<div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Margaret Rhee</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:mrheeloy@gmail.com">mrheeloy@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 3:46 PM<br>Subject: Queer Ethnography, Methods, and Play<br>To: soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br></div><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:garamond,serif;font-size:small"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><font color="#1d2129"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Many thanks again to Maria, Lynne, Truong, and Kenji for this discussion on Poetry and Play, I hope the conversation continues into this week's continuation into play through the lens of queer and trans theory, methods, and ethnography. </span></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><font color="#1d2129"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap">For this week and the month's discussion, we're</span></font><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"> interested in artists, thinkers, and activists with practices that cross over boundaries and intervene in dichotomous logics. With attention to justice, we explore how multiple forms of art practices prompt us to reimagine different kind of worlds, as strategy and survival. We're honored and grateful to our participants this week Chase Joynt, Erica Rand, Jerry Zee, and Kale B. Fajardo for engaging in this topic. </span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap">Through interventions in queer and trans film, archival research, performance and writing in Chase's work that intervenes in the historical archive, to embodied</span> forms of ethnographic and auto-ethnographic queer writing and athletics in Rand's interventions in skating, Kale's research and visual ethnographic interests in environmental humanities with photography and writing with the ocean, and the crossing social scientific methods and borders through questions of the environment and Asia in Jerry's scholarship and thinking. </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif">Our participants provide vital interventions in their work. I invite them to share further, and if and how play impacts their approaches and creative practices? </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><b>On Practice and Play: Gestures Across Genres </b></font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif">In this month's -empyre- forum, we take up the question of productivity and and the politics of play, and how playing across genres, mediums, forms, disciplines, and departments, etc. makes for new kinds of innovative art, thinking, and community; and in doing so, better intervenes and gestures toward transformative futures. The current conspiracy-us versus them- culture perhaps exemplifies the problem of singular thinking and the need for creative, eclectic, and innovative practices more than ever. We’re interested in artists, thinkers, and activists with practices that cross over boundaries and intervene in dichotomous logics. With attention to justice, we explore how multiple forms of art practices prompt us to reimagine different kind of worlds, as strategy and survival. Initially inspired by Tony Conrad's work, his practice spans across film, music, writing, and sculptures, we playfully ask how play lends itself to more libratory ways of creation and practice. </font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif">We begin with the first week on media and new media art in conversation. with Tony Conrad's playful work across mediums, we then move into a second week asking questions on poetry and playing across the visual, cinematic, and theoretical, the third week is dedicated to the theme of ethnography across forms such as photography, film, and poetry, the forth week focuses on the ways artists advocate for decolonial and racial resistance through playing across genres and forms. While seemingly diverse, we hope the loosely organized topics will lend itself to connections between the weeks, and across the genres and themes presented. With attention to questions such as capital, creativity, institutional critique, and justice, we’re honored to have the following artists and thinkers join us for this conversation and reflect on the possibilities of practice, gestures, and play.</font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div></div><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><div style="direction:ltr"><font face="times new roman, serif">We also invite our -empyre- subscribers, whose own work broadly resonates with the themes of practice and play, to join the conversation. What are the ways your practice has played or plays across genres? Have you faced institutional challenges in crossing disciplinary divides, and if so, how did you overcome them? Is play and practice productive? We explore this topic of play through four loose themes. We welcome our guests and all -empyre- subscribers to actively participate and post this month and share your practices and experiences of playing across genres and any questions that arise. We look forward to the conversation. </font></div></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><b><br></b></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><b>Queer Ethnography, Methods, and Play </b><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><b><br></b></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><b>Biographies </b></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><b>Chase Joynt</b></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font color="#1d2129" face="times new roman, serif"><span style="white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><div class="gmail_default"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif">Chase Joynt is a moving-image artist and writer whose films have won jury and audience awards internationally. His latest short film, <em>Framing Agnes</em>, premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, won the Audience Award at Outfest in Los Angeles, and is being developed into a feature film with support from Telefilm Canada’s Talent to Watch program. Concurrently, Chase is in production on a feature-length hybrid documentary about jazz musician Billy Tipton, co-directed with Aisling Chin-Yee. Joynt’s first book <em>You Only Live Twice</em> (co-authored with Mike Hoolboom) was a 2017 Lambda Literary Award Finalist and named one of the best books of the year by <em>The Globe and Mail </em>and CBC. His second book, <em>Conceptualizing Agnes</em> (co-authored with Kristen Schilt), is under contract with Duke University Press. </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif">With projects supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Chase’s work is distributed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and VTape. </font></div></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="times new roman, serif"><b>Erica Rand </b></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(29,33,41);white-space:pre-wrap"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span id="m_2950761747781090230gmail-m_9100447790798047735gmail-docs-internal-guid-70bfb7ae-7fff-3063-3c4d-f5a25b97d6e2" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.2;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Erica Rand is a professor of Art and Visual Culture and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates College. Her writing includes </span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Barbie’s Queer Accessories</span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> (1995), a study of the doll’s history and manufacture in relation to corporate and consumer meaning-making; </span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The Ellis Island Snow Globe</span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> (2005), a queer, anti-racist alternative tour of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty; and </span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Red Nails Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice</span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> (2012), a collection of short essays grounded in participant-observation research in adult figure skating. She serves on the editorial board of </span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Radical Teacher</span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> and is currently working on </span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-style:italic;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The Small Book of Hip Checks on Queer Gender, Race, and Writing, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">in which autoethographic fragments bump up against other engagements, working to make muscle memory of experimentation against traditional ideas of heft and fluff.</span></p></span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><b>Jerry Zee </b></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(43,43,43)">I am an anthropologist of environment and politics. I explore embroilments of land and air as openings into political experiment. My research tracks the substantial dynamics of sand, dust, and wind as a way of gaining insight to contemporary environmental politics in China and downwind.</span><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(43,43,43)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(43,43,43)">I work, in my research, with scientists, engineers, foresters, farmers, artists, and breathers of all kinds. Overall, I wonder over how an avowedly post-natural contemporary meteorology displaces analytic habits and ways of asking inherited from a more confident social science, and, through this, I ask what anthropology has already been becoming in this strange weather.</span></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><b>Kale Fajardo </b></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="times new roman, serif"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51)">I'm an Associate Professor of American Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. (Pronouns: He/Him/His.) I received my PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In graduate school, I focused on visual anthropology, postcolonial studies, gender/sexuality studies, and Asian American Studies. I have a Bachelors of Science degree in Human Development Studies from Cornell University, with concentrations in Southeast Asian Studies and feminist studies. I'm currently working on my second book entitled, _Fish Stories: Photos/Essays from St. Malo to Manila Bay_. In this transnational research project, I engage with the “environmental humanities” and I'm also returning to my past training and passions in visual anthropology. In _Fish Stories_, I photograph, write about and theorize the intimacies and interconnections between “Filipinx, fish, and marine ecologies” (historical and contemporary), while also engaging with anthropological debates about the “border zones between art and anthropology practices” (Schneider and Wright, 2010). My methodological (re-)orientation (that is, moving towards art/photography-as-anthropology) is also informed by Tim Ingold’s notion that “artists and anthropologists come to know…through an art of inquiry that emphasizes thinking through making” (2013) and Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov’s concept of "ethnographic conceptualism," which he defines as “ethnography conducted as conceptual art.” _Fish Stories_ is also a homage to Allan Sekula and his book Fish Story (1995). In _Fish Stories_, I include original photographs and written essays on “siyokoys” (mermen) in Philippine visual media and folklore to theorize human-fish-sea intimacies and queer/trans masculinities. I also analyze and engage with ethno-historical images and photos of "Manila-Men” sailors and fishermen and their descendants in the bayous and coastal areas of Louisiana. These fishing grounds are adjacent to the contemporary “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico (which cannot sustain marine life.) I also analyze and engage with old snapshot photographs of Filipino migrant workers who worked in salmon canneries in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Currently, these are sites where salmon populations have significantly decreased. Lastly, in _Fish Stories_, I return to the Philippines to photograph and write about contemporary fisherfolk in coastal Bulacan Province and the broader Manila Bay Area. Fisherfolk in Manila Bay are stressed by global warming, rising seas, depleted fisheries, urbanization and mega-regionalization, and marine pollution. On campus, I'm active in Asian Studies + Environmental Humanities (ASEH) programming at the Environmental Humanities Initiative.</span></font></div></div></div><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Margaret Rhee, Ph.D. </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">College Fellow in Digital Practice (2018 - 2019) </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Department of English </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Harvard University </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Assistant Professor in Media Theory (2019) </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Department of Media Study </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">SUNY Buffalo </font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
</div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Margaret Rhee, Ph.D. </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">College Fellow in Digital Practice (2018 - 2019) </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Department of English </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Harvard University </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif"><br></font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Assistant Professor in Media Theory (2019) </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">Department of Media Study </font></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px"><font face="garamond, serif">SUNY Buffalo </font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>