DOCSLIB.ORG

Exposing New Guinea

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Exposing New Guinea Exposing New Guinea The early photographers, W. G. Lawes and J. W. Lindt Volume 1 Antje Carolin Lübcke A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University July 2016 © Copyright by Antje Carolin Lübcke 2016 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks must go to Chris Ballard, Bronwen Douglas, and Gael Newton who took me on as a PhD student and helped me to the finish line with this project – thank you, thank you, thank you. I also thank The Australian National University for financial assistance given in the form of travel grants to carry out extensive archival research in the UK and Europe in early 2013, and The Commonwealth Department of Education for the APA Scholarship that allowed me to come to Australia to undertake my PhD. One of the most heartening experiences of the past years has been meeting some of the superstar archivists, librarians, and curators in charge of the photographic records of our pasts. Their knowledge, passion, care, and dedication to preserving these valuable objects and ensuring they are accessible to the public deserve recognition. In particular, Rebecca Conway, Jude Philp, Kylie Moloney, Karina Taylor, Gael Newton, Alan Davies, Geoffrey Barker, Zara Krpata, and Jocelyn Dudding – thank you for sharing your knowledge and opening the doors to the collections in your care. For their interest in my project and the helpful and informative discussions about historical photographs and the representation of New Guinea, I am grateful to Max Quanchi, Jude Philp, Elena Govor, Joanna Sassoon, and Jane Lydon. You helped strengthen my resolve that the New Guinea photographs of W. G. Lawes and J. W. Lindt are worthy of a PhD thesis. And to my ANU CHL postgraduate colleagues, Coombs building officemates, and Braddon flatmates: you all made my PhD experience the best it could be. Thank you for the feedback on my writing, intense academic discussions (Andrew, Graeme, Nic, Latu, Siobhan, Dario), laughs, pints (Adam, Jack), and baking (Pyone). To Tiffany, Karen, Liz, Lorien, Karina, Siobhan, Kylie, Crit, Christopher, Meghan, and Kenton: nothing prepared me for this PhD Odyssey but you all got me through it. Your friendship and support (and keen proofreading eye, Kenton) means the world to me. Thank you (though ‘thank you’ doesn’t seem nearly enough)! Finally, to my parents, Hildegard and Ralf, my sisters, Eva and Lena, and my lovely Simon – your gentle encouragement and unfailing support will take me a lifetime to repay. May these bound pages be a start. for Karina ABSTRACT This thesis explores the early photographic representation of southeast New Guinea through a close examination of the lives and work of two of the first Europeans to fix the region and its inhabitants on glass plate negatives. It has been acknowledged that the London Missionary Society missionary William G. Lawes and the professional photographer John W. Lindt created images of New Guinea that have become iconic through their repeated reproduction in print media, their global dispersal, and replication by subsequent visitors-with-cameras to the region. However, the immediate circumstances of their photographs’ production have received little attention in the literature. Focussing on the nature of Lawes’s and Lindt’s photographic encounters, traces of which can be read from the images themselves as well as their writings, reveals the significance of the camera as well as the agency of Papuans in shaping the photographic record. The contemporary framings of their New Guinea images are also considered in order to understand fully the different trajectories for the promotion and influence of their photographs, which are now equally widely dispersed in archive collections around the world. In the chapters that follow I reconstitute the histories of Lawes’s and Lindt’s New Guinea photographs in order to better understand their production and circulation. The result of this investigation is a more nuanced visual history that encompasses the specific encounters, networks, technology, and texts that shaped the early photographic record of New Guinea. CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE Approaching W. G. Lawes and J. W. Lindt and the photographic representation of New Guinea 1 CHAPTER TWO New Guinea before the lens: European imaginings and images 30 CHAPTER THREE Bringing New Guinea into focus: W. G. Lawes and J. W. Lindt in New Guinea 69 CHAPTER FOUR Exposing New Guinea: W. G. Lawes’s and J. W. Lindt’s photographic encounters 114 CHAPTER FIVE Fixing New Guinea in the colonial imagination: J. W. Lindt’s ‘Picturesque New Guinea’ in Australia and Europe 150 CHAPTER SIX In print: Mission, anthropological, and other framings of W. G. Lawes’s New Guinea photographs 190 CHAPTER SEVEN Framing views: The legacy of W. G. Lawes and J. W. Lindt in the visualisation of New Guinea 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY 246 CHAPTER ONE Approaching W. G. Lawes and J. W. Lindt and the photographic representation of New Guinea In the late nineteenth century, New Guinea – and more specifically the southeast portion of present-day Papua New Guinea – took on a more distinct form in European imaginings through the relatively new technology of the camera (figs. 1.1 & 1.2). Though Europeans had engaged with this region of the world from the early sixteenth century, when Spanish voyagers first sighted the island’s coastlines, European footfalls were limited to its shorelines. The arrival of the London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary William George Lawes and his small family in Port Moresby in 1874 marked the beginning of more intense European-Papuan encounters, encounters that could now be captured on glass-plate negatives. It has been acknowledged that Lawes and the professional photographer John W. Lindt created photographs of New Guinea that have become iconic through their repeated reproduction in print media, their global dispersal, and replication by subsequent visitors-with-cameras to the region. However, the immediate circumstances and local contexts of the production of their photographs have received little attention in the literature. Taking my cue from the ‘material turn’ in the humanities, and the ‘visual turn’ that preceded it, in this thesis I examine the grounded encounters that shaped Lawes’s and Lindt’s pictures of New Guinea. Rather than select a few iconic images, the two men’s oeuvres are considered as a whole and alongside each other, a method that allows for more searching questions to be asked regarding the two men’s encounters with the people and the land. Focussing on the nature of Lawes’s and Lindt’s photographic encounters, traces of which can be read from the images themselves as well as their writings, also reveals the roles that local Papuans played in shaping that photographic record. What further crystallises from a close examination of the visual and textual documents produced by Lawes and Lindt is the different motivations the two men had for photographing New Guinea. Lawes, the pioneer missionary in Port Moresby, 1 was clearly driven in part by a desire to document the progress of his work amongst the ‘heathen’ population. As the first permanent European ‘settler’ in the region he also believed he could aid the work of anthropologists in the metropolitan centres by photographing the Papuans in his mission district, contributing to the steadily growing corpus of ‘portrait types’ that became a staple of anthropological studies by the late nineteenth century. Lindt, on the other hand, was driven to travel to New Guinea in 1885 as much by his curiosity about the island and its inhabitants as by his keen business sense and artistic aspirations. Lindt wanted to encounter and capture ‘savage’ Papuans and photograph the newest of Britain’s colonial ‘possessions’ in order to increase sales of his images at a time when photographic studios in Australia were beginning to struggle as a result of a financial crisis as well as the increased accessibility of photography to amateurs. Lindt’s images are certainly more accomplished than those of Lawes and he was more adept at advertising his work than the missionary. Despite these differences, both men’s photographs of New Guinea can be found in collections the world over. My archive story This thesis originated during a six-day topic-finding trip to Sydney in August 2011.1 Though I had begun my PhD in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University in March of the same year, my original thesis topic, which centred on the visual production of the Hamburg South Seas Expedition (1908–10), had fallen through as a result of the rather tight gate-keeping of the photographic collections of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology that I needed to access to undertake my project. Having been thrown off-course, it was decided, in consultation with my supervisors, to turn to more accessible archives. I had yet to immerse myself in visual sources (as I had been planning to travel to Germany for 1 Though I have always been a self-reflexive researcher throughout my studies, I am here explicitly heeding Antoinette Burton’s, and other scholars’, call to tell my ‘archive story’ (Antoinette Burton (ed.), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005). On the ‘archival turn’ see also, Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘Annals of the Archive: Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History’, in From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures, ed. Brian Keith Axel, 47–65 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002); Patrice Ladwig, et al., ‘Fieldwork Between the Folders: Fragments, Traces, and the Ruins of Colonial Archives’, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Working Papers, Working Paper No. 141 (Halle/Saale, 2012): 1–23; Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009)).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 Aesthetic Judgment and the Transcultural Apprehension Of
    Social Aesthetics and Moral Judgment: Pleasure, Reflection and Accountability, ed. Jennifer McMahon, London and New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 161-179. Aesthetic Judgment and the Transcultural Apprehension of Material Things Ivan Gaskell Abstract: This paper is an attempt to examine aspects of the consequences of the transfer of individual culturally charged material items (principally artefacts) between societies that have different cultural values. This is an especially urgent matter, epistemologically, aesthetically, and ethically, when the societies concerned are likely to develop or are already in an unequal power relationship. One pressing set of circumstances in which individual material items changed hands was the expansion of European (in the extended sense) interests in the sixteenth through twentieth centuries. Many of the things acquired by Europeans entered collections initially or eventually devoted to the emerging field of ethnography. In this paper I claim that when an object moves from one society to another, one or more of three attitudes is in play, each of which involves aesthetic judgment: (1) supersession: the new users employ and interpret it solely on their own terms without regard to the uses and interpretations of its earlier users, either oblivious to those earlier uses, or purposefully to expunge them; (2) assumption: the new users discern familiar characteristics that they value, including aesthetic characteristics, and that they assume earlier users also discerned and valued; (3) translation: the new users attempt to learn the terms of use, interpretation and value of the earlier users by means of cultural acquisition and translation, acknowledging that these may differ from their own wholly or in part, but in the belief that their acquisition will bring them advantages.
    [Show full text]
  • Notes and References
    NOTES AND REFERENCES PREFACE 1 In the period of history covered by the present work, the words most commonly used to describe the type of society studied by anthropologists were "primitive" and "savage". Since however, neither of these words can be used without strongly pejorative overtones, I have done my best to avoid them, substituting instead more emotionally neutral words like "aboriginal", "indigenous" and "preliterate". None of these words is perfectly suited to the job at hand and the result may sometimes come out sounding rather oddly. Nonetheless, I would rather be guilty of minor offences of usage than of encouraging Eurocentric prejudice. 2 Peter Lawrence, "The Ethnographic Revolution", Oceanill45, 253-271 (1975). 3 A recent work which makes a start in this direction is Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines, Gerard Lemaine, Roy MacLeod, Michael Mulkay and Peter Weingart (eds.), (The Hague and Chicago, 1977). From our point of view the most inter­ esting contribution is Michael Worboy's study of British tropical medicine, a discipline which, largely because of its relationship to British imperialism, exhibited a maturation process which bore many similarities to that of British Social Anthropology. 4 Jairus Banaji, ''The Crisis of British Social Anthropology", New Left Review 64, 75 (Nov.-Dec. 1970). 5 E. E. Evans-Pritchard's famous 1940 ethnography on The Nuer, for example, often regarded as the ultimate achievement of British Social Anthropology, presents the Nuer as a self-contained, static and harmoniously-operating group. However, it is evident from a number of things which Evans-Pritchard mentions in passing that, in fact, the Nuer interact so substantially with the neighbouring Dinka people that, instead of reifying "the Nuer" as a self-contained social entity, it may well have been more sensible to write a book about the Nuer-Dinka complex.
    [Show full text]
  • Victorian Heritage Database Place Details - 28/9/2021 the HERMITAGE
    Victorian Heritage Database place details - 28/9/2021 THE HERMITAGE Location: 161 MAROONDAH HIGHWAY NARBETHONG, Murrindindi Shire 1 Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) Number: H0303 Listing Authority: VHR Extent of Registration: Shire of Healesville. No.303. The Hermitage, Maroondah Highway, Narbethong. [Victoria Government Gazette No 100 Wednesday, October 9 1974 p.3649] Statement of Significance: The Hermitage, Narbethong, is a complex of buildings which was erected in 1894 as a residence, studio and guest house on a thirty-two hectare site on the summit of Black Spur, for internationally renowned anthropological and social photographer, John William Lindt. Born in Germany, Lindt ran away to sea and arrived in Melbourne in 1862. From here he travelled and settled in Grafton, where he remained until 1876, first working for a photographer, before taking over this business, and then opening his own photographic studio. Lindt subsequently moved to Melbourne, which was a rich and rapidly developing city on his arrival in 1876, and opened a photographic studio in Collins Street, Melbourne. He immediately gained recognition amongst the prosperous members of society and gained a reputation for society, landscape and cityscape photography. He was an official photographer for an expedition of Sir Peter Scratchley to New Guinea in 1885 and for the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1888, and won medals internationally for his work. Lindt travelled extensively abroad and locally, and familiarised himself intimately with such picturesque areas of Victoria as the mountainous forests between Healesville and Marysville. Closing his studio in 1894 after losing his clientele in the financial crisis, it was to this area that Lindt moved and developed his estate, the Hermitage, where he remained until his death in 1926 at the age of 81 years.
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenous Archives
    INDIGENOUS ARCHIVES 3108 Indigenous Archives.indd 1 14/10/2016 3:37 PM 15 ANACHRONIC ARCHIVE: TURNING THE TIME OF THE IMAGE IN THE ABORIGINAL AVANT-GARDE Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll Figure 15.1: Daniel Boyd, Untitled TI3, 2015, 56th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, All the World’s Futures. Photo by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy: la Biennale di Venezia. Daniel Boyd’s Untitled T13 (2015) is not an Aboriginal acrylic dot painting but dots of archival glue placed to match the pixel-like 3108 Indigenous Archives.indd 342 14/10/2016 3:38 PM Anachronic Archive form of a reproduction from a colonial photographic archive. Archival glue is a hard, wax-like material that forms into lumps – the artist compares them to lenses – rather than the smooth two- dimensional dot of acrylic paint. As material evidence of racist photography, Boyd’s paintings in glue at the 2015 Venice Biennale exhibition physicalised the leitmotiv of archives. In Boyd’s Untitled T13 the representation of the Marshall Islands’ navigational charts is an analogy to the visual wayfinding of archival photographs. While not associated with a concrete institution, Boyd’s fake anachronic archive refers to institutional- ised racism – thus fitting the Biennale curator Okwui Enwezor’s curatorial interest in archival and documentary photography, which he argues was invented in apartheid South Africa.1 In the exhibition he curated in 2008, Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, Enwezor diagnosed an ‘archival fever’ that had afflicted the art of modernity since the invention of photography. The invention, he believed, had precipitated a seismic shift in how art and temporality were conceived, and that we still live in its wake.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Classification' of the Late Eighteenth Century Pacific
    Empirical Power, Imperial Science: Science, Empire, and the ‘Classification’ of the Late Eighteenth Century Pacific A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in History University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon By Justin Wyatt Voogel Ó Copyright Justin Wyatt Voogel, September 2017 All Rights Reserved Permission to Use In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis/dissertation in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other uses of materials in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of History Arts and Science Admin Commons Room 522, Arts Building University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A5 Canada i Abstract The Pacific of the mid eighteenth century was far removed from what it would become by the first decade of the nineteenth.
    [Show full text]
  • Lavin Poster (NHRE 2011)
    Exploring the Relations and Collections of A.C. Haddon at the Smithsonian Institution Luke Lavin, Amherst College, Amherst, MA Joshua A. Bell, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC What do the National Museum of Natural Histories’ collections from A.C. Haddon’s General Makeup of the Alfred C. Localities of Torres Strait Collections Analysis and Findings: The dugong charm, tobacco pipe, and first voyage (1888-9) to the Torres Strait tell us about Haddon and local Torres Strait related photos show how objects in the Smithsonian collection can be used to aid in communities’ trade relationships and agencies? 4% Haddon Collections at the Western Islands- Badu, Moa, retracing Haddon’s interaction with locals (e.g., Waria and Gabia) and Europeans 9% Mabuiag, Muralug, Giralag, Kiriri, (e.g., Milman and Beardmore) stationed in the area. The histories of these objects, Smithsonian Ngurapai, Waiben, Maurura: 19 Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940) went to the Torres Strait Islands in 1888 to examine marine items and their movements, give us a glimpse into the trade relationships between the Background: Northern Islands- Boigu, Buru, biology and reef systems. Transformed by the experience, Haddon returned in 1898 as head of the Cambridge 7% Dauan, Saibai, Daru, Bobo, Parama: seafaring Islanders, New Guineans, and Cape York Aboriginal communities in 4 items Anthropological Expedition, which revolutionized anthropological field methodologies and helped establish British 1% addition to the customs Haddon sought to “salvage” through his work. The objects Eastern Islands- Mer, Dauar, Waier, Social Anthropology (Herle & Rouse 1998). 42% Erub, Ugar: 13 items themselves speak to the transforming material realities of the region, and the ways in which islanders incorporated external materials in their shifting practices (Fig.
    [Show full text]
  • Captain Bligh's Second Voyage to the South Sea
    Captain Bligh's Second Voyage to the South Sea By Ida Lee Captain Bligh's Second Voyage To The South Sea CHAPTER I. THE SHIPS LEAVE ENGLAND. On Wednesday, August 3rd, 1791, Captain Bligh left England for the second time in search of the breadfruit. The "Providence" and the "Assistant" sailed from Spithead in fine weather, the wind being fair and the sea calm. As they passed down the Channel the Portland Lights were visible on the 4th, and on the following day the land about the Start. Here an English frigate standing after them proved to be H.M.S. "Winchelsea" bound for Plymouth, and those on board the "Providence" and "Assistant" sent off their last shore letters by the King's ship. A strange sail was sighted on the 9th which soon afterwards hoisted Dutch colours, and on the loth a Swedish brig passed them on her way from Alicante to Gothenburg. Black clouds hung above the horizon throughout the next day threatening a storm which burst over the ships on the 12th, with thunder and very vivid lightning. When it had abated a spell of fine weather set in and good progress was made by both vessels. Another ship was seen on the 15th, and after the "Providence" had fired a gun to bring her to, was found to be a Portuguese schooner making for Cork. On this day "to encourage the people to be alert in executing their duty and to keep them in good health," Captain Bligh ordered them "to keep three watches, but the master himself to keep none so as to be ready for all calls".
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenous Women's Preferences for Climate Change Adaptation And
    Indigenous women’s preferences for climate change adaptation and aquaculture development to build capacity in the Northern Territory Final Report Lisa Petheram, Ann Fleming, Natasha Stacey, and Anne Perry Indigenous women’s preferences for climate change adaptation and aquaculture development to build capacity in the Northern Territory Charles Darwin University Northern Territory Government Australian National University LISA PETHERAM, ANN FLEMING, NATASHA STACEY AND ANNE PERRY Published by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility ISBN: 978-1-925039-55-9 NCCARF Publication 84/13 © 2013 Charles Darwin University This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the copyright holder. Please cite this report as: Petheram, L, Fleming, A, Stacey, N and Perry, A 2013 Indigenous women’s preferences for climate change adaptation and aquaculture development to build capacity in the Northern Territory, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, pp. 44. Acknowledgement This work was carried out with financial support from the Australian Government (Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of the Commonwealth or NCCARF, and neither the Commonwealth nor NCCARF accept responsibility for information or advice contained herein. The role of NCCARF is to lead the research community in a national interdisciplinary effort to generate the information needed by decision-makers in government, business and in vulnerable sectors and communities to manage the risk of climate change impacts. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Warruwi community for their participation and support in this project.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ethnographic Experiment in Island Melanesia ♦L♦
    Introduction The Ethnographic Experiment in Island Melanesia ♦l♦ Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg Anthropology in the Making: To the Solomon Islands, 1908 In 1908, three British scholars travelled, each in his own way, to the south-western Pacific in order to embark on pioneering anthropological fieldwork in the Solomon Islands. They were William Halse Rivers Rivers, Arthur Maurice Hocart and Gerald Camden Wheeler. Rivers (1864–1922), a physician, psychologist and self-taught anthropologist, was already a veteran fieldworker, having been a member of the Cambridge Torres Strait Expedition for seven months in 1898 (Herle and Rouse 1998), after which he had also carried out five months of fieldwork among the tribal Toda people of South India in 1901–2 (see Rivers 1906). The Torres Strait Expedition was a large-scale, multi-disciplinary effort with major funding, and had helped change a largely embryonic, descrip- tive anthropology into a modern discipline – reflective of the non-anthro- pological training of expedition leader Alfred Cort Haddon and his team, among whom Rivers and C.G. Seligman were to develop anthropological careers. During the expedition, Rivers not only engaged in a wide range of observations based on his existing training in psychology and physiology, but also increasingly collected materials on the social organisation of the Torres Strait peoples, work that ultimately resulted in him devising the ‘genealogical method’ for use by the growing discipline of anthropology, with which he increasingly identified. 2 Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg ♦ The 1908 fieldwork in Island Melanesia which is the focus of this book was on a much smaller scale than the Torres Strait Expedition, but it had 1 a more sharply defined anthropological agenda.
    [Show full text]
  • Memoirs of Hydrography
    MEMOIRS 07 HYDROGRAPHY INCLUDING Brief Biographies of the Principal Officers who have Served in H.M. NAVAL SURVEYING SERVICE BETWEEN THE YEARS 1750 and 1885 COMPILED BY COMMANDER L. S. DAWSON, R.N. I 1s t tw o PARTS. P a r t II.—1830 t o 1885. EASTBOURNE: HENRY W. KEAY, THE “ IMPERIAL LIBRARY.” iI i / PREF A CE. N the compilation of Part II. of the Memoirs of Hydrography, the endeavour has been to give the services of the many excellent surveying I officers of the late Indian Navy, equal prominence with those of the Royal Navy. Except in the geographical abridgment, under the heading of “ Progress of Martne Surveys” attached to the Memoirs of the various Hydrographers, the personal services of officers still on the Active List, and employed in the surveying service of the Royal Navy, have not been alluded to ; thereby the lines of official etiquette will not have been over-stepped. L. S. D. January , 1885. CONTENTS OF PART II ♦ CHAPTER I. Beaufort, Progress 1829 to 1854, Fitzroy, Belcher, Graves, Raper, Blackwood, Barrai, Arlett, Frazer, Owen Stanley, J. L. Stokes, Sulivan, Berard, Collinson, Lloyd, Otter, Kellett, La Place, Schubert, Haines,' Nolloth, Brock, Spratt, C. G. Robinson, Sheringham, Williams, Becher, Bate, Church, Powell, E. J. Bedford, Elwon, Ethersey, Carless, G. A. Bedford, James Wood, Wolfe, Balleny, Wilkes, W. Allen, Maury, Miles, Mooney, R. B. Beechey, P. Shortland, Yule, Lord, Burdwood, Dayman, Drury, Barrow, Christopher, John Wood, Harding, Kortright, Johnson, Du Petit Thouars, Lawrance, Klint, W. Smyth, Dunsterville, Cox, F. W. L. Thomas, Biddlecombe, Gordon, Bird Allen, Curtis, Edye, F.
    [Show full text]
  • Archipelago Construct:The Matter of Polynesia
    ARCHIPELAGO CONSTRUCT 429 Archipelago Construct:The Matter of Polynesia INGALILL WAHLROOS-RITTER Woodbury University “… we are beginning to recover a certain philosophi- This paper describes a proposal for a course that cal respect for the inherent morphogenetic potential interrogates a particular non-western culture and of all materials. And we may now be in a posi- mines it through its matter in order to enrich the tion to think about the origin of form and structure, not as something imposed from the outside on an current architectural academic and professional inert matter, not as a hierarchical command from discourse by bringing place to the fore. Specifi- above as in an assembly line, but as something that cally, this studio seeks to investigate the matter of may come from within the materials, a form that Polynesia in order to initiate and develop a lexicon we tease out of those materials as we allow them to that will lead to the design of a virtual museum have their say in the structures we create.” Manuel De Landa, Uniformity and Variability: An and reconsider the conventional (Western) idea of Essay in the Philosophy of Matter. the building enclosure. The studio methodology – a paranoid investigation into the substance from In his essay Hyper-locality: On the Archaeology which architecture is made – is intended to act al- of the Here and Now In the Architecture of R&Sie, chemically to dissolve the boundaries of ‘otherness’. Andreas Ruby identifies the history of Modernism as a progressive dissolution of place. The dogma THE STUDIO of Modernism, he states, developed an architecture “emancipated from the circumstances of its Archipelago Construct is a proposal for a transdis- concrete physical surroundings.” Postmodernism, ciplinary studio undertaking the design for a mu- Ruby continues, refers to an idealized past, and seum of the Society Islands in Polynesia.
    [Show full text]
  • Style and Meaning Anthropology’S Engagement with Art Has a Complex and Uneven History
    NICHOLAS THOMAS THOMAS NICHOLAS & CLARK ALISON style and meaning Anthropology’s engagement with art has a complex and uneven history. While style and material culture, ‘decorative art’, and art styles were of major significance for ( founding figures such as Alfred Haddon and Franz Boas, art became marginal as the EDS meaning discipline turned towards social analysis in the 1920s. This book addresses a major ) moment of renewal in the anthropology of art in the 1960s and 1970s. British Essays on the anthropologist Anthony Forge (1929-1991), trained in Cambridge, undertook fieldwork among the Abelam of Papua New Guinea in the late 1950s and 1960s, anthropology of art and wrote influentially, especially about issues of style and meaning in art. His powerful, question-raising arguments addressed basic issues, asking why so much art was produced in some regions, and why was it so socially important? style ANTHONY FORGE meaning Fifty years later, art has renewed global significance, and anthropologists are again considering both its local expressions among Indigenous peoples and its new global circulation. In this context, Forge’s arguments have renewed relevance: they help and edited by scholars and students understand the genealogies of current debates, and remind us of fundamental questions that remain unanswered. ALISON CLARK & NICHOLAS THOMAS This volume brings together Forge’s most important writings on the anthropology anthropology of art Essays on the of art, published over a thirty year period, together with six assessments of his legacy, including extended reappraisals of Sepik ethnography, by distinguished anthropologists from Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom Anthony Forge was born in London in 1929.
    [Show full text]