéro n’es...
Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World investigates arts and aesthetics in their widest sense... more Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World investigates arts and aesthetics in their widest senses and experiences, from a variety of perspectives branching from the metaphysical to the political. Moving beyond art as an expression of the inner mind and invention of the individual self, the volume bridges the gap between changing perceptions of contemporary art and aesthetics, and maps globalising currents in a number of contexts and regions. The volume includes an impressive variety of case studies offered by established leaders in the field and original and emergent scholarly talent covering areas in India, Nepal, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Rwanda and Germany as well as providing transnational or diasporic perspectives. From the contradictory demands made on successful artists from the south in the global art world such as Anish Kapoor, to images of war and puppetry created by female political prisoners, the volume compels creative and political interpretations of the ever-changing ...
The permeability of the boundary between religion and politics in India has already been highligh... more The permeability of the boundary between religion and politics in India has already been highlighted in many studies. In reality, ever since Independence, the separation established by the Indian constitution between these two central domains of social life has always been rather tenuous. But it is only during the last two decades that a large-scale movement openly questioning the principle has emerged. In effect, political parties appealing to Hinduism have been making a concerted attempt to turn it into the more or less explicit basis for a national state culture. which would replace the purely secular ideals prevailing until now.' The separation between religion and politics is not, however, the most decisive factor in defining our modernity. A more fundamental distinction is the one which has been progressively drawn between beliefs in all their variability on the one hand and, on the other, the scientific approach, which in contrast bases its legitimacy on both its universa...
In recent anthropological debates, it is accepted—sometimes rather hastily—that ‘naturalism’ repr... more In recent anthropological debates, it is accepted—sometimes rather hastily—that ‘naturalism’ represents the prevalent ontology within Western modernity. The ethnography of the contemporary world does not necessarily require us to contest this statement in a fundamental way; but it does compel us to put into perspective the scope of such a claim. This is particularly true if we consider what is taking place in the domain of humanoid robotics and the way in which the actors in this field explicitly seek to challenge certain ontological presuppositions that supposedly characterise our era. After briefly introducing the stakes of such a debate, I will demonstrate why an unprecedented experiment with a humanoid robot in the collections at the Musee du Quai Branly offers the opportunity of an ethnographic study to reflect upon the role that ontological presuppositions play in the way in which the visitors comprehend the robot and, more broadly, their environment.
The concept of darshan-which is usually translated by words like 'vision' or 'gaze'-has come to o... more The concept of darshan-which is usually translated by words like 'vision' or 'gaze'-has come to occupy a central place in studies of the visual culture of India., Its status is attested by the importance it is given in the work of scholars like Diana Eck, 1 and Lawrence Babb 2 whose works deal with aspects of Indian culture and society where darshan is used by the people themselves; that is mostly, in religious contexts. The importance of the concept of darshan is also shown in its use nowadays by scholars of the visual culture of India, where the word is not used in everyday speech. This is particularly the case in mass-media and popular culture studies; darshan is often used in this context to explain cultural differences in the way people may use photographs and popular prints or look at cinema in India. (Christiane
Is it possible to imagine that one may feel morally right to kill and decapitate an old man in th... more Is it possible to imagine that one may feel morally right to kill and decapitate an old man in the middle of the night who is completely defenceless andwho had been particularly kind to you when you were a child?According to cultural relativism, this a distinct possibilityif you belong to a culture where such behaviour is effectively acceptable and you have been socialised in it and interiorised its values.But if you strongly believe in the universality of moral values, you will no doubt consider that any one who is not perverse would spontaneously find such behaviour completely abhorrent, whatever his or her culture, his or her educationand the sort of legitimacy which may be claimed for such an act.Finally, if you are following some of the recent researches taking place in the anthropology of morality, you will probably judge that both perspectives are not necessarily contradictory; you may consider that much depends, from a methodological point of view, on the level of analysis t...
On ne compte plus aujourd'hui les appels a repenser l'innovation. Il y aurait urgence eco... more On ne compte plus aujourd'hui les appels a repenser l'innovation. Il y aurait urgence ecologique. Et certains n'hesitent pas a predire la fin du monde a moins d'une rupture radicale de nos modeles de croissance. Alors que chaque nouvelle generation de telephone ou d'ordinateur est celebree comme si elle constituait un progres decisif pour l'humanite, le low tech a l'inverse, cet ensemble heterogene de techniques, de modes de composition alternatifs, definis tantot negativement (pauvrete ou economie de moyens) tantot positivement (faire beaucoup avec peu de choses, faire avec ce qu'on a, faire plus local et plus participatif, etc.) viendrait partout ebranler la toute puissance du high tech. Avec lui, ce ne sont pas seulement une autre lecture des techniques et d'autres facons de concevoir qui se donnent a voir, mais des population entieres d'hommes et de procedes, dont le role a bien souvent ete sous-estime, de l'Inde a l'Afrique en pas...
Propaganda and art history do not separate as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and many ot... more Propaganda and art history do not separate as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and many other art historians (such as Emile Mâle, Ernst Gombrich , or Kenneth Clark) have not hesitated to put their knowledge in the service of propaganda for their homelands when circumstances required doing so. At a more fundamental level, the problems of analyzing propaganda force us to investigate some of art history's key postulates. This article focuses on the very beginnings of documentary films in the British Empire and India.
Carlo Severi, directeur d’etudesDenis Vidal, directeur de recherche a l’IRD Alfred Gell a recemme... more Carlo Severi, directeur d’etudesDenis Vidal, directeur de recherche a l’IRD Alfred Gell a recemment attire l’attention sur le fait que les artefacts qui se trouvent dans nos musees classes sous le label « art primitif » ne sont pas seulement des temoignages d’un instinct universel qui presiderait a la creation artistique. Bien que dependants d’une esthetique indigene, beaucoup de ces objets sont, dans les societes ou ils ont ete concus, traites comme des etres vivants, le plus souvent a l’int...
Propaganda and art history do not lie as far apart as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and... more Propaganda and art history do not lie as far apart as we might think. As we know, Aby Warburg and many other art historians (such as Emile Male, Ernst Gombricht or Kenneth Clark) have not hesitated to put their knowledge in the service of propaganda for their homelands when circumstances required doing so. At a more fundamental level, the problems of analyzing propaganda paradoxically force us to investigate some of art history's key postulates. This is shown by focusing on the very beginnings of documentary films in the British Empire and India.
Universitas-monthly Review of Philosophy and Culture, 2011
Since the 1980's, the reflection concerning meeting of cultures, cultural transmission, and i... more Since the 1980's, the reflection concerning meeting of cultures, cultural transmission, and inter-culturalism usually concerns domains all linked with post-colonial, trans-national, and cultural diasporas questions, but also exile, hybridity, etc. In such a context, the methodological approach of contemporary art is mostly founded on sociology and history of art methods. The paper thus proposes an aesthetic approach of this problem, through the practical study of what we have chosen to call the "new figures of universal artists." It seems interesting to study these artists that refuse, even in an indirect way, an appreciation of their art based on an identity, or on a specific culture, approach. Their attitude as well as their creativity forces us to re-examine the validity of usual appreciation categories and of art evaluation. More than that, a number of them express on their artwork and on artistic creation even more pioneer ideas than any avant-garde theories. Ther...
In this work, we study how learning in a special environment such as a museum can influence the b... more In this work, we study how learning in a special environment such as a museum can influence the behavior of robots. More specifically, we show that online learning based on interaction with people at a museum leads the robots to develop individual preferences. We first developed a humanoid robot (Berenson) that has the ability to head toward its preferred object and to make a facial expression that corresponds to its attitude toward said object. The robot is programmed with a biologically-inspired neural network sensory-motor architecture. This architecture allows Berenson to learn and to evaluate objects. During experiments, museum visitors’ emotional responses to artworks were recorded and used to build a database for training. A similar database was created in the laboratory with laboratory objects. We use those databases to train two simulated populations of robots. Each simulated robot emulates the Berenson sensory-motor architecture. Firstly, the results show the good performa...
« We must consider not only beholder's symptoms and behavior, but also the effectiveness, efficac... more « We must consider not only beholder's symptoms and behavior, but also the effectiveness, efficacy and vitaitty of images themselves; not only what beholders do, but also what images appear to do; not only what people do as resuit of their relationship with imaged form, but also what they expect imagedforms to achieve, and why they have such expectations at ail » [David Freedberg]. Qu'il s'agisse d'images de facture traditionnelle ou de formes d'imagerie plus nouvelles ou plus singulières, une partie importante de la production visuelle est mise aujourd'hui au service de diverses formes d'identité collectives ou indivi¬ duelles dans le monde. L'objectif de ce numéro est de proposer, à partir d'études de cas menées en Afrique, en Asie et en Amérique du Sud, un ensemble de réflexions et d'analyses sur le rôle que jouent, à notre époque, diverses imageries pour illustrer ou propager des logiques identitaires qui peuvent concerner des per¬ sonnes aussi bien que des lieux ou des communautés. Un domaine de recherches longtemps négligé Si l'on excepte quelques rares recherches, généralement consacrées à des formes d'imagerie valorisées pour leur qualité artistique, c'est seulement depuis une date récente que l'on a commencé à s'intéresser sérieusement au rôle joué, ailleurs qu'en Occident, par les formes de représentation visuelle associées plus spécifiquement à la modernité (photographie, cinéma, images virtuelles, etc.) et au rôle que ces dernières peuvent jouer dans la définition des identités '. Ainsi, par exemple, l'étude de l'activité des photographes africainsqu'il faut distinguer soigneusement de l'histoire de la photographie en Afriqueconstitue Chercheur en anthropologie, IRD, Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (EHESS). 1 La raison de ce nouvel intérêt est due, entre autres facteurs, à une meilleure prise de conscience du rôle joué par l'imaginaireet l'imaginaire visuel, en particulierdans la définition des identités. L'ouvrage de référence dans cette perspective est celui de Benedict Anderson [19831 à propos de la construction de l'identité nationale en Indonésie; pour des développements plus récents dans cette perspective, voir, par exemple, Hjort, Mackenzie [2000].
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