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P025


Agile Objects: The Art and Anthropology of Re-materialization 
Convenors:
Emilie Le Febvre (Interactive Ethnography and Arts Institute)
Ros Holmes (University of Oxford)
Chair:
Clare Harris (University of Oxford)
Format :
Panels
Sessions:
Saturday 2 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

This panel examines the practices by which artists and media-makers from non-Western contexts are progressively re-materializing digital content in order to increase the exclusivity, cultural capital, and visibility of their aesthetic and cultural creations.

Long Abstract:

At a time in which our experience of cultural artefacts is often physically removed by digitization, this panel seeks papers that consider the practices, politics, and affects of re-materializing artworks from diverse geographical perspectives. The process of de- to re-materialization has been referred to by David Joselit as a 'comedy of matter'; a situation in which the most ''immaterial'' of formats—digital information—has paradoxically led to a proliferation of material states. This metastasizing of media formats can in effect render a quantum of data into a printed photograph, a 3-D print or an analogue sculpture, facilitating a variety of practices from bootlegging and creative appropriation to the return of cultural heritage. These processes of re-materialization have subsequently led to the formation of 'agile objects': cultural artefacts whose value may have originally resided in their authentic forms but today are revered for their capacity as digital files to take on several distinct forms simultaneously.

While these practices among artists, media-makers and museums have been the focus of increasing scholarly attention, their theorization and prevalence beyond Western contexts remains largely unexplored. Redressing this imbalance, we premise that art historical and anthropological examinations of re-materialization can provide unique perspectives about the politics of cultural capital from the Near East to East Asia, Australia to Latin America. This multi-disciplinary panel therefore invites papers that consider the transposition of digital content into objects of material, commercial and collectable value, exploring the capacity of these 'agile objects' to shape artistic and museum practices.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Saturday 2 June, 2018, -