Anthropology and Beauty

Organised around the theme of beauty, this innovative collection offers insight into the development of anthropological thinking on art, aesthetics and creativity in recent years. The volume incorporates current work on perception and generative processes, and seeks to move beyond a purely aesthetic and relativist stance. The chapters invite readers to consider how people sense and seek out beauty, whether through acts of human creativity and production; through sensory experience of sound, light or touch, or experiencing architecture; visiting heritage sites or ancient buildings; experiencing the environment through ‘places of outstanding natural beauty’; or through cooperative action, machine-engineering or designing for the future.

Stephanie Bunn is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK.

Anthropology and Beauty From Aesthetics to Creativity

Edited by Stephanie Bunn First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Stephanie Bunn; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Stephanie Bunn to be identiﬁ ed as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁ cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-92879-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-68156-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents

List of illustrations ix Notes on contributors xiii Acknowledgements xviii

1 Anthropology and beauty: introduction 1 STEPHANIE BUNN

PART I Beauty and pattern 21

2 The problem with beauty: an anthropological perspective 23 SUSANNE KÜCHLER

3 The material labour of artful mathematics 36 ELIZABETH DE FREITAS

PART II Beauty as grace 51

4 With beauty all around me, I walk 53 JILL D’ALESSANDRO

5 The unexpected gift of beauty 67 MARC HIGGIN

6 Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell’s anthropological theory of art 82 ERIC HIRSCH vi Contents 7 The continual changes: transforming art styles in Enlightenment Scotland and beyond 98 PETER GOW

PART III Perceiving beauty 113

8 Grace in moving and joy in sharing: the intrinsic Beauty of communicative musicality from birth 115 COLWYN TREVARTHEN AND STEPHEN MALLOCH

9 The Favourite Sounds Project 131 PETER CUSACK

10 Colour palettes and beauty 148 DIANA. J. B. YOUNG

11 Aso iyi, aso eye: resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile aso-oke 166 ENI BANKOLE-RACE

PART IV Beauty and skill 187

12 Beauty as a capacity: a study of hands-in-craft 189 ANNA GUSTAFSSON

13 Cinematographers’ skilled vision and aesthetic praxis 204 CATHY GREENHALGH

14 Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 217 CRISTINA GRASSENI

PART V Beauty, the body and performance 231

15 Fleshly beauty: an anthropological perspective 233 ALEXANDER EDMONDS Contents vii 16 Beauty in motion: collective creativity in contemporary dance 248 CAROLINE M. POTTER

17 Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 262 MELISSA TRIMINGHAM

PART VI Beauty in space and time 277

18 Threshold and temporality in architecture: practices of movement in Japanese architecture 279 RAY LUCAS

19 Carbuncles, surfaces and beautiful built environments 292 RACHEL J. HARKNESS

20 Paradigms of transmission: aesthetic afﬁ nities and intertextualities in the art of Will Maclean 306 LINDSAY BLAIR

21 Beauty and belonging 324 CARA KRMPOTICH

PART VII Beauty, work and design 339

22 Beauty and economy 341 STEPHEN GUDEMAN

23 Mysterious equations: formulating good design for Textiles U.S.A. 353 T’AI SMITH

24 Engineering as a process of beauty 371 IAN J. EWART

25 Collaborative forms 385 WENDY GUNN viii Contents PART VIII Beauty as synthesis 401

26 Appropriation, imitation and creation: glass beadwork among Panará people 403 ELIZABETH EWART

27 The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu: kinship and continuity on Paama Island 418 CRAIG LIND

28 The beautiful and the blessed: brightness, balance and bones in Kyrgyz shyrdak felt 434 STEPHANIE BUNN

29 From the North with my cello, or, ﬁ ve propositions on beauty 449 TIM INGOLD

Index 465 Illustrations

3.1 Douady mating rabbits 43 3.2 Rössler attractor 44 4.1 Wearing blanket (fi rst-phase chief blanket, Ute style), ca. 1840 55 4.2 Serape , ca. 1850 59 4.3 Serape , ca. 1860 61 5.1 The vandalised recycling bins outside the housing estate in South London the night they were found by White 69 5.2 Counsel , 2005; vandalised recycling bins in the New Contemporaries exhibition at Liverpool Biennial 2006 75 6.1 Assembling fade 9 1 6.2 Arranging the sacrifi ced pigs in a line 92 6.3 Lines of money displayed before being transacted 93 8.1 Spectrograph and pitch-plot of Laura, a 6-week-old girl, and her mother making melody together 118 8.2 Laura in dialogue with her mother 120 8.3 Nasira exchanges short ‘coo’ sounds with her father 121 8.4 Sharing a traditional nursery rhyme story with a 4-month-old baby 122 9.1 Favouritesounds.org sound map, Handsworth, Birmingham 138 9.2 London favourite sounds word cloud, 2002–3 139 9.3 London favourite sounds word cloud, 2013–15 140 9.4 Southend-on-Sea favourite sounds word cloud, 2010 141 9.5 Manchester favourite sounds word cloud, 2006–9 143 9.6 Berlin favourite sounds word cloud, 2012–13 145 11.1 Obatala ceremonies 169 11.2 Vintage Sanyan 170 11.3 Vintage and modern Alaari 171 11.4 A man of prestige 175 11.5 Aso asiko – modern Sanyan 181 12.1 Production of a child’s baptismal-gáppte by its grandmother 192 12.2 Hands at work, låhtåt the vuoddaga 197 12.3 Hands at work, untangling the warp for weaving the avve 197 x Illustrations 16.1 High-energy opening duet from Pave Up Paradise , performed in 2011 by Phoenix Dance Theatre 256 16.2 Tender closing duet from Pave Up Paradise , performed in 2011 by Phoenix Dance Theatre 257 17.1 Chloe’s ‘picnic on the moon’ 269 18.1 A range of paving stones from the strolling path highlighting a shift of ground conditions which has an impact upon the body of the visitor 282 18.2 The Shokatei pavilion, lifted off the ground and with incremental thresholds described by the various fl oor treatments 283 18.3 One of the thresholds of the Old Shoin with a transition from smooth and untreated materials towards the carefully planed and orderly modularity of the building 283 20.1 A Catechism of the Laws of Storms: Vision of the Hydromancer , 2014 309 20.2 Nomad Trace , 2001 313 20.3 Method Net , 1978 317 21.1 Wool dance apron made from a ship captain’s coat and decorated with weaving and puffi n mandible fringe 327 21.2 Button blanket belonging to an unnamed female chief, who was the third chief in her clan 328 21.3 Carved wooden fi gure of a dog sled with thread and wool or felted fabric and metal tacks, 1979 334 23.1 Installation view of the exhibition Textiles U.S.A. ; August 29, 1956 through November 4, 1956; the Museum of Modern Art, New York 356 23.2 Page spread from American Fabrics 38: Special Issue: Textiles U.S.A. (Fall 1956), 58–59 361 23.3 Installation view of the exhibition Textiles U.S.A. ; August 29, 1956 through November 4, 1956; the Museum of Modern Art, New York 365 24.1 6023 in the workshop during renovation 379 24.2 Part of the 6023 lubrication system 381 25.1 Designing Environments for Life Workshop 2, Provotypes Workshop, October 2009 391 25.2 Løgstrup and company employees working with the research tool 392 25.3 Generating fl exible categories involving dialogic products 394 26.1 The evolution of decorative art 408 27.1 Harris Kamen draws. Lulep Netan Village, Paama Island, Vanuatu 421 27.2 Lumali Timi – the two siblings/twins, pencil on paper, by Mansen Kenet, Etout āmal, Luli Village, north-east Paama Island 425 Illustrations xi 27.3 Ah – Black Crab , pen on paper, by Morrison Hungahari (deceased), Etout āmal, Luli Village, north-east Paama Island 426 28.1 Kyrgyz shyrdak , wedding felt, featuring pattern of the heart 439 28.2 Kyrgyz shyrdak illustrating bone imagery, early 20th century, Bishkek region 444 28.3 Wedding felt made for Kenje Toktosunova’s marriage, including hearts quilted in and diamond-shaped tabak forms, Issyk-kul region 445 29.1 My cello 452 29.2 My lasso 453

Colour plates 1 Poncho serape , ca. 1830 60 2 Kere dancers 90 3 Chuck Close, Self-Portrait I, 2009 153 4 Ngupulya Pumani 2015, Maku Dreaming 155 5 Uluru just before dark on a cold July day 158 6 Uluru materialising at dawn on a cold July day 158 7 Uluru an hour after materialising at dawn 158 8 Sydney Town Hall illuminated by sequences of coloured light, December 2015 161 9 Sydney Town Hall illuminated by sequences of coloured light, December 2015 161 10 Aso olona 174 11 Musician Juwon Ogungbe in Sanyan 177 12 Women in aso-ebi ‘completes’ 180 13 Modern resplendence 182 14 Anna Gustafsson with a child who has just been baptised 191 15 Matthew ‘underwater’ 270 16 The Gate of Honour, demonstrating the use of rustic detailing and timber step marking the actual threshold 280 17 Portrait of Angus Mackenzie , 1982 311 18 Leviathan Elegy , 1982 315 19 An Sùileachan, 2013 319 20 Birch bark basket decorated with dyed porcupine quills, sweetgrass, and black thread 330 21 Page spread from American Fabrics 38: Special Issue: Textiles U.S.A. (Fall 1956), 60–61 360 22 Satellite under construction 373 23 GWR locomotive 6023, ‘King Edward II’ 378 24 Beads and partially complete beadwork kept in an old dress 414 25 Aesthetics of uniformity: Panará men and women dancing 415 26 Kyrgyz shyrdak, from Bishkek, made by Kulacyl Jainakova, early 20th century 435 xii Illustrations 27 Balanced work in classical Kyrgyz shyrdak , made by Toktobubu Abyldaeva, early 20th century 435 28 Kyrgyz tur shyrdak , illustrating the balanced symmetry of the patterning and use of complementary colours 441 29 Dazzling topchu (button) shyrdak from At Bashi region 447 Notes on contributors

Jill D’Alessandro , curator of the Caroline and H. McCoy Jones Department of Textile Arts, joined the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2002. Since that time, D’Alessandro has curated numerous exhibitions on a diverse variety of subjects, ranging from ethnographic textile traditions to twentieth-century fashion design. She has contributed essays to Fiberarts, Hali , Tribal Art, Textile Society of Americas proceedings and several museum publications. Eni Bankole-Race is an award-winning textile maker and independent ethnographer. She designs and makes fabrics under her own label, Maverick Designs, marrying traditional techniques with contemporary materials and aesthetics. The conservation of these traditional textile techniques, their cultural signifi - cance and their recognition as Heritage craft forms have always been major motivators in her work. Eni is also a freelance lecturer in the ethnography of African textiles. Lindsay Blair teaches Art History and Cultural Theory at the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland. Research interests include Surrealism in America (with particular emphasis on Joseph Cornell), Cross-Disciplinary Representations: Place as Text in Visual Culture and Literature, and Contem- porary Visual Culture of the Scottish Highlands. Scholarly outputs include ‘An exploration of place and its representations: an intertextual/dialogical reading of the photographs of AB Ovenstone and the novel Gillespie by John MacDou- gall Hay’ (co-authored), International Review of Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, Canada, 2016; Joseph Cornell’s Vision of Spiritual Order , London: Reaktion Books, 1999; Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box, BBC Omnibus documentary (60 mins), Writer and Associate Producer, 1991. Stephanie Bunn is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She has conducted fi eld research among high mountain pastoralists in Kyrgyzstan and has learned many textile skills in her area of study. Her research focuses on creativity, skill, learning and the environment. She is currently conducting collaborative research about Scottish basketry, memory and skill. Stephanie has made several museum textile collections, and curated the fi rst ever British Museum exhibition on Central Asian nomadic textiles, Striking Tents , publishing the associated book, Nomadic Felts (2011). xiv Notes on contributors Peter Cusack is a fi eld recordist and musician/artist long fascinated by our sonic environment. He initiated the Favourite Sounds Project to discover what people fi nd positive about everyday soundscapes and Sounds from Dangerous Places to investigate major environmental damage and change through sound. He is a research fellow at the University of the Arts, London. Alexander Edmonds is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Edin- burgh. His research on beauty examined how Brazil became a global leader in cosmetic surgery. He is the author of Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex and Plastic Surgery in Brazil, awarded the Diana Forsythe and the Eileen Basker book prizes. Elizabeth Ewart is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Linacre College. She has carried out fi eldwork in central Brazil with Panará people and is the author of Space and Society: A Panará Eth- nography (Bloomsbury, 2013). Her interests include questions of social identity, personhood and space, as well as issues addressing material culture and value, in the form of gardens and glass beads. Ian Ewart is Research Fellow at the University of Reading, and ESRC ‘Future Research Leader’ (2013–17). He worked in engineering for many years before turning to anthropology as a way of studying the place of technology in the world around us. His current research investigates the role of digital technologies in our experience of the built environment. Elizabeth de Freitas is Professor in the Education and Social Research Institute, at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on philosophical investigations of mathematics, science and technology, pursuing the implications and applications of this work in cultural studies of education. Her recent work focuses on mathematics and the body, examining gesture, sensation and embodiment in various kinds of mathematical activity. She also writes exten- sively on social science research methodology, exploring alternative ways of developing experimental research methods that can address biosocial and biopolitical entanglements. She is associate editor of Educational Studies in Mathematics , and has published four books and over 50 chapters and articles on a range of topics. Peter Gow is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of several books and numerous articles based on his fi eldwork in Peruvian Amazonia and in Brazil. The books include Of Mixed Blood: Kin- ship and History in Peruvian Amazonia (1991) and An Amazonian Myth and Its History (2001). He also conducts research on social transformation in the Highlands of Scotland. Cristina Grasseni, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht Uni- versity, is known for the ‘Skilled Visions’ approach to sensory ethnography. She is the author of Developing Skill, Developing Vision: Practices of Locality in an Alpine Community (2009), Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Notes on contributors xv Standards (ed., 2007) and Beyond Alternative Food Networks: Italy’s Solidarity Purchase Groups (2013). Cathy Greenhalgh , independent fi lm-maker (director-cinematographer), lecturer, media anthropologist and writer, has 30 years’ university teaching and management expertise (latterly Principal Lecturer in Film and Television, University of the Arts London); 15 years’ expertise as a professional cinematographer; and directs fi lms for cinema, gallery and museum spaces. Her research interests centre on collaborative and interdisciplinary creativity, fi lm-making practices and communities of practice, cinematographic phenomena and aesthetics, performativity and narrative. Stephen Gudeman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He has undertaken research in Latin America where he studied local economies, family and religious life. Recently, he was co-director of a six-country comparative research project at the Max Planck Institute (Halle). He has published 11 books and numerous articles. Wendy Gunn is Senior Research Fellow, Research[x]Design Research Group, Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, Belgium. She also is Adjunct Profes- sor at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her current research seeks to leverage scientifi c research involving sensorial experience and perceptual acuity of patients, hospital staff and visitors into architectural and engineering design processes and practices towards improving air quality within hospital settings. This research aims to advance anthropology by means of design (rather than for, or, of design). The research has potential to link social and material dimensions of air quality in hospitals with the health and well-being of patients, staff and visitors and brings a novel contribution to participatory care through care(ful ) design. Anna Gustafsson is a lecturer and researcher in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. She is also an academic associate of the Centre of Cosmopolitan Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her interests include gender, craftsmanship, emotions, and old age. Rachel J. Harkness is a social anthropologist interested in exploring (eco-) architecture as a peopled process and in considering how people make manifest their designs for living. She works in the UK and the US, and is a Lecturer in Design Context at the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, where she is part of the European Research Council project ‘Knowing From the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design’. Marc Higgin is Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the Univer- sity of Aberdeen. His current research is with visual artists and their practices of making, following the different contexts, each with their own regime of value, through which materials and things are transformed into works of art. Earlier research centred on human-animal relations, conducting research with guide dog xvi Notes on contributors partnerships, working alongside animal scientists developing new standards of farm animal welfare in Europe and investigating the market for Halal and Kosher meat. Bringing together these different lines of inquiry is an interest in questions of knowledge, embodiment, skilled practice and environment. Eric Hirsch is Reader in Anthropology at Brunel University London. He has a long-standing interest in the ethnography and history of Melanesia. He edited Gell’s collected essays The Art of Anthropology (1999) and contributed to the recent volume – Distributed Objects , Chua and Elliott (eds.), 2013 – that evaluated Gell’s Art and Agency (1998) ten years after its publication. Tim Ingold is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out fi eldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on the environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. Ingold’s current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013) and The Life of Lines (2015). Cara Krmpotich is Associate Professor in the Museum Studies program at the Uni- versity of Toronto. She researches and teaches in the areas of museum and indigenous relations, collections management, repatriation and cultural property, and material culture. She is a leader of the Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections program overseen by First Story Toronto at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. Previously, she conducted fi eld research with the Haida Repatriation Committee and served as Network Facilitator at the Pitt Rivers Museum to support the Haida delegation’s visit to the Pitt Rivers and British Museums in 2009. She is author of The Force of Family: Repatriation, Kinship and Memory on Haida Gwaii, co- author with Laura Peers of This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Chang- ing Museum Practice , and has published articles in the Journal of Material Culture , Museum Anthropology, Curator and Museum Management and Curatorship . Susanne Küchler is Professor of Anthropology at University College London. Her research focuses are on the material in art and design, the nature of innovation and the cognitive work of images. Küchler is currently working on a new manuscript, The Material Mind , which develops the theoretical implications of her past ethnographic research into the making of sculpture and social memory. It takes insights into the nature of innovation in Oceania to the laboratory context of material science and offers a critical review of existing theorisation of material aesthetics and the formalised nature of thought symptomatic of knowledge economies. Craig Lind is Teaching Fellow and member of the Centre for Pacifi c Studies, in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His PhD research concerns Paama Islanders’ dwelling and migration in urban and rural Vanuatu and provides the material for an upcoming monograph. Craig’s research interests include the Pacifi c, gender, kinship, Christianity, hierarchy, chiefs, art/sand-drawing, kava, migration, identity, personhood and place. Notes on contributors xvii Ray Lucas is Head of Architecture at the University of Manchester where he teaches a range of anthropologically informed studio units and lecture courses. Lucas works at the intersection of anthropology and architecture with a focus on the development of drawing, notation and other graphic methods of description and understanding. This approach to a ‘Graphic Anthropology’ is currently being applied to contexts such as the Sanja Matsuri festival in Tokyo and Namdaemun market in Seoul. Lucas is the author of Research Methods for Architecture (Laurence King, 2016), which aims to redefi ne the nature of research undertaken in the discipline; and will soon publish Drawing Paral- lels: Knowledge Production in Axonometric, Isometric and Oblique Drawings (Ashgate, 2017) and Anthropology for Architects: Social Relations and the Built Environment (Bloomsbury, 2017). Stephen Malloch, PhD, Clinical Researcher, Psychotherapy Training Program, University of Sydney, is also a Psychotherapist and Executive Coach in private practice. His work is informed by his love of music, his research into ‘Com- municative Musicality’ and his practice of Mindfulness. Caroline M. Potter was Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Oxford from 2008–14, before taking up her current position within Oxford’s Health Services Research Unit. Building on insights from her previous work in dance anthropology, her current research focuses on bodily experience in relation to health and well-being. T’ai Smith is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Author of Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design (University of Min- nesota Press, 2014), she is currently researching the economy and philosophy of fashion in the nineteenth century. Colwyn Trevarthen is Professor (Emeritus) of Child Psychology and Psycho- biology at the University of Edinburgh, with experience in brain science and psychology. He studies infant development and how young children move, communicate happiness and maintain well-being in imaginative play and shared learning. Melissa Trimingham is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Kent. She has published widely on scenography, the Bauhaus stage and the use of puppetry, masks and costume with autistic children. Her monograph The Theatre of the Bauhaus: The Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer was published in 2011. Diana J. B. Young’s research explores the anthropology of colour, currently through the intersection of consumption practices and art histories in central Australia. She also works on space, ecology, visual culture, materials and museum ethnography. Recent curatorial research projects include ‘What Do Objects Want?’, ‘In the Red’ and ‘Written on the Body’. Acknowledgements

This book has become what it is through the efforts of all the talented and inspiring people who have contributed chapters with their diverse perspectives and expertise. The theme, beauty, is one that has bothered me, as an interdisciplinary scholar, for many years. As a maker, I knew that this was what I strived for in some way as I worked, yet as an anthropologist, the aesthetic approach taught me that there was nothing absolute about beauty, it could never be more than relative. This contradiction, or puzzle, spurred me to try to ﬁ nd a resolution, and whether we have found it or not, I salute the authors in this book for their attempts. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the organisers of the ASA Decennial Conference in Edinburgh, 2014, who chose the theme Anthropology and Enlightenment for the conference, and allowed me to lead the strand on Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design, which provided the foundations for several sections of the book. I thank my many students who have contributed to discussions on this theme over the years at the University of St Andrews, and continue to provide fresh insights and challenges to my views. And I thank the research group, Knowing from the Inside, based at the University of Aberdeen, under Professor Tim Ingold. This group has been the intellectual soup, or medium, in which many of the ideas and paths of thought in this book have been grown, enriching my understanding beyond all bounds. Finally, thanks to husband Jon, and to all my friends and family who have born with me through the inspiring and the challenging phases of this work. Thank you all. 1 Anthropology and beauty Introduction

Stephanie Bunn

Collections: wholes and not wholes; brought together, pulled apart; sung in uni- son, sung in conﬂ ict; from all things one, and from one all things. Heraclitus

The following 28 chapters in this volume explore diverse perspectives and approaches to the experience and production of what the authors take to be ‘beauty’. The aim of the book has not been to make pronouncements on what is beautiful, nor to give an overview of thinking on the subject, nor even to philosophize a great deal about it. Rather, the intention is to see the value of an anthropological approach to beauty. To this end, I have aimed for a gathering together of diverse cultural insights through a juxtapositioning of writings around the experience of ‘beauty’, including the experience of thinking about it. As such, this volume provides a kind of contemporary ‘anthology’, and one which, as Michael Jackson puts it, aims to “illuminate some of the shared themes and preoccupations” of thinkers and practitioners who are addressing this subject today (1996, viii), intending to deepen insight and understanding, not to analyze nor rationalize beauty, nor “fetishize it as a product of intellectual refl ection” (ibid 1). The book does not take a purely phenomenological approach, although most chapters approach beauty through its experience. However, an anthropological approach to beauty does not necessarily mean an exclusively experiential one, since as with American and European approaches, where ideas about beauty have not been exclusively tied to Classical and Enlightenment thinking, so diverse societies may think of beauty (if they have a term for it) as emerging through engagement in many different ways; as residing in the object; as relative; as eternal; and so on. It was Alfred Gell who fi rst sought to “wrest the anthropological study of artworks away from the soggy embrace of philosophical aesthetics” (1999, 17). Following this spirit, contributors to this volume were asked to extend thinking beyond either the Classical view of beauty (as seen in the work of Plato and Aris- totle, who saw beauty as residing in the form of the object, the so-called Platonic solids), or the purely Enlightenment approach (as in the writings of Kant, Burke, 2 Stephanie Bunn Hegel and others, who saw beauty as subjectively experienced, yet only honestly so through disinterested contemplation). Instead, they were invited to explore why people care about beauty, why it matters. They were asked to consider it as a form of action alongside the result of actions; to address it as universal and/or relative; and to consider it as much a quality that people sense, seek and strive for, as an object or a thing to judge, assess or simply delight in. There have always been thinkers who have taken a more dynamic, integrated approach to aesthetics. Thus Heraclitus predated Platonic ‘solids’ with notions of fl ow and unity (500 BCE). More recent thinkers who have argued that things can be ‘known together’ include radical empiricist William James (late 19th century; see Taylor 1996, 117); pragmatist John Dewey (see his Art as Experience , 1934); along with phenomenologists such as Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962). Their work is paralleled by the work of anthropologists such as Michael Jackson, Paul Stoller, Tim Ingold, Eric Hirsch, Martin Holbraad and others. Such diverse views are also recounted through the everyday experiences of fi eld companions, interlocutors and other fellow travellers, and the aim is to give these everyday experiences a voice too. This diversity is refl ected in the strong interdisciplinary composition of the book. Chapters include a piece by Elizabeth de Frei- tas, who considers the bodily experience of understanding complex mathematical problems; an exploration of how Navajo interlocutors describe the beauty in a Navajo weaving (like lightning; see D’Alessandro); sound artist Peter Cusack’s discoveries of favourite urban sounds; contrasting First Nation American views of beauty either as in objects linked to ancestors and memories, or as processes linked to effort, skill and time (see Krmpotich’s account of Haida and Cree visitors to museum collections). Performers, anthropologists and neuroscientists give accounts of negotiated and reciprocal understandings of beauty in communication and movement (see Trevarthen and Malloch; Potter; Trimingham); and explorations of everyday beauty in work, effort and moments of grace (see Cusack, Gudeman, Higgin). Through these real-life accounts of beauty, contributors have thus looked beyond lodging beauty in the eyes of the critic or the consumer, to its experience – through the work of producers, makers or creators, or through the whole person of the observer, all of whom, through engagement, may strive for some kind of balance, order, disorder or revelation, something as wholesomely satisfying to the hand and heart of the producer as it is to the eyes of the beholder. An aesthetic, judgemental or evaluative approach to beauty tends to lodge beauty in the object or artefact under consideration. Yet a relativistic approach (so key to anthropology) also usually takes such judgement (since it is being made by a subject) to be purely subjective. This is one reason why, as Gell described, we have been stuck in Enlightenment thinking’s soggy embrace (1999). This books aims to bridge this divide, and consider beauty as experienced through relationships, whether between person and thing; maker and the made; person and process or action; person and environment; or person and person; but always as experienced as a dynamic, living process (see Dewey 1980 [1934]). Anthropology and beauty: introduction 3 By focusing on beauty, rather than judgements about it, we are released from a purely evaluative, aesthetic approach to human creativity, enabling us to address more experiential, relational approaches. This enables us to extend our discussion to include diverse kinds of attention and action, whether outwards to wider social and environmental understandings, or inwards to contemplation. In this vein, we can explore how people might be moved towards or respond to beauty, whether in the immediate locality or in a ‘place of outstanding natural beauty’; through shared acts of human creativity and production; listening to music or local sounds; performing ritual; experiencing architecture; visiting art galleries or ancient buildings (age, it seems, brings beauty); or in simple technology or designing for the future. The insights that this provides take us towards a perspective which addresses how the experience of beauty can inform intuitive understandings of the world, and provides new perspectives on how diverse social histories and cultural practices might contribute towards understanding creativity. The eight parts in this book aim to provide approaches to exploring beauty from such a relational position. Beauty is addressed through its generative potential; through perception, skill, and bodily and performative capacities; and through its spatio-temporal qualities. The role of beauty in work, economy and design is considered, as is its collective experience, and its manifestation as synthesized meanings from diverse aspects of social life. These approaches are not intended to be exhaustive.

Beauty as generative: patterning and number From very different backgrounds in anthropology, art and mathematics, both authors in Part I have reached similar positions in regard to the generative potential of patterning, maths and beauty. The authors, Susanne Küchler and Elizabeth de Freitas, break with the analytical habit of assuming that patterns articulate meanings which are somehow “produced elsewhere” (Strathern 1990, 38), and instead show how patterning and mathematical cognition can be understood and experienced as directly affective through action of the body and the social. This understanding is similar to that which Victor Turner noted in the Forest of Symbols (1970), where, towards the end of his book, he proposes that there are aspects of patterning which simply by-pass meaning, symbolism or conceptual referencing, and are directly affective and transformative. For mathematics, Paulus Gerdes proposed that geometric thinking is fundamentally linked to patterning as practiced through cultural forms such as basketry and drawing (1999, 2007). In regard to number, Jadrun Mimica argued that humans have a form of consciousness, a mythopoeia, which is instrumental in how we generate and structure cultural knowledge such as mythic narratives, forms of aesthetics linked to art or poetics, science and maths (1988, 5). Just as Diana Young has shown that we do not experience colour as abstract or separate from the material with which it is imbued (see for example Chapter 10 this volume), so Mimica argues for number, that societies such as the Iqwaye experience number as embodied, linked to counting on fi ngers and toes (Mimica 1988, 23). Yet this does not preclude them from comprehending 4 Stephanie Bunn the abstract aspects of maths, whether in reference to counting or more complex understandings such as the “intimation of infi nity” (ibid 96–100). The difference among Iqwaye, it appears, is that there is a more holistic approach to the relationship between quantity and quality, pattern and body, body and cosmos. Küchler (Chapter 2) explores the affective potential of patterning as a form of direct translation, as a synthesis of mnemonics and spatio-temporal meanings, linking land with kinship groups. She argues, following Benjamin, that patterns (in Pacifi c art forms) provide a recognition, or a kind of visual onomatopoeia of the similar, “concretised in geometric and mathematical forms” that, through the beauty of the patterning, are immediately affective. Thus, specifi c neighbourhoods express their socio-cultural knowledge and relationships – whether of kinship systems, exchange sequences, memories or navigational knowledge – through graphic gestures encapsulated in patterning, so that incorporated within each society’s art, their patterns take the form of unique spatio-temporal maps which are at the same time affective. Exploring a similar approach to pattern, though as if through the opposite end of a telescope, Elizabeth de Freitas discusses how new solutions to mathematical problems arise. Mathematical beauty, she explains, has frequently been depicted as tied to inexplicable operations of the mind, as remote and pristine, citing for example Bertrand Russell: “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere . . . yet sublimely pure” (2014, 60). Thus, she argues, creativity and beauty in maths may be used to “[erase] all traces of its labour” (Chapter 3). Yet ancient maths was a far more applied state of affairs, where mathematical invention, a process which may entail looking for patterns, resonances and surprises, was (and is) “deeply embodied” ( ibid ), and was frequently produced through practical activities such as drawing diagrams. This mathematical diagramming does not just represent or illustrate a problem; it is part of the generative process of developing new ideas. In similar vein to the visual onomatopoeia of Pacifi c patterning, the mathematical diagram provides a synthesis of past understandings and a development into the new. In both cases, the beautiful, patterned process indicates, or becomes a part of, the solution or resolution, and the labour involved brings into being the relationships expressed. And these relationships, “in being experienced as beautiful, indicate their signifi cance” (Arkani-Hamed 2013).1

Grace, beauty and the work of art Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait pas. Pascal

The moment of experiencing beauty in art or performance has been described by Plante as an “act of grace” (cited in Gablik 1995, 161). Bateson similarly proposes that: “Art is a part of man’s quest for grace; sometimes his ecstasy in partial success, sometimes his rage and agony at failure” (1995, 235). Grace is not, says Bateson, an aspect of art that can be reduced to words, or even symbolism. Art Anthropology and beauty: introduction 5 cannot be translated nor does it represent, he says. He is concerned, as William James was before him, with what is implicit “in style, materials, composition, rhythm, skill and so on” (ibid 236) – that “complex layering of consciousness and unconsciousness that creates diffi culty when we try to discuss art, or ritual, or mythology” (ibid 240). If one can pin it down, for Bateson grace is a “perfect way of seeing, or drawing” that provokes a moment of balance or integration (ibid 234, 248), what he calls ‘empathy’ and James calls ‘sympathy’ (the term ‘empathy’ was yet to be coined in James’s day), and in the beauty of what emerges, we see for a moment the revelation of how the artist sees the world. Such an experience is, of its nature, profoundly synaesthetic. As Higgin says, here the viewer and producer encounter the “rules of transformation” when perception, feeling and thought are brought together with gesture and learned skill (Chapter 5). For Gell, in contrast, experiencing grace through an artwork is closer to an act of ‘enchantment’, ‘captivation’ or ‘awe’ (1988). As Hirsch notes (Chapter 6), Gell had a tendency to downplay beauty, perhaps refl ecting his preference for the conceptual or interpretive aspects of art. Thus Gell tended to avoid the artwork as production or creativity, approaching it more as an image with a history, subject to interpretation. However, Gell’s attempt to reach across the viewer-object divide, through the use of terms such as ‘enchantment’, ‘awe’, even ‘magic’, links to a perceived opaqueness in the process of production, implying a similar mystifi cation to that which de Freitas outlines (Chapter 3), and to which Ian Ewart and Tim Ingold return to later in this volume. This mystifi cation of beauty returns Gell’s approach, in some ways, to the separation between subject and object in Enlighten- ment thinking that he aimed to avoid. Nevertheless, Gell’s ‘abduction of agency’, where artefact or event act as an ‘index’, is very relevant here, and is expanded upon by both Higgin and Hirsch in this part. It is rare to fi nd the experience of beauty articulated more forcefully than in the Navajo notion of Blessing/Beauty Way or hozhóóji, as D’Alessandro describes (Chapter 4). Navajo hozhóó can be realized through the act of weaving, and, as D’Alessandro’s communicants recount, the tranquillity of weaving creates harmony and brings beauty into the world, encapsulated in woven blankets. The power conveyed by this kind of creative act remains in these blankets, so that later weavers, through seeing and touching them, share in the experience. It is, as D’Alessandro describes, as if the weaving harnesses the energy of lightning, and through this makers or viewers experience grace. This reverses Gell’s notion of ‘enchantment’, since it is the power of the work through its creation, not its mystifi cation, nor something attributed to it, that affects the viewer, bridging the gap between process and observer. For Higgin, the experience of beauty is an unexplained gift. It can be encountered in the everyday as much as in any creative act, such as, he describes, in the light of the low winter sun shining in water fountaining from a blocked drain. Such everyday encounters, he suggests, constitute small tears in the fabric of ordinary life. Thus Higgin is drawn to exploring moments of grace through the ‘found object’, here in the work of conceptual artist Douglas White. The shocks created 6 Stephanie Bunn through tears in our daily fabric are, says Higgin, “epistemological shock(s) to experience, resisting the act of representation” (Chapter 5). Following Bateson, he suggests they make the system of mind – both within the artist and beyond, in the wider environment – directly tangible. In describing Fuyuge ritual performance, gab , in Melanesia, Hirsch illustrates how Gell’s notion of ‘abduction of agency’ equates with a kind of captivation through the experience of beauty, generated through the sequence of ritual events. This experience is so powerful that it binds people to the performers. All the ingredients of gab – the dancers, their gleaming oiled bodies, the multiple roads along which invited guests have travelled, even the pigs at the sacrifi ce, the “whole multi-faceted artwork” – contribute to the abduction of agency, and to the experience of beauty at a gab event – resulting in captivation of local women, and thus gathering the performers’ fame. This dynamic creative process continues through time, despite all manner of change. Gow evokes Kant’s contrasting notions of beautiful and sublime (which parallel Gell’s enchantment and awe), following the path of grace from Classical paintings by Ingres and Poussin across thresholds of analogies, to reveal how changes in one art form may elucidate transformations in another. In his case he moves from Classical painting to the song-poetry of the Highland aristocracy, heard today in an ceol mor , ‘the big music’ played on the pipes. Kant, the ‘beautiful magister’ of Konigsberg, almost always juxtaposed beauty with the sublime (1951, 1981[1763]). For Kant, while “the beautiful includes birds, sea shells, articles of dress and furniture, dwellings, trees, gardens, bird- song, a summer day, and yes woman – as well as the products of beautiful art”, the sublime includes “the pyramids of Egypt, St Peter’s cathedral, the wild greatness of nature, the infi nite, mountain peaks . . . stones, the starry vault, courage, sacrifi ce, the separation from society when this arises from an idea which overlooks personal interest” (Goldthwaite 1981, 36). “The sublime arouses awe and admiration, whereas beauty arouses joy” (ibid ). One feels that if there is anywhere Kant allows taste to trump disinterested contemplation, it is here, where grandeur is valued over the everyday. In his chapter, Gow hints that the sublime might be a more beautiful kind of beauty (Chapter 7). We may, says Gow, at times fi nd certain art forms so “of the past” that they are no longer understandable, yet their power is such that one day, the image or sound, familiar from childhood, will begin to ‘speak’, to evoke a beauty beyond the beautiful. Thus the experience of beauty as grace can be both spine-tingling and joyful, and may be encountered in both everyday creative acts, or through the more dramatic.

Perceiving beauty: sound and vision We can experience beauty through giving attention to the world, engaging with it through our perceptual systems. As Merleau-Ponty proposes, “To see is to have colours or lights before one, to hear is to encounter sounds, to feel is to come up against qualities” (1962, 4).2 Most contributors to this volume have approached Anthropology and beauty: introduction 7 perception as directly experienced, or ‘felt’, as Merleau Ponty’s “com(ing) up against qualities” evokes. James Gibson developed this phenomenological approach to perception in his approach to ecological psychology (1968). Both he, and later Ingold, insist, however, that while we may analyze the senses as if each system is operating in isolation, the perceptual systems are experienced in an integrated and immediate way, and we should address them as working together ( ibid ; Ingold 2000 and Chapter 29 this volume). Ingold, along with Hsu, further argues that while sensory experience is socially mediated, this does not mean that the senses are simply culturally or socially constructed, or culturally inscribed upon the body (Ingold 2000; Hsu 2008). Just as the senses work together, perception also develops in an integrated body- mind sort of way along with social and cultural practices from the moment of birth, even from conception. There is, as Hsu says, a mutuality between social relations, the body and the material world (ibid ). Nevertheless, while sensing is an integrated process, focusing on specifi c aspects of perception can help us to understand differently nuanced perspectives on experiencing the world. The European and American philosophical traditions tend to place the highest value on vision, an approach usually acknowledged to have originated in the work of Greek philosopher Aristotle. But, if we approach the world through the ear, for example, we may fi nd new insights into aesthetic engagement and to what people describe as beautiful. Part III focuses on hearing and vision, while acknowledging that touch, smell, taste and even aspects of perception such as orientation and temporal awareness, or the experience of heat or pain, contribute to aesthetic comprehension. Hearing and seeing can be recognized as qualitatively different kinds of perceptual experience which work together. While what we hear is sound – movements in air towards, around and through our bodies3 – what we see – whether brightness or shadow, colour or tone – we see in light. Thus sound is concerned with movement, dynamism and narrative; vision is concerned with what light reveals about the world and our environments. Sound, as a form of movement, profoundly illustrates that beauty in heard and vocalized communication lies in relation to and in between subjects from the earliest of ages. Trevarthen and Malloch show that beauty is a shared experience, manifest through movement, as infants and care-givers elicit communication and response, and give “graceful attention to the world” (Chapter 8), in contrapun- tal forms of conversation, evoking a musicality through both their playful and performative qualities. Such interactive sounds are frequently produced sonically through intuitive timekeeping, modulation, invitations and spaces, and are mirrored in movements such as gesture, eye direction, slight touch and refl ecting the actions of others. These temporal narratives can be experienced through reciprocal, predictive timings of vocalizations or silences between infants and carers, resulting in a kind of ‘attunement’. Sound artist Peter Cusack explores this “graceful attention to the world” through his 20-year Favourite Sounds Project. In asking participants what their favourite urban sounds are, his project reveals “cities of the ear” to be sonic environments 8 Stephanie Bunn where the simple poetry of sounds of everyday personal experience predominate over more famous or awe-inspiring ones. Such “favourite sounds” are more often acoustic atmospheres than isolated sounds – sounds which incorporate places, memories or activities, often inseparably so, full of detail animation and personal routines. Cusack’s project reveals not only a different perspective on the city than one approached through vision, but also that “favourite sounds” – the sound of a cat purring, the hum of an electronic substation and so on – really do give voice to the small beauties of human life, part of the everyday beauty of the world. Both authors writing on vision direct our attention towards the combined dynamic and material qualities of what we see in light. Diana Young, focusing on colour, argues that we must not treat it as something ‘added-on’ to a colourless world. Colour, she says, has a vitality, it suffuses things, is an aspect of things’ material properties, and is dynamic, constantly changing. Therein lies its beauty. We see this in objects’ luminosity and transparency, in ripening fruits, ageing leaves or sun-illuminated rocks as they change colour through time. Young shows how one colour contains many, how colour juxtapositions create vibrancy. Flux, movement and transformation of colour, she argues, are what constitute its beauty. Bankole-Race directly addresses the dynamic role of light, where its capacities to dazzle and refl ect “coalesce into resplendence” in Yoruba prestige textiles. Mak- ers use silk, dyes, beating and burnishing, colour, metals, sequins, beads, mirrors and lurex to create cloths that are vibrant, fl ashing with energy. Their signifi cance lies in their capacity to capture light, and to evoke brightness and darkness through even the simplest fl ash of a coloured stripe. Worn at initiations and weddings, and accompanied by elaborate use of etiquette, Yoruba ceremonial cloth synthesizes the sensory and the social, bringing in the temporal, sedimented into cloth through the combined patina of age and the power of historical signifi cance. The resplendence of ceremonial clothing thus lies both in its material brilliance and in the accumulation of these textiles through time, which, burnished with age, accrue further status, signifi cance and grandeur to the wearer.

Skillful and beautiful Without skill is no art. Bateson (1995, 247)

Skillfulness entails perception combined with learning. It can be understood as a kind of learned facility practised and re-practised as we work, until the point is reached where, as Heidegger describes, our tools, technique and materials have become ‘ready-to-hand’. That is, he suggests, they are used almost unrefl ectively, as a part of the extended person, in a kind of direct, unmediated approach to work (1927/1962). This ‘tacit knowledge’ embodied in skillful action (see also Polanyi 1967) can extend beyond the body into materials, the surrounding world, and includes our interactions with others in performance or collaborative work (Bunn 1998–9). It has been described by Bateson as ‘mind in environment’ (1972). Anthropology and beauty: introduction 9 Yet, as Sennett argues, skillfulness is also concerned with the will to work to the best of one’s ability. Craftsmanship entails doing a task as well as it could be done, he says, evoking Platonic ideas of making, the idea of executing an action to its fullest (2008, 2016). This impulse to do well through skill is a kind of ‘art’, and it has moral overtones. The will to do well also links to the capacity to deal with the unanticipated through a mixture of problem-solving, planning and effort (Sennett 2008, 2016; Marchand 2016; Bunn 2016). Most skilled work does not so much throw up big problems, but requires ongoing decisions to be made moment by moment, and challenges which require patience and refl ection (Bunn 2016; Marchand 2016). It is this combination of practice and patience, effort and fl ow, along with the will to do well, which is fundamental for the production of beautiful, skilled work. David Pye provides an additional perspective on skill in his ‘workmanship of risk’ (1968), arguing that the maker or performer also has to let go of the will to control, and allow new ideas to come, in order to achieve good, skillful and beautiful work. Lave describes this aspect of enskillment as “doing what you know and what you don’t know, iteratively, all at the same time” (2015). Herein lies the intriguing contradiction at the heart of skillfulness, that a practitioner must know very well what to do, how to do it and what they would like to achieve, yet in order to do so, they must accept that they cannot simply impose form onto substance or a mental blueprint onto material. To do this produces the ‘workmanship of certainty’, work made to a formula, resulting only in routine outcomes. Skillfulness for Pye is an in-the-moment, ‘direct experience’ kind of work, paralleling Gibson’s ‘direct perception’. The parallel is not so unlikely, since as Gibson explains, in touch (a prerequisite for many aspects of human creativity) the haptic perceptual system and the motor system meet (see also Bunn 1998), and as neuroscientist Chemero argues, “We perceive the environment in order to do things” (2013, 146). Most anthropologists studying skill have tended to focus on the hand-made and craft – iron-work (Coy 1989; Keller and Keller 1993), carpentry (Marchand 2010, 2016), weaving (Venkatesan 2010), tailoring (Lave 2011), ceramics (Gowland 2016); or bodily achievements such as dance (Downey 2010; Potter 2008), even bicycle riding (Sigaut 1993) or sorcery (Stoller 1989). Yet, skill can address any status of work, and may include gardening, renovation or digital technologies. Palsson’s Enskillment at Sea illustrates the embodied knowledge in the use of sonar for locating fi sh shoals among Icelandic fi shermen (1994), while Sennett cites examples of craftsmanship from London road-sweepers to computer graphic designers (2016). Authors in Part IV encompass this diversity, with Gustafsson writing on Lulesámi weavers, Greenhalgh writing on the multiple, almost subliminal skills entailed in cinematography, while Grasseni explores how sensing beauty is itself a learned, embodied and socialized capacity. Lulesámi enskillment, described by Gustafsson, includes the ability to develop good working hands which have accuracy and dexterity, often with swollen joints and arthritis; and fostering the necessary social and moral skills, including patience, effort and self-reliance. She shows how these values are embedded in community involvement and collective responsibility, both in craft and in local life 10 Stephanie Bunn more widely. Thus, the beauty in Lulesámi craft emerges between the craftworker and materials, and the moral element it contains is embodied in their working hands, and manifest in the rhythms, patience and self-discipline each maker develops through becoming skillful. For Greenhalgh, rather than being good with one’s hands, craftmanship as a cinematographer entails ‘having an eye’, a skilled vision refi ned almost beyond imagination. To the outsider, the cinematographer’s skills deal with the subliminal nature of how to interpret and communicate the ‘vision’ of a fi lm, through such subtleties as how camera movement, framing and lighting may affect mood, meaning and narrative. At the same time, their organizational skills require them to communicate part, at least, of this vision to a fi lm crew, while creating the appropriate ambience for work, and both delegating and leading the crew to create a product which communicates to an audience. The complexities of managing and developing this kind of skill are almost impossible to quantify, as are the mechanisms for developing an aesthetic in a working environment where visual references evoke both personal memories in the audience, and also past aesthetics drawn from the history of painting, sculpture, photography and cinema. There is also a question of balance, since if a fi lm is ‘too beautiful’, it may even detract from the ‘message’ of the fi lm. Thus, the relationship between skill and beauty in this context lies as much in understanding the subtleties of human communication, as in the profound understanding of the visual effect of the moving image on an audience. Grasseni explores beauty as a form of common sensing through witnessing the end of working life and repurposing of an old Derbyshire cotton mill. Her account of the mill’s old and new inhabitants learning to pay attention to new potentialities of the nearly derelict building – from its old industrial past to possible future as a rural idyll – revaluing and re-sensing its possibilities, reveals how aesthetics can be understood also as a form of competence, an aspect of our co-constitution of the environment, and thus how beauty is a part of our ecology. Contributors to this part see skill as linked to perception, as learned and as taking place between people, or people and the environment, and through work. Beauty emerges through these relations. A maker, performer, musician, electrician or engineer senses the potential success of the work through its ongoing rhythm and fl ow, frequently adjusting things according to their sense of the developing quality in the piece, and within this is a sense of satisfaction, or pleasure, even joy, in the task at hand, and with the emerging result. This ‘feeling’ both intuitively helps guide this work and results from it. There is an ethical and cooperative tone to this skillful practice, too, both in terms of striving for excellence, and of maintaining a balance between self-reliance and working well together, since skill is rarely an isolated capacity.

Beauty embodied and performed Today we are having the exciting thing (kayman): we don’t die . . . we are happy . . . the dancing makes their bodies buoyant. Gawan woman, 1975, in Munn (1986) Anthropology and beauty: introduction 11 While the body perceives and creates beauty in its surrounding environment, it may also itself be perceived and evaluated, and may both respond or act upon itself to enhance or modify how it is perceived. Appreciation of the body is rarely just purely contemplative, or dispassionate (as Kant describes for his vision of ‘true beauty’). Rather there is a dynamic, a relationship between bodies – bodily beauty frequently produces affects, even relationships, with others. There is also no absolute divide between the bodily experience of beauty through acting within or upon the world, or observing it, and the work done to the body by a subject which may develop its beauty potential. Thus, Gustafsson, mentioned earlier, describes how the actions of skilled hands may also be assessed as beautiful through the manifestation of the wear and tear of work upon their muscles, tendons and bones. Similarly, Olympic gymnasts or cyclists may evaluate the arms or legs of others within their communities to assess their capacity for excellence in their craft or sport. Such performers or actors are not simply objects of their own actions, but through their actions may themselves experience beauty through the performance of these skills. In regard to the ‘beauty of the body’, Alex Edmonds explores “fl eshly beauty” through his research into plastic surgery and race in Brazil, as both an inheritance which may be modifi ed to refl ect social norms, and yet which also itself may generate change in unpredictable ways. Beauty, he argues, connects the generations because it can be inheritable, and yet it also draws future sexual partners together. Social constructionism neglects this capacity of beauty, which acts between people, and which, he argues, can create affects such as attraction, which can cut across social, cultural and physical boundaries. Caroline Potter has elsewhere described the sensory effects of dance on the body as generating heat and kinaesthesia, along with other sensory effects (2008). Here she examines what beauty does as it is generated through dance as “an emergent phenomenon that serves to orientate collective sensory engagement across space and time” (Chapter 16). Like Edmonds and Gustafsson, she sees beauty as a capacity, but, as Greenhalgh describes for cinematography (Chapter 13), dance refl ects a collective creation through dancers, set, lights and choreography into a piece, or work, rather than a property of the body of just one dancer. This coalescence into beauty is ephemeral, she says; it comes and goes through the shared pleasurable experience in particular moments. Beauty prompts the dancers, they have to work at it, but it is actively made in the act of performance. Beauty as an emergent capacity is evident too in Trimingham’s account of Imagining Autism, a project with autistic children which incorporates immersive environments, performers and puppetry. Trimingham too repositions beauty as doing – as enactment, as a verb and as ephemeral “moments that make the heart beat faster”. If autists perceive differently, she proposes, then creating an improvi- satory performance space of immersive environments may enable the diversity of autistic perception to give expression to and to feel what they understand as beauty. Bodily beauty, then, is something which does , and which moves , as much as something which is . It crosses the divide between subject, process and practice. It can be both experience and object, but it emerges in the doing as much as in the being, and it is relational. 12 Stephanie Bunn Beauty in space and time There are changes, but underneath the changes are no things which change: change does not require a support. There are movements, but no inert or invari- able object which moves. Bergson (1934)

French phenomenologist Henri Bergson saw space as movement, and time as duration – the essence of both being change (1934). Ingold (2011), drawing on Gibson and von Üexkull, takes a more engaged approach, talking rather of ‘environment’ or ‘inhabitation’.4 An interlocutor of Evans-Pritchard put it thus: “The ashes of the dung fi re in my cattle camps are so very deep”. This, Evans-Pritchard translates as: “The singer is a descendant of an ancient ancestor whose people occupied the same space for unaccountable years” (1951). Thus we see that all are concerned with people’s lived daily existence in space and time, their “habitual and practiced interactions with space over a period of time” (Lucas, Chapter 18) The combined wisdom of these approaches suggests that while we experience time and space through movement and change, yet we also experience them through relationships with people, places and memories. Either way, time and space pervade us, and we are in time, and in space, even as we attempt to conceive of them. How, then, is it possible to talk of the beauty in ‘things’ if they are in constant fl ux, always changing, if we are inside this fl ow and change? And can we draw on direct sensory experience to do so? James Gibson would argue that we sense movement and our position in space through an additional perceptual system – orientation (1968). We sense the world vertically (through gravity) and horizon- tally (through our ‘sense of direction’), and we engage with this system haptically through inhabiting and moving through both the ‘natural’ and built environments. Parallels for time would be experiencing the temporal bodily processes of maturation, bodily cycles, ageing and environmental rhythms such as seasonality. A simple illustration of the bodily aesthetics of inhabiting space can be seen in how people mark out ‘lines of desire’, paths where inhabitants of a community prefer to walk, making a track across the grass, rather than, say, walking on a constructed pavement. Beauty in space, then, is arguably experienced and constructed through how people mark out, build and inhabit their environments, whether in houses, factories, shrines or football pitches. It is also evident in transitions between spaces. Signifi cantly, it is likely that it was through building, along with making, that our human understanding of geometry developed – the Greek term ‘geometry’ meaning literally “the measure of the earth” (Wilson 1988, 152). Greek geometry, of course, has very specifi c architectural connections with aesthetics through European and American notions of perfect proportion, linked to Euclidean geometry and the notion of the Golden Mean, which informed Vitruvian ideas of beauty in architecture. Despite this, architecture’s utility signalled to Kant that it lay outside of his concept of ‘free beauty’ which he applied to the fi ne arts (which had to be “purposive without purpose”), consigning architecture instead to adherent beauty (“purposive with purpose”), and altogether more functional (see Cairns and Jacobs 2014, 19). Anthropology and beauty: introduction 13 In his architectural approach to beauty, Lucas discusses the “subtle beauty” of the threshold – a uniquely architectural phenomenon which mediates between different qualities of space, often interior and exterior – revealing how human inhabitation practices mark how spatial conditions change (Chapter 18). The thresholds of a Japanese villa do this, as Lucas describes, through lived practices as mundane as requiring visitors to remove shoes on entry, through alterations in ground surface, growth of green dripping moss, creation of vistas and even through entry conditions such as the compulsory writing of Buddhist sutras. Harkness explores architectural surfaces, which she also sees as sites of movement and change (Chapter 19). Surfaces of buildings can act as facades, she says, concealing basic human needs such as sewage, water, heat and resources, but they are also boundaries between inside and out, and can communicate values such as honesty (through materials), and calm. Her interest lies in how the quality of the everyday built environment refl ects a kind of moral approach to beauty, and is important for wellbeing, happiness and a sense of social cohesion. Bergson was also concerned that one could never talk of time without incorporating space: “When we invoke time it is space which answers the call” (1934). Spatializing time, he thought, involved segmenting it and thus denying its fl ow or succession. For Bergson, it was music in which lay “the purest impression of a succession we could possibly have”, the ease and grace of which lay in rhythm ( ibid ). Yet in the lived experience of time, we cannot separate space and time to experience such ‘pure succession’ since we pass through time within space. As Munn suggests, “Time and space are integral to each other” – you cannot disentangle them in a lived world; they are like each other’s ‘other self’ (1992, 24). In anthropology, time “has often been handmaiden to other anthropological frames” (Munn 1992, 93), which include history, cosmology, ritual, descent and, most recently, memory. Although time has its rhythms which may be valued differently, or given different qualities in different communities – yet, through a kind of “rough common sense”, time also appears to have a common experiential foundation, including one-way fl ow, from past, through present to future, as James argues, following Gell (see James and Mills 2005, 4–6). “There is no fairyland where people experience time in a way that is markedly unlike the way which we do ourselves” (Gell 1992). Nevertheless, the relationship between past, present and future may be given different emphases in different communities, so that the grace, pleasure or pain that emerges through succession may have different kinds of value. Certain qualities of time may be auspicious, or presage future events. And, as E. P. Thompson explains so clearly in regard to time in industrial capitalism, working systems which quantify time can transform the experience of the quality of time from one which is “task-oriented” to one which is “time-oriented” (1991). Nomadic communities, such as Kyrgyz herders among whom I worked, also describe a more dynamic approach to time, operating within a world where understanding change is what counts, rather than taking a more segmented approach. “We cannot avoid creating things that take the form of time”, says Munn (1992, 24), and in this creation, there is beauty – whether stories, artefacts, kinship 14 Stephanie Bunn systems, ceremonies or contemporary art. In this vein, artist Will Maclean explores time through memory, history and myth, drawing on long past memories of the Highland clearances and the Scottish fi shing and whaling industries. He makes assemblages from material collected from personal archival sources – second-hand shops, his family archive, local libraries and beaches, which through their Surre- alistic quality give new perspectives on the beauty and care in processes of tradition and transmission. This, as Blair shows (Chapter 20), reveals how the artist’s intuition of time acts almost as a form of perception, revealing memory as linked to that mythopoeic form of consciousness described by Mimica, referenced earlier. Cara Krmpotich also develops the relationship between beauty, time and things, showing how meetings between First Nations people and their material heritage in museums can prompt co-existing experiences of beauty, which may undercut standard museum views. In this context, an artefact may be beautiful because it refl ects an anticipated cultural design form, and cultural protocols, and because it belonged to a group in the past, prized for being handed down through generations. Or it may be beautiful because it refl ects the skills of one’s ancestors, such as the effort that went into collecting and sewing on all the buttons to a button blanket, or in making a sweet-grass basket. The second perspective refl ects pleasure in the ingenuity of one’s ancestors, their skill, even their spirituality, summed up in the words of an interlocutor: “I can’t even imagine how long that would take” (Chapter 21).

Beauty: economy, work and design Any work of art is not the product of an act of design by some individual genius, it is the outcome of ages of experimentation. William Lethaby (1912)

Stephen Gudeman remarks that, “Beauty and economy are an unlikely pairing . . . economy has to do with working life, whereas beauty is exciting and unique” (Chap- ter 22). Against this, he argues that beauty has everything to do with working life, since without the effort and the work put into making things, things – from the mundane to the glorious – would not emerge. Like other authors in this part, he draws the link between our recent economic and industrial history, and how ideas of beauty in design and making have become fundamentally tied to economy. From the Industrial Revolution onwards, the increase in mass production has been tied to consumption because what is made has to sell. Thus, there is a strong economic and commercial imperative to much post-industrial design, because when goods are produced in quantity, they need a market. A designer’s important task, therefore, is to make goods appealing, saleable and beautiful in order to give a competitive edge. So, if design is about producing the best, in the industrial design era, it also has to sell, and in a consumer economy, beauty is tied to this imperative, so it may also be short term. This can mean a new kind of built-in obsolescence to stimulate consumption, where people do not wait until something is used-up to discard it, but, as T’ai Smith argues (Chapter 23), they develop new ways (such as fashion) Anthropology and beauty: introduction 15 to perceive it as ‘used-up’ to match the pace of machine production. Thus beauty becomes ephemeral and transient as new beauties develop each season. But how does this relate to the view that design is about producing the best solution to a problem? Sennett (2008); Flusser (1999); and Gudeman (Chapter 22), along with Hannah Arendt (1958), have all argued that craftsmanship, or workmanship, and tied to this, design – the kind of designer-workmanship that incorporates tactile knowledge with thinking – are what makes us human and what makes humans so successful as a species. If Sennett proposes that craftsmanship implies doing something as well as possible, Arendt contrasts animal laborans with homo faber. She argues that to work only to sustain life is merely to labour, little more than slavery, while to make work well, work which endures beyond a person’s lifetime, is fundamental to our humanity (1958). In similar vein, Flusser proposes that designers need constraint to work against, so as to continue to develop innovative ideas (1999). Designers are tricksters, he says; they deceive us into thinking that things they have created are solutions, when in fact they usually provide constraint. Even artefacts we take as given or ‘normal’, such as spoons or chairs or trainers, defi ne or limit our behaviour in some way, and challenging these limits can produce creative solutions. He argues that within the history of design, humans have developed an increasing lack of engagement with their environment as we have moved from hands-on work, through machines to robotics. Along with this, human skill has less constraint to push against, and this works against innovation. The new human being does not handle or produce any more, and becomes instead Homo ludens , the player, or leisure seeker. Flusser, Arendt and Sennett raise important ethical and moral questions about the value of work, and the value of beautiful work. If designer-workmanship incorporates tactile knowledge with thinking, then hands-on work and working against constraint are important for learning and developing new ideas. The relationship between design, ethics and beauty is further complicated through questions such as whether, for example, a well-designed weapon can be beautiful (see Barad 2007 on nuclear weapons for a parallel perspective in science). Design with a moral purpose is not always effective either, and ethics can emerge as much in the practice of workmanship as in thinking about work. The challenge perhaps, as Sennett (2016) and Gudeman (Chapter 22) propose, is to re-consider how humans can work together. Of course, this argument is not new, emerging in the Arts and Crafts movement of William Morris, and before. Many familiar statements about the link between beauty, work and ethics arose is this era. “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”. “Nothing should be made by man’s labour which is not worth making or which must be made by labour degrading to the maker”. “Truth to materials”, “fi tness to purpose”. And so on. In this part’s exploration of these questions, Gudeman is concerned about how contradictions between self-interest and community are tied to economy. He points to how in capitalist economic theory, beauty tends to refer to the end result of production; whereas in family- or community-based economies, the process of workmanship more often evokes expressions about beauty. Gudeman is concerned 16 Stephanie Bunn with “everyday labour” in parts of Latin America, and argues that no mere economic term can reveal the care, variability and creativity in workmanship of such small communities. It is precisely these intangible aspects of work that he wishes to address: the concern with effort, time, skill and patience. A beautiful garden is marked by tending and weeding; a net may be made simply for the desire to do so; enjoyment can lie in invention for developing effi cient techniques. Thus he proposes that we might look to the practices of the handworker for insights to a more community-focussed economic theory. T’ai Smith is concerned with how taken-for-granted, calculable qualities in design have been wedded to American entrepreneurial logic since the Industrial Revolution (Chapter 23). She contrasts this quantifi able approach with the more qualitative writing of Annie Albers, ex-Bauhaus weaver, who came to the United States following WW2. Albers’s philosophy of design is bound up with tactile sensibility and physical activity, resisting the cycle of consumption, fashion and built-in obsolescence. Knowing her work, one is left, says Smith, “with feeling the impossibility of an experience of beauty that resides outside a direct interface with materials”. Ian Ewart (Chapter 24) further develops Gudeman’s concerns with everyday labour, proposing that for engineers, the main goal is to make something that works, so that the act of production itself is beautiful. This applies equally whether one is re-engineering an old rail locomotive or designing a machine to travel in space. Here, the beauty lies in the effort and the knowledgeable behaviour – the “doing things right and doing them well” – in the process. Finally, Wendy Gunn tries to formulate how anthropological knowledge might inform design, discussing her innovative practice that aims to rebuild the division between designer and consumer through new experiments in design anthropology (Chapter 25). Most notably, she is concerned with conversations between users and designers. For Gunn, anthropology has something to offer design, and her work looks in detail at successful collaborations between designers and communities, so as to be able to re-implement and reincorporate the outcomes into new design forms.

Beauty and synthesis: doing beauty together The fi nal part of this book expands upon beauty generated through working together and through caring about this. Tomasello argues that one aspect of our unique humanity is the way we accumulate and build upon our stock of knowledge through working together, through teaching and learning through generations, and through regeneration, and this is clearly manifest in human creative practices (2009). At an intimate level, people are always together through our shared histories, our life in communities and our intersubjectivity. There are profound social and economic outcomes to working together which ultimately produce both complex cultural practices and technological innovations. We create beauty through this work, which, as Hallam and Ingold suggest, is also a continuous act of cultural improvisation, learning as we live life with others (2007), or as Lave (2011) and Anthropology and beauty: introduction 17 Coy (1989) suggest, achieved through involvement with a community of practice, and, as Trevarthen and Malloch show, through listening and response there is a creative, shared and transformative aspect to cooperative learning (Chapter 8). Working creatively as a team, relying on others to complement and build up experience, as Greenhalgh and Potter discuss, can also feel good (Chapters 13 and 16, respectively). Olivia Harris describes how Andean people often placed more value on work done together than artefacts that developed as outcome, because for them it was work, rather than things, which could be exchanged and the sociality was tantamount (2007). This institution of cooperative labour distinguishes Andean communities from other groups in the region and her companions felt sorry for communities who did not know how to operate thus. Such a collective approach to human work and creativity contrasts with the European and American notion of the artist as individual. We actively encourage student artists to ‘express themselves’, claim authorship of their work and write personal statements. This would have been anathema, for example, to Yolngu aboriginal bark painters (Morphy 1989). Yolngu ‘art’ (although Morphy says they may not call it ‘art’) is not evaluated in the terms Europeans or Americans use for art. For Yolngu, the creativity in such paintings is evidenced in Ancestral Power, manifest in the paintings’ dots and cross hatching, which are reproduced in each new painting. This power is lost if the painter decides to put their individual expression into the work, as opposed to reproducing the hatching and thus regen- erating Ancestral Power. In this part, Elizabeth Ewart expresses a similar divergence from the artist as individual among Amazonian Panará people (Chapter 26). Here, too, beauty is more often used with reference to the collective process of working together than for objects that are the result of such work. To be beautiful is thus a moral as much as an aesthetic attribute. This relates to moral-bodily qualities of energy and sociability which are manifest in working together collectively. There is likewise no notion of original invention attached to the end product, since things are continually repurposed and remade. It is as if, for Panará people, the beauty emerges through a condensation, or synthesis, of aesthetic and moral qualities refl ecting modes of behaviour and making processes. Lind similarly describes the ‘evanescence’ of beautiful Paama sand drawings from Vanuatu, which are made and then immediately wiped away. Again, what matters here is the doing, and through the doing, the calling up and aligning of the people and places attached to the drawings. Crucially, Lind shows that the drawings are not a social recipe, nor blueprint for social grouping. Rather, it is the improvised action of making drawings that, as Ingold and Hallam describe (2007), renews the connections between people and place. Further, since people’s ancestors literally came out of the ground in local Paama views, their creativity and the beauty in the work are synthesized as a manifestation of the place. The sharing of sand drawings only with other clan members likewise refl ects this. Kyrgyz textile art, discussed by Bunn (Chapter 28), is also produced through collective work, although this can have either positive or negative connotations, depending on social and economic obligations of indebtedness. The Kyrgyz 18 Stephanie Bunn aesthetic also extends the possible range of connectedness and synthesis between and beyond communities, to their ancestral kin, animals and other signifi cant aspects of the non-human environment, which hinge around the importance of balance in Kyrgyz belief and culture. This provides a visual onomatopoeia of the similar, parallel to that which Küchler describes (Chapter 2), where multiple aspects of what is meaningful are synthesized in cultural forms, so that the patterns are immediately affective. The fi nal chapter, by Ingold, emphasizes these themes (Chapter 29). He too proposes that beauty lies as much in growth and emergence, as “through the things to which they fi nally give rise”. Ingold’s concern also lies with attention, in how we perceive the world, and in the immediacy of that experience, before it is judged. Finally, along with other authors in this part, he proposes that there is a unity, or synthesis, of affective experiences in creativity. In conclusion, the relationship between beauty and anthropology can be seen through the multiple perspectives that diverse cultural and disciplinary understandings reveal. Aesthetics is just one aspect of how we experience beauty; it extends beyond just one kind of sensory experience, and it can be learned. We cannot separate things which are made and experienced as beautiful from the generative processes and practices of their making and creation, and this includes the contemplative experience of beauty. Even if appreciation of artefacts is immediate, making beautiful things requires work, and the making of this work can provide a kind of moral compass which is bodily experienced through skill, learning, engagement and attention. Beauty is thus embedded in our humanity and our environment, our relationship with it and what we make of it, and it is as affectively powerful, and joyful, to our minds and our memories as our hands and our bodies.

Notes 1 See discussion between theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed and Ian McEwan, Guardian 2013. 2 I am indebted to PhD student Adil Iqbal, who ﬁ rst drew my attention to this statement by Merleau-Ponty. 3 I am indebted to PhD student Arran Calvert for drawing my attention to this contrast. 4 Although Ingold is, in his own terms, “against space” (2011).

References Arendt, H. 1958 The human condition . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Arkani-Hamed, N. 2013 What is the common ground between art and science? The Guard- ian , 17.11.13, 16. Barad, K. 2007 Meeting the universe halfway. Durhman, NC: Duke University Press. Bateson, G. 1972 Steps to an ecology of mind . St. Albans: Paladin. Bateson, G. 1995 Style, grace, and information in primitive art. In A. Forge (ed) Primitive art and society , 235–255. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bergson, H. 1934 La pensée et le mouvant . Paris: F. Alcan. Bergson, H. 2004 (1912) trans N. Paul and W. Scott Palmer Matter and memory. New York: Zone Books. Anthropology and beauty: introduction 19 Blacking, J. (ed) 1977 The anthropology of the body . London: Academic Press. Bunn, S.J. 1998–9 The importance of materials. Journal of Museum Ethnography, 11, 1999, 15–28. Bunn, S.J. 2016 Who designs Scottish Vernacular baskets. Journal of Design History (Spe- cial Issue), 29(1), 24–42. Cairns, S. and Jacobs, J. 2014 Buildings must die: A perverse view of architecture . Cam- bridge, MA: MIT Press. Chemero, A. 2013 Radical embodied science. Review of General Psychology , 17(2), 145–150. Coy, M.W. (ed) 1989 Apprenticeship: From theory to method and back again . New York: SUNY Press. Dewey, J. 1980 (1934) Art as experience . New York: Perigee Publishers (Berkeley). Downey G. 2010 ‘Practice without theory’: a neuroanthropological perspective on embodied learning. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16(s1): S22–S40. Evans-Pritchard, E. 1951 Kinship and marriage among the nuer . Oxford: Clarendon. Flusser, W. 1999 The shape of things . London: Reaktion Books. Gablik, S. 1995 Conversations before the end of time . London: Thames and Hudson. Gell, A. 1988 Technology and enchantment. Anthropology Today , 4(2), 6–9. Gell, A. 1992 The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. In J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds) Anthropology, art and aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gell, A. 1999 ed. E. Hirsch. The art of anthropology: Essays and diagrammes. London: Athlone Press. Gerdes, P. 1999 Geometry from Africa: Mathematical and educational explorations . The Mathematical Association of America. Gerdes, P. 2007 Drawings from Angola: Living mathematics . Milton Keynes: Lightening Source. Gibson, J. 1968 The senses considered as perceptual systems . London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Gowland, G. 2016 Thinking through materials. In T. Marchand (ed) Craftwork as problem solving . Farnham: Ashgate. Hallam, E. and Ingold, T. (eds) 2007 Creativity and cultural improvisation . London: Routledge. Harris, O. 2007 What makes people work? In R. Astuti, J.P. Parry and C. Stafford (eds) Questions of anthropology . London and New York: Berg. Heidegger, M. 1962 (1927) trans J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Being and time . New York: Harper & Row. Howes, D. (ed) 1991 The varieties of sensory experience . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hsu, E. (ed) 2008 Ethnos: Special edition on the senses , 73, 4. Ingold, T. 2000 The perception of the environment . London: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2011 Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. London: Routledge. Jackson, M. 1996 Things as they are . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. James, W. and Mills, D. (eds) 2005 The qualities of time: Anthropological approaches . Oxford: Berg. Kant, I. 1951 (1790) trans J.H. Bernard. Critique of judgement. New York: Hafner. Kant, I. 1981 (1763) trans J. Goldthwaite. Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime . Berkeley: University of California Press. 20 Stephanie Bunn Keller, C. and Keller, J.D. 1993 Thinking and acting with Iron. In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (eds) Understanding practice . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Langer, S. 1953 Feeling and form . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Lave, J. 2011 Apprenticeship in critical ethnographic practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lave, J. 2015 Lecture given at the University of St Andrews . Lethaby, W.R. 1912 Architecture: An introduction to the history and theory of the art of building . London: Williams & Norgate. Marchand, T. 2010. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute special issue on knowledge . Marchand, T. 2016 Craftwork as problem solving: Ethnographic studies of design and making . London: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962 The phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Mimica, J. 1988 Intimations of inﬁ nity: The cultural meanings of the iqwaye counting and number systems . Oxford: Berg. Morphy, H. 1989 From dull to brilliant: The aesthetics of spiritual power among the Yolngu. Man , 24(1), 21–40. Munn, N.D. 1986 The fame of Gawa . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Munn, N.D. 1992 The cultural anthropology of time: A critical essay. The Annual Review of Anthropology , 21, 93–123. Palsson, G. 1994 Enskilment at sea. Man (N.S.), 29, 901–927. Polanyi, M. 1967 The tacit dimension . London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Potter, C. 2008 Senses of motion, senses of self. In E. Hsu (ed) Ethnos: Special edition on the senses , 73(4), 444–465. Pye, D. 1968 The nature and the art of workmanship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Russell, B. 1919 (2014) Mysticism and logic: And other essays . Los Angeles: Peruse Press. Sennett, R. 2008 The craftsman . London: Penguin. Sennett, R. 2016 http://bambuser.com/v/6206410 Sigaut, F. 1993 Learning, teaching and apprenticeship. New Literary History , 24, 105–114. Stoller, P. 1989 The taste of ethnographic things. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Strathern, M. 1990 Artefacts of history: Events and the interpretation of images. In J. Siikala (ed) Culture and history in the Paciﬁ c. Helsinki: Finnish Anthropological Society. Taylor, E. 1996 William James, on consciousness beyond the margin . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Thompson, E.P. 1991 Work-discipline and industrial capitalism. In E.P. Thompson (ed) Customs in common . London: Penguin. Tomasello, M. 2009 Why we cooperate . Cambridge, MS: MIT Press. Turner, V. 1970 The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual . Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni- versity Press. Venkatesan, S. 2010 Learning to weave, weaving to learn: What? Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Special Issue on Knowledge), 158–175. Wilson, P. 1988 The domestication of the human species. Yale: Yale University Press. Part I Beauty and pattern

2 The problem with beauty An anthropological perspective

Susanne Küchler

The question of beauty tends to be responded to with examples drawn from the world of the concrete – a face, a stretch of landscape, an artefact or a building – but also from the world of abstract mathematics. The intuitive nature of our response to things of beauty has allowed neuroscientists to raise the question of whether the brain has a system that is responsive to beauty in the abstract, and to query the extent to which the experience of beauty is bound to knowledge.1 This move in science to build a model for, and to claim understanding of, a domain the humanities have long considered to be their own – the study of beauty and judgements provoked by its manifestation – is of particular interest to anthropology, whose method of classifi cation and comparison is one it shares with science. The models anthropology builds, however, are also informed by the inherently subjective method of observation of the particular unfolding of actions and events, and it is this unique combination of generalized and particularized dimensions at the core of the social anthropological method that has placed the study of the form taken by beauty squarely in the centre of anthropological theory, while also making it the focus of debates over the use of the comparative method in anthropology. From Pitt-River’s evolutionary ethnology and Alfred Cort Haddon’s study of the life-histories of design in the English tradition, to the American and French tradition of morphological analysis exemplifi ed by Franz Boas and Claude Lévi- Strauss, and the integrative efforts of Gregory Bateson, infl uenced by both the American and the English approaches, anthropology has, in the spirit of the comparative method, long contributed to our understandings of the difference made by ideas of beauty to society and culture.2 The comparative frame of analysis, which aimed to expose a referent of an aspired form not in a depicted reality, but in a formalized world that exists in the mind alone, came to a sudden halt with the disciplinary framing of the study of such forms as the anthropological study of art, accompanied by a move away from the study of the systemic properties of language of which the assemblage of motivic forms was seen to be a manifestation, to the study of communication within which images served as metaphors. This move, from systemic relations between forms to meanings and values understandable in context alone, was part of a wider shift away from the comparative method that defi ned anthropology for decades – a shift which relegated the study of beauty to the margins of anthropological theory. 24 Susanne Küchler No further contribution to the study of beauty was to emerge from anthropology until the recuperation of earlier approaches by the late Alfred Gell and more recently by Carlo Severi, both strictly comparative studies that aim to understand the nature of imagines agentes or ‘stylized’ images that abduct attention with an immediacy that cancels out interpretations of referential meaning.3 Drawing on these studies and tracing the tradition of thought they invoke, this chapter will argue that images recognized as manifesting beauty have their referent not in an external, independently verifi able reality known through experience, but in their own internally held relation to a prototype, the pre-hermeneutic and yet action-based identity of which will enable us to locate beauty in the nature of being human, both generically and subjectively, freeing anthropology to engage productively with science once again.

Formalization, memory and mathematical imagination As anthropologists educated in the era of hostility towards comparativism, much of our interest in beauty tends to lie in the idea that the diversity of its articulation shows up the social nature of the ideas and actions that inform its manifestations.4 In fact, compositions of all kinds, from architectural structures through to music and dance, manifest this socialness in non-random, cohering and formalized relations of proportion and multiplication that are intuitively recognized and responded to. During the heyday of revolt against comparativism, when anthropology turned away from the formal analysis of compositions, amplifying instead the metaphoric qualities of images as the content of acts of communication, interest in the patterns and the processes by which they are formed, later referred to by the neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese as ‘the relational nature of action’, fell almost completely into abeyance.5 Manuscripts demonstrating formal analysis and an acute interest in pattern as a vehicle of information processing, rather than as content, were only published again after the path-breaking work on Art and Agency by Alfred Gell had reasserted the active role played by cohering formal properties in relating persons to one another.6 Today neuroscience can tell us that the properties and processes underpinning formalization and pattern formation support not just the capacity for humour and consciousness, but also a sense of self that is recognized by those that are bound to us. 7 While we know that the patterns created by neurons in the brain and in the material world created by us mirror each other and make possible predictable and thus stable human relations that allow for a biographical perspective, extending both into the past and the future, we do not yet fully understand how patterns are discriminated, bringing about not just positive but also negative reactions with equal consistency and durability.8 Distinct styles of music, for example, can stand in for one another in one and the same context. However, when musical forms are selected on the basis of their coherence, their synergic and yet diffi cult to unpack cooperation with one another, style assumes a ‘psychological saliency’9 that subtly informs empathetic and inter- subjective understanding of modalities of personhood, the recognition of which Problem with beauty: anthropological perspective 25 binds people together more fi rmly and lastingly than even a shared language. This psychological saliency of style, resonant of patterns of constancy and variation within and between its manifold manifestations, is arguably acutely important in the identifi cation of and response to beauty, and it is only by turning to the question of its formalization that anthropology can return to a productive inquiry into its nature and the difference it makes to culture and society. Anthropology has long argued for the socialness of pattern. That patterns work in distinct modalities informed by ideas fundamental to the working of different ‘types’ of society has famously been advanced in a classic article by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss that approached the question of why the phenomenon of split representation, involving the characteristic splitting of an image so that two halves face one another, can be traced across both Asian and American art.10 By tracing the splitting of an image to the actions informing the process of the creation of this pattern via the translation of an image from three-dimensional into two-dimensional form, Lévi-Strauss was able to draw a parallel with the characteristic collapsing of the concept of person with a socially effective offi ce in ways symptomatic of hierarchical societies in which men compete over structurally and genealogically conferred status that outlasts the individual person. Split representation and competition over partly divine, partly achieved status were also practised among the Marquesas Islanders of Polynesia at the time of contact, although here it involved the inverse translation of an image from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional surface, made apparent in the pattern refl ections depicted on the front of a fi gure across its back. 11 Marquesan fi gures, in fact, are wrapped in composite and modular motivic images that were cut, pasted and transformed through geometric translation, rotation or refl ection in a manner appropriate to two-dimensional surfaces. 12 Formalized ideas of relation are shown to underpin both action and action representation in these case studies, which show pattern to be a key factor in the durability of systems of hierarchy in which status competition is endemic and identity is perpetually threatened both from within and beyond the social world. In acknowledgement of the epistemic nature and formative capability of pattern, the anthropologist Carlo Severi has argued for the need to reappraise the formal properties of images as manifestations of the workings of mnemonic systems that are of acute importance in societies in which knowledge of political offi ce that transcends human lifespan is not stored in ways that make its access and verifi cation independent of remembering.13 With their dependence on archives of memory, the defi ning factor of such societies is that the incantations of the patterns they live by are subject to shifting passions, subjective interests and intentions, and that they are informed by strategic, future-directed thinking rather than thinking directed towards verifi cation or understanding of the past.14 Severi shows in his work on the ‘chimera principle’ that the comparative study of mnemonic systems was long prevented in anthropology because the apparent representational quality of images led anthropologists down the path of interpretation when they should have searched for the ways these images serve as devices for incantation and as vehicles of transmission. By exposing the formalization supporting the workings 26 Susanne Küchler of mnemonic images, Severi continues the unfi nished work on the nature and properties of Mnemosyne undertaken by the early twentieth century art historian Aby Warburg. 15 The relation between image and word, standing in for remembering and imagination, at work in Severi’s approach to formalization takes us towards a comparative approach to pattern, as it seeks to account for the imagination at work in language which Warburg’s work famously showed to have a ‘Nachleben ’ that is constitutive of transmission. To get at the imagination that is at work in language and pattern, we need to turn to the work of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin and his ideas on translation. For Benjamin, translation thrives on the intuitive and imaginative grasping of mimetic relations within and between things, and is practised most acutely when thought is unshackled from memory, in contexts that Benjamin identifi ed as symptomatic to childhood and modernity.16 Ignoring the conventional understanding of translation as supporting communication between languages and between worlds of things, Benjamin’s concern with translation was directed to recover a ‘language of things’ by exposing acts of translation within language and within things, which happen when memory is detached from experience. Benjamin shows how by disrupting the temporal schema underlying the notion of remembering, translation folds time back on itself by making all articulations equally present.17 Most important for our understanding of the nature of imagination driving the formalization supportive of mnemonic systems is his argument that translation is not in fact simply a linguistic matter alone but requires a ‘magical’ synthesis or ‘participation’ that merges the subject of translation with its object of refl ection, so that ‘we fi nd ourselves refl ected in things we know [as much as] things recognized themselves in their knowledge of other things’.18 The use of pattern instead of content to elicit mnemonic transmission is thus, according to Benjamin, a refl ection of the subject’s capacity to recognize the similar as language’s material refl ection of itself. It is on the basis of the ‘similar’ in the world (Merkwelt ), concretized in geometric and mathematical forms, that the mind can be seen to look both back to the past and forward to the future, enabling the opening of ‘the window of the monad’, in the words of the art historian Horst Bre- dekamp who refl ected on the enduring signifi cance of Gottfried Leibniz’s thesis on the ‘theatre of nature and art’.19 Leibniz, according to Bredekamp, saw the knitted garter worn by men in the seventeenth century as the conscious manifestation of mathematical patterns that link interior thought to material and social worlds, like an onomatopoetic word whose sound pattern is a concept made material and thus socially effi cacious. The mathematician and philosopher Alain Badiou has taken forward these ideas about the vehicular capacity of formalization in pattern.20 Badiou starts his analysis seemingly at the opposite end – asking not how the similarity that constitutes pattern is recursively tied to a prototypical form, but how prototypical forms themselves give rise to new patterns precisely through the process of comparison incurred by a prototype’s casts-offs of self-similar patterns. Badiou’s idea that the mathematical nature of formalization both enables recognition of the similar and also the imagination of the new should be of profound interest to anthropologists Problem with beauty: anthropological perspective 27 and neuroscientists intent on understanding the difference the work of pattern makes to society. Anthropology has been adept at pointing out that ideas in mathematics are good to think with when projecting an understanding of the nature of being in relation.21 The anthropologist Marcia Ascher has been most comprehensive in her comparative account of how mathematical imaginations are expressive of concepts of relation that are operative in both ritual and everyday situations, enabling us to see how mnemonic systems articulated in patterned images are carried by ideas that exist partly outside of the realm of experience yet are also informed by experience. In anthropology we have a famous example of the workings of mathematical ideas in the making of seemingly unremarkable graphic designs drawn into the sand, twisted into string, plaited into palm fronds or woven into vines described by the early anthropologist A. B. Deacon, who was stationed as missionary in Vanu- atu in the South Pacifi c and conducted fi eldwork there until the 1930s.22 Trained originally in physics, Deacon was able to translate the geometric diagrams that were drawn, plaited and lashed by the islanders into quaternion number systems, showing thereby that patterned artefacts worked as temporal maps of relations of affi nity, and with this documenting the existence of the most complex marriage system known to us, consisting of six classes. His insight that people model biographical relations using material translations between geometry and number system inspired in turn Claude Lévi-Strauss to conceive of the analytical method of studying kinship we still rely upon today.23 From this insight to the acknowledgement that mathematical ideas model the workings of society via seemingly abstract artefacts and associated narratives is a small, but, for an anthropology looking for ways to embrace again the comparative perspective with new tools, radical step.24 We could see the use made of number systems that permit a topological view of the world to be accidental, motivated by the ingenuity of Vanuatuan islanders alone. It so happens, however, that rotational and transformational geometries have been demonstrated across wider Oceania, where social groups are not on the ground, but in the head: multiple, heterogeneous and fl uid, barring ritual moments where their singularity and homogeneity are staged in artefactual assemblages.25 The prevalence of topological imagination in island Oceania is without a doubt supportive of ocean living, as it permits the drawing together of visible and invisible factors informing navigation by allowing temporal relations to be assigned spatial values that are consistent under deformation and that allow an imagination of continuity to exist alongside the multiplicity and heterogeneity of spatial referents. Yet how rotational geometry works when it is made use of in the making of patterns that attract attention for their recursive transformational coherence, and the difference that this elicitation of a canonized graphic imagination makes to society, has not yet been fully understood.26 That we do not yet know much about rotational geometry and its workings in Oceanic arts is the result of our own conceptual bias that assumed pattern to work like drawing in representing a three-dimensional referent in two dimensions. Graphic elements and compositions that do not appear to represent a prototype, the identity of which we can independently verify, are dismissed as abstract and as 28 Susanne Küchler untranslatable into linguistic concepts. Whole categories of artefacts and associated performances, from baskets to mats to music to dances, have as a result been simply ignored in analysis, relegated to the stores of ethnographic museums and to the niche of craft, leaving us bereft of a vital resource to understand the potential workings of a new aesthetics of computer-interaction design that works with texture to create new global and yet local material connectivities and of course removing data of signifi cance to understanding the workings of societies producing such artefacts.27 The solution correcting our assumption is simple and has been in the conceptual tool box of anthropology since the now classic essay by Claude Lévi-Strauss on split representation described earlier. As neatly put by Alfred Gell in his analysis of Marquesan style, patterns in Oceania are the product not of dimensional representations, but of ‘graphic gestures’ that are in turn constitutive of the inter-subjective and thus legitimate understanding brought to effi cacious action, and of a conscious deployment in defl ecting recognition.28 Not recognizing the beauty of such graphic gestures, we realize, may be grounded in complex intentions and unleash equally complex consequences.29

The graphic constitution of continuous multiplicity and the mobilization of alterity: the case of Oceania In a classic essay on visual categories among the Walbiri of Central Australia the American anthropologist Nancy Munn established the systematic use of graphic elements that work as gestures, lacking direct referents in the world as seen, but conjuring up connections between heterogeneous and multi-referential entities.30 Such graphic elements that are eloquently made use of in anything from sand painting and painting on and off the body are circular paths, referencing anything from waterhole, fruit, fi re, yam, tree and so on, to a straight line, and referencing a straight tail, a spear, a tree trunk, a backbone and so on.31 Other graphic elements such as winding path, cave and actor sitting/standing likewise have what Munn calls ‘discontinuous meaning ranges’, that is, they are marking heterogeneous spatial referents whose identity is offered up only in association with neighbouring elements brought into relation through ever-changing combinations that invite to be engaged with as manifold and yet connected sequences of a coherent graphic system rather than as substitution for an entity whose identity is singular and discontinuous. Ethnographic research has shown up the relation between the production of a graphic system that constitutes spatial relations as heterogeneous and yet continuous and the social organization common to Australian Aborigines, whose topological underpinning has allowed objects of beauty to work in the conscious defl ection of recognition and positioning of alterity.32 Further to the west and into the heart of the South Pacifi c, just south of the main island of New Guinea in an island region known as the Massim, a similar graphic system is practised by the Trobriand Islanders.33 Decorating the prow- boards of outrigger canoes that carry valuables and food stuffs between the islands are graphic designs in non-random and yet diffi cult to disentangle combinations which Alfred Gell famously alluded to as formidable weapons in ‘psychological Problem with beauty: anthropological perspective 29 warfare’, causing ‘the overseas Kula partners of the Trobrianders, watching the arrival of the Kula fl otilla from the shore, to take leave of their senses and offer more valuable shells or necklaces to the members of the expedition than they would otherwise be inclined to do’.34 The impression management Gell refers to depends upon the recognition of what is relational about the action conjured up by the graphic gesture of the prow, an understanding of the complex intentions it outlines (the expectation of news, food and valuables and of the need to recip- rocate), and of the position of the canoe in a continuous sequence of journeys (indicating where the canoe would have come from and what it may carry, given the specialization of many of the low-lying archipelagos in the region). Somehow the prow’s graphic design allows a spatio-temporal map to be made overt and conceptually graspable in the absence of a linear map that allows complex relations of exchange to be as securely navigated as the ocean. Unlike the maps we are used to deploying, using Euclidian fi nite geometry that holds for three dimensional linear point confi gurations, these graphic maps are using a different approach as they account for the neighbourhood around discrete points, which then are assembled conceptually into a continuous sequence that offers itself up to narrative accounts rather than visual representation.35 My own research into island Melanesian and eastern Polynesian has brought to the fore that seemingly distinct pattern systems, one articulated in three dimensional and the other in two-dimensional artefacts, both utilize such topological geometry to map space-time by assembling relations around discrete points.36 A brief outline of the way topological geometry is used to similar ends and yet in very different ways will show how the understanding of the work of beauty enables us to understand similarities and differences in social organization whose reach and resilience have surprised generations of anthropologists who expected their work to be not more than salvage of what soon would be a matter of the past. The fi rst pattern system is known under the generic name of malanggan , a ritual system of images that reify relations over land held internally by a number of distinct biographically related social groups on an island north-east of mainland New Guinea. The island has seen a great impact from the annexing of land for use as foreign-owned plantations in the decades leading up to colonial administration in the early nineteenth century. The malanggan fi gures overtly invite interpretation via seemingly representational motivic elements, such as snakes, birds and fi sh whose identity can be independently verifi ed and whose naturalistic fl air coupled with surrealistic enchainment have incited the interest of Western collectors for over a century. Carved from wood for the secondary burial rituals that culminate in the demonstrative gesturing towards future relations over land, malanggan are designed to captivate those who arrive from beyond the horizon in ways strikingly differently and yet with similar ends as outlined earlier for the Kula canoes sailing the Massim in search for exchange partners. Enticing recognition based on encyclopaedic knowledge of a foreign ecology, the carved assemblages of graphic motives are working their magic by trapping the gaze in a futile attempt at recon- structing how they came to be and relate to one another.37 Quite to the contrary to what we would assume, the sale of the ritually used artefacts, once deployed, was 30 Susanne Küchler desired rather than inhibited, with the remains of ritual action taken to the houses of local missionaries to be exchanged for money offered up by captains of passing ships or in latter days by passing tourists and collectors. It is only when looking at collected artefacts as assemblages of graphic elements one realizes that discrete combinations map the points of temporally and spatially connected sequences of exchange in a manner that demands a sense of the continuous nature of combinatorial actions that result in local and temporally specifi c fi gurative articulations. Rather surprisingly, what we fi nd as a cohering principle informing the graphic manifold of malanggan is the inside view of the geometry of the knot to bind all possible combinations together into a coherent and yet invisible whole.38 The three dimensional appearance of the assemblage, typical and distinctive for malanggan art, is a deliberate and yet conceptually inconsequential decision that further seeks to entrap the Western collector keen to see in the fi gures a likeness with what makes this culture human – its capacity to remember the dead with a spectacular display of local lore. Not remembering, however, but in fact systematic forgetting of past assemblages supplants the dynamic of malanggan , which incites local attention for its future-directed mapping of relations and connections that traverse discrete local neighbourhoods. For hidden in full view beneath the surrealistic combinations of expressive motivic elements, islanders used this system to manage the distribution of land and the patterns of its use untrammelled by institutions until the enforced land registration of the late 1980s, which made it unnecessary for relations over land to be mapped via this graphic system. The second pattern system is that of tivaivai , giant piecework that involves the patching of pieces from fragments of pre-dyed cloth into iterated, self-similar and transitively arranged motivic elements.39 Like the motivic elements of the malanggan , the pieced together elements that are replicated across the surface of a tivaivai are seemingly representational. Mostly fl oral in nature, an inkling that the piecework element on the surface of the tivaivai is quite unlike a drawing, in that it is not ‘of’ something that exists separately from the depiction, comes only when we realize that the views depicted are impossible ones to have unless one presses and thus fl attens the fl ower, splitting and reassembling its parts in ways that allow us to see it in the round while laid out on a two-dimensional surface. Rather than working as a drawing or a depiction of something that exists independently, the alternation of hyperrealism, with pollen and stamen embroidered in bewildering detail, and of abstraction, with coloured patches arranged as mirror image of themselves within a single motivic element, points up that what matters is the assemblage itself, that is, the juxtaposition of pieces that are not attached to one another. Assemblage and patching as graphic gestures, constitutive of connectivity and continuity, touch at the core of a sentiment that pervades Cook Islands’ social organization. Nothing can quite convey the sense of disparateness that exists between households populating the tiny islands, where proximity alone would seem to condition people to be pervaded by a sense of relation, as the practice of adoption from beyond the island. So-called ‘feeding children’ are taken into a household by a couple in their later years to raise the children as the spiritual owners and Problem with beauty: anthropological perspective 31 guardians of knowledge that connects the living with those that have come before. Like the occupants of a household and a village living side by side as foreigners on discrete patches of land, women who come together in sewing bees for the stitching of the piecework are rarely related through ties of blood or marriage. And yet, as they sew the patches with the same stitch and pull to create seamless and even planar coverlets, they turn their manifold relations into a coherent whole. The back of the tivaivai is the mirror image of its front, laying open in the continuity and the evenness of the stitch the connections that women have wrought through their actions upon the fabric. The pieced together hexagons or diamond shapes cut out from pre-coloured cloth, like the fl ower petals, leaves or stems cut in precise scaled relation to one another, fi nd their similitude in the patchwork of local spaces marked by cement gravestones that cover every corner of the islands. Hidden inside the graves, wrapped around their inhabitants, are tivaivai that have ended their journey as shrouds made for the dead, having conjoined those that live in their shadow. Viewed from above, the tiny islands of the Cooks are covered in an array of rectangular gravestones covering tiled tombs that in their early years have superstructures like the houses next to which they stand. As inhabitants of the house next to the tomb die or move away to fi nd work in the metropolises of the West, the house is abandoned leaving only the tomb with its tivaivai to mark the position for a new house occupied by those who eventually return to be buried themselves in the islands. To understand the importance assigned to the beauty and correctness of assemblage and the arrest of movement in the face of lived-in worlds that are as separate as they are similar to one another, like the islands on which this living is staged, we need to be mindful of the recent history of the Cooks which had placed its islands into the zenith of forces unleashed by successive endings and irreparable losses. The swift ending of paietua , the great ritual the Cook Islands shared with Tahiti aimed at securing the continuing connection between the dead and the living, in response to the adoption of Christianity, followed by the disappearance of young men aboard ships that frequented the islands during the days of whaling and blackbirding, left Cook Islands women, no strangers to making connections as newcomers to islands through adoption or marriage, to literally put fractured lives back together again. The beauty of the tivaivai lies in its moral connotation of securing continuity and connectivity in the face of the enduring fracturing of resemblance, felt perhaps most strongly by the inhabitants of the Cooks’ many transnational communities that engage in the making and gifting of tivaivai , and its associated performance of dance and music, with a fervour that calls attention to the relational nature of the action that ‘is’ tivaivai . The graphic systems that have been briefl y presented here show a capacity for ‘gesturing’ ideas of how to be in relation with persons and with objects in ways that are constitutive of what we may call the ‘fabric’ of society, that is, of the intuitively shared expectations and responses that take on their most orchestrated and overt form in actions that are future directed. In Oceania where such actions tend to inform the making of artefacts and of ritual, thus gestures come into their own. Understand- ing these natures of gestures, their multiplicity, coherence and potential for alterity, 32 Susanne Küchler enables us to understand how things of beauty work and why they continue to matter in conjuring up how to be in relation.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that it is beauty’s intuitive and yet inter-subjective response which has been the chief reason for the lack of studies of beauty in anthropology. By tracing the nature of the response to the work of pattern in connecting the inner world of the mind to the lived-in world, the paper has argued that anthropology can ﬁ nd a way to engage with beauty ethnographically and comparatively. This is because, subject at once to mathematical imagination and situated formalization, patterns are constituted by a relational nature of action and it is this that enables us to understand why the response to beauty is inter-personal and also why it may occasionally be engaged with lack of attention or even hostility. While our understanding of the role patterns play in human consciousness and emotive response has been advanced signiﬁ cantly by neuroscience over the past decade, anthropology and comparatively situated ethnography can offer an understanding of how the intertwining of intention with imagination in action and action representation, situated at the crossroads of practices that are vital to the resilience of communities, is informing the predictability of response on which empathy relies. Anthropology has a lot to offer to our understanding of how beauty works, what it does and why it matters to the human propensity to intuit how to be in relation with persons and with objects via objects that are made with beauty in mind. The study of beauty therefore may lead the way to the return in anthropological theory towards big questions and big issues, enabling its theories to engage with those developed in the sciences in new and productive ways.

Notes 1 Kawabata and Zeki (2004); Zeki (1999); Zeki et al. (2014). 2 On Pitt-Rivers, see Bateson (1973); Haddon (1911); Hicks and Stevenson (2013). 3 Gell (1993, 1998); Severi (2015). 4 Boivin (2008); Knappett (2005). 5 Gallese (2001:33–4). 6 Campbell (2002); Gell (1998); Küchler (2002); Myers (2002) – all three books emerged from research conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 7 Eagleman (2015). 8 Descola (2013); Latour and Weibel (2002). 9 Gell (1998:163). 10 Lévi-Strauss (1963). 11 Gell (1998:195). 12 Gell (1995). 13 Severi (2015). 14 See Pomian (1999), who argues for a return of the narrowing of the gap between history and memory in the digital age. 15 For an excellent write-up of Warburg’s ideas and his inﬂ uences, see Severi’s ‘Warburg the anthropologist’ in his The Chimera Principle (2015:25–68). See also Coleen Becker (2013) on Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel as methodological paradigm. Problem with beauty: anthropological perspective 33 16 Benjamin (2002). 17 Benjamin (1999); Bracken (2002:327–8). 18 Bracken (1999:327). 19 Bredekamp (2007:21n51). 20 Badiou (2007). 21 Cf. Ascher (1994, 2002a, 2002b); Ascher and Ascher (1981); Biersack (1982); Eglash (1999); Urton (1999). 22 Deacon (1934). 23 Lévi-Strauss (1966:15). 24 Rio (2005). 25 Harrison (2006). 26 Bennardo (2002); Hutchins (1995). 27 Wiberg and Robles (2010). 28 Gell (1998:190–1). 29 Gell (1998:83). 30 Munn (1966). 31 Ibid 938; Myers (2002). 32 Gloczweski (1989); Povinelli (2002). 33 Campbell (2002). 34 Gell (2006:164–5); this paper was originally published in 1992, based on a seminar presentation given in 1985. 35 Bennardo (2002); Hutchins (1995). 36 Küchler (2002); Küchler and Eimke (2009). 37 Gell (1996). 38 Küchler (2003). 39 Küchler and Eimke (2009).

References Ascher, M. 1994. Ethnomathematics: A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas . London: Routledge. ——— 2002a. ‘Reading Khipu: Labels, structure and format’. In J. Quilter and G. Urton (eds.) Narrative Threads , pp. 87–102. Austin: University of Texas Press. ——— 2002b. Mathematics Elsewhere . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ascher, M. and R. Ascher 1981. Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics and Culture . Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press. Badiou, A. 2007. The Concept of the Model: An Introduction to the Materialist Epistemol- ogy of Mathematics (ed. and trans. Z.L. Fraser and T. Tho). Melbourne: Re Press. Bateson, G. 1973. ‘Style, Grace and information in primitive art’. In G. Bateson (ed.) Steps to an Ecology of Mind , pp. 101–25. London: Granada. Becker, C. 2013. ‘Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel as methodological paradigm.’ Journal of Art Historiography , 9:1–25. Benjamin, W. 1999. Selected Writings: Volume Two: 1927–1934 (ed. M.W. Jennings, H. Eiland and G. Smith, trans. R. Livingstone et al.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press. ——— 2002. The Arcades Project (ed. R. Tiedemann, trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaugh- lin). London: Belknap Press. Bennardo, G. 2002. Representing Space in Oceania: Culture in Language and Mind . Can- berra: Australian National University. Biersack, A. 1982. ‘The logic of misplaced concreteness: Paiela body counting and the nature of the primitive mind’. American Anthropologist 84(4):811–29. 34 Susanne Küchler ——— 2010 [1927]. Primitive Art . New York: Dover Books. Boivin, N. 2008. Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Role of Things in Human Thought, Society and Evolution . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bracken, C. 2002. ‘The language of things: Walter Benjamin’s primitive thought’. Semi- otica 138(1):321–49. Bredekamp, H. 2007. Die Fenster der Monade: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Theater der Natur und Kunst . Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Campbell, S. 2002. The Art of Kula . Oxford: Berg. Deacon, A.B. 1934. Malekula: A Vanishing People in the New Hebrides (ed. C.H. Wedge- wood). London: Routledge. Descola, P. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eagleman, D. 2015. The Brain: The Study of You . London: Canongate Books. Eglash, R. 1999. African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design . New York: Rutgers University Press. Gallese, V. 2001. ‘The “shared manifold” hypothesis: From mirror neurons to empathy’. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(5–7):33–50. Gell, A. 1993. Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia . Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— 1995. ‘Closure and multiplication: An essay on Polynesian cosmology and ritual’. In D. De Coppet and A. Itenau (eds.) Cosmos and Society in Oceania, pp. 21–56. Oxford: Berg. ——— 1996. ‘Vogel’s net: Traps as artworks and artworks as traps’. Journal of Material Culture 1(1):15–38. ——— 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— 2006. ‘The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology’. In E. Hirsch (ed.) The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams, pp. 195–86. Oxford: Berg. Gloczweski, B. 1989. ‘A topological approach to Australian cosmology and social organisation’. Mankind 19(3):227–40. Haddon, K. 1911. Cat’s Cradles from Many Lands . London: Longmans, Green & Co. Harrison, S. 2006. Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Confl ict in Melanesia and the West . Oxford: Berghan Books. Hicks, D. and A. Stevenson (eds.) 2013. ‘Characterizing the world archaeology collections of the Pitt-Rivers Museum’. In World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum: A Char- acterization , pp. 1–15. Oxford: Archaeopress. Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition in the Wild . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kawabata, H. and S. Zeki 2004. ‘Neural correlates of beauty’. Journal of Neurophysiology 91:1699–705. Knappett, C. 2005. Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Küchler, S. 2002. Malanggan: Art, Memory and Sacrifi ce . Oxford: Berg. ——— 2003. ‘Imaging the body politic: The knot in Pacifi c imagination’. L’Homme 165:205–33. Küchler, S. and A. Eimke 2009. Tivaivai: The Social Fabric of the Cook Islands . London and Wellington: British Museum and TePapa Press. Latour, B. and P. Weibel 2002. Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Problem with beauty: anthropological perspective 35 Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. ‘Split representation in the art of Asia and America’. In his Struc- tural Anthropology . New York: Basic Books: 245–268. ——— 1966. The Elementary Structures of Kinship . London: Beacon Press. Munn, N. 1966. ‘Visual categories: An approach to the study of representational systems’. American Anthropologist 68(4):936–50. Myers, F. 2002. Painting Culture: The Making of Aboriginal High Art . Amherst: Duke University Press. Pomian, K. 1999. ‘History: From moral science to the computer’. Diogenes 185(47):34–48. Povinelli, E. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rio, K. 2005. ‘Discussions around a sanddrawing: Creations of agency and of society in Melanesia’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(3):401–23. Severi, C. 2015. The Chimera Principle: An Anthropology of Memory and Imagination . Chicago: HAU Books. Urton, G. 1999. The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philoso- phy of Arithmetic . Austin: University of Texas Press. Wiberg, M. and E. Robles 2010. ‘Computational composition: Aesthetics, materials and interaction design’. International Journal of Design 4(2):65–76. Zeki, S. 1999. Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press. Zeki, S., J.P. Romaya, D. Benincasa and M. Atiyah 2014. ‘The experience of mathematical beauty and its neural correlates’. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8(68):1–12. 3 The material labour of artful mathematics1

Elizabeth de Freitas

The mathematical aesthetic According to Rancière (2010), the Western tradition of aesthetics confounds two oppositional concepts of beauty, the fi rst associated with the supposed autonomy of art and the second with collective or common forms of sensibility . Western aesthetics always has this dual nature, where autonomy seems to pull art out of the material world, while the collective affi rms its belonging to our shared material culture. On the one hand, art appears to transcend the making process, while on the other hand, art is a refl ection of our collective taste and material activity. Thus the aesthetic, according to Rancière, operates through the conjunction of two kinds of sense: the pure ‘sense’ of detached appreciation and the common sense of material sensation. This awkward conjunction effects “the distribution of the sensible” across various cultural practices, so that what is deemed perceptible (visible, touchable, audible, odorous) refl ects particular cultural values about artfulness. For Rancière, this is why aesthetics is always political, and why we must examine how aesthetics effects this distribution of the sensible.

The entire question of the ‘politics of aesthetics’ – in other words, of the aesthetic regime of art – turns on this short conjunction. The aesthetic experience is effective inasmuch as it is the experience of that and . (Rancière 2010, 124)

A designation or judgement of beauty often appeals to the ‘pure’ sense of detached appreciation, and thereby eclipses the material labour of artful practices. The very material labour that is involved in artful practices, in producing the beautiful, is denied or dismissed as mere technique or technicity. And yet, as Erin Man- ning says of artfulness, there is always “a rigorous process that consists in pushing technique to its limit, revealing its technicity” (2015, 48). This technicity becomes more than conﬁ ning habit when it is attuned to the force of its own potential, when it evolves into a technicity that unleashes “a becoming that could not have been mapped in advance” (ibid 60). Rather than mystify the creative process, and construct a false binary between art and technique, Manning emphasizes the rigorous process – and perhaps also the compulsive attention to task – that drives an artful practice. Technicity and technique, in this respect, are at the heart of artfulness. The material labour of artful mathematics 37 This issue of technicity takes on a distinctive ﬂ avour in mathematics where the senses have played such a controversial role, and where reasoned ‘eureka’ moments are meant to preside. In A Mathematician’s Lament , Lockhart (2009) argues that mathematics is an “art form” that makes visible what was previously imperceptible:

Now where did this idea of mine come from? How did I know to draw that line? How does a painter know where to put his brush? Inspiration, experience, trial and error, dumb luck. That’s the art of it, creating these beautiful little poems of thought, these sonnets of pure reason. There is something so wonderfully transformational about this art form. The relationship between the triangle and the rectangle was a mystery, and then that one little line made it obvious. I couldn’t see, and then all of a sudden I could. Somehow, I was able to create a profound simple beauty out of nothing, and change myself in the process. Isn’t that what art is all about? (Lockhart 2009, 27)

Mathematics here entails “sonnets of pure reason” and “poems of thought”, both rather elitist ways of evoking the lived experience of artful mathematics. Indeed, these expressions capture the paradox of aesthetics – a lived paradox in which the autonomy and separateness of the aesthetic sense are opposed to the aspiration to live it as a sensibility. This paradox is precisely how the aesthetic fi nds its power – it operates through the dream of an unavailable ideal form that must be made fl esh and possessed as reality. Unscripted acts of free expression – “Somehow, I was able to create a profound simple beauty out of nothing” – are expressed through sensation – “I couldn’t see, and then all of a sudden I could” – so as to capture the autonomy of “pure reason”. It is this paradox that makes the mathematical aesthetic such a powerful political gatekeeper in various contexts. Mathematics is removed from the world through its autonomy, and yet we must learn to live this autonomy through acts of freedom. Advocates for a mathematical aesthetic typically and tacitly draw on this duality, by fi rst claiming that mathematics partakes of the autonomy of the aesthetic and then insisting that one must live this aesthetic as a form of life (if one is to do ‘proper’ mathematics) (Sinclair 2001). The demand that mathematics “should feel like a splash of cool water, and be a beacon of light – it should refresh the spirit and illuminate the mind” (Lockhart 2009, 68), as though it were meant both to awaken and cleanse us, reveals how images of mathematics operate through this aesthetic duality, this conjunction of intellectual purity and sensual refreshment. And yet the purity side tends to infect the sensual side, so that images of mathematical embodiment in the literature tend to be stark and clean, refl ecting a “painful beauty”. We can hear this in Lockhart’s desire to create something that is not of his own creative capacity:

To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion – not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don’t understand what your 38 Elizabeth de Freitas creation is up to; to have a breakthrough idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive , damn it. ( ibid 37–38; emphasis in original)

For Rancière (2004, 2009), this appeal to aesthetics always entails a sensory politics, whereby sense (as sensation) and sense (as meaning) together produce a particular aesthetic regime in which particular sensory experiences are valued. This is critical in the case of mathematics, which is often considered an elite gate-keeping discipline in schools. Of course the specifi c ways in which a mathematical aesthetic is pursued vary, but there is an overarching emphasis on pattern recognition in much of the literature on the mathematic aesthetic. For example, in his attempt to defi ne mathematics as the “classifi cation and study of all possible patterns”, the mathematician W. W. Sawyer (1955, 12) implies that the heuristic value of mathematical beauty stems from mathematicians’ “sensitivity” to pattern, and originates in their belief that “where there is pattern there is signifi cance ” ( ibid 36; emphasis in original). Sawyer goes on to explain the heuristic value of attending to pattern:

If in a mathematical work of any kind we ﬁ nd that a certain striking pattern recurs, it is always suggested that we should investigate why it occurs. It is bound to have some meaning, which we can grasp as an idea rather than as a collection of symbols. ( ibid )

Sawyer’s claims resonate with how the mathematician Poincaré describes the special aesthetic sensibility towards pattern that must be possessed by a mathematician. For Poincaré (1908/1956), the mathematician is not only able to recognize patterns, but is also attuned to look for new regularities and symmetries, and to respond to them through further investigation. We see here how the supposed sensibility of the mathematician perceives the invariant relationship in the chaos of experience. But even if we grant the mathematician his or her tendency to look for pattern, the nature of this looking for pattern is a deeply embodied act, achieved through material habits and sensual interventions, be they diagramming, calculating, gesturing or some other form of doing that entails material practice (de Freitas & Sinclair 2012, 2014). The eye and the other sense organs are crucial in looking for patterns, and yet all too often we fail to appreciate the role of the body in mathematical activity. Not only does this refl ect a cultural bias that ascribes mathematical activity to a disembodied mind – as the fi lm A Beautiful Mind about mathematician John Nash suggests – but it refuses to consider the bodily labour entailed in mathematics. In other words, the mathematical aesthetic always makes the mistake of overemphasizing the autonomy of the mathematical object and the corresponding capacity of the mathematician to perceive this invariant autonomy. Any attempt to rethink the mathematical aesthetic in materialist terms has to reckon with this common inclination to overemphasize the purity of its onto-logical The material labour of artful mathematics 39 source. Russell’s (1919/2014) famous quotation is frequently cited as an example of how this sensibility is expressed: “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show” (ibid 60). A cold and austere beauty is one that is pure and autonomous, erasing all traces of its labour and the hands that made it. Moreover, the stone cold sculpture shows no mobility, and the matter is hard and infl exible. And yet, like the quotation from Russell, a reference to the aesthetic dimension of mathematics is frequently offered as a counter to the usual emphasis on purely epistemological concerns about truth and certainty. The mathematician Wolfgang Krull (1930/1987) characterizes mathematics by contrasting epistemic concerns about truth and logical consistency with aesthetic engagement:

Mathematicians are not concerned merely with ﬁ nding and proving theorems, they also want to arrange and assemble the theorems so that they appear not only correct but evident and compelling. Such a goal, I feel, is aesthetic rather than epistemological. ( ibid 49)

The aesthetic here guides the direction of an investigation, and may motivate the search for new proofs of theorems that were already correctly established but lacking in aesthetic appeal (Lakatos, 1976). Thus the distinction between functionality and autonomy (the false dualism between use-value and artfulness) informs this judgement, whereby a mathematical proof becomes aesthetic when it seems to serve no purpose. In other words, once we have a proof, what is the use of another? In not being useful, it becomes aesthetic. Lockhart’s (2009) lament for the loss of mathematics-as-art reveals the same dubious assumption, as he distinguishes the “mundane ‘useful’ aspects [that] would follow naturally as a trivial by-product” from the more central aesthetic activity of real mathematics. Once again, we see how the technicity of artfulness is denied. To this end, Rota (1997) describes how references to mathematical beauty more often mask the sensual, embodied and contingent actions of mathematical activity, in a self-serving act that mystiﬁ es the individual’s intellectual capacity:

Mathematical beauty is the expression mathematicians have invented in order to obliquely admit the phenomenon of enlightenment while avoiding acknowledgement of the fuzziness of this phenomenon. . . . This copout is one step in a cherished activity of mathematicians, that of building a perfect world immune to the messiness of the ordinary world, a world where what we think should be true turns out to be true, a world that is free from the disappointments, the ambiguities, the failures of that other world in which we live. ( ibid 132–133; emphasis in original). 40 Elizabeth de Freitas According to Rota, references to mathematical beauty are a way of sustaining an untouchable or unreachable realm. In such cases, the proposal of a mathematical aesthetic introduces for the individual a mystical capacity to perceive something that others cannot perceive. This underscores the highly contentious issue of access to mathematical knowledge, and the way that different kinds of bodies are entrained and acculturated to perceive in particular ways. Mathematical bodies are indeed entrained to produce particular kinds of mathematics.

Logic and surprise Hacking argues that the connection between logic and mathematics “simply did not exist” until the logicist movement of the nineteenth century (advocated by Frege, above all), which aimed to reduce mathematics to logic, and replaced Aristotelian logic with what was termed “symbolic logic” (2014, 137). Hacking’s claim breaks with the conventional belief that ancient Greek mathematics was historically signifi cant for its revolutionary use of proof and demonstration. This false image of ancient Greek mathematics as the ultimate actualization of logical, rational thought entails an equally pernicious image of mathematics itself as pure, immaterial, disembodied reason. Latour (2008), in agreement with Hacking regarding the mythologizing of Greek proof, emphasizes Plato’s role in forging an image of mathematics as the ultimate face of logical deduction, in which argument was seen to be apodictic, rather than rhetorical and sophistic. Both Hacking and Latour draw on the work of Netz (1999), who shows how the ancient revolution in mathematics was a far more applied or practical affair, grounded in material conditions and experiments, rather than appeals to logic. Thus there is a historical contingency of the association of mathematics with logic, and a need to reconsider the political reasons for such association, and the possibility of an alternative, perhaps unrecognizable, mathematics. There were indeed two kinds of mathematics in ancient Greece, the high-street mathematics of elite membership in Euclid’s academy, where apodictic proof was prized, and the far more populous and infl uential mathematics of the trade schools (Asper 2009; Netz 2009). As mathematics became institutionalized and further axiomatized in the nineteenth century, mathematics became more and more associated with logic and a particular style of proof. Hacking says of mathematics: “we could have got on without proof as the gold standard, indeed without proof at all, but then mathematics would have been a very different kind of activity, far more akin to the empirical sciences than as it is practiced today” (2014, 142). As Hacking indicates, there is a material, semiotic side to mathematics that is often overlooked because of this logicist heritage and the associated axiomatic image of mathematics. Hacking suggests that logic will always play a pivotal role, and its claim to autonomy will remain, insofar as mathematics aims to be a “self-authenticating method” of inquiry. However, the empirical and pragmatic dimension of mathematics always means that there is an artful materiality to doing mathematics. This tension between logic and the empirical is crucial for understanding the particular kind of artful technicity at work in mathematics. Mathematical invention The material labour of artful mathematics 41 always seems to involve this dual investment in the logical and the material, and frequently appeals to the notion of surprise . Dreyfus and Eisenberg claim surprise as one of the important aesthetic qualities of a mathematical problem. Their list of such qualities includes: “its level of prerequisite knowledge, its clarity, its simplicity, its length, its conciseness, its structure, its power, its cleverness, and whether it contains elements of surprise” (1986, 3). The list consists of the usual intellectual ideals, and surprise is treated as a psychological state exhibited after the mathematics is completed. All the usual characteristics of the mathematical aesthetic – clarity, brevity, elegance, conciseness – lack signifi cant impact if a feeling of surprise is not also engendered:

The conclusion of such a powerful argument tends to contain an element of surprise for anyone who did not know the argument before . . . [M]athemati- cians . . . like the unexpected . . . The factors contributing to the aesthetic appeal of a solution . . . almost follow naturally from each other: clarity – simplicity – brevity – conciseness – structure – power – cleverness – surprise. ( ibid 6)

Surprise, however, is not simply a psychological state that ensues from activity, but rather inheres in the material conditions of the mathematical problem. There is surprise in both the positing of a mathematical problem, in thereby revealing a new space to work and play, and in the unusual arrangement of constraints that furnish unexpected solutions. Dreyfus and Eisenberg make the mistake of treating the problem as simply that which lacks solution, rather than being a generative force that produces the new. Problems are not simply cloaked solutions – as though their problematic nature was a secondary quality. They treat surprise as an aesthetic judgement , rather than studying the corporeal activity involved in such problematic events. Stanley argues that surprise has to be seen as “an event of emergence” and that those who are surprised must be “prepared to be surprised”, in that surprise occurs only when there is a discrepancy between expectations and experiences (2002, 15). The word surprise has French and Latin roots in surprendre (to over-take) and prehendere (to grasp or take, as in prehensile ). In the sixteenth century, surprise came to mean ‘a feeling caused by something unexpected’, thus combining the affective ‘feeling’ with the epistemic anticipation that the future is known. A surprise disrupts the certainty of the present moment, and affi rms the unexpected nature of the future. Surprises tap into the potentiality of the present, grasping the future (prehensile) while being overtaken by it. As Stanley suggests, surprise is a deeply relational event, emergent through the interaction of different bodies: “[S]urprises are event-full moments or happenings” (ibid ). As events, surprises are not owned by the subject that undergoes them; events or happenings recombine heterogeneous materialities and redistribute the sensible. During an experience of surprise, an individual assemblage is literally ‘over-taken’ by new material assemblages. A surprise is an event whereby new relations of speed and rest reconfi gure the bodily arrangements of the collective. Bodies mix and intermingle during 42 Elizabeth de Freitas surprises in ways that bring forth immanent tensions and new surface effects, new ways of sharing new kinds of sensation. The contours of the sensible are literally reconfi gured through surprises – you must close your eyes fi rst, in order to open them afresh. Thus, surprise is a crucial facet of the mathematical aesthetic because it mobilizes new kinds of material labour and new ways of sensing. In the next section, I focus on the emergence of fractal geometry in the twentieth century, in order to show how the ‘intellectual surprises’, so often attributed to mathematical insight, entail reconfi guring the perceptual capacities and material labour of the human body.

Sensation and embodied mathematics The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot infamously declared “to see is to believe” when discussing his extensive use of computer imaging while inventing a new fractal geometry (1982). This new emphasis on visualization was, according to Mandelbrot (1992), a shift in mathematical practice where the visual had become demoted in relation to symbolic logic. The eye, according to Mandelbrot, was crucial to mathematical invention because of its potentiality or indeterminacy: “the eye is not specialized, it is a universal tool” (Mandelbrot cited in Samuel 2012, 28). Just as Mandelbrot came to see islands and landscapes in the speckled printer outputs, his colleague the French mathematician Adrien Douady, overwhelmed by the pages and pages of “computer-generated clouds of dots”, came to see fractal mating rabbits, which he drew onto the dot-matrix print-outs (see Figure 3.1 ). Drawing the rabbits onto the dot-matrix print-outs furnished new links between ideas, and literally brought forth a new assemblage of meaning and matter. As Samuel (2012) notes, Douady emphasized the act of drawing in this process: “And just at that moment, quite suddenly, as soon as we had made the drawing, we understood what was going on” (Douady 2005, quoted in Samuel 2012, 45). Otto E. Rössler – who was working in this same area – argued that the material act of drawing was part of a feedback loop “directly inﬂ uencing the properties of the mathematical objects under study” (ibid 49). Rössler is known for his work on the “Rössler attractor” in 1975, which was an emergent geometric shape representing long-term predictions within a chaotic system (Rössler 1977). Part of his method of investigating chaotic systems involved drawing two spiral-like tracks on two sheets of paper, and then manipulating the two sheets of paper in 3-space so that he might grasp how they were related. He would then draw the folded paper with the distorted spiral-like shapes, to conjure new forms of interaction (Figure 3.2). He then created a series of sketches that further stretched and distorted the spirals so that one can see how they moved across the two curved paper surfaces. Rössler states that the process of handling the paper was crucial in his thinking, but that other bodily engagements were also entailed, including an audible ear “pop” and a “nose perception” by which he felt a string winding and winding The material labour of artful mathematics 43

Figure 3.1 Douady mating rabbits around his nose as he worked the spiral on the page (Samuel 2012). One might be inclined to simply dismiss such a statement as merely metaphoric, as though the reference to a body experience (string, nose, ear pop) stood in for the disembodied act of cognition, as though he was using a rhetorical device to help communicate the feeling of engagement. After all, there was no real string! And yet the encounter with paper and pen, the manual activity of folding and twisting, combined with the visual activity of glancing and squinting, entailed material actions that actually brought forth the new mathematical concepts. Rössler seems to be describing how sense (as meaning) and sense (as sensation) are melded together, emphasizing the power of material engagements with media. In the following quote he draws attention to the haptic nature of vision, how looking is 44 Elizabeth de Freitas

Figure 3.2 Rössler attractor

“completely tactile” and how the speciﬁ city of the medium makes a difference – “materiality does matter”:

Real pictures are always erotic pictures as well. Topology or geometry is like looking from all sides as though in outer space. That is all completely tactile. Without touching and without kneading it is impossible to imagine. Material- ity does matter: Essentially mathematics is nothing more than pottery. (Rössler 2007) The material labour of artful mathematics 45 In these accounts of mathematical invention, we see an emphasis on the material encounters entailed in diagramming and doing mathematics. We also learn that mathematics is a highly embodied engagement with various kinds of media, and that new mathematical concepts emerge when the senses operate in unexpected ways. In the development of fractal geometry, Mandelbrot’s unspecialized eye became re-assembled with the drawing hand and the new digital media in ways that broke with current regimes of sense-making. The case of fractal geometry highlights how these mathematicians were part of a historical reconfi guring of the ontology of the senses, quite literally partaking in a cultural development or change whereby new capacities for the body were unfolding as the eye-hand- computer assemblage produced new mathematics. One fi nds a similar materialist reading of inventive diagrams in the work of the philosopher of mathematics Gilles Châtelet (2000), who argues that a diagram is an experiment at the threshold between the actual and the virtual. Châtelet discusses the mathematical diagrams of Oresme, Cauchy and Grassmann as material interventions, cutting up space, folding surfaces and multiplying dimensions. The diagram is not simply a representation, or an illustration or code – there is no algorithm or rule for determining it. He examines how diagrams function as part of inventive mathematical practice, tracking how they operate less as representation and more as generative devices. For Châtelet, diagrams are allusive and elastic, and never exhausted – they act as interference or intervention in that they are potentially creative events, conjuring and shaping the sensible in sensible matter. The diagram invites an erasure, a redrawing, a “refi guring” of corporeal relations (Knoespel 2000, xvi). Châtelet suggests that innovative diagramming techniques have historically pushed through confi ning axiomatics and state-sanctioned practices to allow for new forms of doing mathematics and science. The diagram is a potential that is never entirely actualized, since it stands somehow outside of representation: “Diagrams are more than depictions or pictures or metaphors, more than representations of existing knowledge; they are kinematic capturing devices, mechanisms for direct sampling that cut up space and allude to new dimensions and new structures” (de Freitas & Sinclair 2012, 462). According to Châtelet, diagrams are not extracted from sensible matter through an act of reduction or subtraction because diagrams are a kind of capture technology, a machine for grasping, trapping, contracting, folding and twisting matter. All of the mathematicians discussed earlier emphasize the corporeality and material physicality of mathematics as a creative activity and a media event . The term media event refers to the often overlooked material media involved at such moments, including paper, dot-matrix printers, blackboards and multi-touch iPads. I follow Vogl and others in materialist media studies in using the term media event to emphasize the event-nature of these material encounters:

These are events in a particular, double sense: the events are communicated through media, but the very act of communication simultaneously communicates the speciﬁ c event-character of media themselves. Media make things readable, audible, visible, perceptible, but in doing so they also have a 46 Elizabeth de Freitas tendency to erase themselves and their constitutive sensory function, making themselves imperceptible and “anesthetic.” (2007, 16)

Media events play a signifi cant role in redefi ning what sensory perception entails – indeed perception is a media event whereby the senses are created anew (ibid ). The philosopher Michel Serres argues that mathematical concepts, more so than other kinds of concepts, seem to capture the body’s fl uidity and “indefi nite capacity to transform” its material relations (2011, 94). Mathematical events of creation, he argues, depend on “infi nitesimal intuitions” or “petites perceptions” when consciousness submits to the impersonal, pre-individual mobility of material entanglements. As a philosopher of mathematics, he unpacks mathematical invention for how the material confi guration in that moment of invention – body, culture, technology – demands a new way of sensing and making sense. Of course mathematical inventions do not occur in one moment, but over long periods of time and as a result of sustained activity by a community of practice. But this doesn’t curtail studying the material habits and the material circumstances of those people involved for how these habits and circumstances factored into the emergence of new mathematics. Serres describes the event of Leibniz trapped on a boat for days, at the mouth of the Thames, detained by contrary winds, his body “thrown into a thousand shifting inclinations”; poring over his notes as the boat rolled, he formulated the details of the infi nitesimal calculus. Or did he? Such an experience at sea was not, of course, a causal condition for the invention of the calculus, and it would be foolish to suggest so. The anecdote, however, like all stories that relate bodily events to the creation of enduring ideas, is compelling because of the way it undermines the necessity of invention. By attending to the body at such moments, and its changing relationship with other moving bodies, we come face to face with the contingency of mathematics. Serres discusses other mathematical inventions, grounding each in the material entanglement of bodies:

Do you want to invent mathematics? Consult your body, the devil take Plato; the sublime philosopher claimed that the ignorant slave, as staged in the Meno, had forgotten that he knew geometry, while the theory of the Forms hid from its author and two thousand years of servile mimicry this glaring truth: all bodies know geometry and each is ignorant of it. Blind to the body’s riches, we don’t even see what those [who] do see them are doing: creators owe their discoveries to an exquisite proprioceptivity. ( ibid 146)

We hear this “exquisite proprioceptivity” in the comments of Mandelbrot, Douady and Rössler. When Mandelbrot speaks of the unspecialized eye, he is underlining the adaptability of the eye, and how vision becomes vision as a response to the environment; when Rössler speaks of his “ear pop” and his “nose perception”, he directs our attention to the ways that his whole body was engaged in the diagramming experiment. The material labour of artful mathematics 47 In attending to the potentiality of the body, one begins to imagine how the body could be differently confi gured. Instead of speaking about the affordances of any particular sense (vision, hearing, touching), one can study the way that sensation operates chaotically below the level of perception. Here I draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (2003/1981, 1993/1988, 1994/1968) who directs our attention to the same “infi nitesimal intuitions” or “petites perceptions” that operate at micro scales beyond the limits of perception. Rather than treat perception as the synthesis of distinct micro-perceptions, he suggests that these “infi nitesimal intuitions” traverse and indeed sustain a fi eld of sensation that continuously binds differently modulated bodies together (de Freitas & Ferrara 2015). Thus perception is an act of contraction or expansion of the various fl ows of sensation across this fi eld. Perception occurs as a media event occurring across the material fabric that binds all bodies in a collective. This continuous recalibration or modulation operates beneath the apparent judgements entailed in perception. Indeed, perception is less about synthesis of distinct sensations, and more about an investment in a collective resonance of intensity – a resonance effected across a collective, rather than by an individual – so as to form folds in the tissue of shared experience. This approach treats learning mathematics as a rhythmic folding of sensations , a modulating intensity that traverses the tactile surface of our material entanglements. In a similar fashion, Roth (2015) speaks of the “kinetic melodies” that might describe the various eddies and fl ows of thought circulating and sustaining (and exceeding) the activity of mathematical graphing. This approach applies to entanglements between bodies, concepts and signs: As Smith puts it, “Beneath concepts, one always fi nds rhythmic blocks of complexes of space-time” (2003, xix). Rhythm is likewise the pre-perception of a diagram: “it is rhythm itself that would become the Figure, that would constitute the Figure” (Deleuze 2003/1981, 60). If sensation is a modulating wave of intensity, then the individual human body is a media event of resonance and convergence, with rough fractal borders. This is a body with potentially different perceptual capabilities or different calibrations of sensation, depending on the encounters. Thus the event of perception must be studied less as a process of receiving and synthesizing information and more as a relational contraction of energy and affect.

What kind of mathematics can a body do? It is through the elastic potentiality of the body, its responsive stretching in relation to other bodies, that the human body begins to habituate to particular kinds of actions. In this regard, Serres suggests that there is a “material mimicry” that needs to be better studied in artful practices (2011). This is a mimicry that copies and repeats the same , but must also, at some point, reach a pitch or intensity that afﬁ rms all of repetition . This is not to undermine the importance of conceptual understanding, but to begin to grasp the tiny muscular actions that are entailed in every kind of learning encounter (the tapping on a touch-screen, for instance) and how each act is also a contraction of every other action that has come before. Serres describes this aspect of learning as unconscious and sometimes trance-like: 48 Elizabeth de Freitas “The teaching body dances its knowledge softly so that the audience will, like it, go into a trance and so that, through virtual mimicry of its gestures, a few ideas will enter their heads via the muscles and bones, which though seated and immobile are solicited, pulled towards the beginnings of movement, perhaps even by the written work’s little jig” (ibid 96). Again, this is not to dismiss the importance of understanding as we have come to conceive of it in mathematics education, but to study the way that learning also entails a material mimicry “without understanding” in that one engages rather than recognizes that which one learns. Serres isn’t advocating for rote memorization, but for an appreciation of how learning occurs, in part, without our conscious awareness. Thus there is “nothing in knowledge which has not been ﬁ rst in the entire body, whose gestural metamorphoses, mobile postures, very evolution imitate all that surrounds it” (ibid 70). This is a body that is enmeshed in or mixed with other bodies, continuously altering the assemblages it forms with other bodies. And it is precisely because of this ongoing change in the mix that there is a potentiality in the body that outstretches current epistemologies, and demands that we rethink the contours of the body:

How do we deﬁ ne a body given over to so many poses and signs: when and under which form is it itself ? How do we get beyond so many differences according to the person: when and under which form is it us? These multiple postures prevent us from saying. My body and our species don’t exist so much in concrete reality as ‘in potency’ or virtuality. ( ibid 52)

In this chapter, I’ve focused on the materiality of mathematics, exploring how artful and creative mathematics is a provisional media event. Analyzing perception for how it operates through virtuality and speculative investment allows us to imagine an unscripted future mathematics unrecognizable to us today. I don’t deny that assemblages (bodies) of all kinds have orientations and particular ‘I cans’ that are related to the particular confi guration of bodies in relation. As Sheets- Johnstone suggests, ‘‘creaturely forms [have] certain potentialities of movement and not others in virtue of the bodies they are, and in turn [have] certain conceptual potentialities and not others’’ (2012, 20). But as Mandelbrot declared as he ven- tured into new digital media, “the eye is unspecialized”. The body’s potentialities are not exhaustively determined by the current bodily arrangement, and new kinds of material encounters will entail new bodily arrangements. As Serres (2011) argues, mathematics itself seems to offer strong evidence for this claim. The mathematicians Lucian Boi, Benoit Mandelbrot, Adrien Douady and Otto Rössler all partook in a radical reconfi guring of mathematics and, simultaneously, a reconfi guring of their own sensory engagement with the material world.

Note 1 This chapter elaborates on a previously published article “Material encounters and media events: What kind of mathematics can a body do?” in the journal Educational Studies in Mathematics (de Freitas 2015) and draws on my work with Nathalie Sinclair in Math- ematics and the body: Material entanglements in the classroom (2014). The material labour of artful mathematics 49 References Asper, M. (2009). The two cultures of mathematics in Ancient Greece. In E. Robson & J. Stedhall (eds.) Oxford handbook for the history of mathematics. Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press. 107–132. Châtelet, G. (2000/1993). Figuring space: Philosophy, mathematics and physics (Trans. R. Shore & M. Zagha). Dordrecht: Kluwer. de Freitas, E. (2015). Material encounters and media events: What kind of mathematics can a body do? Educational Studies in Mathematics , 91(2), 185–202. de Freitas, E. & Ferrara, F. (2015). Movement, memory, and mathematics: Henri Bergson and the ontology of learning. Studies in Philosophy of Education , 33(6), 565–585. de Freitas, E. & Sinclair, N. (2012). Diagram, gesture, agency: Theorizing embodiment in the mathematics classroom. Educational Studies in Mathematics , 80(1–2), 133–152. de Freitas, E. & Sinclair, N. (2013). New materialist ontologies in mathematics education: The body in/of mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics , 83(3), 453–470. de Freitas, E. & Sinclair, N. (2014). Mathematics and the body: Material entanglements in the classroom . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deleuze, G. (1993/1988). The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (Trans. T. Conley). New York: Continuum Press. Deleuze, G. (1994/1968). Difference and repetition (Trans. P. Patton). New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G. (2003/1981). Francis Bacon: Logic of sensation (Trans. D. Smith). Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Douady, A. (2005). Interview with Nina Samuel. In N. Samuel (ed.) (2012) The islands of Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals, chaos and the materiality of thinking. New Haven, CT: Bard Graduate Center, Yale University Press. Dreyfus, T. & Eisenberg, T. (1986). On the aesthetics of mathematical thought. For the Learning of Mathematics , 6(1), 2–10. Hacking, I. (2014). Why is there a philosophy of mathematics at all? New York: Cambridge University Press. Knoespel, K. (2000). Introduction. In G. Châtelet (eds.) (2000/1993) Figuring space: Phi- losophy, mathematics and physics . Dordrecht: Kluwer. ix–xxiii Krull, W. (1930/1987). The aesthetic viewpoint in mathematics. The Mathematical Intel- ligencer , 9(1), 48–52. Lakatos, I. (1976). Proofs and refutations . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Latour, B. (2008). The Netz-works of Greek deductions. Social Studies of Science, 38, 441–459. Lockhart, P. (2009). A mathematician’s lament: How school cheats us out of our most fascinating and imaginative art form . New York: Bellevue Literary Press. Mandelbrot, B. (1982). The fractal geometry of nature . New York: Freeman. Mandelbrot, B. (1992). Fractals and the rebirth of experimental mathematics. In H. Jürgens, H.-O. Pietgen & D. Saupe (eds.) Fractals for the classroom: Part One: Introduction to fractals and chaos . New York: Springer. 1–16. Manning, E. (2015). Artfulness. In R. Grusin (ed.) The nonhuman turn . Minnesota: Univer- sity of Minnesota Press. 45–80 Netz, R. (1999). The shaping of deduction in Greek mathematics: A study in cognitive history . New York: Cambridge University Press. Netz, R. (2009). Ludic proof: Greek mathematics and the Alexandrian aesthetic . New York: Cambridge University Press. Poincaré, H. (1908/1956). Mathematical creation. In J. Newman (ed.) The world of mathematics . New York: Simon and Schuster. Vol. 4, 2041–2050. 50 Elizabeth de Freitas Rancière, J. (2004). The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible (Trans. G. Rockhill). New York: Continuum Press. Rancière, J. (2009). Contemporary art and the politics of aesthetics. In B. Hinderliter, W. Kaizen & V. Maimon (eds.) Communities of sense: Rethinking aesthetics and politics . Durham: Duke University Press. 31–50. Rancière, J. (2010). Dissensus: On politics and aesthetics (Trans. & Ed. S. Corcoran). London: Continuum Press. Rössler, O. (1977). Chaos is abstract kinetics: Two prototypes. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology , 39, 275–289. Rössler, O. (2007). Interview with Nina Samuel. In N. Samuel (ed.) (2012) The islands of Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals, chaos and the materiality of thinking. New Haven, CT: Bard Graduate Center, Yale University Press. Rota, G. (1997). Indiscrete thoughts . Boston: Birkhauser. Roth, W.-M. (2015). Excess of graphical thinking: Movement, mathematics and ﬂ ow. For the Learning of Mathematics , 35(1), 2–7. Russell, B. (1919/2014). Mysticism and logic: And other essays. Los Angeles: Peruse Press. 50. Samuel, N. (2012). The islands of Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals, chaos and the materiality of thinking . New Haven, CT: Bard Graduate Center, Yale University Press. Sawyer, W.W. (1955). Prelude to mathematics . London: Penguin. Serres, M. (2011). Variations on the body (Trans. R. Burks). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2012). Movement and mirror neurons: A challenging and choice conversation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences , 11(3), 385–401. Sinclair, N. (2001). The aesthetic is relevant. For the Learning of Mathematics , 21 (1), 25–33. Smith, D.W. (2003). Translator’s preface. In G. Deleuze (ed.) Francis Bacon: The logic of sensation . New York: Continuum Press. vii–ix. Stanley, D. (2002). A response to Nunokawa’s article: Surprises in mathematics lessons. For the Learning of Mathematics , 22(1), 15–16. Vogl, J. (2007). Becoming-media: Galileo’s telescope (B. Hanrahan, Ed. & Trans.). Grey Room , 29, 14–25. Part II Beauty as grace

4 With beauty all around me, I walk

Jill D’Alessandro

In beauty (happily) I walk. With beauty before me, I walk. With beauty behind me, I walk. With beauty below me, I walk. With beauty above me, I walk. With beauty all around me, I walk. It is fi nished (again) in beauty. It is fi nished in beauty. It is fi nished in beauty. It is fi nished in beauty. From ‘The Navajo Night Chant’ (Matthews 1994, 275)

For Navajo weavers, the concept of hózhó describes a dynamic of order, beauty, balance, and harmony that exists in a cosmos that is constantly in motion. This concept guides the Navajo way of life within a cultural framework that stresses individual autonomy as a means of creating a universal harmony within one’s community. This chapter will examine hózhó as it is realized through the art of weaving, in particular through analysis of the classic Navajo blanket as a physical manifestation of this belief. Hózhó is a central theme in Navajo studies and has been addressed by numerous scholars, anthropologists, and ethnographers of Navajo culture, religion, and art including Navajo writers1 whose writings I will reference throughout the course of this chapter, concluding with an examination of south-western Native American art’s and ideologies’ inﬂ uence on and assimilation by the New York School of artists in the mid-twentieth century.

Introduction to “Classic-period” Navajo weaving Since its appearance on the market in the early 1800s, the Classic-period Navajo blanket has been coveted throughout the American south-west by both natives and non-natives. Today private and museum collections preserve works from this period and recognize them as a pinnacle of achievement in the canon of American south-western weaving. Descended from Athabascan-speaking groups, the Navajo 54 Jill D’Alessandro migrated into the south-west from western Canada. They called themselves Diné, “the People.”2 While the exact timeline for their arrival into the south-west and their migratory route are still disputed, historical records clearly indicate that by the mid-1600s they had settled in the area known today as Four Corners (consisting of the south-western corner of Colorado, north-western corner of New Mexico, northeastern corner of Arizona, and south-eastern corner of Utah), where they lived as semi-nomadic pastoralists. Scholars generally concur that Navajo women learned to weave from Pueblo peoples in the late seventeenth century, when Pueblo peoples, seeking refuge from the Spanish occupation, came to reside with the Navajo. In less than a century, the Navajo emerged as the pre-eminent weavers of the American south-west. In 1788, after escorting a Navajo leader, Antonio El Pinto, home from imprisonment in Santa Fe, Spaniard Vincente Troncoso observed, “They make the best and fi nest serapes that are known, blankets, wraps, cotton cloths, coarse cloth, sashes and other [things] for their dress and for sale” (Wheat 1976, 425). The Classic period in Navajo weaving is generally considered to extend from 1800 to 1864,3 a time when many battles were fought among Native Americans, Spanish Americans, Mexicans, and European Americans for control of the western territories. This period of turmoil and transition in the American south-west exposed the Navajo to new materials, new perspectives, and new markets that resulted in one of the most fertile periods in their emergent textiles tradition (Hed- lund 2013). By the early 1800s, Navajo weavers departed from plain-and twill- weave techniques favored by the Pueblo and began to weave using an almost exclusively tapestry technique, working with handspun yarns of natural white and dark brown from the wool of churro sheep, which were introduced by the Spanish in 1598. These natural hues were supplemented with yarns dyed dark blue using indigo obtained from Spanish settlers, and later with red threads raveled from bayeta cloth dyed with the natural insect dyes lac or cochineal, imported by way of the Santa Fe Trail. Together these components created a distinct Navajo palette of off-white, dark brown, indigo, and crimson. During the Classic period, two textile traditions – the “chief blanket” and the “ serape-style” blanket – advanced as the foremost vehicles for the artistry and innovation of Navajo weavers. Following the Pueblo model, chief blankets were woven on a horizontal plane, wider than long, and were worn wrapped around the body (Figure 4.1). The title “chief blanket” is, in fact, a misnomer, since the Navajo had no chiefs. The term derives from the status of leaders in other Native American groups, most notably Plains Indians such as Ute and Sioux, who wore this important trade object, skillfully woven of the fi nest materials, as a symbol of power and infl uence (see Figure 4.1 ). While the earliest chief blankets are revered by experts and collectors for their purity of design and exceptional quality, the Classic-period serape is celebrated for its vitality and artistic innovation. Outside of the Euro-American collectors, both the chief blanket and serape were primarily used as wearing blankets and were worn by both men and women. Woven with a vertical orientation, the serape and the poncho serape are the only two textiles in the Navajo repertoire without obvious Pueblo origins. Instead their roots are in Spanish and Mexican traditions with stylistic evidence referencing the Saltillo serape , named for the city of Saltillo, With beauty all around me, I walk 55

Figure 4.1 Wearing blanket (fi rst-phase chief blanket, Ute style), ca. 1840. United States, south-west, Navajo wool; weft-faced plain weave, diagonal-join tapestry weave, eccentric weft; 131.4 × 176.5 cm (51 3/4 × 69 1/2 in.) Gift of the Thomas W. Weisel Family Collection, 2016.14.18 in the Mexican state of Coahuila, a center for both serape weaving and trade. Hence, the Spanish word for blanket, serape , is used when referring to weavings of this type. During the nineteenth century, the Saltillo serape , distinguished by its intricate mosaic pattern and virtuosic tapestry technique, became one of the most recognizable elements of male dress in Mexico. By the 1830s, Saltillo serapes reached New Mexico through trade networks, and their usual design – a large central medallion of concentric diamonds set against a complex patterned fi eld – had a transformative effect on Navajo weaving. Over the next fi fty years, Navajo weavers, as well as the neighboring Hispanic Rio Grande weavers, began to explore a range of geometric motifs that referenced the serrated edges of the Saltillo diamond. From the relatively congested Saltillo serape , they extracted pure geometric forms, isolating and enlarging them according to traditional Navajo principles of symmetry, balance, and purity of design.4 Navajo weavers believe that intrinsic power, imparted during the weaving process, remains in the blanket even after the life of the weaver. Today contemporary Navajo weavers study Classic-period blankets as sources of inspiration and empowerment. “By (seeing these blankets and touching them), you extend your ability to do your weaving. (The experience) becomes a part of you. It becomes a part of your thought, your dreams, your vision, your prayers, and meditation. It’s a process of relearning. We’re relearning the old ways” (Hedlund 1996, 65).

Of Spider Woman and Changing Woman Oh our Mother the Earth, oh our Father the Sky, Your children are we, and with tired backs We bring you the gifts that you love. 56 Jill D’Alessandro Then weave for us a garment of brightness; May the warp be the white light of morning, May the weft be the red light of evening, May the fringes be the falling rain, May the border be the standing rainbow. Thus weave for us a garment of brightness That we may walk ﬁ ttingly where birds sing, That we may walk ﬁ ttingly where grass is green, Oh our Mother the Earth, oh our Father the Sky! ‘Song of the Sky Loom’ (Tewa) (Spinden 1933, 94)

The spiritual importance of weaving as a divine gift is essential to understanding both the weaver’s practice and the role weaving plays in Navajo society. Not only did Navajo weavers learn their art from the Pueblo, but they also incorporated elements of Tewa Pueblos’ cosmology into their own worldview, as seen in the similarities between the Tewa “Song of the Sky Loom” and the Navajo legend of Spider Woman. In the Navajo belief, weaving began in a lower world when Spider Man and Spider Woman introduced the Holy People (ancestors) to the loom and the patterns it makes. According to the Navajo creation myth, Spider Woman taught Changing Woman how to weave and how to take proper care of her tools and the materials for weaving. Spider Woman instructed that the tools were sacred and should never be taken for granted. She taught Changing Woman the songs and prayers to accompany every aspect of weaving. Changing Woman stayed with Spider Woman for four days and learned everything she could from her. When it was time to return home, Changing Woman asked for cotton that was dyed yellow, black, and white from coal, plants, blossoms, and sandstone. Her dyes stuck because she sang the correct song and prayers (Fishler 1953, 105; Witherspoon 1987, 17; Patterson-Rudolph 1997, 100).

Spider Woman instructed the Navajo women how to weave on a loom, which Spider Man told them how to make. The cross poles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sunrays, the healds (heddles) of rock crystal and sheet lightning. The batten was a sun halo, white shell made the comb. There were four spindles: one a stick of zigzag lightning with a whorl of cannel coal; one a stick of ﬂ ash lightning with a whorl of turquoise; a third had a stick of sheet lightning with a whorl of abalone; a rain streamer formed the stick of the fourth spindle, and its whorl was white shell. (Reichard 1968, cover page)

The role of Changing Woman as the conduit for sharing the knowledge of weaving with the Navajo is signiﬁ cant. In the Navajo pantheon, Changing Woman, daughter of First Man and First Woman, is one of the most important of the Holy People, or ancestors, referred to in Navajo as Diyin Dine’é . As Farella explains, Changing Woman is the embodiment of goodness (Farella 1984, 63). She is “described as a child of ‘Sa’ah naaghái, Bik’eh hózhó; she can be spoken of as Earth’s child; she can call on the Sky, her father, and she is also the child of the mountain’’ (ibid 1984, With beauty all around me, I walk 57 56). Witherspoon further explains, “Before Changing Woman left the Navajo to themselves, she gave them the Blessingway ceremony. (The rite of the Blessingway, a two day song ceremony, offers guidance in every aspect of life and is concerned with beauty, harmony, peace and well being, excluding all evil.) She also gave them the seeds of food plants and the livestock they would need for food (sheep) and travel (horses), and she gave them the fabrics and jewels they would need for clothing, for adornment, and for offerings. She gave them everything they would need to sustain their lives. She is their mother, she created them and she sustains them” (Witherspoon 1987, 17). Jennifer Denetdale, Navajo scholar and historian, emphasizes the centrality of Changing Woman in Navajo philosophy today: “Nava- jos understand and talk about women’s roles within a framework that values the characteristics of female deities such as Changing Woman. Navajo women who are honored and revered share Changing Woman’s attributes” (Denetdale 2007, 179). It is noteworthy that Spider Woman taught weaving to Changing Woman, their benevolent mother, the personiﬁ cation of ‘Sa’ah naaghái, Bik’eh hózhó, who then passed the knowledge as a way of life and a means of sustenance.5

‘Sa’ah naaghái, Bik’eh hózhó : in old age walking on the trail of beauty ‘Sa’ah naaghái, Bik’eh hózhó is a central tenet in Navajo philosophy and is vital in understanding the society’s worldview; however, relaying this complex concept in the English language is problematic. A literal translation by Father Bernard Haile describes ‘Sa’ah naaghái as long life and Bik’eh hózhó as happiness; another literal translation reads “in old age walking the trail of beauty” (Witherspoon 1977, 18). Navajo/Diné poet Rex Lee Jim expands the translation: ‘‘May I walk, being the omnipresent beauty created by the one that moves beyond old. Now we all know that we are born into this world and we live for sometime and then we die” (Jim 2000, 232). Gladys Reichard offers a broader, philosophic explanation: “Considerations of the nature of the universe, the world, and man, and the nature of time and space, creation, growth, motion, order, control, and the life cycle includes all these and other Navajo concepts are expressed in terms quite impossible to translate into English. The synthesis of all the beliefs detailed above and of those concerning the attitudes and experiences of man is expressed ‘Sa’ah naaghéi , usually followed by Bik’e hózhó” (Reichard 1963, 45). At the core of this principle is the dynamic of beauty, balance, and harmony called hózhó , perhaps the most signiﬁ cant belief in Navajo cosmology. It is this concept of hózhó that guides a Navajo weaver at her loom.

Balance and harmony in Navajo weaving Navajo believe that forces outside of a weaver guide her in the creation of her designs. This begins with the legend of Spider Woman, who, when teaching about design fi elds, also taught weavers to create symmetry and balance in their work. As master weaver and elder Lorieta Benally explains, “Not only did Spider people 58 Jill D’Alessandro teach the Navajos to weave in ancient time, they provided help and protection and were often instrumental in restoring the harmony so often threatened by Ma’ii, the coyote” (Willink and Zolbrod 1996, 78). Through the tranquil state of weaving, the Navajo weaver creates harmony. Contemporary weaver and artist D. Y. Begay describes her own personal experiences: “When I am weaving, I am in a complete compulsive mindset; I am in my element or in my own private world at the loom. Each row, each color and each design is an intimate creation as I build each row. A positive open mind and attitude provokes a positive environment and beauty within oneself. I weave almost every day. I create a quite meditative time to converse with the Holy People to ask for good weaving skills and blessings. I also acknowledge the Holy People upon completing a tapestry” (Begay 2015, personal and e-mail correspondence). Begay’s practice refl ects the Navajo perception of an individual’s role in society. Noted ethnographer Gladys Reichard offers a clear analysis of Navajo understanding of individuality in her essay ‘Distinctive Features of Navaho Religion’: “[The Navajo group] has accepted the concept of harmony, of securing and preserving a calm frictionless state of mind, and has gone from man outward to the ends of the universe, connecting each feature of body, mind, earth, sky, wind, and celestial phenomenon with one another in a constantly and closely interlocking system . . . At the same time it has decreed that man does not, shall not, become subservient to his social group and lose his individuality in it” (Reichard 1945, 202). She continues, “The Navaho individual is the reason for the coordination of universal phenomena; he therefore directs his ritual from the individual outward. There can be no tribal well-being unless each member enjoys it” (ibid 1945, 206). Again, poet Rex Lee Jim illuminates the Diné perspective: “Our responsible actions bring beauty into the world. This beauty comes about by following the laws set forth by ‘Sa’ah naaghái. Fortunately how ‘Sa’ah naaghái is formulated is within our complete control. By exercising this responsibility we design our own lives. We bring beauty into this world. The beauty comes from within us. Hózhóón, then, is our inner self singing and dancing in the physical world” (Jim 2000, 235). This ideology permeates Navajo weaving traditions, in which the signature of the weaver is made discernible in her choices of color and composition even as she works within the parameters of traditional forms. Gary Witherspoon further explains a Navajo artist’s unique position in attaining hózhó: “A Navajo experiences beauty most poignantly in creating it and in expressing it, not in observing it or preserving it. The experience of beauty is dynamic; it fl ows to one and from one; it is found not in things, but in relationships among things. Beauty is not to be preserved but to be continually renewed in oneself and expressed in one’s daily life and activities. To contribute to and be a part of this universal hózhó is both man’s special blessing and his ultimate destiny” (Witherspoon 1977, 178). Hózhó, then, is neither perfect nor static symmetry. It is a dynamic symmetry that combines both delicacy and boldness, creating contrasts and tensions of elements that are ultimately harmonized by the overall scheme (Hatcher 1974, 213). D. Y. Begay explains, “According to Navajo culture we believe that a weaving should not be perfect. This is a taboo that I practice. A weaving With beauty all around me, I walk 59 cannot be perfect because human beings are not supposed to be flawless” (Begay 2015, personal and e-mail correspondence). Hózhó is therefore a holistic concept that realizes that with good there is bad and that perfection does not exist in nature. Thus a Navajo weaver strives for balance in their work yet avoids symmetry. This artistic principle is illustrated in the Classic-period serape seen in Figure 4.2. The bold pattern of the serape is created by an overall network of stacked diamond motifs executed in crisp natural white against a vibrant red ground. The central fi eld contains a large diamond lozenge fl anked on either side with half diamonds. Two large Xs can be read in the negative spaces. The pattern mirrors itself at the midpoint of the weaving. Weaver Barbara Teller Ornelas describes her own reaction to reaching the midpoint: “The most beautiful part of the weaving is in the middle of it. Everything has a rhythm, and you go with your heartbeat while weaving. Once you fi nd your rhythm, you don’t want to stop. Then you have found your balance, your hózhó . It’s like being in the middle of a really great book; you don’t want to stop until it’s fi nished” (Notarnicola 2001, 86). It is at this midpoint that the Navajo weaver adeptly asserts an overall harmony to the weaving’s woven plane by mirroring the pattern in reverse.6 Yet, the static symmetry of this serape ’s network pattern

Figure 4.2 Serape , ca. 1850. Navajo wool; weft-faced plain weave, interlocked tapestry weave, eccentric curved weft; 231.1 × 157.5 cm (91 × 62 in.) Gift of the Thomas W. Weisel Family Collection, 2016.14.20 60 Jill D’Alessandro is broken by the insertion of dark indigo blue dashes that punctuate the ﬁ eld. While the arrangement of the dashes follows a pattern, the weaver has made small alterations to the length and placement of the dashes from one unit to the next producing a rhythmic effect (see Hatcher 1974, 211). The weaving is balanced but not perfectly symmetrical. The overall composition does not have a single focal point but rather disperses the viewer’s attention over the entire ﬁ eld in much the same way as an Abstract Expressionist painting, as will be discussed later in this chapter. According to Willink and Zolbrod, “A good weaver can observe hózhó by arranging small differences into a large pattern” (1996, 30). The poncho serape ( Plate 1 ) illustrates this aptitude. The work of an expert weaver, it is designed in bands showcasing numerous patterns. The control of this varied array of design motifs is noteworthy as is the consistent handling throughout the weaving. However, the weaver intentionally breaks away from the symmetry by placing two dark blue bands together in the top row of zigzag motifs. This disrupts the repetitive pattern of alternating white and dark blue bands. In what would be an almost symmetrical layout, this small alteration adds a dynamism that is not

Plate 1 Poncho serape, ca. 1830. Navajo wool; weft-faced plain weave, interlocked tapestry weave; 198.1 × 129.5 cm (78 × 51 in.) Gift of the Thomas W. Weisel Family Collection, 2016.14.16 With beauty all around me, I walk 61 immediately recognized. In the words of Harry Walters, Navajo elder and former director of Diné College Museum, “the illusion of symmetry prevails” (Willink and Zolbrod 1996, 26). Witherspoon explains, “In Navajo culture, movement, repetition, balance and harmony, and controlled or restrained emotion and force are dominant themes” (Witherspoon 1977, 169). The serape shown in Figure 4.3 exempliﬁ es this idea of contained energy. The vibrancy of the weaving is achieved by the bold color choices and strong graphics. The weaving is organized into separate bands of zigzags and stripes yet maintains the traditional central diamond motif.7 The weaver has executed the zigzag bands in four different ways, which can be interpreted as linking the patterns to Navajo legend, as it is believed by some elders that the zigzags represent lightning. According to the Navajo emergence story, the sun, Jóhpnaa’éí, gives his sons, the warrior twins, Monster Slayer and Child Born of Water, four different kinds of lightning arrows to slay the mon- sters that have been threatening all the people on earth. Using a limited palette of red, deep indigo blue, and natural white, these graphic geometric forms are arresting in their visual impact. However, by employing a traditional framework of banded patterns and a centric diamond, the weaver has been able to maintain

Figure 4.3 Serape, ca. 1860. Navajo wool; weft-faced plain weave, dovetail, interlocked, and vertical-join tapestry weave, eccentric curved weft; 137.2 × 83.8 cm (54 × 33 in.) Gift of the Thomas W. Weisel Family Collection, 2014.16.19 62 Jill D’Alessandro harmony and balance in a design ﬁ eld that is charged with energy. It is as if she has harnessed the energy of lightning. Harry Walters explains: “Navajo weaving is directly related to nature – dawn, day, twilight, and night, mountains, trees, animals, and insects; earth, air, water. All of these are holy elements, and they are all present in Navajo weaving. These elements have power, and when we depict them in a weaving, they have the same power” (Walters 1996, 29).

Infl uences on the Modern art world It is this energy and mysticism that drew the Modern art world, and particularly the New York School in the 1930s and 1940s, to study Native American art. A pivotal moment in appreciation of Native American art was triggered by the landmark exhibition Indian Art of the United States that took place at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, in 1941. Organized under the direction of René d’Harnoncourt of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior, and Frederic H. Douglas of the Denver Art Museum, the exhibition showcased more than one thousand objects on three fl oors of galleries and included an entire gallery dedicated to Classic-period blankets. It was hailed as one of the most provocative achievements in the early life of the already powerful MoMA. In his review of the exhibition, New York Times critic Edward Alden Jewell wrote, “the Indian show at the Museum of Modern Art [turned] strengthening persuasion into triumphant conviction. There the American Indian is brought before us at his full stature . . . What results is an event of the very highest importance” (1941, V9). Indeed, the exhibition had a profound effect on the avant-garde artists in New York and particularly on the Abstract Expressionists. Jackson Pollock, a frequent visitor to the installation, became fascinated by Navajo sand paintings, which he credited for breaking him from the traditional canvas format to begin working on the fl oor. Witherspoon expounds on the similarities between Pollock and Navajo artists in his Language and Art in the Navajo Universe: “Like Navajo artists, Pollock tried to express forcefulness, energy, and motion without the loss of order, balance and control. Like nineteenth-century Navajo blankets and Navajo sandpaintings, Pollock’s expression of movement seems to extend beyond the edges of the canvas. Pollock’s work, and thus Navajo art as well, was germinal to the development of . . . colour fi eld painting” (1977, 177). The Formalist artists, too, were drawn to Native American art and saw the reductive quality of design and the emphasis of economy over complexity as being akin to their own aims. For another group, known as the Mythmakers – Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Clifford Still, and Adolph Gottlieb – it was the spiritual quality inherent in Native American art that was most impactful (Rushing 1995, 121). As Gottlieb explains: “While modern art got its fi rst impetus through discovering the forms of primitive art, we found its true signifi cance lies not merely in the formal agreements, but in the spiritual meaning underlying all archaic works” (Gottlieb and Rothko 1943). Within the study of Navajo weaving, it is noteworthy that a contemporary artist, Tony Berlant (b. 1941), became one the biggest advocates for the art form during the 1970s. Berlant’s work with Mary Kahlenberg, most notably their 1972 With beauty all around me, I walk 63 exhibition and publication The Navajo Blanket and their 1976 publication Walk in Beauty , brought Navajo weaving to the forefront of artistic dialogue in the 1970s. Berlant, an avid collector of Navajo blankets, also sold blankets to a number of artists in his circle including Anthony Caro, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg, Tony Smith, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, to name a few (Berlant 2003, x–xi). Frank Stella bought thirty-four weavings. He later shared with Berlant an anecdote: one day he laid the weavings out across the fl oor of his studio, one on top of another, all at different angles, and it was this exercise that broke him from Minimalism (Berlant, June 7, 2014, personal correspondence and D’Alessandro 2014b, 84). Berlant explains: “All I had to do was show the blankets. Regardless of their own personal approaches, artists immediately shared my intense visceral reaction to these weavings and the powerful abstract vision they conveyed. We saw them as energy fi elds.” For Berlant, it was the weaver’s belief in the supernatural that separated Navajo blankets from other weaving traditions. It was a similar evocation of shamanistic experience that the Abstract Expressionists were also seeking. As Jackson Pollock stated, “The modern artist . . . is working and expressing an inner world – in other words expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces” (Freidman 1972, 176). Yet such comparisons can seem somewhat trivial; whereas Navajo artists drew directly from their heritage and cosmology, the Modern artists sought artistic inspiration outside their own cultural identity. As Willink and Zolbrod elucidate: “In classic Navajo thought, history is dynamic and alive, mythic time recycles itself in recorded history, while the remembered past is reinvested in the present” (Wil- link and Zolbrod 1996, 52). Even within contemporary Navajo society, certain individuals maintain their beliefs in their traditional and mythological roots that permeate their everyday lives. D. Y. Begay describes these infl uences: “As a young girl I was taught to be productive and tidy. I heard stories about how a weaver needs to be aware of her weaving space. A weaver must employ tidiness and care for her weaving tools and materials. So when the Holy People descend upon her home to scrutinize her weavings and her home they will approve of the weaver’s good habits. And she will be granted beautiful weaving skills. I acknowledge the belief. I practice tidiness and production. I weave in the morning because my mind is at peace; my thoughts are fresh, alert and ready. My eyes are fresh and the colors and the lines are vivid and alive. I like to be prepared so the Holy People can approve of my weavings” (2015, personal and e-mail correspondence). This practice is what infl uential theorist on comparative mythology and religion Joseph Campbell describes as the “fourth function of myth . . . that’s the pedagogical function. How to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. Myth can tell you that” (Campbell and Moyers 1988). For Campbell this is the one function of the myth that he felt that everyone must try to relate to. Navajo historian Jennifer Denetdale validates Campbell’s conviction: “Certainly for the Diné, invoking the creation narratives, the events and the beings who act in them, provides lessons for life, allowing listeners to refl ect on how hózhó can be regained. Events that took 64 Jill D’Alessandro place during the creation and the journey to the present world still take place. We also learn from the stories what can happen when we do not follow directives set down during primordial times” (Denetdale 2007, 40). The Navajo weaver achieves this, for she shares the gift of Spider Woman, creates the harmony bestowed on her by Changing Woman, and uses her craft as a form of self-expression to manifest these universal ideals. A Navajo weaver’s prayer summons this power: “With me there is beauty, in me there is beauty, from me beauty radiates” (Willink and Zolbrod 1996, 8).

Notes 1 Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhóón is often referred to simply as SNBH, and is generally understood to mean “one’s journey of striving to live a long, harmonious life.” See Diné Perspectives Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, a compilation of personal accounts of what Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhóón means to individuals in contemporary Navajo/Diné society. See also www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid2464.htm. 2 The fi rst known historical reference to the Navajo was in a 1626 report by a Spanish priest, Father Zarate-Salmerón. The word “Navajo” derives from “Apaches de Navaju” from the Tewa language and means “great planted fi elds.” 3 In 1863, the Navajo were defeated by American troops led by Kit Carson, then were forcibly removed from their land and interned at the Bosque Redondo Indian Reserva- tion in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This exile lasted until 1868, during which time the lifestyle and weaving traditions of the Navajo underwent several changes, marking the end of the Classic-period and the emergence of the late Classic-period (approximately 1865–1889). 4 Portions of this introduction to Classic-period weaving were previously published in my essay “Classic-Period Navajo Blankets,” in Lines on the Horizon (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2014). 5 Even within contemporary Navajo society, there are weavers who are beholden to the traditional beliefs. Anthropologist Jill Ahlberg-Yohe relates her exchange with one Navajo weaver: “Nelly Mae brought to life how weaving is tied to a way of viewing the world and how it references such things as weaving origins, its purpose, and its use for Navajo people today and always. Embedded in these structures are deeply rooted systems and weaving’s meanings and uses in life. For her, selling a weaving is not only a viable source of income. It is also part of a cosmological exchange among Navajo weavers and the Holy People, or the Diyin Dine’é, created for their benefi ts.’ (Ahlberg-Yohe 2008, 370) 6 An Anglo tapestry weaver (an expert weaver herself ) explained to me that this was very diffi cult to do because working on a four-selvedge loom the tensions are different from the top to bottom. However, when I asked D. Y. Begay about this, she saw it as fundamental to the Navajo weaving process. 7 Hatcher explains the Navajo approach: “Usually, and in any medium, the Navajo artist seems to go about his artistic problem by arranging, against a given background, a variety of small elements or components into very formal and symmetrical patterns with parallel or radial structural lines. He prefers that the design units be unambiguous, (and) separate from another” (Hatcher: 214).

References Ahlberg-Yohe, J. 2008 What Weavings Bring: The Social Value of Weaving-Related Objects in Contemporary Navajo Life. Kiva , Volume 73, Number 4, 367–386. Available at www.jstor.org/stable/30246557 With beauty all around me, I walk 65 Begay, D. Y. 2015 When weaving. (e-mail). Berlant, A. 2003 Foreword: An Artist Perspective. In Webster, L., Berlant, T., & Burger, H. (eds.). Collecting the weaver’s art: The William Clafl in collection of Southwestern Tex- tiles . Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, ix–xii. Berlant, A., & Kahlenberge, M. H. 1972a Blanket Statements. Artnews , Volume 71, Num- ber 4, 42–45, 69. Berlant, A., & Kahlenberge, M. H. 1972b The Navajo Blanket. Art in America, Special Issue: The American Indian , 78–82. Berlant, A., & Kahlenberge, M. H. 1977 Walk in beauty: The Navajo and their blankets . Boston: New York Graphic Society. Bonar, E. H. 1996 Woven by the grandmothers: Nineteenth-century Navajo textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian . Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. D. 1988 The power of myth . New York, Doubleday. D’Alessandro, J. 2014a Classic-Period Navajo Blankets. In Robb, M. H., & D’Alessandro, J. (eds.). Lines on the horizon: Native American art from the Weisel family collection . San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 59–61. D’Alessandro, J. 2014b Cultural Confl uence. Hali , Summer 2014, Number 180, 78–83. Denetdale, J. 2007 Reclaiming Diné history: The legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita . Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Farella, J. R. 1984 The main stalk: A synthesis of Navajo philosophy . Tucson, AZ: Univer- sity of Arizona Press. Fishler, Stanley A. 1953. In the beginning: a Navaho creation myth. Salt Lake City: Uni- versity of Utah Press. Freidman, B. H. 1972 Jackson Pollock: Energy made visible . New York: McGraw-Hill. Gottlieb, A., & Rothko, M. 1943 “The Portrait and the Modern Artist”: Dialogue Broadcast Over Radio Station WNYC. 13 October 1943. (Typescript reprinted as Appendix B of Adolf Gottlieb: A Retrospective , by Alloway and MacNaughton). Hatcher, Evelyn Payne. 1974 Visual metaphors: A formal analysis of Navajo art . St. Paul: West Pub. Co. Hedlund, A. L. 1996 ‘More of Survival Than an Art’ Comparing Late Nineteenth and Late Twentieth Century Lifeways and Weaving. In Bonar, E. H. (ed.). Woven by the grandmothers: Nineteenth-century Navajo textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian . Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 47–68. Hedlund, A. L. 2013 Navajo classic blankets: A study in chronology and creativity in the canon: A mini-symposium. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco on February 7, 2013. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jYj1tB9K Jewell, E. A. 1941 The Redman’s Culture: Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Pres- ents Indian at His Full Stature. New York Times , January 26, X9. Jim, R. L. 2000 A Moment in My Life. In Krupat, A. & Swann, B. (eds.). Here fi rst: Auto- biographical essays by native American writers . New York: Modern Library, 229–246. Kahlenberg, M. H., & Berlant, A. 1972 The Navajo blanket. New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc. in association with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Matthews, W. 1994 Navaho legends . Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Notarnicola, C. 2001 Woven lives, weavers’ voices: A family of Diné weavers speak about Diné textiles . Master’s thesis, Department of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona, Tuscon. Patterson-Rudolph, C. 1997 On the trail of Spider Woman: Petroglyphs, pictographs, and myths of the Southwest . Santa Fe, NM: Ancient City Press. 66 Jill D’Alessandro Reichard, G. A. 1945 Distinctive Features of Navajo Religion. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, (online) Volume 1, Number 2, 199–220. Available at www.jstor.org/ stable/3628759 Reichard, G. A. 1963 Navaho religion, a study of symbolism, 2nd ed. New York: Bollingen Foundation; distributed by Pantheon Books. Reichard, G. A. 1968 Spider woman: A story of Navajo weavers and chanters , 2nd ed. Glorieta, NM: Rio Grande Press, Inc. Rushing, W. J. 1995 Native American art and the New York avant-garde: A history of cultural primitivism . Austin: University of Texas Press. Spinden, H. J. 1933 Songs of the Tewa: Preceded by an essay on American Indian poetry, with a selection of outstanding compositions from North and South America; an appendix contains original Tewa texts and explanatory notes . New York, NY: Pub. under the Auspices of the Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts, Inc. Vincente Troncoso, “Report on His Escort of Antonio El Pinto to His People,” 1788, trans. David Brugge. Spanish Archives, Coronado Library, University of New Mexico, Albu- querque. Cited in Joe Ben Wheat, “Documentary Basis for Material Changes and Design Styles in Navajo Blanket Weaving,” in Ethnographic Textiles of the Western Hemi- sphere: Irene Emery Roundtable on Museum Textiles, 1976 Proceedings, eds. Irene Emery and Patricia L. Fiske (Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1977), 420–440. Walters, H. 1996 The Navajo Concept of Art. In Bonar, E. H. (eds.). Woven by the grandmothers: Nineteenth-century Navajo textiles from the National Museum of the American Indian . Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 29–31. Weigle, M., & Babcock, B. A. 1996 The great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway . Phoenix, AZ: Heard Museum. Wheat, J. B. 1976 Ethnographic Textiles of the American Southwest: Irene Emery Round- table on Museum Textiles. In Emery, I., & Fiske, P. L. (eds.) (1977). Ethnographic textiles of the Western Hemisphere: Irene emery roundtable on museum textiles, 1976 proceedings . Washington, DC: Textile Museum. pp. 420–444. Wheat, J. B., & Hedlund, A. L. 2003 Blanket weaving in the Southwest . Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Wheat, J. B., & Mitchell, E. E. 1984 The gift of Spiderwoman: Southwestern textiles, the Navajo tradition . Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Whitaker, K. 1981 The Navajo Chief Blanket: A Trade Item among Non-Navajo Groups. American Indian Art Magazine , Volume 7, Number 1, 62–69. Willink, R. S., & Zolbrod, P. G. 1996 Weaving a world: Textiles and the Navajo way of seeing . Santa Fe, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Witherspoon, G. 1977 Language and art in the Navajo universe . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Witherspoon, G. 1987 Navajo weaving: Art in its cultural context. Flagstaff, AZ: Museum of Northern Arizona. Zolbrod, P. G. 1984 Diné bahane: The Navajo creation story . Albuquerque, NM: Univer- sity of New Mexico Press. 5 The unexpected gift of beauty

Marc Higgin

My initial response to the invitation to write about beauty was to turn away. As an idea, as an ideal, it seemed like trouble best left alone. In the months spent working with artists in the fi eld, beauty rarely, if ever, came up in conversation; so laden with the weight of past struggles within the ‘Western aesthetic project’, it was a term of little use in the ongoing work of making things and making sense of what was made (Marcus and Myers 1995). While beauty was absent from the aesthetic vocabulary – the language and ideas used “when we talk about, think about, or in other ways ‘handle’ works of art” – used by the artists I worked with, it nevertheless retains a place in everyday life (Becker 1984, 47). Wheeling my newborn – beautiful to my eyes – through the streets of Aberdeen, trying to think what I could possibly have to write about beauty, we were stopped in our tracks by an impromptu waterfall falling from a blocked drain high above, the light from the low winter sun setting the water and grey granite ablaze. “Beautiful” escaped before a smile had the chance to silence it. This chapter presents a speculative account of beauty in dialogue with the sculptor Douglas White and Gregory Bateson’s notion of grace in art; an account that tries to fi nd a way past a beauty petrifi ed within aesthetic discourse to bring out the life beauty still has within the everyday as the ability of something, someone, to stop us in our tracks; a small tear in the fabric of ordinary life. Douglas White is a London-based artist with whom I worked as an assistant for six months during my current research. This paper follows the making of one work of art, Counsel , exhibited in 2007.

A very short history of beauty Beauty has had a long and distinguished history within the philosophical, religious and political thought of the West; an embodiment of value making a place for itself alongside the less tangible Good, Truth and Justice; a muse stirring trouble in the relations between material form and experience, between the senses and thought, between the particular and the universal, between the personal and the public (see Eco 1986). Beauty was transfi gured in the socio-historical differentiation of ‘high’ culture within European societies from the ‘early Modern’ period (Shiner 2001; Miller 1991). As the beaux-arts of the Academies took institutional and social 68 Marc Higgin form in opposition to the useful and popular arts, beauty shed its imbrications with everyday life and usefulness, with its devotional calling in religious life, to become the “imitation of beautiful nature” for the sake of pleasure and pleasure alone (Shiner 2001, 80–88). The good form of its portraits, still-lifes, landscapes and historical scenes mirrored the refi ned tastes of the new classes of art lovers fi lling the quiet, polite environs of the museum and salon (Bourdieu 1984). This refi ned beauty at home in the Academies, salons and museums was rejected in the birth pangs of a Modern art and its embrace of the Primitive (Miller 1991; Marcus and Myers 1995; Schneider 2003). In the ‘fetishes’ that fi lled the halls of the Trocadero, Paris, Picasso found a way past the stifl ing constraints of 19th century art, beyond “what was called beauty in the museum” (Lemke 1998, 38). Their sublime and savage beauty didn’t just have a profound infl uence on the experimentation of Picasso’s Cubism that broke with the good taste of formal and representational conventions; it allowed him to dream of an art freed from the polite confi nes of the museum. Here is Françoise Gilot remembering how Picasso described the encounter to her:

At that moment I realized what painting was all about. Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designated as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires. When I came to that realization, I knew I had found my way. (Gilot cited in Lemke 1998, 38)

The aesthetic operation of the beaux-arts and their neutered objects of beauty were rendered obsolete by the avant-gardes of the new century: Cubism, Dadaism, Constructivism, Futurism, Surrealism. Each sought, in their way, to overthrow the tyranny of “stable orders of collective meaning” (Clifford 1988, 539) in which art and beauty had found their good and proper forms (Shiner 2001, 79–98). In their relegation to a rejected past, the idea and ideal of beauty nevertheless still serve as a reference point from which to measure the distance marking the relevance and seriousness of contemporary art (Groys 2008; Perry 2014). Counsel , the work of art around which this paper turns, is a ‘found object’. Douglas happened upon its contents on the streets of South London, acquired them, then exhibited and sold them as his work. This story, then, necessarily falls within the orbits of two distinct legacies of the found object inherited from the time of Modernist revolt against the ‘aesthetic operation’ of the Academy: the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp and the objets trouvés of the Surrealists. While the “strange new beauty” of the ready-mades has found a central place within Alfred Gell’s re-working of art as an anthropological concept (Gell 1996, 1998), foregrounding the work of interpretation in constructing the object of art, this chapter tries to develop an alternative path offered by the “convulsive beauty” of objets trouvés (Breton 1987, 10) in dialogue with Gregory Bate- son’s notion of grace in which the object itself troubles any stable sense of interpretation. The unexpected gift of beauty 69 An unexpected moment of beauty Douglas White collects things: exploded tyres, burnt out bottle-bins, the drying carcasses of cacti, the limbs of fallen beech trees. Like many collectors, he ﬁ nds it difﬁ cult to pin down in words what it is about certain objects that so fascinates him; words always come too late, after the event. This is how he tells the story of his encounter with the objects that became Counsel .

One night I was cycling through south London, when I caught something out of corner of my eye. I shook it off, assuming a trick of the shadow. I continued on. Some minutes later I stopped and turned around. I found this strange pair of apparitions (see Figure 5.1). They had been bottle recycling bins and there had been a third for paper which had been set alight. The heat had melted the other two, causing them to slump over their bottles. The plastic casing had become molten, and then set into the mottled, moulded skin of an elephant. It feels strange to describe the ﬂ ush of desire I felt, the kind reserved for the rarest of meetings, a feeling that the world is changed by virtue of something’s existence. Later, at home, I could not sleep for thinking about them, wondering if I’d see them again. I was with them again by 6 am the next morning in case they were to be removed. At 9, I phoned the council and ﬁ nally spoke to a woman named

Figure 5.1 The vandalised recycling bins outside the housing estate in South London the night they were found by White 70 Marc Higgin Deborah. She knew of the bins and explained that sometime in the next two days they would be taken to landﬁ ll. I suppose she assumed I was phoning to complain about the mess, so seemed surprised when I asked exactly when they would be picked up but she couldn’t tell me. So I waited next to them. At some point in the afternoon, a truck arrived. For a small token, the driver agreed to deliver them to my studio which was just down the road. They had become my wards. (White, interview, 12/2013)

He almost passed them by, these apparitions in the otherwise familiar and dense fabric of the city at night. They had had their given form and function within this weave set in durable, high-density polyethylene but they now stood transformed: odd and out of place. It feels strange to describe the ﬂ ush of desire I felt, the kind reserved for the rarest of meetings. White evokes the sense he had of being overwhelmed, enchanted by these apparitions and the corresponding ache of desire to possess them, to keep them close. Here is our ﬁ rst tentative opening on beauty: an unexpected irruption in the weave of everyday life, a feeling that the world is changed by virtue of something’s existence .

The grace of art Gregory Bateson, in his Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art (1972), uses the idea of grace as a way of engaging with the question of what works in works of art. Within Bateson’s idea of an ‘ecology of mind’, conscious thought and verbal language, so prominent within the social scientiﬁ c accounts of human agency and intentionality, are but a small part of a much more extensive, mostly unconscious and habitual, system , whose circuits of action and response weave the brain to the body and out into its environment. Grace, in the work of art, names its ability to provoke a moment of balance or integration within experience that makes the systemic nature of mind indirectly tangible. What is it in the artwork that makes this possible? Bateson approaches the work of art as a complex form of communication that encodes information legible to conscious thought together with a surplus, a remainder, that remains opaque to propositional explication but that nevertheless communicates. “Every picture tells a story” with a cast of recognisable “objects, persons or supernaturals” (1972, 139), but Bateson resists the temptation of explaining art through this legible meaning to concentrate instead on style , on the non-representational dimension of pictures.

What is implicit in style, materials, composition, rhythm, skill, and so on? . . . The code whereby perceived objects or persons (or supernaturals) are transformed into wood or paint is a source of information about the artist and his culture. It is the very rules of transformation that are of interest to me. (1972, 139)

Bateson explicates these rules of transformation through the skilful practice of the Balinese painter Ida Bagus Dja ti Sura. Skill is central to the workings of what Bateson The unexpected gift of beauty 71 called mind ; bringing perception, sensibility, feeling and thought together with bodily gesture and habit that grow in correspondence with particular qualities and movements of materials and forces (see also Ingold 2010, 97–99). In the effort of working with materials, of learning through watching others and being corrected, a rhythmic, gestural, compositional ﬂ uency becomes woven into the primary process – the skilled habits – of mind. Every community of practice, every culture, has its own particular and evolving species, and sub-species, of grace (and frustration, stiffness and failure). In his discussion of a painting by the Balinese artist, Bateson follows the move from the “lower level redundancy” of mastered habit – of a species of unconscious embodied in the representational conventions of Balinese painting – to its “modulation” to give “higher orders of redundancy” that communicate a way of seeing, a gracefulness, previously unknown.

Consider the case of the man who goes to the blackboard . . . and draws, freehand, a perfect reindeer in its posture of threat . . . ‘Do you know that his perfect way of seeing – and drawing – a reindeer exists as a human potentiality?’ The consummate skill of the draftsman validates the artist’s message about his relationship to the animal – his empathy. (1972, 153–154)

Grace is the name Bateson gives to this unexpected gift of this perfect reindeer, to the way the world is changed by its sudden appearance on the blackboard. In Bate- son’s ecology of mind, this change is neither objective nor subjective but a change in the tenor, in the quality, of relation: a new way of seeing, a new way of feeling. It is this shift that makes tangible – albeit indirectly – the systemic nature of mind and its entanglement in the world. This gift is not something understood; it does not pass through the ‘secondary process’ of articulated thought, but operates through what Michael Taussig calls the “skilled revelation of skilled concealment”. A trick , in which “habit has the possibility of dehabituating itself, slowing down the speed by which sensory knowledge becomes knowledge”, opening a possibility that “we can become either more aware as to the existence of this mechanism and its mode of functioning or perhaps, even, ﬁ nd new life suspended in this in-between place” (2009, 188). In Bateson’s account, the moment of grace afforded by the object of art is grounded in the higher-order modulation that makes the work of skill visible: behind the gift of art stands the artfulness of its maker. But what skill, what code, do these half-melted recycling bins embody? They were found, a chance encounter with the unplanned consequences of matches, paper and ﬁ re: no one ‘made’ them. But the encounter with their strange, haunting beauty was nevertheless a moment of grace for Douglas, revealing the extent to which:

My own will, my own position in the world is not transparent to me and that’s what art-making is for me . . . it’s this idea that you think you’re investigating the world but in fact you’re investigating yourself or, even, that the world is investigating you. (White, interview, 07/15) 72 Marc Higgin Beauty, in the account I am putting forward here, is a word to describe this power of something, someone, to inspire a moment of grace, however fugitive. This, as André Breton says, is a “convulsive” beauty (Breton 1987, 3). Much like Alfred Gell’s elaboration of the power of enchantment in the work of art, beauty acts as a kind of epistemological shock to experience: an object that resists the act of representation, the act of “mentally encompassing [its] coming-into-being as [an object]” (Gell 1992, 49).

An ecology of beauty For Gell, the power to enchant can be read back to the productive power of technology to bring the artefactual world into existence, the species being of a community of which the enchanted is part but oblivious as to its (opaque) paths of effi cacy. Primary human agency, which Gell places at the root of the secondary agency/ power of objects, is certainly not the “self-governing, refl exive individual whose inner life can be conveyed at will to a public composed of similarly sovereign individuals” (Massumi 2002, xiii) of Enlightenment thought but it does end with human skin. The “world of materials” (Ingold 2007, 7) remains “a pre-analytic given, one of the basic building blocks upon which a social or cultural theory of meaning could (unrefl exively) be built” (Leach 2007, 167). While Bateson’s focus on the artfulness of Ida Bagus Dja ti Sura’s painting can be read back into this economy of human agency, his ecology of mind leaves space for these bins to have an “agency beyond or against human intentions – when, rather than being passive, inert, and merely material, they do something to us” (Pels 2010, 613). Skill is certainly a doing taking shape within an ecological weave of relations (see Ingold 2000, 289–293) but it is also always an undergoing (Dewey 1934; Ingold 2013).

There is . . . an element of undergoing, of suffering in its large sense, in every experience. Otherwise there would be no taking in of what preceded. For ‘taking in’ in any vital experience is something more than placing something on the top of consciousness over what was previously known. It involves reconstruction which may be painful. Whether the necessary undergoing phase is by itself pleasurable or painful is a matter of particular conditions. (Dewey 1934, 36)

This ‘taking in’ opens experience up to a vital multiplicity of human and non-human beings, things, materials and forces. As Tim Ingold argues, beings, materials and things each have their own generative movements of formation and trans-formation that become woven in ways of being-in-the-world (Ingold 2013, 2000): an ecology is always a multitude into which we are thrown. For White, the beauty of these bins cannot be disentangled from the mystery of their “coming-into-being as objects” (Gell 1992), the way they set eye, feeling, imagination and thought into motion:

Deborah said there had been a spate of these events. She spoke in weary tone of bored and apathetic vandals with the will to destroy. I can imagine The unexpected gift of beauty 73 a different scene, a hooded assembly gathered like Shakespearean witches, bored yes, but bored with all the material inertia of the city. The trees above were scorched to a great height, the fl ames must have been huge. Within the fi re, these two crossed the barrier, slipped through the holes of their proposed function, two bodies relieved of their function, reborn in the fl ames. Or rather half born, caught in living transformation. They seemed both tragic and comic, full and empty; moved into a white space they are both trash and yet somehow also a traditional sculpture, a king and a queen. Romantic, serious, ridiculous. Permanently caught between positions, they no longer belong to this world and but for our chance encounter they would have long left it. This is not what we expect of objects: of all things we expect them to stay the same. We humans, we are allowed our narrative twists and turns, our falls and redemptions, from our objects we expect a certain solidity, a certain fi xity of state, this is their job, they hold reality in place. (White, interview, 12/13)

These half-melted bins had taken new form in a fi re that lay outside the economy of human manufacture; their half-melted forms held a power set apart from the ‘animated’ material culture (Pels 1998) that had defi ned their previous life. They had become opaque, a kind of open question rendering everything else around them under the yellow light of high pressure sodium lamps a little less evident, a little less solid. They offered a hint of the underside of the city’s weave: recycling bins turned inside out, a memento of the metabolic, ecological life of materials that they so helpfully, and hopefully, keep hidden; a jolt making tangible the habitual life grounded on the unthinking solidity and usefulness of objects (Ingold 2010). Seen through the unexpected beauty of these bins, Bateson’s ecology of mind leaves room for a generative, or co-constitutive, power to earth as an integral part of skill – an integral part of coming-to-know the world. Beauty as a form of grace, rather than enchantment, names not the awe of subjective agency before the glow of its own indirect refl ection, but a making tangible of the manner of its enmeshment in an ecology of mind that extends beyond consciousness, beyond the habitual life of the bodily unconscious, beyond even the non-conscious extensions of technology to the crescent, generative earth which we inhabit (Taussig 2009). Caught between two worlds, these bins give uncertain sign from beyond what Pels calls the “sceptical secularist point of view”, in which things “are never magical by themselves: they require the intervention of human intentions, since something material only becomes wonderful or out-of-the-ordinary for human beings” by troubling the equivalence of human being and “the intervention of human intentions” (2010, 613). Beauty, then, is neither in the object nor in the subject, but forms a particular mode of encounter that slows down the speed by which sensory knowledge becomes knowledge, opening a way in which things can “speak for themselves” (Holbraad 2011, 3) or, rather, in which things can make speech stutter, uncertain, responsible. White talks about his practice as a sculptor as a form of alchemy: the “old science of struggling with materials, and not quite understanding what is happening” 74 Marc Higgin (Elkins 2000, 19). He works with materials – wood, blown-out tyres, cacti, clay and wax – not as passive matter awaiting the imposition of a form but as generative and forceful in their own right. The work of sculpture consists in developing sensitivity to their movements in the process of interacting with them; a negotiation from which form precipitates, always at risk of being underdone or overdone, endowed (sometimes) with a power, a beauty that escapes any simple economy of individual agency. These bins hold the highest value for him amongst all his work as a sculptor; they arrived fully formed and perfect in their entirety, perfect because they had not been disfi gured in the struggle with voluntary, conscious action and judgement. White’s sculptural practice can be seen as a kind of collecting, a “gathering around the self . . . [the] assemblage of a material world [that marks] off a subjective domain which is not other” producing its own “hierarchies of value, exclu- sions, rule-governed territories of the self ” (Clifford 1985, 47). But these bins show a certain unruliness to this collecting, in which he is pulled out of his self as much as gathers around it, is possessed as much possesses, that troubles the second, the other, half of this story, in which an economy of the possessive individual lays claim to this beauty (Leach 2007).

Beauty in the art world To return to that fateful night, it was an encounter to which White arrived as a particular kind of person: an artist. While one eye stood astonished before these apparitions materialised in the corner of a car park, the other eye was already busy imagining them standing alone in the white space of a gallery, his and not his. Clifford draws out the tension in collecting between a self-absorbed ﬁ xation, verging towards the extremes of idolatry and fetishism on particular things from the “sceptical secularist point of view”, and the call to display and share with others (1985); a process by which a private and intimate hierarchy of value is brought out into the light of others’ gaze and evaluation.

The making of Counsel Douglas exhibited Counsel as part of the New Contemporaries show at the 2006 Liverpool Biennial (Figure 5.2). Exhibiting these found objects was a gamble whose outcome could fall between two extremes: to be met with indifferent silence or become woven into the heated work of interpretation and come into focus as a relevant, serious work of art by a relevant artist (Becker 1984). The bins vacillated between trash and a work of art, White between an obsessed hoarder and a serious artist (Perry 2014). The ‘white cube’ in which they were placed is not just a neutral backdrop but does important work removing any distracting context to foreground form (O’Doherty 1999). In the blankness of the setting, the burnt-out bins stand alone as an object: to be looked at, taken seriously, thought about, evaluated and exchanged (Appadurai 1986). The space invites the simple, yet not so simple, “twist of attitude The unexpected gift of beauty 75

Figure 5.2 Counsel , 2005; vandalised recycling bins, 240 × 170 × 155 cm; in the New Contemporaries exhibition at Liverpool Biennial 2006 toward your awareness and its object” that constitutes the aesthetic experience for Clement Greenberg, enabling the play of form in experience by disabling the interested eye that assesses and sees through every object to its potential use, proﬁ t or danger. In bringing people face-to-face with these objects, unable to simply pass by, viewers might – White hoped – see, might feel, some of that profoundly odd and unsettling experience he had found in them that night (1999, 5). However, there is a difference between the encounter in the car park at night and the encounter in the gallery. While the gallery space invites the viewer to slow down and look again, it also, inevitably, leads the eye to the small panel on the wall on which is written the title of the piece and the name of the artist responsible for its presence here. As Leach argues, the conventions of the ‘white cube’ not only play a central part in the production of objects of art but also in the production of the artist as the embodiment of a particular type of creativity (2007): they invite the speculative game of abduction in which the object of art serves a material index revealing the creative mind of its maker (Gell 1998).

Certainly, I’m indirectly infl uenced by Duchamp and others like him. They create a foundation to make this sort of work somehow valid but that’s not to say that I wouldn’t be doing this stuff now if it wasn’t art. When I was a kid I wanted to run a junk shop . . . so maybe I’m deeply attracted to weird objects – art or no art. Also that tradition of the conceptual readymade . . . that kind of work refutes the spiritual dimension that these things can have, and I actually want these objects to mean something more than their constituent parts. . . . 76 Marc Higgin Such talent has also brought White fame, most notably a recent splash in local London paper Wandsworth and Putney Guardian that read, ‘£8,500 work of art that is a load of rubbish’ – the headline for an article on White’s recent monumental work Counsel . . . Translated into a gallery context, the bins take on the mantel of a 21st century version of the bronze King and Queen fi gures cast by Henry Moore and Lyn Chadwick in the 1950s. The dark yawning forms have an air that is at once regal and slightly sinister – the melted plastic has become like shrouds or heavy robes of fabric. The sculpture also has an £8,500 price tag, which did more for the tabloid imagination than any creatively melted plastic. What the Wandsworth and Putney Guardian’s intrepid reporter failed to notice, however, was that in a turn of conceptual brilliance that puts anything Duchamp did in the shade, White succeeded in multiplying the value and function of the melted bins while at the same time redeeming them so they remained true to the spirit of the original purpose. After all, the burnt recycling bins . . . had themselves become detritus, destined to become merely a strangely large element in the cornucopia of rubbish dumped into landfi lls every year. Instead, in the ultimate act of recycling, White reframed them as art, thus achieving a glorious vindication of art’s ability to transform the mundane and discarded into totems of cultural value. (White, interview, Hackworth, 2007, 83)

This lengthy quote by the art critic Nick Hackworth serves to illustrate this work of interpretation. Hackworth begins by drawing out the resonances of Counsel ’s sculptural form within the history of art: Moore and Chadwick’s monumental sculptures, the richness of surface and texture that fi lled religious iconography. But he takes more care in placing the act of appropriation as creative gesture within the legacy handed down from Duchamp’s ready-mades. The twists and turns of these melted forms are made to index the conceptual brilliance of their diversion into the gallery, made to carry a signature interpretive gesture marking White out as ‘this artist’. Duchamp boiled the aesthetic operation down to the minimal requirement of choice:1 picking one ordinary article of life over another, and giving it a title, a plinth and a space in the gallery. The radical nature of Duchamp’s ready-mades slowly rippled through the art world over the course of the 20th century, a relent- less needling and questioning of ‘what is art?’: need it involve craft? Is the intention and signature of the artist enough? What role does the gallery play in constructing a work of art? And the eye and interpretation of the viewer? As Gell argues, following the work of Arthur Danto (1964), Duchamp’s ready-mades inaugurated a “total take-over of the ‘image-making’ side of art by the ‘'refl ecting on history’ side of art: concept art is the fi nal convergence of art-making, art history, art philosophy and art criticism in a single package” (Gell 1996, 19). The questions about the object of art, its “qualities of visual appealingness or beauty” ( ibid 19) become secondary to the ideas behind it: “a work of art may not be at all ‘beautiful’ or even interesting to look at, but it will be a work of art if it is The unexpected gift of beauty 77 interpreted in the light of a system of ideas that is founded within an art-historical tradition” (Gell 1996, 15). Alfred Gell (1996, 1998) appropriates Danto’s emphasis on interpretation to elaborate his own, anthropological, theory of art, which tries to break down the stranglehold of tradition in the defi nition of art – the power of the old men holding the keys – to broaden out (or, rather, strip down) the interpretative context so that an anonymous Zande hunting net could sit alongside Damien Hirst’s pickled shark as equally elegant and rich “material indexes” for human creative agency, as equally powerful works of art (1996, 1998). His anthropological reading performs its own claim as to what is art, what is good art, daring anthropologists to outdo and undo the self-appointed guardians of ‘high’ culture. But he retains the interpretive mode in which “objects can only have an effect as representations of others’ mind and agency”; objects of art still function within the logic of a possessive individualism, a holism of the individual subject set against, and encompassing, “the object world beyond them” (Leach 2007, 187).

I wanted it as soon as I saw it, straight away, which is illogical because I had nowhere to put the thing. The minute you see it – I especially liked it in the lobby of Simmons and Simmons but also the gallery – it completely transforms its meaning, its visual meaning and it becomes impossible to look at it and not be intimidated by it . . . it becomes heavy with meaning, whereas a burn-out recycling bin on the side of the council block you can walk by quite easily without noticing it. And you start noticing the glass through the melted plastic and also for a thing that’s ugly – you know, its made out black burnt plastic and broken glass – you start to notice the lines of its form, like a cowl or an eye gazing out at you. And the way it opens up, the depth of it. (Evans, interview, 07/15)

Here is John Evans, the collector2 who bought Counsel , speaking of his own encounter with the burnt-out bins: how he was moved by them, moved to make sense of them as art and moved to buy them. Counsel was recognised as a work of art by Evans, Hackworth and the curators of the 2006 New Contemporaries exhibition, as well as other ‘legitimating voices’ of the art world (Bourdieu 1984; Becker 1984), adding to White’s reputation. Every act of interpretation within the “tournament of value” that constitutes the art world and its mode of exchange (Appadurai 1986) is an act of speculation on its rising cultural and monetary value. In their own way, every article written, every work of art bought, is also a gamble: the work of interpretation they index on the part of the critic or collector may infl u- ence and add to a consensus on the value of a work as well as add to a reputation as a serious and insightful critic, as an interesting and shrewd collector.3 Or it may remain a minority view: they might get it ‘wrong’. For White, Counsel is not a conceptual work of art in the mould of a ready- made; it is not primarily about his ideas, the act of appropriation or the critique of the art world. Despite the emphasis placed on his creative signature as an artist, there remains something in the presence of these objects that cannot be fully 78 Marc Higgin encompassed within this reading of (his) creativity, an unruliness that was there at the encounter on a London street and within the gallery walls: an “untran- scended materiality” (Pels 1998, 92) that troubled the distinct edges of the subjective agency – the “possessive individualism” – that serves the “foundational type of personhood” with the contemporary art world (Leach 2007, 187–188). The fi gure-ground reversal it provokes is more immediate and convulsive. This is how I understand the ‘spiritual dimension’ of Counsel that, for White, resists a reading of its constituent parts through abduction. Bourdieu has much to say on the religious dimension of art that also challenges the holism of individual agency. In his analysis it is the way that shared knowledge (savoir , ‘to know’) is embodied in habitual ways of seeing (voir , ‘to see’) that defi nes the role of taste – the heat of aesthetic argument over what counts as art, as good art – within society. Much like Gell’s anti-aesthetic, Bourdieu warns that to ascribe some independent power to the object of art is to fall prey to a particularly virulent form of commodity fetishism. But celebrating the (inter-) subjective work of interpretation occludes the role of habit. The object of art – Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living or Douglas White’s Counsel – sits at the centre of different constellations of evaluative interest but what they hide is the learnt, but unconscious, way of seeing (a fl uency) that allows us to see these objects as art, as amusing, accomplished and valuable signed signs within a history of associated moves, leaving others without this aesthetic education bemused, outraged, indifferent. Beauty, for Bourdieu, is inherently conservative. It is the habits of eye, heart and mind that turn some burnt-out recycling bins into a valuable work of art – this, for Bourdieu, is the magic at the heart of art. The content and objects of art are arbitrary, their function simply to communicate membership to, and swagger within, a social group. Bourdieu elaborates the complex arithmetic by which mastery of particular species of unconscious connects cultural capital with economic capital. As an empty “totem of cultural value”, these bins once again return to being a “pre-analytic given, one of the basic building blocks upon which a social or cultural theory of meaning could (unrefl exively) be built” (Leach 2007, 167). The grace, or lucidity, certain works of art may inspire is recouped within a purely human understanding of sociality.

By way of a conclusion After it was bought, Counsel was exhibited in the lobby of the London law fi rm Simmons and Simmons. Their art collection, also managed by Stuart and John Evans, would provide a fi ne illustration of the complex inter-twining of economic, social and cultural capital at play in the world(s) of contemporary art. Counsel ’s stay in the lobby lasted for a few weeks before it was removed after an unprec- edented amount of complaints from staff at the fi rm. Its hulking, sinister form resisted its framing as art, invading the space, making its uncomfortable, uncom- forting presence felt. For John Evans, this is exactly why it worked as art and, he said, it was the one piece that people at the fi rm seemed to remember. These The unexpected gift of beauty 79 bins resisted the logic of recognition that moves smoothly (or not so smoothly) from sensory knowledge to knowledge to open up to a beauty – however odd and unsettling – that makes one think and see again, questioning not just habitual ways of seeing art but that which gets taken as given, as earth, in everyday life in this city. In the lobby of Simmons and Simmons, as much as the corner of the car park where Douglas White encountered them, these half-melted recycling bins were an irritant, a perturbation, to the habitual life that would normally pass them by. It was this power to provoke something that is not quite a feeling and not quite a thought that White gambled on when he exhibited them, that others might, too, be interested in them, entranced, disgusted, overwhelmed even. There are many types of response possible but the aim of this chapter has been to bring out one: the sense of beauty, of grace, that forces (however fl eetingly) the ‘reason of reason’ to acknowledge the ‘reasons of the heart’, to acknowledge its enmeshment, its exposure, to a world (and its knowing) that we cannot fully possess or control. The beauty of this work, as I’ve described it, is of course implicated in the skill of Douglas White as an artist, in the developed, intuitive, perceptual ability to shape and play with the qualities of form within the social expectation and value creation system of the art world (and his own position within it). But my concern has been with a certain irreducible remainder, a certain beauty that cannot be fully explicated within either the logic of ‘possessive individualism’ that characterises the art world or over-arching social structures that determine taste. Beauty – as a rip in the fabric of experiential life – is less a concept than a small opening in thought that allows us to follow its transformative ripples as it is ingested and digested within our habitual modes of relating – as persons, as bodies, as metabolism.

Notes 1 As Margaret Iversen notes (2004), Duchamp was at pains to undermine subjective choice and intention by using constraints or rules that determine sculptural form through the operation of chance. 2 The Lodeveans collection was set up in 2007 by Stuart and John Evans, as an investment art fund. After the 2008 crash and decreased interest from institutional investors in contemporary art as an option for ‘alternative’ investment, it changed its aim from short-term ‘ﬂ ipping’ of artworks for proﬁ t to the building of a collection that would pay for itself through the sale of certain works, with the remaining art distributed amongst its investors. 3 Nick Hackworth, the art critic who wrote the piece on White in Dazed & Confused , went on to establish Paradise Row Gallery in 2007, and represented White in the United Kingdom until the gallery’s dissolution in 2014.

References Appadurai, A. 1986. ‘Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value’. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, A. Appadurai (ed.), 3–63. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Bateson, G. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind . New York: Ballantine Books. 80 Marc Higgin Becker, H. 1984. Art Worlds . California: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Breton, A. 1987. Mad love = L’amour fou . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Clifford, J. 1985. Objects and selves – an afterword. In Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture, vol. 3, G. W. Stocking (ed.), 236–246. Madison: Uni- versity of Wisconsin Press. Clifford, J. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Danto, A. 1964. The Artworld. Journal of Philosophy , 61(19), 571–584. Dewey, J. 1934. Art and Experience . New York: Perigee Books. Eco, U. (1986). Travels in hypereality (W. Weaver, Trans.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt. Elkins, J. 2000. What Painting Is . London: Routledge. Gell, A. 1992. The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. In Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds.), 40–63. Oxford: Clar- endon Press. Gell, A. 1996. Vogel’s Net Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps. Journal of Material Culture , 1(1), 15–38. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Greenberg, C. 1999. Homemade Esthetics: Observations on Art and Taste: Observations on Art and Taste . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Groys, B. 2008. Art Power . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Holbraad, M. 2011. Can the Thing Speak? OAP Press, Working Paper Series, Article #7. http://openanthcoop.net/press/http://openanthcoop.net/press/wp-content/uploads/ 2011/01/Holbraad-Can-the-Thing-Speak.pdf Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill . London: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against Materiality. Archaeological Dialogues , 14(1), 1–16. Ingold, T. 2010. The textility of making. Cambridge Journal of Economics , 34, 91–102. Ingold, T. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge. Iversen, M. 2004. Readymade, found object, photograph. Art Journal , 63(2), 44–57. Leach, J. 2007. Differentiation and encompassment: A critique of Alfred Gell’s theory of the abduction of creativity. In Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethno- graphically , A. Henare, M. Holbraad and S. Wastell (eds.), 167–188. London: Routledge. Lemke, S. 1998. Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origin of Transatlantic Modernism . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marcus, G. and Myers, F. 1995. The traffi c in culture: Refi guring art and anthropology: An introduction. In The Traffi c in Culture: Refi guring Art and Anthropology, G. Marcus and F. Myers (eds.), 1–54. Berkeley: University of California Press. Massumi, B. 2002. A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari . London: Routledge. Miller, D. 1991. Primitive art and the necessity of primitivism to art. In The Myth of Primi- tivism: Perspectives on Art , S. Hiller (ed.), 35–52. New York: Routledge. O’Doherty, B. 1999. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space . Oakland: University of California Press. Pels, P. 1998. The spirit of matter: On fetish, rarity, fact and fancy. In Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Places , P. Spyer (ed.), 91–121. New York: Routledge. The unexpected gift of beauty 81 Pels, P. 2010. Magical things: On fetishes, commodities, and computers. In The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, D. Hicks and M. C. Beaudry (eds.), 613–633. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Perry, G. 2014. Playing to the Gallery: Helping Art in Its Struggle to be Understood . Lon- don: Penguin. Schneider, A. 2003. On ‘Appropriation’: A Critical Reappraisal of the Concept and Its Application in Global Art Practices. Social Anthropology , 11(2), 215–229. Shiner, L. 2001. The Invention of Art: A Cultural History. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Taussig, M. 2009. What Color Is the Sacred? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 6 Beauty and captivation Fuyuge gab and Gell’s anthropological theory of art

Eric Hirsch

Introduction: gab as an artwork When Father Paul Fastré1 drafted his Notes on the manners and customs of the Fuyuge2 (n.d.)3 he devoted a section to what he calls “Secrets or principles of beauty” or “The art of becoming beautiful”. Fastré’s focus is, in particular, the preparation of male beauty for dancing. Fuyuge dancing is a central feature of a competitive ritual organised by a collectivity of host men and women who challenge other men and women to perform (see later in the chapter). The ritual is staged to mark and celebrate life-cycle events in the host collectivity. The dancers are invited so they can chase away spirits of the dead with their beautiful and powerful performances. At the culmination of the ritual, large numbers of pigs are sacrifi ced and given to the dancers in exchange for their performances. The relation between hosts and dancers is reciprocal. Fastré does not explicitly address female beauty in the dance, but it is clear from what he writes that this is complementary. He describes the preparations that invited dancers undertake in order to ready their bodies and adornments for the dance performances. The preparations are complex and arduous. Fastré was assisted in his studies by two Fuyuge men and these men told him that the dance is above all about the “art of captivating women”. Men want to cut a handsome fi gure to please the women, “Single men to fi nd one or several, and for the others to fi nd a new one, either for the moment or forever” (ibid 68). The Fuyuge word for ‘beauty’ is seseg . A Fuyuge man or woman will do things to her/himself to become beautiful, such as acquiring a new item of clothing or, as discussed later in the chapter, following strict taboos before dancing. There is also the related notion of valag which has connotations of fi ne and beautiful, but also domesticated. Gell discusses captivation as the primordial kind of artistic agency. He refers to artefacts that appear to originate through some kind of ‘magical’ occurrence, or the “spectacle of unimaginable virtuosity” (1998, 68, 71). His examples include Vermeer’s The Lacemaker and carved Trobriand canoe prow-boards (ibid 69). The sexual captivation created in Fuyuge dance is not ‘artistic’, but the magically infl uenced dancers and their adornments have an artistic quality and it is this that captivates the women. Thus, one kind of captivation – artistically created beauty – facilitates a sexual captivation as noted by the Fuyuge men Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 83 earlier (cf. Gell 1998, 66). Captivation is a particular example of what Gell defi nes as the “abduction of agency”: artworks or “indexes”, in Gell’s terms, are perceived as the “outcome . . . and/or the instrument of, social agency” (ibid 15, emphasis removed). The agency of the index is causally inferred or abducted by the recipients or patients of the index. Gell argues that captivation is conventionally seen as the agency of the artist being primary, but that the artwork or index can also exert captivation in and of itself, as in the simple and complex patterns of decorative art (ibid 72, 73–95). His anthropological theory of art is “a theory of the social relations that obtain in the neighbourhood of works of art, or indexes” (ibid 26). He goes on to state that “[s]ocial relations only exist in so far as they are made manifest in actions” (ibid 26). Four terms obtain in this theory of the art nexus: already mentioned are the indexes, artists/agents and patients/recipients. Finally there is the prototype, entities “which the index represents visually or non-visually” (Gell 1998, 26). As Chua and Elliott (2013, 6, following Gell 1998, 30) note, “[t]hese four entities are relational slots within the art nexus that can potentially be fi lled by anything or anyone. Each acts as an agent or a patient . . . vis-à-vis the others, sometimes doing so simultaneously or at different points in time”. What is apparent in the Fuyuge case is that the captivation created by the invited dancers is inextricably connected to the captivation engendered by the ritual setting of the hosts in which the dancing performances occur. In order for the potential beauty of the dancers to captivate the audience (recipients), a setting – an artefact – for their performance needs to be created. The setting itself needs to be captivating in order to match the performances of the dancers and entails several stages in its assembling. Without an enchanting setting, the dancers will not appear as beautiful as they possibly can. And the reverse also holds true: if the dancers do not come across as beautiful they will simultaneously affect the perception of the ritual setting of the hosts in an adverse manner. As Gell observes more generally: “there is a seamless continuity between modes of artistic action which involve ‘performance’ and those which are mediated by artefacts . . . Every artefact is a ‘performance’ in that it motivates the abduction of its coming-into-being in the world” (Gell 1998, 67). The intricate connection between dance and ritual context is implicitly acknowledge by Fastré and his interlocutors as, prior to describing the art of becoming beautiful, the manuscript describes the various stages of creating the ritual village where the dance and other rites are performed, known as gab , which is also the name of the ritual itself. Building the ritual village, planting the ritual gardens, decorating the ritual village, raising the large number of pigs to be sacrifi ced in the village, among other conventions, all of these are about acquiring fame. As one of Fastré’s (n.d., 27) associates notes, “You should understand that it is . . . for the glory and fame that we do all this extra work”. But to acquire such fame, those bestowing the fame, i.e. other invited Fuyuge, must be captivated by one’s accomplishments. The more the beauty of the dancers or the fi ne-looking gab village captivates its audiences, the more fame the dancers and hosts, respectively, acquire. There is a clear relationship between beauty, captivation and fame. 84 Eric Hirsch Although it is the case that Fastré only writes about the dancers attaining beauty what is also implied in his narrative is that gab in its entirety must be perceived as ‘beautiful’ (valag ) by those coming to witness its performance. As suggested earlier, the beauty of the dancers is appreciated against the background of the beautiful gab village and the other performances that unfold therein. And in similar fashion, the gab is only recognised as having been a success if the dancers performing within it are perceived as fi ne-looking. Thus, numerous related forms of captivation need to be accomplished if the overall performance of gab is to be fame-inducing. In this chapter, I suggest that gab can be understood as an ‘artwork’ in the sense proposed by Gell; as much a series of artefacts as of performances, where the abduction of agency occurs in the relations between agent/artist, patient/recipient, prototype and index. In the case of gab the relations between these terms shift in the course of the ritual as different persons and collectivities of person assume positions of agent and patient, index and prototype (cf. Gell 1998, 95). Each gab follows a protocol that is understood to derive from the ancestors. Gab is composed of a number of stages or parts and each part is integral to the whole. If anything, gab is whole and part at once: any part in the sequence is connected to every other part through one kind of relation or another (cf. Wagner 1986, 213). The collectivity of persons and their relations that create gab and the individual person and her/his relations are versions of the ‘same’ thing, i.e. ancestrally derived persons and their relations. The difference is in terms of magnifi cation and scale. This can be illustrated through the importance Melanesians place on names and naming. It is names, not individuals or collectives, that are afforded the greatest value and attention (see Wagner 1991, 163). I quoted Fastré’s associate earlier, where he says that it is fame that motivates the work they do for gab ; fame is where one’s name, personal and collective, is magnifi ed – known in a positive manner both far and wide. Each gab is a unique enchainment of persons arranged to achieve a captivating effect as defi ned by ancestral precedent. Fuyuge dance and the beauty attained by the dancers is an important stage or part in the composite that forms gab (see Gell 1998, 140).

Beauty and Gell’s theory of art Although my argument draws on Gell’s theory of art, the theory has little to say about beauty. However, this is not because he is not interested in the experience of beauty or how one understands beauty. In another context he admits that he is a “practising aesthete, never happier than ooh-ing and aahing before the great masterpieces of art” (Gell 1999, 17). Gell’s intention in downplaying the analytical signifi cance of beauty and aesthetics was to “wrest the anthropological study of artworks away from the soggy embrace of philosophical aesthetics” (ibid ). In one of the few passages where beauty is mentioned Gell discusses the sand-drawings and the land of the dead of the Malakula people (in present-day Vanuatu) described by Deacon and Layard. These are diagrams drawn on the sand, some of which portray a diffi cult journey and obstacles that need to be overcome on the way to Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 85 the land of the dead. Gell observes that “[w]e are a long way, here, from the idea that patterns appeal to the eyes or give aesthetic pleasure. I do not think that the Malakulans thought of these patterns as independent visual objects at all, but as performances, like dances, in which men could reveal their capability. Melanesian aesthetics are about effi cacy, the capacity to accomplish tasks, not ‘beauty’” (1998, 93–94). Then again, in the Fuyuge case examined here (and perhaps in the Mal- akulan case), beauty and effi cacy are not separate but inter-connected. To appear beautiful or to create diagrams that are aesthetically valued is to provide evidence of one’s effi cacy. Gell seems to acknowledge the importance of beauty in his theory of art; not as an analytical category but as an intrinsic feature of the experience of artworks. For example, he highlights the beauty of kula valuables when discussing the strategies of Kula operators in the western Pacifi c (ibid 229–232). More generally, he argues that the separation of religious experience from aesthetic experience is a distinctly Western, post-Enlightenment historical development associated with the rise of Western science (ibid 97). In India idolatry as a form of religiosity is common place and as Gell (1998, 97) observes it is inconceivable for a wedge to be driven “between the beautiful form and religious function of venerated idols”. “Consequently, it is only from a very parochial . . . Western post-Enlightenment point of view that the separation between the beautiful and the holy, between religious experience and aesthetic experience, arises” (ibid 97; cf. Morphy 2009, 7–8, 24n.6). The emphasis on beauty, multiple related forms of captivation and the achievement of fame were as true in the early decades of the twentieth century when Fastré was writing as they were in the later twentieth century when I conducted research among the Fuyuge. The circumstances of the Fuyuge and of gab had transformed in the intervening period. At the same time, what constituted beauty, captivation and fame have also altered. And yet, when I read Fastré’s text, much of what he writes on these matters resonates with my own experiences among the Fuyuge many decades later. How can this be accounted for? A conventional anthropological analysis might speak of ‘continuity and change’. It is clear that the Fuyuge have experienced signifi cant historical transformations over the decades but what I am drawing attention to here is not just continuity with past conventions (see Gell 1998, 256). Rather, it is a quality that is more general. It is connected to Gell’s question about what lies behind the seductive power of art. Is there something universal at work here – the abduction of agency – as Gell suggests? In following Gell in my analysis, I recognise that his theory has been subject to a number of critiques. I consider some of these later, after considering beauty with reference to Fastré’s and my own work on Fuyuge gab . In what follows I describe in more detail the Fuyuge gab in terms of its beauty and as an artwork. I consider this in terms of Fastré’s account and then compare this with my own material, elucidating, in particular, the captivation generated in the stages of gab performance. I then consider some of the criticisms that have been made of Gell’s theory and assess these in light of the Fuyuge material presented. 86 Eric Hirsch Gab : ritual, artwork and means of a collectivity’s power I refer to gab as a ritual but, following Gell, also as an artwork. Many of the examples Gell uses to illustrate his theory involve rituals of various kinds. In all respects, however, gab is what the Fuyuge continually anticipate and live for. This is what I found in the later twentieth century and it was as true at Fastré’s time as he remarks, “A village can be said quite literally to live for this [ritual]. They think about it from one [ritual] to another, and in fact do not really think about much else” (Fastré n.d., 21, original emphasis). In this respect gab is comparable to the Maori meeting houses (Gell 1998, 252–253) created as “vehicles of a collectivity’s power” (ibid 251, quoting Thomas 1995, 103). They are indexes of the collectivity’s power and attempts to disempower others by the greatness of gab. Ultimately, then, to speak of ritual or of artwork is to address different forms of power. The Fuyuge say that in performing gab they are following in the ways of the gorowa (Macgregor’s bowerbird). The male gorowa builds a bower around a tree sapling in the forests above the lower elevation valleys of human habitation. This is its gab . It decorates the gab with all sorts of shiny objects it fi nds on the forest fl oor in order to make the gab attractive and beautiful. The Fuyuge say these are his yams. The bird dances in its bower and by doing so tries to attract a ‘wife’ (a female to mate with). The gorowa has a bright yellow plume at the back of its head and it fl icks this as it performs its dance. This is its headdress. The gab the Fuyuge perform in the lower realms of the valleys is not only parallel but is a version of the bird’s gab . The bird, in their understanding, provides the basis or source for their conventions; the bird is person-like and not separated from humans in the way Westerners usually understand (see Ingold 2000, 50). Gorowa and the ways it creates and performs gab originates from tidibe . Tidibe is a creative force and power that has shaped the Fuyuge world and world beyond. Although tidibe concerns past actions, it is simultaneously about ever-present perduring forces. By following in the way of tidibe and the ancestors, the Fuyuge are able to appear effi cacious and are thus able to captivate their audience. In Gell’s terms, the gorowa provides the prototype for the way the Fuyuge create gab and the effectiveness they seek to attain through their performances. Other birds (e.g. Raggiana bird of paradise) are the prototype for various dance steps and drum beats performed in gab .4 Fastré tells us that men from an area will gauge whether they have suffi cient pigs of size and number of their own, or from relatives and friends, to draw on in order to organise gab . Pigs may seem very different from the dancers with which I began. But pigs are also an analogue of the dancers as each needs to appear comparable and a substitute for the other. The performance of the beautiful dancers must be matched by the beautiful (valag ) pigs they receive in exchange. Each occupies the ritual village at different stages and is displayed in ways that evoke the other. The sacrifi ce of the pigs at the culmination of gab , and their distribution to the dancers and other guests, is a performance that is not only comparable to that of the dancers but to other elements of the gab that are staged beforehand. In Gell’s terms the gab as a whole is an index, but the parts or stages that are Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 87 perceived to constitute this whole are indexes as well. As mentioned earlier, part and whole exist at once, and at any moment of the ritual one simply acts as fi gure or ground to the other. Fastré next turns to the planting of a special garden for the gab , where yams are of importance. He focuses on the magic used to ensure the multiplicity of the yams produced. Harvested yams are prominently displayed around the interior of the ritual village and the size and quality of the yams, like that of the pigs, are an indication of the ritual hosts’ effectiveness.5 In order for the yams to grow in a beautiful manner numerous taboos (hek ) must be followed. As Fastré (n.d., 34) notes: “Yams are . . . considered as persons”. In a similar vein, taboos are followed by the dancers (see later in the chapter) in order for them to attain a handsome skin and fi gure. Again, the hosts seek to have their yams perceived by the gab audience as looking as beautiful as the dancers; the fi ne skin of each is a sign of the dancers’ as much as the hosts’ potency (cf. Gell 1998, 41). The building of the village where the gab is staged is covered next in Fastré’s account. In real time the village would be constructed after planting the large yam garden. The village is created around a large central plaza (endant ) with women’s houses ( amuliti) around the perimeter, entrances facing towards the plaza, and conventionally, at opposite ends, two men’s houses (emend ) are constructed. The various ritual structures are together constructed by the men and women hosting the gab. It is a collective undertaking. In this process of construction magic is used to make the men’s houses. This makes the gab strong and dangerous. Now, Fastré observes, it needs to be made weak and gentle for those inhabiting the place (Fastré n.d., 44). Fastré emphasises that the place is gab , not just the dance or other ceremonies. He likens it to how we might use ‘exhibition’: “the place where they are exhibited, or the action of exhibiting” (ibid ). Fastré continues, “If we were proceeding in chronological order this subject would only be dealt with later. But since we are dealing with buildings, let us go with it” (ibid ). This is how Fastré introduces his brief account of the house constructed for the dancers. “It is only a big shed without walls or fl oor . . . a few posts with a temporary roof run up in a hurry” (ibid ). The subject would be dealt with later because the structure is only constructed just prior to the arrival of the dancers. The house for the dancers is located some distance from the main gab village. While the structures around the gab plaza are raised off the ground, with the two men’s houses signifi cantly so, the house for the dancers is on the ground. Each of the hosts’ women’s houses and men’s houses around the gab is separated, while the living arrangement in the invited dancers’ house is one large, undifferentiated space. Thus, houses around the gab plaza face onto the large plaza, while, as mentioned, being differentiated from one another. The dancers’ house faces onto no space except itself; the dancers must internally differentiate themselves when they come to occupy the space. In these respects, then, the house for the dancers and the houses for the hosts (and their guests) are inversions of one another. This opposition is created so that through the enactment of the gab , and in particular the performance of the dance, the fi nal sacrifi ce of pigs and the exchanges between the hosts and dancers, the 88 Eric Hirsch opposition can be obviated at the end of the ritual. The negation of the opposition creates the conditions for it to be re-established at a later time and place. The beautiful and fi ne (valag ) structures around the plaza are created to contrast with the hastily constructed structure without a fl oor used to house the dancers. Because the gab is always a challenge and struggle for power the dancers are placed in an unappealing building from which they should emerge in all their beauty to dazzle the hosts and their other guests. But before the gab village and any of these structures are created, and the large yam garden is cultivated, the hosts of the ritual decide which dancers they will invite (Fastré n.d., 46).Which village or group of villages is asked depends on whether those villages had challenged the hosts to dance in the past. If this is the case then there is a debt that needs to be returned: “Those to whom we owe pigs (our creditors) will dance” (ibid 47). Fastré discusses the intricate procedure of inviting the dancers and the movement of the dancers towards the gab . Invitations to the dancers and their movement to the gab are both conducted along roads that traverse the lands of different villages; each village is associated with different sets of named roads and the people residing there are often referred to by the road name. Each road is looked after, or guarded, and the person doing so is called the enamb u bab (father of the road). Fastré emphasises that each father of the road must be properly recognised – through prestations of various kinds – by those traversing upon his road and passing through his village. Adherence to these protocols is perceived as essential for the effective performance of gab . The hosts of the ritual seek to gather and concentrate as many roads as they are able. This contributes to the overall beautiful appearance of gab ; not just in the number of roads the hosts are able to gather, but also the speed with which they are able to accomplish the gathering of roads. The number of roads gathered, as much as the speed in which this is accomplished, is evidence of the hosts’ power. Fastré’s narrative then turns to the preparations of the dancers and the bodily transformations they effect in order to attain a beautiful appearance. He also refers to the “feverish activities” of the hosts and the invitations they take to guests from other villages who will witness and assess not only the dancing performances but the actions of the hosts (ibid 55). The bodies of the dancers must be light and their skin unblemished. To accomplish this the dancers undertake a regime of fasting before their performance. Fastré describes the procedures and rites followed in order “to beautify the body” – “beauty consists of a lithe slender body and a smooth glossy skin with a natural shine” (ibid 64–70). He notes that it is a process of “purifi cation”. For example, he describes how each dancer keeps a “beauty stone” (seseg bute ) near his person. “This continual contact will make the brilliance of the stone pass into the one who is carrying it” (ibid 64). All relations with women are banned prior to the dancing performance, as is contact of water on the skin, both of which will negatively affect the skin appearance. One can only wipe the skin with crushed croton leaves or the roots of special plants. “Usually, plants with a strong perfume or brilliant colours are chosen, especially yellow, which colours the skin nicely or oily plants which make it shine. Before they are Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 89 used they are spread out in the sun, not to dry them but to heat them so they will capture some of the sun’s brilliance and add it to the skin” (ibid 65). Before the dancers put on their adornments for their long-awaited daytime performances, the hosts challenge the power and strength of some of the dancing group. They plant stakes from the hoyan tree (Cryptocarya lauraceae ) in the plaza and apply magic to the stakes so they are very strong, but fl exible. Men who will dance at night leap over the plaza fence in silence brandishing spears and run at the stakes, leaping to incredible heights, to try and knock them over. “When the tree-trunks have all been thrown down they re-group, the singing begins and in a frenzied outburst of movement they hurl themselves around the courtyard like a lot of dervishes, waving their weapons so wildly that one would fear bloodshed” ( ibid 62). And then there is utter silence again. As Fastré observes, “The dance . . . is no sinecure . . . that accepting a dance was considered as accepting a challenge” ( ibid 78). The interdiction with regards to water changes on the day of the dance when all the dancers gather and bathe at rivers renowned for their beauty enhancing qualities. These are known as seseg yu, waters of beauty. The men and women then prepare for the daytime dance. The principle headdress for the men is adorned with kere feathers (Electus Parrot). Already in the 1930s, Fastré notes that these feathers were formerly reserved for high status men only, that they were too costly for others, “and few indeed were those who had the right to it. But nowadays there is less of the former overpowering respect for the hierarchy, and money is so easy to get” (ibid 70). Fastré’s manuscript now describes in detail the daytime and night-time dances and the place of men and women performers in each of these dances. In the daytime dance, in particular, he describes how the hosts hang a couple of skulls from the kere dancer, or dancers, and the dance begins. It is slow, with a solemn drum roll: “It is a dance that consists rather in the movement of the feathers than of the body and this calm dignity forms a striking contrast to the gyrations [aifari ] of the [women dancers] around them” (ibid 72) (see Plate 2). That evening the night-time dance follows. It consists of varied drum-beats and songs. Many, as noted earlier, have bird dance and bird song as prototypes. The performance lasts throughout the night until dawn. “The women and girls of the village are responsible for the lighting. They walk singing or in silence before or at the side of the dancers, holding torches made of very dry bamboo and a wood that looks like elder-tree even if it is not” (ibid 75). Fastré then asks his interlocutors if dancers left the group at the invitation of a woman. “Obvi- ously there are women whose sole interest seems to lie in chasing men . . . and there are men who chase after women in the same way. Women do go up to the dancers and touch them. But that is no more permissible during the dances than in everyday life . . . What often does happen is marriage between young men and women; and it does also happen that married women go off with one of the dancers” (ibid 76). We could say, following Gell, that the agency of the dancers is abducted by the women witnessing their performance which captivates the women’s passions, in some cases. 90 Eric Hirsch

Plate 2 Kere dancers Photo by E. Hirsch, 1985

At dawn the dancers retire and the hosts get to work disassembling the vegetables they have used to decorate the village plaza – following in the way of the gorowa described earlier. They are assembled in a line in the plaza with a space left in the plaza centre. “In this way people can see the quantity available for distribution, and listen to the praise that will not fail to come from the visitors or they will supply it themselves if others do not” (ibid 79). The food is divided between the dancers and other guests. This is called fade , divisions (Figure 6.1). What the divisions recognise are the named roads that have been concentrated in the gab . The yams, taro, sugarcane and other vegetables are assembled into the fade . Fastré emphasises that the division created for the dancers is much larger than for all the other named roads, “for they are the real stars of the occasion” (ibid ). The distributions have a solemn tone. The fade are not just food but an index through which the hosts seek to have their agency abducted by the recipient of their creation. The hosts have created, in a sense, an image of the recipient, one the recipient must collect once the name of their road is called. Just as the invited dancers seek to enhance their performance through taboos and magical procedures, so do the hosts with respect to their pigs and how they are sac- riﬁ ced and distributed. While the dancers were concentrated outside the gab prior to their performance, the pigs are concentrated inside the gab plaza prior to the performance of their sacriﬁ ce. Once the pigs are gathered together – a slow and arduous Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 91

Figure 6.1 Assembling fade Photo by E. Hirsch, 1983

task – there is the act of placing the polag . “Polag means all the magic things that are given to the pigs to keep them in good health and to fatten them rapidly” (ibid 83). The pigs are an analogue of the dancers and both are an index in Gell’s terms: i.e. where the realm of agency overlaps with the realm of patiency/recipients. In the case of the invited dancers, this is through the magical transformation of their own person and body, while the gab hosts deploy their agency to transform the pigs into large, fat animals with beautiful (valag ) skin. The sacrifi ce of the pigs is imagined as a war: “an image [evone ] that simulates a real war” (ibid 87). The speeches of the hosts evoke the pigs as the enemy that need to be killed by leaping at them like a ‘lightning-fl ash’ (ibid ). When the invited dancers performed earlier, their desire was that their magic and power would cause harm to the hosts, such as killing some of the recipients of their performance or having their dances cause houses to catch fi re. Both performances are indexes of the respective collectivity’s power. When it comes to cutting and distributing the pig, Fastré highlights that this is an ‘art’ (ibid 90); not only the carving of the pig, but the manner in which the recipients are called (Figure 6.2). The invited dancers are summoned fi rst as they are the ‘kings’ of the gab ( ibid 91). All the dancers and other guests depart the gab loaded with pork, which is further distributed when they reach their homes. The gab at the end, in Fastré’s words, “remains only as a memory” (ibid 93). Eventually its structures 92 Eric Hirsch

Figure 6.2 Arranging the sacriﬁ ced pigs in a line Photo by E. Hirsch, 1985 deteriorate and the site vanishes as the hosts return to their ordinary places of habitation. Each gab acts as an index composed of numerous related indexes; the place is gab – where the indexes are exhibited as much as the action of exhibiting, as Fastré notes earlier. What ultimately matters to the Fuyuge is that performers of gab have their name known far and wide. The indexes or artworks they have created are the means for achieving this potential renown. But for their performances to have this effect, they must be perceived as at once beautiful and captivating. Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 93 Transformation to gab and critiques of art and agency Over half a century later Fastré’s account resonates with what I observed in the mid-1980s and in 1999. Fuyuge invited dancers still followed protocols to enable them to evince beauty, and the ritual hosts still constructed their village and assembled their yams and pigs in complementary and beautiful ways. However, the display and performance with bones are a convention of the past. The contemporary gab exhibits evidence of both tradition and innovation. But as Gell argues at the end of his account,

An artefact or event [e.g. a performance] is never traditional or innovatory in any absolute sense. . . . A “traditional” artefact (or event) is only “traditional” when viewed from a latter-day perspective, and as a screen . . . through which its precursors are adumbrated. . . . Conversely, an “innovatory” object (or event) is innovatory only on condition that we situate ourselves anterior to it in time . . . so that we can likewise see it as a screen through which still later objects may be protended. (1998, 256)

Every gab is intended to be a gab that will be superior to that of rival gab while at the same time every gab is meant to draw on an extended temporal ﬁ eld from the ancestors of the past that simultaneously prevails in the present. So while the general pattern of gauging the size and number of pigs, inviting the dancers, planting the yam garden, constructing the gab village, etc. all remained

Figure 6.3 Lines of money displayed before being transacted Photo by E. Hirsch, 1999 94 Eric Hirsch similar there were substantial differences in what now constituted a beautiful and captivating gab performance. For example, by the turn of the twenty-fi rst century, daytime dances were now in some places performed as ‘disco’, a form of performance that had its critics. Although rigorous preparations were made to the skin and body, guitars were used instead of drums. Pigs were gathered and sacrifi ced as described by Fastré, but the numbers were much greater and the expectation was that exchanges would now involve the transaction of money. Money was displayed in a manner analogous to how pigs were arranged before their distribution and how dancers arranged themselves in the plaza: into rows or lines that highlighted their overall magnitude. At the same time, my Fuyuge associates said they followed in the way of gorowa (as the prototype) in how they created gab (Figure 6.3). These alterations to the indexes created (e.g. dancers, pigs, exchange valuables and so on) have occurred because the performers of gab – whether agents or patients – fi nd them captivating, as evincing beauty (seseg ) and perceived as beautiful (valag ). What it is to be a Fuyuge person and the horizons of their experience and expectations are different from the time Fastré was writing. This is clearly due to the infl uences of missions, colonialism and ‘modernity’. Lipset argues that Gell’s theory is ahistorical, particularly as regards the concept of the person (2005, 111). Lipset’s analysis of Murik art (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) shows how it is now produced largely for tourists. Cosmic male spirits are no longer part of the art produced as they were in the not too distant past. At the same time he indicates that “Murik art remains imbued with agency” ( ibid 135). However, “the overall concept of the person within which that agency is embedded has changed” (ibid ). It is on the basis of these sorts of transformations that Lipset makes his argument against Gell’s theory. But this does not seem to be a very strong criticism. Gell’s model is devised to be universal, applicable regardless of time or space. If the art nexus is different among the Murik now, as compared in the past, then the key issue is whether Gell’s theory can help elucidate these differences. If concepts of the person have changed then, by implication, notions of agency, patiency, index and prototype will have transformed. If the abduction of agency is now primarily targeted at outside tourists in contrast to an indigenous male collectivity, this does not pose a problem for the theory, only for how the theory might be applied to these contrasting situations. Although Lipset does not draw attention to Murik ideas of beauty, it can be suggested that these have transformed: from ideas based on cosmically infl uenced indexes (canoes) that captivated inhabitants in this “world of water” (ibid 113) to art object commodities destined for touristic tastes and the fi nancial support of individual carvers and their kin. In a similar critical vein Morphy argues that Gell incorrectly equates aesthetics with evaluations of beauty, both of which Morphy suggests are inappropri- ately marginalised in Gell’s anthropological theory of art (2009, 7). However, Gell admits “that works of art are sometimes intended and received as objects of aesthetics appreciation, and that it is sometimes the case that works of art function semiotically, but I specifi cally reject the notion that they always do” (1998, 66). Although Gell’s earlier work was heavily infl uenced by semiotic analysis and an Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 95 emphasis on meaning, he came to abandon this focus (Gell 1975). His reason for doing so was due to what he saw as an “embedding problem”: “how is the semiotic system embedded in social practice?” (Gell 1999, 17). Through a focus on captivation and the abduction of agency, he was able to fi nd “a way of both preserving the absolutely signifi cant aspect of the work of art as something which has a powerful cognitive effect on the spectator, as well as something which is produced by very potent cognitions of the maker”. He goes on to say, “I had a way of linking that side of the equation to the social effi cacy of art – the fact that we produce and consume art in ways which very often do not seem to be in the self-interest of the immediate agent or patient” (ibid 17). At the same time, this way of producing and consuming art is connected to the primacy of social relations that “occupy a certain biographical space, over which culture is picked up, transformed, and passed on, through a series of life-stages” (Gell 1998, 11). In general, as Chua and Elliot (2013, 16) point out, Morphy (2009), as well as Layton (2002), have both criticised Gell for advancing a universal theory that appears to ride roughshod over the signifi cance of cultural convention. Layton admits that he is an “unrepentant semiologist” (ibid 461). He contends that Gell’s model of the art nexus is incomplete without “recognising the status of art as a culturally constructed medium of visual expression”. What these criticisms underline is a tension in anthropology between a long-standing focus on, and respect for, the particular and grand theories that go beyond the particularities of context. Does Gell’s theory enable, for example, the study of ‘beauty’ as a cross-cultural phenomenon? Or is there an implicit bias in the theory with the distinctions made between ‘primary’ agents (i.e. intentional humans) and ‘secondary’ agents (i.e. artefacts) that reproduce the Western emphasis on the individual and precludes such wider understanding (see Gell 1998, 20–21)? Although this might be one conclusion to draw from the distinction made by Gell, it is based on only a partial reading of his theory and the examples used for illustration (see Henare, Holbraad and Wastell 2007, 17–18; Leach 2007, 174, 183). Again, as Chua and Elliott (2013, 15) observe, the later chapters of Art and Agency reveal that the “socio-cultural forms of things are shaped by their intrinsic properties”. This is less a contradiction in Gell’s theory than a multi-layered understanding of agency in terms of causation, the relational texture of social life and the effects generated through the art nexus.

A concluding word . . . In this chapter I have analysed the relations between beauty and captivation in Fuyuge gab by drawing on Gell’s anthropological theory of art. Other anthropologists working in the Melanesian region have focused on the importance of beauty in dance performance, which is how I began this chapter. A classic example is the work of A. Strathern and M. Strathern on Self-decoration in Mount Hagen (1971). They observe, for example, with respect to pig killings and their distributions, that the “dancers . . . should . . . be well looked after, since they are displaying equally their decorations and their own beauty and health” (ibid 11; cf. M. Strath- ern 1979). Others have followed their lead in examining the signiﬁ cance of dance 96 Eric Hirsch performances to wider social and political relations (see O’Hanlon 1989). With regards to the case considered here, I have analysed gab as an ‘artwork’ in its entirety, instead of viewing the dance performances alone as art (cf. Eves 2009). My aim was to highlight the inextricable connection between dance performance and its ritual setting as regards assessments of beauty. In doing so I have shown that the use of Gell’s theory enables the analyst to expand the range of entities that are considered as artworks and, by implication, the manner in which beauty and captivation can be understood in fresh ways within particular social relations of power.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to the editor, Stephanie Bunn, for her invitation to contribute to this volume and for excellent editorial work on my chapter. I also thank Anna Kawalec for her critical reading of a draft of this chapter. For any errors in fact or form I have only myself to thank.

Notes 1 Fastré was the fi rst missionary to live among the Fuyuge, founding a mission station there in 1905. He stayed with the Fuyuge for over twenty-fi ve years and began to draft his manuscript prior to his retirement from mission activity in Papua. 2 The Fuyuge reside in fi ve river valleys in the Papuan highlands, 100km north of Port Moresby, the national capital. They have a population of ca. 14,000. I conducted research in the Udabe Valley. Fastré was based in the neighbouring Auga Valley. 3 The manuscript does not have a publication date but from what Fastré has written at the end of the text it is clear that it was produced over the period 1937 to 1939. 4 The gorowa as the prototype of gab performance is not mentioned by Fastré in his manuscript. I found this surprising given the broad range of topics covered in his text. This cannot be because the idea was a recent innovation as similar notions are found throughout Melanesia (see for example Feld 1982). Although Fastré was based in a neighbouring Fuyuge valley to the one where I conducted research the practice of gab in each of the fi ve Fuyuge valleys is similar in general form with individual variations not only between valleys but within them as well (e.g. there is a women’s dance in the valley Fastré lived in but not in the valley in which I was based). 5 Other foods are also planted in this garden including taro and sugarcane that are displayed along with the yams.

References Chua, L. and M. Elliott. 2013. Introduction: Adventures in the art Nexus. In L. Chua and M. Elliott (eds.). Distributed objects: Meaning and mattering after Alfred Gell . Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1–24. Eves, R. 2009. Speaking for itself: Art, meaning and power in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Australian Journal of Anthropology , 20: 178–197. Fastré, P. n.d. Manners and customs of the Fuyuges (trans. M. Flower and E. Chariot). Carmel, Bomana: Papua New Guinea. Feld, S. 1982. Sound and sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics and song in Kaluli expression . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Beauty and captivation: Fuyuge gab and Gell 97 Gell, A. 1999. The art of anthropology: Essays and diagrammes (ed. E. Hirsch). London: The Athlone Press. Gell, A. 1998. Art and agency: An anthropological theory . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gell, A. 1975. Metamorphosis of the cassowaries: Umeda society, language and ritual . London: The Athlone Press. Henare, A., M. Holbraad, and S. Wastell. 2007. Introduction: Thinking through things. In A. Henara, M. Holbraad and S. Wastell (eds.). Thinking through things: Theorising artefacts ethnographically . London: Routledge, 1–31. Ingold, T. 2000. The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill . London: Routledge. Layton, R. 2002. Art and agency: A reassessment. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , 9: 447–464. Leach, J. 2007. Differentiation and encompassment: A critique of Alfred Gell’s theory of the abduction of creativity. In A. Henara, M. Holbraad and S. Wastell (eds.). Thinking through things: Theorising artefacts ethnographically . London: Routledge, 167–188. Lipset, D. 2005. Dead canoes: The fate of agency in twentieth-century Murik art. Social Analysis , 49: 109–140. Morphy, H. 2009. Art as a mode of action: Some problems with Gell’s Art and agency . Journal of Material Culture , 14: 5–27. O’Hanlon, M. 1989. Reading the skin: Adornment, display and society among the Wahgi . London: British Museum Press. Strathern, A. and Strathern, M. 1971. Self-decoration in Mount Hagen . London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Strathern, M. 1979. The self in self-decoration. Oceania , 49: 241–257. Thomas, N. 1995. Kiss the baby goodbye: Kowhaiwhai and aesthetics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Critical Inquiry , 22: 90–121. Wagner, R. 1991. The fractal person. In M. Godelier and M. Strathern (eds.). Big men and great men: Personiﬁ cations of power in Melanesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 159–173. Wagner, R. 1986. Asiwinarong: Ethos, image, and social power among the Usen Barok of New Ireland . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 7 The continual changes Transforming art styles in Enlightenment Scotland and beyond

Peter Gow

“Is hiririn the name of the little ﬁ nger on the right hand; or the name of the hole in the chanter; or the name of the note; or what else is it?” “No,” said the master, that’s “hiririn ,” and he played that word over again cleverly, with the same little ﬁ nger. John Francis Campbell on how the pibroch is taught, 18801

The enquiry can begin with Jean August-Dominique Ingres’s painting, The Dream of Ossian . It was painted in 1813 on commission from Napoleon for his palace in Rome. It is the record of a specifi c stylistic problem. Ingres, young, ambitious, and absurdly talented, wanted to be a history painter. He was commissioned to paint a history painting by the most powerful man of his age, to hang above the commissioner’s bed in the Palazzo de Quirinale, no less. Everything should have been going really well. Except, clearly, it wasn’t, because in these very august circumstances, Ingres painted this extremely strange painting. It has at least two problems as a history painting. Firstly, history painting was beginning to go out of fashion when Ingres painted it. Secondly, its subject matter was the focus of a prolonged and intense debate about the defi nition of history itself.2 Like all paintings, Ingres’s The Dream of Ossian is a very complex object. Paint- ings take a long time to conceive and to execute. Ingres’s painting was based on an earlier painting, Ossian by François Gérard, also commissioned by Napoleon, which is compositionally less complex. And The Dream of Ossian as we know it today is not exactly how it was originally executed. In the unfortunate changed circumstances of its commissioner, Ingres acquired it back. The Dream of Ossian was not painted onto the ceiling of Napoleon’s bedroom in the Palazzo de Quiri- nale, but rather onto a canvas that was then affi xed to that ceiling. In its very form, it hinted at temporal instability.3 The most powerful man of his age turned out to be less impressive than he had initially seemed, and Ingres, an ambitious man in his own right, had to do what he had to do. It was then re-painted by a student of Ingres, Raymond Balze, sometime after 1835. Balze began to transform it from its original oval form to its current rectangle, adding several new fi gures. Balze never completed the re-painting, which explains some of its strangeness. This suggests that Ingres planned to sell the painting, but then lost interest in it. Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 99 Ingres’s painting style is usually thought of as at the end of Classicism, a style born in the early Renaissance and about to enter terminal decline in Ingres’s old age, as modernism took over. Ingres was notoriously conservative as a painter, and notoriously hostile to all the new stylistic and genre developments occurring around him. But The Dream of Ossian is hardly a Classical painting. This painting is not Ingres’s most famous painting, which is arguably Grande Odalisque from 1814, painted on commission from Napoleon’s sister, Queen Caroline of Naples. With Grande Odalisque , you sort of know where you stand, but with The Dream of Ossian, you don’t. The young Ingres who painted The Dream of Ossian is either bizarrely reactionary or bizarrely prophetic. You don’t know if it is simply a bad painting, harking back to the worst excesses of the Baroque, or a sort of precocious fumbling towards Cubism or even German Expressionist cinema. The “dream” part of the painting is effectively an oil painting of a sketch, an extremely unusual pictorial strategy. Here, Ingres inverts the temporal relationship between sketching and painting for artistic effect. When a painter as skilled as Ingres starts abandoning the basic pillars of his style, you know something big is going on. What exactly are we looking at here? I think that Ingres’s painting is a remarkably insightful visual commentary on the debate that surrounds its subject, Ossian. Ossian was, or was said to have been, a blind Scottish poet of the third century CE, who recorded in verse the exploits of the warrior hero Fingal and his companions the Feinn. Ossian was, or was said to have been, the son of Fingal. The obscure fi gure of Ossian came to the attention of people like Napoleon and Ingres due to the publication of English translations of his work by James Macpherson of Badenoch in Speyside, from 1760 onwards. Macpherson was a close relative of the hereditary owner of Badenoch, Edward Macpherson of Cluny, an ardent Jacobite aristocrat who eluded capture by the British army on his own lands for nine years in a remarkable piece of political élan , before fi nally escaping to France. The dates are signifi cant. The great Jacobite Rising began in 1745, was fi nally defeated at Culloden, just north of Badenoch, in 1746, and fourteen years later a young relative of an utterly intransigent Jacobite chief was publishing the fi rst of his translations of the poems of Ossian in London, the main seat of a British king of the Protestant succession.4 Macpherson’s books were wildly successful. Many of the great luminaries of the European Enlightenment fell in love with them, from Diderot to Goethe. Even the wonderful Voltaire took them seriously, or as seriously as that genial sceptic took anything. Ossian’s poetry was widely held to be “sublime,” a distinctively Enlight- enment aesthetic judgement that held that beyond mere “beauty,” there was a kind of more beautiful “beauty” that needed a special name and special philosophical exploration. The sheer grandiosity of the whole affair explains Napoleon’s commission to Ingres, and his remarkable pictorial response. As is to be expected, there was some dissent from such near universal acclaim, and unfortunately, in the political circumstances, it came most strongly from within the literary elite of London, and from an Englishman, Dr Samuel Johnson. It is entirely possible to anachronistically misread this situation. Johnson did not dislike Scottish people, as his long, intense, and very warm friendship with James Boswell 100 Peter Gow attests. And he was genuinely interested in and intrigued by Gaelic-speaking High- land Scotland, for one of his favourite authors was Martin Martin, the author of famous books on the Western Islands (2003). His dispute with James Macpherson was not about any distaste for Scotland, Highland Scotland, or native speakers of Gaelic, but an entirely personal distaste for James Macpherson, the man himself. Being an eminently reasonable man of his Enlightenment time, Johnson sought to justify this personal distaste with reason. Macpherson, Johnson argued, was a forger. Macpherson, he said, had forged the poetry of Ossian. He also thought that it was bad poetry, but the key charge was forgery. Today, predictably enough, the debate is about the authenticity of the poetry of Ossian, but authenticity as we now understand it is a recent concern. In the debate about this work in the latter half of the eighteenth century, authenticity was opposed, not to inauthenticity in our sense, but to forgery. The charge was that Macpherson was a forger, and that he had simply made up the poetry himself, and that it was therefore a fake. Today, there is general recognition that there is no independent evidence for the existence of either Fingal or Ossian, so we are clearly not dealing with the history of third-century Scotland. Today, again, we would have no diffi culty in recognizing the poems of Ossian as myths. If so, what exactly would it mean to be a “forger” of a myth? You can forge money, forge documents, and so forth, but you can hardly be accused of forging a myth. As the Gaelic proverb holds, “If it is a lie as told by me, it is a lie as told to me.” For me, this a very profound defi nition of Scottish Gaelic oral tradition. So, what could it possibly mean to forge a myth? To forge a myth is precisely the process of mythopoeia, that is, the genesis of myth, and what a myth is. As Lévi-Strauss said, “A myth is a message that is, properly speaking, coming from nowhere” (1970). Johnson’s accusations against Macpherson strike us now like pre-Freudian dream analysis. Freud pointed out that we actually are the authors of our dreams, but that the “we” in that statement is the really complicated bit, not the meaning of the dream itself. If Macpherson “forged” the poems of Ossian, then he was simply doing what myths make people do, that is, tell them. Johnson’s position now strikes many of us as ridiculous. Many, that is, but by no means all. James Macpherson is mostly known today precisely because he is known as a literary forger, and the poems of Ossian are mostly known today because they are held to be the authored works of James Macpherson, not Ossian. In her excellent book, Sublime Savage , published in 1988, Fiona Stafford produces an account of James Macpherson’s life and of his work that brilliantly elucidates the precise origins of his version of the poems of Ossian in the very specifi c social and cultural context of their production. Like most informed modern commentators, Stafford effectively exonerates Macpher- son of the charge of forgery, and in fact shows just how important he was in formulating a key cultural shift in Scotland and beyond .5 But as noted, Dr John- son’s opinion has prevailed in the popular mind, largely because virtually nobody these days reads Ossian/Macpherson, but many read Johnson’s wonderful account of his travels in Scotland with Boswell, where the case is discussed (Johnson and Boswell [1984]). But this has the absurd effect that we know about James Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 101 Macpherson and Ossian only as a distant echo of an Enlightenment debate about aesthetics and language that most of us would now fi nd as genuinely incompre- hensible as Ingres’s painting.

Analogy We need a helping hand here. We need what anthropology endlessly provides, analogies. This problem looks like that problem, and we solved that problem in that way, so we can probably solve this problem in the same way. An analogy exists in Nicolas Poussin’s Rebecca at the Well (it has other titles), which was painted circa 1648. This painting has been beautifully analyzed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in Look, Listen, Read (1997). Poussin is very popular with modern audiences in a way in which Ingres, on the whole, is not. Lévi-Strauss analyzes this painting precisely in relation to the extraordinary aesthetic power of Poussin for modern audiences and the intellectual reasons for it. At the time of its fi rst public appearance, Rebecca at the Well generated serious controversy. Critics asked whether it was a good painting. Contemporaries of Poussin looked at this painting, and asked the then pithy question, “Where are the camels?” Today, nobody in their right mind would ask that question about this painting. “Where are the camels?” Frankly, who cares? It strikes us as utterly ludicrous, as Lévi-Strauss pointed out. But Lévi-Strauss goes on to show that what has really changed between Pous- sin’s time and ours is the attitude to historical events and to painting itself. In the late seventeenth century, Poussin’s theme was the representation of a very important historical event, and indeed a sacred one. The event in question is the fi rst step in the actual founding of God’s Chosen People, for Rebecca is here revealing herself as the ideal bride of Isaac, the son Abraham was willing to sacrifi ce to God but was then not required to do so. And in Genesis, she reveals this by her solicitude for the messenger’s camels. The camels are absolutely crucial to the original story: there were twelve of them, and the number twelve is going to be really signifi cant just down the line, and drawing water from a well for twelve thirsty camels is a lot of work. The seventeenth century question was about whether or not an artist was at liberty to change the sacred history: how far can artistic license be taken? Poussin, who was not much of a painter of animals, probably thought he could leave the camels out, but his critics took him to task for this serious misrepresentation of the known event. Poussin may have reasoned that he could leave the pictorially problematic camels out of the scene because Genesis clearly states that they were resting some way away when Abraham’s servant fi rst met Rebecca at the well. His critics probably reasoned that the camels were absolutely central to the scene, because Abraham’s servant had absolutely no idea that Rebecca was the correct, divinely chosen, bride for Isaac until she provided him with water, and then watered the camels. Neither had yet happened in the scene Poussin painted. Today we can barely understand this debate because we don’t believe the supposedly known event ever happened and because our current concept of “artistic licence” 102 Peter Gow has spread from being a serious intellectual problem to a basic defi nition of what artists do. Artists should take liberties with everything, many of us now feel. Poussin’s current popularity may actually be down to precisely this willingness to subordinate reality to sheer artistic intent. His paintings contain no unattractive camel-related awkwardness. Tastes change, as we all know, but as Lévi-Strauss pointed out, tastes change in a fairly systematic manner that should be of real interest to anthropologists. He wrote,

Contemporary styles do not ignore one another . . . The originality of each style, therefore, does not preclude borrowings. It stems from a conscious or unconscious wish to declare itself different, to choose from among all the possibilities some that the art of neighbouring people has rejected. This is also true of successive styles. The Louis XV style prolongs the Louis XIV style, and the Louis XVI style prolongs the Louis XV style; but, at the same time, each challenges the other. In its own way, it says what the preceding style was saying in its own language, and it also says something else, which the preceding style was not saying but was silently inviting the new style to enunciate. (1983)

In his account of style, Lévi-Strauss makes a very important point, which is that cultural variation and historical change are the same thing. That is, different cultures and different historical periods of our own past differ from us in exactly the same way. This runs completely contrary to the key Enlightenment claim for a radical break between the past and the present, between arguments from authority and arguments from reason. In various places, Lévi-Strauss argues that different aesthetic systems should be treated as structural transformations of one another. The argument is present in his reﬂ ections on the Caduveo (Kadiweu) in Tristes Tropiques (1976), in his conversations with George Charbonnier (1969), in the “Overture” to the Mythologiques [1970], and ﬁ nally in Look, Listen, Read (1997). Each aesthetic medium is autonomous, governed by the physical resistance of its materials, but as aesthetic media, they are all manifestations of human thought being played out in real time. At any given place and time, they necessarily interact with and transform each other. This is not a “spirit of the age,” where some mysterious entity orchestrates the various aesthetic media into some kind of unity, but rather the complex interplay between different aesthetic media that throw up momentary syntheses that are immensely aesthetically compelling at that point. Such syntheses are overthrown again as time passes, and can come to seem completely ridiculous. Consider Ingres’s The Dream of Ossian again. Ingres, and later Balze, must have had very compelling aesthetic reasons for heading where they were going, but a modern audience can no longer really see where that “where” might be. Lévi-Strauss’s meditations on Rebecca at the Well elucidate a key problem in understanding the controversy about Macpherson/Ossian. One of the great curiosities about the Enlightenment debate about Ossian and Macpherson is its focus on Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 103 manuscripts , their version of the camel problem. The reason that Macpherson is currently best known as a notorious forger is that he did indeed claim to have in his possession the original manuscripts of Ossian’s poetry. He was never able to prove this, and Dr Johnson, on that basis, branded him a forger and a liar. Today, the debate seems totally ridiculous, for we know that myths are only ever written down in quite unusual circumstances, but then why did Macpherson make his obviously untrue claim about the manuscripts when the actual origin of this poetry was clearly oral? There is ample evidence that the stories of Fingal were circulating in oral form during Macpherson’s early life. For example, David Stewart of Garth, born in 1772, recalled of his boyhood,

the recitation of their traditional poetry was a favourite pastime with the Highlanders when collected round their evening ﬁ re. The person who could rehearse the best poem or song, and the longest and most entertaining tale, whether stranger or friend, was the most acceptable guest. When a stranger appeared, after the usual introductory compliments, the ﬁ rst question was, “ Bheil dad agad air an Fheinn? ” (Can you speak of the days of Fingal?) (1822:114–5)

Why then did not Macpherson simply tell the truth? There are two aspects to this. Firstly, thinkers of the latter half of the eighteenth century had a developed sense of written versus oral tradition, but one that is deeply unfamiliar to us today. For them, written manuscripts were primarily material objects that travelled unchanged through time, faithfully retaining the original words and meanings of their authors, while oral transmission was a wild and unruly thing that mercurially changed words and their meanings more or less at random. In order to have true meanings, words had to be written down on the page and then read. What is Samuel Johnson most famous for if not his dictionary? And what is a dictionary if not a way of pinning down words and their meanings onto the enduring form of a manuscript?6 Secondly, this confl ation of the written with the truth and the oral with lies was particularly serious for languages such as Scottish Gaelic that were not often written down at that time. Without writing, it was then held, the Gaelic language was incapable of progress , and progress was the buzzword of the Enlightenment. Even a truly great thought in Gaelic would die with its thinker, it was held, surviving only in the mangled and worthless form of oral transmission. This, I think, is why Macpherson claimed to have in his possession the original Gaelic manuscripts, by which, I charitably assume, he meant his own written form of the oral Gaelic originals. It is, after all, quite preposterous to expect to fi nd original manuscripts written by a blind poet before the invention of Braille. But if Ossian actually had composed these poems, the casuistical logic then went, there had to be manuscripts that would have underwritten the faithful transmission of the words and their meanings from the third century to the present. Macpherson “lied” because the actual truth was not at that time dans le vrai , to use the apparently common French phrase popularized by Foucault. Today, in informed circles, 104 Peter Gow Macpherson is hailed as the supremely prescient founder of the written recording of Highland Gaelic oral tradition, an activity that burgeoned under the infl uence of the debate about Ossian in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which continues today. By contrast, the travel writings of Samuel Johnson, while very precious testimony and great writing, could be profi tably shown to students of anthropology as an excellent guide on how not to do ethnographic research. In particular, openly and forcefully disagreeing with your hosts and sources of local information is a very bad research strategy. Johnson, as a man of his time, was committed to Reason and the Reasonable, while ethnographers now realize they have to be committed to the reasons and reasonableness of their hosts. It is unlikely that anyone today would consider the Ossian/Macpherson poems particularly extraordinary as world literature, or sublime in the eighteenth century sense. Indeed, does anyone really use the sublime as a meaningful aesthetic category anymore? A modern person like myself can stand in awe of Caspar David Friedrich as a painter, but that awe has very little to do with any overt sense of the sublimity of nature. That I simply take that for granted. I am much more impressed with Friedrich’s remarkable artifi ce. The sublime has lost its once-important contrast, as the linguists would put it, to the merely beautiful. Even a really insightful modern exploration of the Enlightenment concept of the sublime, Edward Simpson’s study of the earthquake in Gujarat in 2001 and its ongoing consequences, is persuasive precisely because it has nothing to do with the beautiful at all (2013). And, today, we would not even recognize Ossian/ Macpherson’s poems as poems, rather than as myths. Our concept of poetry has changed too. It seems to me that this late-eighteenth-century controversy does raise important anthropological questions. Anthropology as a science is hardly neutral with regard to the Enlightenment, the triumph of arguments from reason over arguments from authority, and more especially the Scottish Enlightenment, which provided some of its key conceptual vocabulary, as I have discussed elsewhere. But what then do we do with those bits of the Enlightenment in general, and the Scottish Enlighten- ment in particular, that now strike us as risible? Do we pretend that these bits are mere glitches, some sort of “off-message” marginalia to the central theme of the triumph of reason? Or should we give them their full due, and accept them for what they are, as other concrete modes of human thought, however bizarre or apparently wrong-headed they strike us now? To put it more strongly, if we want to keep the thought of David Hume, either for itself or as a way into the thought of Immanuel Kant, do we then have to consider what David Hume originally thought about Ossian and James Macpherson and what he later thought? At no point, as far as I can see, did Hume challenge the poems of Ossian because they were irrational nonsense. Instead he challenged them because of his doubts about their authority. Remember that this is David Hume we are addressing. David Hume formulated his doubts about Ossian and Macpherson for reasons that we would not now fi nd central to the Enlightenment project, but rather a very strange off-shoot of it: do we, or do we not, have reasons to accept the authority of these traditions? Is there, in short, a reasonable case to be made for the Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 105 acceptance of an argument from authority? This is a very strange Enlightenment argument, when you think about it. Where are the manuscripts, indeed! In a very interesting article about Sir James Frazer, Mary Douglas argued that we are divided from his work by a “cultural ridge” (1978). That is, Malinowski could read Frazer with genuine enthusiasm and admiration, we can read Malinowski with genuine enthusiasm and admiration, but we can no longer understand Malinowski’s genuine enthusiasm and admiration for Frazer’s work. To us, The Golden Bough and The Sexual Life of Savages seem like utterly incom- mensurable works, the former alien and boring, the latter familiar and engrossing. What exactly has happened? On one level, the key intellectual problem here is perfectly obvious to anthropologists, and very accurately pin-pointed by Douglas in her remark on the “cultural ridge.” In the particular case discussed here, the world of the Enlightenment and specifi cally of the Scottish Enlightenment is a foreign culture to us, and has to be treated in exactly the same manner as any foreign culture is treated by any anthropologist. But on another level, the key problem here is deeply unfamiliar to us, for if we treat the world of the Enlightenment and specifi cally of the Scottish Enlightenment as a foreign culture, we cease to know with any real confi dence where any of our ideas actually come from. On the one hand, when we refer to Scottish Enlightenment thinkers for intellectual back-up, we may actually simply be tricking out our own thoughts in stolen fi nery. We can say, “Hume thought this,” and “Rousseau thought that,” but such citation has no real respect for the complex and ultimately disastrous social relations between these two great thinkers. And who today reads Hume’s major work, his history of England? Who has even heard of it?7 On the other hand, there is a genuine anthropological mystery here. We endlessly tell ourselves that context matters. But what happens when we are the product of the context that we seek to describe? When I really think about it, I am a concrete product of the Scottish Enlightenment, and amazingly marked by it in ways that I both do and do not like. When I was growing up in Edinburgh, and trudging daily through all its Enlight- enment-era glories and miseries to get to and from school, I knew almost nothing at all about the Scottish Enlightenment. My school probably felt that Enlighten- ment scepticism and openly expressed atheism were not the best things for the impressionable young minds of the city’s future lawyers and doctors. I actually discovered Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment as a student in Cambridge, in a course taught by Ernest Gellner, and later from reading Tobias Smollett, who I quite wrongly assumed was an Englishman.

Stylistic revolution What I did know as a boy, the son of a man of Atholl, was Highland history. This knowledge was visceral, and it is only quite recently that I have begun to intel- lectualize it.8 As Karl Marx noted in Capital , where the eviction of my ancestors is briefl y mentioned, the events in eighteenth century Highland Scotland were a very late example in Europe of the expropriation of the agricultural population from the 106 Peter Gow land, and as such, a triumph for the bourgeoisie. This bourgeois revolution bore down strongly on young men like James Macpherson. He was a Highland Scottish gentleman in a world in which being a Highland Scottish gentleman was changing vertiginously. These changes may have culminated in the defeat of the great Jacobite Rising of 1745, but they had started long before. In an important sense, the defeat of the ’45 Rising at Culloden was the fi nal act in the prolonged fi ght for autonomy of the Gaelic-speaking aristocracy and of their followers, fi rst against the Scottish state, and then against the unifi ed British one. The Gaelic-speaking peoples of northern Scotland, with their long and oft-rehearsed memories of past battles and perfi dy, can have had very few illusions that the House of Stuart was a reliable guarantor of their autonomy, but they had no other choice. At Culloden in 1746, their political defeat was total. In the case of someone like James Macpherson, his very social class was pro- gressively disappearing. As he reached adulthood, this class disappearance was becoming terminal. As a close relative of the hereditary owner of Badenoch, he would have been raised to have had a good chance of being a hereditary tenant, a tacksman , of that owner and hence to have enjoyed a fairly prosperous and leisurely life. But that world was gone, even for those hereditary owners who had declared for the Protestant succession, or for those who had skilfully avoided declaring anything. The act of abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions meant that the Highland aristocracy, even those whose estates were not forfeit, had no interest in retaining their tenantry as a fi ghting force, and hence little interest in retaining them at all. Men like James Macpherson had to look about them, and literary success in London would have beckoned as an attractive possibility. Major casualties of the prolonged process of loss of political autonomy by the Highland aristocracy were the elite art forms of the Gaelic-speaking people, and especially what we would now call poetry. Newton and Cheape have described that poetry as follows:

Professional poets who had the beneﬁ t of years of professional training composed this class of song-poetry (dàn ) in a literary register of Gaelic and another professionally trained specialist (usually referred to as the reacaire ) chanted or sang it to the accompaniment of the clàrsach (a metal strung harp). (2010: 75)

These authors call this style “song-poetry,” an elaborate art form that is unfamiliar to us today. This song-poetry was unquestionably professionalized, and based on a complex division of labour that required institutionalized forms dependent on patronage. Its major professional centres were in Ireland, and it was profoundly affected by the expansion of ﬁ rst English, then British, state power there under Tudor and Stuart monarchs. If the cultural prestige of song-poetry relied on these now lost ties to Ireland, the collapse of the style necessarily followed structural features interior to it. It was already intrinsically decomposable into three components: composition, song, and harp music. Harp music simply disappeared, and while song and composition in Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 107 Gaelic continued, these ceased to be elite art forms, and shifted into the hands of the common people. Aristocratic art forms became increasingly anglophone and oriented towards the styles of southern England, and towards the violin in music. In Lévi-Straussian terms, the collapse of the division of labour between the composition of song-poetry and its performance is not simply the end of a style, but the condition of its revolution. While Newton and Cheape’s main focus is on the shift from harp to bagpipe music, they show a complex set of structural transformations within styles. Consider James Macpherson’s poems of Ossian in the speciﬁ c context of the de-professionalization and fragmentation of Gaelic song-poetry. Firstly, although these poems retain much of the content form of the older style, they appear in the entirely novel form of printed texts. Secondly, as printed texts, they are necessarily read, not sung, and are devoid of any musical accompaniment. And thirdly, James Macpherson very consistently and very aggressively denied that he was their compositor. They were, he insisted, composed by a blind Scottish poet in the third century CE. Three key features of the song-poetry style are thus inverted in Macpherson’s Ossian. An anthropologist, informed by reading Lévi-Strauss, begins to take notice. A recent account of the Macpherson/Ossian case by the historian Michael Fry raises the issue boldly. After noting that Macpherson was trained in Latin and Greek literature, not that of Gaelic, he writes,

He had found some manuscripts in Old Irish (hard to read for even trained scholars today) and some bards declaiming a classical Gaelic different from his vernacular of Strathspey. A youth ambitious to get into print could make little of all this. What he could do was concoct an epic out of the materials and ideas he had gathered, if couched in another language, so as to tickle current literary taste. And why not? In Gaeldom plagiarism had no meaning. Bards never claimed copyright or troubled themselves whether others thought them original. Their aim was to give the best possible performance of material familiar to everybody for the audience right in front of them. (2014: 342)

Fry continues,

Macpherson did imitate, as best he could, a genuine tradition. ( ibid )

All this is true enough, but how to explain the vehement, and very unbardly, refusal by Macpherson to claim authorship? Would it not have been easier to say, “Hey, guys, I actually wrote all of this stuff!”? The consistent refusal of authorship is very alien both to the tradition that Macpherson claimed to be simply translating and to the prevailing style of the period in which he was doing it. Consider Samuel Johnson, for example. Macpherson’s poems of Ossian, and the Enlightenment controversies that surrounded them, begin to make sense as a problem about stylistic transformation, the 108 Peter Gow genesis of a “cultural ridge.” Douglas’s key insight was you cannot see a cultural ridge looming up, or even when you are in the midst of it, but only retrospectively. You can imagine that you are in the midst of a stylistic revolution, perhaps even quite rightly, but the nature of that stylistic revolution only really becomes clear much later. Ingres painted a history painting to hang over Napoleon’s bed. Nei- ther seemed to realize that history painting was seriously going out of fashion as bourgeoisie taste took over. The Macpherson/Ossian case needs another analogy, this time found not in anthropology, but in Highland Scotland and in the ongoing transformations of song-poetry. It exists, and it is spectacular, if basically unfamiliar to most modern audiences. In the period immediately before the emergence of Ossian/ Macpherson’s poetry, a remarkable art form was developing in Highland Scotland, an ceol mor, “the big music,” also called an piobaireachd, “the piping.” In Scots and English, it is called pibroch. It is a niche art form that most non-afi cionados fi nd boring, if not unlistenable. Historically, pibroch is as mysterious as Ossian/Macpherson’s poetry. Cannon has noted that the history of pibroch, aside from some very interesting claims in oral tradition which are unsupported by any documentation, is in fact all prehis- tory, and the historian must proceed as an archaeologist (2008). Pibroch is remarkably complex, for it is not called “the big music” for nothing. But the period of composition of the major pieces seems to have been relatively short, as Cannon argues, which suggests a burst of intense creativity. Such creative intensity is characteristic of revolutionary stylistic transformations. As Alfred Gell once said to me, “The Renaissance was really short. Modernism has already lasted much longer. The Renaissance was more like the ’60s.” The “big music” emerged in a very specifi c aesthetic climate in Gaelic-speaking Scotland. Before its emergence, as Newton and Cheape note, bagpipe playing was not associated with “music,” but rather with “noise,” in the sense of loudness: it was a stirring martial art, used to rally men in battle. “Music,” as noted, was dominated in aristocratic circles by the combination of the clàrsach , the “Celtic harp”, and song. The “music” of harp and sung poetry was the refi ned “interior” modality of the very “exterior” pipe playing. As I have discussed elsewhere, High- land life of this period was characterized by a complex play of “inside/outside” contrasts and their associated movements (2009). What Newton and Cheape really seem to be showing is the parallel collapse of the song-poetry, a refi ned art form associated with the “inside” of aristocratic houses, and the parallel rise of pibroch, a refi ned art form associated with the “outside” of such houses, the aristocratic lands themselves. In this specifi c context, the very rapid emergence of pibroch begins to make sense. It has long been suspected that pibroch is a transposition of harp music to the bagpipes, although it is extremely diffi cult to prove for lack of historical evidence. Historians may be wary of saying anything in the face of the basic lack of historical evidence, but anthropologists have had to learn to be somewhat more intrepid, for lack of historical evidence is how our discipline got started in the fi rst place. Consider what we do know about pibroch. Bagpiping was originally a martial Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 109 art of noise-making, then apparently out of nowhere, from within it emerged an astonishingly intricate musical style of very little value as a martial art. The transformational origin of pibroch in the transposition of harp music to the bagpipes sounds logical enough, but I want to propose another hypothesis, based on my own aesthetic experience. Pibroch, I suggest, is basically a transposition to bagpipe music, not of the harp component of song-poetry, but of its sung component, and especially of the sung lament form, which was a female vocal style. To me, the pibroch sounds sung. I think that it would be really hard to hit and hold pibroch notes on a harp, while a very good singer could fi nd “the big music,” its hits and holds, with relative ease. Certainly, Lizzie Higgins, taught to sing by her piper father, could do it with absolute ease. I suggest therefore that pibroch is the transposition of a specifi c style of female vocal style into a specifi c male style of piping. This is another structural inversion. And of course, pibroch literally is sung, for it is taught through the sung form of an cantaireachd , “song,” a fact rather obscured by the use of standard musical notation in discussions of the style (but see Donaldson [2000]). And an ceol mor is intensely oral, for it is blown from the mouth, by a man’s forceful breath into the bag, rather than by the plucked or bowed strings of the harp or violin.

Conclusion In retrospect, I realize that I began this enquiry into stylistic transformation in Enlightenment Scotland and beyond with Ingres’s The Dream of Ossian for a very good, if entirely unconscious, reason. The question arose from within my personal history, as a boy raised in Edinburgh but with a head full of Highland romance. In order to show how Macpherson’s Ossian emerges from within fairly obscure but fascinating stylistic transformations in the politically very marginalized Gaelic- speaking Highlands of Scotland, I needed to show that the same processes were playing out in recognized centres of power and in recognizably canonical styles. In short, I needed analogies. And who better than Napoleon and Ingres? As long as we continue to think about Macpherson in terms of Johnson’s judgements about lying and forgery, we cannot begin to see that phenomenon with any real clarity. I do not think that Macpherson was a forger or a liar, but then nor do I think that Johnson was an important Enlightenment thinker. He was an amusing enough wordsmith and an interesting observer, to be sure, but he is hardly up there with Ingres in my aesthetic admiration. Johnson condemned Macpherson/Ossian, like a bad and peevish critic. Ingres saw the structural complexity of the issue, and tried to transpose it from poetry to painting in order to please his patron, Napoleon. I am in Buchanan Street in Glasgow listening to a very talented young woman piper as she, clearly bored with playing the usual tedious repertoire of such busking, shifts into an ceol mor, “the big music.”9 She plays the long, slow lament melody of the ùrlar , the ground, and then she begins the fi rst change, siubhal , fi nding the new notes that lie within those of the original melody with confi - dence, skill, and grace. She is playing amazingly well. I am simply stopped in my tracks, as she follows out these continual changes for an apparently more-or-less 110 Peter Gow indifferent audience in this busy Glasgow street. But I am listening, and she is making me listen very carefully indeed. Soon, she will have to play an cruanthla , “the crown,” and resolve all of those unruly little notes back down onto the original lament melody, refi nding the home note with her sheer mastery of the technique. My fi ngers are crossed that she will be able to do it, but I am transported already. Is this strange sensation I am feeling perhaps what the Enlightenment people called the “sublime,” this beauty that lies beyond the beautiful? If so, I think it is because this young woman piper is fi nally opening my ears to this musical style, which I grew up with but never took with aesthetic seriousness until this moment. The pibroch was always there, like the sounds of children playing or barking dogs or passing cars, but was never before here . I had just crossed the threshold into this other style, and found its extraordinary beauty, and how this beauty felt different to my existent sense of beauty. Such new beauty is necessarily dissonant, and to name such aesthetic dissonance, we might even want to reclaim the word “sublime” to do so. Through one of his most notable apparent aesthetic failures, Ingres, whom I have long admired, has opened the door to where this new here might be.

Acknowledgements This chapter is a product of conversations about art, style, and beauty with Michael Bowles, Amikam Toren, Christina Toren, John Onians, and Alfred Gell in the 1980s. Stephanie Bunn provided an intellectual frame in which to write it, and I thank Chris Knight and Penny Harvey for their comments on the original presentation at the ASA conference in Edinburgh in 2014, and Henry Tracey and Victor Cova for two key points. And last but by no means least, John Grant, for the pibroch.

Notes 1 Quoted in Donaldson [2000:2]. 2 The sources used for Ingres are Rosenblum [1990] and Carrington Shelton [2008]. 3 My thanks to Christina Toren for noticing this point. 4 My main source for Macpherson and Ossian is Stafford [1988]. 5 See Gelbart [2007], among many others. 6 Of course, the Enlightenment was crucially driven by the technology of printing, where manuscripts had a speciﬁ c technical status, but this did not affect the oral/written opposition. 7 I thank Debora Danowski for this point. 8 See Gow [2008, 2009]. 9 Women pipers are a recent development, not attested in the historical literature on the style. They are popularly said to be the daughters of champion pipers who, lacking sons, by default taught their daughters their art. That Lizzie Higgins’s father taught her to sing but not play in pibroch style might suggest a moment in the evolution of female pipers. I have never heard the female “sung lament” style used in street busking.

References Cannon, Roderick D. 2008 The Highland Bagpipe and Its Music, Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited. Carrington Shelton, Andrew 2008 Ingres , London and New York: Phaidon Press. Transforming styles in Enlightenment Scotland 111 Charbonnier, George 1969 Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss , London: Jonathan Cape. Donaldson, William 2000 The Highland Pipe and Scottish Society, 1750–1950: Transmis- sion, Change and the Concept of Tradition , East Linton: Tuckwell Press. Douglas, Mary 1978 “Judgments on James Frazer”, Daedelus , 107(4):151–164. Fry, Michael 2014 A Higher World: Scotland 1707–1815 , Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited. Gelbart, Matthew 2007 The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”: Emerging Cat- egories from Ossian to Wagner, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Gow, Peter 2008 “The Cripple Tailor and the Deer: A Scottish Myth and Its History”, Inau- gural professorial lecture, the University of St Andrews. Gow, Peter 2009 “Answering Daimã’s Question: The Ontogeny of an Anthropological Epistemology in Eighteenth Century Scotland”, Social Analysis , 53(2):19–39. Johnson, Samuel and James Boswell 1984 A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland/ The Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides , Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1970 The Raw and the Cooked , London: Jonathan Cape. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1976 Tristes Tropiques , London: Penguin Books. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1983 The Way of Masks , London: Jonathan Cape. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1997 Look: Listen, Read , New York: Basic Books. Martin, Martin 2003 Curiosities of Art and Nature: The New Annotated and Illustrated Edition of Martin Martin’s Classic “A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland” , (ed. Michael Robson). Port of Ness: The Island Book Trust. Newton, Michael and Hugh Cheape 2010 “The Keening of Women and the Roar of the Pipe: From clàrsach to bagpipe, 1600–1782”, Ars Lyrica Celtica , 17:75–95. Rosenblum, Robert 1990 Ingres , London: Thames and Hudson. Simpson, Edward 2013 The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat , London: Hurst & Company. Stafford, Fiona J. 1988 The Sublime Savage: A Study of James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stewart, David 1822 Sketches of the Characters, Manners and Present State of the High- landers of Scotland: With Details of the Military Service of the Highland Regiments , Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co.

Part III Perceiving beauty

8 Grace in moving and joy in sharing The intrinsic Beauty of communicative musicality from birth

Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch

What is Beauty? Where is it? In this chapter, we understand Beauty as a verb – a manifesting in bodily movement of the life spirit of human awareness, which proclaims our imaginative vitality and summons the attention of others. A sense of Beauty is an inner delight we seek in graceful attention to the world, and it motivates appreciation and memory of the surroundings in which we live (Dewey 1934). A beautiful experience is not a ‘thing’, objective and static, ‘out there’, only to be learned. It is created in the mind subjectively and shared inter-subjectively by communication in present moments of awareness (Stern 2004). It is developed and remembered by our efforts to belong in community with its culture, a need to be in affective companionship with others, sharing stories with valued meaning. Creating Beauty, however intricate and stylised the technique or ritual form of its production, expresses impulses of play that are essential to our human nature. We create ‘works of art’ in order to engage in activities that have their origins in an innate desire to be part of something greater than ourselves – to make discoveries with delight that are inspiration for shared beliefs about life and the world, created with those we trust as reliable companions. Our engagement in shared recreations and cultural learning nurtures these motives of the Self, and brings vitality to our community and its recorded past. We create beautiful activities or objects, which signal to others that we value these acts of belonging. Sharing our sense of Beauty helps us make sense of life (Turner and Bruner 1986). Sensing and creating Beauty is part of a human life from the start, and, as we illustrate later in the chapter, infants seek cooperative and sympathetic responses to their intuitive experiences of pleasure from parents. Human beings develop consciousness in intimate companionship, inventing sensitively timed dramatic performances of co-created meaning. The emotional Self gives shape to these ‘dancing’ or ‘musical’ narratives or projects of imaginative appreciation, and is in turn shaped by them (Bjørkvold 1992). Both infant and caregiver are motivated to share their vitality in measures of movement (Stern 2010). Through this affective conﬂ uence of intentions by touch, gaze and voice, and the sequencing of activities into longer ‘stories’ and games, associated with loving care for safety and comfort, so the child’s Self evolves, beneﬁ ting from aesthetic 116 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch appreciation of its creations with others. Artful narratives of gesture, combining visible and audible movements of the body, only later shared with words, weave our relational life, guiding the trajectory of our development as a person with memories of our own accomplishments and vicissitudes, joys and challenges (Trevarthen 2013; Trevarthen and Panksepp 2016).

The aesthetics of life stories and the making of art We call the healthy making of these narratives created in community ‘Commu- nicative Musicality’ (Malloch and Trevarthen 2009). Each game with a child or work of an artist is an act intending to create Beauty, the feeling that appreciates the products of enaction – including objects of musical art. We are using the words ‘musicality’ and ‘musical’ in a very particular way. By the ‘musicality’ of caregiver-baby interaction, we are not referring to what we generally understand to be ‘music’, with its known composers and performers within a particular tradition. We are identifying the origin in human life of all creations of artful culture with what Jon-Roar Bjørkvold (1992) calls The Muse Within, and what Victor Turner (1982) distinguished as the human seriousness of play that leads to performances of ritual and theatre. Musics, and indeed all art forms, are moulded in distinctive ways by the forces of the culture of which they were made (Turner and Bruner 1986). A song from a rainforest community in Brazil will sound very different from a Beethoven symphony, which in turn will sound very different from a piece by Webern. All these cultural productions of the sound of the human body moving – that is story- making in sounds made manifest through the movements of the voice or through the manipulating of objects – will have the essence of Beauty within their creation arising from our common Communicative Musicality, the origins of which some authors suggest can be traced to celebrations of the fi rst humans (Dissanayake 2000; Brandt 2009; Whiten et al. 2011; Merker et al. 2015). Any piece of music will be appreciated as more or less beautiful depending on the unique combination of our cultural sensitivities and our innate appreciation of ‘musicality’, the human abilities that make possible the production and appreciation of music, dance and any other human endeavour that could be considered one of the temporal arts, as in religious ceremonies or theatre, all instances of “the human seriousness of play” (Turner 1982; also see Blacking 1969/1995). Adding to our sense of Beauty is our appreciation of expressive movement found in motionless, but ‘moving’, artistic creations of manipulative skill, such as paintings and sculptures, clothes and tools, and buildings. The grace that distinguishes productions of graphical art as beautiful can be found in the gestures of a young infant (Trevarthen 1984), and the stories of imagination they portray (Gratier and Trevarthen 2008; Delafi eld-Butt and Trevarthen 2015). Movements of human hands have delicate form in time and space long before the body can stand and walk, and they seek attention in communication. The feelings of the artist or builder are evidenced in the lines and shapes of the artwork, and the fi nished whole displays an ongoing human activity of planning and creating experience through Grace in moving and joy in sharing 117 time, the directing of its architecture by the artist’s thoughtful movements valued within a particular cultural context (Turner and Bruner 1986). By observing the movements of infants in communication we identify the natural origins of the forms of expression of our human desire for the liveliness of cultural learning. We learn skills with an innate power for moving, remembering and planning to live in sympathy and enjoyment with others. This endowment makes our appreciation and production of an endless variety of dramatic temporal narratives possible – forms of music, dance, poetry or ceremony; static products of artfulness such as paintings or sculptures; the universal narratives of a mother and her baby intimately conversing; or the wordless emotional and motivational narrative that lives beneath words of a conversation between two or more adults, or between a teacher and a class. In the co-ordination of practical tasks, a shared, intuitively communicated understanding is necessary for successful completion, and for inner appreciation of the ‘goodness’ of the work. It is our common musicality that makes it possible for us to share the time of actions meaningfully together, with anticipation and recollection of pleasure in the ‘imitative arts’, as explained by Adam Smith (1777/1982), and as is appreciated by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1965).

Natural dimensions of musicality, for regulating effi cient action with emotional harmony Scientifi c theories of mental growth, especially of the ability of the human brain to learn and use language, must attend to the special way of signalling thinking and feeling by controlled dynamics of moving (Stern 2000, 2010; Trevarthen 1999, 2016). Stephen Malloch applied his knowledge of music and psychoacoustics (Malloch 2000) to Colwyn Trevarthen’s recordings of mother-infant proto-conversations to defi ne the primary parameters of intuitive time-keeping and expressive modulations of ‘musicality’ for “communicating the vitality and interests of life” (Malloch 1999; Malloch and Trevarthen 2009). He identifi ed pulse , quality and narrative , defi ned as follows:

1 Pulse is the regular succession of discrete behavioural steps through time, representing the ‘future-creating’ process by which a subject may anticipate what might happen and when. 2 Quality consists of the contours of expressive vocal and body gesture, shaping time in movement. These contours can consist of psychoacoustic attributes of vocalizations – timbre, pitch, volume – or attributes of direction and intensity of moving perceived in any modality. 3 Narratives of individual experience and of companionship are built from the sequence of units of pulse and quality found in the jointly created gestures – how they are strung together in affecting chains of expression. These ‘musical’ narratives allow adult and infant, and adult and adult, to share a sense of sympathy and situated meaning in a shared sense of passing time. (Malloch 1999; Malloch and Trevarthen 2009, 4) 118 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch Thus music is sounds of the human body moving in sociable ways, and its Beauty is an expression of pleasure of sharing stories of this enthusiasm.

Examples of beautiful performance with infant partners We present three particular instances of the expression of Communicative Musi- cality in spontaneous playful performances of infants with their parents to illustrate the technique of descriptive analysis.

(a) The melodic story of a ‘proto-conversation’ Figure 8.1 shows the vocalisations of Laura, a 6-week-old infant, and her mother ‘talking’ together. Their vocalisations are represented on a spectrograph, showing their fundamental frequencies and overtones, and a pitch-plot. The mother’s utterances are written below the spectrograph. The pitch C4 (261.63 Hz) is indicated by a horizontal line that crosses the spectrograph, and C4 along with C3 and C5 (the octaves below and above) are indicated on the pitch-plot. A rectangle around a vocalisation indicates an utterance by the baby. Numbers at the top of the spectrograph indicate the duration of the ‘bars’ in seconds. Bars are determined by the occurrence of important acoustic events – vocalisation onset or offset, top or bottom of a pitch ‘bend’, or audible word emphasis. A dashed bar-line indicates no vocal event marks its placement, but its location is inferred from the duration of the surrounding bars. The infant and mother demonstrate predictive timing in the bars, and in the contours of their vocalisations. This co-created regularity allows the mother to invite the infant to have her turn, uninterrupted, just as a good jazz ensemble will allow opportunity for an instrumental solo (Schögler and Trevarthen 2007). Sometimes the infant takes up the invitation for a vocal turn, and sometimes she

Figure 8.1 Spectrograph and pitch-plot of Laura, a 6-week-old girl, and her mother making melody together Grace in moving and joy in sharing 119 remains silent. It also gives a holding structure ( just like a musical structure) within which mother and infant individually vocalise and express themselves. For example, the mother leaves space for her infant’s turn in bar fi ve (infant vocalisations 5 and 6); the infant vocalises right at the end of bar ten (utterance 11), precisely meeting the end of her mother’s vocalisation (utterance 10) with a vocalisation that is in duration almost precisely a quarter of the total length of this bar, and which is a timing interval that refl ects a natural division of the mother’s vocalisation number 10 into equal segments (shown on the spectrograph by four equally spaced vertical lines, the interval between each being 0.41 seconds). In utterances 14 and 15, the tongue clicks the mother makes co-incidentally with her infant’s vocalisations fall into regular groups spaced 0.2 seconds apart – the clicks are uttered at twice the rate of the sub- divisions marked in utterances 9 and10. Overall, an analysis of timing shows a co-ordinated, playful, negotiated ‘proto-conversation’, as beautifully described by Mary Bateson (1979). The pitch-plot below the spectrograph, and in Figure 8.2, is indicated by small circles. Whether the circles are black, grey or white indicates the strength of the pitch of the sound – in other words, how close the sound is to a pure harmonic spectrum. The darker the circle, the more ‘pitched’ the sound is. The interaction between the pair can be considered as consisting of four ‘musical’ phrases. The fi rst begins with the mother’s energetic opening of three U-shaped pitch gestures, which invite activity. Their gesture of open invitation is then balanced with a descending pitch gesture that closes the mother’s fi rst phrase (4). The fi rst phrase ends and the second phrase begins with the infant answering and further inviting the mother’s participation through a new musical idea – a rising pitch gesture (vocalisations 5 and 6). The mother takes up this invitation with great vitality, continuing and developing this upwards pitch movement with her next vocalisations (7 and 8). Her vocalisation number 9 summarises this pitch movement with a downwards then upwards sweep, which she follows with U-shaped inviting pitch gestures in this higher register (10). The infant then vocalises a short downwards moving pitch shape, which transitions to the third phrase, which the mother immediately follows with a development of this idea, with an exaggerated downwards pitch movement. The mother invites further participation of her infant with another U-shaped vocalisation (13), but the infant’s fl atter pitch gestures (14 and 15) to which the mother replies with fl atter, descending pitch shapes (16 and 17) mark the transition to the fourth and last phrase which closes this piece of communication. If we consider the pitch-plot as a whole in more detail (Figure 8.2), we can see a dynamic ‘musical balance’ in the interaction (for more on musical balance in interactions, see Malloch 2017). The overall shape is represented in Western musical terms as four phrases – Introduction, Development and Climax, Resolution and Coda – a shape of a companionable interaction. It is a musical narrative shape we fi nd instantly recognisable and satisfying. As a simple and natural expression of human affection, it is beautiful. 120 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch

Figure 8.2 Laura in dialogue with her mother who expresses her part ﬁ rst in words, and at the end in non-verbal sounds of attunement with Laura’s expressions. Their utterances are numbered as in Figure 8.1. Above, Laura pays attention, smiles and makes a ‘coo’ sound, with small gestures of her hands Figure adapted from Malloch and Trevarthen 2009, p. 3; further adapted from Malloch 1999, where a more detailed explanation and analysis will be found

(b) Dialogue with a ‘premature’ sense of Beauty in a song of companionship To illustrate innate timing in human life in its movement and its sharing with others, we present an acoustic analysis of a dialogue of simple sounds made by a two-month premature baby and her father who is holding her against his body, ‘kangarooing’ in an intensive postnatal care unit in Amsterdam (Figure 8.3). The Grace in moving and joy in sharing 121

Figure 8.3 Nasira (N), born three months premature, now two months premature, exchanges short ‘coo’ sounds with her father (F) who is holding her close to his body, ‘kangarooing’ (Trevarthen 2016) From a ﬁ lm by Saskia van Rees (van Rees and de Leeuw 1993; spectrographs produced by Stephen Malloch (1999) spectrographic measurements reveal how infant and father command the muscles of chest, vocal organs and mouth to emit very short ‘calls’. The father, with a deeper, more resonant voice, closely imitates the pitch, duration and intonation of the baby’s rudimentary utterances, matching the gentleness of feeling. They move in a shared pulse, playing their parts with ﬂ exible synchrony; as in Laura’s proto-conversation, they are like two experienced musicians improvising ‘in the groove’ (Gratier and Trevarthen 2008; Kühl 2007; Lee and Schögler 2009; Schögler and Trevarthen 2007; Trevarthen 1999, 2013). This inner time sense, and the sensitivity for cooperative contingency of response ‘in time’, make possible the invention of shared meaning from birth, even with a two-month premature baby. They are abilities of infants who will reach out to understand the world and motivate the development of acquired skills, arts and shared tasks (Dissanayake 2000), including, after many months, those of language to talk with interested others about life and the meaning of its actions and objects (Halliday 1978; Bruner 1990). Baby and father share, with matching precision, the tempo and rhythm of syl- lables (0.3 seconds in duration, and separated by 0.7 seconds) grouped in a phrase (of 4 seconds). Then they make a sequence of single sounds separated by four phrase-length intervals. The tempi of human moving (Fraisse 1982) are in the same range as those that give measure to cultivated performances of musical sound, to words and sentences in speech, to intelligence visible in the turns of head and impetuous eyes, in gestures and steps of dance or theatrical performance, in strokes and shapes of drawing, and in skilled manipulations of tools to build. The intended messages of talk are sensed proprioceptively in the body of the one who is moving to vocalise, and may be received by another with senses of sight and touch, as well 122 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch as hearing. They are elements of what Susanne Langer (1942) has called “forms of feeling”, of the musical semantics of Ole Kühl (2007), and of the “vitality dynamics” of Daniel Stern (2010). They characterise the way human beings signal intentions and build imagination for meaning by “mimesis” (Donald 2001) – by moving with the inner sense of Beauty in the sound and physical gesture of the body moving.

(c) Enjoying participation in the story of a familiar ritual In the last example, we see a mother reciting a nursery rhyme with her 4-month- old baby girl (Figure 8.4). This illustrates the beginnings of progress from simple ‘innate’ musicality as in a proto-conversation, to new forms recognised as part of the mother’s and infant’s cultural environment. Mother and infant are enjoying a familiar, relaxed performance. It is obvious from the infant’s reactions that this is a rhyme the baby has heard many times before and enjoys hearing again. She becomes animated with pleasure, and smiles as soon as the mother begins. She is appreciating the song’s Beauty – the graceful unfolding narrative of their imaginative relationship. For the ﬁ rst verse, the baby does not vocally join in. In the second, the mother ceases to articulate the words – rather, she says a rhythm – “di dum, di dum, di dum” – represented in musical notation. Below the mother’s rhythm the vocalisations of the baby are also represented in musical notation, and the timing is indicated in seconds above the bar. (For reasons of visual clarity, rests are omitted in the transcription where it does not create ambiguity.) The baby is joining in with the mother in a musical fashion, in time. And the baby’s vocalisations show musical variety, as well as consistency. In the ﬁ rst bar of the second verse, the baby vocalises on the ‘up-beat’, an idea that is so prominent in this rhyme. In the second and third bars, the baby vocalises on the beat. In the third bar, the baby appears to make use of the rest by introducing a new rhythmic idea in the form of a triplet (the baby laughs in a triplet rhythm). In the third verse,

Figure 8.4 Sharing a traditional nursery rhyme story with a 4-month-old baby, who knows the ritual well – musical notation of the second and third verses Grace in moving and joy in sharing 123 the baby consistently vocalises on the last beat of each bar, which is very different from what the baby did during the second verse. It appears that the baby is developing her musical creativity from verse to verse. In the third bar of the third verse, the baby makes a ‘musical joke’. After vocalising precisely on the last beat of bars 1 and 2 of verse 3, she sustains this beat in bar 3, but enters a semiquaver early. Her sound is particularly vigorous at this point – it seems that she wants to emphasise the fact that she is entering early, and playing with expectations. However, whether or not this is a deliberate act on the part of the infant, that this ‘early’ vocalisation is sensed and appreciated by the mother, is suggested by the mother’s laughter immediately following it. After this shared tour-de-force by both musical partners, the rhyme loses energy, and other play takes over. From this example, we can see that a young infant is quite capable of entering into the ‘structure’ of a musical game, participating in a musically ‘logical’ way, and being a partner in creating Beauty, rhythmic and joyful, using cultural forms based in innate musicality. Her vocalisations during her mother’s rhyme show a true musical feeling – they support the musical structure of the rhyme – they never work against it, except with careful attention to make a clever joke. Teas- ing and joking are an afﬁ rmation of the inventive mental life they enjoy sharing (Reddy 2008).

Beauty in the brain: self-feeling of grace and well-being attributed to experience in the world with companions Consciousness is not critically related to being smart; it is not just clever information-processing. Consciousness is the experience of body and world, without necessarily understanding what one is experiencing. Primary phenomenal states have two distinct but highly interactive branches: (1) the ability to perceive and orient in the world, and (2) the ability to feel the biological values of existence. (Panksepp 2007, 101)

We wish to relate the abilities an infant has to share vitality with feelings to the science of the human brain, how it develops and how it has evolved. But this task is made diffi cult by a tradition that assumes the dominant function of the brain is to think and remember in intelligent representations. For centuries the human brain has been conceived by medical science and psychology as an organ of intelligence; for individual use in command of the body, for learning how to move with attention, to perceive and use the resources of the world, and to benefi t from the knowledge other individuals have mastered and that may be defi ned with precision in text. The highest achievements of this intelligence have been understood as symbolic or representational, a compilation of awareness of particular events or objects remembered and made defi nite in processes of language for communication of ‘facts’. Contemporary brain science uses a technology that attempts to visualise changes in local concentrations of neural activity, or accompanying blood circulation, in the cerebral cortices of a 124 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch fully conscious subject. The aim is to identify different cognitive functions and emotions of individuals who are studied when immobile and refl ective, responding to stimuli with defi ned content. This search for sensory-motor centres for processing practical objective knowledge does not reveal a centre for integration of action or awareness of the mobile Self (Llinás 2001; Merker 2007; Goodrich 2010; Ammaniti and Gallese 2014), nor are the subjective feelings that appreciate vitality in personal adventures and shared values in cooperative life identifi ed (Damasio 2010: Panksepp 2007). Only correlates of the tool-use of language are recorded. For example, applied to appreciation of objects of art, recent functional brain imaging fi nds confi rmation that some parts make objective assessments of good form, and others ‘represent’ emotions of liking or disliking (Di Dio et al. 2007). There is an artifi cial or procedural gap in understanding created by this science of the organ of the mind, between our appreciation of the free enjoyment of Beauty in its many forms, as for example when we listen to music (Turner and Ioannides 2009), and the facts that can be established with measured reliability by experiments designed to answer questions posed a priori. Two brain scientists end a review on events that may be recorded throughout the brain when a person is appreciating music, as follows:

tomographic analysis of MEG responses to real music demonstrates that very large areas of the brain are activated when we listen to music. These activa- tions differ in the left and right hemispheres; the left hemisphere is more engaged when regular rhythms are encountered . . . auditory and motor areas closely follow the low-level, high-frequency musical structure. In contrast, frontal areas contain a slower response, presumably playing a more integrative role . . . music simultaneously engages distant brain areas in a cooperative way across time. This might be one reason why music has such a profound impact on humans. (Turner and Ioannides 2009, 171)

The frontal areas referred to are linked to subcortical systems that generate feelings of the Self in its body (Merker 2007; Panksepp 2007; Damasio 2010). An alternative approach in neuroscience sees activities of the human brain in wider evolutionary, developmental and social context. It considers the activities of the person as an agent and in affectionate relations, rather than as an individual thinker, and extends the enquiry deeper in the brain beneath the exceptionally elaborate human neo-cortex, to identify internal subjective sensations and expectations that may be shared with less sophisticated states of mind, which are satisfi ed with fewer impositions of objective fact (Ammaniti and Gallese 2014). The impulses of curiosity and pleasure in an imagination that moves a body with a host of muscles and many senses as one rhythmic performer are discovered and found to have ancient roots in core parts of the mammalian brain stem, beneath the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres, and to be adapted to communicate purposes and feelings in prospective awareness (Panksepp 2007; Panksepp and Biven 2011). The Grace in moving and joy in sharing 125 motivating systems of the human brain stem are identifi able months before birth, and they develop as the directors of a child’s growth in conscious understanding and its education for cultural cooperation. The morphology and morphogenesis of the body and brain as an integrated agent designed to elaborate and share purposes, interests and feelings (Trevarthen 2001) demand recognition that a passionate Self is creator of intelligence built of time in movement (Sherrington 1955). The central role of a feeling for Beauty becomes apparent, for example, in the spontaneous creation of beautiful games in the ‘musical culture’ of groups of children under school age when they are free to discover their natural talents for singing and dancing to please their own invention (Bjørkvold 1992). A leader in this more humanistic and sensuous brain science is Antonio Dama- sio, and his attention to the roots of subjective feelings and the primacy of feeling for thinking (2010) is supported by Jaak Pankespp’s pioneering research in the primary affective consciousness of the mammalian brain (2007; Panksepp and Biven 2011). Damasio, reviewing the latest research on neural systems of affective states, makes a clear distinction between emotions as responses to perception of benefi cial resources or sources of danger in the environment, and feelings that integrate these internal physiological adjustments of vital organs with awareness of the body as an agent for selective behaviour in the world. The sense of Beauty, along with the sense of moral Goodness, described by David Hay as a relational consciousness – “the rudimentary core of children’s spirituality, out of which can arise meaningful aesthetic experience, religious experience, personal and traditional responses to mystery and being, and mystical and moral insight” (Hay and Nye 2006, 109) – is a feeling, not an emotion. Its activation pervades all levels of the brain as it gives subjective value to intentions, experiences in consciousness as well as their sharing and cultivation. This is a neuroscience of the full human spirit, of the Self with all its neurons and all its sensory-motor body, which Rudolfo Llinás names the “I of the Vortex” (Llinás 2001). Beauty comes alive in the sensory-motor cauldron of the brain stem with its visceral responsibilities, and it guides the life of the Self.

The experience of Beauty in intimate relations, and in the trans-generational life of art in culture Merlin Donald (2001) presents an account of the human brain and body as a biology of mimesis evolved for mastery of the complex cooperation of individuals in large social groups with an ancient tradition of ‘cultural intelligence’ mediated by metaphors of knowledge in symbolic form. Dissanayake (2000) identifi es the evolutionary origins of art in the joyful feelings of playful invention that develop between infant and parent. In a review of theories of the origin of music, Bjorn Merker et al. (2015) conclude that human culture began with the evolution of production and enjoyment of dramas defi ning tribal identity in musical activities, and that adaptations of breath and voice control for vocal celebration in the beauty of song, with dance, may have long preceded the powers of speech to defi ne distinct objects and their uses. 126 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch Evidence from the anthropology of ritual and art in societies in all levels of technological complexity, and from research on the importance of play in development of cultural intelligence in childhood, direct attention to the affective impulses that give value and durability to social practices and institutions, and to aesthetic appreciation of the environment and manipulative skills (Turner and Bruner 1986, 13–14). In the interaction between evolutionary biology and cultural invention a sense of Beauty has grown strong as culture has evolved in expanding human communities and their migrations, transforming the primate brain so it has become human with a greatly enlarged capacity for recognising and categorising different kinds of experience. Beauty has informed how humans relate together with the imaginative purposes of the conscious Self, and with the invention of elaborate, evolving cooperative practices (Whiten et al. 2011).

Coda – Beauty and healing As a psychotherapist and a musician, the second author, in the course of sitting and talking, and sitting in silence with his clients, experiences moments of creating a sense of intimate trust with others by sharing expressive movements – moments of Beauty. As described earlier, our co-created gestural narratives of voice and body that unfold over shared time (Osborne 2009) are the motivated embodied signals of our companioning with others (Stern 2010; Trevarthen and Fresquez 2015). Our emotional selves both give shape to these ‘dancing’, ‘musical’ narratives of imaginative communication, and are shaped by them. Our languaging sits on top of our gestural narratives. Two rivers of communication are exchanged – the river of unfolding language narratives, and the river of unfolding gestural narratives. The confl uence of these rivers creates meaning as it moves through time. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that out of the many factors that give rise to effective therapeutic outcome, it is the quality of the therapeutic relationship that carries much of the effect (Norcross and Lambert 2011). And it is the dynamics of our Communicative Musicality, carried by the vehicle of vitality contours (the amodal energy inherent in a graceful rise of a hand, or a graceful rise of a voice) and our ability for affect attunement (our skilled ability to give back to another an identifi able version of their vitality contour, creatively changed through coming into contact with our own inner life), that lie at the heart of forming trusting relationships. Companionship is based in the sharing of and creating with the vitality of the Self (Stern et al. 1985; Stern 2004). Human infants develop healthy consciousness in intimate companionship of care. The reader will remember Figures 8.1 and 8.2 that illustrate the gestural narratives between 6-week-old Laura and her mother. In our analysis we talked of the creation of musical balance that occurs between mother and daughter as they ‘talk’ with each other, the giving and receiving as they exchange meaningful affective narratives, without word meaning playing any signifi cant role in that exchange. It is the feeling in the vitality of the gestures that contains and conveys meaning, and it is the play of these feelings, over smaller and larger time scales Grace in moving and joy in sharing 127 (Osborne 2009), that is brought into a balanced structure over time by mother and infant; in the example of Laura and her mother, this balance over the larger time scale was likened to a four part musical structure, which we are saying is beautiful in its nature. Our ability to create relationships of companionship is vital for the life of the therapeutic relationship, and it is this which is the Beauty of the relationship – the felt dynamics of it as it unfolds over shared time – as well as an ‘engine’ of therapeutic change (Horvath et al. 2011). The dynamics of companionship are therapeutic because they attune to the essential efforts that the mind makes to regulate the body, both in its inner processes and in its purposeful engagements with the objects of the world, and with other people (Trevarthen and Malloch 2000). The felt Beauty of this intuitively healing process is perhaps part of what all expressions of Beauty aspire to – healing of the mind and body through expressing the vitality of Life with others – whether that be through talking with a friend, engaging in therapeutic dialogue or appreciating the products of this inner vitality in a nursery rhyme, a highly skilled production of a ballet or the fl ow of a line as it ‘moves’ across a canvas.

References Ammaniti, M. and Gallese, V. (2014) The Birth of Intersubjectivity: Psychodynamics, Neu- robiology, and the Self . New York, NY: Norton. Bateson, M. C. (1979) The epigenesis of conversational interaction: A personal account of research development. In Bullowa, M. (ed.), Before Speech: The Beginning of Human Communication , 63–77. London: Cambridge University Press. Bjørkvold, J. R. (1992) The Muse Within: Creativity and Communication, Song and Play from Childhood Through Maturity . New York, NY: HarperCollins. Blacking, J. (1969) The value of music in human experience. In The 1969 Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council (Republished in Bohlman, P. and Nettl, B. (eds.) (1995) Music, Culture and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, as Chapter One, Expressing human experience through music). Brandt, P. A. (2009) Music and how we became human – a view from cognitive semiotics: Exploring imaginative hypotheses. In Malloch, S. and Trevarthen, C. (eds.), Communi- cative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship, 31–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bruner, J. S. (1990) Acts of Meaning . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Damasio, A. R. (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain . New York: Pantheon. Delafi eld-Butt, J. T. and Trevarthen, C. (2015) The ontogenesis of narrative: From movements to meaning. Frontiers of Psychology , 6, 1157. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01157 Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience . New York: Minton, Balch and Co. Di Dio, C., Macaluso, E. and Rizzolatti, G. (2007) The golden beauty: Brain response to classical and renaissance sculptures. PLoS One, 2(11), e1201. doi: 10.1371/journal. pone.0001201 Dissanayake, E. (2000) Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began . Seattle: University of Wash- ington Press. 128 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch Donald, M. (2001) A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness . New York, NY and London, England: Norton. Fraisse, P. (1982) Rhythm and tempo. In Deutsch, D. (ed.), The Psychology of Music , 149–180. New York: Academic Press. Goodrich, B. G. (2010) We do, therefore we think: Time, motility, and consciousness. Reviews in the Neurosciences , 21, 331–361. Gratier, M. and Trevarthen, C. (2008) Musical narrative and motives for culture in mother- infant vocal interaction. The Journal of Consciousness Studies , 15(10–11), 122–158. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic . London: Edward Arnold. Hay, D. and Nye, R. (2006) The Spirit of the Child . (Revised Edition). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Horvath, A. O., Del Re, A. C., Flückiger, C. and Symonds, D. (2011) Alliance in individual psychotherapy. Psychotherapy , 48(1), 9–16. Kühl, O. (2007) Musical Semantics . Bern: Peter Lang. Langer, S. K. (1942) Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lee, D. N. and Schögler, B. (2009) Tau in musical expression. In Malloch, S. and Trevar- then, C. (eds.), Communicative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companion- ship , 83–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Llinás, R. (2001) I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Malloch, S. (1999) Mother and infants and communicative musicality. In Deliège, I. (ed.), Rhythms, Musical Narrative, and the Origins of Human Communication: Musicae Sci- entiae, Special Issue, 1999–2000, 29–57. Liège, Belgium: European Society for the Cog- nitive Sciences of Music. Malloch, S. (2000) Timbre and technology: An analytical partnership. Contemporary Music Review , 19(2), 155–172. Malloch, S. (2017) Establishing a therapy of musicality: The embodied narratives of myself with others. In Daniel, S. and Trevarthen, C. (eds.), Companionship: The Rhythm of Relating in Children’s Therapies, 63–81. London: Jessica Kingsley. Manuscript submitted for publication. Malloch, S. and Trevarthen, C. (2009) Musicality: Communicating the vitality and interests of life. In Malloch, S. and Trevarthen, C. (eds.), Communicative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship , 1–11. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Merker, B. (2007) Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: A challenge for neuroscience and medicine. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 30, 63–134. Merker, B., Morley, I. and Zuidema, W. (2015) Five fundamental constraints on theories of the origins of music. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B , Biological Sci- ences , 370, 2014 0095. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0095 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1965) Phenomenology of Perception . Trans: C. Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Norcross, J. and Lambert, M. (2011) Psychotherapy relationships that work II. Psycho- therapy , 48(1), 4–8. Osborne, N. (2009) Towards a chronobiology of musical rhythm. In Malloch, S. and Trevarthen, C. (eds.), Communicative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Com- panionship , 545–564. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Panksepp, J. (2007) Emotional feelings originate below the neocortex: Toward a neurobiology of the soul. Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 30, 101–103. Panksepp, J. and Biven, L. (2011) Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions . New York: Norton. Grace in moving and joy in sharing 129 Reddy, V. (2008) How Infants Know Minds . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schögler, B. and Trevarthen, C. (2007) To sing and dance together. In Bråten, S. (ed.), On Being Moved: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy, 281–302. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sherrington, C. S. (1955) Man On His Nature. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. The Gifford Lectures, 1937–1938. Smith, A. (1777/1982) Of the Nature of that Imitation Which Takes Place in What Are Called the Imitative Arts. In Wightman, W. P. D. and Bryce, J. C. (eds.), with Dugald Stewart’s Account of Adam Smith (ed. Ross, I. S.), Raphael, D. D. and Skinner, A. S. (General eds.), Essays on Philosophical Subjects, 176–213. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Stern, D. N. (2000) The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Development Psychology (2nd Edition). New York: Basic Books. Stern, D. N. (2004) The Present Moment: In Psychotherapy and Everyday Life . New York: Norton. Stern, D. N. (2010) Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy, and Development . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stern, D. N., Hofer, L., Haft, W. and Dore, J. (1985) Affect attunement: The sharing of feeling states between mother and infant by means of inter-modal fl uency. In Field, Tif- fany M. and Fox, Nathan A. (eds.), Social Perception in Infants , 249–268. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Trevarthen, C. (1984) How control of movements develops. In Whiting, H. T. A. (ed.), Human Motor Actions: Bernstein Reassessed, 223–261. Amsterdam: Elsevier (North Holland). Trevarthen, C. (1999) Musicality and the intrinsic motive pulse: Evidence from human psychobiology and infant communication. In Deliege, I. (ed.), Rhythms, Musical Narrative, and the Origins of Human Communication . Musicae Scientiae, Special Issue, 1999–2000 , 157–213. Liège: European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Trevarthen, C. (2001) T he neurobiology of early communication: Intersubjective regula- tions in human brain development. In Kalverboer, A. F. and Gramsbergen, A. (eds.), Handbook on Brain and Behavior in Human Development , 841–882. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Trevarthen, C. (2013) Born for art, and the joyful companionship of fi ction. In Narvaez, D., Panksepp, J., Schore, A., and Gleason, T. (eds.), Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development: From Research to Practice and Policy , 202–218. New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Trevarthen, C. (2016) From the intrinsic motive pulse of infant actions, to the life time of cultural meanings. In Mölder, B., Arstila, V., and Øhrstrøm, P. (eds.), Philosophy and Psychology of Time , 225–265. Dordrecht: Springer. Trevarthen, C. and Fresquez, C. (2015) Sharing human movement for well-being: Research on communication in infancy and applications in dance movement psychotherapy. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy: An International Journal for Theory, Research and Practice , 10(4), 194–210. doi: 10.1080/17432979.2015.1084948 Trevarthen, C. and Malloch, S. (2000) The dance of wellbeing: Defi ning the musical therapeutic effect. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy , 9(2), 3–17. Trevarthen, C. and Panksepp, J. (2016) In tune with feeling: Musical play with emotions of creativity, inspiring neuroaffective development and self-confi dence for learning in company. In Hart, S. (ed.), Inclusion, Play and Empathy: Neuroaffective Development in Children’s Groups , 29–54. London: Jessica Kingsley. 130 Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch Turner, R. and Ioannides, A. (2009) Brain, music and musicality: Inferences from neuroim- aging. In Malloch, S. and Trevarthen, C. (eds.), Communicative Musicality: Exploring the Basis of Human Companionship , 147–181. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turner, V. W. (1982) From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play . New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Turner, V. W. and Bruner, E. M. (eds.) (1986) The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. van Rees, S. and de Leeuw, R. (1993) Born Too Early: The Kangaroo Method with Prema- ture Babies . Video by Stichting Lichaamstaal, Scheyvenhofweg 12, 6093 PR, Heythuy- sen, The Netherlands. Whiten, A., Hinde, R. A., Stringer, C. B. and Laland, K. N. (eds.) (2011) Culture Evolves . Oxford: Oxford University Press. 9 The Favourite Sounds Project

Peter Cusack

Introduction “What is your favourite sound of London, Beijing, Berlin or . . . and why?” With this seemingly simple question at its heart, the Favourite Sounds Project has set out to discover what we fi nd positive about the soundscapes of the cities, towns and neighbourhoods where we live and how we interact with the ever-present sounds of urban life. The project began in 1998 in London as a broadcast for the artist-run radio station Resonance FM and continues today. In the years between it has explored cities as diverse as Beijing, Prague, Birmingham, Manchester, Southend-on-Sea, Taranto and Berlin. Independent researchers have also created versions of their own in Chicago, Brussels and New York City.1 The response to the project has been wonderful, and the many replies to the aforementioned question make fascinating reading. They reveal the cities of the ear in surprising detail – it is a perspective quite different to that of the eye – and illuminate the complex roles of sound in our lives. People’s choices of favourite sounds clearly refl ect the physical and cultural geography of the places where they live and the similarities and differences that emerge between cities have added further to the project’s interest. Many of the sounds have been recorded taking care to be as faithful to the original suggestions as possible and are available on CDs2 or online.3 They have also been used in radio shows, exhibitions,4 presentations and for further creative work. It is pleasing that a project originally intended for the arts has attracted a wider interest, from disciplines such as anthropology, geography and environmental planning as well as from the media and public. The Favourite Sounds Project is almost two decades old. During this time, global and local soundscapes have been especially dynamic, driven by rapidly evolving technologies, by social, economic and cultural changes, and by world-defi ning events such as 9/11. In London, the city under longer-term study, such changes have shown up in the choice of favourite sounds. Equally the project has undergone developments of its own. In Birmingham the question was modifi ed to ask recent immigrants about sounds remembered and loved from places of previous residence, and in Berlin the question became a methodology for investigating soundscapes in areas scheduled for re-development. The project has also taken advantage of online technologies and GPS. The favouritesounds.org website now allows sound recordings to be heard linked to map or satellite images of their original locations.5 132 Peter Cusack The central aim of the project is sonic discovery. It sets out to explore and celebrate the wealth of sounds that immerse us in urban areas and what they mean to us. In each city the method has been to ask as many people as possible the aforementioned question and to document the replies through extensive fi eld recordings. Since 1998 thousands of responses have been received. Given the numbers this chapter focuses on London with briefer references to Manchester, Berlin and Southend-on-Sea.6

Context The project’s context is the growing interest in our sound environment. In recent decades researchers in Acoustic Ecology7 (initiated by R Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project), at Cresson8 (Centre for Research on Sonic Space & Urban Environment) and at other centres have developed substantial theoretical and methodological frameworks for soundscape research and have discussed the conceptual, aesthetic, environmental and planning implications. Projects such as 100 Japanese Soundscapes,9 100 Finnish Soundscapes10 and the Tuned City Festi- vals11 have given impressive practical expression to such work. Amongst smaller groups and individual artists there has been an explosion of interest in fi eld recording and related practices, much of which now appears online as extensive websites or radio streams rather than in conventional arts venues.12 A detailed overview is beyond this chapter’s scope but essentially these approaches take a holistic view and argue that soundscape issues, such as noise pollution, should be understood and tackled from a multidisciplinary perspective that acknowledges the positive benefi ts of environmental sound. This stands in contrast to more traditional and offi cial views that regard soundscape issues as those of noise abatement. The European Acoustic Heritage Project13 and David Paquette’s thesis Describing the Contemporary Sound Environment14 both summarise the positions. A further context is given by recent legislative moves that attempt to deal with noise pollution and the growing loss of tranquillity. The 2002 European Noise Directive15 requires EU member states to noise map their urban areas and encourages them to be more ‘proactive’ in creating human-centred sound environments. It should be said that this work has, as yet, shown little impact on the ground. A gulf still exists between those who argue for a more holistic approach and those who are bound to the noise control perspective. Currently the latter group dominates in the government departments, transport industry boardrooms and development corporations that have the power to make a difference. However, there seems to be a gradual realisation that this situation is not sustainable and that new ideas, such as consulting local people on their sonic environments, are needed.16 The Favourite Sounds Project is proposed as a small contribution to the debate.

The favourite sounds question “What is your favourite sound of London, Berlin or, . . . and why?”

This central question has been applied consistently and is intended for those who know their city well. The respondents were also asked, optionally, for personal The Favourite Sounds Project 133 information – name, gender, age, part of the city where they live. Other questions have often been added to speciﬁ c projects in individual cities. Most commonly:

“What is your favourite sounding place in London, Berlin or, . . . and why?” “What is your favourite London, Berlin or, . . . sight (view, building, object) and why?”

However, the amount of additional information is considerable and this chapter discusses replies to the central question alone. Questions were asked verbally, online and as a questionnaire on paper. The latter has proved the most effective by far, usually when distributed at lectures, exhibitions or concerts, where written replies can be encouraged and returned immediately. Inevitably this has been selected for responders in academia or those inclined towards the arts. It is hard to tell what difference this makes. The point was tested to some extent in Manchester, where a wider range of people were reached through street surveys conducted by a professional market research company. These replies show more one or two word answers and less full accounts of the reasons why, but it is a very different type of encounter. When ﬁ lling in the questionnaires, people often welcome an opportunity to think or talk around the subject before answering. In street interviews a response is required immediately. The number of replies per city depends greatly on time and resources. In Lon- don, where the project has been running on and off from 1998 to the present, there are more than 1,200 replies, of which 869 have been processed. The smallest project, at Southend-on-Sea, produced 47. Most have achieved in the low hundreds. Experience shows that between 200 and 300 are needed to give what feels like a reasonable spread of responses. More is preferable if practicable. Most of the projects have taken place in arts contexts where budgets are small and usually pri- oritised towards the ﬁ nal show. It has not always been possible to canvass as many people as wished. The exception was in Manchester, where the Favourite Sounds Project was an arts contribution to the multidisciplinary, EPSRC supported, Posi- tive Soundscapes Project,17 and more funding was available to collect responses.

The replies and recordings From an arts perspective the wealth of information generated has been wonderful. The individual replies are fascinating to read and attempts to record the sounds have been equally instructive. Tracking down the exact location of sounds and the times when they occur is a unique way to explore a city. It is very enjoyable and frustrating by turn, but the sonic perspective gained greatly enhances one’s knowledge of local neighbourhoods and the city as a whole. Consequently, for me, ﬁ eld recording has become a favourite practice for investigating places and environments, whether they are new or familiar.18 The recordings themselves become an invaluable resource, both as straight documentation and as a sound diary, which can trigger powerful memories of the places visited. From a research perspective, though, the sheer number of replies has been overwhelming. There is just too much information and it has taken a very long time to 134 Peter Cusack formulate approaches for interpreting the data. Different questions have emerged of which the following remain key today:

• Are there convincing general observations that can be made from the replies while still doing justice to the detail that people clearly ﬁ nd important to give? • What aspects of city life and geography do favourite sounds reﬂ ect? • Do the sounds fall into meaningful categories and, if so, which? • Do favourite sounds evolve over time, and how do the choices of one city compare to another? • What lessons, if any, can be drawn concerning soundscapes and urban planning?

These questions need to be discussed in reference to the replies themselves. As the ﬁ rst and the longest running of the projects the London initiative has provided the basic practices used in other cities.

London’s favourite sounds These examples were collected between 1998 and 2015. The favourite sounds are in quotation marks; the reasons why in parentheses.

“A Mistle thrush singing on a bright winter or early spring morning in a Lon- don park.” (I am an ecologist and bird song is one of my things. Mistle thrush song is deeply intense and incredibly uplifting.) “The applause at the end of a Leyton Orient (football) home win.” (It is usually the completion of an afternoon of a whole range of emotions – personal emotions, but shared with many others.) “A good busker inside a tube station, but not in the carriage.” (Makes long corridors seem less bleak.) “My cat’s ‘meow’ when she sees me and the patter of her little feet coming up the stairs.” (Because she is pleased to see me and she is saying hello to me and I always answer. It makes me happy as I love her loads and she’s furry and soft.) “Sounds of birds singing, foxes’ sounds during the night in London’s common land – Little Scrub W10.” (Reminds me that nature is still around even in London and we must save it. This is positive.) “Silence.” (Because it’s so rare.) “‘Mind the gap’ announcement on the London underground.” (It’s really original to London and I ﬁ nd it a bit funny.) “Band practice of Royal Guards at Horse Guards Parade or barracks.” (Makes me feel very patriotic. It’s a very rich sound and good for accompanying walking through St James’ Park.) “The man at Bethnal Green tube that sings, ‘Stand behind the yellow line please’ in a Nigerian accent – he is usually there in the morning 8/8.30 on the westbound platform.” (He cheers me up.) The Favourite Sounds Project 135 “Hearing the banter between market traders.” (To me it summarises the earliest periods of London living. Hustle & bustle in the streets and the interaction between people. Market traders also tend to have strong London accents and always make me laugh. My dad also grew up working in Peckham market – nostalgically it reminds me of him.) “Walking through Abney Park Cemetery to Church Street (cutting the corner).” (Footsteps and nature – feels like you’re taking a deep breath before you start out at the other end with all its chaos.) “Greenwich foot tunnel.” (Long reverberant echo sounds, acoustic distor- tions of familiar sounds, voices, footsteps.) “My cats purring and the leaves rustling in my cherry tree, with Concorde overhead.” (Quiet, animal, motor, other rhythm, nature.) “ The sounds of the many different languages that are spoken in the city.” (It describes the sheer diversity of London, one thing that makes the city a unique place. It can at times be disorientating, which I ﬁ nd to be very exciting. )

Such responses offer momentary glimpses into individual lives, and it is diffi cult not to be affected by the simple humanity and poetry expressed. They evoke the small beauty of everyday sonic experience, which is too often ignored. For me, successful strategies for creating human-centred sound environments need to include the enhancement of such experiences and to increase their diversity. The few examples quoted here cannot do justice to the whole, but they are illustrative of observations that apply more generally. The fi rst concerns sonic diversity. Favourite sounds range from near silence through the intimacy of a cat purring to the deafening roar of Concorde when landing.19 The span is impressively broad. Within this, however, the great majority are chosen from the innumerable local and personal sounds that accompany daily journeys and routines in the city. Initially this was a surprise. Before the project started it was expected that London’s most famous sounds – the chimes of Big Ben; the bells of St Paul’s Cathedral – would feature strongly as favourites, but they do not. Big Ben is mentioned 15 times in 869 replies and the bells of St Paul’s twice. The responses suggest that sounds are more likely to be chosen if they are integrated into a person’s life and heard regularly in familiar situations. There are, of course, plenty of exceptions. Another aspect of diversity is that many favourite sounds are not in fact individual sounds at all. They are mixes, or even entire acoustic atmospheres, whose signifi cance lies in their sonic combinations or contrasts. Such combinations are described in different ways. There are lists – “cat purring/leaves rustling/Con- corde overhead” or “children playing/music from other fl ats” – but place names, activities or both also serve as labels for the sound mixes signifi cant to particular locations, e.g. “Greenwich foot tunnel”, “walking through Abney Park Cemetery”. Such replies highlight the crucial link between place and sonic awareness. Favou- rite sounds are often inseparable from the places where they are heard. A further observation concerns the level of detail given. It is frequently quite high and almost always includes signifi cant non-sonic aspects of life, such as 136 Peter Cusack places, times, memories, emotions, activities and personal routines. This emphasises how closely aural perception is integrated with our other senses and with the totality of everyday experience. When attention is paid to the detail it is noticeable that almost no one says exactly the same as anyone else (as a consequence there is no outstanding favourite London sound). Even if sounds appear to be generically the same, such as street markets or station announcements, the specifi cs of each may differ greatly. Individual stations are mentioned from all over the city; exact platforms are specifi ed as are time of day and special announcers’ voices. Likewise with natural sounds distinct species may be identifi ed (Mistle Thrush, Blackbird) and particular locations, times, days and seasons given. Should these be counted as the same sound or innumerable different ones? For me it has become increasingly important to respect what people say and to take the details into account. When considered together these observations suggest that Londoners are well aware of the city’s sonic diversity and that, despite the undoubted noise and aural overload of London life, detailed hearing, although not necessarily listening, still fl ourishes. They also support the contention that as individuals we habitually, but probably sub- consciously, acquire a deep sonic awareness of the places that we most often frequent. The idea of a city’s sonic identity is also raised. What does this mean and to whom? Offi cially and commercially sonic identity is regularly characterised by a few highly celebrated, often historic, sounds, like the chimes of Big Ben, which have become city brands. But from a city dweller’s perspective it could equally refer to the unique combinations and juxtapositions of smaller sounds that are the practical aural experience of urban living.

Sonic categories Stepping back from the detail it is noticeable that London’s favourite sounds fall into a number of broad categories. Public transport sounds – the London Underground, Overground Trains and Buses – are an obvious group. Bird songs/calls are another. From the 869 replies the categories with the largest number of sounds are as follows:

Category Number of mentions Percentage of the 869 total

The London Underground 98 11.3 Bird Songs/Calls 93 10.7 Overground Trains 54 6.2 Buses 45 5.2 People 45 5.2 Music 45 5.2 Bells 36 4.1 Quietness 36 4.1 Street Markets 32 3.7 The River Thames 31 3.5 Animals 28 3.2 Airplanes 19 2.2 Sports 18 2.1

The Favourite Sounds Project 137 Smaller groups include ‘Sounds of Home’ (pets; frying onions; the key in my front door), the ‘Islamic Call to Prayer’, ‘Skateboarders’ and ‘Special Acoustic Spaces’ (Greenwich Foot Tunnel; British Museum Great Court). A few people like the sound of ‘London Traffi c’, although this is regularly qualifi ed as ‘traffi c at a distance’, when it is ‘peaceful’ or ‘reminiscent of the sea’. However, a considerable number of London’s favourite sounds are only mentioned once or twice and have no obvious group. Outwardly the categories may seem fairly clear but there are many inconsis- tencies. One is that the range of sounds within a group can be so wide as to question its overall coherence. ‘The London Underground’ includes everything from “the approaching rumble of a train”, to “a good busker in a tube station”, to “mind the gap announcements”, to “Oystercard bleeps”, to “a baby heard on the tube”. All occur in the Underground but are not remotely similar sounds. It is a categorisation through place, not sound. However, ‘People’, covering “different languages”, “conversations emerging from a pub”, “night crowds in Leicester Square”, is categorisation by sound, not by place. ‘The River Thames’ group – “waves on pebbles”, “boat horns echoing”, “cyclists on the towpath” – is another place category. ‘Sports sounds’ are classifi ed by activity. The use of sounds, places or activities as criteria for categories comes directly from the replies themselves, where the notions are constantly interlinked. Another inconsistency is that sounds may fi t two or more categories. For example, should ‘a good busker in a tube station’ be classifi ed as ‘Music’ or ‘The London Underground’ or both? These diffi culties increase with sound mixes or acoustic atmospheres. Indeed, some of the latter are better represented as categories in their own right. ‘Quietness’ includes sound mixes and atmospheres where “distance”, “quiet” or “silence” are prominent reasons for their choice. However, despite the anomalies, categorisation has offered much more than fi rst anticipated. It eases cross comparisons between cities and through time, which are interesting, and, more surprisingly, encourages perceptions of the urban soundscape that are unexpectedly intuitive and creative. Whilst considering the sounds and their possible groupings one’s viewpoint begins to expand. The sounds no longer appear as single, separate entities, but more as shifting patterns of relationships that interconnect across the urban landscape. One gradually appreciates their ranges and spatiality, the dynamics of their rise and fall, the movements of their travel and their densities. On further refl ection it is clear that some connections, such as the trajectories of geese honking in fl ight or distant sirens Doppler-shifting at speed, are real and can be heard. Other patterns, like those of noisy children dispersing from school or commuters’ footsteps heading for the station, are more complex; at any one moment our ears register parts of the pattern but not the whole. Yet other relationships are created through association. Individual parks or cemeteries, geographically distant, may be linked in the imagination by the quieter open atmospheres that one expects they share in common. Time and memory are crucial to these intuitive patterns and relationships. Sonic impressions from one place will be remembered in the next. Sounds suddenly recalled from the past colour, or even drown out, those of the present. Such fl uid perceptions and shifts in focus move naturally from overviews to local detail, through memory and back. To 138 Peter Cusack me they are signifi cant hints of the everyday aural experiences that shape our deep sonic awareness of the city places and neighbourhoods with which we are familiar.

Interactive sound maps and word clouds How can this dynamic of city sounds, their positions, movements and interconnec- tions, real, associative or imaginary, be presented? Although limited, interactive online sound maps20 offer some possibilities. In the sound map of Handsworth, Birmingham (Figure 9.1) the spots represent audio recorded at the locations indicated; clicking starts playback and moves the viewpoint closer. The sounds are heard in conjunction to visible details on the

Figure 9.1 Favouritesounds.org sound map, Handsworth, Birmingham Base map © Google 2016 The Favourite Sounds Project 139 ground; juxtapositions that are surprisingly informative and compelling. Some maps are programmable to play sequences of sounds showing simple linear connections and relationships. A Birmingham example occurs as a teenager describes his favourite Jamaican sounds while the satellite image jumps to the different places mentioned.21 Sound maps are useful but cannot, as yet, provide convincing representations of more complex and ﬂ uid sonic patterns. However, one can imagine a future when sound maps will be integrated with the wealth of existing geographic information, such as census data, bio-diversity surveys and noise maps. Word clouds created from the lists of category names and favourite sounds have proved to be unexpectedly revealing. The font size is proportionate to the number of times the word is mentioned. They quickly show which aspects of the city give rise to favourite sounds. Closer readings can suggest possible connections and relationships between sounds. They are also very convenient for comparisons between cities or through time and can be seen as summarising a city’s sonic identity, at least from the favourite sound perspective.

London’s favourite sounds through time The evolution of city soundscapes is many-layered. Certain types of sound seem to change rapidly and others hardly at all. Some indications are given in London’s favourite sound word clouds for 2002–3 and 2013–15 ( Figures 9.2 and 9. 3 ) – roughly ten years apart. Both show much in common, which implies a consistency to Londoners’ choices over time. The categories ‘Underground’, ‘Trains’, ‘Birds’, ‘Buses’, ‘Music’ and ‘People’ all feature in both, with ‘Underground’ sounds maintaining their prominence. However, the proportions between categories varies.

Figure 9.2 London favourite sounds word cloud, 2002–3 140 Peter Cusack

Figure 9.3 London favourite sounds word cloud, 2013–15

‘Birds’, ‘Buses’ and ‘Markets’ have been reduced in 2013–15, whereas ‘Music’ has increased a little and the ‘Thames’ category is much larger. It is important to be cautious about these apparent trends. The number of replies in 2013–15 was 103 compared to 218 for 2002–3 and the lower fi gure is below the range for complete confi dence in the results. However, they certainly indicate that choices of favourite sounds are sensitive to soundscape change. Individual sounds show a similar responsiveness. Mentions of Concorde have vanished by 2013–15, whereas Oys- tercard bleeps are clearly present. Neither is a surprise. Concorde was taken out of service in 2003, the same year as Oystercards were introduced. The variety of languages heard in London has markedly gained as a favourite sound by 2013–15; a sonic thumbs-up to the city’s amazing ethnic diversity. One disadvantage of categories and word clouds is, although they may indicate overall trends, signifi cant changes of detail can be missed. This is noticeable in public transport systems, where regular upgrades and replacements have widespread consequences for the soundscape. London’s Routemaster buses were with- drawn by 2005 and, sadly, the ‘ting’ of the bus bell rung by passengers pulling a cable – one of the city’s favourite sounds – disappeared with them. Details in the replies show not only an absence of the ‘ting’ from this date but also that none of the replacement push button electronic sounds (including a sampled recording of the ‘ting’) has ever been chosen as a favourite since. Perhaps this is one reason for the downwards trend in the favourite sound status of the city’s buses over the period. Announcements in the London Underground provide another example. After the attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, warning and safety announcements have prolifer- ated relentlessly in stations and on trains. Station announcements have long been favourite sounds but the details again reveal changes. At the start of the project, more generalised announcements were regularly mentioned; however, today it is those made on the spot by employees with extrovert personalities or ear-catching The Favourite Sounds Project 141 voices that stand out. Perhaps this is a reaction to the overkill of recorded messages heard on every Underground journey today. Details of other sounds also indicate that small differences are noticed. Although Blackbirds remain the most mentioned individual species, wildlife favourite sounds have registered the population explosion of the now native Ring-necked Parakeets and the noisy presence of London’s foxes.

How do London’s favourite sounds compare with those of other cities?

Southend-on-Sea (UK) favourite sounds A few of Southend-on-Sea’s replies are:

“Sea waves mixed with the chill-out music heard when you sit on the terrace of Ocean Beach Cafe.” (Because it makes you feel like you’re on holiday and like it doesn’t matter that you have just sneaked out for a coffee.) “The sea.” (It is calming and has a mysterious and enchanting feel.) “The sea when it’s dark.” (You can only hear it not see it.) “The foghorns tooting on the estuary when it is really foggy outside. This tends to be more in the cooler months with cloudless skies, some moisture and little wind.” (It is a sound with an important purpose, communication method that has been used for centuries and I am glad it is a tradition that hasn’t been killed by our digitalised era. It sounds lonely and eerie but almost like it was being ﬁ ltered by the fog itself. It just sounds beautiful!)

Figure 9.4 shows the word cloud for Southend-on-Sea (population 177,000). Its smaller size and location are strikingly different from London’s (population nine

Figure 9.4 Southend-on-Sea favourite sounds word cloud, 2010 142 Peter Cusack million). It is a coastal town, where, clearly, the choice of favourite sounds is dominated by the sea and shoreline. They represent 48% of the total. Although the number of replies is small it seems unlikely that more would signiﬁ cantly alter this balance. Southend-on-Sea is a popular seaside resort, and sounds of the funfair and its attractions are also mentioned as favourites. In contrast with London public transport sounds hardly feature at all. It is worth noting that the Italian coastal city of Taranto showed a similar dominance of favourite sounds related to the sea.

Manchester favourite sounds Manchester’s replies include:

“Manchester Central Library.” (The main room has a quite noticeable echo (possibly due to the shape of the room) meaning that quiet sounds can be heard very clearly across the other side of the room. Not very good for a library but it is a fascinating effect.) “People talking – Manchester accents.” (Love the local twang.) “The cheering crowd at a Manchester United match.” (All walks of life from Manchester and beyond forget troubles, differences and join together in a common love.) “Buskers – especially the guy with the weird Middle Eastern stringed instrument that I don’t know the name of.” (There’s such a wide variety and it cheers you up.) “The tram toot.” (It makes me laugh because it is feminine.) “Tills ringing.” (Love shopping.)

The word cloud ( Figure 9.5 ) for Manchester shows clear differences from Lon- don’s, but obvious similarities too. Overall the city’s favourite sounds seem less diverse and tend to group into a smaller number of categories. Public transport systems remain the main source of the city’s choices. Manchester has no underground railway but the Metrolink trams, whose ‘toot’ is famously musical, serve a similar purpose. As in London ‘Birds’, ‘People’ and ‘Bells’ are prominent categories. However, perhaps surprisingly, Manchester’s outstanding category is ‘Music’. The sounds of sports and shopping are also favoured. It is interesting to ask why Manchester should exhibit these differences from London. It is a much smaller city with a population of 500,000, but also the centre of the Greater Manchester metropolitan area (population 2.7 million). People travel into the city centre, particularly for shopping and entertainment. Manchester’s favourite sounds were canvassed partly by street interviews conducted in the centre, meaning that a higher proportion of the replies are from visitors from the outer lying districts. Perhaps this is one reason why Manchester is the only city studied so far where shopping is a signiﬁ cant source of favourite sounds. Compared to London there are fewer parks and green spaces in the central area, which may explain why wildlife sounds feature less, although ‘Birds’ remains a The Favourite Sounds Project 143

Figure 9.5 Manchester favourite sounds word cloud, 2006–9 prominent category. The local Manchester accent is appreciated and makes an obvious contribution to the city soundscape, as do street musicians (buskers), who perform in the central pedestrianised areas. It is a signiﬁ cant contrast to London, where music is permitted in the Underground, but not in the streets, and a clear example of how soundscapes can be affected by local laws and regulation. Man- chester’s commitment to music applies not only to performers, but also to the acoustics and atmospheres of particular venues themselves, including classical music concert halls, rock music arenas, clubs and pubs. In ‘Sport’ football dominates. The city has two of the most famous football clubs in the United Kingdom and match day action, crowds and chants are popular favourite sounds.

Berlin favourite sounds Despite its smaller population (3.5 million) Berlin is the most comparable city to London (nine million) so far studied. Both are great European capitals, both have signiﬁ cant rivers and neither is on the coast. Berlin’s favourite sounds include:

“S-Bahn when it comes into the station.” (When I return from travelling and the S-Bahn pulls into the station then I know that I’m home.) “Squirrel and acorns. He comes every morning for 8 years running along an iron banister. His feet click on the metal. When I call out ‘acorns’ in a friendly way he comes very close sometimes.” (I am happy that this cheeky animal trusts me. He is a dear little friend.) 144 Peter Cusack “I like the sound of the clock in my kitchen.” (I hear it from my bedroom, that’s why I like it – day or night, doesn’t matter. Berlin is so quiet that I can hear it from my bedroom. It reminds how silent Berlin can be, is. I come from a very loud country Brazil where silence is maybe impossible. ) “The quiet at Tempelhof fi eld in the morning.” (When I go jogging in the morning and fi nd myself in cobbled street that is loud then I leave it and the quiet is nice. When the wind blowing through your ears suddenly is gone, then it is especially nice.) “ Berlin Hinterhof soundscape, evenings, preferably in summer. Talking, laughing from balconies, children, concerts, Sunday evenings.” (Social, rural atmosphere and relaxing situation.) “The sound of a very old bicycle on the street or pavement. It’s quite ‘tinny’ and you think the bike might fall apart. You can hear it all times and it’s immediately noticeable. It stops you. Metal grinding, rattling, clinking.” (It sounds like an old friend, not perfect, but dependable, but the bike itself is completely utilitarian – stripped of all fl ourishes. Its age is its glory, which it announces to the streets.) “I like the nightingale in the big yard of the kindergarten on the corner of Modersohnstraße/Revelarstraße.” (It is a pleasure to hear the bird singing when I go out with my dog during the night when the city is peaceful.) “Saturday mornings at Wintersfelde Market (Wintersfeldeplatz).” (Where one can buy fruit and vegetables. The stallholders always shout the price,‘2 bananas, 2 euros’. Usually they are Turkish or from another country and I love how their German sounds. I also like that they speak very loud and always use the same sentences.) “The playground across from my building on Saturday about 12.00pm (Stephanplatz – especially in the summer).” (I can hear from it what the weather is like and the sound of children playing reminds me of my old place in Cologne.)

Berlin’s replies share many similarities with London’s. The sounds and reasons why are often described in considerable detail, and their overall sonic diversity is wide. The word cloud for Berlin ( Figure 9.6 ) shows many of the big-city characteristics found in London. Public transport systems – U-Bahn (underground railway); S-Bahn (overground railway) – are the most prominent sources of favourite sounds and the categories of ‘Birds’, ‘People’, ‘Bells’, ‘Markets’, ‘Quietness’ and ‘Acoustic Places’ (public spaces, usually interiors, of unusual acoustic interest) are common to both, although not necessarily in the same proportions. Like the River Thames in London, sounds along the River Spree in Berlin are regularly mentioned. Some categories though are unique. Hinterhöfe are Berlin’s inner courtyards, which are characteristic of the city’s older architecture. Protected on all sides by the surrounding buildings, they are islands of quiet in the busy city. In the past they were places for small industries and would have been ﬁ lled with the sounds of work. Today they are mostly residential and the human sounds of family life, conversation, footsteps, doors opening and closing, and bottles dropping into The Favourite Sounds Project 145

Figure 9.6 Berlin favourite sounds word cloud, 2012–13 bottle banks come to the fore. Small Hinterhöfe can be very silent; larger ones may contain children’s playgrounds and gardens where birds sing. These acoustic spaces can be spectacularly reverberant, enhancing the quality of sound heard there. Tempelhof Field is also exclusive to Berlin. Since its closure as an airport in 2008 Tempelhof has become a vast, open park within the city, very popular for sports, cycling, kite ﬂ ying, arts events, dog walking or just relaxing. In summer the large expanses of meadow are alive with grasshoppers and crickets. Its sense of urban sonic space and distance is unmatched in cities elsewhere. It is also interesting to compare individual favourite sounds. In Berlin the most favoured bird song is that of the Nightingale; in London it is the Blackbird. Whooshing or rattling bicycles are mentioned too, as is the general quietness of Berlin’s soundscape (a notable contrast to other major cities). The sounds of community, such as children playing and animals in neighbourhood city farms, are also prominent choices in Berlin.

Summaries and conclusions These comparisons confi rm the common observation that different cities have their own individual sonic characters. But more is apparent too. Favourite sounds may correlate with aspects of a city’s physical geography, planning, culture, economy, history, transport or legal structure. This is particularly obvious in the coastal cities where the sea and shoreline dominate the choices. But correlation can also be made with transport, urban wildlife, religion, architecture, the variety of languages or accents spoken and other city elements. Of particular note are local laws that regulate street music. The comparisons, and the project 146 Peter Cusack as a whole, consistently support the truth that the complete fabric of a city is manifest in its soundscape. The comparisons also show that size matters as far as favourite sounds are concerned. As would be expected big cities like London and Berlin show greater diversity in the sounds chosen and a wider range of sonic categories. Bigger cities too consistently feature transport sounds amongst the largest categories. Again this is no surprise but does emphasise how much time city dwellers spend travelling and the signifi cance of hearing whilst on the move. Other favourite sounds are common to all cities, big or small. That people everywhere appreciate hearing children, voices and normal conversation seems so obvious that it is hardly worth mentioning, but it serves to highlight just how diffi cult this can be in many noisy city environments. Wildlife sounds, particularly birds, are universal favourites too, indicating that improvements to an area’s bio-diversity will also be appreciated, and heard, as a positive contribution to the soundscape. What lessons does the project have for urban planning? For me there are several. Firstly, that the range of sounds regarded as favourites is extremely wide. This strongly argues for sonic diversity as a serious criterion for the creation of human- centred soundscapes. Secondly, that people rarely regarded sound as separate from the other vital aspects of city life. This implies that sound should be as basic to the planning process as are visual, architectural, usage and other considerations. This is not always the case, and it is noticeable that attempts to integrate sound at later stages are often limited in their success. In summary the project suggests that, although the everyday sound environment rarely receives much attention, people are very sensitive to the details, and indeed the beauty, of urban soundscapes and to their constant evolution and change. Those responsible for such changes should certainly be aware that developments of all kinds, big and small, have deep sonic consequences that city dwellers will notice and that will affect their lives.

Notes 1 Chicago Favorite Sounds website. URL: www.favoritechicagosounds.com/. The Brussels Favourite Sounds Project has evolved into the Brussels Sound Map. URL: www.bna-bbot.be/brusselssoundmap/?lng=nl#about. The Prague Favourite Sounds Project has evolved into the Sounds of Prague website. URL: www.sonicity.cz/en (all accessed 29 April 2016). 2 Three favourite sounds CDs have been produced:

• Your Favourite London Sounds (released 2001 on the Resonance label) • Favourite Beijing Sounds (released 2006, KwanYin 022) • Favourite Berlin Sounds (released 2013, ReR PC5)

3 Favourite Sounds website. URL: http://favouritesounds.org/ (accessed 29 April 2016). 4 Sound installation Favourite Sounds: Birmingham, 1 May to 16 August 2010. Commissioned by the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, UK. URL: http://birminghammusicnetwork. com/2010/05/01/mac-arts-centre-reopens-its-doors-saturday-may-1st-2010/ (accessed 29 April 2016). Sound installation Favourite Sounds: Southend on Sea as part of Small Worlds Fair 2010, 28 September to 24 October 2010. Commissioned by the arts centre Metal, Chalk- well Park, Southend. Curated by Simon Poulter. URL: http://southend.idea13.org/blog/ swf/ (accessed 29 April 2016). The Favourite Sounds Project 147 5 Favourite Sounds website. URL: http://favouritesounds.org/ (accessed 29 April 2016). 6 An article on the favourite sounds of Beijing can be found in: Chinery Colin. 2008. Sound and the City . ISBN-10: 7208068410: The British Council. 7 Schafer, R.M. (ed.) 1977. Five Village Soundscapes. Vancouver, BC: ARC Publications. Schafer, R.M. 1977, 1994. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World . Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. 8 Cresson: Centre for Research on Sonic Space & Urban Environment at the Graduate School of Architecture in Grenoble. URL: www.cresson.archi.fr/ACCUEILeng.htm (accessed 29 April 2016). Augoyard, J.-F. & Torgue, H. (ed.) 2005. Sonic Experience – a Guide to Everyday Sounds . Translated by A. McCartney & D. Paquette. Montreal: McGill Queen’s Uni- versity Press. 9 Torigoe, K. 2003. Insights Taken from Three Visited Soundscapes in Japan. URL: www. acousticecologyaustralia.org/symposium2003/proceedings/kTorigoe.html (accessed 29 April 2016). 10 Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology 2006. One Hundred Finnish Soundscapes Com- piled for Publication. URL: http://akueko.netne.net/tiedote.php?id=26 (accessed 29 April 2016). 11 Tuned City Festival. URL: www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=457 (accessed 29 April 2016). 12 Four of the most active sites are (all accessed 29 April 2016):

• www.soundsofeurope.eu/ • www.frameworkradio.net/ • www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/survey/soundmaps/ • http://aporee.org/maps/

The radio aporee sound map is the pioneer of online interactive sound mapping and one of the longest existing. It is open access, allowing anyone to upload recordings, and as of 29 April 2016 has an archive of over 30,000 such uploads. Some have used this to document the soundscape of one single location over a period of years, e.g. over 250 recordings can be found at these locations in Berlin. URL: http://aporee.org/ maps/?loc=1391&m=satellite http://aporee.org/maps/?loc=1392&m=satellite. 13 European Acoustic Heritage. URL: http://europeanacousticheritage.eu/2012/09/ research-publication-european-acoustic-heritage/ (accessed 29 April 2016). 14 Paquette, D. 2004. Describing the Contemporary Sound Environment: Mémoire de maî- trise . Burnaby: Simon Fraser University. URL: www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/ article/download/2543/2286 (accessed 29 April 2016). 15 European Noise Directive. URL: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/noise/directive_en. htm (accessed 29 April 2016). 16 COST 2012. Soundscape of European Cities and Landscapes. URL: http://soundscape- cost.org (accessed 28 July 2105). 17 Positive Soundscapes 2012: Positive Soundscapes. URL: www.salford.ac.uk/computing- science-engineering/research/acoustics/psychoacoustics/positive-soundscapes-project (accessed 29 April 2016). 18 An example is the Sound from Dangerous Places Project where the use of ﬁ eld recording is described as sonic journalism. URL: http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/ (accessed 29 April 2016). 19 The supersonic airliner run by British Airways and Air France that ﬂ ew over London daily. It was taken out of service in 2003. 20 A survey, probably incomplete, of existing online sound maps. URL: https://delicious. com/radiophonie/sound,map (accessed 29 April 2016). 21 Jamaican Soundscapes: http://favouritesounds.org/?projectid=3&soundid=163 (accessed 29 April 2016). 10 Colour palettes and beauty

Diana J. B. Young

Introduction Some years after the anthropological debate on ‘aesthetics as a cross-cultural category’, Ingold famously wrote that social scientists treated culture as though it hovered above the material world, but did not permeate it (1996). Substitute ‘colour’ for ‘culture’ and you have the way that colour is approached by such scholars. That is, as I’ll argue in this chapter, colour is a culturally constructed concept – but there it hovers above things, things that are often described as though they were colourless. Colour does not suffuse them. More recent interest in ‘the line’ and in drawing as a way of revivifying anthropology, along with interest in making as a means of accessing and generating anthropological knowledge, emphasises the processual while following the anthropological tradition of ignoring colour or treating it as an incidental quality of things rather than as a primary material (Ingold 2010; Taussig 2009; Grimshaw and Ravetz 2015). Ingold, following Deleuze and Guttari’s argument on matter as fl owing, as having vitality and propulsion (2004), has recently argued for the substitution of material for matter (2010). The properties of materials anticipate the form that will emerge, he suggests (ibid ). Lines, says Ingold, with their itinerant, emergent, fl owing quality, are the bringing into being of things. Lines produce dynamism and change and are processual. He quotes art historian Bryson who says that painting covers up that process of making unlike drawing where the process is exposed. I agree with Ingold that the qualities of materials are crucial to making things. The idea of paint, and by inference of colour, as something to be dismissed or at any rate not attended to, I’ll explore here. I assume that whilst there are different technologies of colour in the sense of photographic, computer, dyes, paints, thread, cloth, land, rocks, gem stones, plastics, etc., colour is material. Colour materialised is one way to attend to beauty. Colour need not be opposed to line, as in Florentine Renaissance art historical dualism or in the Venetian separation of drawing and colouration, designo et colore, as distinct aesthetics, where the line is cerebral, structural, and colour sensuous and decorative (see Gage 1993, 117, 126). In this chapter, I suggest that to treat colours as a permanent aspect of surfaces is a mistake. Indeed the openness of colour to processes of transformation, I’ll argue, is what opens colour to becoming beautiful. Ingold wants to ‘assign primacy’ to the fl ows and properties of materials, not to the fi nished form (Ingold 2010). Colour palettes and beauty 149 I suggest that approaching colour as a material provides such forward propulsion, the impetus to create form that Ingold wishes to argue. There can be making with and knowing through colour practices, and coloured materials offer the possibility to elicit form as I will argue here.

On colours The argument that colour is not a universal but rather a culturally specifi c construct has been mounted by diverse anthropologists and linguists (Saunders and van Brakel 2002; Saunders 2000; Wierzbicka 2008; Young 2006; Young 2011). In this approach, whilst all humans have the capacity to see colour, it is only in some societies that hue (as in which colour) is regarded as a salient, socially shared aspect of the world, and therefore likely to be implicated in ideas of beauty, should those too exist. Much writing about colour has been concerned with understanding how human perception works and not about things and images at all. Implicit in this view is that colour is subtractable from things – a mere secondary quality of them. But colour might be considered as beautiful exactly because of its instability. Vital- ity is judged by colour and also by the ability of something to change colour; the human face or a deciduous tree, for example. Or, something may be considered beautiful because of its colour or because it resembles something else of the same colour. This latter concept of similitude through colour relationships is one that many hunter-gatherers use, including Australian Indigenous Western Desert people. Colour as similitude offers the potential for an open-ended network of visual analogies between things, and things and persons, through colour (Young 2006; 2011). There is the concept ‘colour’ and there are colours, in the sense of materials and practices and what colours do. One of the dominant ways that Western cultures deal with their colour anxiety, the need to contain colour’s unruliness and its tendency to escape, to be excessive, garish – colour in other words as antithetic to beauty (Batchelor 2000; Young 2006; Taussig 2009) – is through the system of the Munsell Chart. Munsell, an American professor of drawing, invented his colour system at the start of the twentieth century. Refi nement of colour taste, which Munsell felt was required after the many novel aniline colours derived from coal tar invented in the preceding decades, gave way to commercialisation and colour standardisation uses for the chart (Blasczyck 2012). Each colour swatch or chip on the chart is governed by the three parameters Munsell invented: hue, which colour; value, the amount of grey in the colour; and chroma, the brightness of the hue. These variable aspects have become naturalised ways to conceive of colour in the developed world. They do not of course encapsulate other dimensions of colour such as transparency, glitter or luminosity (Saunders 2000). Crucially the Munsell Chart is about separating colours into singular objects; ‘what a beautiful colour!’ Western ideas of colour then are about the classifi cation of fi xed hues, singular hues. These are not ideas about hues that succeed one another as a fl ow of colours. Colours transform things and can do so repeatedly, randomly or rhythmically as one colour becomes another. This transformative attribute of colours is an 150 Diana J. B. Young important one to ideas of thrilling beauty; fi reworks and sunsets, for example. If the concept of colour is culturally constructed and socially specifi c, this is emphasised with particular groups of colours or palettes. But neither colour nor culture is a bounded ontology. Palettes are also an attempt to control the effects of colours together. In this chapter I’ll discuss the similarities and differences between some palettes and their attendant possibilities for beauty. We live in a more highly chromatic world than ever before in human history. Colour is deeply implicated in capitalism where marketing controls colour availability. Chroma moves from industrial wares, household goods, cars and clothing to built environments and the digital world. From a marketing point of view, novel colour has been paramount although in the contemporary world it is combinations of colours, or ‘palettes’, named after the artist’s paint-mixing board, that need to be novel. This kind of palette is an aesthetic toolbox for ways that colours relate to one another across categories of things and people, collapsing the distinction between them (Young 2006). Rather than the singular hues of the Munsell Chart, palettes generate the interaction of colours and amplify their ability to transform things; they are a marauding squad – colours on the move as a group (Eaton 2013) . It is a hard task though to control the itinerant nature of colours as qualities that compose the world. The interrelation of different colours is what makes colours do something (Young 2006). A new kind of colour, still to be adequately addressed anthropologically, is digital colour and the beauty of the computer palette. The machinery of capitalism impacts on local colour palettes. It is often cultural brokers who realise the potential of a local artisan’s skills and design new products for the market. Here the question of colour combinations and judgements of taste about what is pleasing or beautiful become paramount (Gow 1996, 219). The palette used in each fashion season diffuses into utility clothing so that no one acquiring clothing is immune to it. Japanese palettes, where colour prints of kimona , for example, historically incorporated very different kinds of hue mixture, show how surprisingly different colour combinations can be to an un-encultured eye (Wada 2010). The palettes in Wada’s book are from the Showa period in the 1930s when Japanese culture was becoming infl uenced by European aesthetics. Writing about colour is often confi ned to artists and art works, and here I’ll follow the tradition, while treating this as part of a wider category that connects visual imagery with environmental use of colours that might offer different cultural capacities for shared human experiences of beauty. Artists who work with colour are knowledgeable specialists, but their practice is culturally specifi c. In this chapter I’ll discuss the impact of the market on the contemporary palettes of Indigenous Western Desert artists in Australia, who had no concept of ‘colour’ before colonial contact (see Young 2011) and where colours, as sets or groups that work together, are changing from being exclusive knowledge about belonging to the landscape of one’s Ancestor’s, and about bodily practices, to becoming (in some cases at least) orientated towards the non-Aboriginal consumer’s colour preferences and the painter’s own recursive archive. I’ll compare these palettes with American artist Chuck Close’s work and with some examples of environmental and digital colour. Colour palettes and beauty 151 Colour palettes The artist’s palette board came into being, in European art history at least, in the Renaissance as a way of systematising pigments in the way they were laid out on the board, as Gage relates (1993, 177–190). By the mid-1600s palettes had become artefacts where the paints were mixed, for bringing forth new colours. The colours in a contemporary palette might occur scattered across people and clothing, the environment and food. Palettes are also purposely designed or assembled for specifi c groups of things, such as paint or fashion clothing or interior furnishings. Palettes are culturally specifi c, period or time specifi c, and can be considered as an object, a thing. The world-wide-web offers thousands of sites where you can choose ready- made digital palettes, or assemble your own. There are seasonal palettes for fashion or makeup (‘colour changes everything’) or events (‘the perfect palette for your wedding day’) which are re-invented to provide novelty and evoke desire. These palettes, such as house paints, for example, have ‘accent’ colours, where you are permitted one bright colour amongst the ‘subtler’ toning ones (meaning the same hue but less bright). One wall in a room or the house front door will do, thank you (Young 2004). Palettes are a constraint on colour and offer cultural rules about what colour ‘goes with’ what, a Bordieuian distinction. These include socially and culturally appropriate colours for men’s suits, for example. Colours among Australian Indigenous Western Desert people are considered to be processual, in that they are a way of imagining continuous transformation of both human bodies and ‘Country’, the landscape that is held so dear, since it was created by Ancestral action. This conception of colour is here not that of the Munsell Chart. Instead it is one where the hue that you see contains other hues emergent within it. For example, a bush fruit such as a fi g is yellow at fi rst, but will turn red and then purple as it ripens. Colour both transforms a thing and itself transforms. Travelling along through this desert country, present day people and things transform in colour exchanging qualities so that a dissolution of subject and object begins to occur. There are only pauses in this process, never an end point. The transformations keep on emerging (Young 2011). In terms of what could possibly be construed as a judgement of ‘beauty’, there is a term ‘rikina ’ (Pitjantjatjara) which means ‘fl ash’. I understand this to mean that what people judge as rikina – the image, clothing, car or country – is composed of several highly contrasting colours which together create an impression of vitality and movement. These sets of colours, or palettes, might also have socially recognised referents, but this need not be so. Two colours that ‘go together’ might refer to a football team and simultaneously to body paint for a boy’s initiation ceremony, for example. Ex-hunter-gatherers arguably retain their ‘foraging mentality’ and a kin-based sociality, where everyone is more or less related to everyone else and to country (see Barnard 2004). Colours are similarly relational. Colours are understood as ‘here and there’, on the body, on the land, on plants or food, in art works. This interplay (or network if we nod to Latour) accounts for the success of colour as an adopted material and concept. Western Desert people desired coloured things and embraced the novel concept of ‘colour’ as ‘kala ’, and some English colour names, ‘red one’, for example, used adjectively, but ‘colour’ was not a quality that 152 Diana J. B. Young they singled out in things before colonisation. Colour words in English are abstract names whereas colours here are all about materials, and qualities of likeness. There was a recognition among desert peoples that these new materials (dyes, coloured cloth, paints, novel food stuffs and cars, for example) would amplify their existing relational and religious practices. Colours are a multi-faceted way of materialising and making knowledge. They provide a fl ow and a forward propulsion of the kind Ingold argues for creativity with materials.

Some colour palettes

Large scale transformative palettes In a global appropriation of a ‘palette’ through digital media, the rainbow fl ag of gay rights activism was projected onto the residence of the US president, the White House, following the US Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2015 to legalise same sex marriage. The fl ag is composed of equally bright stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. The brilliantly coloured lighting transforming the iconic white building’s materiality (white being an ideal screen for colour). Coca-Cola, American Airlines and Levi’s were among companies to use the rainbow to brand their own goods as a gesture of inclusivity. Here is an affective palette loaded with socially shared symbolism that can be used as light, or as other material, to transform any object or person. As a palette it has a life of its own. Such affective and transformative palettes are becoming increasingly common. After violent politically or religiously motivated attacks, seen as attacks on a nation’s identity, the colours of that nation’s fl ag have been projected onto the state buildings of other, empathising nation states. This is a far larger gesture than the centuries-old one of fl ying the colours – raising a small piece of coloured cloth on a fl ag pole. A hugely popular public installation in London in 2014, created to mark 100 years since the start of World War 1, was composed of red ceramic poppies, one for each of the 888,000 Commonwealth soldiers who died, imitating the Flanders poppies traditionally made in paper for remembrance. The poppies were installed in the moat of the Tower of London. In its environment this installation was composed of a colour palette very typical of Britain or more especially of Lon- don; bright red (of London buses and of post boxes and old fashioned telephone boxes) punctuating green trees and grass with grey-blue washed-out skies and grey buildings. The poppies provide a spectacular excess of redness in relation to the rest of the palette. Photographically, red is the most easily captured colour and that continues to be true for digital cameras (Roberts 2007).The red poppies are, therefore, like the gay rights rainbow fl ag, ‘a fi eld of affective intensity’ (Pinney 2005, 266).

Enchantment in exposing colour process American Chuck Close is a ‘face blind’ artist who, because of this, has based his portrait painting on photographs (see Plate 3). Close likes to reuse his portraits in different media so that there is a Gellian expansion of the image as it is remade anew each time through different coloured materials and practices (Gell 1998). Plate 3 Chuck Close, Self-Portrait I, 2009 © Chuck Close; courtesy of Pace Gallery 154 Diana J. B. Young Close’s work is based on a grid structure. Collaborating closely with print makers, Close creates the portrait through assemblages of nested colours each making a square in the image. When viewed close-up you can discern only the colours, not the whole image. Move further away and the colours interact with each other to coalesce into a ﬁ gural form – the image of a face. The portrait demands shifting backwards and forwards between the animation of the colours’ ‘pixels’ and the image as a whole. Close and his collaborators also use computers to orchestrate the complex colour arrangements. The shift in view – between the marks on the surface and the thing depicted – links to digital imagery as I’ll discuss later in the chapter (Sultan 2014, 33). Here is Close on thinking through the extremely demanding printmaking process using nineteen printing blocks and eighty-eight colours:

It was really more theory. I explained . . . that in a given square if you have a bright blue you will need to have something equally bright to neutralise it. And it could be two or three different colours. You can’t just take the bright blue and put dull browns on top of it. That won’t work. You have to really see that if you have a blue, you have to have an equally bright orange somewhere, or a yellow, blue, or red, so that all together they balance each other out. . . . My main concern was about the colour world we were building . ( ibid )

Each image is built with a large number of printing blocks each carrying a different colour layer of the portrait. Each square is like a palette on its own: for example, orange, red, yellow, mauve, green. They interact together and with the other nests of colours to create a facial topography. Colour is knowledge. Colour is making. It is a way of eliciting form. Close shows his making by exhibiting the printing blocks as works too in which only parts of the image emerge. He wants the viewer to understand what he does. He isn’t concealing the process as ‘magical’ (Gell 1992) yet despite this demonstration of how the image was made, its enchantment lingers, perhaps because we are unused to having colours shown to us as materials for making. Although he speaks of a ‘colour world’, implying something closed, Close emphasises that colours are an unfolding process.

Ngupulya Pumani: a Western Desert painter’s palettes The social anticipation of colours as a process of transformation and as a propulsion forwards is manifested in some Western Desert painters’ palettes. During the last decade there have been signifi cant developments in painting for the market across the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. Anangu artists aim to make their work rikina / fl ash, to make an image fi lled with vitality and movement that alludes to the transformations of country, transformations which show the continuing spiritual power and presence of the Creation Ancestors (Young 2011). Painters work with industrially produced synthetic polymer paints (acrylics), a ready-made material to be hunted and gathered through shops or the local community art centre, not extracted from the land. Plate 4 Ngupulya Pumani 2015, Maku Dreaming, 122 × 300 acrylic on linen © Ngupulya Pumani/Licensed by Viscopy, 2017 156 Diana J. B. Young A current palette is one that is built up in layers from dark to light colours. Several artists were using this palette in 2015. It could be said that the palette is a thing in its own right. Ngupulya Pumani’s work is, like that of other women artists at the small settlement of Mimili, based on the maku /witchetty grub Tju- kurpa (Dreaming). She is currently a prominent artist employing this dark to light palette. Like much of the work coming out of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara community-owned art centres in the far north-west of south Australia, her work’s foundation is black-primed canvas. Over this she applies bright mid-toned colours – purples, oranges, reds, perhaps over-painted in white. All are applied in small dots and dashes creating rhythm and iteration, a mutable seeming surface where colours react to one another. The paint materials and the combination become locally Indigenous through the way they are applied and the aesthetic they create. The top layer is over-dotted in paler colours and in different colours to the underlying ones, the over-all effect creating a shimmer. The fi gures under this veil of upper colours seem to be women, plants, breasts and digging sticks. Pumani’s palette alludes to the processual palette of witchetty grubs, which are pinkish when young, fat and white with egg-yoke yellow insides and a defi ned black face when grown. The grubs are one of the bush foods still hunted by Australian Indigenous Western Desert people. The colours together create movement – of the dancing women in the witchetty ceremony, of the witchetty Ancestor and the spiritual ties of women to the places the Ancestor created. Pumani describes her recent work as infl uenced by, and replete with attachment to, her late mother and the fl ash of colours of women dancing the maku inma religious ceremony (Pumani 2015). Her current work bears a resemblance to Chuck Close’s in that, like Close’s, her paintings use colour as processual. Pumani is showing these changes in her painting’s coloured layers. Like Close’s work, different topographies, created through colour relationships, are revealed when the viewer shifts from detail to distance, an insight that Hinkson brings to Warlpiri drawings (Warlpiri being northern neighbours of the Pitjantjatjara) (Hinkson 2014). Like Ayers Rock Pumani’s paintings evoke a constant state of becoming, of transformation through colour changes that rise up from inside the canvas.

Ayers Rock palettes At Ayers Rock in central Australia, I was on the tourist side of its cultural life rather than, as on previous visits, with its Anangu traditional owners. Both Ayers Rock, or Uluru, and the neighbouring Olgas, or Katatjuta, are inside a National Park. Both are sacred sites of enormous importance for their traditional owners. Uluru is positioned through its road traffi c system and pay gate as a spectacle for tourists. At the toll-gate, a digital sign tells customers the day’s weather and the exact time when the sun will set that day. Anangu call this tjintu tjarpangyi (sun entering) when the sun appears to enter the ground where the Creation Ancestors are still. Uluru may be climbed, although there are signs made with the authority of Anangu expressly asking tourists not to. Visitors may walk around the rock’s base Colour palettes and beauty 157 although various sections are fenced off where they contain secret sacred places related to the Tjukurpa (Creation Ancestors). The rock runs with spectacular tiered waterfalls after heavy rain, when it turns almost black, but since this is most likely to happen in the intensely hot time of year, fewer tourists experience it. Most famously, the rock transforms in colour during the intense, rapid changes of the angle of light as the sun sets and rises. Following ticket acquisition, the rock may be scrutinised from designated car parks, and different ones have been constructed for sunrise and sunset viewing. These restrictions account for the similar views of the rock that are reproduced globally. According to tourist brochures, it is during rapid changes in the altitude of the sun and the atmospheric conditions that the rock changes colour. This is what Uluru does. It appears to have agency, to produce coloured light. Coach tours are provided with their own viewing park and depart for the rock about an hour before sunrise or sunset. On my visit, the (non-Indigenous) coach driver and his colleagues, who had seen many sunsets and sunrises, were connoisseurs of the rock’s colours. The drivers urged the tourists, as they imbibed the supplied alcoholic beverages, to take a picture of the rock every few minutes because it was only through these images that they would understand the extent of its colour changes. It had rained the week before, an unexpected meteorological event for the season, and the drivers rhapsodised on the effects of rain on the rock. A few weeks later in the chill of July, the sky was a strange uniform grey and the rock appeared like a rich chocolate mud cake; even its texture seemed to have changed. At the sides of the tarmac road were swerve marks where tourists had stopped for more photographs. The rock commands attention through its sheer scale. It is hard to look at anything else. It exerts a fascination. Colour changes are positioned as central to the whole tourist experience of visiting Uluru and the quality of these changes is down to luck, timing and, apparently, proper documentation. Setting up camp early with deck chairs and tables, camera and tripods for some, and selfi e sticks, smart phones or tablets for others, many climbing on the roofs of their cars, tourists in the sunset viewing area designated for private cars are compelled to behave in an Anangu-like way. They all must wait. There is no hurrying the sun. Nor is there any certainty about the colour show they will get. Anangu are used to waiting: for money, for food, for people to arrive, for the right set of circumstances to arrange themselves. There is an obvious difference here, namely that, for most visitors to this landscape, colour is likely to be ‘natural’, explained by light and atmospherics. Here, ‘colour’ is culturally constructed and projected back onto ‘nature’. For Anangu, the traditional owners, the colour changes are cultural, the result of Ancestral presence and energy here with us (Keen 2004; Young 2006). For them the motility of the colours is the active spiritual presence in their land. Uluru’s colour changes are a palette, albeit one where all the colours are not equally present at once, except on postcards with their accumulated colour time. This is a diachronic palette with ‘open ended’ colour, where the colour becoming cannot be defi nitively predicted on any day. Uluru is always in process, emergent, and this is what gives it its allure, excitement and beauty (see Plates 5 – 7 ). The images that visitors make on their digital tablets and smart Plate 5 Uluru just before dark on a cold July day Photo by the author

Plate 6 Uluru materialising at dawn on a cold July day Photo by the author

Plate 7 Uluru an hour after materialising at dawn Photo by the author Colour palettes and beauty 159 phones extend the colour possibilities further. For Anangu the rock is a genera- tor of light and colour showing its sacredness. It appears on occasion to glow from within, an effect that is serendipitously replicated on the digital devices now used to photograph it.

Picturing beautiful colours in the world and chromatic disappointment For decades, postcards of the rock have featured its serial colour transformations. A current image shows the rock’s colour changes, purportedly at three hourly intervals through a day. These are digitally manipulated images in which the shadows remain static; they are only a sign for colour transformations and a sign that the colour has been digitally altered. But what of those digital images that anyone with a mobile phone can create? The relationship between images and things is now often mediated by the digital. The world is replete with digital coloured images that only recently were precious, laboriously and expensively made. How does that change affect sociality and cultural speciﬁ cities? Benjamin famously pointed to ‘the anticipation of reality by images’. Digital images can be so indigestibly perfect, glossy renditions of the ordinariness of the world, that they bring to mind Baudril- lard’s insight that digital music’s perfect reproduction brings an end to aesthetic pleasure (1987, 19). There is no space for the imagination between the image and the real. Yet digital technology, although improving, is still poor on colour recognition, so that there is a gap between colour in the world and colour in the digital device. ‘What you get is an interpretation of the scene. Some colours are over emphasised, subtle colours disappear’ (Hirsch 2007). Digital colour is unstable colour that can be altered easily in camera as well as in post-production editing. The boundaries of colour veracity have collapsed (Roberts 2007, 204). If we have to rethink the world through digital images what role does digital colour play in remaking colour palettes? Digital colour treatments have the ability to change whole palettes or the relationships of colours within a palette in ways that are at once magical and banal. Everyone is potentially their own colour master. Horrocks, writing of digital images, describes them as ontologi- cally thin, deceptive, feigning and set free from social and cultural particularity (2012, 115). To know if this is really so we need ethnographies of digital colour as material (see Lehmann 2012 on digital thinness). Horrocks points to the difference that digital images make to the body; the body stays still and the image moves, zooming in or out. Whereas confronted with the original work by Close, or Pumani, and many other Western Desert artists, it is the shift in view that transforms the image. McLuhan made a distinction between light through stained glass and the computer screen, and light on pigments and materials (1987, cited in Horrocks 2012). Colours look back at you (Batchelor 2000). The luminously coloured digital screen 160 Diana J. B. Young is like that of an illuminated Medieval manuscript. Colour as light was associated with the light of the heavens that induced happiness in thirteenth century Christian concepts. Dante described the ‘smiling colour’ of the multi-coloured and gilded letters that art historian Gage argues was analogous to ‘lighting up’ the face (Gage 1993, 77). Computer screens, including personal digital devices, provide luminous colours, the beguiling ‘smiling colours’ that stare back at you and with which you bond.

Media facades The diachronic palettes of Uluru glow as images transformed inside a myriad of digital devices in a multitude of different digital palettes. Keeping the impression of luminous digital colour, together with a constantly changing colour, has become possible through new lights that can be used in the built environment. Palettes of colour as light in the twentieth century were neon and fl uorescent, but there is a new level of pliability with LED (light emitting diode) lamps and digital displays. Colour is the way of transforming surfaces and in the built environment this can be achieved through impermanent static coloured light. Indeed, technical possibilities for interactive architecture and building exteriors that change colour on demand are now a part of cityscapes. LEDs and digital colours are new colour materials (see Plates 8 and 9 ). Digitally mediated urban spaces, made possible by LED lamps and screen technologies, are still rare enough to be remarkable, but are also becoming increasingly common aspects of metropolitan centres. With more recent media facades, meaning facades created by dynamic media rather than just bathed in coloured light, a building’s facade is constantly transformed. Media facades can be based on mechanical or digital components (Haeusler 2009). The digital ‘bricks’ of media facades that pixelate buildings and other structures provide the capacity for colour transformations, for example, the Tower of the Winds, Tokyo. Such buildings often have huge followings and their images are posted and shared on social media, perhaps because they are ‘smiling’ structures, animated displays of colours like a long lasting fi rework display or ‘a digital campfi re’ that draws people to it. Digital technology enables the man- made environment to mimic a monolith like Uluru. These buildings command attention through their constant colour transformations which are frequently after dark spectaculars.

Digital colour and Australian Indigenous desert painting Painting in acrylics on canvas has become the main way that Aboriginal people throughout central Australia can earn money. Many of the paintings made by artists from diverse Aboriginal cultures in central Australia are often referred to using the Plate 8 Sydney Town Hall illuminated by sequences of coloured light, December 2015 Photo by the author

Plate 9 Sydney Town Hall illuminated by sequences of coloured light, December 2015 Photo by the author 162 Diana J. B. Young banality ‘colourful’. In art centres and painting studios one hears the terms ‘contrasting colours’ and ‘complementary colours’ banded didactically about. All art advisers control palettes of painters to an extent, even as they protest against this (Michaels 1988). Artists watch carefully when new art managers arrive, waiting to see what the new person likes and promotes, and may adapt their own techniques accordingly. Artists need to sell their work. Papunya Tula artists (the most globally renowned school of Western Des- ert art) have adopted and maintained a controlled palette of earthy colours: oranges and browns, pinks and yellows, often mixed with white, black and white, never any green. The remarkable persistence of such a palette, which was not used by Papunya Tula painters in the 1970s during the early years of this painting movement, has become a trademark, a commercial branding of the company. Recognisable palettes are generated by one artist whose market success means that the palette is taken up by another artist (often family of the fi rst) and then diffused across a whole movement until the ‘look’ becomes commonplace or mere ‘product’, its poetry and affective potential diminished by its ubiquity. For some painters whose careers have peaked, copying their own high quality earlier work is a means of continuing to earn reasonable sums of money. There are commercial galleries and web sites crammed with this kind of work. Such paintings are available in any colour palette so long as the colours work together to make the image move, oscillate. Originally an artist such as Kathleen Petyarre made similar images in different colour palettes, showing through this making the different country or transformative state of the Ancestral subject of the work (Nicholls and North 2001; Young 2011). With the collapse of the art market after the Global Financial Crisis, Aus- tralian Indigenous art’s market appeal is turned towards the domestic and decorative. ‘Everyone likes a black and white painting’, a commercial dealer told me in passing, adding that every collector should have at least one such painting because it ‘goes with everything’. As decorative art for the Western domestic interior, such Indigenous art comes in colour ways, the kind of variations that furnishing fabrics for curtains and upholstery conventionally offer. The buyer may choose a painting based on its appropriate fi t for their domestic interior colour scheme. In order to comply with this and earn money, certain well-known painters repeat their own motifs again and again in different colour palettes and formats (a situation more likely to arise in a commercial dealer’s studios than in the more culturally focussed ‘community art centre’). This could be reminiscent of Close but instead of expanding possibilities it limits them. One artist uses the motifs made famous by her deceased mother at smaller scale on smaller tourist-sized canvases. She paints one in pinks and reds, another in cream and yellow, another in bright rainbow colours. These consumer palettes remake the works as both exotic, and familiar enough to bring home. In these paintings the colour is unstable – like digital colour. And Colour palettes and beauty 163 often such works are sold online. Western Desert Aboriginal people too have smart phones, tablets and laptops. The infl uence of digital aesthetics, more especially on labile colour in paintings, still connects to colour as a cultural way of knowing. But the works are often diminished because of their colour ways, palettes that disconnect them from the painter’s own way of being in the landscape and instead appeal to the colours of the buyer’s landscape.

Open colour We do not know (though perhaps Samsung or Apple knows) what colour palette bias for beauty Japanese visitors who photograph Uluru have compared to Ger- mans, say; ‘[C]olouring materials are not intrinsically cultured but only become so in their diverse applications’ (Lehmann 2012, 93). Specifi c combinations of colours and what they do and how that is appreciated are culturally specifi c. Is there a universal satisfaction with colours that moves and changes? Flux and movement are beauty and awe. The transformational colours in sunsets can now be mimicked by LED lights. This instability of digital colour as a material reinforces how colour can be fl owing, emergent. Our Western cultural bias towards seeing colours as singular and contained means that we have diffi culty thinking of colour in this way. When colour as LED lights is applied to stable structures – offi ce blocks and bridges – this very instability provides facades with alluring transformative potential making the structures into events. These are new smart materials that cut across the nature-culture paradigm, imitating sites of aesthetic revelation like Uluru. The digital screen with its palette of luminous colour is both an accessory to this process and a disruption of it. Surely it is no coincidence that there is currently a resurgence of appreciation for luminous colour and a corresponding resurgence of interest in the light art of the 1970s. Close’s and Pumani’s work, although employing different cultural concepts of colour relations, each work with palettes that are open ended where the image is latent with transformative potential. Therein lies its beauty. The tourist painters of central Australia must use colour as though it is already a part of a landscape of elsewhere-metropolitan domestic interiors with their constrained palettes, counter acting the possibilities for forward propulsion in the art work (and in their lives as painters). This tourist art is as unstable in its palettes as digital colour. Palettes are an attempt to control the effects of colours together against the itinerant nature of colours as qualities, and colours as materials in the world.

References Barnard, A. 2004 Mutual aid and the foraging mode of thought; re reading Kropotkin on the Khoisan. Social Evolution and History 3, 3–21. Batchelor, D. 2000 Chromaphobia . London: Reaktion. Baudrillard, J. 1987 The Evil Demon of Images , (trans) P. Patton and P. Foss, Power Insti- tute of Fine Arts. Sydney: University of Sydney Press. 164 Diana J. B. Young Blasczyck, R. L. 2012 The Color Revolution . Cambridge MA and London, England: MIT Press. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari 2004 A Thousand Plateaus , (trans.) B. Massumi. London: Continuum. Eaton, N. 2013 Colour, Art and Empire: Visual Culture and the Nomadism of Representa- tion . London: I. B. Lauris. Gage, J. 1993 Colour and Culture, Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction . London: Thames and Hudson. Gell, A. 1992 The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. In J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds.), Anthropology Art and Aesthetics, 40–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gell, A. 1998 Art and Agency an Anthropological Theory . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gow, P. 1996 Against the motion. In T. Ingold (ed.), Debate; Aesthetics Is a Cross Cultural Category in Key Debates in Anthropology , 201–236. London: Routledge. Grimshaw, A. and A. Ravetz 2015 Drawing with a camera: Ethnographic ﬁ lm and transformative anthropology. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 255–275. Haeusler, M. H. 2009 Media Facades: History Technology Content. Ludwigsburg Ger- many: Av-Edition GmbH, Publishers for Architecture and Design. Hinkson, M. 2014 Remembering the Future: Warlpiri Life Through the Prism of Drawing . Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Hirsch, R. 2007 Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age . New York and London: Focal Press, Taylor and Francis Group. Horrocks, C. 2012 Heidegger’s pixel; digital colour as standing reserve. In C Horrocks (ed.), Cultures of Colour Visual Material Textual , 107–119. New York, Oxford: Berghahn. Ingold, T. (ed.) 1996 Debate; aesthetics is a cross cultural category. In Key Debates in Anthropology , 201–236. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2010 The textility of making. Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, 91–102. Keen, I. 2004 The old air force road: History, myth and mining in north-east Arnhem Land. In A. Rumsey and J. Weiner (eds.), Mining and Indigenous Life Worlds in Australia and Papua New Guinea , 157–181. Wantage: Sean Kingston. Lehmann, A.-S. 2012 Taking the lid off the Utah teapot: Towards a material analysis of computer graphics. Zeitschrift fur Medien und Kulturforshung 1, 157–172. Michaels, E. 1988 (1994) Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition Media and Technological Hori- zons . St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Nicholls, C. J. and North, I. 2001 Kathleen Petyarre: Genius of Place. Adelaide, SA: Wake- ﬁ eld Press. Pinney, C. 2005 Things happen or From which moment does that object come? In D. Miller (ed.), Materiality , 256–272. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Pumani, N. 2015 Ngunytju Kurunpa Mother Spirit, in Association with Outstation Gallery and Mimili Maku Artists . Darwin: Outstation Gallery. Roberts, P. 2007 A Century of Colour Photography: From the Autochrome to the Digital Age . London: Viking Books, Penguin. Saunders, B. 2000 Revisiting basic colour terms. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 6, 81–98. Saunders, B. and J. van Brakel (eds.) 2002 Theories, Technologies, Instrumentalities of Color: Anthropological and Historiographic Perspectives. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Colour palettes and beauty 165 Sultan, T. 2014 Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration . Munich, London, New York: Prestel Verlag. Taussig, M. 2009 What Colour Is the Sacred? Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Wada Sanzo 2010 A Dictionary of Colour Combinations . Kyoto, Japan: Town Seigensha Art Publishing. Wierzbicka, A. 2008 Why there are no ‘colour universals’ in language and thought. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 14, 407–425. Young, D. J. B. 2004 The material value of colour: The estate agent’s tale. Home Cultures 1(1), 5–22. Young, D. J. B. 2006 Water as country in the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion Special Issue (eds) A. Garner & V. Strang 10, 239–258. Young, D. J. B. 2011 Mutable things: Colours as material practice in the Northwest of South Australia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17(2), 356–376. 11 Aso iyi, aso eye Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile aso-oke

Eni Bankole-Race

This chapter is based on ethnographical observation from independent fi eldwork across Yorubaland and beyond, and explores the links between the elements of design, light and harmony that coalesce into the phenomenon of resplendence associated with the Yoruba prestige textile, aso-oke . I will further examine the armature and drivers of the spectacle of resplendence – tradition and ‘fashion’ – and investigate how the symbolism of the designs and patterns contributes to the understanding of grandeur sought by all participants – the weaver, the wearer and the observer. From the fl uid equiluminescence of centuries-old fl oating patterns, the phenomenon of ‘beaten cloth’, to the modern incorporation of nylon and lurex yarns (among other enhancement practices), the manifold qualities of various types of aso-oke and the special weaving and dyeing techniques endow the fabrics with ‘light capture’ (ina yiya, iya’na – the ability to attract and refl ect vibrancy) and opulence. Apparel is worn with intent – which could be to seduce, to intimidate, to stun, to announce one’s presence, one’s status, to illustrate one’s relationship to the community or to announce who one is to the surrounding world. In the same way a Punk on a 1970s east London street fl aunted black leather and safety-pins to declare an anarchic world-view, so too does a Yoruba Ogboni Chief wear their ‘ saki’ (ceremonial stole of offi ce especially woven for the individual on initiation) signifying their status as initiates into that secret and exclusive society. Centuries of tradition and a culture of crafting beautiful items have imbued Yoruba communities with an air of elegance and vibrancy in their clothing and attire that is not generally experienced in the Western world which often chooses conformity above individual expression. With reference to aso-oke , beauty is conveyed not merely in the appearance of the cloth, but in its multi-faceted actuality – both its materiality and sensoriality, its symbolic import and its historical linkages. Its beauty is also in the instruments of weaving – the balance of the loom, the ooya , the omu ; the texture and grade of the yarn; the physicality of the weaving; the intention and commitment of the weaver; the knowledge of the appropriate supplication made to the relevant Orisa and the conviction of their guidance. Within this sphere, respect and reverence are manifested as ‘beauty’ (ewa ). This multi-layered analysis that occurs almost instantaneously in the ‘mind’s eye’ of the discerning observer – the appreciation of the essential harmony of all parts – is what confers beauty and elevates it to resplendence. Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 167 My research undertaken so far in Lagos, Ibadan and the major ‘been to’ areas of Yoruba diaspora (London, Birmingham, Atlanta) over the last six years, along with my own practice as a textile maker and my familial experience, has shown that the desire and the requirement for resplendence are an integral element of the Yoruba spirit, and indicate that traditional dress and textiles, while visually stunning in themselves, hold much greater symbolic import than non-Yoruba sensibilities would imagine. In Visual Culture, Chris Pinney argues that the fi eld of visual culture as is currently understood “needs to be superseded by an engagement with embodied culture . . . that recognises the unifi ed nature of the human sensorium” (Pinney 2002, 84–5). Complementing this view, Omatseye and Emeriewen posit that Afri- can cloth has an inherent aesthetic in its symbolic usage, motifs and colours, that cloth “speaks” (2012). It could be argued that Yoruba aso-oke not only speaks, but its language of particular aesthetic sensibilities and cultural values governs understanding and usage of what is an intangible sensory experience. Further- more, the various attempts to harness this intangibility into a prism, refl ecting the resplendence of the wearer in order to achieve their sensorial objective, actually dazzles the senses of onlookers, establishing the wearers’ status as ‘beyond the ordinary’. “Cloth in this context is a wordless means of communication that is well understood by those who use it” (ibid , 2012). Embellishment on cloth in its attempt to capture, or enhance, the natural interplay of light and shade or dark, with an almost inexhaustible range of techniques and materials, from metals to colour and even physical manipulation, has existed since awareness of body covering and adornment. For the Yoruba, the kaleidoscope quality of light under the African sun lends a unique perspective to life, colour assaulting the eye at every turn, illustrating “the sum of countless expressions of individual aesthetic preferences, and its spectacular patterns incorporate every colour in the chromatic spectrum” (Lagamma 2009). This chapter therefore undertakes to explore the articulation of the aesthetic symbolism inherent in the concepts of beauty and harmony as status-enhancing cultural artefacts, both traditionally and in contemporary social and ceremonial customs among the Yoruba, drawing on the extensive vocabulary utilised describing the myriad ways in which beauty is manifested and experienced in this culture.

The descendants of gods The Yoruba nation, some 35 million strong and the single largest ethnic group in Africa, claim descent from the Orisa (deities) and, whether at home or in diaspora, have a unique and distinct cultural life with a lineage that can be traced to Oduduwa , with Ile-Ife as the cradle of civilization. It is vital to emphasise that the Yoruba are not a tribe but rather an aggregation of kingdoms, each of which is traditionally governed by a divine Oba (ruler), along with his court of Oloye (titled chiefs). Yoruba people are distinguished by their rich oral tradition. The history, culture and social psychology of the people are all embedded in the multitudes of proverbs, epic poems, dirges, chants, drum tones, songs and, linked to this, textiles. Communication with Orisa and ancestors is an integral aspect of traditional religion because of the wisdom and vision that both impart – especially pertinent 168 Eni Bankole-Race to artists and artisans “based on the explanations, predictions and control of the immediate world and on communication with the deities based on covenants that promise rewards” (Barnes 1977). For the majority of modern-day Yoruba, Christi- anity and Islam have ostensibly superseded traditional Orisa worship and ancestor veneration, with effi gies now seen as ‘demonic’, especially among devotees of the new ‘Redeemed’ and ‘Evangelical’ Christian denominations. However, these non-traditional religions are very often merely a thin veneer over an underlying belief in the concept of Ori and the power of the Orisa . Ori (personality-soul) is a metaphysical concept important to Yoruba spirituality and way of life. The word (literally ‘head’) refers to one’s spiritual intuition and destiny, and represents the refl ective spark of human consciousness embedded into the human essence. A balanced character signifi es an alignment with one’s Ori or divine self, bringing inner peace and satisfaction with life. This is the ultimate prayer of the Yoruba – ‘k’ori mi san mi ’ (may my ‘head’ grant me a successful destiny). An immaterial entity, called Ori-inu (inner-head), is intractably connected with human destiny and considered responsible for the actuality and worth of man in the material world. Thus for the Yoruba, Ori is believed to be not only the bearer of destiny but also to be the essence of human personality which rules, controls and guides the life and activities of the person (Idowu 1962, 170).

Weaving history Scholars of African textile technology agree that prior to contact with ‘Western culture’, traditional Nigerian communities had developed their indigenous technology by ecologically driven conditions of ingenuity (Aﬁ gbo and Okeke 1985; Ojo 2006). The raw materials for traditional weaving, cotton, silks, dyes and mordants, were largely obtained from the local environment and before colonial contact, weaving ﬂ ourished in central and northern Yorubaland, especially in Owo, Ede, Ibadan, Ondo, Oyo, Ogbomoso, Ado-Ekiti and Iseyin towns. Modern aso-oke weaving has moved beyond those traditional centres, with weaving enterprises being found even in urban cities such as Lagos. Yoruba cloths can be divided into three major categories: cloths for rites and ceremonies, cloths worn for daily use and cloths for prestige (Eicher 1976; Lamb and Holmes 1980). Plain white cotton (aso ala) is most commonly used for ritual purposes or to denote spirituality, both in modern day Christianity/Islam and regarding the Yoruba deity, Obatala , the Sky God, who is associated with the sun, with light, with purity and whiteness or brightness. Etymologically, Obatala derives from the elision of ‘Oba ita ala ’ meaning ‘King of the crossroads of white light’. Ala is frequently translated to mean white cloth which is the Ifa symbol for the source of consciousness in Creation. This praise song illustrates the cloth’s sacredness (Figure 11.1): Oriki Obatala – Obanla o rin n’eru ojikutu s’eru Oba n’ile Ifon alabalase oba patapatan’ile iranje O yo kelekele o ta mi l’ore Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 169

Figure 11.1 Obatala ceremonies Author’s private collection

O gba a giri l’owo osika. O ﬁ l’emi asoto l’owo Oba igbo oluwaiye re e o ke bi owu la O yi ‘ala Osun l’ala o ﬁ koko ala rumo Oba igbo Ase Praise song for the Lord of the White Cloth The great god who never fears the coming of Death The King who rules for all generations Who quietly favours me with blessings, Snatching them from the grip of the malevolent, He places them in my honest hands. . . Protector of White Cloth, I salute you Father of the Sacred Grove So be it.

The two other defi nitive Yoruba fabrics are Adire and aso-oke , with the latter being the more prestigious of the two. Adire , considered ‘ordinary cloth for ordinary people’, is coined from two Yoruba words – ‘adi ’ meaning to tie (resist) and ‘re ’ which means to dye. Adire , therefore, is descriptive of both the process and product of cloth dyeing. Aso-oke , also called aso-o fi , is the most culturally important Yoruba prestige textile and the name operates on two levels – aso-oke (literally higher cloth) as well 170 Eni Bankole-Race as aso ilu oke (cloth from the ‘upper country’ where it originated). It is traditionally hand-woven on a horizontal, narrow loom that produces strips of cloth of few inches wide. The strips are usually about 14cm and are usually stitched together to make an outfi t, the number of strips dependent on the type of cloth and design. There are very many aso-oke types, including Adoji – drawn-string laced with red and white warp stripes; Waka – an Ijebu cloth, solid black, with occasional red warp stripes; Opa Aro – dark blue with green stripes; Ifun – beige/light brown and navy popular among the Owo and Ondo; but the three most widely recognised and considered pre-eminent are Sanyan , Alaari and Etu in their many variations. Sanyan is regarded as the king of Yoruba cloths, illustrated in the saying ‘San- yan baba aso ’ (Sanyan, father of cloths). The fi bre used for making this cloth is obtained from the cocoons of the Anaphe silk worm which are processed, handspun into silk threads, washed and soaked in corn-starch. The natural colour of the silk gives Sanyan its distinctive beige colour. Alaari is crimson or magenta coloured. It was traditionally woven with locally spun silk yarns or traded waste silk dyed in red camwood several times to achieve permanence in colour fastness. Today most producers of Alaari use pre-dyed machine-spun cotton thread. Etu is midnight blue-black, with a thin stripe of lighter blue running through, the cotton threads having been dyed repeatedly in traditional indigo dye, a very expensive and laborious process, lending it its status. Certain factors guarantee the preservation of traditional textiles like aso-oke , and primary among these is that traditional attire is still considered essential at important milestones in life, such as weddings, investitures and funerals. These are celebrative occasions for what Clarke describes as the ‘classic triumvirate’ of Yoruba success, owo, omo, ori ire (wealth, children and good fortune), and it is imperative for men and women to be appropriately well-attired on such ceremonial occasions. Aso-oke is therefore ‘courtly dress’, reserved for special occasions where formal and digni- fi ed attire is required (Asakitikpi 2007, 101–15; Oyelola 2004, 132).

Figure 11.2 Vintage Sanyan Author’s private collection Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 171

Figure 11.3 Vintage and modern Alaari Author’s private collection

Traditional aso-oke was ‘beaten’ to a shine after weaving, as the fi nal step in its production. Weavers sent the raw woven cloth to professional beaters to be ‘fi nished’, where heavy mallets were employed in beating the cloth thinner. The stiff nature of the cloth lent itself to this treatment which served the dual purpose of compressing and making it more malleable, as well as putting a high sheen on the rather sober colours available at the time. Beating aso-oke was a very laborious and highly prized skill, and very expensive to be done properly. The prestige accorded to one’s appearance when so outfi tted was therefore quite considerable. In most contemporary/ready-to-buy aso-oke , this ‘light-capture’ is created with commercially produced metallic threads locally called ‘lurex’. In different communities of Yorubaland and at different times, aso-oke has taken on signifi cance far beyond a source of functional clothing, serving as a link between generations, families and societies, a key to the construction of group and individual identities (Clarke 1972; Lamb and Holmes 1980; Olutayo 1991). “The salience of aso-oke owes much to its ability to be both modern and part of a tradition, or perhaps better, that it lends itself to modern ways of thinking about tradition in a manner that many other visual art forms of pre-colonial origin, perhaps because of their closer ties to indigenous religious practice and disputed local political allegiances, have not” (Clark 1998, 299).

Wearing the past In traditional Yoruba culture, status was conveyed by more than mere economic prowess. A person’s standing in the community was also reinforced by one’s ward- robe, especially on formal or ceremonial occasions. The appropriate clothes, made from prestige textiles and augmented in the appropriate manner, were indications that the presenting grandeur was more than skin-deep (Bankole-Race 2013). 172 Eni Bankole-Race “In Yoruba culture, one’s personal appearance as well as that of one’s associates communicates importance because they prize affl uence and rank . . . In dress, a state of elegance, dignity and composure is sought” (Cordwell 1983, 56). The identifi cation with familial defi nition was especially pronounced, particularly when an accumulation of textiles, material culture, over many generations, represented the measure of a family’s worth, or at least their historical signifi cance. Since land was allocated by lineage, cloth, in the form of robes or wrappers, was among the few possessions most people were able to accumulate and pass on to their junior siblings or children (Fadipe 1970,141). My research into this subject reveals that status was, and is, inextricably interwoven with clothing, attire being quite literally ‘refl ective’ of social standing within the community. By this I mean refl ective in its many manifestations – the sheen of the cloth, the relationship within social groups and so on. Wealth, and consequently power and leadership, is further manifested visually by the possession and wearing of precious metals or rare ornaments with the textiles, and the display of wealth to elevate and secure social status is inherent in Yoruba society. Ceremonial occasions such as chieftancy investitures, weddings and funerals are theatres for ornate attire and wealth to be displayed for the enhancement of both family and individual status. The Yoruba philosophy of clothing is therefore replete with symbolic import, not all of it visually overt. Resplendence is not dependent on loud or garish display. It is also found in the most subtle of nuances – a fl ash of bright red stripe amidst the blue-black of an agbada etu; the appreciation of the beauty of darkness that governs the play of light on beaten cloth; the sheer subtlety of a drawn-thread design in an otherwise ‘plain’ Sanyan buba . . . there is therefore an aesthetic of ‘fancifulness’ as well as an aesthetic of ‘plainness’ – the ‘hidden’ versus the ‘revealed’, which only the discerning can appreciate. This resplendence of cloth and dress must, however, be underpinned by an armature of breeding, good manners and respect, else one becomes a ‘garawa ofi fo’ – an empty barrel, all noise and no use. The futility of beauty without meaning is often highlighted, and among the Yoruba, beauty has to be ‘mindful’, must be functional, however minimally. As the proverbs go, ‘iwa l’ewa’ (one’s character is one’s beauty), and ‘iwa rere l’eso eniyan ’ (a good character is the best attire). Another common saying in Yorubaland is ‘Aso la nri ki, ki a to ki eniyan ’ (it is the cloth we should greet before greeting the wearer). This saying illustrates that in some contexts it is the history and antecedents imbued in the cloth that one accords respect to – not just the person. The cloth/textile in these circumstances therefore evokes a multi-faceted, culturally signifi cant and positively evaluated type of meaning that the beholder instantly experiences in a way that transcends literal sensibilities and comprehension. A traditional tale tells of a community in disorder – the populace go about naked, basic social norms are non-existent. Children are uncouth and disrespectful, parents unloving and cruel, and couples are hostile strangers to one another. The fundamental relationships of community are impossible. Ifa , in a bid to address the untenable situation, asks for a sacrifi ce of raw cotton bolls. Esu, Ifa ’s occasional messenger, then arranges for the cotton bolls to be Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 173 processed and woven into cloth, which he then gives to the head of the household in the dead of the night, telling him to wear it when leaving his room in the morning. The next morning, the head drapes the cloth around himself, which immediately separates him from the rest of the naked populace. The cloth confers dignity upon him, and he rises to it, greeting his children, who respond with the respect one should always accord one’s father. Observing him with awe, they exclaim ‘Ase, aso tie ni iyi eniyan ’ (so it is actually cloth that makes us human). The rest of the populace follow suit, and with clothing also came the awareness of societal rules and norms. This legend indicates that importance or status is tangibly linked to the garments worn and cloth possessed, as they ‘bu iyi kun ’ (confer status/dignity). The importance of cloth is further reiterated, ‘owu ni a ba gbin, a ki gbin ide; owu ni a ba gbin, a ki gbin ileke; ati ide, ati ileke, okan kii bani de horo oku; ojo a ba ku, aso nii ba’ni lo’ (one should plant cotton rather than brass or beads, because neither brass nor beads accompany one to the grave; when one dies, the only accompaniment is one’s shroud). Fox argues that cloth intensifi es sociality in rituals of birth, initiation, well-being, mile-stones and death; it “swaddles the newborn, wraps and heals the sick, embraces and unites the bride and groom, encloses the wedding-bed and in the end, enshrouds the dead” (1977, 97, 204). In this vein, the Yoruba also believe that ‘it is our destiny’ to be clothed. The close link between cloth and immortality is also expressed in divination poetry explicitly connecting cloth with the creator, Olodumare : Odomode kii gbo’ku aso Yeyeye l’aso o gbo Agbalagba kii gbo’ku aso Yeyeye l’aso o gbo Odomode kii gbo’ku Olodumare Yeyeye l’aso ogbo Agbalagba kii gbo’ku Olodumare Yeyeye l’aso o gbo The young never hear of the death of cloth, Cloth only wears to shreds. The old never hear of the death of cloth, Cloth only wears to shreds. The young never hear of the death of Olodumare , Cloth only wears to shreds. The old never hear of the death of Olodumare , Cloth only wears to shreds. (traditional Ifa divination verse)

This shows the explicit connection the Yoruba make between cloth and lifecycle, their cosmos and power. The particular type of aso-oke pictured in Plate 10 is predominantly woven and worn by the Ijebu (one of the Yoruba ‘nations’), who refer to it generically as aso Plate 10 Aso olona Photo by the author Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 175 olona, ‘cloth with patterns’, a name derived from its characteristically rich array of weft-ﬂ oat designs (see Plate 10 ). Bearing images of water spirits and other power-laden symbols, the cloth serves as emblems of chieftaincy, priesthood and membership in the ever-powerful Oshugbo society. Thus, it lies at the very core of Ijebu power and leadership (Aronson 1992). Aso-oke is thus undoubtedly an integral element of the historic and cultural landscape of the Yoruba, representing social status as well as national identity. Its centrality to traditional sartorial continuity is comparable to the signiﬁ cance of the Talking drum (Gan-gan ) in Yoruba musicality.

Resplendence Attending a Yoruba wedding, whether in Lagos, Luton or Las Vegas, would present one with a note-worthy spectacle – an intermixing of texture and colour, highlighted with fl ashes of gold and precious stones, against a background of laughter and music. On such occasions, ola, “a state of self-suffi ciency, respect, and esteem” (K. Barber 1991) and not necessarily ola (wealth), is the desired image one wants to portray. Therefore, while the nouveau-riche ‘society’ classes – (the ‘celebrities’, the Big Boyz and Girlz ) – may be the fi rst to adopt new cloth – especially the avant garde, old families and older people tend be more conservative in contemporising traditional designs. The ‘circular logic of authenticity’ in which the old is assumed to be more valid, more ‘truthful’ than the contemporary, holds great weight in the traditional

Figure 11.4 A man of prestige 176 Eni Bankole-Race Yoruba view of inherited cloth (Rovine 2008). The bride’s father who wears a vintage inherited agbada alaari even if (or possibly because) it has a few moth- holes is making a statement to all about the longevity of the family’s prosperity and standing. It is often said that the amount of jewellery worn by the Yoruba is excessive – they are considered gaudy, vulgar, some of their accoutrements belittlingly described as ‘bling’. However, this negative perspective is informed by a lack of understanding of the peculiar sensibility governing Yoruba dress protocols, for example, women’s ties (gele ) are always made from highly refl ective fabrics, specially woven for the Nigerian market, and tied in elaborate styles to catch and refl ect as much light as possible. Whether it be one exquisite statement piece or many layered rows of pearls or coral, the intention and effect are always the same – to catch the sun in order to draw the eye of the onlooker so that ‘they’ can see how ‘blessed’ by the light one is. When Bain Hugh Clapperton the explorer (1788–1827) met the Alaa fi n of Oyo-Ife/Katunga in 1825, his notes state that “the monarch was richly dressed in a scarlet damask robe, ornamented with coral beads, and short trousers of the same colour with a light blue stripe, made of country cloth; his legs, as far as the knees, were stained red with henna, and on his feet he wore sandals of red leather” (Lander 1830, 212). A few decades later the African-American Richard Campbell recorded of the Alake of Abeokuta, “His body above the loins was nude; otherwise his attire consisted of a handsome velvet cap, trimmed with gold, a costly necklace of coral, and a double strand of the same ornament about his loins, with a velvet cloth thrown gracefully about the rest of his person, under which he wore his shocoto , a sort of loose trouser reaching only to his knees” (Clarke 1998, 301). Indeed, an analogy could be made between Yoruba ceremonial dressing and the battle of resplendence between Henry VIII and Francis I of France in their meeting on the Fields of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. The King of France was said to be dressed in tissue-cloth (one assumes silk organza) set with precious stones and pearls, while “King Henry’s armour-skirt and horse-trapper were decorated with 2,000 ounces of gold and 1,100 huge pearls, the price of which was incalculable” (Eakins 1995). In Plate 11, renowned musician Juwon Ogungbe is wearing a Sanyan and silver ‘gbariye’, a costume which refl ects both the spotlight, but also the aura of his larger- than-life stage persona – the artist using resplendence to his professional ends. The Yoruba pay very close attention to social formalities, to etiquette, to status differences and to institutional procedures and roles because these conventions stand as the foundation of their community life, providing a contextual framework and a material reality. A Yoruba person is generally prepared to connect his/her self-image with what others see him/her do. The esteem acquired does not only pertain or belong to the individual, but to their family, their lineage, their ‘house’(ebi) . One of the most common and self-defi ning proverbs in Yoruba is ‘B’ori kan ba suwon, a ran ‘gba’ (if one destiny is successful, it must affect the rest; one person’s glory is refl ected on a swathe of others). The individual is of less concern, but rather the communality of both acclaim and Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 177

Plate 11 Musician Juwon Ogungbe in Sanyan blame. In this connection, each individual has the responsibility to protect the name and image of the family/lineage. The inculcation of values and codes of conduct that project the good name of the ebi in the larger society into the psyche of each member is a fundamental mechanism that engenders social order (Shitta-Bey 2014). The aim is to be attractive and important enough for others to want to forge alliances, primarily through marriage, but also through trade or politics, illustrated in the proverb as follows: ‘Eni t’o kan akanpo ewu ti kuro ni ile san tabi ko san ’ (the breeding of one who is dressed appropriately is beyond questioning). 178 Eni Bankole-Race Clothes in themselves do not however change status. Another proverb states ‘Aso nla ko l’eeyan nla ’ (appearing gorgeously does not imply that one is important or infl uential). A poor man who appears in expensive attire and is mistaken as wealthy will know that he is not a rich man even if others do not, and a wealthy man dressed plainly loses no status. Regarding self-deception, the Yoruba say ‘Eni tio ba tan ara re ni orisa oke maa tan ’ (one who deceives himself will be deceived by the Deities), a reminder for honesty in all things. Dressing like the wealthy just for a day on account of donning the same type of cloth (aso-ebi ) will not change one’s personal circumstances. One is therefore advised to ‘cut one’s coat according to one’s size’ (‘Se b’oo timo elewa Sapon ’) or lay oneself (and one’s ebi ) open to ridicule. Boas refers to an analogy – as a craftsman works upon an object, he modifi es or produces a surface; if he is highly skilled, a virtuoso, the surface produced is so regular as to be aesthetically pleasing. Moreover, the virtuoso will often play with his material, thus producing an intricate pattern, which may later be transferred to a new medium, e.g. from cloth to pottery. The artist, in contrast to Boas’s craftsman, is aware of himself and of an audience for his creation. He looks at his work from the point of view of his audience, and he directs his virtuosity towards the creation of forms that, he anticipates, will have certain kinds of impact upon the audience (Boas 1940, 535–6). The artist in the context of Yoruba dressing is not the weaver, but the wearer, who ‘directs his virtuosity’ towards the impact his appearance will have on his audience, with deliberate intent. Thus we hear: O yo s’ojude Oba, bi i mono-mono ko ni (his/her appearance at the royal court was like lightning, fl ashing). The signifi cance and importance of light-capture are illustrated in the extensive vocabulary used to differentiate the many forms of refl ection and refraction: Dan – shine, glow; Ko – gleam/ sparkle; Bi – iridescence; So – soft shimmer; Dan yirin yirin – glittering. For example, a beautiful dark-skinned woman would be complimented as ‘Adu maa dan ’, the closest translation of which would be ‘so dark she glows’. Aso-oke is customarily never washed, as washing may cause the dyes to run or the threads to warp, but hung out to air and then sent to be re-beaten, and so vintage inherited cloths have developed a patina comprised of one’s ancestors ‘“beaten” into the weave’. According to Harvey Molotch, objects gain sentiment from accumulated social and physical use, that is from their worn surfaces, altered shapes and odours (2003). Apart from meeting the challenges of modernity, the aso-oke tradition has been able to, and continues to, refl ect the tenacity of and the world-view of the Yoruba culture. This is consistent with the principles of their culture, which in Yoruba language is referred to as ‘asa ’ (tradition, habit) and which paradoxically encourages resilience where necessary and dynamism where required, hence the saying ‘ Igba l’aso, igba l’ewu’; that is a recognition that just as the relevance of particular cloths wanes with time, so also does the fashionability of garments. Indeed the term ‘aso asiko ’ means ‘up-to-date-attire’ – and there is an unspoken consensus of this bottom line objective. While vintage cloth is revered and prized, new innovations are welcome and quickly adopted. Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 179 Fashion and the contemporary scene In contemporary Nigeria, women dictate and infl uence fashion trends and at the same time ensure that traditional hand-woven cloth is always a part of the Yoruba fashion. In a social milieu with a geographical range spanning the entire globe, where one may be required to attend as many as three events in a week-end, the almost frenetic dynamism of the social scene and its constant search for innovation among Nigerians, and Yoruba, in particular, coupled with the tradition of commissioning bespoke designs to be woven for every important occasion – weddings, investiture of chieftaincy titles, funerals – have also fuelled an emphatic resurgence in the adoption of aso-oke among the young middle class and a re-establishment of its centrality as a prestige fabric. Traditions such as aso-ebi are one of the major drivers in the evolution of aso-oke as an increasingly relevant aso asiko . “The tradition of aso ebi serves a number of functions. The fi rst and major one being that it ensures . . . new and innovative designs are developed”(Asakitikpi 2007, 112). The concept of aso-ebi ( aso – cloth, ebi – family), a peculiarly Yoruba tradition in which family members wear matching outfi ts on special occasions, and which has now been exported to other cultures in almost every part of the world, is based on familial closeness. The traditional family system of the Yoruba, ebi , consists, not just of generations of a particular genealogy, but also families from different genealogies whose links can be through marriage or adoption or other relationships arising from human or natural factors. Aso-ebi ( aso t’ebi da jo – ‘cloth the family has contributed’) was originally a funerary contribution of cloth to wrap a family member before burial. The practice has evolved into a way of distinguishing a celebrant and/or host and their family from the guests at social gatherings. However, as kinship ties in Yoruba society extend far beyond the nuclear unit, reaching into long-standing friendships, and even to one’s parents originating from the same geographical area, aso-ebi in its complicated gradations of familial intimacy enables one to gauge (with some accuracy) the degree of kinship to the host by the aso-ebi worn by guests. Although there have been negative opinions of the practice of aso-ebi through the years, Yoruba sociologist J. A. Sofola convincingly argues what he sees as the sociological functions of aso-ebi – that it demonstrates sympathy and solidarity with the celebrant, creates mutual obligations, aids historical memory, soothes tensions over wealth imbalances and promotes the therapeutic effect of public ceremony (1973, 125–32). It is considered a privilege to be asked to ‘take’ aso-ebi with a celebrant, but also an honour for the celebrant to have their request accepted. A popular saying is ‘B’o l’omo ogun, b’oo l’omo ogun – wo ehin re wo ’ (it is only when a leader looks behind him that he realises how many followers he has). A celebrant may be neither wealthy nor infl uential but is recognised as the ‘leader’ of the occasion, and when he gets up to dance, his ‘followers’, most in aso-ebi, will accompany him en masse. This is a public validation of the celebrant, supported by another saying, ‘Eniyan l’aso mi’ (people are my clothing). While this is not meant literally, their presence or willingness to identify with a celebrant by virtue of wearing aso-ebi is a cover for him or her and seen as a 180 Eni Bankole-Race

Plate 12 Women in aso-ebi ‘completes’ Author’s private collection strong expression of communal solidarity and love. This suggests that not being identifi ed with aso-ebi is synonymous with nakedness (Perani and Wolff 1999, 180; Aremu 2006, 18; and Familusi 2010, 2). Just as the mysterious idea of what is ‘in’ suddenly appears in the great design houses of Paris, Rome, London and New York, so too with aso-ebi led fashion across Yoruba society. The basic elements of a full Yoruba woman’s outfi t, a ‘complete’, are Iro (wrapper), buba (blouse), Gele (head-tie) and a stole, Ipele , or shawl, Iborun, which is usually hung on the shoulder of the user, with an optional sling, Oja , for nursing mothers to strap their babies on with. A man’s ‘complete’ would Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 181 consist of trousers, Sokoto , tunic, buba , agbada, a large embroidered fl owing over- gown, and cap, Fila .

Buba appear with necklines deepened or embroidered, sleeves fi tted or fl ared, iro tied as minis one season, fl oor-length the next. Are the men wearing Gbariye or buba and soro , ole nte l’afa or full agbada . . . ankle length sokoto or are the young fogies sporting Kembe . . . are they going retro with their fi la in the ab’eti aja style ? (Bankole-Race 2013)

The traditional big three of aso-oke – Sanyan, Alaari and Etu – have been deconstructed and re-interpreted to suit contemporary taste, while still maintaining their status and usage as prestige wear. Modern day adaptations have produced a textile which is light and comfortable to wear and aso-oke has undergone such contemporising that it is possible to satisfy any design requirement. The new generation aso-oke designers are also not above turning the tables and appropriating some Western motifs resulting, for example, in the craze, a few years ago, for Burberry-like plaid designs. Wit, fun, elegance – these are all incorporated into the aso asiko ethos and, far from being staid and moribund, aso-oke designers are combining the international perspectives of young, well-travelled aso-ebi wearers with traditional aesthetic inspirations to produce a renaissance fashion textile while developing a uniquely African home industry into a global trend, with aso-oke now being worn from Atlanta and Accra to Calgary and Cardiff. Although men often dress in the more sober end of the spectrum – grey, white, brown, black – the fabrics are brocades or embossed or embroidered or sheened.

Figure 11.5 Aso asiko – modern Sanyan Author’s private collection 182 Eni Bankole-Race Very rarely do people wear dull and matte (as it would be considered rude to the host) except for funerals of the young or the childless. The contemporisation of aso-oke – changing from beaten sober colours, heavy with import and signifi cance, with clear delineation as to usage and status, into a relatively light textile that can be embroidered, embellished and gaudifi ed with lurex thread – could be read as mirroring the devolution of stable societal values and mores, or it could be interpreted as a necessary and inevitable relaxation of overly staid, hide-bound traditions – a realisation of the need for fl exibility in order that the underlying tradition be preserved.

Conclusion My ongoing research so far has shown that the desire and the requirement for resplendence – for declaring ‘look at me, here I am, worthy of your consideration – look how Edumare is blessing me, has blessed my ebi ’ – is an integral element of the Yoruba psyche, and means that traditional dress and textiles, while visually stunning in themselves, when manifested in displays of resplendence, hold much greater symbolic import than non-Yoruba sensibilities would imagine.

Plate 13 Modern resplendence Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 183 Among the Yoruba, beauty, ewa , is the manifestation of the well-made or well- done. Being pleasant to behold or experience, it attracts (fani m’ora ) eliciting admiration, honour and respect and conferring prestige (iyi ). Ewa, however, is dual-aspected – ewa ode (outer beauty) dealing with the superfi cial and outward appearance, while ewa inu (inner beauty) refers to intrinsic worth. “In man, ewa inu is frequently implied in the word ‘iwa ’ character, while in objects, it is implied in the word ‘wiwulo ’, or functional utility” Lawal (1974, 239). A person who is ‘well-made’, and of good character and lineage (omo’luwabi ), would be considered ‘A r’ewa eniyan ’ (a beautiful person). Iwa is not merely determined by one’s personal good behaviour, but may also incorporate ebi -related proper observance of ‘asa ’ (traditions, mores), which in turn engenders ‘ase ’ (agency). “Iwa is the very stuff that makes life a joy because not only does it please Olorun (the High God), it also endears one to the hearts of all men” (ibid 240). For the Yoruba, beauty lies not only in what catches the eye but also in the ase derived from the work’s completeness. From these elements one can then discern the iwa , or essential nature, and fi nally its ewa , or beauty. “While the appreciation of ewa ode is relative and varies from person to person, the possession of iwa is universally accepted as the sina qua non of beauty. Hence the saying ‘iwa l’ewa ’ (character is beauty)” (ibid 240). Ewa manifested as sartorial resplendence as portrayed in the usage of aso-oke combining both iyi (honour, respect, prestige) and eye (celebration) is therefore an acknowledgement that all the multi-faceted societal requirements and mores have been satisfi ed.

References Abiodun, R., Drewal, H.J., and Pemberton, J. III (1991) Yoruba Art and Aesthetics , Zurich: Museum Rietberg (Exhibition catalogue). Aesthetics in Africa – Aesthetic Discourse – Yoruba, Beauty, Ashe, and African, http:// science.jrank.org/pages/8182/Aesthetics-in-Africa-Aesthetic-Discourse.html#ixzz43v DogSr2 A fi gbo, A. and Okeke, C.S. (1985) Weaving Tradition in Igbo-Land: History and Mecha- nism of Igbo Textile Industry. Nigeria Magazine , Lagos: Department of Culture, Federal Ministry of Information, Social Development, Youth, Sports and Culture. Akinwunmi, T. (1990) The Commemorativ, e Phenomenon of Textile Use among the Yor- uba: A Survey of Signifi cance and Form . PhD Thesis in the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, p. 171. Aremu, P.S.O. (2006) Yoruba Traditional Weaving: Kijipa Motifs, Colour and Symbols. Nigeria Magazine , No. 140, p. 18. Aronson, L. (1992) Ijebu Yoruba Aso Olona: A Contextual and Historical Overview. African Arts 25(3), pp. 52–63, 101–102. Asakitikpi, A.O. (2007) Functions of Hand Woven Textiles among Yoruba Women in Southwestern Nigeria. Nordic Journal of African Studies 16(1), pp. 101–115, www.njas. helsinki.fi /pdf-fi les/vol16num1/asakitipki_aretha.pdf Bankole-Race, E. (2013) Weaving the Future, Wearing the Past; Contemporising History through Aso-oke , Pasold Conference. Unpublished. 184 Eni Bankole-Race Bankole-Race, E. (2014) Re fl ections on Resplendence , ASA. Unpublished. Barber, K. (1991). I Could Speak until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women, and the Past in a Yoruba Town, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Barnes, S.T. (1977) Voluntary Association Membership in West African Cities. Urban Anthropology 6(1), pp. 83–106. Boas, Franz (1940) Race, Language and Culture , New York: Macmillan. Clarke, D. (1998) Aso Oke: The Evolving Tradition of Hand-Woven Textile Design among the Yoruba of South Western Nigeria. Thesis submitted in fulfi lment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, pp. 299, 301. Clarke, W.H. (1972) Travels and Explorations in Yorubaland (1854–1858), Ibadan: Ibadan University Press. Cordwell, J.M. (1983) The Arts and Aesthetics of the Yoruba. African Arts 16(2), pp. 56–60. Eakins, L. (1995) Field of Cloth of Gold , tudorhistories.org Edwards, T. (2011). Fashion in Focus: Concepts, Practices and Politics , New York: Routledge. Eicher, J.B. (1976) Nigerian Hand-Crafted Textiles , Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press. Fadipe, N.A. (1970) The Sociology of the Yoruba . Ibadan University Press, p. 141. Falola, T., Afolabi, N., and Adesanya, A. eds. (2008) Migrations and Creative Expressions in Africa and African Diaspora , Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Familusi, O.O. (2010) The Yoruba Culture of Aso Ebi (Group Uniform) in Socio-Ethical Context. Lumina 21(2), Holy Name University, p. 2. Fox, J.J. (1977) Harvest of the Palm: Ecological Change in Eastern Indonesia , Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 97–206. Gillow, J. (2009) African Textiles: Colour and Creativity Across a Continent , London: Thames & Hudson. Idowu, E.B. (1962) Olódùmarè: God in Yoruba Belief, London: Longman Nigeria plc, p. 170. Lagamma, A. (2009) The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End. African Arts Spring 42(1), pp. 88–99. Lamb, V. and Holmes, J. (1980) Yoruba Weaving , Herting-Fordbury: Roxford. Lander, R. and Lander, J., (1832) Journal of an Expedition to explore the course and termi- nation of the Niger, Vol. III, Chapter XVII, pp. 64–100 (24 to 27 October 1830), London, John Murray. Lawal, B. (1974) Some Aspects of Yoruba Aesthetics. British Journal of Aesthetics 3(15), pp. 239–240. Molotch, H. (2003) Where Stuff Comes from: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers and Many Other Things Come to be as They Are , New York, London: Routledge. Moloye, O. (2004) Traditional High Fashion in Transition, in Understanding Yoruba Life and Culture, eds N.S. Lawal, M.N.O. Sadiku, P. Ade Depamu, Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, pp. 377–388. Ojo, B. (2006) An Appraisal of the Weaving Cottage Industry in South West Nigeria – Potentials of Visual Arts and Creativity , CCAF Publication. Olaoye, R.A. (2005) Cloth Talks, a Study of Cloth among the Yoruba in Nigeria. Africa Update , www.ccsu.edu/AFSTUDY Olutayo, A.O. (1991): The Development of Underdevelopment: Rural Economy of Colo- nial Southwestern Nigeria. Unpublished Ph.D thesis Department of Sociology, Univer- sity of Ibadan. Resplendence and the Yoruba prestige textile 185 Olutayo, A.O., Akanle, O., and Fadina, O.A. (2011) Aso-Oke (Hand-Woven Textiles) of SouthWestern Nigeria: A Compact Examination of a Resillient Artifact. American Jour- nal of Sociological Research 1(1), p. 3.1. Omatseye, B.O.J. and Emeriewen, K.O. (2012) An Appraisal of the Aesthetic Dimension to the African Philosophy of Cloth. Journal of Language, Technology & Entrepreneur- ship in Africa 3(2), p. 57. Oyelola, P.L. (1981) Nigeria Crafts, London and Basing Stoke: Macmillan Education. Perani, J. and Wolff, N. (1999) Cloth, Dress and Art Patronage in Africa, New York: Berg Publishers, p. 180. Pinney, C. (2002) Visual Culture, in The Material Culture Reader, ed V. Buchli, Oxford: Berg, pp. 81–86. Rabine, L.W. (2002) The Global Circulation of African Fashion , Oxford: Berg. Rivers, V.Z. (1999) The Shining Cloth , London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. Rovine, V.L. (2008) Bogolan: Shaping Culture through Cloth in Contemporary Mali , Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schneider, J. (1987) The Anthropology of Cloth. Annual Review of Anthropology 16, www. jstor.org Shitta-Bey, O.A. (2014) The Family as Basis of Social Order: Insights from Yoruba Tradi- tional Culture, in International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 23, Swit- zerland: SciPress Ltd, pp. 79–89. Sofola, J.A. (1973) African Culture and the African Personality: What Makes an African Person African, Ibadan , African Resources Publishers Co. pp. 125–132. Trauberg Hansen, K. and Soyini Madison, D. eds. (2013) African Dress – Fashion, Agency, Performance , London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Glossary Ab’eti aja – a style of fi la . So called as the ear fl aps mimic a dog’s ears. Adire – Yoruba cotton resist-dyed textile. Agbada – the full and fl owing gown worn by Yoruba men on formal occasions. Alaari – a type of aso-oke , traditionally crimson coloured. Aso asiko – fashion, fashion forward, trend-setting. Aso-ebi – uniform dressing to show kinship and/or support at important or signifi - cant social events like weddings. Aso-oke – a traditional Yoruba hand-woven prestige textile. Buba – the simply cut ‘blouse’ of a Yoruba woman’s outfi t. Also used for the male tunic. Esu – capricious deity in the Yoruba pantheon. Etu – a type of aso-oke , traditionally indigo coloured. Fila – male cap. Gbariye – a style of agbada . Less full, but with a distinctive fl are. Sleeveless. Gele – female head-tie, an integral part of formal dress. Iborun – a shawl, part of the complete Yoruba female attire. Ifa – the deity and system of divination in Yoruba theology. Ina yiya, iya’na – the ability to attract and refl ect vibrancy. Ipele – a stole, smaller than an iborun . Iro – a length of fabric, wrapped like a skirt around the lower part of the body. Part of female attire. 186 Eni Bankole-Race Kembe – archaic style of sokoto with extremely wide mid-calf-length legs. Cur- rently enjoying a resurgence. Kijipa – Yoruba hand-woven cloth made exclusively by women. Oduduwa, O’odua – original ancestor of the Yoruba. Ogboni – a prestigious Yoruba secret society. Oja – length of cloth specially woven for cradling a baby on its mother’s back. Ole nte’l’afa – a style of slim-line, fl oor-length tunic with long sleeves, worn by men. Ooya , omu – parts of a traditional loom. Orisa – Yoruba deities. Oshugbo – a prestigious Ijebu secret society. Sanyan – the most prestigious type of aso-oke , beige-coloured. Sokoto – traditional draw-string trousers for men, loose-fi t, tapering to a tight embroidered ankle. Yoruba – large ethnic group from south-western Nigeria, with one of the most widespread populations in the diaspora. Part IV Beauty and skill

12 Beauty as a capacity A study of hands-in-craft

Anna Gustafsson

One way to think and speak of beauty in relation to handicraft practices is to assign it to the objects, the things that craft-makers produce. This approach to beauty is seen widely in analytical models of aesthetics that have tended to focus on sensory perceptions and judgments of the material world and the art object (e.g. Kant 1934 [1787], 1952 [1790]; Baumgarten 1954 [1735]; Gell 1998; see also Overing 1988; Coote and Shelton 1995). Limiting our notion of beauty to objects per se is, however, not useful for understanding how the Lulesámi, a subgroup of indigenous Sámi of northern Fennoscandia, comprehend the beauty of their craftsmanship. Rather than restricting the appreciation of beauty to the handicraft objects themselves, the Lulesámi’s notion of beauty encompasses the skills involved in their making . This is an important insight. What it tells us is that Lulesámi do not recognise beauty as a quality of an object, so much, but rather as a manifestation of a craft-maker’s productive capacities. This interconnection between beauty, handicraft and the production process is recognised in the Sámi literature. Sámi craftsmanship, which includes clothes- making, producing knives with reindeer antler and birch, carving out drinking vessels from birch burls, weaving root baskets, and various forms of leather work and knitting, has fascinated travellers, academics, writers and art collectors for centuries. In the many monographs written about the Sámi, and in studies focusing particularly on their craftwork, handicraft is admired because of the craft-makers’ abilities to transform materials from local surroundings into things that fi t the ways of life and the climatic conditions of the circumpolar north (e.g. Schefferus 1673; Leem 1767; Turi 1917; Drake 1918; Kolsrud 1947; Vorren and Manker 1957; Rácz 1972; Beach 1994; Kihlberg 1994, 1996, 1999; Kjellström 2000). Today, experienced craft-makers are further respected for their skills of incorporating new materials from other parts of the world into their work. Whether made in a material from the sub-Arctic or elsewhere, Sámi handicraft is recognised by its rounded forms, ornamentations and bright colours. In contrast to Kant’s (1952 [1790]) distinction between form and function, the handicraft is renowned for being both practical and beautiful; perceptions that fall close to Morris’s Arts and Crafts approach (Cumming and Kaplan 1991). While it is widely recognised that beauty is manifested in the craft-makers’ abilities to transform materials into functional and aesthetically pleasing handicraft, 190 Anna Gustafsson other dimensions of what makes the craftwork beautiful are rarely mentioned in literature on Sámi craftsmanship. Among Lulesámi craft-makers that I came to know during my fi eldwork in 2010 and 2011, the term suodar is used when talking about ‘ugly’ handicraft. According to Sigga, an experienced craft-maker, this term describes carelessly and badly made craftwork. It implies that a piece of work has been made too hastily and without refl ection. The term tjábbát is, on the other hand, used for describing beautiful handicrafts, which are said to be made with accuracy, patience, dexterity and thought. An experienced craft-maker’s work is described as tjábbát , as she is ‘good with her hands’ and because she ‘has the skills in her hands’. Thus, beauty is not only a manifestation of the skills of transforming materials into handicraft, but also of the capacity of the craft-maker’s hands as well as her specifi c moral abilities, as I will come to illustrate. In this chapter I therefore consider an alternative way of perceiving beauty that does not focus on objects, but on the ways in which Lulesámi express, judge and understand beauty. To this end, I suggest that beauty, from a Lulesámi perspective, can be best understood in terms of three interrelated capacities. These are fi rstly the skills of transforming materials into handicraft; secondly, the craft-maker’s ability to develop her hands and to grow accustomed to the work; and thirdly the fostering of specifi c social skills and personal virtues that are necessary for the making of handicraft, and which have important implications for Lulesámi everyday existence. The appreciation of these skills does not exist in a vacuum, but is informed by Lulesámi life conditions and concerns. Anthropologists have previously noted that craftwork not only involves technical skill, but that it also encompasses a complete way of being, traversing and merging material and immaterial realms of life (e.g. Guss 1989; Reichard 1998 [1934]; Terrio 2000; Herzfeld 2004; Marchand 2001, 2008, 2009; cf. Sennett 2008). A comparative reading of the ethnographic material on craftsmanship reveals that particular political, economic, religious and social settings infl uence the ways in which craft apprentices learn the work, the relationship between craft-makers and particular ways of working (ibid ). Like- wise, I came to understand that, among the Lulesámi, the beauty of craftwork does not exist as an autonomous realm separated from other aspects of their lives, but that it is judged through their wider values and outlooks on life. Before elaborating on the capacities to which appreciation is attached, I shall start by briefl y introducing the Lulesámi and their craftsmanship, and summarise some key points of their philosophy and practice of everyday life which will help our understanding of how they assess beauty.

The Lulesámi and their craftsmanship This study is grounded in anthropological fi eldwork conducted in the hamlet of Ájluokta along the shores of a northern Norwegian fjord. At the time of my fi eldwork, Ájluokta had a population of around 900 people, of which approximately half of the residents considered themselves Lulesámi. In contrast to some other Sámi groups, the Lulesámi with whom I worked have never depended on Beauty as a capacity: hands-in-craft 191 reindeer-herding. Instead, up until the 1960s, they sustained themselves on fi shing, hunting, gathering, forestry and small-scale farming. Craftsmanship was an integral part of their self-suffi ciency and it included the production of all things needed in everyday life. With time, as the monetary economy increased, people took up waged labour (as nurses, teachers, academics, civil engineers, etc.) and manufactured items became cheaper and more available, so most things started being bought. Today it is predominantly women who make handicraft, and they mainly produce the gáppte , a characteristic Sámi dress. The gáppte was worn in daily life up until the mid-1900s, but has gradually since then been replaced by what the Lulesámi call ‘Western clothes’ (vestlige klær). Nowadays the gáppte is worn by women and men of all ages only on special occasions, such as baptism (see P late 14 ), school graduation, weddings, inaugurations of Sámi institutions and

Plate 14 Anna Gustafsson with a child who has just been baptised 192 Anna Gustafsson

Figure 12.1 Production of a child’s baptismal-gáppte (see Plate 15 ) by its grandmother musical events. Although the garment is worn on relatively few occasions, its making is a lengthy and complex process. The production includes sewing the dress with woollen cloth or other types of fabrics; sewing the ‘dickey’ (sliehppa ) and hat (gahper ) with woollen cloth and decorating them with pewter embroidery; weaving the belt (avve ) and a thin band (lissto ) that decorates the bottom edge of the dress; and fi nger-weaving (låhtåt ) the shoe bands (vuoddaga ). Many women learn and make craftwork for the gáppte on an almost daily basis, either at home surrounded by family, in the house of a kinsperson or in the hamlet’s communal craft studio. They mainly produce the gáppte for their next of kin. Some women also make the gáppte on commission from other Lulesámi villagers in return for a monetary payback as a sideline to their old age pensions or salaried employment. For people living in the rural area around Ájluokta, most employment opportunities are now found in the urban areas of northern Norway. Production of the gáppte can provide villagers with a further income. However, rather than earning more money themselves or encouraging others to specialise in craftwork full-time, craft-makers urge people to learn the work and to produce the dress for themselves and their families. Lulesámi say that ‘one should not look at other people’s hands’. One woman explained that one should not depend too much on other people or let them do all the work, but always aim at ‘working with your own hands’. This emphasis on personal autonomy was a view that I frequently encountered during Beauty as a capacity: hands-in-craft 193 my research, and which has also been noted by others working among the Sámi (Pelto 1962; Paine 1970; Ingold 1997; Balto 2005; Jávo 2010). Jávo (2010, 86) explains that the emphasis on personal autonomy was important for the Sámi in order to be able to live in the sometimes harsh sub-Arctic environment. She argues that people had to learn how to tackle and endure adversity in order to survive (cf. Paine 1970; Ingold 1997). Building on Jávo’s argument, I suggest that the virtue of personal autonomy today also serves to prepare young people in particular for the current labour situation. For those who prefer to dwell in rural areas, being independent is advantageous for creating new work prospects by starting their own businesses. Older people say that the younger generations have to work hard and not expect help from others, but learn to think and act for themselves, and refl ect upon the consequences of their actions. The value of independence is further extended to Lulesámi’s political, social and moral philosophy. The Lulesámi have never had leaders as such, but organised themselves in family units based on egalitarian relationships and mutual support in everyday life. During my fi eldwork, people continuously highlighted their dislike for authoritarianism, coercion and dependency. While they cherished independence, they equally stressed the importance of communal living. I was frequently told that a peaceful communal life can only be achieved by autonomous individuals that are given the right to free choice and that take responsibility for their actions. For example, although craft-makers emphasised that people should make the gáppte , it was up to each person to decide for themselves if they wanted to learn the work. At the same time as people stressed self-rule, it was considered vital to feel belonging within a collective to achieve personal well-being. The Lulesámi who I came to know said that people who lacked such connection were at risk of disruptive feelings, such as sadness, insecurity, low self-worth, depression and boredom. For illustration, during my fi eldwork a man suddenly fell seriously ill and was taken to hospital. It was not known if he would survive. During this time, villagers said that his wife and children were at risk of getting ill as well, due to the uncertainty of his condition and the possible loss of a family member. In order to prevent them from getting ill, villagers stayed with the family in their house, helping them cook, chatting or just sitting quietly in a corner reading or knitting. I was told that the most important thing at this time was that the family members felt part of a wider collective by being in close and constant physical contact with others. The gáppte also creates and refl ects this sense of being a part of a community. The garment does not only protect and decorate the body, but it also establishes the wearer’s social and geographical belonging and identity. Moreover, villagers wish for people to produce the gáppte for their family, rather than for commercial purposes, as they perceive that the dress establishes and affi rms ties of affection between its maker and wearer. Just before I left Ájluokta, Anita, an elder and experienced craft-maker, stopped taking orders for producing the dress for others. She explained that, as she was getting older, she wished to make things only for her children and grandchildren. Anita said that the things that she made for her family would continue to demonstrate her affection towards them and reproduce their relationship through time in a tangible sense even after her passing. This was 194 Anna Gustafsson important for Anita, both for her remaining in her relatives’ lives and her projection of their desires, to continue having their mother and grand-mother present through the handicraft that she made. Thus, the establishment and visual display of affectionate relationships through the gáppte were more important to her than monetary returns from the craftwork. With the Lulesámi’s value of independence and Anita’s aspiration to produce handicraft for her family members in mind, I now continue to explore how certain productive skills are valued not only for making a dress to be worn, but also for the creation of a good and beautiful way of living.

The ability to work with materials I agree with Bunn (1999, 2011) and Ingold (2011) that an important aspect of craftwork is practical engagement with materials like wool, skin, wood and horn, and the ability to transform such materials into handicraft. Although this might seem obvious, relatively little is said about materials in the anthropological literature on material culture. Instead, it is the fi nished products, or other aspects of the production process, that are recognised and attended to. According to Bunn (1999), the practical experiences of working with materials, the activity which craft-makers engage in, frequently go unnoticed. Similarly, Ingold states, ‘we are inclined to look for the meaning of the object in the idea it expresses rather than in the current of activity to which it properly and originally belongs’ (2000, 346). From the Lulesámi perspective, it is this ‘current of activity’ to which the handicraft belongs that we need to consider for understanding how accomplished craftwork comes into being. For Lulesámi, the making of handicraft depends on a craft-maker’s ability to make use of available resources and her knowledge of the appropriateness and quality of materials. Older craft-makers are respected for their abilities in making use of the materials within their local surroundings. Women like Anita have the skills to make use of the entire reindeer, including spinning the sinews into threads and harvesting and preparing skins to make clothing. In the past these women also made clothes by turning wool into home-spun cloth or yarn. Ellen, an elderly, experienced craft-maker with whom I lived throughout my fi eldwork, said that there was not such a great abundance of choice in the past, especially at the time of Germany’s occupation of Norway during the Second World War, as there is today. She highlighted that materials were expensive, and that they still are, considering the time and effort that it takes to collect, prepare and work with them. As such, craft-makers need to be resourceful and the material has to be relatively easy to work with, long-lasting and suitable for their specifi c purposes. There is a strong belief among Lulesámi that their material surroundings cannot be controlled. In relation to this, craft-makers are encouraged not to force specifi c shapes and patterns onto materials, but to follow and work with them. This is exemplifi ed in the proverb Ávnnas muitala mo galggat bargat, ‘The material shows you how to work’ (cf. Guttorm 2001, 55). By working with materials, craft-makers make use of their unique qualities and potential to transform and endure. This does not mean that the material does not show resistance or that Beauty as a capacity: hands-in-craft 195 the production process is harmonious. Rather, it means that a craft-maker cannot just implement an idea onto any piece of material, but she has to work with it by understanding what it does when being prepared, cut, sewn together, combined with other materials, and wetted and dried. This requires not just the skills of engaging with materials, but also knowledge of animals, the seasons and weather conditions, altogether an extremely well-developed and fi nely honed skill set in both materials and related environmental knowledge. For example, when touching and looking carefully at a fur or skin it becomes apparent that each piece differs in thickness and colouration. This can depend on the age and gender of an animal, the time of year the material is harvested and the quality of the grazing land. As an example, an adult male reindeer skin taken during winter, when the coat is much thicker, is particularly good for making winter gloves. However, the animal should not be too old, as the hairs more easily fall off and the material can lose much of its ability to warm. Today, when the majority of materials are bought rather than harvested, younger craft-makers often lack the ability to make use of locally sourced materials. Although some people still take an interest in learning these skills, most young craft-makers are admired for their ability to locate good-quality and inexpensive materials online or via post-order. The new virtual domain and opportunity for fi nding materials require a different set of skills. For example, Ella, a middle-aged woman who had never been interested in the internet until recently, had realised the potential of purchasing materials online and was now learning how to use the computer from her teenage son. Another diffi culty that Sigga and other women faced was how to assess textiles such as velvet, silk, fl ax, corduroy and various synthetics, now more commonly available with the growing global market. The specifi c qualities of these materials pose new challenges, and craft-makers need to learn how to work with them. For example, a woollen cloth’s sturdiness enables women to easily sew straight seams with the sewing-machine, whereas more delicate fabrics like satin can easily move and change shape under the sewing-machine’s needle. Satin also wrinkles easily and, in contrast to materials like wool, it does not mend itself from needle pin punctures and other smaller tears. Moreover, online stores do not always offer to send fabric samples before purchasing, so careful consideration is needed when ordering materials online. This can be diffi cult as many women say that the feel and colour of a textile often differ when holding it in the hands from on the computer screen. When I asked women what kind of material they preferred to work with, they answered that they have to hold it in their hands to feel its particular qualities. This tacit understanding of materials develops with experience and is essential for making functional and beautiful handicraft. When one observes an experienced craft-maker weaving, sewing or embroidering, the work often looks straightforward. Threads interweave evenly without any visible effort from the craft-maker and the fabric of the garments she makes falls neatly, as if it could do nothing else. However, the skills of making handicraft, which seem so straightforward to an inexperienced craft-maker, require long and often arduous practice. In this process, it is not only the materials that transform, but the craft-maker’s hands as well. 196 Anna Gustafsson The beauty of hands-in-craft According to Lulesámi craft-makers, novices or researchers like me can only fully apprehend craftsmanship by doing rather than observing or talking about it. This is because the work is unspoken and, as Ellen once phrased it, ‘It’s something completely different to experience it!’ Taking their words seriously, I employed an apprentice-style methodology by learning and making handicraft with the women, during fi eldwork. What I and other novices came to appreciate is that learning is based on observation, imitation, a few verbal instructions and hands-on practice. I also (painfully) learnt that it is much harder to do the work than it initially appears. One day, at the beginning of my fi eldwork, Anita had eagerly taken on the task of showing me how to fi nger-weave (låhtåt ) a pair of shoe bands (vuoddaga ) for the gáppte. As we were about to cut the threads for the work, Anita said that we could use our hands to rip the yarn apart. She demonstrated by holding up a piece of yarn in front of me and with a fast, confi dent movement her hands ripped it into two parts. ‘The hands are the best tool,’ she said. ‘My aunt never used scissors, no, she just ripped the yarn apart like this.’ Although it looked easy, I felt a painful, burning sensation going through my hands, down my arms and almost all the way along my spine when I tried. Instead of my hands ripping the yarn apart, it felt as if it was the yarn that was trying to rip my hands apart. Seeing my facial expression, Anita opened her hands and showed them to me. ‘Have you ever seen such knotty and twisted hands?’ she asked, and continued with a sense of pride in her voice, ‘These are hands that have worked!’ She held up a crooked fi nger and laughed, ‘This is called wear and tear (slitage )!’ Later, when Anita demonstrated how to låhtåt , she moved her fi ngers with a kind of gracious ease and the threads gradually intertwined into an even pattern. It did not look very complicated. But, as soon as I tried it, the tensions of the threads either softened or strengthened. I could not even manage to hold the threads comfortably in my hands. Some threads fell out of my hands. Others tangled. I became angry with my fumbling and cramping fi ngers that did not move in the way I wished. It was as if they had a life of their own. Anita, who seemed to notice my frustration, said, ‘It takes time for everyone to learn at the beginning. You’ll see that you get used to it after a while.’ What Anita highlighted, and I experienced, was that hands change depending on the life that they live. As the Finnish architect and scholar Pallasmaa so aptly notes, ‘Hands . . . have their unique appearances and features . . . just think of the robust hands of a steelworker . . . or the delicate, utterly precise hands of a surgeon, pianist or magician’ (2009, 26). When one looks at Anita’s hands, they are distinguished by their robust character and crooked fi ngers. More than that, they are also characterised by their elegant dexterity in weaving, sewing and knitting. Other Lulesámi describe her work as beautiful (tjábbát/pent ) and say that this is because she is ‘good with her hands’. Her hands are, in turn, shaped by and perceived by the work that they produce. Unlike Anita’s hands, which have many years of experience of making handicraft, the pain that I initially felt in my hands revealed my inexperience and inability. Observing my hands, Anita smiled and Figure 12.2 Hands at work, låhtåt the vuoddaga

Figure 12.3 Hands at work, untangling the warp for weaving the avve 198 Anna Gustafsson said, ‘Just look at them, they are so sensitive. They are not used to hard manual work!’ Thus, the beauty is not a quality of objects, separated from other realms of life, but it develops interdependently between the materials used and the hands of a craft-maker through practice and a growing familiarity with the craftwork. The beauty of handicraft is also a beauty of the hands, despite their twisted appearance, and of the productive skills of the craft-maker. When craft-makers like Anita are said to ‘have the skills in their hands’ it is not a possessive ownership of a specifi c set of technical skills or inherited traits that are referred to. Rather, the skills are considered part of a continuous learning process. A novice is considered to learn , rather than being taught , how to make handicraft. This is a crucial distinction. Craft-makers around the world are often valued for maintaining culturally signifi cant practices and producing fi ne objects. While it is recognised that craftwork involves a wide range of technical skills, craftwork has also been devalued and perceived as a mere manual execution of collectively constrained activities (Herzfeld 2004; Marchand 2008; Venkatesan 2009). Venkatesan writes, in her study of Labbai mat weavers in India, that a common perception is that ‘the craft producer is a vessel of authenticity rather than an author of his own strategies of production’ (2009, 43). In the Lulesámi case, such a view would imply that a novice is taught a set of pre-existing skills of how to make handicraft by a more experienced craft-maker. When these skills have been acquired, the novice then applies them as a planned activity in the work at hand. Drawing on my ethnographic material, I note that an apprentice in Lulesámi handicraft gradually becomes more skilled and learns the craftwork through her relationship with experienced craft-makers. However, the women did not teach each other a set of skills, but they strategically arranged environments in which people could learn how the handicrafts are made by engaging in their making themselves. Those who wanted to learn how to make handicraft could readily do so, as the experienced craft-makers generously shared of their skills. Experienced craft-makers encouraged one another to demonstrate their specifi c skills to novices aiming to prevent social hierarchies and to promote self-reliance. Frequently, the women highlighted the importance of allowing each person to learn based on their own capacity. They stressed that skills cannot be forced onto someone, but that each person must learn from their own volition and through active participation with the work at hand. In other words, for the Lulesámi, understanding of craftwork does not come from the outside, but emerges from within. I have already mentioned that the Lulesámi place a high emphasis on independence and consider it bad manners to be overly reliant on others. Consequently, it is appreciated when a person ‘makes an effort to do something by themselves’ ( gidde å gjøre noe selv). Returning to Anita, the beauty of her craftsmanship was judged as an accomplishment, and an effort and willingness to develop her hands over time towards productive profi ciency. This transformative process, visually manifested in her hands, was valued by others as it enabled her to make handicraft and also because it demonstrated her ability to be independent. More than that, as the craftwork was mainly made for family members, a woman’s effort to learn the work also demonstrated her affection for them. Beauty as a capacity: hands-in-craft 199 Rhythm and patience Experienced hands not only have the ability to make handicraft, but also to judge the fi nished work. It took me a few weeks to fi nish my fi rst vuoddaga , and when I brought them home Ellen was eager to see and feel what I had completed. She took the vuoddaga in her hands and observed them closely in silence. She moved her fi ngertips over their surface. After a while she nodded, handed them back to me and said, ‘They’re not bad for the fi rst ones that you’ve made. Next time think about stretching the threads with equal strength on both sides. One side is woven a bit harder than the other.’ Ellen showed me the vuoddaga and it was quite clear that one side was woven harder than the other, leaving the pattern somewhat uneven. Ellen explained that this was most likely due to the fact that I am stronger in my right hand. She highlighted that while my handicraft revealed different strengths in my arms, other craftworks can indicate that a woman has lost concentration or become tired and started to weave more loosely. Of other works, she said that the maker might have been irritated, stressed or tense as the weaving felt like it had been done with great strength. By observing and touching the vuoddaga with her experienced hands, Ellen was able to interpret the skills and unique features of the maker’s hands as well as their emotional state of being. In other words, aspects of a woman’s life can be narrated from the handicraft that she produces. As a number of researchers have noted, the making of handicraft entails more than the development of technical skills (Coy 1989; Ainley and Rainbird 1999; Herzfeld 2004; Marchand 2008; Sennett 2008). It includes a growth of specifi c moral virtues, attitudes and character traits about how to be and relate within the world, to other people and towards the work in hand (ibid ). For Lulesámi, these skills are, as Ellen revealed to me, demonstrated in a craft-maker’s hands and her way of working. As Lulesámi craft-makers point out, one of the most important aspects for making an evenly patterned vuoddaga is to fi nd a rhythm in the weaving. I suggest that the rhythm of weaving is best described as a kind of effortless fl ow of work. This effortless fl ow is diffi cult to achieve and depends on a number of factors. A craft-maker has to be relaxed while working. The sort of work that provides a restful state differs among craft-makers and depends on the kind of work that they enjoy doing. To achieve a rhythm also requires some experience in the specifi c craftwork. For an effortless fl ow to occur the body has to fall into a familiar pattern by continuously adjusting to the work. Achieving this rhythm requires patience to endure and tolerate the diffi culties, self-doubts and sometimes painful efforts of the work. A good craft-maker is said to be patient, even when facing hardships. Once, Sigga demonstrated how to weave a thin woven band (lissto ) to Ragnhild, a woman who had just recently started taking an interest in handicraft. Ragnhild found the work hard and instead of practicing, she constantly complained about the diffi culties and demanded that the more experienced craft-makers help her. One evening, when Sigga and I were alone, she said, in a disapproving and slightly worried tone of voice, ‘I doubt Ragnhild will ever learn when she’s so impatient. She can learn if she wants, I’m sure of that, but she can’t expect it to go well 200 Anna Gustafsson from the start.’ Sigga highlighted that it is diffi cult for everyone in the beginning, before continuing, ‘You can’t just give up. If you give up how will you succeed with anything in life?’ What Sigga underlined here was not only the importance of being patient and to tolerate the sometimes arduous practice of learning the craftwork, but also how it might affect a person’s outlook and doing on life at large. She continued to say that people always face challenges and that one needs to remain patient (cf. Sennett 2008). Ragnhild’s impatience and need for constant support contrasted with the specifi c personal qualities and moral principles that were both emphasised and cultivated among the women in the process of fi nding the rhythm of the work and becoming skilled in making handicraft. Apart from her apparent lack of patience, Ragnhild’s behaviour also broke the unspoken principle of not being over-reliant on others by demanding their help. I earlier brought to light that experienced craft-makers always generously shared of their skills with a novice. Yet, later when the novice practices craftwork, it was common that more experienced women ignored any pleas for help, or responded that they had other things to do. A novice was often told that she had to fi nd her own way (måte ). I felt confused when witnessing or experiencing myself these reactions and refusals to help as the behaviour contrasted so strongly with the usual generosity that permeated everyday life among the Lulesámi. As I started paying more attention to these instances, I noticed that a woman always received assistance a short time after she had been denied help. With time I came to understand that rather than being an eruption of sudden impoliteness, the initial rejection of help served as an incentive for the novice to practice her patience, refl ect on and somatically engage with the work on her own. The dismissal forced an apprentice to sit down and try to sort out the diffi culties for herself. It was then that the more experienced women, who at fi rst had denied aid, offered a piece of advice. More commonly novices were able to fi gure out the work on their own, by being patient, observing others and through trial-and-error. I came to understand that the rejec- tions helped to foster a novice’s self-reliance by encouraging the growth of her problem-solving capacities, concentration and endurance. Craft-making, then, is not based on a set of rigid rules or the transmission of skills from one craft-maker to another, but a continuous engagement with the work in hand. Mistakes are made, not because a rule is broken, but because of misapprehension. To avoid and reconsider such errors, a craft-maker needs to learn to continuously refl ect on the work. The arduous effort and personal investment of time and energy in the learning of handicraft are benefi cial and valued for many Lulesámi for becoming accustomed to hard, disciplined work and not expecting immediate results without going through some hardships. The way the women enabled novices to learn craftwork fostered confi dence in a person’s ability to take on and manage challenges, and consequently their ability to make handicraft that was considered beautiful.

Hand-made imperfections: concluding remarks The day when I brought home the fi rst pair of vuoddaga that I made, Ellen showed me a pair that she had made a long time ago. She said that these were among the Beauty as a capacity: hands-in-craft 201 best vuoddaga that she had made. Studying them, I noticed a small irregularity in the pattern. I showed it to Ellen and she said, ‘Yes, that’s how you can tell that they are hand-made!’ She explained that there has to be a small fl aw in the handicraft in order for them to look hand-made. On continuing, she highlighted that people are not perfect and that this should be refl ected in their work. Her statement refl ects recognition of personal limitations. Frequently, people said that no one is perfect and that they do not live according to a set of rules or predictable attitudes and actions. They acknowledged their weaknesses and said that this was something that they constantly had to work on. Beauty is, thus, not an ideal of perfection, but the visual manifestation of the capacity to act in a specifi c way that also bears witness of the imperfection of human existence. If descriptions of beauty in relation to craftsmanship often focus on the things that craft-makers produce, this view of beauty is not useful if we are to understand the Lulesámi’s evaluation of their craftwork. For them, beauty is not attributed to the handicraft themselves, but to their production. The handicraft is a demonstration of larger processes through which beauty, tjábbát , is established. Appreciation of the production is attached to the craft-maker’s capacity to act independently in the world. The reason for this is that craft-making is not based on a set of predetermined and collectively constraining rules, or a mere copying of others’ ways of doing things, but instead it encompasses a continuous adjustment to the work at hand, the willingness to develop one’s body, to think for oneself and to attune to other people and work with materials. The appreciation of independency is also to be understood through specifi c political, social and moral concerns and values. To act autonomously in the world allows for the creation of a peaceful and egalitarian community life. It respects other people’s independence. It also enables women to produce the garment for their family members and as such create lasting visual bonds of affection. In sum, the individual’s capacity for action is important both for making handicraft and for the creation of a good community life. The Lulesámi notion of beautiful craftsmanship does not exist outside this realm of productive capacity.

References Ainley, P. and H. Rainbird (eds.) 1999. Apprenticeship: Towards a New Paradigm of Learn- ing . London: Kogan Page Limited. Balto, A. 2005. Traditional Sámi child rearing in transition: Shaping a new pedagogical platform, in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Scholarship , 90–113. Baumgarten, A. G. 1954 [1735]. Re fl ections on Poetry: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus . Berkeley: University of California Press. Beach, H. 1994. Saami Life and Handicraft. In Klein, B. and Widbom, M. (eds.) Swedish Folk Art: All Tradition Is Change , 98–111. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with Kulturhuset Stockholm, the Swedish Institute and Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bunn, S. 1999. The importance of materials, in Journal of Museum Ethnography , 11, 15–28. 202 Anna Gustafsson Bunn, S. 2011. Materials in Making. In Ingold, T. (ed.) Redrawing Anthropology: Materi- als, Movements, Lines , 21–32. Farnham: Ashgate. Coote, J. and A. Shelton (eds.) 1995. Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coy, M. W. (ed.) 1989. Apprenticeship: From Theory to Method and Back Again . Albany: State University of New York Press. Cumming, E. and W. Kaplan 1991. The Arts and Crafts Movement. London: Thames and Hudson. Drake, S. 1918. Västerbottenlapparna under förra hälften av 1800-talet; etnografi ska studier . Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Gell, A. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory . Oxford: Clarendon. Guss, D. M. 1989. To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest . London: University of California Press. Guttorm, G. 2001. Duoji bálgát – en studie i duodji: kunsthåndverk som visuell erfaring hos et urfolk . Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Tromsø. Herzfeld, M. 2004. The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifi ce in the Global Hierarchy of Value . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ingold, T. 1997. Work, Identity and Environment. In Mousalimas, S. A. (ed.) Arctic Ecology and Identity , 41–68. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill . London: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2011. Introduction. In Ingold, T. (ed.) Redrawing Anthropology: Materials, Movements, Lines , 21–32. Farnham: Ashgate. Jávo, C. 2010. Kulturens betydning for oppdragelse og atferdsproblemer. Transkulturell forståelse, veiledning og behandling . Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Kant, I. 1934 [1787]. Critique of Pure Reason . London: Dent. Kant, I. 1952 [1790]. Critique of Judgment . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kihlberg, K. 1994. Samernas Slöjd. Virtuoserna och legenderna. Rosvik: Förlagshuset Nordkalotten. Kihlberg, K. 1996. Dáiddaduodji. In En bok om samiskt konsthantverk: The Art Handicraft of the Sami . Rosvik: Förlagshuset Nordkalotten. Kihlberg, K. 1999. Den stora boken om Samernas slöjd. Giheta Dáidu: The Great Book of Sámi Handicraft . Rosvik: Förlagshuset Nordkalotten. Kjellström, R. 2000. Samernas liv . Stockholm: Carlssons Bokförlag. Kolsrud, K. 1947. Finnefolket i Ofoten. En studie i Ofotens demografi og sjøfi nnenes etnografi i elder tid . Oslo: Nordnorske Samlinger VIII. Leem, K. 1767. Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, deres Tungemaal, Levemaade og forrige afgudsdyrkelse . Copenhagen: G.G. Salikath. Marchand, T. 2001. Minaret Building and Apprenticeship in Yemen . Richmond: Curzon Press. Marchand, T. 2008. Muscles, morals and mind: Craft apprenticeship and the formation of person. British Journal of Educational Studies , 56(3), 245–271. Marchand, T. 2009. The Masons of Djenné . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Overing, J. 1988. The aesthetics of production: The sense of community among the Cubeo and Piaroa. Dialectical Anthropology , 14, 159–175. Paine, R. 1970. Lappish decisions, partnerships, information management and sanctions – a nomadic pastoral adaptation. Ethnology , 9, 52–67. Pallasmaa, J. 2009. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture . Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Beauty as a capacity: hands-in-craft 203 Pelto, P. J. 1962. Individualism in a Skolt Lapp Society . Helsinki: Kansatieteellinen arkisto. no. 16. Rácz, I. 1972. Samernas konstskatter . Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren. Reichard, A. G. 1998 [1934]. Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Schefferus, J. 1673. Lapponia . Frankfurt. Sennett, R. 2008. The Craftsman . London: Yale University Press. Terrio, S. J. 2000. Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate. London: Univer- sity of California Press. Turi, J. 1917 [1910]. En bok om lapparnas liv . Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Venkatesan, S. 2009. Craft Matters: Artisans, Development and the Indian Nation . Hyder- abad: Orient BlackSwan. Vorren, Ø. and E. Manker 1957. Samekulturen: en oversikt. Tromsø: Tromsø Museum. 13 Cinematographers’ skilled vision and aesthetic praxis

Cathy Greenhalgh

Introduction This chapter is largely based on fi eldwork observations of workshops and interviews conducted at Camerimage International Festival of the Art of Cinematog- raphy , held annually in Poland since 1993, i.e.: cinematography here is considered as an art form as much as entertainment and industry. Feature fi lms and high-production-value television drama series provide the most developed cinematographic aesthetic experimentation and technical invention in the fi lm and television industries and the arena in which it could be argued the most virtuoso of cinematographers work. Whilst the director is often described as having the overall vision for a fi lm, the cinematographer interprets, enables and coordinates the crew to achieve this photographically (whilst the production designer is responsible for the look of actors and sets being shot). On large-scale productions, the role is known as ‘director of photography’, which refl ects the complexity of integrating management of technical crews (lighting, camera and grip – movement) which collaborate with other departments: production, direction, production design (art direction), sound and music, and editing, as well as costume, make-up, and special and visual (digital) effects. Whilst cinematography is predominantly an act of visualisation, seeing and observing in great detail and implementing the outcome, it occurs differently according to location and the type of narrative being fi lmed (Greenhalgh, 2010). The visual strategy constructed by the cinematographer is shared to differing extents with the crew. Collaborative creativity requires mutually agreed appropriation (John-Steiner, 2000), and crew hierarchy operates increasingly through ‘distributed cognition’ (Hutchins, 1996). As ‘skilled vision’ (Grasseni, 2009), cinematography requires particular expertise, aptitude and ongoing vigilance to cope with changing circumstances. ‘Having an eye’ in this profession involves both explicit and tacit knowledge, demanding a combination of rule use (histories of fi lm, photography and painting), ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998) knowledge, habits and procedures as well as technical and creative invention. Decisions about relationships between point-of-view and character through use of setting, framing and lighting (working with the director) may produce precise mise-en- scène (blocking, staging, compositional placing of all elements within the action), or at least a style overlay. Cinematographers’ vision and praxis 205 Cinematography is often described as having meaning within a text, as technology or art form. It is less analysed as culture, process, phenomenon or consciousness. In the case of feature fi lm cinematography, it is a form of thinking and practice which concerns how camera movement, framing and lighting affect meaning and enhance narrative fi lmed drama. These elements can alter or organise temporality and space, and sensing of embodied and affective events. Working with colour and tone, penumbra and sfumato (smokiness), focus and motion, light and texture, the cinematographer manipulates audience perception by alternate revelation and concealment. Connoting material presence or substance, performativity and environmental context may involve numerous choices and modalities. To achieve virtuosity and to sustain this with career longevity in this highly competitive profession require a number of coinciding circumstances – intelligence, creativity, excellent technical knowledge, an internal ‘library’ of solutions, improvisation, persistence, leadership, well-matched collaborators, contacts . . . and luck. Thus, for a cinematographer to develop their ‘aesthetic praxis’ it takes many years. Images ‘feel’ as much as ‘look’ in the narrative of a fi lm, and memory – recalling knowledge and sensory experience – is essential. So is a confi dence with the chosen aesthetic and understanding that this is both organisation of a medium and people. There are many underlying rules and protocols, and navigating all of this to produce something original and appropriate for the fi lm’s feel and narrative requires ‘holding’ the picture or method. One must be both a strong individual visionary and a good collaborator to achieve virtuoso status in this profession. This chapter describes feature fi lm cinematographers’ skilled vision and aesthetic praxis, utilising ethnographic insights from interviews and fi eldwork with cinematographers from over twenty years’ research and teaching in this fi eld, as well as the author’s professional experience as a cinematographer herself. Examples of professional rhetoric, concepts of beauty, and creativity and technical invention valued by cinematographer informants will be used to underline the nature of cinematographic visual expertise.

Organisational aesthetics and collaborative visualisation Being one of the handful of the key creative personnel on the fi lm set, the cinematographer infl uences what has been called the ‘aesthetics of organization’ (Strati, 1999). In other words they infl uence the working atmosphere and ambience for the crew and the area around the camera where the director works with the actors. Whilst they may have strong charismatic personalities, temperamental behaviour (that may be allowable amongst actors or directors) is not appreciated. Virtuoso cinematographers are sought as much for their way of working as for their aesthetic achievements and ability to inspire trust and confi dence in their art. In creative industries this type of cultural production atmosphere has been noted to require a new form of management, i.e.: ‘aesthetic leadership’ (Guillet de Monthoux, Gustafson and Sjöstrand, 2007). The fi lm and television industries 206 Cathy Greenhalgh have developed the model of these key creative management roles for a long time already, such as those of infl uential cinematographers. Cinematographers’ aesthetics of organisation is linked to how they accrue and disseminate knowledge and aspire to an aesthetic praxis beyond their powers of skilled vision. Silvia Gherardi studies ‘knowing in practice’ and argues that workplace learning has a texture which is highly situated (Gherardi, 2006: 131). They may tend to work with directors who prioritise visual statements when they work with fi lm narratives (Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg or the Coen brothers, for example) or who favour the minutiae of actor expression and gesture (like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach). Some prefer working with the artifi ce of the studio; others prefer the serendipity of location work. It is clear from cinematographers’ narratives that experiences in certain places, with specifi c directors, with certain script subjects, have helped them solidify knowledge or make profound changes in approach. Becoming known for a strong look, whilst appearing to shoot something different on every fi lm, is a challenge (subject to fashion and typecasting). Nev- ertheless, a developed personal philosophy, keen sense of commitment to the art form, articulated ways of performing or enacting the professional role and attention to the history and experience of forebears would seem consistently evident. It is often said that there is no formula for how to make a good fi lm, or a box-offi ce success, though many try through script and visual style or genre directives. As British cinematographer Oliver Stapleton says: ‘The nature of the fi lm experience has nothing to do with how good the fi lm is going to be . . . because to me it’s the ingredients . . . like cooking a fantastic dinner . . . from the heart, from the gut, a series of very clever, subtle, minute adjustments to what I (and others) did. With the audience, the movie will live or die right there on the screen’ (Stapleton, 2015). Within production and budgetary conditions the cinematographer needs to develop a personal survival philosophy if they are to keep working, grow creatively and achieve virtuoso status. There is an evolving performance of identity and care of the art form going on here which some cinematographers are able to enact in such a way which supports exceptional ability. Australian-born, Hong Kong-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle maintains: ‘Emotions transcend and cross the camera to the audience. The energy of the shot, the chi goes through the camera . . . texture, colour, all that informs your day and you make associations’ (2015). This refl exivity between thinking and practice, he stresses, is:

trying to make this balance between what your eye sees, what you imagine or what the script imagines, or what the director imagines or what the actor suggests to you, and what you can really do. That is the great pleasure of what we do because you’re always engaged with that . . . you’re addressing how does it look, how’s it going to look, how do I want it to look, how can it look, how can it look different, how can it look more profound or appropriate to what you are trying to say? ( ibid ) Cinematographers’ vision and praxis 207 British cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, who also works in Denmark, expresses it thus:

For me, it was always a mixture of the physical and the metaphysical . . . The American ‘serving the story’ – I don’t believe that’s an adequate description of our job. That’s part of it . . . I believe there’s a very magical balance there, if you can ﬁ nd that, your own kind of inevitable, unavoidable inner voice, poetic side . . . it keeps coming . . . you nurture it. And at the same time you’re not leaving the story, taking off, destroying or bombarding it or reforming it. If I can keep that balance, that is some kind of recipe for how I work. (1999)

Film set work involves knowledge of the physicality required for ‘cheating’ bodies to lenses, that is, the choreography, the ‘blocking’ of action in front of the camera (or several cameras). It requires awareness of repetition and processuality – practice, process, procedure, skilled timing and safety (see Greenhalgh, 2010). Visualisation is required though all stages of pre-production, production and post-production. To keep continuity between shots for editing, all crew members need awareness of what is in frame and what may be out of place. Cinema (and large-scale television drama) and the practice of fi lm-making are complex and collaboration is considered rewarding because so many complementary but different skills are needed to build a production and complete a feature fi lm. It takes camaraderie and team skills as well as personal initiative, including ‘appropriative expertise’ (Greenhalgh, 2007), to switch between locations and studios in the strange temporal zone and evolving creative geography of bodies and equipment moving around the fi lm set. Aesthetic decisions can be tracked to some extent through the documentation that accumulates during pre-production, production and post-production. This might include preliminary sketches and photographs, actors’ screen tests, storyboards, shot lists, rehearsal notes, lighting and rigging diagrams, pre-viz (pre-visualisation animations), polaroids or digital stills, production designer correspondence on materials, costumes, textures, make-up and so on. But these are kept by different members of the crew and practice-based studies of fi lm set work are rare because of all the detective work needed to uncover tacit technique, to which documents only allude. The (Stanley) Kubrick Archive within the Special Collections at the University of the Arts London is a rare assembly of all the information from various feature fi lm departments, which Kubrick meticulously kept for fi lms he made like 2001 and The Shining. Because Kubrick worked with a number of cinematographers, though, a patchwork of archive material from other contributors (such as notes from laboratory technicians and personal assistants) is needed to build a picture of the cinematographic philosophy behind the fi lms. Ideas and accumulated knowledge of the ways to resolve practical solutions to achieve results are often the result of collaborative work. Vera John-Steiner refers to ‘collaborative dynamics’ (2000: 204) and the effects of ‘distributed collaboration’ (ibid 197), which is prevalent in media practices. In the past, in Hollywood, 208 Cathy Greenhalgh for example, various companies specialising in genres such as musicals, epics, westerns or fi lm noir developed cinematographic experimentation in their studios and laboratories on site. Secrecy as to how effects were achieved was heavily guarded until the studio system broke down in the 1960s, due to the advent of television and mobility of new world cinemas. The burgeoning fi lm festival scene and the rise of fi lm criticism compared visual strategies. The horizontal rather than vertical nature of industry structures now means many technical and aesthetic tactics and preferences are passed down from crew to crew and from fi lm to fi lm over time, across productions, outside companies. We can think of contemporary media practice and fi lm-making in particular as ‘interdisciplinary, performative, interactive, transformative and processual’. Technical and aesthetic practical expertise that is collaborative is adept at being ‘polymathic . . . appropriative, mobile, manipulative, communicative’ (Green- halgh, 2010: 309). Knowledge is power for an individual cinematographer, but they are also dependent on cognitively distributed information within on-set/ location culture and through digital coordination of parts of the production process. This means internal ‘policing’ and contracting (Daskalaski and Blair, 2002), through overlapping communities of practice to achieve reliability and loyalty, and, by its nature, complex coordination across all the departments of the fi lm unit. Cinematographers seek collaborators and source crew who can assist them in manifesting their visual strategies. For example, having a really good gaffer (head electrician who runs the lighting department team) is essential and many cinematographers work with the same few gaffers over their careers if (subject to producers and budget) they can arrange it. Jim Plannette, a Los Angeles – based gaffer, has worked on numerous blockbuster fi lms (Planette, 2015). He also brings forty years of expertise and connections to younger cinematographers on smaller fi lms, such as Eduard Grau on Suffragette, directed by Sarah Gavron (2015). He was infl uenced by his father, Homer Planette, a Hollywood lighting technician who began in 1919 and learned his techniques on fi lms such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). So whilst ideas of what will work and look good for a fi lm may be the aegis of the cinematographer, they may be infl uenced by experienced personnel and the legacy of those prior achievements. The aesthetic solutions and narratives of working life passed down this way are very important to cinematographers, the vast majority of whom in the contemporary sphere are freelance workers. Reputation and repertoire are linked and disseminated, the discourse and rhetoric moved and shifted across productions but also through companies, equipment hire houses, professional guilds and societies, at fi lm festivals, trade shows and now across numerous social media forums, etc. Nevertheless, if a new technique or look has been found, this can be protected in contracts the cinematographers and others sign and cannot be discussed until fi lm release and festival or award success. A lot of copying goes on too. As soon as something new and exciting is detected in the fi eld there will be an ‘homage’ to it. Unlike plagiarism in writing, intellectual property of images is diffi cult to copyright and protect. One way, increasingly, for virtuoso cinematographers to Cinematographers’ vision and praxis 209 do this is to claim inventions and looks in articles in major magazines such as American Cinematographer . Making a fi lm is a huge undertaking. ‘It’s defi nitely an industry’, states Ameri- can cinematographer Phedon Papamichael. ‘The set has rules and everybody . . . serves a specifi c function . . . part of a big machine that is producing a product . . . with corporate deals and sponsorship’ (Papamichael, 2005). Oliver Stapleton prefers smaller, more independent fi lms (having worked on several blockbuster-size ones). He claims:

Some call it a catastrophe. The cinematographer really did use to control form from beginning to end, but this has been eroded over the last twenty years . . . The ﬁ lm industry is many things . . . There’s a large part of it that is two-hundred million dollar games. There’s a percentage of photography and a percentage of politics, management . . . If there are less guys in the room, less committees, less money, there is less panic and more control. (2015)

Christopher Doyle maintains it is hard to be an artistic cinematographer, and his conﬁ dence in this is boosted by exposure to different cultural traditions (and perhaps the lack of unionisation in Hong Kong).

If you get one or two images in a ﬁ lm that are outstanding that’s really good . . . The thing is to be open to perception and respond to what’s available as opposed to what’s being imposed. I think . . . that’s probably my problem or my conjecture with Western thinking, is that in the East, that’s part of the culture, that things are more organic. (2015)

Cinematographic agency and medium If cinematography could be described as having a medium it can be principally broken down to three main elements: composition or framing, camera movement and lighting. Compositional ‘use of specifi c lenses can defi ne power relationships between characters, defocus or focus attention to specifi c areas, defi ne point-of- view, play with our sense of what we see and don’t see’ (Greenhalgh, 2005: 211). Off-screen space is as important a factor in the psychology of the frame as on- screen space. Lighting plays the biggest part in ‘creating emotional tensions and releases’ through spaces where action takes place. Lighting can have ‘tonal, colour, focus, and rhythm values as subtle and varied as music or noise’ (2005: 211, ibid ). Movement ‘creates inter-relationships and can accentuate an actor’s choreography, gesture, physiognomy and presence’ (2005: 211, ibid ). Temporal experience is slowed or quickened through the mobile camera. Combined with these three elements are in-camera movement of exposure, shutter effects, focus and fi lm speed (slow or fast motion which can now be achieved by ‘ramping’ or gradual turning up and down during the shot). Together with moving lights and dimmers 210 Cathy Greenhalgh these can also be used as ‘expressive registers’ (2005: 211, ibid ). All these areas have conventional practices and assumed ‘second nature’ activities which can be questioned as well as experimental tendencies amongst some cinematographers. Manufacturers will assist with technology in these inventive realms if budget, time and personalities allow with the situated workplace of specifi c fi lm productions. A virtuoso cinematographer can often be found to have very developed research and testing experience and reliance on regular dialogue with camera, grip or lighting engineers. Cinematography means ‘writing-with-light-in-motion’. In the contemporary domain these images are manifested in cinema, on television and across multiple moving image platforms. Some of these characteristics could include, for example, the visual immersion of moving patterns of light and dark, disappearance of shapes and persons on and off screen in time duration, fl owing intensities caused by stressing tonal values during a shot, the sense of a chronotope (time-space frame, to use Bakhtin’s term) underpinning the narrative, a chromatic plan which mutates through the story or appears with certain characters, and numerous others. It is important for the cinematographer to recognise, understand and articulate this in the actual work and communicate this to the director and other collaborators. In the case of cinema then, the agency of the artefact cannot clearly be seen in the way Gell describes (1998). Ingold’s redefi nition of the agency-materiality matrix in terms of energies, actions and becomings, in his use of the metaphor of kite fl ying (is it located in the object, the fl yer, the string, the wind?), is helpful here (2011: 214–216). The poesy and process of fi lm-making therefore require extensive overlapping of both human and technological inputs, and the image is in fl ux even more so in the digital age. To analyse the way an element, such as the aesthetic use of colour attributes in a fi lm, arises requires tracking decision making and implementation through several people and processes. In cinematographic terms decisions will have been made about lighting gels, camera fi lters, menu setting of colour information on digital cameras or type of colour fi lm used. As well as with the director, colour hue and contrast range may have been discussed with the production design and costume and make-up departments, possibly with props, special effects (pyrotechnics, snow and wind machines), with location fi nders and managers. In post-production editing and visual effects many more changes can be made. It is always important that those creating changes know how these will play out on a large television screen or in the cinema. Changing the magenta or cyan level on a shot may look too extreme when projected large if the decision has been made from looking at a small monitor screen. On a daily basis images are sent as data to different parts of the fi lm unit team. Cathrine Hasse discusses the notion of ‘relational agency’ (2013, taken from Edwards and D’Arcy, 2004) as a way of thinking through different entities; humans, technologies and techniques can recognise and trust communicating languages and signs. These processes may be both overt and covert. The ‘previously hidden dimensions of work processes have today been discovered and appreciated as central to effi ciency and creativity’ (Guillet de Monthoux, Gustafson and Sjos- trand, 2007: 4). The way that cinematography workfl ow design as well as data and Cinematographers’ vision and praxis 211 documentation which contain aesthetic and technical information are handled by crew personnel, companies attached to the fi lm production and the cinematographer relies on clear signalling of intention. This is a kind of orchestration, in this case fi lm production, which depends on ‘collaborative, organized and managed artistry’ (ibid 7). Oliver Stapleton sums up the cinematography profession’s anxiety about creativity and control, especially in this digital era:

We have a particular problem today where we have so many tools . . . insane amounts of equipment. But ﬁ lms seem busier, not better. Are we creating more intensely than we were in the nineteen-seventies? There’s too little experimentation, everything is too uniform . . . Then only (the cinematographer) looked through the camera. No-one saw the picture (until it emerged from the ﬁ lm laboratory). Changes made were not publicly debated. They were trusting the director of photography. The secret was with us. We had a kind of shamanic knowledge. Other people tend to have a reverence for that. The assumption now is it’s easy to make pictures. Now everyone has a phone and less people go to the cinema or watch TV . . . Now the whole studio sometimes has a live feed to the image you are setting up . . . Production is overpowering the movie . . . The problem for me . . . is an aesthetic problem. (2015)

In the present era there seems to be a societal anxiety with a world ‘over-saturated’ with images of all kinds. Cinematographers might be partly to blame for this. The somewhat anti-ocularcentric take of recent fi lm theory invested in the senses certainly distrusts the visual, or what can be perceived as visually ‘over-the-top’, too viscerally textured by light or beautifully coloured. This is common across disciplines, yet at the same time there is more and more communicated in society by visual means. This may be because of the unusual and subliminal nature of what cinematography is. It combines a variety of knowledges which many of us know intuitively, but are rarely taught. However it is in reality very complex to achieve. Grimshaw detects a similar anti-ocularcentric bias in terms of ‘anxieties about visualism’ and how visuality has been theorised in anthropology (2001: 6). Grasseni partly redresses this in her Skilled Vision (2009), pointing to the value of vision and its operations in various situated practices. This author conceives of camerawork as spatial and embodied and that the visual perception of the cinematographic has certain characteristics. Cinema uses technology to modulate perception, though in fi lm theory this proprioceptive aspect (applying neuroscientifi c and psychological studies to audience reception theory) has only recently gained attention in comparison to studies of representation (Richmond, 2016). Pink writes about ethnographic documentary camerawork as drawing, ‘walking with video as a graphic anthropology’ (Pink in Ingold, 2011: 143–156). Strecker notes the ‘co-presence’ of particular kinds of movement, which he views as cinematographic in his ethnographic fi lms, and which contribute to the ‘validity and evocative power’ of fi lm (Strecker, 2013: 53). He claims ‘all good 212 Cathy Greenhalgh fi lmmakers are keenly aware of this referential power of attributes . . . fi lm is an art of the concrete and always has to focus on the visible accessible, which in turn magically evokes a totality by means of its attributes’. The camera is able to ‘capture and even enhance this wondering about the nature of things . . . to explore and document the most primary states and processes in the world’ (Strecker, 2013: 54–55). Cinematographers are trained and attuned to notice this power and subtle somatosensory potentials of the moving image, i.e.: a ‘tactile epistemology’ is at play (Barker, 2009; Marks, 2000), and the ‘corporeality of images’ (McDougall, 2006) is exacerbated in some of the most arresting cinematography. Information about aesthetic choices on fi lms is spread over many media but generally a rhetoric is repeated which promotes the latest technologies and equipment manufacturers, fashionable tropes and professional habits, rather than revealing comparative cinematographic approaches and highlighting conceptual, rather than technological, innovation. Understanding how aesthetic ‘joy’, such as appreciation of beauty, is revealed through temporal and spatial placing of cinematographic elements over a narrative arc is crucial, both a feeling and a skill. But, ideas of beauty tend to derive from the notion of a new look, rather than the marriage of an effi cient concept integrated with a narrative. Some of this is a spillover from creating ‘good looks’ in commercials. Many feature cinematographers also work in this area, though the beauty of skin and faces, landscapes and cityscapes, garments and products that are deliberately heightened through lighting and colour effects, exaggerated framing, etc., tends to be caricatured by the profession as ‘eye-candy’.

Creative control and beauty expertise Maintaining a clear aesthetic praxis for the virtuoso cinematographer requires vigilance, tenacity and confi dence. To make their work stand out, they are using all their tricks, so to speak, but trying not to overdo the look of a fi lm detracting from the narrative. Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who shot many fi lms with Ingmar Bergman, describes how, ‘It is always easy to make beautiful images, but never easy to make integral, telling images that fi t the story and the overall message of the fi lm’ (2003: 10). In terms of beauty, it is clear that aesthetic import may include pleasure and that balanced composition, serene lighting or gentle movement, for example, may form part of a requirement for cinematography. As American cinematographer Ed Lachman reminds us, ‘I like to light the space, not hit the actors, not always the “pretty” way (Lachman, 2015). Creating beauty is part of the cinematographers’ repertoire, a necessary economic foundation (they must be able to do it when called for) and key in their ‘professional vision’ (Tyler in Goodwin, 1997). They must be able to make an actress look glamorous or her skin glow, though there may be a differing attitude to the use of colour fi lters. Indeed, there is a whole argument as to the gendering and ‘troublesomeness’ of prettiness and colour in fi lms (Galt, 2011). Cinematographers must be able to make landscape seem epic and sublime if called for. But in general they do not serve the pretty, but are looking through visualisation for solutions which enable and enhance the stories of fi lms. They Cinematographers’ vision and praxis 213 must be able to create drama and subtlety with light, beautify or roughen up faces in close-ups, create memorable ‘money-shots’ – openers and climactic scenes – create atmospheres and illusory worlds or heightened realism. In the contemporary era where colour is so manipulable through digital capture on camera and during editing, producing something new and striking is a tough call with numerous choices to narrow down. There are examples in the cinematography canon which are still ‘raided’ now. The Technicolor process was reserved for epic and big entertainment subjects, as most lower budget, serious stories were shot in black and white. The extreme colour and contrast used in the ballet fi nale with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in An American in Paris (1951), directed by Vincente Minnelli, shot by Alfred Gilks and John Alton (who was famous for lighting fi lm noirs), were inspired by the Impres- sionists, Post-Impressionists and Fauvist painters. The play with every shade from pastel to saturation dimming in and out from scene to scene seems very resonant of the fl ashing colour options and post-modern pastiche use of wildly distorted colour available in cinematography now and used in many music videos and fantasy fi lms. At the time, though, Kelly did not like the shadows over his fi gure and felt they detracted from his choreography, and, until the fi lm won an Oscar, the cinematographers were criticised. In the 1970s, subtle use of colour in landscape was in vogue and new fi lmstocks meant cinematographers could escape the harder studio lighting and shoot at low light levels on location. Days of Heaven (1978), directed by Terence Malick with actors Richard Gere and Brooke Shields, is set during the 1930s American depression and uses dustbowl locations inspired by the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. It was shot by Paris-based Cuban cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who used only long takes captured at dawn and dusk during the ‘magic hour’ (i.e.: no direct sun, just the soft light of the sky, which gives a particular melancholy but beautiful glow to faces, and coral, lemon, verdigris and mauve tones). Almendros writes about how it was diffi cult to convince Hollywood technicians at the time to wait around and shoot for only forty minutes per day (Almendros, 1984). He used little fi ll light and silhouettes creating an effect like Millet paintings of French peasant workers or Monet’s haystacks. The apparent prettiness of the fi lm was maligned by critics, and Malick withdrew from fi lm-making for many years. But the fi lm won an Oscar for cinematography as in this sense the experiments in it were considered radical and very new. Almendros, though, was not a member of the American unions and he continued to work outside America for the rest of his career. Landscape colour can be easily digitally enhanced now so that a fi lm like Life of Pi (2012), based on Yann Martel’s novel, directed by Ang Lee and also an Oscar winner, caused some controversy. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda sampled colours from photographs from real environments and weather effects to add to his lighting effects in the studio for the fantasy story about a shipwrecked teenage boy and tiger. Because this work is largely carried out by collaborating digital effects supervisors, colourists and animators, some cinematographers are now calling for a second craft category at the Oscars that distinguishes between cinematography and visual effects heavy fi lms like Gravity (2013), directed by Afonso Cuaron and 214 Cathy Greenhalgh shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, and Avatar (2009), directed by James Cameron and shot by Mauro Fiore (seventy percent of which was computer generated) (Giar- dina, 2016). On the other hand, this pattern shows that cinematographers’ work and expertise are morphing with these new techniques and genres and that colour is one of the most fl uid elements in ways it simply could not be in the past. Carol (2015) is a period fi lm set in 1952 New York (fi lmed in Cincinnati), directed by Todd Haynes and shot by New York-based cinematographer Ed Lachman. Star- ring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, it tells the story of an illicit lesbian romance from an interior stance, evoking Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt as adapted by screenwriter Phyllis Nagy. The fi lm is very much about the gaze and given that the younger woman is a photographer, Lachman was inspired to use Viv- ian Maier’s street photography as a compositional infl uence (she shot in black and white, but also in colour). Indeed this is an example of expert homage. Lachman shot the fi lm on Super 16mm rather than digital or 35mm, the normal route, giving a soft, blurry look. Very few visual effects were added to enhance scenes where the characters are frequently seen through windows and mirrors. Lachman describes Haynes’s desire for a ‘very specifi c, slightly spoiled palette’. Lachman and the production designer Sandy Powell describe how they worked from a ‘lookbook’ that Haynes keeps for each fi lm which has meticulous notes, especially on colour (Lach- man and Powell, 2015). The palette of muted greys, salmon, blues, pinks and early fi fties textured surfaces contribute to the double female centric experience portrayed. Carol was successful at the box offi ce; nevertheless there was initial worry about whether the story would sell. The fi lm has been admired for a new way of looking it seems to create by melding the colours, protagonists and storyline. Essentially Lachman achieved this by not being afraid to use older, more forgotten techniques and by rigorous research of visual infl uences. In addition he, Powell and Haynes had worked together before, he knew about the eccentrici- ties of Haynes’s lookbook and he knew how to create intimate spontaneity with the actors. All of this came from their built-up expertise and collaborative ability combined with skilled vision. In contemporary British high-production-value television broadcasting in 2016, with period dramas like Poldark , Sherlock and Downton Abbey , and in Nordic-drama infl uenced detective series such as Happy Valley , Shetland or futuristic series such as Humans, the contemporary trend is for striking cinematography which makes the most of locations in London, Cornwall or Scotland, and elaborate costume design and textured sets. These follow the success of American network series such as Game of Thrones or Mad Men. It can be argued that the casting of beautiful actors in stories built mainly around youth-oriented stories creates audience following. It is possible also to note copying of successful looks from other series or from award-winning feature fi lms, with extremes of light and weather effects and bold use of colour.

Conclusion Beauty and prettiness are relational terms that in cinema history tend to relegate cinematography to a lower order. Rosalind Galt notes there are ‘politics of pretty’ when she quotes French fi lm director Francois Truffaut: ‘if at any moment one Cinematographers’ vision and praxis 215 becomes aware of the beauty of an image, the fi lm is spoiled’ (Galt, 2011: 15). She suggests this ‘anti-aesthetic’ still dominates thinking about cinema (ibid : 2011: 15). It means that fi lms that emphasise narrative over aesthetics win the day over perhaps more subtle, perhaps slower, smaller fi lms. So, whilst beauty can be seen as a skill amongst cinematographers, the apparent reluctance to position it too much may be to do with Western and diverse world views in relation to the language of beauty. The predominantly male cinematography fraternity perhaps uses the word in particular ways. Nevertheless, the desire to achieve it, capture it, create it and present it is there in the art form of cinematography and it would seem to be part of the individual and collective fi lm-making activity to aspire to it for some fi lms. The combination of stricture and expansion which occurs through skilled vision, creative collaboration and distributed cognition would seem to still encourage this in contemporary cinematographic practices and it can be found from student discourse to the expressed praxis of some of the most virtuoso cinematographers.

References Almendros, Nestor (1984), A Man with a Camera . London: Faber and Faber. Barker, Jennifer (2009), The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience . Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Daskalaski, M. and Blair, H. (2002), “Knowing” as an activity: Implications for the ﬁ lm industry and semi-permanent work groups . Paper submitted for Organizational Knowl- edge, Learning and Capabilities Conference, Athens, April 2002. Royal Holloway, Uni- versity of London. de Monthoux, Guillet, Gustafson, Claes and Sjöstrand, Sven-Eril (Eds) (2007), Aesthetic Leadership: Managing Fields of Flow in Art and Business. Basingstoke and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Edwards, A. (2010), Being an Expert Practitioner: The Relational Turn in Expertise . Dor- decht, The Netherlands: Springer. Edwards, A. and D’Arcy, C. (2004) Relational agency and disposition in sociocultural accounts of learning to teach. Educational Review 56 (2): 147–155. Galt, Rosalind (2011), Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image. New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press. Gell, Alfred (1998), Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press. Gherardi, Silvia (2006), Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning . Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Giardina, Carolyn (2016). Oscars: Why Cinematographers Are Arguing for a Second Craft Category for VFX-Heavy Films . Behind the Screen Section. Hollywood Reporter . Febru- ary 15th. Goodwin, C. (1997), Professional Vision. American Anthropologist, Volume 3, Pp. 606–633. Grasseni, Cristina (Ed) (2009), Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards . New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Greenhalgh, Cathy (2010), Cinematography and Camera Crew: Practice, Process and Pro- cedure, in Birgit Brauchler and John Postill (Eds), Theorising Media and Practice . Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. Pp. 303–324. 216 Cathy Greenhalgh Greenhalgh, Cathy (2007), Traveling Images, Lives on Location: Cinematographers in the Film Industry, in Vered Amit (Ed), Going First Class? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement . New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. 72–86. Greenhalgh, Cathy (2005), How Cinematography Creates Meaning in Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai, 1997), in John Gibbs and Doug Pye (Eds), Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Pp. 195–313. Greenhalgh, Cathy (2003), Shooting from the Heart: Cinematographers and Their Medium in Making Pictures: A Century of European Cinematography. New York and London: IMAGO with Harry N Abrams and Aurum Press. Pp. 94–154 with colour plates. Grimshaw, Anna (2001), The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology . Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Hasse, Cathrine (2013), Artefacts That Talk: Mediating Technologies as Multistable Signs and Tools. Subjectivity Journal , Volume 6, Pp. 79–100. Palgrave Journals . Hutchins, Edwin (1996), Cognition in the Wild . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Ingold, Tim (2011), Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge, and Description . Lon- don and New York: Routledge. John-Steiner, Vera (2000), Creative Collaboration . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marks, Laura (2000), The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses . Durham and London: Duke University Press. McDougall, David (2006), The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography and the Senses . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nykvist, Sven (2003), The Director of Photography, in ‘The Cinematographers’ View: Jack Cardiff, Sven Nykvist, Guiseppe Rotunno’ in Making Pictures: A Century of European Cinematographers by IMAGO: The Federation of European Cinematographers. New York and London: IMAGO, Harry N Abrams and Aurum Press. pp: 10–11. Pink, Sarah (2011), in Tim Ingold (Ed), Redrawing Anthropology: Materials, Movements, Lines . Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. Richmond, Scott C. (2016), Cinema’s Bodily Illusions: Flying, Floating and Hallucinating . Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Strecker, Ivo (2013), Co-Presence, Astonishment, and Evocation in Cinematography, in Ivo Strecker and Markus Verne (Eds), Astonishment and Evocation: The Spell of Culture in Art and Anthropology . New York and Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 52–62. Strati, Antonio (1999), Organization and Aesthetics. London, California, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Wenger, Etienne (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity . Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Interviewees, seminars and press conference recordings at Camerimage festival Anthony Dod Mantle (1999), Christopher Doyle (2015), Ed Lachman (with Sandy Powell) (2015), Phedon Papamichael (2005), Jim Plannette (2015), Oliver Stapleton (2015). 14 Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’

Cristina Grasseni

Introduction I wish to offer an ethnographic example of how sensing beauty is a skilful and situated capacity, namely a skill that is learnt, embodied, and socialized in specifi c ways for distinct practices. I make use of my notion of skilled visions to show how beauty may be lived as a form of common sense, ‘common sensing’ being in turn the result of learning skills. This interpretation of beauty as a form of social skill enables us to show ethnographically what is otherwise invisible – tacit knowledge. In my work on skilled vision and breeding aesthetics, I have stressed the positionality of beauty – not only in ecological terms but also in ideological terms (Grasseni 2004). My argument is that sensing order, harmony, and design is not just a question of perception but a form of cultural orientation in the world – corresponding to socially cultivated capacities to notice, make out, follow, shape, and arrange objects, meanings, and environments. In 1998 I made a short fi lm, Thin Threads , about the unlikely inhabitants of a cotton mill in the Peak District, as it was running to its end of production. In the following section I will describe the multiple practices of locality that developed during the last years and months of production at Torr Vale Mill in New Mills (Derbyshire) in the late 1990s. The fi lm was about the life histories and aesthetic sensibilities of factory workers, artists, travellers, and the mill owner, which I was fortunate enough to intercept then, but did not write about until much later. These provide an ethnographic example of how different capacities to create and validate beauty corresponded, in the very same place, to different routines and apprenticeships warranted by disparate lifestyles and life histories. In other words, different enskilments to beauty (or ways of learning to recognize beauty) were enabled by different practices.1

Space, skill, and beauty Torr Vale was a cotton mill built in 1788 in New Mills in the Peak District. Prob- ably the longest-standing functioning mill in England at the time of fi lming, it was originally used for spinning, weaving, and fi nishing. By the end of the nineties, only weaving and fi nishing were still being carried out. An ample structure of 218 Cristina Grasseni fi fty thousand square feet, divided in blocks of different epochs and functions, it reached an elevation of fi ve fl oors but sat at the bottom of the River Goyt’s canyon (the Torrs of New Mills). Deep in the ravine, its glass ceiling eyed up from well below the railway level, making an odd sight for the passersby on the road to New Mills – and was a perfect target for wandering vandals.2 When I got to know it, Torr Vale Mill was already doomed – production grinding to a halt, water leaking from the roof in the vacated blocks. Apart from vermin, it hosted a diverse population: Mike the loom operator, last of the 350 previous employees; Mr R. the owner, and loom enthusiast; Linda the machinist, stamping furiously on the last working Singer – a foot-operated electric sewing machine; and Ray the trucker, taking occasional orders for lucrative trade from across the Channel. There were other more or less permanent dwellers, who had come to use the space of the mill not as workers but as guests: Keith the artist literally ‘in residence’; a carpenter using an ample vacated block to build his own boat; a painter in need of long tables for her commissioned canvasses; and myself. How people came to be there was a matter of serendipity and personal connections to the mill owner. The carpenter and painter were grateful to use the space for free, turning ample rooms into artist studios and workshops; Keith the artist had returned from travelling and did not have a place to go back to. He worked night shifts to spare the best light of the day for his paintings. He transformed a wing of the mill into his personal studio and slept there. This liminal population had the blessings of the owner who knew that this was too broad an area to supervise with the factory workers, three hundred at its height, now reduced to three. Welcoming free guests was a vaccine against vandalism, break-ins, and the fi re hazards that come with them: “I think we’ve got to make somebody live here, or work here, or play here, or be here,” says Mr R. on camera in my fi lm. Thin Threads was simply my ‘Easter fi lm’, part of a number of training exercises as a visual anthropologist, and it took all but one day of research, fi ve days of shooting, and seven days of editing according to my Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology worktape. In the fi lm, Keith is the main character and takes me on a journey exploring both the working and the ‘occupied’ space of the mill. While editing, I strove to re-create the sense of awe and fascination that I fi rst felt when I discovered the mill, concentrating on sound to make rhythm shape the narrative: the fl owing water of the Goyt river, the running looms, and silence. Beauty hung all around. Mossy cotton threads nested like cobwebs on the idle Jacquards, looming like cathedrals. The nineteenth century Lancashire looms, once operated by hydraulic power, were left to rot in the basement next to the idle wheel. Hydraulic power and the shaft operating the Lancashire looms had long been replaced by electric machinery. Some occasional ‘fl ying shuttle’ looms were still running, though mostly giving way to 1980s Rapier looms. The mill welcomed creativity and brutality alike. Linda, the last of the seam- stresses, began her shift at fi ve in the morning because she did not cherish the thought of climbing the path home alone, in the dark afternoons. She rushed through her tasks blasting BBC Radio2 to enliven the vast, cold, hemming department – scattered with empty shelves and abandoned trolleys. Canned soup and Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 219 black tea warmed her up. At night, an indefatigable Mr R. would mend the Singer, using spare parts from the carcasses all around. We recycled cartons to pack the last deliveries: towels for hospitals requiring NHS woven in the warp and weft of the fabric, and exquisite double-pile hotel laundry sets. The offi ce was the only heated locale in the building, hosting a telephone and fax – our umbilical cord to the world. Linda and Ray would taciturnly share a brew with John ‘the loom mechanic’, the weaving mind of the mill. They fi lled ashtrays with spent butts. Smoking anywhere else, among all that cotton fl uff, would have been indeed a deadly sin. John would scribble cabbalas of numbers and instruct Mike on how to prepare a back beam to ‘feed’ the looms. With Mike, I occasionally recycled half-spun cones of thread, so that we could use up every inch of the cotton. A machine would rewind them up to a prescribed weight. Weight corresponded to length – which John and Mr R. could calculate precisely. Then another machine, the size of the entire ‘beaming room’, would drape the thread of each cone onto a back beam. The back beam would ‘feed’ the loom from behind, each thread being hoisted up through a heddle to provide the warp. As the warp proceeded up the loom, the weft would be woven, from side to side – originally by a ‘fl ying shuttle’ containing a fuze of thread.3 None of the threads in the back beam should have broken – but they did, and the loom would instantly halt. A ‘dropper’ – a fl at, pencil-sized press of aluminium – would hang from every thread in the warp and would drop when it broke, thus helping the loom operator to retrieve the broken thread and knot it. We were using imported cotton, not in-house spun and ‘sized’, as it used to be. Mike talked about himself through the mill’s machines: “This is the sizing machine. It puts size on the threads. They put wax in here, then the machine spreads it on the sheets, otherwise the threads are too brittle. They go under here and then they spread out so they dry individually, otherwise they stick together. You should see four sheets, see: one, two, three, four.” “How long have you been working here?” – I ask on camera. “Thirty-fi ve . . . since 1963. Is it thirty-fi ve years? Yes, in April. It’s a lifetime isn’t it? Always stuck in one place. You wouldn’t do it would you?”4 Keith would drag away the back beam on wheels, almost too heavy for one man. The looms made the wooden fl oors vibrate day and night, whenever someone was available to operate them and intervene when a thread would break. Once the back beam ran out before time and all the warp came out of the heddles. We had made a mistake calculating the weight of the thread on the back beam. We took all night to knot them one by one, as the knotting machine was itself in need of fi xing. Mr R. hovered sleepless, trying to fi x the latest disaster caused by his unskilled helpers. He would go to bed in his working clothes, cotton fl uff trapped in his grey hair. The workers of the day shift scarcely interacted with Keith. He fi tted their perfect stereotype of the arty-farty newcomers that fl ocked to New Mills making house prices soar, but was in fact a local boy and confi dent enough about the history of the place to give me guided tours, as captured on tape: “These are the Lan- cashire looms. They were powered by a spinning drive connected to the wheel and they would all work at the same time. Each shuttle lasted two and a half minutes 220 Cristina Grasseni and had to be changed by hand. Each worker tended six looms. They had to replace the empty shuttles, prepare the replacements, fi x the snapped threads.”5 Factory workers and artists were grafting new meanings and adapting old routines, giving new life to old materials and machinery, exploring the new potentials of this environment. However, their previous training and current social positioning dictated their capacity to articulate discourse and attach moral outcomes to their improvisations. Each task in Torr Vale defi ned communities of practices through sensorial and cultural apprenticeship, as well as through intense practices of narration, stereotyping, and moralizing. The fascination with the space of Torr Vale Mill and its liminal quality lingered on. From a fi lm exercise, the project turned into a personal exploration of the mill as a heritage production site, a creative space, and a rudimental but magical living opportunity. After I completed my fi lm I moved in too, as my student grant ran out and I could not cover my rent. Others came during my time: Jonny, my future husband; and various temporary guests: a traveller in need of mending his bus, a team of rock climbers who left their expensive gear behind them and used the Torrs as exercise walls. We also had unwanted visits, break-ins, and vandals. We were liminal – none of us could claim this as a residence but we used the address, the fax machine, the electricity, and the blessed hot water. Both experts and novices carried out aesthetic interventions on and around the mill, but the ways in which each was moralizing others in aesthetic perception depended on their main task in the mill, as well as to varying degrees of improvisation on new functions for abandoned spaces. Keith, myself, and the other ‘artists’ were playing as opposed to working. We dismounted machinery and assembled planks to build desks and beds, and had hot baths in the plastic-cast wheelers to shift cloth from one department to another. By defi nition, our adaptation of functional factory rooms to living quarters was spurious, messy, placing matter out of place to John, Michael, and Linda. Linda was fi lling that empty space with music and so was Keith – both aesthetic interventions – but one claimed moral righteousness over the other. Our different ‘communities of practice’ were engaging differently with seeing, sensing, and valuing: each of our previous apprenticeships and inculcation as factory workers, artists, or visual anthropologists resulted in sensibilities that we acted out on the space, while being at once aesthetic and moral, functional and normative.

Local rules and common sensing I used this ethnographic example to show that members of different communities of practice may sense order, harmony, and design differently. In the case of Torr Vale Mill, this affected our aesthetic appreciation of space, often with very real consequences. I referred earlier to impromptu or organized guided visits of the mill. As it came to its end, the mill attracted the attention of several agencies and was often visited, scrutinized, documented, and assessed from different points of view: whether it could be listed as an A heritage building; whether it would pass Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 221 safety measures for fi re hazards; how much it was worth, if not just in terms of its brick (an offer that Mr R. reportedly received from a building company). According to Istomin and Dwyer (2009), different forms of ‘spatial cognition’ account for the different experience of the landscape as members of different communities of practice: those who travel through the Arctic Tundra in snowmobiles and those who continue to use sledges, for example, practice a distinctive system of distributed cognition, including the task of way- fi nding . Does this difference pertain only to spatial orientation, or can it apply to aesthetic and moral preferences? It was apparent that the mill’s environment was co-constituting radically diverse relationships with its human inhabitants, and that its liminality was opening up this space to a wider-than-usual palette of skills and opportunities for use. Aesthetic interventions would not be limited to glue-tacking posters in the toilet or blasting up the radio – it could accommodate painting, climbing, carpentry, and even raving. Each though bore its own aesthetic morality – its common sensing – and was not necessarily compatible with all the others. Skill is in fact both a social performance and a co-constitutive relationship with an environment – as in Ingold’s taskscape (Ingold 1993). This notion refers to all tasks and actions of groups or individuals in an environment, stressing the fact that they are all interconnected and infl uencing how the other tasks are understood and executed: enskilment unfolds in relation to the taskscape. An apt example comes from Andreas Roepstorff’s fi eldwork in Greenland (2007). While he was navigating in the fi ord of Torssukkattak, the Danish anthropologist observed how the two fi shermen in charge of the boat – man and son – communicated with each other with nods while checking the surface of the water for dangerous ice. Roepstorff notices the parallel between this navigation skill and that of neuroscientists reading the brainscapes of fMRIs in his work on brain imaging at the Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at Aarhus University. In both cases, according to Roepstorff, one needs to know what to expect in order to see it: whether specifi c indicators in functional magnetic resonance imaging data (the ‘brain scans’ that abound in popularized versions of ‘what goes on in the brain’6 ), or surface ice. In Roepstorff’s words, “learning to see therefore becomes a matter of learning to pay attention to some differences while down-playing others” (Roepstorff 2007, 193). This does not mean of course that all is known and anticipated, or descending from some pre-existing pattern or template (a critique dear to anthropologist Tim Ingold) but rather, to speak in a similar language to Ingold, that while acting in the world can be a creative, improvised process (Hal- lam and Ingold 2008), “the co-ordination of perception and action that is of the essence of skill” is indeed “a path to be followed” (Ingold 2013, 301). Such a path is literally engraved in the ‘world of materials’ that litters our everyday space – and its encoded morality. To teach someone else to see this, namely to take notice of it, is at once a moral and aesthetic effort because it guides others to resonate with a signifi cant confi guration, pattern, or aesthetic preference. People sense order, harmony, and design according to their enskilment to do so. To think of aesthetics as a form of competence allows one to stress how beauty is part of a wider and complex fabric of relations – an ecology. For example, during my 222 Cristina Grasseni involvement in a community map project in northern Italy, the residents of an alpine valley gathered testimonies of lost games. One of them consisted of playing with the freshly cut grass (andéna ) that a sickle leaves behind the cutter, as the cutter proceeds rhythmically and regularly through the fi eld. While grandfathers would cut, grandchildren would play skipping back and forth on these patterns of grass temporarily left on the ground. Some skilled cutters would proceed in spirals instead of in straight lines, so that the children could fi nd more interesting patterns to play with. This example shows how taskscape, skilled perception, and perception of beauty combine and intersect. Harvesting the pastureland is a functional necessity, a skilled activity, and a canvas open to creativity and design so that children can take part in the same ‘common sensing’ through leisurely games. By participating in such place-making activities, a ‘common sense’ is developed, namely the sense of this particular place as worthy, of this landscape as beautiful, of this memory as valuable. So the sense of this place is not existing per se but emerges through the common placing and the common sensing of these skilled actors. This does not mean that this place cannot be experienced in any other ways. But that if sense of place is developed by experience, such experience – a path – is at once enabling and constraining. Once learnt, a path is not necessarily compatible with all other possible ways of experiencing the same place. As in Torr Vale Mill, many perspectives, many paths can cross in the mill, but they do not necessarily overlap (or approve of each other). Those who live here – Heidegger would call them die Wohnende – have developed such ‘common sense’ in a much different way than a simple notion of ‘identity’ would allow to express. Tacit and embodied know-how, cultural performance and skill, ritual and artistic creation, everyday practicalities and material culture . . . all coexist in a common place that is sensed with others. However, once learnt, they become personal histories, thus moral, namely imbued with values and preferences that are ‘commonly sensed’: they are sensed socially, with others, and socially inculcated but vividly intimate. From its industrial past, New Mills was being rediscovered as a rural idyll. At the time of fi lming, the Peak Art Cyber Café provided one of the few places where a local working class and an educated middle class community of newcomers actually met, displaying different languages, preferences, and needs. The café exhibited local art but also offered digital alphabetization courses and internet connection. Hikers in boots and expensive waterproofs could enjoy a hearty meal next to the locals – in boots and working clothes. With the café and local Heritage Centre we organized an Open Day, offering an exhibition of Keith’s paintings, a screening of my fi lm, and a towel sale. We hoped to attract local support for the cause of having Torr Vale Mill listed by English Heritage as ‘Grade A’ building, with a view to its conversion and restoration. Many visitors were ex-factory workers. Linda’s mum shook her octogenarian head at the fi lth. “When we worked here you would not spot a spec of dust.” Those who actually lived in the mill did not attract sympathy beyond Mr R.’s gratitude: at least we would prevent break-ins. But to the factory workers, living down there trespassed any sense of promiscuity between life and work, family and factory. Linda sneered at Keith: she did not see the charm of broken glasses and cold, high ceilings. Home was her canary and a hot bath. The mill was for dirty cups of broth or brew. Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 223 The visitors who found the mill picturesque, with its bricks, chimney, and wide windows, belonged to other sense-scapes and had not known the place when it was in full fl ow: clean, loud, crowded, and strictly hierarchic. To us – the fi lmmaker, the musician, the painter – the mill looked ample and open to opportunities of reinvention. It was an industrial-archaeological treasure-chest, empty of working memories for us, disjointed from the expectation of toil, discipline, and hierarchy – and instead full of surprise. Not to Mr H., recently retired commercial director of a cotton concern, who stepped into Torr Vale and pronounced, “Well, thank God that’s all over.” He knew weavers, spinners, and buyers in Italy, Egypt, and all over England. He knew precisely the reasons for this long-delayed agony. On the Open Day of Torr Vale Mill, diverse and divergent capacities for common sensing and place-making walked past each other, found meaningful intersections, or collided. Beyond dress code, some people easily recognized and respected each other. Mr H. had worked for forty years in the spinning and weaving department of Courtaulds in Walkden, and Mr R. could have a state-of- the-art chat with him on the cotton world trade, coolly observing the reason of one’s own decline. Both Mr R. and Mr H. could tell the calibre of a cotton thread by sight. An apposite metered lens or PPI (picks per inch) would help them calculate the weight of the fi nished fabric (in ounces) per square feet, according to how many threads would fi t in a one-inch section: ten, twenty, or forty. Their knowledge of the trade meant that spaces, logistics, and routines were familiar. On the other hand Mr H.’s son, a musician, knew the high ceilings and opaque glasses from accompanying his father to do his homework on Saturdays, and this place smelt of childhood to him. Mr R. belonged to an industrial aristocracy that would drive Bentleys at the turn of the century and would send their children to alternative schools. Once we cleared out one vast room to make a larger studio for Keith, Mr R. gleefully roasted Marsh Mallows with us: “Do you realize you are burning history here? This is the beaming room. Each of these beams would carry twenty fuzes, and the whole room was full of threads, like a jungle. We can warm our arses now.”7 Torr Vale was indeed listed, but as ‘Grade B’. That meant that, as production stopped for good in December 2000, it would be celebrated in the Royal Mail stamps but only as an object of regard – a landscape to accompany the ambitious Millennium Walkway – a footpath on a suspended bridge that would allow one to walk the length of the Goyt Way. For once regarded not from above, not a fl eeting sight from the railway line, but at water level, the mill was by now just a picturesque view, something to walk around but not to walk in. Empty and still, Torr Vale Mill went up in fl ames in the summer of 2001, leaving it without electricity and heating. The mill lies cold at the bottom of the Torrs , guarding its last looms.

Local rules and common sensing The ethnographic revisitation of Torr Vale Mill’s last days allows us to appreciate how aesthetic competence is often the result of inculcation and socialization. Such training is not acquired spontaneously: we could think of different ‘aesthetic cultures’ as a measure of the different life histories and experiential commitments 224 Cristina Grasseni of each of us. From my life in the mill, fi rst as a scouting visual anthropologist then as a liminal inhabitant, I have tried to convey the full spectrum of its sensorium – the musty smell, the dust and dampness, the roughness, and the blessing of hot water. In this decaying space, every act could become an aesthetic intervention: turning on the radio, dusting the cobwebbed panes. Each intervention is calibrated on competence: the skill of a painter in layering colour, the straight line of an experienced seamstress, the fl awless patterns of a well-woven Jacquard . . . these aesthetic competences are not only a question of external, technical evaluation but acquire meaning in the context of trained abilities. This ethnographic realization connects with a longer refl ection on (aesthetic) skills as something embodied in us, which cannot be codifi ed or represented as something external – on the contrary, it is such expert practice that provides us with an orientation in the world. I have published on how visual skills in particular are learnt, within specifi c cultures and communities (Grasseni 2007). But my thesis about skilled vision can apply to skilled sensing in general: common assumptions about perception presume that it is the action of individual spectators, who process experiential data or vice-versa project their own social expectations onto sensory experience. This model limits our understanding of how people actually attend to each other and to the world. In particular, I have tried to defi ne how ‘skilled visions’ are a form of tacit knowledge. Training, exercise, context, peer-review, hierarchy, custom, and repetition, all play a part in acquiring such visions – as there is of course more than one – and maintaining them. This is why vision, among other senses, is not per se a form of representation, but a complex relation between attention, habit, and representational capacities. In this chapter, I have applied these considerations to the topic of aesthetic perception, namely the experience of beauty. While anthropologists have analytically investigated ‘professional’ or ‘skilled’ or ‘trained’ vision (Grasseni 2004; Goodwin 1994; Saunders 2009; Fountain 2014), the social learning of aesthetic skills by way of apprenticeship is less clearly categorized: few contributions consider ethnographically how people learn to sense order, harmony, and design. The Torr Vale Mill experience focuses ethnographically on place-making as an aesthetic process, which is intrinsic to the point of view and skilled perspective of relevant communities of practitioners and peers. Apprenticeship thus shapes forms of ‘common sensing’, namely a socialized, learnt way of attuning to certain – and not other – shared understandings of order, harmony, and design. I am interested in the way we envision places as ‘fi elds’ of practice and cultural performance – to use an expression of Pierre Bourdieu’s – from an aesthetic point of view. From a perspective of cultural ecology, Torr Vale Mill constitutes an ethnographic example of place as a common fi eld of exploration and construction of specifi c skilled perception and practices of vision. In recent neuroscientifi c developments, beauty appreciation is more often modelled as a neural process (neuro-aesthetics) rather than as a skilful activity. The work of art historian Barbara Stafford nevertheless allows us to appreciate how deep-seated phenomenological capacities are period-educated. While devoting her Echo Objects (2007) to contextualize the ‘cognitive work of images’ within Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 225 basic mental operations such as intuition, inference, association, and categoriza- tion (Stafford 2007, 2), Stafford locates her recent discussion of neuro-aesthetics in continuity with her previous work, whose main tenet is that the visual arts make more explicit the way in which we attend to the world in a culturally scoped way. Stafford has distilled cognitively relevant visual dynamics from the history of art – such as shape and spatial arrangement, mimesis, analogy, and narration. A base dynamic of the cognitive work of images would be ‘haptics’ or ‘the visual touching of our sensibilities’: how sensorially powerful images would render elementary psychological contents such as joy, sadness, ecstasy, fear, expectation . . . She refers to the ‘culture of visibility’ of the eighteenth century as a strategy of composition and presentation that would diagrammatically evoke such deep-seated phenomenological experience. In her previous work on analogy, Stafford privileges the allegory as a form of art that operates complex perceptual and semiotic work in one (1999). A socially educated public eye would know how to read allegories and they would in turn teach how to behave in socially competent ways: allegories gave edifying moral insights and chastise while graphically conveying vices and affectation in a veri- table theatre of emotions (ibid 86). In sum, painting would work through basic universal mechanisms that become effi cacious in ‘haptic’ images, which in turn are enrolled in a public use of art for social pedagogy. She proposes that images are instruments of ‘ in-tuition’, vehicles of basic emotional and perceptual structures that meet our deepest, hard-wired perceptual needs. They activate spontaneous and universal mental activities such as analogy, mimesis, and narration. They are cognitive-perceptual catalysts. Like in chemistry, catalysts work thanks to their shape. So, for example, among the most relevant dynamic in the ‘cognitive work of images’, she explores the ‘techniques of inlay’ through which specifi c kinds of images work concisely through compression and composition to literally lay out meaning in shape. Monograms and other forms of compounded cognitive-and-perceptual shapes require our attention , and produce a performance on our part, to consider different stimuli at once (Stafford 2007, 43, my emphasis). Symbols and amulets, as in votive images, would ‘induce cor- respondences’, hence the cultural focus on them in the history of art as ‘salient objects of refl ection’ and non-mimetic inference (ibid 45). According to Stafford, this bears evidence to the phenomenological embeddedness of thought, as well as its distributed nature: we fi nd it in apt environments, both social and natural. From ecologist Jakob von Uexküll, she adapts to the history of art the idea of an effi cacious environment (Umwelt ) whose relevance to different species is differently processed by each species, with the result that we can effectively say that different animals inhabit different worlds in the same place. However, Stafford compares ‘emblems’ to ‘myths’, considering the former as evidence of the “persistence and global distribution of complexes that can ‘think themselves’ in people’s minds” (ibid 50). Hers is a consistent pursuit of “phenomenological and epistemological structures” that are rooted in “refi ned modes of perception” – a nuanced stance that allows for physiological perception and cultural construction as two sides of the same experiential coin (ibid 3). She hypothesizes 226 Cristina Grasseni that ‘mindlike images’ can function according to their own spatial, proximal, and mimetic logic, quite apart and beyond their narrative potential, activating in art the very dynamics that make them potent in magic and science. Although fascinating, this model only partially accounts for the ways in which specifi c ways of mastering professional and relational domains through distinct aesthetic skills are different in different places for different people, who do different things, and did them differently in different periods of time – as it emerges from the ethnographic experience of Torr Vale Mill. This is largely what is missed by neuro-aesthetics: the cultural and social specifi city of beauty as well as its embeddedness in trained – social and historical – capacities to recognize and conceive of beauty (not necessarily in a work of art). Both exceed the processual and combinatorial rendition of cognitive and perceptual processes that are dominating both scientifi c and common sense understanding of the way we inhabit the world. Perception and cognition are largely modelled as streams of information that fl ow through or to relevant areas of our brain. According to how they are subsequently ‘activated’ or not, we presume to identify ‘stages’ in visual cognition processes such as face recognition.8 However, this model does not take into account the skill of translating perceptual-cognitive inputs and processes (otherwise named ‘the neural correlates of aesthetic competence’)9 into socially and culturally relevant experiences, which differ according to context, age, gender, period, profession, inclinations, training, etc. If we agree with John Berger, that ‘ways of seeing’ are culturally tied to what Baxandall called the ‘period eye’, the history of individuals and groups, and of their learnt capacity to make sense of the space and practices around them, becomes relevant to the quest for an anthropological understanding of beauty through skill (Berger 1972; Baxandall 1972). In my previous work I focussed especially on how one ‘learns to see’ in cultural ways. In Skilled Visions , I gathered examples from my own and other ethnographies, to show how visual apprenticeship takes place in different communities of practice (2007). Visual training happens within forms of social (and sometimes, but not necessarily, professional) apprenticeship. However, this applies to all the senses, despite the fact that perceptual modelling still tends to conceptualize sensing (and thinking) as a private fact.10 Such learning and apprenticeship need not be tacit or spontaneous. For example, Francesco Ronzon (2007) has illustrated through discourse analysis how the aesthetic appreciation of ‘drag’ performance requires a form of skilful knowledge of a relevant repertoire of icons and memorabilia. From the margins of orthodox theatrical performance, Ronzon ‘follows the followers’ of Madame Sisi, a well- established drag performer, posing particular attention to the artefacts and conversations exchanged by Madame Sisi’s fans. Artefacts such as posters or photographs reinstate notions of ‘propriety’ and ‘beauty’ that are only shared within a specifi c circle of connoisseurs. Ronzon’s point is that the appreciative or critical remarks constantly exchanged during and after the performance actively negotiate ‘beauty’ in this context – from the margins of socially accepted aesthetic training, where alternative notions and performances of grace and beauty chart new territory for aesthetic participation. Zemirah Moffat uses the feedback screening participatory Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 227 technique after the example of Jean Rouch11 to analyze her own participant observation in drag clubs in London. Her fi lm straightforwardly looks at ‘intimate’ feelings and spaces, with elicitation techniques and participatory editing strategies. The author records her own interactions with the participants and their reactions to the rough cuts; moreover this refl exive and very ‘talked of’ fi lm co-exists on-line with academic texts about visual ethics and Rouch’s feedback screening strategy. Both works look discursively at the co-construction of beauty, grace, and order through artistic performance in liminal urban spaces. Though ‘beauty’ as such is not the object of their enquiry, the open-endedness of the performances and discourses that they analyze confi rms the notion that beauty is only locally defi n- able, and that it is not measurable by universal standards (Lakoff and Scherr 1984; Kondo 1997). Similarly to what Richard Wilk says of pageants in Belize, drag performances “are a process of selection and representation, of making highly public choices that assert some kind of collective identity. As such they are always arenas for the defi nition of locality, for inclusion and exclusion” (1998 introduction ). While Wilk insists that Belizean beauty pageantry “organize[s] and structure[s] Beliz- eans’ notions of difference” and at the same time “naturalize[s] and essentialize[s] gender, age, ethnicity and the spatial order of the nation state” (1998 introduction ), drag performances do not aim to domesticate difference but rather to reinstate it, express it, or explore it. Both phenomena share the characteristics of being played out in ‘safe zones’ that tolerate what Wilk calls ‘aesthetic diglossia’, namely the potentially disruptive co-existence of different codes and standards of beauty (1998).

Conclusion From the history of visual arts and the ethnography of performance we receive two very different models of how people sense ‘beauty’: order, harmony, and design would in one case respond to hard-wired perceptual needs and in the other it is a negotiated social construction. As we have seen in the case of Stafford, the former model attempts to subsume both cognitivist and phenomenological consideration under neuro-aesthetics. However, if we look at the perception of beauty as a skill, namely as a capacity that is the result of apprenticeship, the dimension of personal histories and the locality of cultural construction come into play: beauty is both a product and a guide of human action at once, historical and phenomenological. Ultimately, to study beauty as skill is a way of arguing for the complexity of sensory ethnography vis-a-vis the determinism and reductionism of the new neuro- everything (neuro-aesthetics, neuro-ethics, neuro-marketing, etc.). However, anthropologists need to picture relevant dynamic and relational accounts of how sense-scapes are informed, structured, and managed. I use the example of my living at Torr Vale Mill to conﬁ rm how aesthetic perception is embedded in a realm of social expertise, which depends on training moral and aesthetic judgement within a structured environment. 228 Cristina Grasseni Notes 1 I wrote about Torr Vale Mill in Italian in my book Luoghi Comuni (Common Places) Antropologia dei Luoghi e Pratiche della Visione . Bergamo, Lubrina, 2009. 2 I will use pseudonyms to refer to the ‘inhabitants’ of Torr Vale Mill. 3 Rapier looms superseded shuttle looms in the early 1980s. Two metal arms would meet half way through the weft and pass the thread to each other, making the weaving process faster than by ﬂ ying shuttle as it allowed the continuous use of a single thread instead of fuzes in shuttles. In contemporary looms, the weft is now ‘passed’ by a shot of compressed air. 4 This is a quote from the video Thin Threads , 1998. 5 This is a quote from the video Thin Threads , 1998. 6 For a cursory example, peruse the article ‘Monkey DO, Monkey SEE’ by visual neuroscientist Daniel Glaser, online at www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01- monkey.html. 7 This is a quote from the video Thin Threads , 1998. 8 See, for example, the work of Prof. Oliva at MIT on face recognition: her presentation for a lay audience is on www.facebook.com/pages/International-Conference-on-Neuroesthetics/. 9 For example, see Nadal on the neural correlates of aesthetic perception: www.facebook. com/pages/International-Conference-on-Neuroesthetics/. 10 Such reductionist models of perception and cognition have been authoritatively deconstructed, time and again, in the history of philosophy, for example, by Ludwig Wittgen- stein with his ‘Private Language Argument’ in the Philosophical Investigations (1953). 11 Mirror Mirror : http://queergiving.co.uk/. Zem Moffat, 2006.

References Baxandall, M. 1972. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berger, J. 1972. Ways of Seeing . London: BBC and Penguin Books. Fountain, K. 2014. Rhetoric in the Flesh: Trained Vision, Technical Expertise, and the Gross Anatomy Lab . London: Routledge. Goodwin, C. 1994. Professional Vision. American Anthropologist , 96(3): 606–633. Grasseni, C. 2004. Skilled Vision: An Apprenticeship in Breeding Aesthetics. Social Anthropology , 12(1): 1–15. Grasseni, C. (ed.) 2007. Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards . Oxford: Berghahn. Hallam, E., Ingold, T. (eds.) 2008. Creativity and Cultural Improvisation. London: Bloomsbury. Ingold, T. 1993. The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology , 25(2): 152–174. Ingold, T. 2013. Making, Growing, Learning. Educação em Revista , 29(3): 297–324. Istomin, K., Dwyer, M. 2009. Finding the Way: A Critical Discussion of Anthropological Theories of Human Spatial Orientation with Reference to Reindeer Herders of North- eastern Europe and Western Siberia. Current Anthropology , 50(1): 29–49. Kondo, D. 1997. About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theatre. New York: Routledge. Lakoff, R., Scherr, R. 1984. Face Value: The Politics of Beauty . Boston: Routledge. Roepstorff, A. 2007. Navigating the Brainscape: When Knowing Becomes Seeing. In C. Grasseni (ed.), Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards . Oxford: Berghahn, 191–205. Beauty as skill and ‘common sensing’ 229 Ronzon, F., 2007. Icons and Transvestites. Notes on Irony, Cognition and Visual Skill. In C. Grasseni (ed.), Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards . Oxford: Berghahn, 67–68. Saunders, B. 2009. Ct Suite: The Work Of Diagnosis in the Age of Noninvasive Cutting . Durham: Duke University Press. Stafford, B.M. 1999. Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting . Cambridge: MIT Press. Stafford, B.M. 2007. Echo-Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images. Chicago: Chicago Uni- versity Press. Wilk, R. 1998. ‘Miss World Belize: Globalism, Localism and the Political Economy of Beauty’, www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/beaaauty.htm. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations . Oxford: Blackwell.

Part V Beauty, the body and performance

15 Fleshly beauty An anthropological perspective

Alexander Edmonds

Introduction This chapter presents an anthropological perspective on the beauty of the human body. I engage with studies of beauty in the social sciences and humanities, including my own ethnographic fi eldwork in Brazil. This work might broadly be called ‘social constructionist’ in that it has demonstrated enormous variation in beauty norms. It often entails critique since such norms can inscribe social inequalities. I also take up this volume’s invitation, however, to ‘go beyond’ the relativist approach that has dominated much discussion of aesthetics. My aim is to explore the generative capacity of beauty to alter social life in ways that are not entirely predicted by cultural symbolism or other inequalities. I ask: what affects and wider social effects are set in motion by beauty? As a heuristic (a ‘device for discovery’), I suggest the term fl eshly beauty . The connotations of fl eshly – as opposed to the more abstract bodily – direct attention to aspects of beauty I want to highlight here. A morally charged word in the Judeo-Christian tradition, ‘fl eshly’ refers to the substance of the body, but also to appetites and desires. It invokes an opposition to the spiritual or rational, and implies the body has agency ‘of its own’. More archaically, but also useful here, fl eshly refers to bonds of blood and sex between people. Fleshly beauty is in part an inherited property of the body, linking generations. The fl esh also draws sexual partners together, who cleave to each other and in the biblical phrase “shall be in one fl esh” – another property of beauty relevant here. The term ‘fl eshly beauty’ suggests the important relationships between beauty and strong affects, such as desire, fantasy, arousal and shaking knees, amongst others. Philosopher Elaine Scarry (2001) points out that in the classical world, a glimpse of a beautiful person imperilled the observer, rather than the observed, suggesting the risks of beauty were quite different to contemporary ones. In the Phaedrus Plato describes a man who after beholding a beautiful youth begins to spin, shudder, shiver and sweat. Of course, the perception of a beautiful person does not always create such affects. Due to the amazing plasticity of human sexuality, the responses beauty provokes may be sublimated, transferred to an object, expressed through art, etc. But one salient aspect of the beauty of the person is that it has a special power to provoke eroticism. 234 Alexander Edmonds I argue it is important to consider these relationships between beauty and erotic affect, though philosophy and social science have often neglected them. Anthropo- logical philosophy in the eighteenth century proposed that beauty must not prompt egoistic behaviour or be too closely linked to practical activity. I use the term ‘fl eshly beauty’ to signal a break from this philosophical argument and to shift focus to ‘interested’ responses to beauty. Twentieth century social sciences also largely passed over the erotic dimensions of beauty. These fi elds departed from the Kantian project of investigating aesthetics as a universal human faculty of judgment, and instead embedded aesthetics within variable cultural contexts. However, the focus of social sciences on symbolism and inequalities also led to neglect of beauty’s capacity to create affects – such as attraction or emulation – which can contravene utilitarian logics or social classifi cations. In this chapter I investigate beauty as a domain of the human that gives rise to powerful affects and important social effects. This generative capacity of beauty is rooted in the fl esh and cannot be entirely explained by other systems of status and social differentiation, such as pedigree, age, ethnicity or wealth. My aim is to develop a perspective that sheds light not just on aesthetic norms, but on what beauty means and does for socially situated actors in everyday life.

Beauty in anthropological philosophy and social anthropology Kant did not devote much space to the beauty of people , but what he did write illustrates the problem that such beauty poses for the philosophy of aesthetics. Like Freud would later, he unsurprisingly writes from the perspective of the male gaze on feminine beauty, and also foreshadows Freud’s (1953) understanding of beauty as sublimated sexual impulses: “This complete fascination [with the “form and features of the fair sex”] is really overlaid upon the sex instinct” (Kant 2003, 86). Kant does not elaborate on this point and seems only to concede it so that he can introduce distance between sexuality, which entails interested, egoistic behaviour, and real beauty, which cannot. To this end he makes a distinction between “very pretty persons completely without moral feeling” (ibid 88), who appeal only to “coarse natures”, and those who are truly “beautiful”. The latter category of women have a “moral expression” in their appearance, which can only be recognised by a “fi ne taste”. Kant also introduces another aesthetic hierarchy, when he discusses the desire of Turks, Arabs and Persians to “beautify their races” through the “fi ne blood of Circassian and Georgian maidens” (ibid 89). His comments reproduce conventional wisdom about women, class and “blood”, but they also refl ect larger philosophical goals in his investigation of aesthetics. For Kant the pleasure derived from beauty does not produce a desire to do anything in particular but rather is merely contemplative. His distinction between true beauty animated by moral feeling, and mere prettiness, which provokes a “coarse” sexual response, preserves a notion of aesthetic judgment as “disinterested contemplation”. Kant’s emphasis on the importance of disinterest in aesthetic Fleshly beauty 235 perception was, of course, enormously infl uential in philosophy, but was also taken up by later racial anthropology. The German fi n-de-siècle anthropologist Carl Heinrich Stratz argued that only Nordic women could be truly beautiful, because they alone did not arouse mundane sexual interest (Hau 2003, 83). Both Kant, and the later, explicitly racial anthropology, could be said to remove beauty from the ordinary realm of sexual interest in order to explore a ‘purifi ed’ and universal faculty of aesthetic judgment. In twentieth-century social anthropology, discussion of beauty focused more on cultural artefacts and performance than on the beauty of the human body. Ethnographies of body modifi cation, though, make many passing references to beauty practices. These works could be said to be social constructionist in that they show how body modifi cation expresses cultural symbolism. For example, amongst the Sudanese Nuba, scarifi cation signals a woman’s passage through puberty and motherhood. This analytic focus contributed to the ethical project of Boasian cultural relativism. In the accounts of travellers the body modifi cation of non-Europeans was a potent mark of savagery. Thus, showing how even the most disfi guring practices (such as neck elongation, foot binding, etc.) have a meaning makes them seem rational, or familiarly human, not savage. In fact, earlier philosophical discussion of aesthetics had also rationalised ‘savage’ beauty. Hegel found the body alterations of non-Europeans to be “barbarous, tasteless, and entirely disfi guring”, yet he also conceded there was a “rational ground” to such practices (2008, 171). They stemmed from a “human need” to alter “natural form”, thus opening the door to a humanising perspective on the beauty practices of others. Lévi-Strauss also rationalised body modifi cation in that he related it to a near universal “horror of nature” (1973 [1955]). Caduveo Indian facial paintings “confer human dignity upon the individual; they ensure the transition from nature to culture, from ‘stupid beast’ to civilised man” (ibid ). Lévi-Strauss’s interest in body modifi cation was, however, subservient to his aim of investigating abstract sets of relationships present across ritual and mythological systems (1983). The main thrust, however, of ethnographic accounts of body modifi cation was to focus on the ritual context that made a particular practice meaningful. These analyses often entailed a relativising critique that challenged conventional Euro- pean beauty and social norms. This was an important critique to make given the fact that physical anthropology and eugenics buttressed their racial science with appeals to aesthetic taste. For example, German anthropologist Blumenbach chose the term ‘Caucasian’ in 1795 to denote the highest evolutionary stage of man precisely because of conventional wisdom, also expressed by his contemporary Kant, that peoples from the Caucasus region were exceptionally beautiful (Gould 1981).1 The intellectual blind spot, however, of social anthropology’s treatment was that it tended to downplay the aesthetic, and even more so, erotic properties of the fl esh. An exception, one of the only full-length anthropological monographs on a beauty norm, is Rebecca Popenoe’s (2004) excellent work on the Azawagh Arabs in Niger. This group practices ‘fattening’ – feeding milk and porridge to adolescent girls until they become not so much plump as obese, in Western terms, though 236 Alexander Edmonds Popenoe’s point is that this medical and stigmatising label is far from Azawagh understandings of ‘fat’. The book could also be said to be a constructionist account of beauty ideals in that it analyses how they “partake of cultural values that operate in several domains”, such as marriage endogamy and symbolism about health ( ibid 189). Popenoe’s work, in my reading, seems ambiguous when discussing the relationships between beauty and sexuality. The topic does not receive much attention until her last chapter, in which she concludes that “ultimately” fatness is a “sexualised aesthetic” or in her informants’ words: “a fat woman is hot. A thin woman is like a man” (ibid 190). The term “sexualised” implies the fl esh is passive, made sexual by society. Yet, whatever traditions fatness expresses and which make it self-evidently beautiful and good, fl eshly beauty also arouses erotic affects that ultimately can threaten the Azawagh cultural emphasis on controlling sexuality ( ibid C 8). Sexual intercourse with unmarried women is prohibited, Popenoe notes, yet a man might steal into the fattening huts to “please himself between a woman’s thighs” (ibid 191). Not all women achieve or maintain the fat ideal, and there is much instability in sexual relationships. Divorce and remarriage are frequent and extra-marital sex is the norm. Since women’s social status and wealth are highly dependent on having a husband and sons, they are under considerable pressure to maintain the bodily “heat” and sexual attractiveness that will “bind men to them, sexually and thereby socially” (ibid 183). This point suggests that individual differences in attractiveness and the fl eshly capacity to fatten can have major social consequences, provoking jealousy, competition or inappropriate unions. While it’s clear that society plays a large role in shaping the Azawagh beauty norm, Popenoe’s work raises questions about what effects attractiveness (or ugliness) in a person have on the people around them. Can the beauty of the body always be read as referring to something else, or does it generate its own effects and affects that contradict cultural logics – a question I return to later in the chapter. Critique is implicit in Popenoe’s work since the Azawagh aesthetic norm is so radically different from the Western “tyranny of slenderness” (Chernin 1981). Critique is more explicit, of course, in feminist accounts of Western beauty norms and practices as a “major articulation of capitalist patriarchy” (Bartky 1990; Morgan 1991). Beauty practices create body alienation and forms of self- surveillance that unequally affect women (Bordo 1993) and support the fi nancial interests of male-dominated beauty and fashion industries as well as male control of the workplace (Wolf 1991). Other critiques examine how beauty practices and norms reinforce racial or colour hierarchies (e.g. Kaw 1993; Monk 2014). Such critique – and in the next section I discuss my own ethnographic work in Brazil as an example of it – could also be said to be constructionist in that it shows that beauty norms express variable power dynamics. One problem with both the anthropological and feminist critique is that the body seems to be passive in these accounts, pliable clay moulded in the image of society. Beauty reveals something about patriarchy and racism, but so too do many aspects of social life, raising the question of whether there are any specifi c qualities Fleshly beauty 237 to beauty? Does the fl esh also impose some limits on the capacity of society (or history, discourse, etc.) to inscribe it? Do aesthetic judgments of, and responses to, particular individuals alter social life in ways not entirely determined by other hierarchies and cultural symbolism?

Constructions of beauty and race in Brazil To discuss these questions I introduce a more detailed example from my ethnographic fi eldwork on beauty and plastic surgery in Brazil (Edmonds 2007, 2010, 2013). Brazil has experienced rapid growth in cosmetic surgery since the 1990s and in 2013 surpassed the U.S. as the country with the most cosmetic procedures performed in the world. Media and a celebrity-centred pop culture have aggressively promoted and marketed plastic surgery, or simply plástica as it is known. The provision of free or subsidised cosmetic procedures in some public hospitals, as well as credit plans, have also made the practice more accessible to the working class and emergentes , those struggling to ‘emerge’ into the middle classes. I’ve argued that surgery has also been normalised and integrated in mainstream women’s reproductive health care for the middle classes, fuelling aspirational desires to obtain a modern medical good (2010, 2013). Thus, patients from across Brazil’s class and colour spectrums have limited access to cosmetic surgery, making the practice a good site for studying tensions and aspirations around beauty. Brazil’s aesthetic norms and practices are entangled with its construction of race. In the early twentieth century, scholars, artists and eventually the state rejected racial anthropology and whitening ideologies and began to embrace racial mixture as a defi ning feature of the nation (Schwarcz 1999). Mixture, mestiçagem , became an emblem of ‘racial democracy’. It was also aestheticised and eroticised, in highly gendered ways, for example, in the work of Gilberto Freyre (1986) who rejected ‘Aryan’ beauty norms and practices (see also Vianna 1999). Modernists embraced a vision of ‘the people’, particularly women, as exhibiting kaleidoscopic beauty, endless variation in skin hue and phenotypic permutations deriving from centuries of mixing amongst Europeans, Africans and ‘Indians’. The affi rmation of mixture is also present in much contemporary beauty talk and beauty work. Unlike in much of Asia, the ideal is not very pale skin (which is sometimes considered a liability in a tropical climate); rather, a large range of skin hues is seen as potentially beautiful. Cosmetic surgeons also praised the effects of European-African mixing on the female body, referencing a more erotic national beauty ideal defi ned by round hips, thighs and buttocks, contrasted with narrow waists, and relatively small breasts (Hanchard 1999). In pursuit of this ideal surgeons redistribute fat from the waist to the hips, or perform breast reduction surgery, which in Brazil sometimes has not a functional rationale (reducing back pain) but a purely cosmetic one. However, beauty norms and practices also reveal the lingering presence of whitening ideologies and contradictions in the ideal of racial democracy. Elites, such as former president Cardoso, claim mixed ancestry with the expression um pé na cozinha , “one foot in the kitchen” – a reference to a black ancestor, a woman slave 238 Alexander Edmonds or servant. This half-joke is perhaps intended to link the speaker to ‘the people’ via reference to the primordial scene in the national imaginary of sex between a white master and darker servant. But many women have their own stories of “one foot in the kitchen”, which refl ect ambivalence about the legacy of mixture. The sun is said to ‘ruin’ pale skin while weight gain is a problem thought to disproportionately affect darker Brazilians. Some women said mischievously that they had inherited a good bunda (butt) from a darker relative. Others referred to a nose “given” by a black ancestor that needed surgical “correction”. Surgeons and patients praised some forms of mixture, but said others were “ugly”, and saw surgery as a means of “harmonising” combinations of traits. The embrace of mixture also coexists with global thinner and whiter beauty norms for women, and more recently, a fad for breast implants that has brought complaints of “cultural imperialism”. These global norms tend to be more dominant in highbrow fashion and elite media domains. Some working class women, in contrast, criticise “imported fashions”, insisting that “thin thighs are feia (ugly)”. On the other hand, in mainstream media and everyday evaluations of appearance the dominant ideal is relatively European facial features and hair, or a whitish appearance, as you can say in Portuguese with terms such as brancinha . Those considered “too black” encounter aesthetic stigma and widespread racial discrimination (Telles 2004; Winddance Twine 1998). To counter discrimination black activists have made the embrace of a new aesthetic of “black beauty” a central component of racial pride (Fry 2002; Edmonds 2010). They have urged Brazilians to reject colour terms and instead adopt a bi- polar racial system classifying groups into “whites” and “blacks”. This identity work is often accompanied by beauty work, for example, replacing hair straighten- ing with “black styles”. Yet while the black movement has been politically infl uential, older aesthetic norms and practices remain highly popular and self-evidently beautiful to many consumers. While elites affi rmed mixture as a trait of the people with aesthetic and cultural value, and a later grassroots movement promoted black aesthetics, the older ideal of whitening (Skidmore 1974) persists in much beauty talk and beauty work. Thus, beauty norms could be said to express a cultural logic of race with deep roots in colonial society as well as more recent aspirations and anxieties.

The generative capacity of beauty So far this analysis has fallen broadly within the social constructionism of social anthropology and feminist critique. I now turn to the generative aspects of fl eshly beauty I have not yet addressed. My aim is to analyse tensions between, on the one hand, beauty – as a fl eshly property of the person – and on the other hand, the logics of social classifi cation. Paul Ricoeur points out the importance of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in social sciences and humanities to investigate the hidden structures underlying social life, be they economic, political or symbolic (1970). He points out, though, that this mode of analysis is sometimes complemented by a “hermeneutics of Fleshly beauty 239 retrieval”. This kind of interpretive work entails crossing barriers of culture, class or history in order to see social life from an actor-centred perspective. As I began analysing my fi eldwork material my focus was on the veiled social and historical processes that constructed beauty norms. I was left, though, with a sense of dis- satisfaction. I had understood something, I thought, about how beauty practices and norms refl ect contradictions in Brazilian health care and in its constructions of race and gender. But was there something that Brazil might teach about beauty? Moving into a ‘retrieval mode’ I began to think more about the inherited aspects of attractiveness, which were often the object of everyday commentary. Con- versations about appearance suggested a kind of aesthetic lottery of birth. The inheritance of beauty, in this view, is a highly random and unpredictable matter. Some traits were particularly valued, such as straight hair. Kin often praised beleza (beauty) in a family member, but might also worry about its consequences. Some siblings were said to “come out” with markedly different “colours” or combinations of facial features and hair, which could lead to embarrassing “scenes”, for example, when a mother with a lighter daughter is mistaken for her nanny. Brazil’s colour hierarchies refl ect racial domination; however, they are not entirely congruent with aesthetic hierarchies. Just as some poorer people are said to be more beautiful than richer ones, so too some darker people are said to be more beautiful than lighter people. I realised, again in a ‘retrieval mode’, that beauty has a hereditary logic of its own, one which is not reducible to other social hierarchies, and which mattered to my informants. While the inheritance of beauty is unfair in that it rewards people without regard to their merit, I argue that the relationship between beauty and social hierarchy is more complex than it might appear at fi rst. Scarry (2001) points out that a major contemporary critique of beauty is that it entails hierarchies of taste and judgment that confl ict with egalitarian ideals. Scarry, in fact, argues against this critique of beauty, maintaining instead that beauty is compatible with ‘justice’. Scarry has, in my view, correctly identifi ed the modern (or really quite recent) ethical ground of beauty, though I disagree with her defence of beauty, at least when it applies to persons. Rather, beauty is highly undemocratic. Sociologists and economists have shown that ‘lookism’ can have social and emotional consequences comparable to racism (though in multi-ethnic societies these two forms of discrimination often overlap) (Hammermesh 2011; Harper 2000; Anderson et al. 2010). The benefi ts of beauty should not be exaggerated and indeed women judged ‘too attractive’ can also be punished for this attribute (Wolf 1991). Still, attractive men and women on average enjoy a wide range of benefi ts – in school, work, sex and romantic love, that is, in three major domains of the modern self. These benefi ts are unfair in that they do not reward moral qualities of the person. However, the very unfairness of the inheritance of beauty also endows it with a capacity to confer benefi ts to those excluded from other systems of privilege. Returning to the perspective of my informants it seemed that nature exhibited to them a kind of black humour – or a ‘just injustice’ – in sometimes passing over those most ‘deserving’ and sometimes gracing those denied the privileges of birth 240 Alexander Edmonds or wealth. The inheritance of beauty can be said to operate as a ‘double negative’: it allocates power unfairly, but can disturb other unfair hierarchies. While beauty is unfair in that it appears to be awarded to the morally undeserving, it can also grant power to those excluded from other systems of privilege based in wealth, pedigree or education (Edmonds 2010). For many of the poorer Brazilians I knew, part of the appeal of beauty – either inherited or enhanced – was that it seemed to offer a means to, almost magically, bypass the myriad obstacles they otherwise face. In Brazil many dreams of social mobility centre on the body. For boys the odds of becoming a professional footballer are remote indeed, yet this dream remains remarkably widespread in part because it represents a form of success that does not need money or wealth to attain. It seems to lie within the means of those without means. Perhaps the nearest feminine counterpart to these hyper-masculine icons are Brazil’s artistas (celebrities): actresses, models and dancers. Talent may or may not be perceived to contribute to their success, but nearly all are known for the perfection of their bodily beleza (beauty), discussed in detail by the Brazilian media. Their dream- like, almost overnight attainment of great wealth and glamour seems to arouse the widespread dream of becoming such an artista . Modelling talent searches get enormous turnout across the country, while some NGOs, such as Lens of Dreams in City of God favela, give teenagers lessons in modelling. Fashion models hardly seem like good role models for disadvantaged youth, in part because their success does not require hard work, but rare genetic endowment. Yet perhaps the very fact that bodily beauty seems to be inherited ‘blindly’ – or partly independently of other status markers – may explain its democratic appeal. Modelling of course often simply remains a sonho , dream, and in urban periph- eries many women concentrate their energies on fi nding an alternative to what was practically the default job for their mothers and grandmothers: domestic service (Goldenberg 2000). The most accessible escape route from this social destiny is work in the expanding informal and service economies. Beauty and youth are less explicit job requirements here, yet women job seekers said these traits are often informal hiring criteria in the fashionable boutiques, bars and hotels that surround many of Rio’s favelas. These bodily qualities can become all the more salient for poorer women as they can help offset the disadvantages of relative darkness, low education or a favela address. The signifi cance of attractiveness for relationships is more complex, but here too beauty is sometimes seen as a resource that generates important social effects. In some Rio favelas women joke about pulling a golpe de bau, a treasure chest coup, or seduction of a wealthier ‘crown’ through a combination of cunning and physical attractiveness (Goldstein 2003). In an environment where men are often expected to have multiple relationships, and women’s income is unpredictable, attracting and keeping a male partner are often seen as an essential means to accessing diverse resources. Attractiveness often is given a more explicit value in sex work. For example, travesti (transvestite) sex workers measure precisely how much an improvement to their bodies (achieved with female contraceptives and silicone injections) translates into money earned on the street (Kulick 1998). Yet, beauty Fleshly beauty 241 is also valued in a wider range of relationships beyond sex-for-money exchanges, and can be converted into resources that are not only material (Bernstein 2007). Brazil has a vibrant youth culture – often body centred and cutting across class distinctions – that is well connected to a booming tourism sector. In its cosmopolitan cities, youth of all classes often have opportunities to mingle with the middle class, and sexual and romantic encounters, both gay and straight, bring not only material benefi ts but also new experiences, travel and cultural resources (Parker 1999). The relatively open sexual and youth cultures of Brazil also contribute to a highly competitive market of relationships in which body work is undertaken in order to compete. Beauty is not seen as a luxury but as something essential, which “ does put food on the table”, as one working class woman put it, reversing an old Brazilian proverb. The patients who sought cosmetic surgery in public or charity hospitals often expected to get immediate, material benefi ts from their operations: earning more income, forming relationships, entering TV (as an actress or model). Other patients wanted surgery to protect themselves from vulnerability in a competitive, uncertain world of work and relationships. Such motives disconcerted surgeons (at least the more ethically minded ones) and psychologists who work at clinics to screen out problem patients, and who believe the only good reason for cosmetic surgery is to raise auto-estima , self-esteem. Some women learned this psychotherapeutic rationale through their interactions at the clinic, while others rejected it, seeing surgery as a means to “get somewhere in society”. These patients did not see beauty as a condition of the body that prompts disinterested contemplation, but on the contrary various interested responses, not all of them desired. My argument is not that beauty is empowerment, as others have indeed argued. Catherine Hakim (2010), for example, provocatively claims that women’s “erotic capital” is so valuable because demand for it is high: men want sex more than women do, on average; since beauty contributes to erotic capital, it confers power (see Green 2013 for a critique). Yet, many of the benefi ts promised by the inheritance or enhancement of beauty fail to materialise. Beauty is interlinked with youth and inherently transient. In contrast, cultural capital, such as education, tends to accrue value over time. The value of many aspects of beauty (such as relative lightness) is determined by power structures. Moreover, it is not always clear who owns whatever benefi ts do fl ow from bodily or sexual capital, Ashley Mears (2014, 2011) argues. Many of the profi ts that derive from women’s beauty in fashion and entertainment industries are appropriated by men. Beneath its glittering surface, there is indeed much about beauty that is ‘suspicious’. Thus, perhaps the actor-centred perspective I have tried to ‘retrieve’ here is simply a form of false consciousness. Political organisation or self-development might bring more lasting rewards than attractiveness. However, I believe that my informants also had insight into the role of attractiveness in the forms of exchange mandated and incited in consumer capitalism. Beauty is not only a ‘superfi cial’ or ‘skin deep’ attribute of the person. It also generates effects in work markets and in the unpredictable fi eld of love and sex – effects that may take on even more importance for those unable to gain other forms of social recognition. The capacity 242 Alexander Edmonds of the attractive person to redirect the gaze of society at her or him can also seem to reveal the contradictions in the liberal ideology that work and education are viable means of social mobility for all. Some elite women I knew expressed bathos at what they called the “vanity of their maids” – the care their servants took with their nails or even their attainment of plástica . Such “vanity”, though, also testifi es to the desire amongst working-class women to negate the indignities of domestic service and, more generally, the invisibility of poverty. Beauty norms do not only inscribe inequality; rather, the fl eshly capacities of their bodies seem to provide limited escape from the injustices that are everywhere around them and of which they are well aware.

Beyond aesthetic relativism? In this chapter I intended to respond to the volume’s invitation to think “beyond a purely aesthetic and relativist stance”. But has my analysis actually done so? I argued that racialised and other status hierarchies are not congruent with aesthetic hierarchies. This lack of congruency is important because the perception and response to fl eshly beauty create affects and effects not entirely predicted by other forms of social domination and symbolism. One objection to my argument, however, is that such affects and effects are themselves constructed, and therefore my analysis has not gone beyond the relativist stance. In one sense, but only a trivial one I believe, this objection is true. All phenomena are socially constructed in the sense that they can only be represented through symbolic means. There is no beauty ‘in itself’ apart from what is perceived by a social being. But this notion of social constructionism is as reductive as the biologism that says all human action is caused by chemistry. A constructionist logic can be applied recursively to itself to show that its account of the world- as-constructed is also constructed, and hence a partial view. As Donna Haraway (1988) points out, seeing makes a world according to the capacities of a particular eye (human, fl y, robot, etc.). Like any form of seeing, constructionism leaves some things in – and others out. As anthropologists we may never entirely be free, as it were, of the worlds we construct in our scholarship; yet we can investigate our intellectual blind spots, glimpse them obliquely. In this chapter I asked: in what ways are the inheritance of beauty and responses to it not determined by social hierarchy and cultural meaning? Social constructionism grants agency to the abstraction of society (or history, discourse, biopower, etc.). We might also ask how this agency becomes entangled with – and sometimes limited by – other agencies, even if they are unknowable in themselves. One example of such agency is fl eshly beauty, which can be perceived through effects it generates that are not rigidly determined by other forms of social organisation. The beauty of youth, male and female, redirects the gaze and interest of society, away from the wisdom, spiritual powers and social capital of their elders. It could be said to impose some limits on the ability of social structures to reproduce themselves in the next generation. A woman may (illicitly or not) choose the beautiful male youth over the elder man her family or social group prefers for his wealth Fleshly beauty 243 or status. Such ‘fatal attractions’ may be more or less rare depending on social structure and individual daring, but they nevertheless have the potential to subvert the rules of marriage and alliance. The social effects of beauty can, in some situations, limit the powers of elders, injecting unpredictable dynamism to generational relationships and social reproduction. If nature is democratic in its relative blindness to status markers when it allocates beauty, it is even more democratic in its indifference to such markers when it takes beauty away through physical decline. Aging, like beauty, is also a social construction. Yet aging entails the diminishment of physical properties of the body, including beauty, strength, and sexual and reproductive powers. This biological process can stand in tension with social aging: the power and wealth that generally accrue to higher status people as they pass through the life course can be under- mined by their physical decline (another ‘just injustice’ of beauty). For this reason perhaps plástica provokes much black humour and social aspiration in Brazil. When surgery ‘fails’, it is seen as a futile effort to counter biological levelling, exposing the fact that despite all her disadvantages the poor moça , girl, will still be more beautiful than the rich senhora . Such failures reinforce a feeling that youth, beauty and physicality are precious resources, available to all, and not the privileges – unlike so much else in life – of the wealthy and high born. On the other hand, when plástica succeeds, it is seen to pile on unfairness to the unfairness of social hierarchy, allowing the rich to seemingly free themselves from the depredations of nature. Some working class women vehemently assert their ‘right’ to plástica , as if the prospect that they would be denied the medical escape from aging that has become routine amongst the middle class would be a fi nal, unbearable injustice. Of course it’s also true that beauty norms are to some extent culturally embedded, and cannot be easily disembedded. The Azawagh beauty norm is an example. Yet fl eshly beauty also travels remarkably well. In globalised markets of sexual relationships – such as romance tourism, online apps and arranged transnational marriages – attractiveness is a primary currency, one that has an exchangeable and mobile value. Even aside from such phenomena of consumer capitalism, historically beauty has been legible across great social gulfs. It can spark the cross-class ‘fatal attractions’ mentioned by Bourdieu (1984), undermine political alliances or cross ethnic divides. The capacity of a beautiful person to cause happy, or often tragic, events is a major trope in Western myth and art (from the Trojan wars to Georgian novels and Brazil- ian telenovelas ). Sociologically, though, we have paid much less attention to the role of beauty in the attraction and bonding which are, after all, necessary for social life. Anthropology has documented variable patterns in marriage proscription and prescription. Some societies proscribe marriage with a cross cousin, or prescribe marriage with a parallel cousin. Others have inverse rules. Numerous structures also govern the “exchange of women”, putting groups into relationships as ‘wife givers’ and ‘wife takers’ (e.g. Black 1972). These models, however, rarely map onto actual marriage practices. There are multiple reasons for this, but one neglected one is that attraction and courtship do not always serve the needs of social reproduction or political alliance. 244 Alexander Edmonds Ethnographers are in a good position to study the effects that beauty has on partner choice, the social confl icts that arise as a result and the limits imposed on the powers of elders to determine youth relationships. For example, in societies where men continue to marry new wives over the course of their lives, the beauty of the male youth may give him the capacity to compete with an elder who has more status, trade relationships or resources. The random inheritance of beauty is a parallel system for allocating power and status that sometimes reinforces, and sometimes interferes with, proscribed and prescribed partner choice. Beauty is only one element in courtship and attraction (amongst other qualities such as wealth, wit, artistic virtuosity, etc.). Scholars, though, seem to have minimised its role in partner choice, perhaps due to European spiritualised notions of both beauty and romantic love. Consider these examples of modern cultural common sense that distinguish between ‘inner’ and ‘outer beauty’: Beauty is skin deep or the eyes are beautiful because they are a window onto the soul. Both these statements refl ect Kantian distinctions between a coarser physical and a more spiritual beauty of the person, one that is animated by moral feeling. Fleshly beauty seems to be too superfi cial or transient a basis for lasting love and partnership. And it probably is. Yet anthropologists and historians emphasise that the social expectation that romantic love should accompany marriage or life long partnership is far from universal (Jankowiak 1995, 2008). It was not historically an expectation in Brazil. The model of enduring romantic love between married partners is still seen as foreign or unfamiliar in some regions, and signifi cantly denoted with the English word lovi , instead of the Portuguese amor (Rebhun 1999). What seems to be more widespread than lovi in the ethnographic and historical record is an affect that resembles more the English folk category of the ‘crush’, a transitory state of infatuation. This swoon-like affect blends intrusive thoughts of the beloved, overwhelming feelings of desire and often perceptions of his or her radiant beauty (Harris 1995). It implies feedback relationships amongst attraction, erotic pleasure and perceptions of attractiveness, with each of these affects reinforcing each other. Beauty could be said to be generative in the sense that it is often integral to experiences of attraction and has the potential to overcome status differences or other barriers – such as the disgust provoked by too close contact with the fl esh of another person – that might otherwise keep partners apart. I have discussed some of the hitherto neglected ways that social science and humanities can contribute to understanding fl eshly beauty. Much scholarship has demonstrated an impressive variability in aesthetic norms and practices as well as their risks, such as body alienation, bodily harm and social discrimination. However, I have proposed that we also study the responses to attractiveness in everyday life. Such responses might seem uninteresting or irrelevant for social theory, perhaps because they are seen as merely private. Yet, investigating them focuses attention on what is specifi c to beauty as a domain of social life. The inheritance of physical beauty can bypass other systems for allocating status, or provoke relationships that do not follow cultural logics of partner choice. Aesthetic perceptions also have a capacity to be shared across ethnic, class Fleshly beauty 245 and cultural boundaries, perhaps especially in the globalised markets of consumer capitalism. Beauty can generate strong affects, pleasant or unpleasant, and set in motion new relationships. Ethnographers are in a good position to shed light on these effects and contribute a richer, practice-oriented perspective on the role of beauty in social life.

Note 1 We earlier saw how Stratz asserted the superiority of Nordic beauty, a claim that inﬂ uential Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre (who had been a student of Boas) vigorously opposed, not only by countering that racial mixture was aesthetically superior to Aryan purity, but also by attacking the very notion of aesthetics as disinterested contemplation (like European Primitivist avant-gardes and other ‘decadents’ he argued that beauty was inextricably entangled with eroticism).

References Anderson, T.L., C. Grunert, A. Katz and S. Lovascio. 2010. Aesthetic Capital: A Research Review on Beauty Perks and Penalties. Sociology Compass 4(8): 564–575. Bartky, S. 1990. Femininity and Domination . New York: Routledge. Bernstein, E. 2007. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Black, L.T. 1972. Relative Status of Wife Givers and Wife Takers in Gilyak Society. Ameri- can Anthropologist 74(5): 1244–1248. Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body . Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chernin, K. 1981. The Obsession: Refl ections on the Tyranny of Slenderness . New York: Harper & Row. Edmonds, A. 2007. The Poor Have the Right to be Beautiful: Cosmetic Surgery in Neolib- eral Brazil. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society 13(2): 363–381. ——— 2010. Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press. ——— 2013. Can Medicine be Aesthetic? Disentangling Beauty and Health in Elective Surgeries. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27(2): 233–252. Freud, S. 1953 [1905]. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Standard Edition. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 7. Freyre, G. 1986. Modos de Homen & Modas de Mulher . Rio de Janeiro: Record. Fry, P. 2000. Politics, Nationality, and the Meanings of “Race” in Brazil. Daedalus 129, Spring. Fry, P. 2002. “Estética e Política: Relações entre ‘raça’, publicidade e produção da beleza no Brasil,” in M. Goldenberg (ed.), Nu & Vestido: Dez Antropólogos Revelam a Cultura do Corpo Carioca . Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, pp. 303–326. Giddens, A. 1993. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Mod- ern Societies . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Goldenberg, M. 2000. “De amelias a operarias: Um ensaio sobre os confl itos femininos no mercado de trabalho e nas relações conjugais,” in M. Goldenberg (ed.), Os novos desejos . Rio de Janeiro: Record, pp. 105–124. 246 Alexander Edmonds Goldstein, D. 2003. Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown . Berkeley: University of California Press. Green, A.I. 2013. ‘Erotic capital’ and the Power of Desirability: Why ‘Honey Money’ is a Bad Collective Strategy for Remedying Gender Inequality. Sexualities 16: 137–158. Hakim, C. 2010. Erotic Capital. European Sociological Review 26: 499–518. Hammermesh, D. 2011. Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful . Prince- ton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hanchard, M. 1999. “Black Cinderella? Race and the Public Sphere in Brazil,” in M. Hanchard (ed.), Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil . Durham, NC: Duke Univer- sity Press, pp. 59–81. Haraway, D. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privi- lege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14(3): 575–599. Harper, B. 2000. Beauty, Stature and the Labour Market: A British Cohort Study. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 62(s1): 771–800. Harris, H. 1995. “Rethinking Polynesian Heterosexual Relationships: A Case Study on Mangaia, Cook Islands,” in W. Jankowiak (ed.), Romantic Passion: A Universal Experi- ence . New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 95–127. Hau, M. 2003. The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hegel, G.W.F. 2008. “The Philosophy of Fine Art,” in A. Singh and R. Mohapatra (eds.), Reading Hegel: The Introductions . Prahran, Victoria: Re Press, pp. 155–190. Gould, S.J. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man . New York: Norton. Jankowiak, W. (ed.). 1995. Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience . New York: Colum- bia University Press. Jankowiak, W. R. 2008. Intimacies: Love and Sex Across Cultures. New York: Columbia University Press. Kant, I. 2003. Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Translated by J. Goldthwait). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kaw, E. 1993. Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7: 74–89. Kulick, D. 1998. Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Pros- titutes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lévi-Strauss, C. 1973 [1955]. Tristes Tropiques (Translated by J. Weightman and D. Weight- man). New York: Penguin. ——— 1983. The Raw and the Cooked: Mythologiques (Translated by J. Weightman and D. Weightman). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, vol. 1. Mears, A. 2011. Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model. Berkeley: University of California Press. ——— 2014. Aesthetic Labor for the Sociologies of Work, Gender, and Beauty. Sociology Compass 8(12): 1330–1343. Monk, E. Jr. 2014. Skin Tone Stratifi cation among Black Americans, 2001–2003. Social Forces 92(4): 1313–1337. Morgan, K.P. 1991. Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women’s Bodies. Hypatia 6: 25–53. Parker, R. 1999. Beneath the Equator: Cultures of Desire, Male Homosexuality, and Emerging Gay Communities in Brazil . New York: Routledge. Popenoe, R. 2004. Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty, and Sexuality among a Saharan Peo- ple . London: Routledge. Fleshly beauty 247 Rebhun, L.A. 1999. The Heart Is Unknown Country: Love in the Changing Economy of Northeast Brazil . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ricoeur, P. 1970. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (Translated by D. Sav- age). New Haven: Yale University Press. Scarry, E. 2001. On Beauty and Being Just . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schwarcz, L.M. 1999. The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870–1930 . New York: Hill & Wang. Skidmore, T. 1974. Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought . New York: Oxford University Press. Telles, E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Signifi cance of Skin Color in Brazil . Princ- eton: Princeton University Press. Vianna, H. 1999. The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music & National Identity in Brazil . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Winddance Twine, F. 1998. Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil . New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Wolf, N. 1991. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women . New York: HarperCollins. 16 Beauty in motion Collective creativity in contemporary dance

Caroline M. Potter

Recently I looked up a former classmate whom I had met during my ﬁ eldwork at a professional contemporary dance school in London. One of her social media posts caught my eye with its simple label: “Beauty . . .”. The post contained a video link to an excerpt from Nowhere , a theatre piece by Greek choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou created in 2009. The video clip featured the ‘body mechanic system’ of Nowhere ’s ‘central scene’, in which approximately twenty performers lined up on either side of two dancers at centre stage to move as a single unit with a single purpose. Most of their bodies and dark clothing receded from view as their many arms aligned side-by-side to create a great snaking motion across the full length of the stage. The two-sided snake quietly rose and then plummeted as it/they slid the clothing off from the central ﬁ gures, a woman and a man, with controlled grace and purpose. If we take ‘beauty’ to denote a pleasurable experience, something that engages the senses and that suggests creative excellence, then I concurred with my classmate’s appraisal of this performance. Nowhere was performed to launch the new main stage of the Greek National Theatre, and it was described thus by the theatre’s website (Theatre Room Asia 2014):

Nowhere is a work about the physical space of the theatrical stage. Constantly changing and deﬁ ned by the men and women that inhabit it, it can be countless different places while designed to be nowhere at all.

This idea of the theatre space as fl uid and co-created resonated with my theoretical stance on human bodies as emergent, i.e. in a constant state of becoming (Potter 2015, 391). In the case of professional dancers, bodies come into being through ongoing sensory engagement with other dancing bodies in their social contexts; student dancers become professionals through a shared training process in which they walk, balance, stretch, fall, turn, leap, sweat, and share weight together on a daily basis. Thus dancing bodies are not simply there in the world, but are constantly made and re-made in a long series of moments involving collective attention to and with others (Csordas 1993). Prompted by my classmate’s post label, I wondered if we could think of ‘beauty’ in similar terms: as a confi guration that comes into existence at particular moments, through the collective sensory Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 249 engagement of multiple bodies situated within particular environmental fl ows. This chapter is the result of that exploration. Anthropological consideration of beauty has focused on the material products of creative effort, with notable attention to the presentation and/or modifi cation of the human body (Strathern 1979; Turner 2012 [1980]; Ewart and O’Hanlon 2007). Beauty has been portrayed by anthropologists as a personal and national tool of identity politics, evident in social phenomena ranging from hair care (Caldwell 2003) to international beauty pageants (Cohen et al. 1996). With Wacquant’s (1998, 334) ethnographic account of boxing a notable exception, descriptions of beauty tend to emphasize physical form (particularly of women) over the day-to-day actions of living persons. Even the growing literature on cosmetic surgery, which highlights the active body modifi cation strategies that people might employ to their personal, economic, and/or social advantage (Edmonds 2008; Ackerman 2010), stems from a feminist critique of normative body image, framed in Foucauldian terms of discipline and surveillance (Fou- cault 1979). While informative, these analyses suggest that beauty is something fairly stable, an intrinsic property that is recognized and reinforced by dominant cultural consensus. More recent anthropological discussions of creativity and skilled practice (e.g. Marchand 2010; Schneider and Wright 2013) allow for a shift from thinking about beauty as viewed (emanating from an object) to beauty as experienced (felt by actors engaged in creative processes). While an important shift to make given the historical bias of attention to the former at the expense of the latter, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. Following Ingold (2000), I have argued previously (Potter 2008) that the senses must be understood as a total percep- tory package that orientates one’s entire body-self within its lifeworld, and not as discreet physiological pathways that give rise to separate experiences of sight, sound, etc. In earlier work I emphasized the felt dimensions of contemporary dance through descriptions of bodily heat and kinaesthesia, two senses that are collectively engaged through the dance training process but that have received little scholarly attention in comparison to the ‘classic fi ve’ (sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch). While mindful of the importance of considering beauty from the dancers’ perspective of felt experience, here I explore beauty as a collective process from an audience’s point of view. From this perspective beauty is still experienced as total sensory engagement rather than merely viewed, but kinaes- thetic and other felt sensory modes are less emphasized than they might have been from the performers’ perspective. In this chapter I will argue that beauty is not a reifi ed quality, but rather an emergent phenomenon that serves to orientate collective sensory engagement across space and time. Beauty comes and goes in moments, as a result of constantly shifting relationships between persons, ideas, and things. It is recognized, acknowledged – indeed collectively created – by embodied persons moving within their environmental webs. Because its existence hinges on confi gurations of multiple persons who share (at least to some extent) in their perception of pleasurable objects or events, beauty is a social occurrence. It is one means amongst many of 250 Caroline M. Potter achieving shared experience, of feeling as though we are swimming in the same cultural sea. In order to make this argument I will draw on ethnographic observations that I initially made more than ten years ago, when immersed in my fi eldwork amongst professional dancers-in-training. For ten months across 2003–04 I was a daily participant in intensive full-time training at a well-known contemporary dance school in London (henceforth ‘the School’). As a registered student on the course I took two daily dance technique classes as well as weekly or bi-weekly courses in improvisation, choreography, performance, and other supporting studies such as anatomy, body conditioning, choreology, and dance history. During this time my research was also informed by my regular attendance at professional dance performances, auditions, and social events alongside fellow students. I spent most of my time with the dancers and teachers connected to the School’s one-year course (approximately thirty students, ranging in age from 18 to 32 years old), but I also observed and got to know some of the approximately 150 dancers on the School’s three-year BA course, particularly fi rst-year students who shared some classes with the one-year students. I followed up with some of these students during the next academic year (by taking open professional classes at the School and meeting with continuing full-time students during their breaks) and again around the time of their graduation from the School in 2006. I have also had opportunities for in-person contact with individual dancers after they made the transition to professionals – notably in 2011, after a performance in which one of my former classmates danced the female role in Pave Up Paradise , described later in the chapter. While I did not frame my explorations of the professional contemporary dance community in terms of ‘beauty’ at the time, one of my initial research questions centred on whether or not this community had implicit body standards for professional success. Below I take as my point of departure a consideration of the form of dancers’ bodies as beautiful, in order to expose the analytical limits of discourse surrounding “the body beautiful” (Reischer and Koo 2004). From there I move to a broader consideration of beauty as an ephemeral confi guration that prompts collective sensory orientation, through description of a celebrated contemporary dance piece that I argue enabled beauty to emerge through its coming-together of the theatre space, soundscape, material objects, and human bodies in motion.

Beautiful bodies As the curtain rose, a solitary fi gure began to undulate within the confi nes of a box of light. For the duration of the piece, a single body contracted and expanded, displaying her chiselled musculature as shoulders rolled, arms cut through the space at lightning speed, and legs occasionally gestured directly upwards towards the light source that bounded the dancer’s movements. The dancer was Sylvie Guillem, a ballerina of the British Royal Ballet who in more recent years expanded her repertoire to include contemporary dance works such as the solo that I witnessed in late 2004. She is regarded by many as the best dancer of her generation, praised for her expressive performance and solid yet Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 251 fl uid technical abilities. But she also has a decided advantage over other dancers in terms of eye-catching attributes: her famous legs. They are long, lean, and limber, easily stretching apart past 180°. They were used as a visual image during a ballet class at the School, with our teacher instructing us to “pretend you have Sylvie Guillem’s legs” so that we might toss our own legs into the air with utmost confi dence and ease. Guillem’s physical body has been scrutinized, celebrated, and potentially envied over the course of her successful career, as this excerpt from a Guardian article (written as she approached retirement) suggests:

Her long, lean, ﬂ exible body threw off technical challenges with an almost insolent ease. As she balanced, supremely, on one super-strong pointe and lifted one delicate, steely leg to graze her ear, Guillem was to some of her public the most glamorous dancer of the age – and to others, the most arrogant. (Mackrell 2014)

Beauty standards amongst classical ballet artists and audiences favour long limbs, a relatively shorter torso, slimness, and articulate feet; these collective preferences are well established and openly discussed (Nolan 2011). The contemporary dance community, in contrast, is less direct in expressing its aesthetic preferences. The bodies of full-time contemporary dance students are continually presented for examination by assessors, auditioning choreographers, and audiences (including peers) alike, but in comparison to their ballet counterparts they are given relatively little guidance as to what sort of body they should aim to become. This lack of explicit discourse begs the question of whether or not an aesthetic ideal exists amongst contemporary dancers and their audiences. The presence of such an ideal could profoundly infl uence shared experiences of beauty, which in turn could orientate the contemporary dance community towards selected practices for training, company selection, and professional recognition. In terms of stature, the School did not seem to promote the notion of an ideal type. Images of students’ bodies were projected throughout the School, usually in the form of promotional posters for upcoming student performances or colourful leafl ets for courses on offer. 1 The bodies on show were highly varied: a short, limber girl executing a technically strong leap; a skinny male balancing in hand-stand position; a tall, lean female in a pedestrian stance looking intensely at the camera; a short, stockier female in an inverted yoga position; a muscular, average-height male standing powerfully on one leg; a short, muscular female fully supporting a tall, leaner male on her shoulder; and a tall, medium-build woman mid-spin with hair fl ying, amongst others. Rather than volunteering, students were approached to be photographed, and I inferred that the School’s staff purposefully chose a cross- section of students to refl ect a variety of people doing a variety of movements. I judged these images to be fairly representative of the student body: roughly twice as many women as men, the occasional non-white student, and bodies that ranged from very tall to very short with varying degrees of leanness and musculature. When beginning my fi eldwork I did not judge my own body to be ideal for dance; I am not naturally limber, and my exceptionally short torso does not easily 252 Caroline M. Potter lend itself to the images of length encouraged in both ballet and contemporary dance. I was surprised upon arriving at the School to meet widely varying heights and body shapes (including a woman in my class of thirty students who was taller than all three male students in the group). The form of some students was described as ‘balletic’ (e.g. slim, small hips, small chest, and proportionally long limbs), but others were dubbed more ‘earthy’ (average or below-average height with a muscular build) or ‘normal’ (resembling the pedestrians on the London streets) with equal enthusiasm. As one of the more ‘earthy’ types, I struggled to resolve my own body image with my preconceived notion of a beautiful dancer. The School’s staff consistently presented a ‘come as you are’ attitude, encouraging students to fi nd “a way [of training] that works for you, for your body”. The institutional discourse took a personalized tone, particularly when teachers or the resident physiotherapist spoke to students about how they might change their individual practice to enhance their performance or to avoid future injuries. These expressions placed value on uniqueness and individual control of one’s own capacity to move – which is perhaps not surprising given contemporary dance’s historical roots in movement styles that were developed by individuals (e.g. Isa- dora Duncan, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham) to suit their own physicalities. Staff members at the School seemed to take pride in purporting a sense of openness and acceptance with regard to body types. The School’s physiotherapist, herself a former dancer, bluntly conveyed her views on the way in which attitudes to different bodily shapes had changed over time: “we used to be told early on that if we didn’t have ‘the look’ to be a dancer then we would have to quit at some point. The dance world is much more accepting now”. This ethos of personalisation and acceptance was reinforced during my fi rst one-on-one tutorial of the year, when a ballet teacher (the same one who had instructed us to visualize Guillem’s legs) encouraged me to consider professional performance. I expressed reservations about my physical characteristics including my limited fl exibility, but she instead emphasized my ability to dance rhythmically and my ‘natural’ capacity to perform. Similar messages were conveyed by other teachers throughout the year: the ‘quality’ of one’s movement and one’s capacity for creative expression overrode physical form. 2 Amongst students, the results of an end-of-year questionnaire that I adminis- tered revealed little evidence for the notion of an ideal body aesthetic in terms of physical stature. When students were asked to rate the importance of particular characteristics for professional contemporary dancers, they consistently rated physical descriptors such as ‘short’, ‘tall’, ‘curvy’, ‘skinny’, and ‘long/lean’ with the lowest rating, corresponding to ‘doesn’t matter/no opinion’. In contrast, words that I considered more personal, quality-of-movement characteristics, such as ‘grounded’, ‘strong’, ‘creative’, ‘expressive’, and ‘fast’, were consistently labelled with the highest rating and its corresponding descriptor of: ‘Ideal. Every contemporary dancer should strive for this’. Even physical characteristics that I would have considered ideal, such as ‘highly muscular’ and ‘highly fl exible’, typically received either a medium (‘not required, but desirable’) rating, if not the lowest rating. These results surprised me, perhaps refl ecting my own lengthy background Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 253 in ballet, which clearly values particular physical traits. The majority of students, however, seemed to accept the School’s projected claim that any student could become a professional dancer, regardless of physical stature, if s/he demonstrated an accepted level of bodily skill and displayed a captivating performance presence. One student epitomized this view by stating: “I don’t think there’s a physical ideal anymore . . . I’m more interested in how someone dances and performs”. More strongly than the questionnaire results, my opinion as to what makes a beautiful contemporary dancer was informed by the informal consensus that seemed to emerge amongst my classmates and teachers regarding which dancers within our cohort showed the most professional promise. By the end of our one- year course certain dancers seemed to garner relatively more positive attention than others from both peers and established professionals; these dancers were praised by classmates, had already been selected for performance projects outside of the School, and/or were given featured roles in the School’s end-of-year graduation performances. One such dancer was the classmate who made the social media post on ‘Beauty’, who has had consistent success as a performer since leaving the School. Although she was one of the younger members of our cohort, through her strong yet feminine physique she conveyed an on-stage presence of a savvy, assertive woman who was not to be trifl ed with. The movement qualities that I associated with her by the end of our training were intensity and power. During classes she was more likely to apply too much force to a movement (at the risk of overbalancing or falling) than to approach a new movement sequence gently. Her movements seemed to project beyond the physical limits of her body; one could sense the air around her displaced as she sent her arm slicing through the space at great speed before arresting the movement in an instant. Other dancers within the School who were collectively identifi ed as talented exhibited a similar ‘commitment’ in their quality of movement, and this seemed to be the basis of their beauty as dancers rather than their physical form (which varied widely between them). If beauty in contemporary dance is not the dancer’s body per se, then what is it? Towards what are our collective aesthetic sensibilities directed? In the remainder of this chapter I move beyond the consideration of beauty as an intrinsic property of bodies, towards beauty as a processual confi guration of social fl ows. In order to pursue this line of argument my analytical lens will expand beyond dancers’ bodies (and their associated qualities of movement) to include the wider context in which those bodies are aesthetically appreciated: the spaces and moments of performance.

Beautiful work The creative co-product of dancers, choreographers, and other artists is often referred to as either a ‘piece’ or a ‘work’. The former term suggests an art object that maintains a similar ontological position to other Western fi ne art forms: a ‘piece’ is a discrete thing, something to be viewed and appreciated in a context that is removed, at least to some extent, from the everyday fl ow of life. A contemporary dance piece is performed in a designated space: often on a stage, but even in more 254 Caroline M. Potter mundane settings of ‘site-specifi c choreography’ (which have included roof tops, museums, airport terminals, and public streets) there is a sense that the space has been temporarily marked for something out-of-the-ordinary. It is also typically time-bounded, from the beginning of a piece when bodies/lights/sounds begin to move in relation to each other and the end when those purposeful relationships are stopped abruptly or fade away. All aspects of a piece – the setting as well as the music, costumes, lighting, props, spoken text, and of course the movements executed through the choreography – coalesce in space and time to form an emergent object of sensory engagement. The alternative term, ‘work’ – favoured by many at my fi eld site – is suggestive of the effort and background processes that underlie each performance. The art form of contemporary dance is thus ephemeral and contingent on relational fl ows, even as it can be perceived as a thing with distinct boundaries of time and space. In an attempt to move beyond the scholarship on “the body beautiful” (Reischer and Koo 2004), which is largely confi ned to the representation and agency of (mainly women’s) bodies through body modifi cation practices, I will now describe a celebrated contemporary dance piece/work as a beautiful object worthy of anthropological enquiry. In understanding beauty as an emergent capacity for inviting collective attention and pleasure, I have focused on a widely praised piece of choreography that originated at my fi eld site. Pave Up Paradise was created by Ben Duke and Raquel Mesequer when both were undergraduate students at the School. In a 2008 interview for londondance. com, Duke refl ected on his and Mesequer’s motivations for creating it:

The movement and text was very much us, based on our experiences . . . and also a reaction against a training that . . . was focused on turning us into the kind of dancers we had no interest, and no prospect, of becoming . . . I was really driven by my limitations as a dancer.

After Duke and Mesequer ﬁ rst performed the piece in a termly student choreography show, staff at the School selected Pave Up Paradise along with a handful of other student choreography pieces for the end-of-year graduation performances. The graduation performances are an annual event at The Place, one of the main contemporary dance venues in London, and the student pieces were showcased alongside longer works set by established choreographers. Darshan Singh Bhuller, himself a graduate of the School and artistic director at the time of Phoenix Dance Theatre in Leeds, UK, came to the performance in July 2004 and afterwards bought the piece for the company’s repertoire. Around the same time the piece won prizes at two different international choreography competitions. Phoenix toured the piece as part of the company’s twenty-ﬁ fth anniversary gala, and it was well received by critics:

It [Pave Up Paradise] is a fast, funny relationship piece danced to live music . . . Suffi ce to say that it was magnifi cent in every way, danced outstandingly by Tanya Richam-Odoi and Kevin Turner as our modern-day Romeo & Juliet. (Graham Watts writing for Ballet.co.uk Magazine, March 2006) Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 255 The positive reception of the piece by the wider dance world mirrored the enthusiasm of its fi rst audience, largely composed of School students including myself. It was the piece that everyone was talking about, with a reference to it even making its way into an end-of-term School pantomime. Within a dance genre that encompasses a wide range of technical and performance styles – not all to everyone’s liking – Pave Up Paradise captured our collective attention and seemed to foster widespread pleasure amongst its audiences. By these criteria it was undoubtedly beautiful. When Phoenix Dance Theatre toured the piece again as part of its Re fl ected programme in 2011, I eagerly bought my ticket – particularly as the female dance role was being performed by a former classmate of mine from the School. At the end of that performance she spoke to me about the signifi cance for her of dancing in the piece, given its connection to her early training. The promotional material for Pave Up Paradise describes it as a witty, tongue- in-cheek presentation of the biblical Adam and Eve story. Co-creator Raquel Mese- quer describes the concept of the piece as a ‘set-up’ in which Eve is doomed to fail and to be unfairly blamed for the fall of man (Phoenix Dance Theatre 2011). We in the fi rst audience had no promotional material to guide us, but instead encountered the piece through its initial scene: a woman wearing a white button-down shirt and black suit stands behind a silver bucket in the upstage left corner, facing the audience and immobile. A man similarly dressed stands in front of a second bucket in the opposite corner (downstage right), his back to the audience and his hands resting near his abdomen, out of view. A musician occupies the upstage right corner, seated casually and holding a guitar under a subtle pool of light. The fi rst movement on stage is barely perceptible; the fi rst moment of which the audience is aware is the sight and sound of a stream of liquid falling from the man into his bucket, which generates laughter. The man then turns to address the audience, the source of the liquid (a beer bottle with attached spout) now visible. He speaks: “And the Lord God said . . .”, followed by a list of instructions that include “do not drink too much” and “do not get distracted by the naked woman”. The man admits to the audience that “I forgot them all”, but then launches the stage into motion with his comment “I think it’s her fault”: a fi rst sharp strum of the guitar coincides with the woman’s sharp look in his direction. The dancers immediately spring into motion towards one another with intensity. The musician plays the fi rst of three tracks (‘Last Night’ by The Strokes) while the dancers engage in an energetic, contact-based duet at centre stage (Figure 16.1). Bodies spin, jackets are grabbed and tugged, the pair rotate around a central point of connection even as they make rapid direction changes or execute a perfectly timed lift. Many of the qualities of movement valued by School students in the end-of-year questionnaire were perceptible to the audience: ‘grounded’, ‘strong’, ‘expressive’, ‘fast’, etc. The pattern and dynamics of the movement suggest at once both a struggle and an unbreakable relationship – as if the two characters would have fought many times before but would have always come back to each other. The woman gets her own poignant/comic moment during this fl owing yet agitated sequence by pointing out that the man forgot all of God’s instructions and then asking aloud, “How is that my fault?” 256 Caroline M. Potter

Figure 16.1 High-energy opening duet from Pave Up Paradise, performed in 2011 by Phoenix Dance Theatre Copyright Tony Nandi. Reproduced with permission.

Sudden moments of stillness coupled with silence create transition points that could be experienced as beauty: as an audience member I could feel a connection between the pair as they spun towards the fl oor before freezing to look at each other. The tempo and quality of the movements gradually soften towards more supportive weight-sharing and mutual acknowledgement of the other as the critical part of a bigger whole; the musician meanwhile performs ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ by Jeff Buckley. We see that the man does indeed get distracted by the naked woman – another comedy moment as she calmly and purposely removes her shirt, which sends him into a frantic rush, shirt ripped off and fl ying, to join her. The proverbial apple eventually emerges in the woman’s teeth from within one of the buckets, and both dancers proceed to bite it simultaneously. “Whose fault was that?” the man asks her. The piece moves towards a close in a tender sequence that coincides with the musician’s third track, ‘Tijuana Lady’ by Gomez (Figure 16.2). In the quiet that surrounds the fi nal moments, the man’s splayed hands move from opposite directions towards his upper and lower torso; just as he says, “It is not good that man should be alone”, the woman’s hands appear from behind him on either side, mirroring and merging with his hands as the lights fade. To what extent can we consider this celebrated co-creation of movement, light, sound, and material things an experience of beauty? Certainly the piece instilled pleasure in myself and other audience members, from the moments of unexpected Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 257

Figure 16.2 Tender closing duet from Pave Up Paradise, performed in 2011 by Phoenix Dance Theatre Copyright Tony Nandi. Reproduced with permission. laughter to the poignant moments of palpable connection. Grounded in the movement style of contact improvisation (Novack 1990), the piece captivated its audiences through the sharing (sometimes throwing) of body weight and the sense of connection enacted by the dancers. The ﬁ nal image of the joining hands especially moved me, linking this out-of-the-ordinary spectacle within a theatre space to my idealized notion of human love and unfailing commitment. Although impossible to fully perceive other audience members’ responses to the piece, I sensed a shared attention to, and appreciation for, our collective encounter with this work. This encounter involved felt dimensions of emotional reaction and shared energy; through total sensory orientation of our body-selves towards the stage, we did not merely view a beautiful object but rather experienced beauty as a collective process that was generated in the shared space and time between performers and audience members. Beauty was an emergent rather than intrinsic property of the piece, a point that I elaborate further next.

Beauty-in-the-making In the context of an ephemeral art form such as contemporary dance, the relevant question to ask may be not what beauty is (its form and properties), but rather what beauty does (its social consequences) and how it emerges as a capacity for shared, 258 Caroline M. Potter pleasurable experience in particular moments. The beauty of Pave Up Paradise served as a sensory anchor point around which multiple somatic modes of attention (Csordas 1993) were collectively directed. In prompting bodily attention from multiple persons, beauty can give rise to shared experience. Ingold reminds us that far from a default position to be taken for granted, “Sharing is an achievement, not a state of affairs that is given a priori. It is something we have to work at. Specifi cally, it is an achievement of joint practical activity, of moving and perceiving together with others in the setting of that activity” (Ingold 2011, 324). Beauty prompts us to perceive together, to witness life in concert with others. We collectively turn towards it, sensing that it is something to be appreciated by all. Of course something does not have to be beautiful to prompt collective attention; the recent tenth anniversary coverage of the London 07/07 bombings (one of which occurred close to my fi eld site) reminded me that horror can be just as socially compelling as beauty, if not more so. People ran towards or away from the destruction and orientated themselves around televisions, computer screens, and radios as the news came in, resulting in both collective action and society-wide refl ection on British identity. Beauty perhaps prompts different forms of coming-together, but the parallels are instructive. Works of art, Gell reminds us, have ‘anthropological implications’ by prompting “innumerable shades of social/emotional responses to artefacts (of terror, desire, awe, fascination, etc.) in the unfolding pattern of social life” (Gell 1998, 6). In the example of Pave Up Paradise, there was a literal coming-together of bodies within the theatre, and their shared orientation towards the piece as it unfolded on stage. Motivations for attendance no doubt differed amongst audience members, but we gathered there for broadly the same purpose: to experience the show. The outbursts of laughter, the thick stillness as hands intertwined and lights faded, the enthusiastic cheers that followed – in these moments beauty was enacted amongst the performers and audience members. It was perceptible and then dissipated, albeit leaving threads in the spaces of memories. If we take the phenomenological perspective of Merleau-Ponty (1962), we cannot think of beauty as simply there , existing as a pre-defi ned set of qualities that is waiting to be stumbled upon. Instead beauty is actively made in the moment of its perception: through the dancer’s projection through space, the painter’s brushstrokes, the child’s presence, the earth’s rotation. The recognition of beauty requires encounters: at the theatre, in the art gallery, at the playground, with the landscape at the moment of sunset. In its capacity to draw our collective attention, beauty emerges as processes unfold, calling out to be noticed and appreciated amidst the tangle of life in which we fi nd ourselves. Works of beauty give us pause, suspending our usual rhythms in acknowledgement of their excellence. Beauty thus emerges in relational confi gurations and fl ows. This is not to say that those fl ows are entirely random. As Bourdieu (1984) reminds us in his oft- cited Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste , aesthetic sensibilities are enacted by people living within a world already ordered (e.g. along lines of social class). The young French bourgeois who confi dently extols the virtues of a particular painting does so not only to express any feelings of pleasure that the painting might have evoked in him, but also to mark his place within society Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 259 amongst the educated elite. Beauty-making is thus a personal as well as social endeavour. In creating Pave Up Paradise , the choreographers explored and amal- gamated movements, music, and spoken text that they found compelling – yet through these creative acts they also spoke out against dance training practices that they found too restrictive, tested the boundaries of the contemporary dance world, and raised their own profi les as dance artists. Those of us who gathered to witness the early performances did so because of our attachment to the School, refl ecting our prior familiarization with and appreciation for the setting, form, and content of the piece. As audience members and fellow dancers who moved and perceived together, we also played our (albeit more distant) part in co-creating Pave Up Paradise as a thing of beauty to be collectively admired within our shared institutional setting (Ingold 2011, 324). In this chapter I have moved beyond ‘the body beautiful’ to consider contemporary dance performance as a collective experience of beauty. From this analysis I have argued that beauty is more process than property, echoing John Blacking’s description of music as a collective route to the ‘other self’ capable of experiencing a “greater intensity of living” beyond the mundane (Blacking 1995, 34). Under- standing beauty as emergent rather than intrinsic allows for shifts in aesthetic preferences over time, thereby highlighting the potential for beauty as a force for social change. Pave Up Paradise would likely not have been considered beautiful had it been performed a century earlier. The athletic, daring bodies of the dancers – particularly the woman – were beautiful by my contemporary standards but may have been seen as grotesque at a time when Isadora Duncan’s bare feet and soft curves were the most acceptable challenge to the conventions of classical ballet. Beauty is thus not fi xed but must be continually re-enacted. Through our ongoing processes of beauty-making we realize our potential as creative beings: to collectively comment on, challenge, and change our ever-fl owing world.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to the students and staff at my fi eld site, London Contemporary Dance School, for welcoming me into their midst and enabling my research. I continue to follow their successes with deep respect and admiration. I also thank my colleagues at Oxford’s School of Anthropology for their many years of support. This material is based upon work generously supported by a United States National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and a Rhodes Scholarship. Any opinions, fi ndings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily refl ect the views of the NSF or the Rhodes Trust.

Notes 1 During my ﬁ eldwork most of the dancers photographed were full-time (day) students between the ages of 18 and 25, but occasionally older students of the ‘evening school’ were also photographed. 260 Caroline M. Potter 2 However I also perceived a certain contradiction within this discourse: in contrast to the varied bodies of the students, greater uniformity of build could be found among teachers’ bodies. This observation might indicate a shift in attitudes about bodily physique over time – or alternatively that in spite of a deeply ingrained dialogue of individualism, in practice certain physical characteristics (e.g. slim build, hypermobility, and obvious muscularity) are more consistently found amongst those who ultimately ‘make it’ as professional performers than among the wider pool of dance students.

References Ackerman, Sara (2010). Plastic paradise: Transforming bodies and selves in Costa Rica’s cosmetic surgery tourism industry. Medical Anthropology 29(4): 403–423. Blacking, John (1995). Music, culture, and experience: Selected papers of John Blacking . Ed. Reginald Byron. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984 [1979]). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste . Trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Caldwell, Kia Lilly (2003). ‘Look at her hair’: The body politics of black womanhood in Brazil. Transforming Anthropology 11(2): 18–29. Cohen, Colleen Ballerino, Richard Wilk, and Beverly Stoeltje (eds.) (1996). Beauty queens on the global stage: Gender, contests, and power . New York: Routledge. Csordas, Thomas (1993). Somatic modes of attention. Cultural Anthropology 8(2): 135–156. Edmonds, Alexander (2008). Beauty and health: Anthropological perspectives. Medische Antropologie 20(1): 151–162. Ewart, Elizabeth and Michael O’Hanlon (eds.) (2007). Body arts and modernity . Wantage, UK: Sean Kingston. Foucault, Michel (1979 [1975]). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books. Gell, Alfred (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ingold, Tim (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling, and skill . London: Routledge. Ingold, Tim (2011). Worlds of sense and sensing the world: Reply to David Howes. Social Anthropology 19(3): 313–317, 323–327. Londondance.com (2008). Interview: Ben Duke Q&A, September 23, 2008. Accessed Sep- tember 25, 2017. URL: http://londondance.com/articles/interviews/ben-duke-qanda/ Mackrell, Judith (2014). Last dance for Sylvie Guillem, the supreme mover with a curious mind. The Guardian , November 4, 2014. Accessed September 25, 2017. URL: www. theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/04/sylvie-guillem-dance-retirement-judith-mackrell Marchand, Trevor (ed.) (2010). Making knowledge: Explorations of the indissoluble relation between mind, body and environment. Special Issue, Journal of the Royal Anthropo- logical Institute . Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1962). Phenomenology of perception. Trans. Colin Smith. Lon- don: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Nolan, Brian (2011). The ideal ballet body. Dance Informa Digital Dance Magazine, July 1, 2011. Accessed September 25, 2017. URL: www.danceinforma.com/magazine/2011/07/ the-ideal-ballet-body/ Novack, Cynthia (1990). Sharing the dance: Contact improvisation and American culture . Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Beauty in motion: contemporary dance 261 Phoenix Dance Theatre (2011). Archive: Pave Up Paradise. Accessed September 25, 2017. URL: www.phoenixdancetheatre.co.uk/work/pave-paradise/ Potter, Caroline (2008). Sense of motion, senses of self: Becoming a dancer. Ethnos 74(3): 444–465. Potter, Caroline (2015). Bodies of knowledge: Medical anthropology and interdisciplinar- ity. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online, ISSN: 2040–1876 New Series 7(3): 385–397. Accessed September 25, 2017. URL: http://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/ jasoonline-2011#collapse1-0 Reischer, Erica and Kathryn S. Koo (2004). The body beautiful: Symbolism and agency in the social world. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 33: 297–317. Schneider, Arnd and Christopher Wright (eds.) (2013). Anthropology and art practice . Lon- don: Bloomsbury. Strathern, Marilyn (1979). The self in self-decoration. Oceania 49(4): 241–257. Theatre Room Asia (2014). Body Mechanics. Web Log Posted, November 9, 2014. Accessed September 25, 2017. URL: http://theatreroomasia.com/tag/dimitris-papaioannou/ Turner, Terence (2012 [1980]). The social skin. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2(2): 486–504. Wacquant, Loïc (1998). The prizeﬁ ghter’s three bodies. Ethnos 63(3): 325–352. Watts, Graham (2006). Phoenix Dance Theatre – ‘Stories in Red’. Review for Ballet.co.uk Magazine , March 2006. Accessed July 29, 2015. URL: www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/ yr_06/mar06/gw_rev_phoenix_dance_theatre_0306.htm 17 Surprised by beauty Imagining Autism

Melissa Trimingham

Come near, that no more blinded by man’s fate, I ﬁ nd under the boughs of love and hate, In all poor foolish things that live a day, Eternal beauty wandering on her way. (William Butler Yeats, ‘To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time’)

It is our eighth drama session in this National Autistic Society School. Dressed in my sailor outfi t, yellow anorak, sou’wester and over large wellies, I am reclining, or rather sprawled and somewhat ungainly, in the infl atable boat-craft next to Matthew, who lies back relaxed and happy. Around us seemingly distant coloured lights punctuate the darkness. The sound of water, the knock and suck of waves, is soft around us, and seagulls cry out. Large fi sh and mermaids swim above us on the projection screen. I look at them through my cardboard tube telescope. A bell sounds as if through fog. Matthew does not speak very much. He reportedly has a vocabulary of one or two words a year, though he surprised us a few weeks ago by taking over the microphone and performing a rap about Sponge Bob. This time there is no mic but Matthew takes my cardboard tube and speaks into it in a distinctly American accent:

“I know I see the world now Don’t let it change the past ”.

Almost exactly seven minutes later he speaks again. We have been lying back in the boat together in lengthy unbroken silence, playing with the cardboard tubes, watching the live projections of ourselves, feeling the light plastic translucent ‘wind cloth’ rise, spread and ﬂ utter above us. This time he plays with the beat and volume, pitch and speed:

“I know I see the world now ”.

He pauses.

“I know I see the world now”. Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 263 This is Imagining Autism .1

*** This week it is Outer Space. Chloe, a child I have rarely heard speak, stands in front of a projection of the moon, crumbling the moon rock ‘food’ (which has been recently fed to the friendly Alien for his picnic dinner) into dust. It ﬂ oats as a cas- cade of magical gleaming specks through the darkness round the projected moon. It is an entrancing image. She is clearly captivated, intensely concentrated. Left to herself in this way, Chloe half chants, half says “picnic on the moon” not once but several times, singing it differently, as she moves in and out of the projected light.

*** Harry, severely autistic, likes taking photographs. We ﬁ nally realise this after he spends two weeks snatching documentary cameras from our hands and swiftly deleting the footage. We give him a camera and from now on he happily ﬁ lters almost his entire experience, inside the environments and out, through the camera lens. Following patiently behind, I watch him photograph everything from detailed close ups of colours on the laminated school notices in the hall, to torn paper I scatter for him on dark surfaces or throw into the air in spectacular showers. Afterwards, we are sent Harry’s photographs. Many of them are beautiful studies of light, texture and shape.

*** We did not necessarily plan for beauty in Imagining Autism . How was it then that beauty continually surprised us? That beauty was inextricably entangled in the experiences of these children and ourselves, a beauty that moved us? Yeats’s seductive lines that front this chapter, summoning the poetic muse through the conscious crafting of rhythm, melody, assonance and rhyme (a process very far I suggest from Matthew’s poetry), personify beauty, and present her as an elusive (‘wandering’), but ‘eternal’ presence, who may – or may not – choose to bless the artist. This vision of beauty as an external ‘visitation’ is ultimately rooted in metaphysics and mysticism, Cartesian dualism and Kantian aesthetics. Access to beauty is won by skill (to summon her), study (to understand her), leisure (to receive her) and (as Yeats’s lines make clear) alert, educated readi- ness. In this Western-centric attitude, and importantly for our purposes here, it is art that gives access to beauty, though beauty may also be felt by the so-called sensitised and educated in a sunset or a face, a landscape or a fl ower. Art is, of course, in this scheme, a special experience separated from quotidian life, a human endeavour that deliberately summons and encapsulates such beauty. It is noticeable that this approach to beauty is primarily visual, and detached from the body, which we might expect from a culture that prioritises the visual over all other senses. In contrast, phenomenological, embodied and affective cognitive thinkers in the West are increasingly reluctant to characterise a beautiful experience as primarily visual, 264 Melissa Trimingham disembodied and somehow bestowed upon us and they consequently locate beauty within our own responses to the world. This has recently been called the “radical aesthetic” (Armstrong 2000) but it has been recognised in Western thought since at least John Dewey and Henri Bergson and early twentieth century avant-garde artists such as Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, who located the visionary fi rmly within our own wondrous capacities of perception. In the East, it has been recognised much longer (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1993). Our experience in Imagining Autism repositions beauty as ‘enactment’ – “moments that make the heart beat faster” (Scarry quoted in Thompson 2006, 48; Shaughnessy 2012, 43). It connects with older romantic notions of beauty as truth, as in Keats (www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173742) (who was theorising only a few years after Kant), notions that persisted into early Modernism (as in Yeats), that is, beauty is an affective experience that moves us and somehow validates our existence. Beauty that moves us is only part of a total repositioning of the aesthetic as affective; if aesthetic experience is affective, it may not necessarily be beautiful or even comfortable.2 Conversely, beauty need not be framed as aesthetic. Writer Naoke Higashida, who is severely autistic, writes of the beauty he perceives around him, of his “incredible, just incredible” affective vision of the world (Higashida 2013). We may not associate beauty with autistic perception; but for Higashida, “Our hearts kind of drown in it” (ibid 32). Autistic perception, perhaps like that of Naoke’s, has been called “The beautiful otherness of the autistic mind” (Happé and Frith 2010, xi–xx). Whilst we should not generalise about the autistic experience, the phrase suggests a neuro-diverse experience of beauty that I wish to explore through Imagining Autism. I seek to unravel the mystery of my heartfelt connection between the children’s experience of beauty and my own within the ‘pod’ (our portable tent and performance space) beside and amongst them, often watching and waiting, sharing and imitating, offering slight variations in my responses, opening up, perhaps, what David Plante identifi ed as a “space in which the grace can, I hope, occur” (Gablik 1995, 161). For me, Imagining Autism opened up beauty as embodied experience; and from it I understand why John Lutterbie suggested that the ‘aesthetic’ may be better understood as a verb than a noun:3 and so might beauty. Finally, despite my moving experiences working with these children, I will be careful not to sentimentalise creativity in autism. In our project we met no savants, no ‘Rainmen’ and no one who investigated curious incidents in the night time. Instead we met children who were simply enabled to imagine, and to do so vividly. Imagination, despite curious ‘savant’ abilities, is not usually associated with autism. This is because the diagnostic criteria for autism suggests autists, especially those on the severer end of the spectrum, have defi cits in imagination and creativity, and even that they lack the inner life that ‘neurotypicals’ enjoy. Imagination, moreover, is notoriously hard to defi ne, and indeed distinguished psychologist Ilona Roth describes imagination as a “theoretical and empirical lacuna”, observing that “despite what seems the obvious relevance of imagination to psychology and the cognitive sciences, and of these disciplines to exploring the imagination, many researchers in these fi elds have been reluctant to engage Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 265 directly with the concept” (Roth 2007, xxi). Autists fi nd very hard what Currie and Ravenscroft identify as the re creative imagination (Currie and Ravenscroft 2002, 135), where they have to put themselves in the shoes of another (a capacity known as ‘theory of mind’4 ) (Baron-Cohen 2008, 57–60); but Matthew’s poetry or William’s photos create something wholly new, revealing what we may call the ‘creative imagination’ (Currie and Ravenscroft 2002, 10). Currie and Ravenscroft are not interested in this capacity: “Another thing commonly called ‘imagination’ is important enough to be noted, though we shall put it aside. We see it when someone puts together ideas in a way that defi es expectation or convention: the kind of imaginative ‘leap’ that leads to the creation of something valuable in art, science, or practical life. We will call this the ‘creative imagination’” (ibid 10). Ignoring this creative imagination, they entirely focus on the lack of recreative imagination in autism.5 In contrast, I will here concentrate almost entirely upon their creative imagination. Autism was only identifi ed in the twentieth century and diagnostic criteria have changed over the years, making this perhaps one of the most confusing and enig- matic of conditions. Children at the severe end of the autistic spectrum are usually non-verbal and do not, or cannot, communicate in ways we recognise. They appear cut off and in their own world, usually making no eye contact and not responding to verbal cues. At the more able end of the spectrum, verbal skills may be highly developed but children often struggle to function socially, lost in a world where they fi nd it hard to fi gure out the rules. Autists are said to lack empathy and social imagination, that is, seeing the world from another’s point of view. There has been increasing recognition recently that the sensory and embodied experience of the world may also be very different for autists and contribute signifi cantly to their behaviour. Bogdashina describes the autistic child as being either hypo (under) or hyper (over) sensitive to the range of sensory information in the environment, sensitivities that may vary from day to day (2003).6 Clearly this has resonance with the growing body of embodiment and cognitive theory that refuses the Cartesian division of body and mind, and argues that the brain extends throughout the body, that brain and body are one (see Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Gallagher 2005; Clark 2008). Autistic perception, where normative sensory signals are so disturbed, may therefore cause continual discomfort in their everyday lives and, at the severe end of the spectrum, mental and even physical pain. Naoke Higashida bears witness that for many autistic children at the severe end of the spectrum their sensory experience of the world is so intense that “they can’t concentrate on anything else” (Higashida 2013, Question 32, n.p.). Even children at the most able end of the spectrum often have sensory diffi culties that interfere with their ability to function smoothly in everyday life (an aversion to particular noise[s] or smell[s], for example). There has been a reconsideration of autism in recent years, epitomised by Happé and Frith’s notion of ‘beautiful otherness’. In Autism and Talent (2010) they enu- merate the unexpectedly creative dimensions of the autistic mind, including an extreme eye for detail (“repetition is not repetition . . . if you have expert levels of discrimination” [xvii]) and, depending on the severity of their autism, a lack 266 Melissa Trimingham of ‘priors’ in their perception of the world. ‘Priors’ in neurological terms are the expectations about the world that the brain/body learns and continually relies on in order to function smoothly and effectively in everyday life. This lack of ‘priors’ parallels philosopher John Dewey’s account of aesthetic experience. Accord- ing to Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton he describes a distinction between ‘perception’ and ‘recognition’: “[f ]or Dewey, recognition describes a falling back on some previously formed interpretative schema or stereotype when confronted with an object, whereas perception involves an active receptivity to the object so that its qualities may modify previously formed habits or schemas” (Csikszentmih- alyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981, 177). Dewey associates aesthetic experience with the ability to perceive differently, breaking out of quotidian habits, and cultivating an open receptivity to the world. Dewey is not talking directly about beauty here; but he locates the aesthetic in experience, not object, and that experience – like the experience of beauty – is both pleasurable and enriching. Is it possible that an optimal state of receptivity to the world, that is, an embodied physically felt connection between self and the materiality we inhabit, gives rise to our experience of beauty?7 Happé and Frith draw on Snyder’s (2009) insights into autistic savant skills that chime with notions of perceiving differently in Dewey’s sense: “Snyder’s controversial theory proposes that it is only top down inhibition that prevents us from being creative artists ourselves . . . they [autists] have privileged access to raw forms of information, not normally accessible, that may give a new and more veridical perceptual insight, in contrast to expectation-based interpretations” (2010, xiv). In this way autists, no matter where they are on the spectrum, may be capable of making unexpected connections in their encounters in the world, and immersing themselves in experiences that are closed to us, accessing, like Higashida, beauty in this way. This may be happening when autistic children play sometimes obsessively with objects, for example, transfi xed by spinning something shiny and catching the light. This in turn appears hugely enjoyable for them. Positive reappraisals of autism highlight controversy between the ‘social model’ of disability and mainstream attitudes to autism. In the social model of disability it is society that formulates and perpetuates the very notion of disability because of the way it operates on models of so-called normality. The resulting notion of ‘neuro-diversity’ rather than ‘neuro-defi cit’ challenges our deepest assumptions about disability and profoundly disturbs our essentialist notions about what is ‘normal’. In conversation with Lisa Zunshine, Ralph Savarese calls for a ‘neuro- cosmopolitanism’ (Savarese and Zunshine 2014, 20), dispensing with the term ‘neuro-typical’ (19). He claims that Baron-Cohen’s (2008) lack of theory of mind in autism is a social defi cit model. It promotes an essentialist view that denies the special and different modes of processing information that autists possess. Savarese cites Lucy Blackman (a non-speaking autistic writer) who claims that diagnostic criteria for autism tell us more about the person using them than the child being diagnosed, since the testing

is somehow actually constructed on whether the tester observed the person to socialize in a way that the tester understood to be socialization . . . We often Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 267 use the term ‘communication’ when really we mean that we have observed in another human being a behavior from which we derive meaning. (quoted in Savarese and Zunshine 2014, 23)

The fact remains, however, that their creative potential or ‘beautiful otherness’ usually remains largely hidden behind silence, lack of eye contact or response, repetitive behaviours (stimming ), and at worst, fi ts and tantrums of agonising intensity. Faced with these behaviours, hard-pressed parents of severely autistic children can be forgiven for doubting Happé and Frith’s optimistic ‘creative’ interpretation of their child’s perception of the world. ‘Beautiful otherness’ is probably the last thing on their mind as they struggle to cope. However, our experiences in Imagining Autism do seem to have synergy with Happé, Frith and Savarese. It is arguable that Imagining Autism provided a space where these children could fully be as autists, giving space for their unique processing of the world. In one or two cases the result was a spectacular change in their performative engagement with their surroundings and with the facilitators. It seems allowing, and further than this, enabling their unique embodied experience may hold a key to the world, in all its mysterious beauty, that these children inhabit. The Imagining Autism ‘pod’ or portable indoor tent transported the children to fi ve different places – a Forest, Outer Space, Underwater, the Arctic and under the City. Once a week over ten weeks, for forty-fi ve minutes, twenty-two autistic children aged 7–11 and of varying abilities, played freely in groups of three or four in a space that offered an immersive environment of colour, light, textures, smells, sound and projections. They played with projection, echoey microphones and lights and sound via the control board, as well as myriad loose elements such as leaves, snowballs, cardboard telescopes and moon rocks. The children, supported by performers or ‘facilitators’ in the characters/costumes of a forest ranger, a sailor or a spacewoman, met masked and costumed larger than life characters (Foxy, Ratty, a Snowman), and various Bunraku style and glove puppets. Improvised stories partly emerged from a loose script or storyboard planned in advance, of which the facilitators were aware but did not follow slavishly. This often included a climax/crisis of some sort such as a storm at sea. As the work progressed many stories were increasingly led by the children themselves. The spaces in Imagining Autism were highly stimulating, but the children, even those severely affected (contrary to expectation of many of their teachers), coped well. How could this be, if often their senses are ordinarily already overwhelmed? In the scene I described at the beginning, when Matthew uttered his ‘poetry’, close examination of the footage reveals some key elements that may have enabled him to function quite differently from his normal engagements with his teachers, his parents and his peers, and process the intense sensory input. Signifi cantly, this was his second experience of the Underwater environment and his eighth session in total, so he was very familiar with the project by then. The fi rst Underwater session had been quiet – almost totally non-verbal, with very little action. Much of this session had been taken up with Matthew peacefully lying in the boat, in contrast to the previous week where he had found his voice rapping about Sponge 268 Melissa Trimingham Bob in the fi rst session of the Arctic. His second Underwater session began quietly, letting the children wander around and adjust to the space. I invited Matthew to join me in the boat. Almost at once he spoke into the tube. I echoed his last line into my cardboard tube: “Don’t let it change the past”. We then lay in silence together playing with the tubes. I made sounds into my tube; I put it gently to his ear and he listened. He made sounds into his tube imitating me. I changed position to watch the large projection screen now fi lled with live projected footage of Matthew himself. I pointed silently to it, and he turned round to watch it too, and smiled at his image. I got out of the boat and began to lift the fl oor sheet ‘water’ under the boat and rock the craft softly; other facilitators joined in. We lifted the light fi lmy plastic sheet we use for ‘wind’ above the boat and let it rise and fall softly below the lights. Harry got into the boat at this point to photograph the ‘wind’ from underneath and Matthew too stood up and touched the sheet as it rose and fell. He grasped it and eventually pulled it around himself as we let go. He then lay back alone in the boat, the sheet tucked around him, the ‘waves’ underneath gently rocking him. This is the substance of the seven minutes between the fi rst and second time he spoke his ‘poem’. Not much happened, no one except Matthew spoke, and often as facilitators we were just waiting and watching, watching and waiting. If this was one of Plante’s spaces for ‘the grace’ to occur (Gablik 1995, 161) it was also perhaps a space, to use Gablik’s words, for “some kind of healing to occur” (ibid 141). Ralph Savarese’s son DJ, and Oberlin College USA’s fi rst non-speaking autistic student, describes the need to wait patiently if we are to communicate with children on the severer end of the spectrum and travel to the ‘place’ where they are:

If you wait patiently and wordlessly, you free me to ﬁ nally respond volun- tarily. Once I’ve freed my body to respond, I can skip over the autonomic responses and give faster motor replies as the conversation continues. (Savarese and Zunshine 2014, 23)

Blackman observes, we recall, that we use the term ‘communication’ when really we mean that “we have observed in another human being a behaviour from which we derive meaning” (quoted in Savarese and Zunshine 2014, 23, my emphasis). DJ’s initial behaviours, as he describes them, clearly would not communicate to us in a way we would understand. Similarly, Matthew, Harry and Chloe all offered behaviours at different times from which we derived no meaning. Accepting means a willingness to hold back, to do nothing. The need for the practitioners to be still, to watch and listen, to wait uncomfortably long, was something we gradually came to understand. It was fundamental to freeing these children ‘to respond volun- tarily’, to ‘skip over’ (as DJ expresses it) ‘the autonomic responses’. By watching, waiting, being alongside the child, not executing any preformed plan, we moved to moments that we understood better, and often these moments were moments of experienced beauty. We recall that left to herself and uninterrupted, Chloe creates her ‘picnic on the moon’ (Figure 17.1), Harry is free to take pictures – and Matthew to ﬁ nd his voice. Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 269

Figure 17.1 Chloe’s ‘picnic on the moon’

Matthew liked to wrap himself up in cloth, blankets, plastic sheets and scenery cloths, whatever he could fi nd in the pod. Working with him was a balance between allowing him plenty of time to rest and assimilate (the waiting I describe earlier) and coaxing him out into the space. The image I have chosen to share here (Plate 15) is of Matthew apparently ecstatically wrapped in translucent cloth bathed in coloured light. I fi nd this a beautiful image: and many would surely agree with me. Matthew had left the boat briefl y and entered the curtained off UV section of the pod (it was the fi rst Underwater session). He entered the upright canopy of white fabric suspended from the roof and surrounded himself with its folds. We do not know whether Matthew is aware he is making a beautiful image: this would position beauty as a purely visual phenomenon. His own experience was much more phenomenological and diffuse than ‘making an image’. Mat- thew’s improvisations in the pod had as their aim, to use Hallam and Ingold’s description of the phenomenological experience, “not to project future states” (i.e. in this example, to make visual images) “but to follow the paths along which such projections take place” (Hallam and Ingold 2007, 15). Hallam and Ingold identify the space of “improvisation” as the quotidian space of our everyday lives, the “crescent” space, the space of emergent meaning where “performative engagements with the materials that surround us” take place. They identify “the dynamic potential of an entire fi eld of relationships to bring forth the person situated in it” and that “creativity is a process that living beings undergo as they make their ways through the world” (ibid 3–12). Similar to Dewey, they see optimal experience as emerging from this quotidian space, an improvisation 270 Melissa Trimingham

Plate 15 Matthew ‘underwater’ Photo by the author different not in kind, but in quality and intensity. Such creative improvisation, I suggest, is largely denied Matthew in his everyday living but released in the pod, unleashing his smiles and laughter, a ‘phenomenology of enjoyment’: in this experience of ‘fl ow’ “concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the fl ow experience is over” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 49). In other words beauty is this optimal state, an extension of ourselves when we are most truly ourselves. The Romantic poet John Keat’s ‘negative capability’ was an attempt 200 years ago to describe this same highly creative and intensely satisfying state of being, where we move in generative harmony with the vibrant material world around us (Trimingham 2011, 107). Matthew’s creativity is intimately connected to the materiality around him. Things “tell us who we are . . . by embodying our intentions” (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton1981, 91) and creativity “is not a faculty of the disembodied mind . . . whose designs are actively imposed upon a world of matter that is effectively dead” (Hallam and Ingold 2007, 12). Moving from the tight, sterile and constrictive blankets and cloths lying around the pod, in which he wrapped himself continually for safety and comfort (affordances [Gibson 1979, 127] which I might uncharitably compare to the sensory rooms that are ubiq- uitous in every special school) into a productive space of “growing emergence” (Hallam and Ingold 2007, 16), Matthew immersed himself in light, soft, coloured fabrics, taking pure pleasure in the beauty of the moment. We recall that he also found his voice in the line of poetry that seemed to come from nowhere: “I know I see the world now, don’t let it change the past”. This extraordinary sentence, whether made up or repeated from something he had heard, emerged through Matthew’s on-going ‘unscriptable’ improvisation in the space, his continuous and Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 271 unique interaction with the materiality around him. Similarly his immersion in the light and texture of the UV curtain was “a movement through a world that is crescent [sic ]” rather than already created, a world perpetually in the making and not already made (ibid 3–12). The connection between Matthew’s experience of beauty and our experience of what Matthew created as ‘beautiful’ shifts centuries of debate about beauty from objective criteria based on the visual into phenomenological experience. This is being increasingly recognised within performance and time based media, such as music. Traditional European and American notions of beauty, derived from aesthetic theories of Kant and Hegel, focus upon affect deriving from viewing the art object, whether within or between different cultures. This obviously leads to debate and confusion as to what is art, what is valid art, what is culturally specifi c art, what is good art – and how all this relates to beauty. Marcel Duchamp in 1917 questioned our trust in and perception of the ‘aesthetic object’ by prob- lematising its ‘beauty’ – he attempted to place a urinal (a pleasing and beautiful shape) in an exhibition, and caused outrage. Later John Cage, Allan Kaprow and a host of other avant-garde artists in late 50s/early 60s America created time based actions and events (‘Happenings’) where participants were both the audience and the artists, drawing attention to experience rather than the art object (Kostelanetz 1970). Cage, his own words as quoted by Michael Kirby, tried to get people to realise “that they themselves are doing their experience and that it’s not being done to them” (Sandford 1995, 52). These aesthetics of experience were articulated earlier in the twentieth century by American pragmatist Dewey, referred to earlier, whose writings particularly inspired the young Allan Kaprow (Kostelanetz 1970, xi–xxvi). As Kaprow progressed from paintings to collage, from collage to installations, from installations to performed Happenings, he left (as did many of his fellow painters) the art object further and further behind. Artists in early 60s America drew us towards an understanding of beauty as a state of being that can emerge through heightening our receptivity and perceptive state. In 4′33″ all Cage is asking us to do is listen – as we learnt to slow down and listen to the children in Imagining Autism. ‘Poetry’ such as that of Chloe and Matthew, and Harry’s photographs, draw attention to lost moments, to the present beauty that inattention extinguishes. The binary in aesthetic thinking about art as experience, or art as artefact or product, leads to binary thinking about beauty, and is misguiding. To see the beautiful as contained only in Matthew’s words or the visual image he made reifi es beauty that actually is fl uid, experiential, personal and deeply gratifying, and open to all of us whether witnessing or creating: we are potentially all part of the nexus. Matthew’s experience of beauty, and my own, seems better described as an inner striving towards “veracity of experience”, the “verifi cation of existence” (Kelley in Kaprow 1970, xxiv) Like the image of Matthew, if we locate the beauty of Harry’s photographs in the visual artefacts alone, we, again, are surely missing something crucial. Harry’s social being, I suggest, is partly or majorly defi ned by a camera within this context.8 His experience of the pod certainly was framed almost entirely by the camera lens. He uses his camera as a tool of improvisation. Even to look at me (and/or my puppets) he photographed me standing behind his shoulder using ‘selfi e’ mode. 272 Melissa Trimingham If creativity is “shaped by models of social being”, then “it [creativity] is better approached as socially embedded and culturally diffuse than as a clearly defi ned act or bonded product” (Hallam and Ingold 2007, 20). It is also better designated “emergent” (Mead quoted in Barber 2007, 25), that is, “everything that happens is new, unrepeatable and not wholly predicatable from what went before” (ibid 25). In other words Harry’s emergent creativity is not (only) (contained in) the resulting photos but is diffused over a series of actions, always and insistently present. Harry’s striving to ‘be’ in the world almost entirely through the creative medium of photography draws attention to the mingling of the quotidian (this was habitual behaviour for Harry) and the strangely beautiful. Harry epitomises what Isobel Armstrong has called the “radical aesthetic”. Arm- strong explicitly parallels beauty to (the new radical) aesthetic when she maintains that “to neglect the concept of beauty as bourgeois, elitist and associated with cultural hegemony is to fail to address the democratic and radical potential of aesthetic discourse” (Armstrong 2000, 2). The radical aesthetic “means broadening the scope of what we think of as art” (ibid cited in Shaughnessy 2012, 254), and, by implication, beauty. Armstrong’s ideas shift value away from the art object as source of beauty (the poem, the picture) into the participatory experience of art, most obviously realised in a performance, whether a community event, an installation or an itinerant experience. It is more a democratic and more egalitarian view of beauty. Pleasure emerges from an affective, embodied – and, crucially, joyful – experience. Here a pleasurable experience of participants and audience alike is in Armstrong’s terms ‘affective’ and therefore ‘aesthetic’ regardless of Kantian and Hegelian standards of artistic excellence which attempted to identify “the autonomy of aesthetic judgments and of the art that gives rise to them” (White 2015, 23). Armstrong’s radical aesthetic of beauty exists in time-bound, ephemeral moments, deeply satisfying and sometimes ecstatic, bound up in our quotidian existence. Beauty is those moments (as John Cage was demonstrating in ‘4’ and 33”’ of ‘silence’) that we often fail to notice. The radical aesthetic is inextricably bound up with beauty as embodied experience, and is an extension of our everyday existence. “Improvisation and creativity . . . are intrinsic to the very processes of social and cultural life” and “to create is to be part of an ongoing process” (Hallam and Ingold 2007, 18–19). If quotidian living is understood as creative improvisation in Hallam and Ingold’s sense, then Imagining Autism provides the creative improvisational space in which autists can fl ourish to such an extent that we begin to recognise and share the beauty of their everyday improvisations and creativity. We might, along with Roger Cardinal, identify their ‘art’ as “highly idiosyncratic and secretive”, “oddly moving” (2010, 181–184) – and infused with beauty.9 Play is a “form of educational currency that artists can afford to spend” (Kelley in Kaprow 1970, xxii). The emergent embodied beauty that both we and the children engendered as we played together in Imagining Autism was a direct consequence of our emergent embodied process as theatre practitioners. When we began we had no more than a hunch about our method, backed up by a small pilot project,10 believing that what Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 273 we were planning would ‘work’ for the psychologists. I hope it does not sound disingenuous to say that we learnt, often clumsily at times, on the job, uncon- sciously nurturing “eternal beauty wandering on her way”(Yeats 1893), listening with ever keener ears to her cues, responding to her pleas for silence, her demands for laughter. The beauty that was Imagining Autism was gifted to us gradually, unexpectedly, unsought and even unrecognised: in short, its beauty was a precious “experience . . . of internal volition” forged from our shared “inchoate fl ow of experience” (Kelly in Kaprow 1970, xvi).

Notes 1 Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as an Intervention for Autism was an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded arts/science collaboration between Drama and Psychology at the University of Kent (2011–2014): Principal Inves- tigator Prof. Nicola Shaughnessy (Drama), Co-Investigators Dr Melissa Trimingham (Drama), Dr Julie Beadle-Brown (Tizard Centre) and Dr David Wilkinson (Psychol- ogy). Pioneering interdisciplinary methods of intervention and evaluation have generated evidence that drama can impact positively upon the symptoms of autism. The research has also challenged many of the myths surrounding the condition, offering new insights into the imagination in autism. For further information on the project visit www.imaginingautism.org. A documentary fi lm of the project Imagining Autism: Now I See the World is available through the Routledge Performance Archive. 2 See Jill Bennett (2005) who explores the pain of others experienced through art and empathy. 3 I am indebted to John Lutterbie, Stony Brook University, for this way of describing this shift in understanding of the ‘aesthetic’ from ‘noun’ to ‘verb’ in a research seminar he gave at Kent University in 2014. See also Lutterbie on the creative act (2013, 103–115): “something has changed and we understand the world differently” (114). 4 ‘Theory of mind’ refers to the understanding that other people have minds. Simon Baron- Cohen, Alan Leslie and Uta Frith (1985) fi rst suggested that the absence of a theory of mind in autistic children may lie at the root of their lack of empathy and social imagination. There is some consensus that this function manifests itself fully around four years old. Other approaches to autism that are infl uenced by embodied cognition theories maintain a more gradual development of empathy that builds in the embodied interaction with the world from the earliest moments of life. See, for example, Mandler (1992). 5 Currie and Ravenscroft consider creative activity in monkeys and speculate that “there could be creatures that have plenty of creative imagination, and little or no recreative imagination” (10). 6 Another perspective on this, as articulated by autists themselves, such as Naoke Higashida, is that autists are simply engaging fully with the world through their senses, which ‘neurotypicals’ cannot do; see Amanda Baggs, ‘In my Language’ www.youtube. com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc. 7 Csikzentmihalyi later identifi es this optimal state as ‘fl ow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). 8 Harry and his camera are discussed further in Trimingham and Shaughnessy (2016) and Shaughnessy and Trimingham (2016). 9 For a discussion of Cardinal’s ‘Outsider Art’ see also Shaughnessy (2013, 323 and 331). 10 Imagining Autism evolved out of a Kent Innovation and Enterprise funded ‘Ideas Fac- tory’ joint proposal ‘Play and Autism’ (Nicola Shaughnessy) and ‘Puppetry and Autism’ (Melissa Trimingham) working in St Nicholas School in Canterbury, Kent. It won Kent University Innovative Project of the Year, 2010–11. 274 Melissa Trimingham References Armstrong, I. (2000) The Radical Aesthetic , Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Barber, K. (2007) Improvisation and the Art of Making Things Stick. In E. Hallam and T. Ingold (eds.), Creativity and Cultural Improvisation, 25–41, Oxford and New York: Berg. Baron-Cohen, S. (2008) Autism and Asperger Syndrome , Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A.M. and Frith, U. (1985) Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”?, Cognition 21.1, 37–46. Bennett, J. (2005) Empathic Vision , Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bogdashina, O. (2003) Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Dif- ferent Perceptual Worlds , London: Jessica Kingsley. Cardinal, R. (2010) Outsider Art and the Autistic Creator. In F. Happé and U. Frith (eds.), Autism and Talent , 181–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, A. (2008) Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, Cognitive Extension , Oxford: Oxford University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience , New York: Harper Perennial (HarperCollins). Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981) The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Currie, G. and Ravenscroft, I. (2002) Recreative Minds: Imagination in Philosophy and Psychology , Oxford: Clarendon Press, and New York: Oxford University Press. Gablik, S. (1995) Conversations before the End of Time , London: Thames and Hudson. Gallagher, S. (2005) How the Body Shapes the Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gibson, J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, MA: Houghton Miffl in. Hallam, E. and Ingold, T. (2007) Creativity and Cultural Improvisation: An Introduction. In E. Hallam and T. Ingold, Creativity and Cultural Improvisation , 1–24, Oxford and New York: Berg. Happé, F. and Frith, U. (2010) Autism and Talent , Oxford: Oxford University Press. Higashida, N. (2013) The Reason I Jump, trans. by K. Yoshida and D. Mitchell, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Kaprow, A. (1970) The Blurring of Art and Life, ed. by J. Kelley, Los Angles and London: University of California Press. Kostelanetz, R. (1970) The Theater of Mixed Means , London: Pitman Publishing (1988) Conversing with Cage , New York: Limelight. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought , New York: Basic Books. Lutterbie, J. (2013) Wayfaring in Everyday Life: The Unravelling of Intricacy. In N. Shaughnessy (ed.), Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being , 103–115, London: Bloomsbury. Mandler, J. (1992) How to build a baby 11: Conceptual primitives, Psychology Review 99.4, 588–604. Roth, I. (ed.) (2007) Introduction. In Imaginative Minds. Proceedings of the British Acad- emy, xxi–xxxvi, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sandford, M. (ed.) (1995) Happenings and Other Acts, London and New York: Routledge. Savarese, R. and Zunshine, L. (2014) The critic as Neurocosmopolite: Or, what cognitive approaches to literature can learn from disability studies: Lisa Zunshine in conversation with Ralph James Savarese, Narrative 22.1, 17–44. Surprised by beauty: Imagining Autism 275 Schiller, F. von (1954) Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man , trans. by R. Snell, Lon- don: Routledge Kegan Paul. Shaughnessy, N. (2012) Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice , Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ——— (2013) Autism, neuroaesthetics and contemporary performance, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 38.4, 321–334. Shaughnessy, N. and Trimingham, M (2016) Autism in the Wild: Bridging the Gap between Experiment and Experience. In P. Garratt (ed.), The Cognitive Humanities: the Embo- died Mindin Literature and Culture, Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan, 191–211. Snyder, A. (2009) Explaining and inducing “savant” skills: Privileged access to lower level, less-processed information, Philosophical Transactions Royal Society B 364, 1399– 1405. Published 13 April 2009. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0290 Thompson, J. (2006) Performance of pain, performance of beauty, Research in Drama Education 11, 45–57. Trimingham, M. (2011) The Theatre of the Bauhaus: The Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer , London: Routledge. Trimingham, M. and Shaughnessy, N. (2016) Material voices: Intermediality and autism, Research in Drama and Education 21.3. Varela, F., Thompson, E. and Rosch, E. (1993) The Embodied Mind Cognitive Science and Human Experience , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. White, G. (2015) Aesthetics and the Aesthetic. In G. White (ed.), Applied Theatre: Aesthet- ics , 21–49. London: Bloomsbury. Yeats, W.B. (1893) To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time, www.poetryfoundation.org/ poem/172052

Part VI Beauty in space and time

18 Threshold and temporality in architecture Practices of movement in Japanese architecture

Ray Lucas

The threshold in architecture is, much as Eisenstein1 argued for montage in ﬁ lm, one of the key sites of creativity. Often considered simply to be the pragmatic entry into a building or room, thresholds can be much more than this, handled in subtly different ways across the world, and representing a key practice element of architectural space: what behaviours are encouraged or required by architectural agency? Mediating between one spatial condition and another, the threshold is a crucial element of architecture, representing a much more subtle beauty than the decorative arts or geometric acrobatics which can be argued to be borrowed or appropriated from the other arts. Threshold is a condition wholly of architecture, and is often when the building sings, has something to say in a uniquely architectural manner.2 Understanding that the spatial conditions are subject to change is important when considering thresholds. This discussion often begins as a series of dichotomies: inside, outside; public and private. There are of course more than these polarised on/off conditions to consider – and crucially, this is one of the areas where architecture such as Katsura Rikyu excels. By managing a gradated series of spatial conditions from the exterior to the interior, this villa constructs an architecture of threshold, of liminal spaces: whilst at the same time articulating each space as it is encountered. That one encounters these spaces is at once obvious and fundamentally important: thresholds must be passed through, must be experienced, and it is perhaps a frustration (understandable though it is) that Katsura is inaccessible to the visitor, hints of its qualities passed by. Other sites, do, however, give access: controlling the movement of visitors in a carefully arranged series of steps, doorways, glances outwards, and surface treatments (see Plate 16 ). It is well established that there is a mediation of surface in Japanese architecture which persists through to modern examples.3 The regard for the ground plane is an important aspect of this: the mediation of the ground is treated with a sophistica- tion grounded in both practical and cultural materiality. The use of tatami as an interior surface is a case in point: the material is strong and durable, but only if shoes are not worn indoors. The mats also have a regular module, which structures space according to a set of dimensions (which vary 280 Ray Lucas

Plate 16 The Gate of Honour, demonstrating the use of rustic detailing and timber step marking the actual threshold a little by region: Kyoto’s tatami are 955mm × 1910mm, Tokyo tatami being 880mm × 1760mm), allowing rooms to be measured in terms of how many tatami mats they contain. This removal of shoes requires an elaboration of the entry to the home: a stepped area where one can comfortably remove and store outdoor shoes, changing into softer interior slippers. This extends the simplest of entrances, as the habit of leaving shoes off is deeply embedded as a practice of being indoors. This is present in the humblest of Kyoto ryokan, modern reinforced concrete apartment blocks, and the simple pavilions and grand residences of Katsura villa. Other sites, such as Saiho-ji (also known as Kokedera or the Moss Garden), construct a careful set of practices and behaviours around entry. Saiho-ji4 presented me with a particular problem as an architectural writer, representing perfectly the notion of the sublime: about which a great deal has been written, often as an opposite to beauty. When attempting to produce a lecture for students of architecture, I ended up avoiding the topic, fi nding little to say other than the recommendation ‘you must visit’. Similarly, whilst photographs are helpful records, they do little to communicate the overwhelming sense of green around the slightly damp moss that the garden cultivates so carefully. It was after a more straightforward architectural history lecture on Katsura, that the practice of visiting contributes greatly to its beauty: and that such practices can in general be said to contribute to a general notion of architectural beauty divested from problematic ideas of function and ornament, the consideration of architecture as Threshold and temporality in architecture 281 a dialogue between people and their environment producing an alternative, non visual sense of beauty. It is with this in mind that the process of visiting Saiho-ji begins months in advance with an application to the monks who maintain the temple and garden. Notice of permission is later received, giving an appointed date and time. Visitors are greeted at the gate to the sacred precinct, a low rustic timber structure with gravel and stone underfoot. As one is guided towards the Buddhist temple, shoes are removed and slippers worn in an area exposed to the open air and elements, the modest fee is paid, and visitors are handed a map of the site before being encouraged to enter the temple area. We are then seated, some small concessions being made to the needs of West- erners unaccustomed to sitting cross-legged with a ledge at the rear of the room. It is not signifi cantly more comfortable in my experience than sitting in the main fl oor, as space is just as constrained per person. In front of each visitor is a small calligraphy table in rosewood, an ink stone, water, stick of ink, and a brush. A sheet of paper with ghost lines of a Buddhist sutra lies on the table, which visitors are prompted to complete. This sheet is, in itself, an interesting practice: copying a model calligraphy, even in this modest way by retracing established steps. The monks chant, in a pattern that gradually increases in intensity with drum and bell accompanying the sutra being read out. Those who can follow along do so, carefully copying the marks on the paper. It is only once visitors have completed this task that they are permitted to enter the gardens, freely walking the route. This preparation is essential for entering the garden itself, which defi es description in so many ways. Practices are embedded deeply in Japanese architecture. One of the classical examples5 of Japanese architecture, the Ise shrine, could be considered to be practice above all, as the structure is hidden behind fences and never open to the public. We know of its existence, of course, and have drawings and photographs of this origin point of Japanese architecture, considered to be without the infl uence of their great regional power, China. Ise is rebuilt every 20 years. 6 The shrine has two sites, Naiku and Geku, some 4km apart, and every 20 years, the Shinkinen Sengu ceremony is held where a new shrine is built from freshly felled timber, the old shrine dismantled, and the relics processed from one site to the other. The Ise shrine is almost purely practice, maintaining the right forests for the timber, the skills necessary for felling and construction, and the memory of the ceremonies: all indicate an architecture of practice rather than form, a kind of quantum state in slow motion.

Katsura Imperial Villa: an open and ambiguous paradigm for architecture Paradigm . Thanks to Katsura Imperial Villa at Kyoto, Japan is one of the rare countries in which a major historical monument is a house. In the twentieth century, whereas America and Europe may certainly have produced numerous 282 Ray Lucas domestic architectural masterpieces, Japan alone has attempted to bring about – and indeed achieved – a real and permanent architectural revolution based on a profusion of houses. (Manuel Tardits 2011: 318)

Katsura Imperial Villa, on the outskirts of Kyoto, is a complex consisting of a villa, various tea houses and pavilions for music, moon viewing, and contemplation all set along a meandering path around a landscaped lake. The meander is deliberate and contemplative, the lake designed for boating and fi shing. The combination of austere ascetic elements with rustic features and material use speaks volumes about the ambitions of the complex, which is often discussed as a prototype for Japanese architecture and as a precursor, key paradigm for the development of modernism in the 20th century. When visiting the villa, I felt that the famous accounts by infl uential modernist, critical regionalist, and postmodern architects Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius, Tange Kenzo,7 and Isozaki Arata which I had read had got the place wrong: and that it was instead a prime example of the experiential nature of architecture. My focus was on the careful placement of stepping stones,8 the variety of ground surfaces which encourage visitors to walk and pause and stand in particular ways in specifi c places: the sound of the rustling bamboo grove against the cawing crows; the dampness in the air with a carefully maintained, seasonal palette; a calm and isolated oasis. Each transition is careful: paths are designed to engage all of the

Figure 18.1 A range of paving stones from the strolling path highlighting a shift of ground conditions which has an impact upon the body of the visitor Figure 18.2 The Shokatei pavilion, lifted off the ground and with incremental thresholds described by the various ﬂ oor treatments

Figure 18.3 One of the thresholds of the Old Shoin with a transition from smooth and untreated materials towards the carefully planed and orderly modularity of the building. This can be seen as a series of adaptations to interval, from the analogue nature of the raw state of materials towards the measure of the regular timber columns 284 Ray Lucas senses and to encourage an embodied, peripatetic thinking: this is a poet’s walk, a philosopher’s meander. This clearly responds to some of my own research interests in the sensory perception of space, the phenomenological experience of being in a given context, the anthropological interest in architecture as it is now, rather than in historical context. It occurs to me that I was every bit as wrong – and indeed as correct – as Tange, Isozaki, Gropius, and Taut. They each imprint their pre-existing research interests on this philosopher’s path, seeing what they want to see. In many ways Katsura is all and none of these things: it is an open matrix for whichever interpretation you wish to impose.

The point of the current essay is to appreciate Katsura, not as a transparently and systematically organised space in the sense of the modernists, but as a contingent, confused, ambiguous, over-layered, and opaque composition . . . Deﬁ ned as ‘gorgeous humbleness’. (Isozaki 2006: 30)

Isozaki furnishes us with some of the key facts of the villa in his essay, noting that it was a staged construction, built in the middle of the 17th century, over the course of around 50 years. The villa was built for the Hachijo Imperial family, princes Toshihito (1579–1629) and Toshitada (1596–1680). Like many buildings in both Japan and Korea, the history is one which includes some rebuilding and reconstruction: architecture is conceived of as less permanent and fi xed, with the reconstructions often hastened by periodic fi res, wars, and earthquakes. One fi gure who is a part of the story is the garden designer and tea master Kobori Enshu, whom many accounts credit with the design of the villa; but most recent scholarship attributes the site to a disciple or pupil of Enshu: as Enshugomi – being after the taste of Enshu himself. It is safe to assume that the princes of the Hachijo family who commissioned the villa had a role in determining much of the character of the site. Isozaki further identifi es Katsura as stylistically ambiguous, straddling two distinctive periods, and offering opportunity for the many multiple readings of the site which are possible. Indeed, it is this multiplicity of meaning which drives my interest in the Rikyu , the detached palace. As a series of pavilions set within a stroll garden, the villa invites the visitor to think, to consider poetry and philosophy whilst walking its carefully articulated paths. Katsura, together with the Ise shrine, the great gate at Nara, and the Tokugawa shrine at Nikko, are held up as the classic works of traditional Japanese architecture. One of the key factors in bringing Katsura to wider interest is its role in the formation of modernism. Two key fi gures visited the villa: Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius. They found in Katsura an alternative model for architecture to those found in Europe: and one which would prove highly infl uential. Threshold and temporality in architecture 285 This infl uence was highlighted in publications of the work of photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro. Several publications have edited the same set of photographs in radically different ways: editing out the sensuous curved roofs, demonstrating only the austerity of surface, horizontality, and clear geometry. As we shall see later, this is contentious – particularly with the photographer, who republished the entire set after Tange Kenzo, a key Japanese modernist architect, edited and cropped Ishimoto’s work to better fi t his own narrative, when Tange had initially been asked by the photographer to provide an essay to contextualise the importance of the villa rather than to take charge of the entire publication as he did.

I would like to treat Katsura as a textual space and therein detect a polysemy of architecture . . . I would especially like to take up the elements that stressed the ﬂ amboyant and acrobatic design tendency of the later renovations. Though hated by modernists, these elements are indispensable to Katsura. (Isozaki 2006: 10)

The idea of the building as a text is crucial to understand here: it is a common form of theorisation of architecture and particularly helpful for understanding architectural history as operative and embedded in the design process rather than a sequence of veriﬁ able facts. Each reader of the text can take their own meaning from it, interpreting it in ways appropriate to their argument. Bruno Taut visited Katsura in 1933, a much larger undertaking than it would be today, as Japan was only relatively recently opened up to the West from its period of sakoku, ending forcibly in 1858. This was not a journey to be taken lightly, arriving from Siberia, and gaining access to the site which was not open to the public, but which he was taken to by the nascent and embattled Japanese International Architectural Association, devoted to the propagation of modernist architecture against the prevailing teikan style preferred by the Nationalist government of the time. Modernism wasn’t to fully take hold in Japan until after World War II with the unique version. Katsura was to dominate Taut’s thoughts throughout his three and a half years in Japan. Japan offered an opportunity for understanding otherness and difference quite different from exoticism and Orientalism. Taut studiously avoids declaring Katsura as the model directly. Isozaki ﬁ nds a single example:

The entire arrangement, from whichever side one might care to look at it, always followed elastically in all its divisions the purpose of which each one of the parts as the whole had to accomplish, the aim of being that of common and normal utility. (Taut in Isozaki 2006: 13)

The politics of modernism are bound up in Taut’s approach to Katsura: that he ﬂ ed Germany due to the left wing associations of modernism alongside the anti-historical stance taken by the Japanese chapter of the movement. Taut’s intervention 286 Ray Lucas changed the path of modernism, leading to Tange Kenzo’s postwar interest in Katsura as a foundation for the new Japanese architecture. Some of the terms of Japanese architecture are useful in understanding the interplay of styles within Katsura. In the early 17th century, two styles are noted as coexisting by Isozaki:

Shoin Zukuri was developed in the medieval period, based on the temple quarters of samurai and priest classes. This style has a distinctive proportioning system called kiwari , noted for its rigour and often compared to the classical orders. Shoin = orderly Sukiya = disorderly Sukiya Zukuri by contrast was a commoner style, a vernacular architecture more often found in tea houses and homes. The relationship with the carpenter is more collaborative in this style, which is less rule based and more open, more free.

Katsura employs both styles freely. Interestingly, it is not the case that one building is peasant style and another noble, but rather a building might appear in plan as shoin whilst the elevation has elements of sukiya . The major buildings of the villa complex are named shoin , and conform to the proportioning system in plan. Eleva- tionally, however, there is often a freedom and wilfulness in decorative approach. Japanese aesthetics has numerous ways of describing the interstices described by a proportioning system such as is found in shoin architecture.

Ma : interval, such as a silence between notes in music or the gaps in between lines of poetry. It could relate to montage, and is said to relate to the stepping stones, tobiishi, found in aristocratic gardens. Ken : related to the alternative reading of the kanji ideogram for ma , this is. A more practical measure of length: approximately 1.8m centre to centre between posts. This measure can vary depending on the region and tradition, but is most closely associated with Buddhism imported from China and later adapted into Japanese variations. Tatami: the familiar bamboo matting which is used as a fl oor covering. Rooms are often measured in terms of how many tatami mats they consist of. A tea house is typically four and a half tatami, the kokonoma (nine- ma) reception room for a palace consisting of nine mats. Kūkan : space, volume, considered by some architectural thinkers to be absent in Japanese thinking about architecture. Kūkan is conceptualised as an assemblage of planar elements which offer the potential for collapse and dismantlement: a different term from the fl ighty kokū. Kokū: fl eeting emptiness, an impermanent notion of space which includes the temporality of occupation, the duration of presence within a space. This concept has a relationship to absence – that a presence is notably missing. (adapted from Tardits [2011: 287–290]) Threshold and temporality in architecture 287 Tardits goes on to state the difference between Japanese concepts of space and those of the West as follows:

Japan developed a system of building made up of static units, each one a paral- lelepiped, independently linked in horizontal series but based on a sequence of related intervals, or ma , able to scan the room itself but also the positioning of room to room within the whole; spacing that also extends, naturally and seamlessly, well beyond the individual structure. (Tardits 2011: 290)

This is more than an academic discussion of aesthetics: it speaks to the wider politics of the time, with the Imperial family weakened by the power of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo (now Tokyo). The struggles for power between the Samurai class and the aristocracy of the Imperial family have marked Japan’s military, social, political, and artistic histories. Indeed, in 1615, the ruling Tokugawa shogunate decreed that the activities of the Imperial court be restricted to the arts and sciences.

Saito insisted that Katsura could not be deemed a development from one style like shoin to another, but a pure cohabitation or mix. He deﬁ ned Katsura as ‘ soan- like shoin’ or ‘handsome tatami parlor’ (kirei zasheki), which basically means a shoin with improvised decorative elements. (Isozaki 2006: 18)

The plan of the shoin at Katsura reﬂ ects its iterative construction, an accumulation rather than a single architectural act.

1 Koshoin – with moon viewing platform (tsukimidai ) 2 Chushoin – transparent shoji screens and ink painted fusuma screens 3 Gakkinoma – music pavilion 4 Shingoten – chigaidana shelves and cabinetry: opacity of space

These major moves all face the garden, but in a staggered arrangement in plan as well as section – with steps up and down enhancing the threshold effects between wings of the shoin ; this arrangement, similar to the placement of utensils in the tea ceremony, is known as the fl ying geese (ganko) formation. Each room has a main space and a service area: a hidden route for the household servants and atten- dants being used to conceal their movements from the nobility. The arrangement is produced to enhance the views of the pond and refl ections in the water, with the setbacks themselves also producing a depth and prospect distinctive from that of Western axial perspective: the effect here is one of layering. Shoji screens are used to carefully demarcate space and allow temporal occupation and are translucent enough to allow light into the plan. The strategy of vistas is particularly important to the garden. Each of the tea houses and pavilions is designed to frame the gaze, to encourage or afford a certain view of the garden and the other villa structures. The garden is deliberately 288 Ray Lucas constructed so that one cannot grasp it all at once. This recalls the terminology for describing space in Japanese aesthetics which always includes a notion of temporality or direction: space is a kind of trajectory or line of fl ight rather than an abstract concept.

Nezu Museum as a threshold The Nezu Museum in central Tokyo is a private collection of premodern works including Japanese and Chinese calligraphy, lacquerware, pottery, and sculpture which opened in 1940, later housed in a new building by Kuma Kengo Architects in 2009. Kuma’s new building has a relationship with the site’s mature garden which showcases many of the religious sculptures collected by industrialist Nezu Kaichiro during his lifetime. The building’s context is important, being the grounds of the family residence, complete with landscaping, iris pond, and several tea houses. More than this, however, is the wider neighbourhood of Aoyama, which is home to a large concentration of Japanese and international designer clothing brands. The boutiques which line the street towards the museum have been designed by a roll call of contemporary architectural stars, with statement-piece spectacles being the order of the day: two storey structures which serve as brand identity for client and architect alike. The Nezu Museum must thus quieten things down substantially, opting for a modest gateway which immediately turns the visitor 90° to the right, down a dark bamboo lined grove with heavy eaves overhead. A second turn, to the left, presents the visitor with the entrance to the museum itself: already separated from the bustle of Tokyo. The museum itself9 is a kind of transitory zone which mediates between Tokyo and the gardens beyond, however. The thresholds often employ turns here, defl ecting the path of the visitor and directing their gaze in a carefully choreo- graphed manner, all until the garden is reached. It might seem that paths are more prescribed in the undulating garden, but the paths fork in a pleasing manner, giving some agency back to the visitor in terms of what to look at and how long to linger. Similar to the gardens at Katsura, this is a garden for refl ection and contemplation. Frustratingly, the pavilions are off limits, but the site resists a totalising image, and cannot be apprehended all at once. The garden, then, demands an ambulatory exploration: it once again has an embedded practice. The careful placement of fl agstones, uneven steps, and winding routes all contribute to ensure the visitor is mindful of every footfall. All the while, other visitors make their own way around, never remaining in sight for long.

Conclusion: architecture as social relationship The idea of an architecture of practice and agency is clearly not restricted to Japanese architecture, and certainly not to those cited as classical examples by key architects and theorists: but they do represent particularly strong examples of a long tradition of architectural design which embeds this attitude through thresholds and paths. Architectural aesthetics has long been considered as a branch of Threshold and temporality in architecture 289 art history, as a sequence of styles and infl uences: biographies of key fi gures and movements. Whilst this remains an important activity, further differentiated by histories of ideas and materials, the recent trends in tracing the effective epide- miology of modernism and shifts in architectural knowledge production from carpenters, masons, and monks through to the development of the studio and professional practice are increasingly specialist and narrow in focus. Alternative discussions of architecture and beauty must take place in anthropology, and this is where a discourse of people and their habitual and practiced interactions with space over a period of time must be held: a spatial or architectural anthropology in which the issues of how we construct places both materially and socially are the central concern. Such spatial practices are most clearly visible in threshold spaces and paths: the connecting routes around a space and assemblages for altering the nature of space from one side of a gate, step, or doorway to another. Stretching these conditions out embeds more into the practice, a wholly architectural beauty which describes the subtle formal cues which differentiate one sense of place from another. Saiho-ji establishes a clear and formal ritual element in its threshold where visitors must participate in a set of activities before gaining access to the Moss Garden. Katsura has a more bureaucratic procedure ahead of an arranged tour, but the carefully managed ground plane and stopping points still offer breathtaking and careful architectural qualities stripped back to their most clear and simple roots. The care with which steps into the main villa buildings are handled demonstrates a discipline tied to material understanding and careful stratifi cation of space beyond the simple inside/outside, public/private dichotomies which dominate Western writing on the topic. Learning from these lessons, contemporary architect Kuma Kengo demonstrates a continuing concern for the threshold condition in his recent works. The Nezu Museum is a case in point, as it uses devices of defl ecting, turning, translucency, and occluding to take the visitor out of the city of Tokyo and into a self-contained garden. This references Japanese traditional architecture in form and material, but in a distinctively modern manner, unafraid of bringing the tradition of architecture up to date.

Notes 1 See, in particular, Eisenstein (1991) where this theory of montage is explored through a series of essays establishing the foundations of fi lm theory for years to come. 2 Convincingly elaborated by Simon Unwin in Analysing Architecture (2003) and Door- way (2007) as well as more recently Rem Koolhaas’s Elements (2014) publication for the Venice Biennale: a collection of 15 books on fundamental architectural elements including one on the Door . 3 Masuda Susumu gives a detailed catalogue of these in his ‘Anatomical Chart of Homes’ (2009), part of a practical series of handbooks for designers which gives the appropriate dimensions for the various parts of the home: including the shoe closet and step arrangement common to Japanese houses. 4 It is worth noting that the moss growth was not initially intended, but the result of an earlier Zen rock garden being left untended due to lack of funds: the resulting moss was so highly regarded as to be maintained in its meticulous current form since the Meiji era 290 Ray Lucas (19th century). The temple itself has a history of building and rebuilding, with a Nara era temple (eighth century) superseded by Soseki’s Rinzai Zen monastery of 1339. The temple buildings have been rebuilt several times due to war, fi re, and fl oods. See Treib & Herman (2003:110–117). 5 As noted by architects including Tange, Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture (in Gropius et al. 1960:14–36), and later Isozaki’s The Diagonal Strategy (in Ponciroli (Ed.) 2004:9–39). 6 Notably the recent 62nd shrine rebuilding photographed at every stage from the felling of trees through to completion by Masaaki Miyazawa (2015). 7 Japanese names are written in original order throughout: Surname , Forename . 8 This is elaborated further by Saito Yuriko (2013), describing the stepping stones as ‘invitations’ to both slow down and to appreciate the feel of the garden underfoot. 9 The spaces of the actual museum are relatively conventional, behaving rationally and displaying the objects in a controlled manner. The palette of materials is noteworthy, however, as Kuma experiments with bamboo screens, fabric, and paper for different types of translucency, all against dark grey metal and slate coloured tiles. The building does not offer an ‘iconic’ view, and is not visible as a totality, rather necessitating a meander, a walk.

References Eisenstein, S.M. 1991. Writings Volume 2: Towards a Theory of Montage . London: BFI Books. Fazio, M., Moffett, M. & Wodehouse, L. 2013. A World History of Architecture . London: Laurence King. Gropius, W., Tange, K. & Ishimoto, Y. 1960. Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture . New Haven: Yale University Press. Ishimoto, Y. 2010. Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Isozaki, A. 1996. The Island Nation Aesthetic . London: Academy Editions. Isozaki, A. 2004. “The Diagonal Strategy: Katsura as Envisaged by ‘Enshu’s Taste’”. In Ponciroli, V. (Ed.), Katsura Imperial Villa . Milan: Electa Architecture, pp. 9–33. Isozaki, A. 2006. Japan-Ness in Architecture . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Koolhaas, R. 2014. Elements . Venice: Marsilio Editori. Kubota, A. 2014a. Design Parts Collection in Japanese Traditional Style Architecture . Tokyo: Design Book. Kubota, A. 2014b. Design Parts Collection in Japanese Traditional Style Garden . Tokyo: Design Book. Kuma, K. (Ed.). 2010. Kyokai: A Japanese Technique for Articulating Space . Tokyo: Tankosha. Liotta, S.-J.A. & Belﬁ ore, M. (Eds.). 2012. Patterns and Layering: Japanese Spatial Cul- ture, Nature and Architecture . Berlin: Gestalten. Masaaki, M. 2015. 62nd Shrine Shikinen Sengu . Ei-Publishing Co. Masuda, S. 2009. The Anatomical Chart of Homes . Tokyo: Ekusunarejji. Naito, A. 1977. Katsura: A Princely Retreat . Tokyo: Kodansha International. Nishi, K. & Hozumi, K. 1983. What Is Japanese Architecture? A Survey of Traditional Japanese Architecture . Tokyo: Kodansha International. Okawa, N. 1975. Edo Architecture: Katsura and Nikko . Tokyo: Heibonsha. Ponciroli, V. (Ed.). 2004. Katsura Imperial Villa . Milan: Electa Architecture. Saito, Y. 2013. “The Moral Dimension of Japanese Aesthetics”. In Bhatt, R. (Ed.), Rethink- ing Aesthetics: The Role of the Body in Design . London: Routledge, pp. 158–180. Threshold and temporality in architecture 291 Tadgell, C. 2008. The East: Buddhists, Hindus and the Sons of Heaven: Architecture in Context , vol. 2. London: Routledge. Tardits, M. 2011. Tokyo: Portraits and Fictions . Blou: Le Gac Press. Toshitsuna, T. (presumed author), Takei, J. & Keane, M.P. (Trans. & Eds.). 2008 [c.1060]. Sakuteiki [Records of Garden Making]. Tokyo: Tuttle Classics. Treib, M. & Herman, R. 2003. A Guide to the Gardens of Kyoto. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Unwin, S. 2003. Analysing Architecture (second edition). London: Routledge. Unwin, S. 2007. Doorway . London: Routledge. 19 Carbuncles, surfaces and beautiful built environments

Rachel J. Harkness

Architecture that offends The city in which I live, Aberdeen, wins The Carbuncle Award for being the most dismal town in Scotland. Articles about this, and comments on social media, catch my eye and I wonder at how we inhabitants of this place have now been drawn into considering the dismalness of where we live and the role of architecture in this. Could this award be right? Is Aberdeen an architectural carbuncle? Moreover, the idea of the carbuncle intrigues me. Although the word possesses a duality, one revealed by its historical usage to name a type of jewel stone, initially it seems such a wonderfully horrible word, speaking as it does of infected boils and abscesses in, or on, the skin. And it leads me to consider architectures as potentially hideous outcroppings, abnormal growths erupting on the surface of a place! What are these carbuncles symptoms of, I wonder: what awful diet has led to these eruptions of the spectacularly dismal? The Carbuncle Awards were established in the year 2000, by architectural magazine Urban Realm , in order to provoke debate and catalyse better architecture. In conferring the 2015 award upon Aberdeen, Urban Realm justifi ed the choice with reference to the city as a whole and to specifi c contested architectural or planning projects. Aberdeen stood accused of having “succumbed to a quick buck”, and of having done little to build upon its granite-rich heritage or its oil wealth in order to improve the quality of the built environment (Urban Realm, 2015). What became very clear about this award was that it was ‘architecture’ in the broadest sense that was being judged and commented upon. It spanned the work of planner, architects, private developers and councils; it included the histories, industries, future visions of and aspirations for Aberdeen; and people used it to refer to the wider urban culture, atmosphere and particular feel of the place. Similarly, the idea of offensive architecture was multi-faceted. Despite frequent mention of ‘generic shopping malls’, lack of green spaces and unsubstantial and ‘cheap’ constructions, what offended seemed to be more complicated than one- off, eyesore buildings. Such particular monstrosities did play a role, but it was architecture in its wider context that was at stake. In such contexts, the offensive seems to be that which grates and does not allow people to get over the ‘rupture of the new’; which is deemed out of proportion and Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 293 out of character, and cannot settle, nor positively contribute to its surroundings. It is perhaps what anthropologist Xose Carlos Sierra calls the “epiphenomenon of ugliness” in the built environment: where a complex reality produces “atrocious cultural discontinuities” (2006, 58). The offensive not only causes controversy and debate, but also stubbornly stimulates the senses in the wrong way. If “satisfaction with life”, as geographer Yi-Fu Tuan argues, “consists largely of taking pleasure in form and expressiveness – in sensory impressions, modifi ed by the mind, at all scales from the smile of a child to the built environment and political theatre” (1989, 233), then the offensive carbuncular does not provide opportunity for this. This chapter pivots, then, upon the controversial idea that contemporary built environments are being developed (i.e. constructed, demolished, maintained, repurposed) in a way that is failing to provide the places and experiences that will contribute to the well-being and happiness of their inhabitants. There is a seeming lack of what Tuan calls the “aesthetic impulse” to construct “a pleasing world” (ibid 239). Many architects, planners and builders are still creating buildings, which, far from being holistic in the socio-environmental sense, have largely divisive and negative impact on their communities. More often than not, and certainly in Britain of late, these architectures have been heavily associated with phenomena such as the creeping death of town centres and the reduction or privatisation of public spaces (Garrett, 2015, National Review of Town Centres 2013). Although the Carbuncle Awards publicly shame the architecture and planning powers that be, they are bestowed with the hope that they will lead to reform and recovery (Urban Realm Magazine, 2014). I hope to beat a similar path and perhaps even recover the carbuncle. Moving from the carbuncle as pustule or infection on the skin or surface of a place to an alternative sense of the term – one that speaks to surface-depth, health and beauty in quite a different way – I fi rst consider popular participation in architecture, its judgement and the importance of beauty in our built environments. Then, with reference to the work of groups of ecological-builders with whom I have carried-out research, and to the work of the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, whose award-winning work generates beautiful places and experiences, I discuss surface in relation to architecture. Surfaces – as the lively places of connection and exchange in which we humans live most of our everyday lives (Tuan, 1989) – play a key role in our sensory experience of architectures. I draw on thinking about aesthetics, politics and alternative economics in order to make an argument for the need to create more modest experiences of the beautiful in our everyday and through our surfaces and practices of surfacing, to highlight the relation between the beautiful and the way in which things come to be in and of themselves in the world. With attention to the connection between ‘fi nishing’ buildings and their surfacing, I show that things ‘coming to be’ speak to the ways in which surfaces not only “function as limits of matter and as spaces of material exchange” (Forsyth et al., 2013, 1014), thus blurring the stark dichotomy of inside and out, but also as means of revelation and concealment of a building’s wider (holistic) being. Where the Carbuncle Awards suggest blots on the landscape that exist as a detriment to the whole, I would rather suggest 294 Rachel J. Harkness that attempts to avoid the creation of dismal and carbuncular built environments might leave notions of a smooth skin disrupted to one side and focus instead on creating and partaking in design and construction that are participatory, holistic and environmentally conscious.

Who is to judge? Architectural criticism and public opinion The debates around the Carbuncle Awards – which frequently extend to discussing who is able and expected to judge architecture – invoke the work of Pierre Bourdieu on ‘distinction’, especially when they refer to ‘educating’ the public in architectural criticism. Bourdieu (1984) writes on this sense of the learnt appreciation of the arts, making a strong sociological case for seeing phenomena such as the Carbuncle Awards as class-ridden commentaries delivered by a cultural elite who have been educated (or have had their sensibilities educated) so as to be able to ‘speak the language’ of the arts. 1 Bourdieu argued that if the beholder of a piece of art – in our case, a work of architecture – lacks the specifi c cultural ‘code’ with which to decipher the secondary meaning of the work or what it is signifying, then they cannot move beyond the purely sensible properties of the piece. This beholder, lacking the cultural competence, fi nds themselves excluded from a realm that speaks inwards, to itself – an “autonomous fi eld of artistic production” (1984, 4). Considering the ‘popular aesthetic’ in contrast to the ‘pure gaze’ of this autonomous art world, Bourdieu highlights that the former is a “taste of sense” (ibid 7), concerned with the function of an image and “affi rmation of the continuity between art and life” (ibid 5). The latter is a “taste of refl ection”, a contemplative detachment or separation that is concerned with form, a disposition that is “the paradoxical product of conditioning by negative economic necessities – a life of ease – that tends to induce an active distance from necessity” (ibid 6). If Bourdieu links the term ‘popular’ to a lack in cultural competence, the cultural theorist Raymond Williams shows that in its meaning as “an unwelcome thing, merely widespread” (1985, 237) the term has long had the sense of courting the masses. However, the word’s root is in popularise , meaning ‘belonging to the people’ – legally and politically (ibid ). This sense of ‘popular’ speaks to Aberdo- nians’ continued participation in the criticism at the heart of the Carbuncle Awards. Here, people are taking part in cultural commentaries on their architectural surroundings as if they belong to them. Indeed, there seems to be an assumption, almost palpable in the debate, that despite the might of the market economy to determine what is built and how it is built, people still have the right to judge and help determine these matters. They are not to be merely subject to them – and don’t necessarily need to be ‘taught’ how to correctly contemplate them. Public attitudes across the UK acknowledge beauty in the built environment and demonstrate an interest in it. A recent ethnographic study into public perceptions of beauty of the built environment by Ipsos MORI (2010) found it to be an important concept to UK citizens. People here strongly associate beauty with happiness and well-being. They reportedly understand it as an experience more than as an object, Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 295 and they strive for more of it in their neighbourhoods (Ipsos MORI, 2010). Whilst acknowledging that people might personally hold different ideas of what is beautiful, the participants in this study felt strongly about the importance of beautiful built environments for the bettering or improvement of society (ibid ). Even with their conscious relativism, they saw this as something that could be shared and recognised in the built environment.

What does beauty mean in terms of architecture? For many centuries, certainly in the West, beautiful buildings were those built in the classical style, borrowing from Greek and Roman traditions. In fact, the ideas of Roman architect Vitruvius concerning power, permanence, security and exposure still shape many widely held perceptions of what is beautiful. Vitruvius is perhaps most famous for his trio of fundamental concepts in architecture: strength, functionality and beauty. His writings also connected the architecture of the body with that of the building, heralding the many commentators after him who have debated and calculated the perfect proportions of beauty. Indeed, since Pythagoras identifi ed proportion as the instrument for establishing the mean between extremes and blending opposites into a relationship, it has been at the heart of what traditional (and occasionally modernist) architects consider beautiful (Westfall, 2013). Beauty in architecture has also frequently been based upon an imitation of nature’s forms and patterns, patterns often interpreted as ‘God’s handiwork’. We see this, for instance, as recognised in the Golden Section, which is celebrated as it plays out repeatedly across nature. Technical mastery, distinction and the ability to impose form on matter – form that represents an objective quality of nature – are the height of beauty in this regime. As was indicated by Ipsos MORI’s research, in which people spoke of good living (2010), the good and the beautiful are related in complex ways. Thus, philosopher of aesthetics Arnold Berleant (2012) notes that there is a sense of moral beauty that is “the beauty of character, of a noble action, of a life: the beauty of real virtue, as Plato put it” (2012, 207). In terms of simple confl ation of the good and the beautiful, architect Jeremy Till suggests that it is now widely accepted that the strict association of visual purity (also linked to cleanliness – certainly in the modernist tradition) with social morality is highly offensive (2009). However, ideas of beauty, virtue and the smooth, unblemished surface are connected still. Certainly, the relationship between ornament and function has been at the heart of discussions of beauty: however, unlike in the nineteenth century, when theory on the relationship between beauty and architecture might be summarised as having been that “a building’s prosaic forms require ornaments whose beauty is universally admired” (Kohane, 2014, 125), today’s opinions on ornament and function are somewhat different. Today, form has followed function to the extent that ornament is generally considered superfl uous and therefore eschewed. Simplicity is awarded in design. Writer Alain de Botton argues that what we fi nd beautiful in architecture is drawn from the way in which buildings communicate to us (2008). He suggests 296 Rachel J. Harkness that we fi nd beauty in what is known to us, what we aspire to (that “beauty is a promise of happiness” [Stendhal, 1822, cited in de Botton, 2008, 11]) and what fi ts. For de Botton, key to creating beauty is the balance of order and chaos in a building: something which can “draw in some of the energy of chaos, and also draw in some of the security and rigour of order, and somehow it sits in the middle” (ibid ). Another important element is the attunement of a building to its era and geographical and cultural location: thus a building’s context, or the way in which a building speaks to its specifi c time and place, is highlighted as central to the beautiful (ibid ). De Botton’s suggestions of how to build the beautiful are driven by his belief that architects should be thinking more about beauty, that the so-called ‘troubled relationship’ that architects supposedly have with beauty is, in part, one of neglect (Reisner and Watson, 2010). So what is architecture’s engagement with beauty? In a recent debate on the subject between architects Ron Arad and Sam Jacob (2014), Arad largely blamed planners for not recognising architectural beauty, while Jacob made relativist claims to beauty’s meaning and suggested that beauty is a retreat from politics, that “when people use the word beauty in design they are seeking refuge from all the diffi culties of modern life – all of its doubts, fears and challenges” (Arad and Jacob, 2014). Of course, this is just one example of how architects think about beauty, but the positions presented seem to entail either a shifting of blame, or a relativism so broad as to be meaningless. Coupled with a casting of beauty in design as essentially escapist, they do seem to suggest a disjuncture between the architectural profession, the more widespread practice of building and public attitudes. Till, in his critique of the discipline’s separation from everyday life, picks up on this disjuncture as architecture’s deluded sense of its autonomy (2009). Remi- niscent of Bourdieu’s autonomous art world, he describes how UK architecture schools inscribe, cultivate and defend a separation of their art from life. Suggesting that Georges Bataille got it ‘dead right’ when he wrote that “Great monuments are erected like dykes opposing the logic and majesty of authority against all disturb- ing elements” (1989, cited in Till, 2009, 19) Till argues that ideas of order and purity (based heavily still on the classical body, such as that depicted in da Vinci’s famous drawing of Vitruvian Man) still dominate and shape this self-referential, ‘autonomous’ realm which denies its own contingency (ibid ).

Surfaces: concealments and revelations The metaphorical use of ‘carbuncle’ suggests that ideas of surface, rupture, and the substance of a place are fi rmly related to beauty in buildings. In Lines , Tim Ingold understands surfaces as never given: they are instead considered as being formed through the interweaving of threads, and in time, conversely, they can dis- solve back into unravelling threads (2007). Life happens in and through surfaces. Carbuncles, posited as either ruptures or outcroppings in the surface of the city, in the nation’s architectural fabric pivot somewhat on the idea that surfaces express the underlying condition of a place, being or thing. We could go further to say that Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 297 they pivot on the idea that surfaces constitute place and express it; that they are sites of exchange and movement. The sculpture Musselled Moore by Simon Starling speaks to both surfaces and carbuncles. Here, a copy of a familiar fi gurine by sculptor Henry Moore has been submerged in a lake and become encrusted with mussels. These carbuncles of the sea become a lively opening-up of the sculpture’s body to the sympathy and empathy of those that behold it and to the interchange of materials with its environment. As Ingold puts it in his discussion of the piece, the mussels bring the fi gure back to life (2013, 91–94). This carbuncled surface is therefore not some homogenising blanket overlying the substance that lies beneath, nor is it some sign of underlying infection. It is something which, in its constant interweaving into being, is blurring the boundaries between inside and outside; each mussel is enriching and enliven- ing the body’s surfaces. In addition to being communicative and never constituting completely defi nitive or impermeable limits, the surfaces of architecture are multiple and both external and internal: buildings always simultaneously face both outwards and inwards. Architecture’s surfaces are also about both revelation and concealment (Zumthor, 2006). Referring to Hitchcock’s famous fi lm Rear Window, in which a man fer- vently watches life (and death) revealed in a facing building’s windows, Zumthor argues that architectural surfaces are about what or how we are allowed to see into, or out of, buildings; and also that they are about what a building ‘says’ to the street, square or landscape that it is part of (2006, 49). 2 In my current research with the builders of an Ecology Centre, just down the coast from Aberdeen, in Fife, the surfaces of the centre are very much layered upon one another throughout the process of construction. These consecutive surfaces are all meeting places, places of interaction, and are the building that they constitute.3 The windows (surfaces of glass themselves) are placed thoughtfully to create certain sightlines. The innermost and outermost surfaces of the building are chosen with care: smooth white walls of plasterboard adorn the interior, and locally sourced, untreated larch (which will age and colour over time from warm reddish tones to silvery greys) clads the exterior. The former is considered appropriately calm and neutral for the offi ce and educational spaces within; the latter, appropriate for the outer-face of this energy-effi cient building, housing an ecologically minded local organisation, on the green banks of a loch. The surfaces of this building have therefore been designed in order to communicate certain values concerning building and the environment, both generally speaking and very specifi cally to this place and these people. The surfaces also function to place (relative) limits, help determine relations between people and place, and negotiate exchange and movement (from the level of air moving in and out for ventilation to that of people crossing the threshold as they come and go). The Ecology Centre is indicative of how the idea of the honesty of a building’s facade and the way that it speaks to its surroundings is also a persevering one in architecture. Since before critic John Ruskin wrote on this subject in the 1800s, there has been concern about facades being concealing surfaces that can be dishon- est, falsely signalling something that, upon further inspection, is not then delivered 298 Rachel J. Harkness (Ruskin, 2001[1849]). There has been a sustained sense throughout the ages then that buildings should speak truthfully of their substance and to their place or context. Aberdonians’ opinions on the ‘carbuncle’ question are in this vein. Keats’s ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty’ proves a mantra worth preserving.

Connection and calm The complex relation of architectural surface to ideas of beauty and psycho-social need can be further elucidated by an example from research I carried out in Scot- land and the US with builders of eco-friendly, off-grid homes called Earthships (Harkness, 2009). In our plastering work together, we covered walls in, and constituted walls out of, earthen plaster fl ecked with straw. I admired the way in which the builders were at pains to use natural, ecological and reclaimed materials and were keen to educate others on architecture’s environmental impact upon the world and the way that building implicates us and connects us within this world. How- ever, I noticed that despite this desire, there was still an attention to surface that did not always leave these strong ethics of connection, transparency and account- ability completely, literally and materially ‘on show’. I argued that house dwellers of the US and UK “have come to expect and prefer, to feel comfortable and secure within, the building that exhibits a calm facade and hides away the workings” (Harkness, 2009, 115). Having worked as anthropologist on more conventional building sites of late, I now wonder whether the extent to which modern buildings (and the lives we lead in and around them) are interwoven with masses of wires, cables, pipes and vents actually necessitates an increase in this ‘hiding away’. I think that facing the reality of these many detailed connections (connections that implicate us in all manner of local to global networks and systems) would be hugely overwhelming and over-stimulating for the majority of dwellers. Anusas and Ingold take up this point about surfaces ‘covering over’ (2013). Concerned with the logics of concealment in mainstream practices of design in Western industrialised societies, they argue that building aspires “toward a logic of form that reduces our ability to perceive the depth and scope of our material involvement with the world around us” (2013, 58). Their analysis focuses upon the “lines or conduits of energetic and material circulation”, which are literally concealed and thus allow buildings to be presented as objects, as “discrete, fi nished entities” (ibid ). The effect, they argue, “is to trap humanity within a vicious circle of increasing environmental alienation” (ibid ). 4 Whilst sympathetic to the main thrust of this argument, I feel the need to com- plicate it. For the eco-builders with whom I worked, the ‘fi nishing’ coats of plaster allowed for an important calming and concerting of materials and energy, time and effort: plastering is a job that is done towards the end of a home’s major construction, and the effect of the smooth earthen surfaces seemed often to be to bring coherence to the works – works with many materials, many elements. Fur- thermore, Earthship plastering comes as part of a much wider, conscious process of engaging in building as dis-alienation, building as contributing to the world. Builders speak of the permeability of their ‘fi nishing layer’, of how earthen-plaster Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 299 ‘breathes’; and, of course, having built their own homes, they know, literally and metaphorically, what lies beneath the plaster layers. So the smoothing and ‘fi nishing’ of surfaces can be quite different from alienating, but can still have something of the distancing of it in the way that it is about removing the ties of connection and dependency from full-consciousness. It is a crucial process by which things can come into being as themselves, as distinct things in and of the world. What Anusas and Ingold’s (2013) work emphasises, however, is that Earthship builders and their homes are a tiny minority in comparison to an overwhelming majority of mainstream practices that are oriented towards the market, towards the continual consumption of architectural objects, and that are helped in this orientation by containing-surfaces that conceal, distance and ultimately alienate. They alienate a population who are either unaware of, or perhaps keen to forget, their multiple connections to sewage plants and the work of water engineers, to cleaners, air-conditioning unit makers and global transporters, to fossil fuels and resource depletion.

Holistic experience: perceiving architecture as more than a visual art Earthship builders – like many eco-builders – engage in a holistic building practice that re-centres people at the centre of architecture (Harkness, 2009). Knowing their building makes me doubt whether Bourdieu’s (1984) thinking about distinction wholly works for architecture. Architecture is so much more than a purely visual art (Paterson, 2011): it is experienced on the building site, in occupation of the building and in the street – realms of the everyman/woman. Built by the efforts of many, it works on and through the whole sensing person. It is sculptural, encompassing, collaborative, and is a thing, perhaps, but not a static object. Since the experiential ‘turn’ heralded by architects such as Alvar Aalto (who fundamentally challenged the notion of architecture as the concretised, visual object), a non-static understanding of our built environment and our multi-sensory experience of it has been established as a counterpoint to much of the architecture of our age. Considering architectural work for its muscular and haptic presence, architects taking this approach strive for architectures based on ‘sensory realism’ rather than “the disembodied Cartesian realism of the architecture of the eye” (Pallasmaa, 1996, 71). This reference to the eye connects to the disinterestedness that Bourdieu’s account of distinction partly rests upon. In his consideration of aesthetics, Roger Sansi (2015) describes Bourdieu’s work (rather usefully) as an attempt to denounce the sociological facts of inequality and education revealed through a denaturalising of taste. Sansi argues, however, that Bourdieu ignores readings which take this disinterestedness to be the ability to engage with an object on its own terms, that is, the “letting what encounters us to come before us in its own stature and worth” (Sansi, referring to Heidegger, 2015, 85). This reading of aesthetics reveals not a detachment of the senses per se , but rather something more like the ‘fi nishing’ coats of earthen plaster that allow the building to cohere 300 Rachel J. Harkness into something distinct, if still connected to its environment and means of production. Sansi shows how (for philosophers such as Jacques Rancière, who build upon this alternative reading of aesthetics) the judgement of taste is the result of conscious work to construct a ‘community of sense’ (or “distribution of the sensible”, in Rancière’s [2006] terms). If politics is the constitution of a commons, then this school of thought posits aesthetics squarely at the ‘very foundations’ of politics (Sansi, 2015, 85). What this means is that art can counter the kind of alienation that Anusas and Ingold (2013) identify and Earthship builders want to resist. Art, and thus architecture, can playfully “show the way of liberation from labour, reintegrating art and life, and disappearing as such in the process” (Sansi, 2015, 85). Here, beauty is understood as a symbol of freedom, a freedom of both people and things; and the hierarchy of the academy (so central to distinction) is, as Sansi puts it, “replaced by the egalitarianism of the distribution of the sensible” (ibid 80). Importantly, the holistic here is not a closed or static thing (Otto and Bubandt, 2010), but something characterised by debate, diversity and dissent; situated in the movement between art as everyday life and art as avant-garde. Peter Zumthor’s thoughtful practice chimes closely with this philosophy: his approach to the beauty of a work of art is one of indeterminacy, openness and space for different interpretations (1999, 28). Treading the paradoxical line between detailed, observant design and the vague – in order to create things which ema- nate richness and multiplicity – Zumthor hopes that if he conceives of a building accurately enough for its place and function, this will allow it to “develop its own strength” (1999, 27–28). Key here is Zumthor’s value for both architecture’s function and its ability to create the grounds for things to grow of their own accord: to come to be or possess a “concentrated substance”, what he calls “the hard core of beauty” (ibid ). Zumthor’s working process, a “slow architecture”, attends to details such as the temperature, feel or sound of spaces in formation, the materials being used, their compatibility, and the surroundings, function and coherence of a building. In his attempts to create ‘atmospheric architecture’, he allows the building to fi nd its own beautiful form (ibid ). A sense of “self-suffi cient, corporeal wholeness” infuses Zumthor’s philosophy, as well as a return to the natural environment, where he sees things as possessing this “hard core of beauty” (Zumthor, 1999, 30–32). Zumthor’s work suggests that for architecture to be experienced well, the possibility for people to build, dwell within and move through places is required. This is a multi-sensorial pursuit. People need to be able to design, make and remake, to inhabit architectures, to access and occupy them. Such an approach has broad aesthetic and political implications, and it may well be that it can contribute to efforts to combat dismal and alienating environments. Beauty, as something experienced, can then be in a building’s character and temperature, in the way that it evokes emotion and entices movement, in the richness of its surfaces, in its way of speaking to that which surrounds it, in its palpable and concentrated substance, in its playful nature, and in its holism and positive contribution to the quality of its situation. Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 301 The economic elephant in the corner In his assessment that there has been an ‘enlargement’ of beauty, Berleant (2012, 210) notes that our broader sense of ‘beautiful’ can “include the ugly, the grotesque, the comic and playful, the tragic, as well as the pleasing” (ibid 205). Thus the supremely functional, even the morally repugnant (e.g. skyscrapers and war machines), can be celebrated as beautiful, even found ‘fused’ with beauty – as in magnifi cent sunsets stained by pollution, and violence and abuse glorifi ed in fi lm ( ibid ). However, he argues that if we have the adjective ‘beautiful’ in place of the substantive ‘beauty’, we can “see the world anew”, and that this is an ability that “gives us an incentive to encourage beauty in all regions of daily life” (ibid ). Signifi cantly, Berleant also notes how the expansion of our aesthetic perception may cause us to be “blinded by the betrayal of beauty in the exclusive worship of economic values” (ibid ). Listing “the pervasiveness of a negative aesthetic in building and house design, in urban surroundings, and in the commercially-led vulgarisation of the countryside”, he speaks precisely to a widespread issue: that of aesthetic decisions being based upon economic reasoning (ibid ). What of beauty when the tenure process for public projects simply results in the hiring of fi rms with the lowest quotes? What of beauty when that which determines the aesthetics of our built environment is so often the pressure to build as cheaply and quickly as possible, utilising mass-produced materials and generic design? We might consider too that the majority of building – 98% globally – happens with little architect involvement (Parvin, 2015, 18). Yet, the gaze of architectural commentators is too often set squarely upon not just the small proportion of the architect-designed buildings, but upon the even smaller number of individual statement pieces designed by big-name international architects. Thus, in the UK at least, whilst focus remains on public buildings or extraordinary homes, the erection of dismally homogeneous offi ce blocks, over-sized supermarkets, new car-reliant housing developments and the like passes largely unexamined. Such architectural economics are far from Zumthor’s ‘slow architecture’. In fact, after Ernst Schumacher’s ‘appropriate’ (1973) small-scale, people-centred technologies, we might argue that there is dire need for ‘appropriate’ architectures which allow a much better ‘fi t’ between building and ecological niche, between construction and habitat, between people, culture, climate and architectural form (see McHarg, 1995[1969]). There are many examples of people in today’s world trying to achieve this kind of appropriate shelter, cognizant of humankind’s interdependence within the wider world. Some of these are self-builders like the Earthship builders; others are making less holistic, but just as important, efforts, such as the people at the Ecology Centre. Demonstrating that “small is beautiful” (Schumacher, 1973) in their own, various ways, they follow the philosophy of ‘enoughness’, appreciating human needs whilst also acknowledging the earth’s limitations. They challenge both mainstream economics and the stripping away of satisfaction in work (often through mass production) that these economics usually entail (ibid ). This alternative, smaller approach sees wisdom as demanding a new orientation of architecture: towards the organic, the gentle, the elegant and the beautiful (ibid) . 302 Rachel J. Harkness Scale, therefore, is important. What is being advocated here is the cultivating of “more modest beautiful occasions” (Berleant, 2012, 210). In these smaller and varied movements, the focus can be not only on the ‘great’ public buildings, the places of public or offi cial appearance. It can be on small streets, edges of towns, spaces between buildings, industrial estates, shopping areas, alleyways, the quotidian spaces of the home, offi ce and workshop. This focus is distributed but still intense, and it is directed to the spaces and surfaces in which we spend our time, and where, through a more ecological architecture or art, people can lessen humanity’s negative impact in the world whilst constituting a commons attentive to the fundamental role of aesthetics in this task.

In the spirit of recovery If the relationship of humankind with the environment of our planet is considered today, the picture can be worse than dismal – as anthropologist Anna Tsing puts it, “it can be terrifying” (Tsing, 2014). But what then are we to do – and how are we to build? Perhaps we can take a lead from Tsing and her colleagues, who describe their efforts to understand and to act as “the arts of living on a damaged planet” (ibid ). It seems fi tting that as a wholly contingent phenomenon and practice, architecture be understood as one of these arts. Furthermore, perhaps awards such as the Carbuncles can start small revolutions towards this art of living on a damaged planet – ways of engaging in hopeful acts of what we might call ‘recovery’, in Gregory Bateson’s sense of constituting a reintegra- tion with nature, with the wider, more-than-human world (1972). Imagine a process of healing, and of integrated, appropriate and beautiful ways of building and dwelling in the world with others, such as Zumthor’s buildings and the eco-builders’ works.5 Implicit here is an emphasis upon architecture as a verb : art as action, as the active making and shaping of the world. This is building as popular participation: not something done to people or for people, it is “of the people, and by the people” (Oliver, 2003, 14). Building can potentially be the artistic engagements of makers seeking simplicity and security in the moment whilst also embracing complexity and movement in the world. It can be political in the sense that it is a sphere of experience containing commonly held and freely debated things (ibid ). Along with the Ipsos MORI respondents, we might, for instance, focus on educational spaces not as places that cultivate tastes and determine, impose and maintain regimes of classifi cation, but rather as playful realms in which the conditions for the creation and experience of the beautiful can be fruitfully bred, where all are encouraged to participate in and contribute to the shaping of our built environments. Here, the beautiful might be understood as something meaningful, moving, and something which contributes positively to the world, and this understanding might then feed out from young people into an adult world that has been struggling to grasp the magnitude and socio-cultural and political importance of their architectural failures. Thus, although beauty does not exclusively reside in things, and although clearly tastes are still learnt and ‘classifying’, architecture that strives to create a building to become a thing ‘in and of itself’ – a beautiful form – certainly appeals Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 303 in a time when the ethics and aesthetics of construction are troublesome and press- ing. In arguments such as Sansi and Rancière’s, we see the potential we possess to create beautiful, free, playful architecture. Therefore, perhaps it is a stretch, but as one of the arts of living on this damaged planet of ours, our architecture could embrace the carbuncle as the bright, hot and precious jewel – and this alternative and long-standing meaning of the carbuncular could be recovered. With the gem in mind,6 we might build richly, colourfully and sparingly. Why not take our award here in Aberdeen and turn it on its head?! We could treat the surfaces of our places as places of interaction, engagement and continuity of the movement of life, places revealing and constituting of community character and value. Why not create within the fabric of the place, fi tting and precious, cared-for architectural beauties within which and around which to dwell? Why not delve deep into our places only with the intention of unearthing beautiful experiences?

Acknowledgements This chapter was made possible by the support of the European Research Council. Warm thanks to Stephanie Bunn and Tim Ingold for reading and commenting upon drafts of this work. I am very grateful to those with whom I worked during my ﬁ eldwork at the Ecology Centre, Fife, and my research on Earthships in Scotland and New Mexico, on whose lives and works this scholarship rests.

Notes 1 Bourdieu’s insight is to show that “the ‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by history”(1984, 3) – that the ability to see and appreciate art is based on the knowledge, concepts and words “available to name physical things, and which are, as it were, pro- grammes for perception” (1984, 2). 2 We should not over-emphasize the window: what is being stressed is that if buildings both conceal and reveal through their surfaces, then how they do this – and to what social or political effect – becomes crucial. 3 As this building is a low-energy building, the layers are highly insulative and very selective about what can permeate them. 4 This alienation of course is the less literal ‘underneath’ of the surfaces they examine. Thus, Anusas and Ingold follow a common approach in social analyses of surfaces: one that is generally mistrustful of them and intent on uncovering what lies behind or beneath (Tuan, 1989; Forsyth et al., 2013). As Tuan notes, this vein of analysis (often Marxist) is important work, frequently highlighting exploitation and injustice by shedding light upon the forces that have produced and sustained the stuff of our world (Tuan, 1989, 237). 5 Integration does not preclude difference, alterity, unorthodoxy and challenge. I am not suggesting nor describing some sort of homogenous-harmonious slab, but rather a shifting, fl exible fabric in which grassroots growths can fl ourish and be refl ected. 6 This is not a gem in the sense of an elitist symbol of wealth, nor of frivolous adornment.

References Anusas, M. and T. Ingold (2013) ‘Designing environmental relations: From opacity to textility’ in Design Issues , Vol. 29(4): 58–69. 304 Rachel J. Harkness Arad, R. and S. Jacob (2014) ‘Is beauty an essential consideration in architecture? The Question’ in RA Magazine, Winter 2014 and blog published 14th November 2014, www. royalacademy.org.uk/article/debate-is-beauty-an-essential-consideration-in-architecture Accessed 7th June 2015. Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psy- chiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology . Northvale, NJ; London: Jason Aronson Inc. Berleant, A. (2012) Aesthetics Beyond the Arts: New and Recent Essays . Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Ashgate Publishing. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. de Botton, A. (2008) ‘The Question of Beauty in Architecture’, Delivered 23rd June 2008 as Part of the City of London Festival at Gresham College, www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures- and-events/the-question-of-beauty-in-architecture. Accessed 22nd February 2015. Forsyth, I., H. Lorimer, P. Merriman and J. Robinson (2013) ‘Guest editorial’ in Environ- ment and Planning A , Vol. 45: 1013–1020. Garrett, B. (2015) ‘The privatisation of cities’ public spaces is escalating: It is time to take a stand’ in The Guardian, 4th August 2015, www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/04/ pops-privately-owned-public-space-cities-direct-action Accessed 4th August 2015. Harkness, R. (2009) Thinking, Building, Dwelling: Examining Earthships in Taos, USA and Fife, Scotland . PhD Thesis, University of Aberdeen. Ingold, T. (2007) Lines: A Brief History . London: Routledge. ——— (2013) Making: Archaeology, Anthropology, Art and Architecture . London: Routledge. Ipsos MORI (2010) People and Places: Public Attitudes to Beauty. On Behalf of the Com- mission for Architecture and the Built Environment. Available as PDF at, www.ipsos- mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1668/People-and-places-Public-attitudes- to-beauty.aspx Ipsos MORI. Kohane, P. (2014) ‘James Fergusson’s Theory of Architecture: Construction and Orna- ment’. Pp. 111–128 in Surface and Deep Histories: Critiques and Practices in Art, Archi- tecture and Design, Chatterjee, A. (ed.), Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. McHarg, I. L. (1995[1969]) Design with Nature . New York: John Wiley and Sons. ——— (2013) National Review of Town Centres External Advisory Group Report: Com- munity and Enterprise in Scotland’s Town Centres. Edinburgh: The Scottish Government. Oliver, P. (2003) Dwellings . London; New York: Phaidon Press. Otto, T. and N. Bubandt (Eds.) (2010). Experiments in Holism: Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology . Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Pallasmaa, J. (1996) The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons. Parvin, A. (2015) ‘Architecture (and the other 99%): Open source architecture and the design commons’ in The Scottish Ecological Design Association Magazine, Spring 2015: Rise of the Machine , Vol. 2015/1: 18–20. Paterson, M. (2011) ‘More-than visual approaches to architecture: Vision, touch, technique’ in Social & Cultural Geography , Vol. 12(3): 263–281. Rancière, J. (2006) The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible . London: Continuum. Reisner, Y. and F. Watson (2010) Architecture and Beauty: Conversations with Architects about a Troubled Relationship . Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons. Carbuncles, surfaces and built environments 305 Ruskin, J. (2001[1849]) Seven Lamps of Architecture . London: ElecBook. Sansi, R. (2015) Art, Anthropology and the Gift . London; New York: Bloomsbury. Schumacher, E. (1973) Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered . London: Blond and Briggs. Sierra, X. C. (2006) ‘Xose Carlos Sierra’. Pp. 57–58 in Ugliness? Destroying a Country: The End of the Humanised Territory – a New Kind of Inter-Colonialism, Baamonde, et al., translated from the Spanish by E. Abalo and O. Iglesias. Galicia, Spain: Difusora de Letras, Artes e Ideas, SL. Till, J. (2009) Architecture Depends . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tsing, A. (2014) ‘Opening Speech’ at The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet Conference , 9th May 2014, http://anthropocene.au.dk/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet/ Accessed 20th May 2014. Tuan, Y.-F. (1989) ‘Surface phenomena and aesthetic experience’ in Annals of the Associa- tion of American Geographers , Vol. 79: 233–241. Urban Realm Magazine (2014) ‘News: RGU architecture head comments on “crude” but “laudable” Aberdeen Carbuncle nomination’, 22th October 2014, www.urbanrealm.com/ news/5100/_RGU_architecture_head_comments_on_‘crude’_but_‘laudable’_Aberdeen_ Carbuncle_nomination.html Accessed 17th July 2015. ——— (2015) ‘Aberdeen’, 15th January 2015, www.urbanrealm.com/features/474/ Aberdeen.html Accessed 17th July 2015. Westfall, C. W. (2013) ‘Beauty and proportionality in architecture’ in American Arts Quar- terly, Vol. 30(1) [Online], www.nccsc.net/essays/beauty-and-proportionality-architecture Accessed May 2015. Williams, R. (1985[1973]) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society . New York: Oxford University Press. Zumthor, P. (1999) Thinking Architecture. Translated by M. Oberli-Turner. Basel: Birkhauser. ——— (2006) Atmospheres: Architectural Environments, Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhauser. 20 Paradigms of transmission Aesthetic afﬁ nities and intertextualities in the art of Will Maclean

Lindsay Blair

Introduction Artist Will Maclean (b. 1941) is primarily known for his boxes, sculptural assemblages or light relief works. These intricately crafted pieces have earned him recognition as one of Scotland’s most signifi cant artists of the twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries. From the worlds of fi shing, whaling and Arctic exploration he gathers up precious detritus which is then assembled in the most innovative of ways with the scientifi c journals of travellers and the antique dream world of the Gàidhealtachd. This work has rightly received critical attention. And yet his politically driven, community-led land installations, his early extensive investigation into ring-net fi shing, his book collaborations with poets as well as his role as tradition-bearer are all relatively under-explored. From very early in his career, Maclean began the collecting process. He amassed volumes of drawings, photographs, books, magazines, tools and objects related especially to his maritime interests. He salvaged memoirs and photographs and written accounts from family members – any materials which could relate in any way to his fascination with the sea. Allied to these searchings were his own journeys of discovery scouring libraries, second-hand shops and antiquarian book shops or sifting through the debris on the beaches off Skye or Wester Ross especially in Achiltibuie and Polbain. Besides this he would be gathering, as does the tradition-bearer, the folklore and tales handed down through extended family from Skye, Lewis and the North West of Scotland. Maclean’s actual experience as a fi sherman, in the tradition of his mother’s folk from Skye and his father’s sea-faring ancestors from Coigach, proved crucial to his development as a maker. He speaks of his early youth:

My family were living in Badentarbert . . . (they) came there in the 18th century. They were evicted to Tanera and then they came back and settled in Polbain. In my own childhood . . . with my father and mother and my aunts, I spent a lot of time talking to the old people. Then, when I was a student, I worked there as a salmon ﬁ sherman with William Muir. I have always been drawn back. (2010 Tayport) Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 307 The echo of Badentarbert comes through with the stern post etched into the surface of the ‘James Caird’ works (2011) and in many pieces created before and after this period.

Cultural transmission Giorgio Agamben’s far-reaching essay, ‘The Melancholy Angel’ (2011 [1999], 675–85), poses a challenge not just for art history scholars, aestheticians or cultural historians but for artists themselves. Taking Walter Benjamin’s essay (2011 [1970], 430–50) on Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920) as his starting point, he goes on to develop the notion of ‘aura’ far beyond anything suggested in Benjamin. Accord- ing to Agamben the only way for a piece of work to attain the ‘aura’ of the art object is through alienation (2011 [1999], 676). The art object must be shrouded in mystery; it should be of apparently miraculous creation, an instantaneous and elusive epiphany (ibid 676), the result of an inexplicable wellspring of inspiration. The attributes which make the artwork eminently collectible are precisely the attributes which confer an ‘aura of alienation’ upon it because there is no apparent link to a context. However, all importantly, according to Agamben, the art object can in no way replace the genuine transmissible element of a living culture because the act of transmission and the cultural item being transmitted are inseparable.1 This is in many ways similar to the argument advanced by Hallam and Ingold’s Creativity and Cultural Improvisation (2007) where we fi nd the same notion articulated in a slightly different form. Amar S. Mall’s essay in the book is focused on the k ōlam which is a widespread form of women’s folk art in South Asia. The kōlam consists of complex patterned and symbolic forms located on the fl oors and thresholds of houses and temples to protect them from malevolent forces. What is interesting is the relationship between tradition, that is, the inherited transmissible element, and the artwork or product itself. The most telling statement reads: “the maturation of the design concept, in thought, is one with its material enactment” (Mall 2007, 75). This argument is in accord with Agamben’s in its denial of the existence of the defi nitive art object, or the rare and beautiful object which defi es description. The traditional way is improvisational in its nature: ever-evolving – the opposite of imitation. Mall writes that “practitioners innovate by way of the improvisational exploration of novel paths around the grid, with the potential of generating previously unimagined patterns” (ibid 75). In the most passionately argued paragraph in Agamben’s essay, he writes:

In a traditional system, culture exists only in the act of transmission, that is, in the living act of its tradition . . . In a mythical-traditional system, an absolute identity exists between the act of transmission and the thing transmitted, in the sense that there is no other ethical, religious, or aesthetic value outside the act itself of transmission. ( ibid 677)

When Agamben asks whether art can take the place of tradition, he is utterly pessimistic: if aesthetics takes the place of tradition – “knotting up again the broken 308 Lindsay Blair thread in the past” – in resolving the conﬂ ict between old and new then the space that is created is an aesthetic space: “what is transmitted in it is precisely the impossibility of transmission, and its truth is the negation of its contents. A culture that is losing its transmissibility has lost the sole guarantee of its truth” (ibid 680). 2 Is it possible for art in our time to occupy a space other than Agamben’s aesthetic space which for him resembles nothing so much as kitsch (ibid 682)?

Will Maclean’s art of transmission Everything in Maclean’s multi-media endeavour speaks of a context. He resisted the pull of Abstraction in his early days and re-aligned himself with a narrative/ symbolic/Surrealist tradition when he began making his constructions; he then developed the project of The Ring Net (1978) which is wholly integrated within a locale, an industry and a way of life – the place/work/folk algorithm of Pat- rick Geddes (Mercer 1997, 211–32); his continuing commitment to the political and the communal in his cairn constructions on the Isle of Lewis (1994–2013) removes him from any ‘art for art’s sake’ position or, indeed, from the purely formal constraints of structuralism. The most telling statement of the artist’s relation with tradition and transmission comes from the artist himself. In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Will Maclean: Collected Works 1970–2010, there is a transcript of Maclean’s conversation with fellow artist, Sandy Moffat. Moffat asks Maclean to speak about his own relationship with the past and Maclean’s response is revelatory:

As I said earlier my father did pass on to me a knowledge and a passion for the culture. As you rightly say ‘part of one’s own ﬂ esh and blood.’ The transcription of ideas – it is a huge question. I suppose it is the sum of parts that include – the collections of the Highland folklorists, J.F. Campbell, R.C. Maclaglan and Alexander Carmichael, the poetry of MacLean, George Campbell Hay and Angus Martin, the painting of Giorgio De Chirico, Wil- liam McTaggart, Amselm Kiefer, and the sculpture of Joseph Cornell, Fred Stiven and H.C. Westermann. Then the ‘art of the sailor’ and the people of the seaboard tribes. Alexander Mackenzie’s History of the Highland Clear- ances (a book my father said should always be, with the bible, at my bed- side), Donald Macleod’s Gloomy Memories and later James Hunter’s Making of the Crofting Community. Then the landscape itself. In Skye, Dun Caan, Camus Mallaig, and Suisnish and in Coigach, Stac Pollaigh, Badentarbert and Achnahaird. (Maclean 2011, 57)

Maclean’s ties to his tradition are unquestionably his inspiration. The sense of context is all important. The relationship to the original source material is of primary rather than secondary importance. The use of memory is paramount in Maclean and we might relate this to Henri Bergson’s Matière et Mèmoire (1896) in Michael Foley’s essay on Bergson: “memory is much more than a portable Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 309 address book and reference library. It is the basis of the intuition that whispers compellingly yes or no ”: “Memory, in practice inseparable from perception, imports the past into the present and contracts many moments into a single intuition”(Foley 2013, 57). Commodiﬁ cation is as much of a challenge in the literary ﬁ eld as it is in art and it is here that we might begin to look at the way that Maclean has insisted on the potential for transmission through innovative collaborations. He has consistently forged partnerships with poets and writers much as happened in the past. An Leabhar Mòr (2002), the great Gaelic book of contemporary art and poetry, was a remarkable attempt to revive the tradition within the Gàidheal- tachd, but Maclean has been involved in artist/poet collaborations before and since. His collaborators have included Sorley MacLean, Douglas Dunn, John Burnside, Kenneth White and Angus Martin. These collaborations articulate in all kinds of ways exactly how the past can act as a source to illuminate the present. The collaboration between artist and writer in A Catechism of the Laws of Storms (2014) derives from the bibliophile element in Maclean – the abiding interest in the seafarer and his lore. See, for example, Figure 20.1, Vision of the Hydromancer (2014). Maclean recounts the gestation of the project: “I came across some dis-bound copies of the Pictorial World of 1883/4 and at the same time I was interested in the theory of the ‘Laws of Storms’ – how to navigate a sailing ship in a tropical storm. I found two books – the Sailor’s Horn Book and the Revised Catechism of the Laws of Storms , made some collages with Ernst and Doré to guide me . . . I gave them titles and then gave them to John who wrote the astonishing poems for them. Only one did not work for me so I changed the image to work with the poem” (Maclean 2015).

Figure 20.1 A Catechism of the Laws of Storms: Vision of the Hydromancer, 2014 310 Lindsay Blair The aesthetics of intertextuality While Maclean’s work has often been linked to history, geography and the poetry tradition of the Gàidhealtachd, less attention has been paid to the aesthetic sig- niﬁ ers which distinguish his art. These can, I suggest, be elucidated through a consideration of intertextuality, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s approach to the historicity of utterances, which Bakhtin views as links in a very complex chain of other utterances. He states:

The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially speciﬁ c environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogical threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue. (2001 [1934–5], 1202)

Bakhtin’s essay has found a sympathetic readership far beyond his own, largely literary, fi eld of study. The concept of intertextuality, derived from Bakhtin’s notion of the dialogical, suggests that meanings reside not within a text as such but within the relationships that the text shares with other texts. Alongside this is the notion that the text has little stable meaning at all but that meanings will accumulate and change as connections or juxtapositions are established in relation to other texts or other audiences (ibid 1215). Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion of the ‘bricoleur ’ extends this possibility. Lévi-Strauss’ bricoleur creates improvised structures by appropriating pre- existing materials which are ready-to-hand (1994). The bricoleur works with signs in a distinctive way by adopting existing signifi eds as signifi ers. Thus, in Maclean’s case, he uses materials or objects which already have a signifi ed in a particular world (such as fi shing hooks or scapulars) and incorporates them into works of art where they now act as signifi ers in relation to the surrounding objects as well as signifying outwards, away from the original referent, towards diverse reading communities throughout the world. The connection with the idea of intertextuality is clear, but the notion is refi ned by referring to a specifi c type of intertextuality such as ‘architextuality’, that is, the elements of a text which enable us to connect it to a genre (Genette 1997). So, in Maclean’s case, the outward form of his collages or constructions allows us to connect him to Surrealism, for example. Maclean’s art, of course, is replete with many other instances of intertextuality, some of which act as ‘metatexts’ implicitly commenting on original sources such as Emigrant Ship (1992), a homage to William McTaggart’s Sailing of the Emigrant Ship (1895), or his incorporation of the cover of the Gaelic bible in his boxes (Portrait of Angus Mackenzie [1982]) as shown in Plate 17 , or his homage to Kurt Schwitters ( Calotype for Schwitters [1986]), or others which align him with the world of scientifi c exploration, or the art of the engraver, or any number of other worlds as well as to the world of Surrealism. Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 311

Plate 17 Portrait of Angus Mackenzie, 1982, 46 × 56 × 7 cm

Modernism and Postmodernism Critical theory has shown, especially in the writings of Fredric Jameson, that the elements of Modernism and Postmodernism may be all but inseparable: the difference between the two movements lies in the relation between the work of art and the dominant ideology of the time (Jameson 1992, xii). Maclean has always represented the point of view of the subjugated, the cleared, the disinherited, the peoples whose cultures, languages or lives are threatened by the hegemonies of their day. This ties his work to the values of Modernism rather than Postmodernism. When we look back to the early days of Modernism: to Braque and Picasso, to Eliot and Pound, to Yeats and Joyce, we are conscious of intertextualities – borrowings and interweavings. In his collaboration with John Burnside – A Catechism of the Laws of Storms – Maclean borrows from Gustav Doré, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from his documentary sources, and from Max Ernst and his collages, but all in relation to his own world of the seafarer, his own familial and cultural background. The kind of disparaging criticism so often levelled at contemporary art practice cannot be applied to Maclean. His is neither the world of ‘simulacra’ which Baudrillard decries, nor does it represent the disappearance of a sense of history which Jameson bemoans (Baudrillard 2001 [1981], 1732–41; Jameson 1992, 25). Jameson refers critically to the tendency in Postmodernism to “transform reality into images”, and also to “the fragmentation of time into a series of 312 Lindsay Blair perpetual presents” (2001 [1960], 1974). The images that Maclean has re-worked derive from the tradition that is part of his own culture but through the formal insertion of Ernst’s Surrealist aesthetic, and then through the contemporary poems of Burnside they become part of a dialogical relationship between past and present. The sense of the threatening nature of a hostile environment and the ingenuities of generations of sailors in adopting strategies to combat that threat is intensely renewed in the collaboration between poet and artist. At the end of Maclean’s Driftworks catalogue (2002) is an item, ‘Pages from a Library’, which gives some indication of the multifarious printed matter which the artist would draw from. The quotation from American Surrealist Joseph Cornell at the opening of the section expresses sentiments clearly shared by Maclean: “Some- thing from the past is more authentic and genuine than anything that can be found in the present” (2002, 35). Maclean’s work is typically replete with reverberation: the whole value in his endeavour is represented by the way that he makes the past continue to live. Maclean’s library, as indicated earlier, comprises books, all kinds of printed matter, objects and, most importantly, memories. Fredric Jameson’s critique of the Postmodern situation is a pessimistic one – his own Marxist leanings make him particularly scathing about what he refers to as ‘The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ (1992, 1), but he identiﬁ es features of the culture of the present day which most people will recognise:

Cultural production is thereby driven back inside a mental space which is no longer that of the old monodic subject but rather that of some degraded collective ‘objective spirit’: it can no longer gaze directly on some putative real world, at some reconstruction of a past history which was once itself a present; rather, as in Plato’s cave, it must trace our mental images of that past upon its conﬁ ning walls. If there is any realism left here, it is a ‘realism’ that is meant to derive from the shock of grasping that conﬁ nement and of slowly becoming aware of a new and original historical situation in which we are condemned to seek History by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever out of reach. ( ibid 25)

Maclean’s praxical understanding of world is a direct challenge to the culture of late capitalism as deﬁ ned by Jameson. He works deliberately with a range of materials and equipment revealing in a number of ways his commitment to the haptic.

The ‘aletheic gaze’ We ﬁ nd in Maclean the embodiment of a world which is quite the reverse of the one described by Jameson. Maclean’s world is characterised by its sense of materiality and time. Finnish architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, discusses this:

The ﬂ atness of today’s standard construction is strengthened by a weakened sense of materiality. Natural materials – stone, brick and wood – allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural materials express their age, as well as the story of Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 313 their origins and their history of human use. All matter exists in the continuum of time; the patina of wear adds the enriching experience of time to the materials of construction. But the machine-made materials of today – scaleless sheets of glass, enamelled metals and synthetic plastics – tend to present their unyielding surfaces to the eye without conveying their material essence or age. (Pallasmaa 2014, 34)

Maclean’s attention to materials, processes and functional traces ensures that his work counters the fl atness which predominates in an era preoccupied with an aesthetic of ageless perfection (see Figure 20.2 , Nomad Trace [2001]). The history of human use referred to by Pallasmaa is ultimately what concerns Maclean; the aesthetics of the known – typically read through the patina of wear – is where Maclean fi nds his way. The visual experience of whaling, fi shing and exploration becomes haptic in his constructions of critical enquiry. Again, Pallasmaa’s insights into contemporary culture reveal a sharp division between an optical aesthetic and a more sensuous aesthetic which would apply to the works of Maclean:

Beyond architecture, contemporary culture at large drifts towards a distancing, a kind of chilling de-sensualisation and de-eroticisation of the human relation to reality. Painting and sculpture also seem to be losing their sensuality; instead of inviting a sensory intimacy, contemporary works of art frequently signal a distancing rejection of sensuous curiosity and pleasure. (Pallasmaa 2014, 35)

Maclean’s relationship with the past is not static; he eschews the standard, perspec- tival viewpoint in favour of a kind of hermeneutics of history, where the past is constantly re-envisioned. In place of the authority of the “assertoric gaze” (Levin 1988, 440; referenced by Pallasmaa 2014, 40), Maclean’s vision of the past allows for a multiplicity of viewpoints. His vision incorporates juxtapositions, contemporary experimentation in photo-montage, an insatiable appetite for experimentation with surfaces and textures as well as a sophisticated grasp of the aesthetics of the found object and its associations. In Levin’s terms, this can be referred to as the “aletheic gaze” (1988, 440 and 40).

Figure 20.2 Nomad Trace, 2001 314 Lindsay Blair Collecting beauty: cabinets of curiosity The phenomenon of ‘wonder’ is inextricably linked with the notion of difference. Curiosity and wonder are elicited in the presence of the weird, the marvellous or the strange. In the collection of Russian Tsar Peter the Great, the viewer is presented with a two-headed sheep, a four-legged rooster, poisonous toads and other exotic animals; individuals with missing fi ngers, the bones of a giant footman and all manner of aberrant peculiarities (Clark 2008). The emphasis on strangeness or the curiosity factor is one aspect of the wunderkammer . The cabinet aspect is almost the opposite. Classifi cation, display, archiving and storage are equally important elements in the presentation and production within the wunderkammer as they confer upon the contents the grave order of the museum. The Surrealists André Breton, Roger Caillois and Marcel Duchamp, as well as Joseph Cornell, would use the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ to question the dominant order of things, as has been argued by Michel Foucault (1970). In more recent times, Damien Hirst, Mark Dion, Arman and Jeff Koons have all used the format to play upon notions of ‘the natural’ and ‘the unnatural’, similitude and resemblance, preservation and transience. Maclean’s works, in contrast, will reference these ‘cabinets of curiosity’, but from the other end of the telescope, in that he chooses objects which are in no sense ‘other’: they, in fact, represent the exoticism of the known . In Driftworks , we read of the way that Maclean’s work invites us to refl ect on “how knowledge and communication are effected. Rarely is information received solely as the presenter intended. Nowhere is this more evident than in the museum. The process of making meaning is as much bound up with mytholo- gies (whether societal or personal), interconnectedness, fi ction, and the talisman- like properties of things, as it is with objectivity” (Ness 2002, 26). These words used by Canadian writer Kim Ness are perceptive descriptions of the attributes of Maclean’s boxes. Maclean’s work is a consistent preoccupation with things known. He plays upon the conceit of the fi ctive and the real within his constructed worlds; while there is an ironical consciousness about this juxtaposition, it does not diminish the sense of preciousness within. Maclean’s preoccupation with marginalised peoples, societies and cultures might suggest an affi nity with early collectors of curiosities, but this surface resemblance is just that. He is drawn to these sorts of cultures, of course, because they resemble the Gaelic culture that he belongs to: they share the values of kinship, hunter-gathering, subsistence, attachment to the physical world and a sense of the sacred or hieratic. And he is drawn to them also because of a sense of their fragility in a post-industrial, technological present. That beauty is explicitly linked to the ethnographic and the anthropological by categorisation and display is nowhere more clearly manifested than in the various exhibits in Driftworks : Fish Traps (2000), Painted Museum (2001), Cod Requiem (2001), St Kilda Group (1998) , Totem Head (2001), Nomad Trace (2001), Objects of Unknown Use (1987 ongoing) or Pages of a Library (n.d.). All bear witness to Maclean’s fascination with taxonomically intriguing phenomena (see also the earlier work in Plate 18 , Leviathan Elegy [1982]). Plate 18 Leviathan Elegy, 1982 316 Lindsay Blair The assembly of objects of apparent ethnographic interest (though often of unknown use) provides an outward aesthetic which is at once familiar to the viewer. Maclean uses this relationship to enhance that sense of serious critical interest which inspired the early collectors of cabinets in the seventeenth century but the language within the boxes has been fundamentally transformed by the practice of the Surrealists. Maclean marries the interests and fascinations of the collector with the metaphysical conceits of the Surrealists and adds to these an aesthetic of his own which, as indicated earlier, is none other than the reclamation of the known. If the works are to have an ‘aura’, they are to have the ‘aura’ not of the alien but of the almost forgotten – memory traces, echoes, cycles, returns or references to da shealladh (second sight) housed in boxes, lockers, shrines or reliquaries.

The counter-narrative Maclean has to invent a language to make this function: a set of signifi ers which will communicate meaning whilst retaining a certain opacity or apparency (Mar- tin 1975, 167–201). As mentioned earlier, one of Maclean’s favoured methods is counter-narrative – his works will often contain elements of story (of a political nature) which can be unravelled to form a linearity or content which can then be re-read as form with a kind of augmented insight or enlightenment. Any number of examples could be cited here but, for example, his James Caird constructions or his D’Arcy Thomson pieces (which make reference to the early twentieth century Scottish biologist and mathematician) are greatly enhanced by the exposition of underlying narrative elements. Even in the early works, like the famous Sabbath of the Dead (1978), we understand far more by relating it to Sorley MacLean’s Hallaig (MacGill-Eain 1999, 226–30). The narrative element we might refer to as the syntagmatic – a horizontal, linear reading which is transformed by the paradig- matic elements of the objects themselves, which function more as signifi ers do in a Cornell box, or a painting by Magritte, either as symbols or as semiotic signifi ers in a closed system of forms. Thus, as semiotic system, objects will function in an indexical relationship with the world from which they are extracted: fi shing vessel, voyage of exploration, whaling expedition or Highland croft whilst functioning in a Surrealist sense through relations of resemblance, similitude or contiguity with the other elements in the piece or series.

Towards an exotics of the known One particular early exhibition of Maclean’s, The Ring Net which focused on a method of herring fi shing originating on the West Coast of Scotland, epitomises the ethnographic/museological impulse in his work. The Ring Net is a collection of drawings, photographs and printed plans, numbering more than 340 items including Method Net, 1978, and is defi ned by Richard Demarco as “a work of scientifi c investigation” (Allerston 1990, 13). Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 317

Figure 20.3 Method Net, 1978

This exhibition was fi rst shown at the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, in 1978. In many ways this exhibition formed a template for his subsequent works, and the aesthetic which it evinces is strongly linked to the cabinet of curiosity, the museological instinct, the ethnographic interest and the exotics of the known . The combination of curiosity with museology in the cabinet of curiosity is present here in slightly altered form. Patricia Allerston writes: “when considering The Ring Net it is imperative to regard it as a documentary exhibition, with equal stress on both terms. Objective criteria were vital in achieving the former, but the latter had as much of an effect on the result” (ibid 28). Thus, we might equate the exhibition element with the curiosity and the documentary element with the classifi cation/archiving emphasis of the museum. The project sets out to cover the entire history of ring-netting from the 1840s to its residual state in the late 1970s. It is concerned not just with the fi shermen and their methods of fi shing but with the other associated industries: boatbuilding, engineering, sailmaking, net making, curing, gutting and packing. One or two instances must serve as indication of Maclean’s attention to detail: the particular way that a hammock was attached to the mast could be the subject of several letters between Maclean and his principal collaborator on the project, Angus Martin. The artist dealt with the plethora of information and materials by approaching it in sections such as boat designs, or 318 Lindsay Blair varieties of ring-net practices, or brailers, or engines, net needles or aspects of net construction. Most signifi cant of all, though, is the relationship of the project with its subject. Maclean used plans and designs from boatyards and factories, which would have the same sort of status as found objects in maintaining an indexical link with their sources, but they also signal the objective/documentary element he was aiming for. He saw the exhibition as “a descendant of the people it presents” (McGrath 1978); in other words, Maclean wished to delimit his own role as creator, seeing himself as vehicle or participant rather than originator/auteur. Returning to Maclean’s relationship with Surrealism, we can recall the argument between Breton and Caillois about the jumping beans where Caillois wanted to dis- sect them and Breton was horrifi ed (Warner 2008).3 When we reach further along this line to the works of Cornell, we fi nd the notion of beauty still acts as a barrier to essential understanding. Criticism tends to be thematic – Cornell’s interest in the ballet, or movie stars or astronomy or childhood, or the biographical – fi nding clues to his concerns in family testimony or art history. Little, however, has been achieved (except in so far as he shared in the language of the Surrealists) in understanding the language of the boxes. When we compare the language of forms within a Cornell box with the language in one of Maclean’s constructions we are immediately aware of divergence. Maclean’s objects function as haptic elements in a world that is familiar (though at times submerged) – his objects bear testimony above all to a praxical understanding of the world rather than an imagined one. His relationship with the objects themselves, and the industries with which they are associated, is through heredity, training, experience and technical knowledge but perhaps fi rst of all, they are objects or instruments that he has handled. That they remain to an extent obfuscated by a sense of mystery is indisputable but that mystery is all to do with time and the sense of what is lost. He fi nds, wherever he travels, echoes from a world that goes back just beyond his own experience – familiar yet strange – so many questions about what has been lost of a language, a culture, a people, and so few answers. His work is redolent above all of the sense of critical inquiry: in this sense, he resembles Caillois rather than Breton.

An Sùileachan : the ‘truth-bearing’ of art Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art draws a comparison between the work of art within the gallery or museum and the work of art as purveyor of truth (2011 [1971], 87–122). He begins by describing the way that art is commonly experienced:

Works are made available for public and private art appreciation. Ofﬁ cial agencies assume the care and maintenance of works. Connoisseurs and critics busy themselves with them. Art dealers supply the market. Art-historical study makes the works the objects of a science. Yet in all of this busy activity do we encounter the work itself? ( ibid 98) Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 319 Heidegger’s answer to his own question is deﬁ nitively negative. He looks at examples of incontestable value from sculpture, literature and architecture which are nonetheless only objects. He writes, “World-withdrawal and world-decay can never be undone. The works are no longer the works they were. It is they themselves, to be sure, that we encounter there, but they themselves are gone by. As bygone works they stand over against us in the realm of tradition and conservation. Henceforth they remain merely such objects” (ibid 98). Heidegger is fundamentally interested in how truth can occur in a work of art. For Heidegger the truth function of the work of art cannot operate if the work has merely “object-being”: “The whole art industry, even if carried to the extreme and exercised in every way for the sake of works themselves, extends only to the object-being of the works. But this does not constitute their work being” (ibid 98). For Heidegger, then, it is through an agency, a relationship with a context, a living force within a society, that art functions as bearer of truth. He chooses the example of a temple to make clear his understanding of the happening of truth at work:

A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the ﬁ gure of the god, and in this concealment lets it stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico. By means of the temple, the god is present in the temple. This

Plate 19 An Sùileachan, 2013 320 Lindsay Blair presence of the god is in itself the extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. The temple and its precinct, however, do not fade away into the indefi nite. It is the temple-work that fi rst fi ts together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The all-governing expanse of this open relational context is the world of this historical people. ( ibid 98–9)

With these thoughts about the truth function of the work of art residing within its “work-being” as opposed to its “object-being” (ibid 98–106), I would like to turn to An Sùileachan, Maclean’s land sculpture piece on the island of Lewis which he designed in collaboration with Marian Leven. The style of this sculpture is based on simplicity, on restraint, on the elimination of rhetorical excesses. Within it Maclean and Leven emphasise the modulation of spaces and the orchestration of the empty, the ‘not said’. The structure integrates the materials – stone, granite, iron and wood – but yet acts as a lens through which the constellation of mountain and seascape is embraced and enlarged. We are aware of dimension – in the sense of the three dimensional being of the structure – as part of a continuum: a continuum too easily lost sight of where the temporal and the fi nite are gateways to the spiritual and the infi nite. The title, An Sùileachan, refers to the eye; it can translate simply as ‘eye opener’ but can also indicate something beyond, something more like perspicacity or prescience. The towering doorway creates the dynamic from inside to outside, a fl owing exchange between the land and the sea. We sense, without having to conceptualise such sensations, the wholly unforced confi guration of the elements in this remarkable geophysical setting to create a rhythm of resonance. The spatial dynamic reveals itself: the two inner stone chambers trace a course which moves powerfully within itself springing back and forth inspired by the concatenation of land and sea, or on a smaller scale, as we see in the eddying fl ow of a rockpool. But An Sùileachan plays with the limit, in the borderline instant. Where the arched doorway is placed, at the boundary, what is communicated is boundlessness, a re-opening of passageways between past and future. An Sùileachan was created by Maclean and Leven following a trip that the artists had taken to St Kilda, the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Something of the Northern elemental quality of people’s lives in these islands informs the metaphysical aura of the structure. In terms of the specifi cs of the forms, the distinctive doorway speaks of the Inuit tupqujaq , a large structure through which a shaman might enter the spirit world, and the two circular chambers of earlier research by the artists on the Pictish double-disc markings were revealed during the excavation of the East Wemyss caves in Fife. Heidegger’s writings refer to a conception of space which corresponds very exactly with that communicated in An Sùileachan, where an ‘emptiness’ is defi ned not as defi ciency but as a fi eld of ‘generation’, or of ‘convening’. When we look out from the structure above Reef on the Isle of Lewis, we look out to an emptiness, Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 321 a boundlessness whose only boundary is the line of the horizon. Instead of reading the boundary as that which contains, it is that which opens out into space or as Heidegger has it, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing ( ibid 118). The second important element that Heidegger presupposes as essential to the work of art concerns its function within the community. He describes the way that the Greek temple would present itself: “The temple-work, standing there, opens up a world and at the same time sets this world back again on earth, which itself only thus emerges as native ground” (ibid 99). Artworks function as ontological paradigms , serving their communities both as ‘models of ’ and ‘models for ’ reality, which means that artworks do not just ‘manifest’, but actually ‘reconfi gure’ the historical ontologies undergirding their cultural worlds. An Sùileachan is dedicated to the Lewis people of the nineteenth century who were cleared from their land and to the twentieth century Land Raiders of Reef. The eastern circle is inscribed with the names of the Reef Raiders. It is also dedicated to the recent land reforms and to the creation of the Bhaltos Community Trust. As such, besides its spiritual extensions, it also examines the notion of the counter-narrative from the perspective of the dispossessed. It is a piece of Partici- patory Art – the stone works created by Ian Smith and Jim Crawford, the iron-work by John MacLeod, the woodwork by John Angus MacLeod. This artwork refl ects far more than the perceptions of two individuals. An Sùileachan works, politically and philosophically, to engage the people of Lewis in a dialogical relationship with their histories.

Conclusion Agamben’s insights into the element of transmissibility within a culture are useful in that they move us away from the notion of aura; all of Maclean’s work points us to context, especially the place/work/folk nexus, and leads us towards the concepts of intertextuality and counter-narrative as ways of reading his works. It would be an error, however, to neglect Maclean’s connections with the aesthetics of Modernism by over-emphasising his links with tradition. It is necessary to attend to the synchronic as well as the diachronic in any examination of his work. I relate Maclean’s cultural aesthetic to the theories of Fredric Jameson, especially on the aesthetics of Modernism and Postmodernism, the notion of the ‘aletheic gaze’ advanced by Pallasmaa, the relationship with museological display, especially as manifested in contemporary ‘cabinets of curiosity’, and ﬁ nally to the insights revealed in Heidegger’s The Origins of the Work of Art (2011 [1971], 87–122).

Notes 1 Agamben speaks as if there is a separation between art and tradition because he is making a point in relation to the collector: “Whether it is a work of art or any simple commodity that he, with an arbitrary gesture, elevates to the object of his passion, the collector takes on the task of transfi guring things, suddenly depriving them both of their use value and 322 Lindsay Blair of the ethical-social signifi cance with which tradition had endowed them” (ibid 675). The argument about commodifi cation proposes a difference between art and objet d’art. In other words the latter represents the erection of a collectible item into a fetishised object separate from life, whereas the other is a part of a living world. 2 The point Agamben makes is you can’t separate culture from its transmissibility. He sets this against the desire to create the inexplicable object as typifi ed by Baudelaire who put the authority of shock at the centre of his artistic labour: “the shock is the jolt power acquired by things when they lose their transmissibility and their comprehensibil- ity within a given cultural order” (ibid 676). 3 Caillois’s approach, in the argument about the jumping beans, was to do with critical inquiry and Breton argued from the position of a poet nurturing chance and magic.

References Agamben, G. (2011 [1999]) The Melancholy Angel. In The Continental Aesthetics Reader 2nd edn. Cazeaux, C. (ed), 675–85. London: Routledge. Allerston, P. (1990) The Ring Net by Will Maclean. Unpublished M. Litt thesis, St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews. Bakhtin, M. (2001 [1934–5]) Discourse in the Novel. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism , Leitch, V.B. (ed), 1190–220.New York: W.W. Norton. Baudrillard, J. (2001 [1981]) The Precession of Simulacra. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism , Leitch, V.B. (ed), 1732–41. New York: WW Norton. Benjamin, W. (2011 [1970]) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In The Continental Aesthetics Reader 2nd edn. Cazeaux, C. (ed), 430–50. London: Routledge. Clark, J. (2008) ‘What was in Peter the Great’s cabinet of curiosities?’ [online]. Available from [27 September 2015]. Cornell, J. (2002 [1946]) The Romantic Museum. In Will Maclean: Driftworks , Brown, K. (ed), 35. Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts. Foley, M. (2013) Life Lessons from Bergson . London: Macmillan. Foucault, M. (1970) The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences . London: Tavistock. Genette, G. (1997) Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree . Trans. Newman, C. and Doubinsky, C. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Hallam, E. and Ingold, T. (2007) Creativity and Cultural Improvisation . Oxford: Berg. Heidegger, M. (2011 [1971]) The Origin of the Work of Art. In The Continental Aesthetics Reader 2nd edn. Cazeaux, C. (ed), 87–122. London: Routledge. Jameson, F. (1992) Post Modernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso. Jameson, F. (2001 [1960]) Postmodernism and Consumer Society. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism , Leitch, V.B., 1960–74. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Levin, D. (1988) The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation . London: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1994) The Savage Mind: Nature of Human Society . London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. MacGill-Eain, S. (1999) O Choille gu Bearradh / MacLean, S. From Wood to Ridge : Col- lected Poems in Gaelic and English Translation . Manchester: Carcanet. Paradigms of transmission: Will Maclean 323 Maclean, M. and Dorgan, T. (2002) An Leabhar Mòr/The Great Gaelic Book . Edinburgh: Canongate. Maclean, W. (2002) Will Maclean: Driftworks . Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts. Maclean, W. (2010) Interview with Blair, L. Tayport. Maclean, W. (2011) Will Maclean: Collected Works 1970–2010 . London: The Fleming, Wyfold Art Foundation. Maclean, W. (2015) Conference [email] to Blair, L. [17 April 2015]. Mall, A. (2007) Structure, Innovation and Agency in Pattern Construction: The K ōlam of Southern India. In Creativity and Cultural Improvisation. Hallam, E. and Ingold, T. (eds), 55–78. Oxford: Berg. Martin, G. (1975) Language Truth and Poetry: Notes towards a Philosophy of Literature . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. McGrath, T. (1978) The Ring Net: Ring Net Herring Fishing on the West Coast of Scotland: A Documentary Exhibition by Will Maclean . Glasgow: The Third Eye Centre. Mercer, C. (1997) Geographies for the present: Patrick Geddes, urban planning, the human sciences and the question of culture. Economy and Society 26 (2), 211–32. Ness, K. (2002) Pentimenti: Interconnectedness in the Art of Will Maclean. In Will Maclean: Driftworks , Brown, K. (ed), 25–9. Dundee: Dundee Contemporary Arts. Pallasmaa, J. (2014) The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses 3rd edn. Chichester: Wiley. Warner, M. (2008) The writing of stones. Cabinet Magazine 29 (Spring) [online]. Available from www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/29/index [9 May 2015]. 21 Beauty and belonging

Cara Krmpotich

Museums have long played a central role in both constructing and shaping senses of beauty, whether at the level of art, artifact, specimen, or architecture. In their positionings of beauty, museums infl uence the appreciation and the creation of art and artifacts in ways that are variously dialogic, resistant, and affi rming. Affi rmations come through collecting and exhibition practices that shape canons, markets, taste, and connoisseurship (Robertson 2003). Affi rmations further come through the selection of museum architecture that transforms streetscapes and public spaces. But even these affi rming activities inevitably lead to an interaction with publics’, critics’, and creators’ evaluations of aesthetics, design, beauty, and craftsmanship. Beauty is taken up in complicated and unexpected ways in museums. Dialogue about, and resistance to, museum prerogatives about beauty are perhaps easiest to see during moments of public outrage when an art museum purchases an artwork deemed by citizens, politicians, or special interest groups to be ‘too simple,’ ‘not real art,’ offensive (and therefore ‘not beautiful’), or over-priced (not beautiful enough) (for an example, see Barber, Guilbaut & O’Brian 1996).1 These controversies illuminate confl icting perceptions of the appropriate relationship between ‘beauty’ and ‘good art.’ Museum publics in these instances feel like museums have lost sight of beauty, or have failed to act as a place of and for beauty. Museum publics, it seems, often rely on museums to be places of beauty; they associate museums with beauty and beautiful things. There are other resistances to museal notions of beauty that occur from within the museum itself. Exhibitions and artistic interventions can express alternative notions and coeval spheres of beauty, or shifting understandings of beauty through time and space. The exhibition and intervention Mining the Museum 2 rendered museum objects less beautiful; inserting the material culture of slavery tainted aestheticized artifacts with the racism and inequality that permeated the objects’ biographies. Resistance to notions of beauty may also occur where collections are classifi ed variously (if not also simultaneously) as art, artifact, specimen, craft, treasure, heirloom, patrimony, sacred, and secret. The examples of resistance explored in this chapter come from within ethnological collections in the most literal sense. The moments described are ones where people are touching, looking, smelling, puzzling out, and intimately encountering Beauty and belonging 325 items in the storage spaces of ethnological collections. Whereas beauty is foundational to art museums, it has not been a central category for ethnological museums, but there is engagement with beauty in both spaces nevertheless. In one case, the people and the collections share the same families, histories, and aesthetic values: Haida Repatriation Committee members visiting Haida collections in the British Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum over a three-week period with the intention of full intellectual and physical access to their material heritage (Krmpotich & Peers 2013). In the second case, the people include Cree and Anishinaabe seniors working with Cree, Anishinaabe, and non-Aboriginal research staff, visiting a wide range of collections to satisfy the seniors’ interest in learning about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis3 history and culture through artifacts. Among the seniors, a burgeoning interest in Inuit material heritage and archaeological fi nds, and long-standing interests in Anishinaabe and Cree basketry, regalia, and clothing, prompted interactions with collections that originated both within and outside Anishinaabe and Cree territories, and thus both within and outside the seniors’ own families, histories, and aesthetic values. The initial designs of these visits infl uenced the kinds of object encounters possible for each group, and thus the articulations of beauty possible in either situation. There were clear expressions from Haidas as to what constitutes aesthetic achievements within long-standing Haida traditions of weaving, carving, and design. Haida aesthetic traditions go beyond the formal and the execution of formline4 designs. Aesthetic values incorporate cultural protocols that support clan ownership and inheritance of treasured belongings, the material manifestation of the immaterial belongings of a clan (songs, dances, names), and the reciprocity and interdependence between opposite clans. In contrast, the Anishinaabe and Cree seniors encountered numerous aesthetic, artistic, and material traditions without a common vocabulary, design history, or set of aesthetic principles. The seniors may or may not have been aware of the measures by which the maker would judge the beauty of the item she or he made, or even whether beauty was something the maker sought to achieve. Although these common starting points were at times lacking, the seniors’ evaluations of beauty in the items they encountered was often tied to their senses of belonging. The qualities they linked to beauty – ingenuity, creativity, diligence – are qualities the seniors would like their own cultures to be recognized for more broadly. In other words, their sense of beauty realigns their cultural histories, their cultural futures, and their own places within this continuum. In both of these cases, belonging is a facet of beauty. In museum collections parlance, the opposite of belonging would be dissociation – the separation of information from an object. Dissociation is understood by museums as a risk to the health and well-being of a collection (Canadian Conservation Institute 2013). Earlier, I contextualized these moments as resistances, and resistances always pose some kind of risk through dissociation. But the kind of intellectual dissociation I discuss here imagines a separation that does not lead to a loss, but rather to a vacancy and an opening. The resistance leads to a healthy dissociation, creating space for belonging by negating visual characteristics as the predominant means of 326 Cara Krmpotich identifying beauty. It is worth framing these moments as resistances, as what is at stake is the very way human beings come to approach and contextualize material heritage. Whose contextualizing of these objects prevails? How many understandings of an object are present? Would a person’s engagement with an object be richer if they learned multiple ways of valuing it – and importantly, would that person begin to question and de-centre their own viewing of all objects thereafter encountered? These questions can all be posed with undefi ned museum visitors in mind, though here they are asked with Haida, Anishinaabe, and Cree museum visitors in mind. Yet these are also questions for anthropologists, ethnologists, curators, and collections staff: what can we learn by exploring someone else’s notion of beauty? What social and cultural values are held within estimations of beauty? What are the relations between beauty, history, politics, economy, morality, and spirituality? What dissociations will improve the health of collections, museums, and their publics?

Belonging is beautiful During the visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Vince Collison, a long-time Haida ambassador for repatriation, characterized visiting museums as “bittersweet,” a kind of double-edged sword.5 Vince has seen a host of major Northwest Coast museum collections in North America during his years repatriating his ancestors’ remains. There is great joy in seeing the remarkable achievements of his ancestors, and a visceral pain in having to leave those achievements behind in museums – far away from their island home, Haida Gwaii. As stewards, museums have kept his ancestors’ creations safe, but often at the expense of their participation in Haidas’ lives. My sense is their physical beauty has been preserved, but another beauty connected to their social, spiritual, and political selves has been stunted. The late Haida artist Bill Reid visited museums regularly to learn from the creations held there. For him, museums contained items embodying the pinnacle of Haida artistry and craftsmanship; if one was going to truly learn Haida aesthetic principles and values, the museum was the place to do it. Yet as Aaron Glass (2013) points out, there was a double-edged sword for Reid and his contemporaries too. To be recognized fully as ‘an artist,’ the international art world (of which museums are a key part) expected works that showed a “discontinuity with history,” “absolute uniqueness,” and “innovation” (Glass 2013, 506). The question then was how to be fully an artist and fully participant in one’s cultural heritage. How could one produce art that was valued and circulated in both cultural spheres? In the 1970s, curator Peter Macnair and the Royal British Columbia Museum were prominent in a movement to re-defi ne the ways in which Northwest Coast items were appreciated, “away from an art discourse based on “decontextualized” aesthetics” towards “standards of value centred on Aboriginal cultural practice” (Duffek 2013, 263). Moving beyond cultural practice (which for Macnair was largely focused on artistic apprenticeship and traditional engagements at the time), Dowell (2013) includes structural features such as kinship, family, community, oral history, and cultural protocol as part of the aesthetic systems in the Northwest Beauty and belonging 327 Coast. While kinship, family, community, oral history, and cultural protocol have deep roots on the Northwest Coast, they are equally forward-looking, supporting adaptation and providing a set of values from which to approach challenges and opportunities (Blackman 1973, 1992; Boelscher 1988; Krmpotich 2014). Indeed, Haida visitors to the British Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum collections expressed a sense of beauty and respect for items whose formal and material qualities showed evidence of belonging within Haida social life. Thinness of carving was thus a valued formal attribute. Silver that had been fi nely hammered into a bracelet before being carved with a person’s crests conveyed the attentiveness of the maker – a skilful capacity for precision and refi nement. Moreover, the creation of items intended to stay within Haida communities was and is still very often guided by clan and family relations; the thinness of the silver, then, can conjure a scene where a silversmith takes special care to create a bracelet for a niece, daughter, or his wife’s clan rather than an unnamed tourist or collector. The thinness of carved wooden masks indicated to Haidas that the carver knew what it was to make a mask for the purposes of dancing, not just display. A lightweight mask was deemed beautiful in the ways it combined the maker’s knowledge of form and function. There was a concurrent beauty latent in the mask from its presence during a time when dozens upon dozens of dances would have been owned by Haida clans, and performed at potlatches for Haida witnesses, not yet outlawed by the Canadian government. Two other items, at once both personal and collective, generated moments where understandings of beauty were expressed. The fi rst was an apron (Figure 21.1),

Figure 21.1 Wool dance apron made from a ship captain’s coat and decorated with weaving and puffi n mandible fringe PRM 1891.49.16; photo courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum 328 Cara Krmpotich created from irregular segments of blue wool, decorated with two rows of weaving comprised of cedar bark with either grass or porcupine quills, each with a hide fringe fi nished with puffi n mandibles. The presence of seams on the obverse and reverse, as well as darting, suggested to Haidas that the apron was made from a ship captain’s coat. The captain’s coat refl ected one kind of trade with Europeans, while the porcupine quills and moose hide fringe refl ected another kind of trade with First Nations in the interior of British Columbia. Haidas picked up on the various colours of thread that had been used to mend the apron, seemingly on multiple occasions. This brought a specifi c kind of beauty to the apron: the repairs were testaments to its being ‘well-loved,’ ‘highly-prized,’ and probably handed down and treasured within a clan for many generations. This resonates with contemporary vocalizations of beauty on Haida Gwaii when, for example, someone wears an inherited button blanket to a graduation ceremony or potlatch. For another Haida in the group, this apron had a strong spiritual presence about it; she gently laid her hands on it during a quiet one-on-one moment. It seems there is beauty in helping people communicate with and feel closer to their ancestors. The second item was a button blanket: a large rectangle of dark wool cloth, edged with a wide band of red wool along the top and two sides, with loops for fastening the garment across one’s collar bones. On the black wool, abutting the red, were 900 tiny buttons sewn in three tight rows (Figure 21.2). Haida elder Diane Brown recognized the three rows as a sign of a chiefl y lineage, correcting the century old object label that confused ‘third rank’ and ‘third chief in a lineage.’ Diane and her clan-mates admired the diminutive buttons that likely had been collected by the blanket maker over time: there was the sheer quantity of buttons, but also the hole arrangements were not all the same; some buttons had a starburst design incised in them while others had a scallop relief around the edges, and

Figure 21.2 Button blanket belonging to an unnamed female chief, who was the third chief in her clan PRM 1908.63.1; photo courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum Beauty and belonging 329 others still were plain. There was beauty in the effort that went into collecting all the buttons, and the effort put into sewing each one on individually. There was also beauty in how the blanket would have been worn, like ‘a proper robe’ fastened across the collar bones, not like a newer blanket fastened across the chest. The imagined wearer’s graceful and regal body possessed additional beauty. There was excitement and beauty in the planning of a blanket for their own chief today, thinking about the prospect of how many rows of tiny buttons they could put on his blanket to honour him and the chiefs in his family before him. The button blanket and apron had no formlines – the design principles so often at the centre of discussions about Northwest Coast aesthetics. But they were deeply involved in kinship, family, community, and cultural protocol, to recall Dowell’s expanded notion of aesthetics.6 Whereas museum staff were concerned by the formal imperfections, repairs, and wear on the apron (Krmpotich & Peers 2013, 58, 60–1), these added to the beauty of the apron for Haidas. None of these formal or visual aspects detracted from the rich social life of the apron. In fact, these formal and visual elements were often what made this rich social life evident. At a visual level, the button blanket was extremely modest in its decoration, opening little opportunity to discuss crest iconography, split-Us, and ovoids. Yet its subtle design was part of its appeal: conversation about the collected blanket and the blanket-to- be-made articulated a sensitivity for achieving a fi ne balance – visually, materially, and behaviourally – between displaying pride in one’s lineage and refraining from boasting (see also Krmpotich 2014). Too many rows of small buttons could be perceived as boasting, an unbecoming trait in Haida social life. The visuality of the objects extended beyond the borders of the material blanket or apron, to include the blanket and apron in their (imagined) social contexts: on the shoulders of a chief, in a longhouse, at a feast; on the body of a shaman dancing; and in the hands of menders, stitching by daylight or fi relight. A similar pattern occurred with a mask that was, for example, talked about in terms of its appearance in a darkened longhouse, dancing round a fl ickering fi re – not the mask in terms of its appearance in a museum research space, with carefully controlled daylight and electric light. My experiences with Haidas in ethnographic collections leads me to an understanding of beauty that balances a visual and material belonging alongside active belonging within a social world. There is an emerging trend in Northwest Coast museology (that is, museological practices happening within the territory of Northwest Coast nations that is informed by prolonged and evolving relationships between institutions, First Nations, staff, artists, and scholarship) to change the terminology of collection items from ‘artifact’ to ‘belongings.’ This is well-aligned to Northwest Coast ontologies, where people, objects, resources, histories, imagery, songs, and dances belong to lineages, and in that in belonging, a social landscape is formed: obligations, responsibilities, identities, and beauty come through this complex world of belonging and belongings. In conversation with Anishinaabe and Cree members of the Memory, Meaning- Making and Collections programme, this use of the term ‘belonging’ for artifacts sits uncomfortably, however. As I discuss later in the chapter, belonging is 330 Cara Krmpotich incredibly important to people in the group, but there is less certainty that items can belong to a clan or that humans can fully possess or control an item. Beauty is often expressed as part of the process of creation, which is more personal than public or collective for the members of the group (cf. Belcourt 2010). Beauty is extended from the artifact to the maker, and the personal relations of the maker – spiritual, social, familial, and environmental belonging – contribute to the potential for beauty to be created.

Ingenuity is beautiful There’s the spirit of sweet grass in that basket. It is so beautiful because some Anishinaabe kwe (Anishinaabe woman) made it and planned it with her mind, with her brain. That is what these things are. They help us remember. (Jacqui Lavalley, Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections member)

Jacqui was speaking about a small round container made of birch bark and decorated with porcupine quills, some of which have been left their natural cream colour with dark tips, and others have been dyed purple ( Plate 20 ). The quills had been

Plate 20 Birch bark basket decorated with dyed porcupine quills, sweetgrass, and black thread Beauty and belonging 331 stitched through the bark to make a fl ower design on the lid of the container, and to add colour to its sides. Her thoughts on this basket were shared with a group of female Anishinaabe and Cree seniors during an artifact handling session in a seniors’ residence in Toronto, Canada. On this day, the seniors were at the start of what is now a two-year-long program designed to bring them in direct contact with a collection of First Nations items cared for by the public history group First Story Toronto at the neighbouring Native Canadian Centre of Toronto (Howarth & Knight 2015; Krmpotich, Howard & Knight 2015). The collection includes vamps, full moccasins, and boots; birchbark and quill baskets; gloves and mittens; dolls; beaded and embroidery wall pockets, wall hang- ings, and embroidered needle cases; wood carvings (mostly of animals); a sample of antler and bone buttons; and two-dimensional drawings and paintings, among other items. The earliest pieces appear to date to the mid-nineteenth century, while a signifi cant number were produced in the last fi fty years as souvenir art. Specifi c origins for pieces were not well documented at their time of collection, with First Story Toronto sometimes being the third or fourth steward in a given object’s history.7 Stylistically, and based on what provenance is available, many of the items refl ect northern Cree material heritage and Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee material heritage from the Great Lakes regions. A smaller number of items come from sub-arctic Athapaskan traditions, Northwest Coast peoples, and possibly Plains Cree and/or Blackfoot traditions. More recent materials also refl ect pan- Indian traditions, illustrating a growing solidarity and knowledge-sharing among Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Jacqui is herself an Anishinaabe kwe , a recognized elder in Toronto, and originally from Parry Island on the northern shore of Lake Huron. She has worked as a teacher, and lives in a Midewiwin way. She is barely fi ve feet tall, and often has a pocket full of grandfather rocks and two rings on every fi nger. Her singing voice is haunting. Her presence is larger than her mass. She readily laughs at herself when remembering parts of her childhood spent with her family. These memories include the making of souvenir arts, and she carries with her a sense of the plant designs fi guratively and abstractly represented in beadwork. She is aware of the ways colours can communicate. Most often, Jacqui speaks of the ways clans have particular colours; Berlo and Phillips (1988) also describe the ways colour and lustre relate to spiritual presences in the world. Tempering Jacqui’s knowledge and experience is a clear consciousness that, in the Anishinaabe world, each community, each family, each maker could have their own understanding of how to create and use objects. There is a willingness to look at and think deeply about the maker. In the case of the round basket, the quill and birch bark work are evidence of the intellectual capacity of the woman who made it as well as her manual dexterity to manipulate the materials to achieve the desired effect. She also sees a beautiful capacity within the maker to integrate and keep present the spirit of birch and the spirit of the porcupine in the basket.8 This looking through the item to the maker happens frequently in the course of the Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections programme. Whether the seniors are with extremely old artifacts or more recent artworks, they are often struck by 332 Cara Krmpotich the ingenuity of the makers and their commitment to bringing the item into the world. The seniors’ comments indicate an appreciation for the ways the makers innovate, adapt, dream, and create with careful attention to the world around them. Thinking across the many collections encountered in the past two years, which include the First Story Toronto collection, but also collections at the Royal Ontario Museum, National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of Natu- ral History, and Museum of Inuit Art, another senior in the group, Helen Parker, shared the following thoughts:

All the stuff we have here – from years ago – they made from hide, furs, quills, trees. They made baskets, medicines, or garments out of these. Sometimes I think, ‘Who would ever have thought of doing something like that?’ They used these for everyday living. How they made things from nature – that amazes me more than anything. To think back: these people were never stuck for anything. Whatever they needed was outside, out in nature. It was there. I tell that to my kids all the time. Even these days. You never have to be stuck for anything. Whatever you don’t have, you can pick it up, from down the line, if you’re out in the bush. You can always ﬁ nd that stuff.

Helen’s fi rst home, her family’s home, is on James Bay in northern Ontario. She has had a long career as a personal support worker for seniors in Toronto’s Aborigi- nal community. When visiting collections with the group, she frequently puts in requests ahead of time for items that museums class as utilitarian: snowshoes and spoons, for example. In other words, things not usually collected by museums for their beauty. Her requests are endorsed by others in the group who are equally excited to see fi shing hooks and rice beaters. These utilitarian items are encountered alongside items intended to have a strong visual and aesthetic impact: the asymmetrical but carefully balanced beaded bandolier bags, intricately carved baby carriers, winter gloves decorated with moose-hair tufting, and raised Haude- nosaunee beadwork. Helen is as likely to smell something as inspect it visually: are the moccasins made of smoked hide, done by hand, in the bush? Or are they commercially prepared hides? The smell of smoked hide adds to its beauty: it builds a connection to the bush and to a capable family unit, working together to transform and create a versatile material. During the group’s visit to the Smithsonian, seniors learned about two kinds of objects new to them. They were both ‘utilitarian’ in that they were not created or collected for their aesthetic value, but are nevertheless exquisitely designed for their purpose. Neither were they created to be singular items, or items for display. Still, they continue to occupy a place in seniors’ memories about the trip. The fi rst is a set of duck bills (the upper halves) that were packed with maple sugar and reportedly given to children as a treat. They were used by Anishinaabe families and existed in the collection of the Natural History museum together with birch bark cones also packed with maple sugar and delicate, simple dolls made out of folded maple leaves. The smell of maple sugar is still present, 100 years after the items entered the museum. The second object is an Inuit wound plug, used to prevent Beauty and belonging 333 blood (and therefore nutrients) from escaping a harpoon puncture in a seal. From concept to design to execution, seniors saw in the duck bills and wound plug comprehensive and immersive knowledge of the environment, hands with the utmost skill, and the capacity to creatively solve problems and bring pleasure into daily life. Taken together, the affect of these items was a sense of the maker’s ingenuity and a sense of beauty in that ingenuity. ‘Ingenuity’ is my gloss for the assemblage of comments from seniors that refl ect upon their predecessors’ abilities to solve problems, re-purpose materials around them, and navigate rapid changes to their world. At times the comments from the group are even more direct than Helen’s: “We were damn smart. Really, really smart.” At other times, they are more subtle than Helen’s: “I have a high respect for people that went through that system [residential schooling]. I just want to learn as much as I can from the Elders. It’s really beautiful that even though they went through a lot, they still hold their head up high, and they’re still proud to say that they’re Native.” This latter comment came during a session when youth were invited to join the seniors in handling items in the collection and to participate in a subsequent talking circle. I have chosen to focus on expressions of beauty prompted by interactions with material heritage in collections. But the latter statement draws attention to coexisting expressions of beauty and (crucially in terms of understanding beauty and belonging) why expressions of beauty are powerful. In people’s vocalizations of beauty, they defi ne what they are, what they are not, and what they hope to be. At a basic level, ‘beautiful’ was offered by project staff and participants alike as a compliment to express appreciation for someone’s home territory or a landscape more generally. When someone brought their own beadwork or quillwork in to share with the group, ‘beautiful’ was used to compliment their skill and artistry. Stories, an individual’s spirit, and Anishinaabe culture were all specifi cally referred to as ‘beautiful’ during the course of our meetings. When the seniors were engaging with an artifact in a collection, or broader cultural practices, ‘beauty’ frequently became more than a compliment. It entailed an appreciation for the maker, rather than being inherent to the thing itself. This was readily apparently when two Anishinaabe kwe staff were engrossed by a large raised beadwork cushion with a squirrel and bird design during a session at the seniors’ residence. Their sense of beauty began with the time required to bring such a piece into being:

Denise: All of the beadwork that she’s done – it’s so beautiful, I can’t even describe . . . Amber: Wow. Denise: Hours. It took her hours. Amber: I can’t even imagine how long that would take.

As one of these women is a sporadic beader and the other an avid beader, there is signiﬁ cant appreciation for how long complex beadwork designs like this one would take. But even non-beaders in the group empathized with the time needed to 334 Cara Krmpotich materialize the piece. “It’s gorgeous,” a senior said of the same raised beadwork; “I mean the time that somebody spent to make it.” The conversation among the beaders and non-beaders led to close looking and an imagining of how many beads someone counted out to create the design, an explanation that the monetary value of beadwork resided in the time to create the piece not the materials per se , but also how beads can be cut in different ways to produce an extra sparkle. Hearing other people talk about how they beaded heightened the element of beauty for some in the sessions. Carving – more aptly, carvers – was also framed in similar ways: that through prolonged and skilled effort, beautiful things were brought into being. “I’m fascinated by this one,” said a senior in response to a small wooden carving of a dog sled ( Figure 21.3 ); “Somebody went to an awful lot of work. Embroidery – I think anybody, if they put their mind to it, can embroider, but how many can draw dogs – carve dogs and animals. He’s even got the riﬂ e up there. And the piece is done by some guy. But I think it’s beautiful. I would keep that out in the open [on display].” The senior’s love for it only grew when another senior shared stories of her dad mudding and icing the runners of their family’s dog sled, feeding the dogs warm oatmeal, and of hearing the “Whi! Whi! Whi! Whi!” from her dad as he encouraged the dogs to pull.

Figure 21.3 Carved wooden fi gure of a dog sled with thread and wool or felted fabric and metal tacks. Carved by Daniel Wesley in Kashechewan, Ontario, 1979 2012.1.75; photo courtesy of First Story Toronto, Native Canadian Centre of Toronto Beauty and belonging 335 Creativity and imagination are words used in ways akin to ingenuity, but that come from the group members themselves. During a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum, in an intimate encounter with an early, elaborately beaded outfi t, the seniors found beauty in the colours of beads and cloth used, and were struck by the minute size of the beads. The amount of time, effort, and skill required to execute such a complex design with such small beads astounded group members – especially the beaders. A frequent refrain was offered: “That’s a lot of work. It’s beautiful.” There was also discussion and appreciation for the imagination beaders use to create their designs, and a linkage made between imagination and artistry. Just before leaving the museum storage area, one senior offered, “This stuff is so gorgeous. It really does give you a feeling of something that’s so precious compared – You always hear the bad news about the people being this and that. It’s just so bad. All the Native people in all these areas and something like this . . .” the comment trailed off, but for those in the room it was clear that the “something like this” – the bandolier bags, the leggings, the quill basketry, the maple syrup spile – are entirely opposite to the bad news. What is both said and unsaid during group sessions is that ‘beautiful,’ ‘smart,’ and ‘diligent’ or ‘hardworking’ are opposite to historic attitudes and prevailing stereotypes about Aboriginal peoples. One young man expressed his mission to help more people see “how beautiful we are, how creative we are, how beautiful the culture is . . . We’re not about glorifying our oppression, you know. That’s not what we’re about. We’re a beautiful people with a beautiful culture. We have beautiful stories. And that needs to be out in the media a lot more, instead of being depicted as people who are lower than everybody else.” ‘Ingenuity’ is emerging in the sessions as a quality the seniors would like to have identifi ed with Aboriginal cultures. Ingenuity manifests as beautiful beadwork, impeccably tanned hides, and solutions to everyday problems. It manifests as beautifully conceived, designed, or executed art and artifacts. It opens up possibilities for the future, in that people can continue to be ingenious whether they live in the city or on the land, whether they can bead and quill, or fi sh and hunt, or work in the civil service or health care profession. There seems to be a sense that belonging to an ingenious cultural heritage is beautiful in itself.

What beauty does As Macnair (cited in Duffek 2013, 624) points out for the Northwest Coast, in the nineteenth century items made for sale outside the community “were every bit as accomplished, in aesthetic terms, as the ethnographic specimens” – that is, the art mirrored the beauty of the items used within daily life and special occasions. This resonates with the material heritage produced in the Great Lakes region at that time as well. This is one of the strengths of anthropology museums for understanding beauty: vast ethnology collections were made within the context Macnair references – moments when formal beauty and social beauty were in balance. But they also contain items that trace a history of the balance of formal and social beauty, where one wanes and the other waxes, as creators continually adapted to widening 336 Cara Krmpotich and shifting needs, priorities, markets, technologies, materials, laws, and cultural encounters. Even where formal beauty is not at its height – a bracelet is thicker, a birch and quill basket was efﬁ ciently made for the souvenir market – the social beauty can persist. Within the Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections project, souvenir baskets evoke memories of making souvenir arts on Manitoulin Island and Georgian Bay, Ontario, with one’s mother who was able to transform remnants into beautiful objects and family income. On the west coast, artist and cultural theorist Ki-ke-in (cited in Duffek 2013, 626) thinks back to an earlier time, when making a basket for the souvenir trade materialized into money that, over time, transformed into a silver dollar, that could then be hammered and carved into a beautiful bracelet for a family member. To be clear, I am not proposing that the Haida, Anishinaabe, or Cree expressions of beauty discussed here are expressions of nostalgia for an earlier time. In both cases, expressions of beauty open up ways forward. In Haida Gwaii, beautiful objects enhance Haida social life. They help keep it vibrant, as activity and performativity are key elements of creating beauty. They create continuity between past and future generations. For Aboriginal seniors in a dense, urban setting, beauty is an expression of those values, practices, and beliefs that transcend a past place and time. Beauty is not about meeting an expectation of what Aboriginal was, but re-setting expectations of what Anishinaabe or Cree was, is, and will be. Beauty exists in visual, formal, material, sensorial, social, and spiritual dimensions. Whereas the Anishinaabe and Cree group tended to focus on the moment of creation and the beauty of the creator, the Haida group tended to focus on the lived life of a piece, and the many hands (often within a clan) that touched an object throughout its life. The relationship between beauty and belonging is not inherent, singular, or ahistoric. The kinds of dissociations happening in these encounters with museum collections resist deﬁ ning what beauty is, and instead suggest we consider what beauty can do.

Acknowledgements Such work would not be possible without the individuals willing to have their personal moments in museum collections be research moments as well. To my Haida, Anishinaabe, and Cree colleagues, I offer deep gratitude. Haawa, Chii-Miigwetch, Thank You. Thank you to colleagues at Pitt Rivers Museum, especially Laura Peers, Kate Jackson, and Heather Richardson. Thank you to the MMMC research team: Lynne Howarth, Heather Howard, and our intrepid research assistants. Research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Haida Material Culture in British Museums: Generating New Forms of Knowledge), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Canadian Heritage (Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections ). Funds to support Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections seniors’ travel to museum collections was generously donated by CN Rail, IndieGoGo sup- porters, John Raulston Saul, and Penguin Books, and the tenacious fundraising efforts of the seniors. Thank you to Matt Brower for help with an early draft, and to Stephanie Bunn for her editorial leadership. Any omissions or errors remain my own. Beauty and belonging 337 Notes 1 Dialogic interchanges about beauty exist in the commissioning of artworks, artefacts, models, and replicas. They exist when publics make artworks and objects inspired by collections, and increasingly, museums are themselves making objects using three- dimensional scanning and printing technologies (see, for example, the Smithsonian’s X3D project, http://3d.si.edu/). 2 Fred Wilson’s seminal work based on the collection of the Maryland Historical Society. 3 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis are the terms used to identify three distinct groupings of Aboriginal peoples within Canada. 4 An ethnographic and art historical term for the NW coast artistic style, epitomized by curved and ﬂ owing lines and forms, including split-Us and ovoid shapes. 5 Vince’s reﬂ ections can be seen within the documentary Everything Was Carved (Butler 2010). 6 Oral history is arguably present in both these items, though there is not the space to explore its presence here. 7 The collection began with the donation (arguably an early kind of repatriation) of items from the Anglican Church Women to a prominent First Nations citizen in Toronto, Mil- dred Redmond, in the mid-1970s. The collection is periodically augmented by donations. 8 Among the group members, Jacqui is most vocal about the spiritual presence in items. Penney (2013) and Corbiere and Migwans (2013) detail the spiritual beings and philoso- phies present within the designs of Great Lakes material heritage, while Berlo and Phil- lips (1988) and Belcourt (2010) write of the highly spiritual nature of creating beadwork, whereby the creation conveys something of the maker’s own spiritual strength and gifts, as well as her deference for the Creator. The seniors in the group include individuals whose beliefs exist on a spectrum from wholly animist (in the sense of acknowledging and honouring the spirits inherent in all the world around them), to a blend of Christianity and animism, to wholly Christian. Taken together, the group has a complex relationship to the spiritual qualities of the pieces in the collection, which includes an altar cloth alongside images of clan dodems and important medicines.

References Barber, B., Guilbaut, S., & O’Brian, J. (eds) 1996. Voices of Fire: Art, Rage, Power and the State . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Belcourt, C. 2010. Beadwork: First Peoples’ Beading History and Techniques . Owen Sound: Ningwakwe Learning Press. Berlo, J. & Phillips R. 1988. Native North American Art . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blackman, M. 1973. Totems to Tombstones: Culture Changes as Viewed through the Haida Mortuary Complexes, 1877–1971. Ethnology , vol. 12, no. 1, 47–56. Blackman, M. 1992 [1982]. During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, a Haida Woman . Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. Boelscher, M. 1988. The Curtain within: Haida Social and Political Discourse . Vancouver: UBC Press. Butler, U. (dir.) 2010. Everything Was Carved . Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum. Available from: . [20 July 2015]. Canadian Conservation Institute 2013. Agent of Deterioration: Dissociation . Available from: . [25 July 2015]. Corbiere, A. & Migwans, C. 2013. Animikii miinwaa Mishibizhiw: Narrative Images of the Thunderbird and the Underwater Panther. In Before and after the Horizon , D. Penney (ed), 37–50. Washington: National Museum of the American Indian. 338 Cara Krmpotich Dowell, K. 2013. Pushing Boundaries, Defying Categories: Aboriginal Media Production on the Northwest Coast. In Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas, C. Townsend-Gault, J. Kramer & Ki-ke-in (eds), 828–863. Vancouver: UBC Press. Duffek, K. 2013. Value Added: The Northwest Coast Art Market since 1965. In Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas , C. Townsend-Gault, J. Kramer & Ki-ke-in (eds), 590–632. Vancouver: UBC Press. Glass, A. 2013. History and Critique of the “Renaissance” Discourse. In Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas , C. Townsend-Gault, J. Kramer & Ki-ke- in (eds), 487–517. Vancouver: UBC Press. Howarth, L. & Knight, E. 2015. To Every Artifact its Voice: Creating Surrogates for Hand- Crafted Indigenous Objects. Cataloguing & Classiﬁ cation Quarterly , vol. 53, no. 5/6. Krmpotich, C. 2014. The Force of Family: Repatriation, Kinship and Memory on Haida Gwaii . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Krmpotich, C., Howard, H. & Knight, E. 2015. From Collection to Community to Collec- tions Again: Urban Indigenous Women, Material Culture and Belonging. Journal of Material Culture . Krmpotich, C. & Peers L. with members of the Haida Repatriation Committee and staff of the British Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum 2013. This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum Practice . Vancouver: UBC Press. Penney, D. 2013. Water, Earth, Sky. In Before and after the Horizon, D. Penney (ed), 9–36. Washington: National Museum of the American Indian. Robertson, B. 2003. The Tipping Point: Museum Collecting and the Canon. American Art , vol. 17, no. 3, 2–11. Part VII Beauty, work and design

22 Beauty and economy

Stephen Gudeman

Beauty is a relationship connecting people to others, to objects, and to ideas. Sending out charms, as in paintings and commercial advertising, beauty draws us toward something and may even lure us to trade money for its possession. Beauty and economy are an unlikely pairing, however. Economy has to do with working life, whereas beauty is exciting and unique. We treasure beauty and claim it cannot be bought with treasure, although their coupling underlies many marriages. Beauty has different meanings in economy. Sometimes it refers to a product and sometimes to a process. Sometimes it is voiced in reference to economy and sometimes not. At times, riches are mystiﬁ ed as beauty, and other times beauty is a sensuous response to a product’s design. The meanings of beauty vary with the form of economy, but the ways they are connected reveal how we conceive and live economy. We can trace these connections by following economy in ideas and practices from high theory, to capitalism, to small-scale house economies, to craftsmen who enact and produce beauty. This path leads from the abstract to the concrete, and from economy’s expressions to its foundations. It reaches an end with the work of Thorstein Veblen who enshrined beauty in his analyses of all economies.

Beauty in economic theory I am not aware of many instances of use of the word ‘beauty’ in standard economics; however, three examples alert us to economists’ mindfulness of the term. First, there is Keynes in The General Theory of Employment (1964) where he compares professional investing in the market to a beauty contest. (Actually, he uses the word “pretty” but his metaphor of the market is known as a beauty contest.) The objective of stock market competition, says Keynes, is to choose the face (i.e. stock) most prized by the other participants rather than the stock the investor thinks is most valuable. In doing so, he must anticipate the average opinion of that stock, but others are doing the same with the result that we reach:

the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fi fth and higher degrees. (1964, 156) 342 Stephen Gudeman Investing is a relationship with beauty, if not between a person and the beautiful, at least among persons who prize the same thing. Keynes’s metaphor, however, may tell us more about the elusive prizes of fi nance than about priceless beauty. A second use of the word ‘beauty’ in economics comes with the title of a book (and fi lm) devoted to John Nash. Now known to many through the biography A Beautiful Mind (by Sylvia Nasar), Nash was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for his equilibrium theorem. Even if beauty here referred to Nash’s mental processes, the title alerts us to what is prized (both honored and remunerated) in economics, which is a beautiful mathematical theorem. In mathematics, on which much of modern economics is based, beautiful theorems are said to be surprising, broadly applicable, and simple in the sense of involving few equations and other proofs. Economics has a number of honored theorems. I am in no position to judge what qualifi es as a beautiful theorem in economics, but I presume the Nash equilibrium theorem would be included. With- out question the First, Fundamental, or Pareto Welfare theorem qualifi es as well. I want to pause for a moment with this theorem, because it fascinates me. For the economist, this theorem of the way perfect markets work may be beautiful, but for the anthropologist its framing is fl awed. In fact, there are two fundamental or welfare theorems in economics. The fi rst states that in a competitive market, everyone trades to the point at which no one can be made better off without someone else being in a worse position. At that point an effi cient allocation of resources is achieved. The theorem assumes that everyone acts in his or her self-interest (with perfect information) and is not swayed by feelings of charity, reciprocity, or sharing. These fi ctional actors are not inspired by the Maussian gift. Market effi ciency has nothing to do with fairness, equity, or equality. Recognizing that such values exist, economists have taken the beautiful result of the fi rst theorem to another stage and a second theorem. The second theorem tells us that any desired and effi cient result, such as equality, can be achieved by redistributing the results of the fi rst theorem. All that is needed is a lump-sum transfer among people by policy or political choice. With the right transfer of the fi rst market result, an effi cient and equitable allocation of resources will emerge through a second competitive market. Everything works out for the best in the most beautiful of worlds. The anthropologist, inspired by Mauss, notices a beauty mark between the two theorems. In both of the fundamental theorems market participants are solely self- interested for effi ciency to be achieved. The link through the transfer of resources between them is another matter. Why would a self-interested actor in theorem one suddenly become a Maussian person interested in the welfare of others? The participant in theorem one must fi rst be self-interested, then become humanely interested in the well being of others to impel the redistribution of the results from the fi rst theorem, then be self-interested to participate in theorem two that leads to equity or equality. The two beautiful pictures require a different hue of paint to link them. This tint of mutuality, however, contradicts the original assumptions (Gudeman 2016). Let us shift from high theory to a different use of ‘beautiful’ in economics. Over forty years ago E. F. Schumacher published a book entitled Small Is Beautiful (1973). Popular among lay folk, the book did not receive much attention from standard Beauty and economy 343 economists, although Schumacher was an accomplished and respected practitioner. The book’s subtitle was Economics as If People Mattered. In the book Schumacher was prescient about a number of issues, including our over dependence on fossil fuels, their scarce nature, their adverse effects on the environment, and the problems of turning to nuclear power. He warned against our increasing use of energy to promote economic growth and was clear about our overuse of chemical additives in agriculture with their deleterious effects on humans and the environment. In the book he began a turn to Buddhist economics with its softer effects on humans and the environment, and defi ned it as “the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means” (ibid 58), which is the practice of thrift as opposed to seeking a gain. I turn to Schumacher not for his prophetic words but for his book’s title, which is one of the few, if only times, that a ranking economist has used ‘beautiful’ in relation to economics and the economy. I cannot fi nd the word ‘beautiful’ in his text, but in some respects it can be read as a refutation, as Schumacher intimates (ibid 34), of one of Keynes’s sparkling essays that was written over eighty years ago. At the height of the depression Keynes addressed “The economic possibilities for our grandchildren” and projected that in 100 years the problem of producing enough would be solved (1931). At that point we could turn to higher values, the good would be preferred to the useful, and virtue to vice. Schumacher doubted that the current economy, let us call it capitalism, could be so easily jettisoned, because it relies on self-interest, greed, and the desire for accumulation and display. Schumacher inveighed against valuing size, whether of cities, corporations, or the Gross National Product, and promoted the use of intermediate technology. For Schumacher, however, the beauty of a small economy referred not so much to reliance on medium size technology as a return to people’s welfare. Others have developed these points since Schumacher, although we rarely hear about beautiful or small economies from standard economists. Still, we cannot conclude that beauty is completely excluded from standard economics. Standard market theory depends on the idea of subjective preferences that vary by the individual. We do not know much about how preferences are formed, but they are revealed in the choices people make. One person may prefer reading an academic book to lounging at the pub. Someone else may prefer purchasing a fast meal to cooking at home. The preferences and their ordering differ, but put them together in a perfectly competitive market, and an effi cient solution or allocation of resources is achieved. Because the constituents of a preference scale are open, and their ordering is subjective, someone might be endowed with beauty but want wealth, and someone else might have ample money but desire beauty. The two meet in the marriage market, the match is made, and an effi cient allocation of resources is achieved. Economy and beauty can work well together.

Beauty in capitalism Taking leave of economists, let us turn to the real economy of production and consumption where beauty has a place. In Minneapolis, the city where I live, a discussion about industry and beauty took place some years ago. Originally grain 344 Stephen Gudeman was transported from the west to Minneapolis and milled on the edges of the Mis- sissippi River that powered the machinery. Other industry grew along the river using the same power source. Times changed, and some manufacturers moved elsewhere. Many of the original buildings, abandoned and used, remained in sight along the river. The controversy concerned these old factories and storage facili- ties. Some inhabitants wanted to tear them down and return the river to a more natural state. One set of voices, however, said that industry was beautiful, and the riverbanks and the buildings should be left standing. For these citizens, the accomplishments of industrial growth were beautiful. The pastoral side mostly prevailed but beauty was invoked to justify both going green and preserving the vision of a growth economy. In both cases, beauty was a relation between observer and observed (depending on the subjective preferences). The idea of beauty in industry has seldom been so enshrined as in the photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher. For many years they photographed grain elevators, water towers, factories, and mine-heads, mostly in Germany. Their black and white photographs are items of beauty, displaying cylindrical and rectangular shapes of monolithic machines and buildings. For example, the mine-head series reveals structures similarly built but each different according to the landscape and artistic variation. Nostalgia pervades the collection, although most of these relics of beauty were monuments of human degradation and misery. They are the antithesis of Schumacher’s beautiful economy. Today the world of commerce and fi nance celebrates itself with designer buildings hailed for their beauty and usually bearing a corporation’s name, although sometimes these valued structures are hardly ‘economic.’ For example, the Sea- gram building in New York City, designed by Mies van der Rohe, fi nished in 1958, and widely hailed, has had the worst energy reading in the city. Conversely, the Chicago Butter and Egg exchange building, which became the original Chicago Mercantile Exchange, featured a classical form with several innovations, and was well constructed. Designed by Alfred Alschuler, it was said to be “handsome,” “magnifi cent,” and worth preserving but was demolished by real estate moguls (Chicago Tribune 2002). Economic advantage trumped beauty. Commodities are designed to invoke beauty for the owner. Raymond Loewy most notably introduced product design in the United States. Known for many products and logos, from streamlined locomotives, to the Studebaker car, to the Coca-Cola dispenser, his consumer design that fi rst drew attention was the 1935 Coldspot refrigerator produced for Sears Roebuck and Co. Working with astute buyers for the corporation, this commodity became an instant best seller and shortly incorporated a variety of innovations. I am not aware that the word ‘beauty’ was used for the refrigerator, but it was a beauty in terms of modernist streamlining, functionality, thought, size, and price, as well as profi ts. The lessons learned carried over to stoves and other home products sold by Sears. Product beauty attracted consumers. Beauty is now built into many commodities from cars to watches. An adver- tisement linking Breitling watches to Bentley automobiles proclaims, “Beautiful motors encased in beautiful body work.” I do not know if this pairing has led to a Beauty and economy 345 statistically signifi cant correlation in their sales, but I presume the metaphor of the two (cars and watches) built on metonymy (motors and bodies) boosts the sales of each. Nike pairs its basketball shoes with a supreme athlete in a picture of the two with the proclamation, “Be Like Mike.” Presumably Michael Jordan’s powers pass to his personal shoes (metonymically) then pass to their product replica (metaphor) and then to the purchaser (metonymically). We are attracted to the beautiful moves of the athlete and hope by magical connections to absorb them. Today we attract others through products of the ‘beauty industry.’ We beautify our hair, skin, nails, and other physical features through perfumes, toothpastes, and creams, and by services, such as massages, exercise studios, weight loss clinics, and surgery. Body beautifi cation also includes the services of tattoo artists and the use of jewelry, as well as always-changing fashions from designer jeans to exquisite dresses. In the United States, during 2015 the revenue of the cosmetic industry alone will gross over fi fty-six billion dollars and is projected to exceed sixty billion dollars in 2016, which is double the sales of cosmetics in 2003. Aca- demics may be less attracted to this material world of beauty; however, they value the output of beautiful minds, as in the case of John Nash, and bestow on them money and prizes. The value of beauty in capitalism extends beyond body magic. Magazines such as House Beautiful present images of beautiful domestic arrangements and accoutrements, as do architectural magazines that display beautiful exteriors and interiors of homes. These showcases are designed to attract homeowners to upgrade their houses and persuade others and themselves of their high tastes. In less mentioned ways employment and earnings are affected by beauty. One study suggests that better looking lawyers earn more than others, and that private- sector attorneys are better looking than their counterparts in the public sector (Bid- dle and Hamermesh 1995). Receptionists often are more attractive than secretaries in the back offi ce. Sales people are always attractively dressed and often benefi t by their personal beauty, although that can be intimidating. These purchases of beauty that attract people to our homes and selves, and that help people keep a job, pump up the Gross National Product.

Beautiful means We reach a signal difference in use of the word ‘beauty.’ In capitalism, beauty refers to an object, a product, or the adorned and beautifi ed person. It is the result or end of production. In house and communally based economies the process of work or workmanship more often evokes feelings of beauty. I do not wish to overdraw the distinction, but economy and beauty fi t together differently in these two contexts. With its emphasis on intermediate technologies, Schumacher’s book, Small Is Beautiful, only begins to capture this difference. My research on everyday labor, artisanship, and small-scale innovation in parts of Latin America reveals another side of beauty in economy. No term captures the care, variability, and creativity of this pretty work that is sometimes done for sustenance and sometimes for a small 346 Stephen Gudeman profi t. Often it is done singly but sometimes involves a small number of people. I did not frequently encounter the word ‘beauty’ in these contexts; however, in these situations it refers more to the work than the outcome. For this work people apply the sentiments that we attach to beauty, such as appealing, pleasing, satisfying, ideal, attractive, and pretty. One morning, high in the northern Andes of Colombia my colleague (Alberto Rivera) and I awoke early in an agriculturalist’s thatch hut where we were stay- ing. The sun was just rising, but the owner was already outside weeding his garden. His wife explained that he took pleasure in having well tended foods close to the house and would weed every morning before departing for his fi elds. We watched him silently cutting and uprooting weeds with his machete before he took coffee with us. The neatness of his garden displayed the satisfaction he took in creating a pretty patch of vegetables and herbs, although few others would ever see it. Earlier in Panama I would sometimes stand with a man in his rice fi eld and he would talk about the work put into it, the neatness of the planting, the lack of weeds, and the growth of the plants and term it ‘pretty’ or sometimes ‘beautiful.’ The same expressions were used for a fl ourishing sugar cane fi eld, which was a cash crop. The comments were as much about the work that created the fi eld as how it looked, because how it looked was the outcome of good work. Elsewhere I found much the same with other agricultural work in progress, such as a fi eld of potatoes in Colombia or a plot of tubers. Sometimes I would hear a similar description at the end of a man’s agricultural workday. The work was hard, a man would say, but when carefully done it was pretty and satisfying. Handicrafts made and used in the countryside received similar comments. In Panama one man made a fi shnet by knotting white cord he had purchased. I heard about his work several times before fi nally visiting him when the netting was fi n- ished. He showed me how to throw the net and displayed it for a few photographs. When I asked about using the net, he said he was not intending to fi sh, and there were few places to do so in the area. He would eventually sell the net but had made it more for the pleasure of producing a handsome utilitarian item than for receiving money in recompense. Others made useful items such as sandals, for which they purchased leather and then cut, nailed, and skillfully glued it. Some people purchased stripped vines or bark to weave hats, and one man was known for making wooden stools and low tables for eating. These in-house activities saved spending cash, and sometimes earned it, but also provided pleasure in the careful making as the people explained. I found this same pride in workmanship with items made for sale. Outside Gua- temala City I visited a woman who made clay fi gurines and worked in a covered extension of her kitchen that had a dirt fl oor. She showed me how she carefully mixed the clay that she secured nearby. Skillful with her hands and imaginative in vision, her fi gurines were delicate, inventive, and each slightly different. Other fi gurine makers would visit her to get ideas for their work, but she seemed pleased to let them see her way of working, and she was very successful in sales of the fi gurines to people from the city who would come to purchase. Beauty and economy 347 In a different area that had amenable soil, a number of men had built kilns for baking bricks, which they sold in quantity to buyers from the city who used the bricks in construction. One man was building a huge furnace that dwarfed the others. He explained how he had thought about, dreamed, and planned it so that it would be stable and bake two or three times more bricks than the other furnaces. He said he had seen how metal rods were used in constructing buildings in the city and was applying this method to the fl oor in his tall and broad furnace. He spoke with pride about his workmanship and the people he was directing, and showed the emerging construction to others, although he was not certain if it would make money or even last. Everything was put together with care. In Guatemala City I also encountered examples of creative workmanship that was directed to market sales. Directly around a major marketplace were a number of tinsmiths. Most worked by themselves making single buckets, pouring vessels and other implements. One tinsmith worked with his two sons. He had organized the three of them into a small production line in which tasks were divided but timed so that as one stage was completed the piece could be thrown to the person at the next table who performed the next task. The father was adept at cutting, bending, and shaping the sheets of tin they bought and had taught his sons how to shape and solder. In contrast to other tinsmiths they did batch production and sales, taking orders in the morning and producing the requested quantity by nightfall. Unlike the fi gurine maker they never allowed others to watch them, and were making enough money to have a television in every room of their house. Their craftsmanship in the work and organization, and the enjoyment it yielded, kept them going at a rapid pace through the day. The process was beautiful whether judged by its effi ciency, the economical actions, the working together, the product, or its success.

Veblen No one was more attuned to beautiful workmanship than Thorstein Veblen, although he did not label it this way. I was initially drawn to Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1953) after my fi rst fi eldwork. Following research in Colom- bia I turned to The Instinct of Workmanship (1914). Beauty fi gures prominently in the fi rst book but is disguised in the second, for Veblen used obscure phrases when others would have suffi ced, and what he considered honorable and beautiful is apparent in the book’s title. Both books present critiques of capitalism, but the latter extends and is more profound than the fi rst. Veblen’s shift captures the distinction I am sketching, although in the end Veblen missed what the anthropologist fi nds in all economies. For years Veblen puzzled me. He penned powerful phrases but also obscure prose. Veblen read widely yet delighted in hiding his intellectual sources. As an evolutionist, Veblen believed in small, cumulative changes; but his arguments and trains of thought often exhibit leaps that belie the theory. Veblen’s distinction between the Captains of Industry and the Captains of Finance is captivating, and his view of capital as both a material substance and a legal form is highly suggestive, but these oppositions have never been fully adopted in standard economics. 348 Stephen Gudeman My puzzlement about Veblen, however, is different. As his writings emerged, Veblen seemed to develop a theory of economy and society, but he never summarized or stated it. Veblen was the founder of institutionalist economics in the United States; however, the Veblen theory I fi nd is unlike that suggested by his many commentators. The difference may be due to the fact that I think Veblen was an anthropologist manqué, and in that portrayal I am alone. Veblen drew on three intellectual strands: symbolism, the materialism of Lewis Henry Morgan, and pragmatism. He joined these in his seldom-read book, The Instinct of Work- manship, where he developed a social theory of metaphor and mystifi cation, and supplemented it with ethnographic speculations. Using this critical perspective for nearly all economies, he tried to replace the accepted axiom of economic rationality with the instinct of workmanship. Veblen produced most of his written work within a span of twenty-fi ve years. His initial papers in the early 1880s were followed by periods of study and relative silence until the end of the century when he caught public attention with publication of The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. His fi rst writings were on Mill and Kant. At Johns Hopkins, which Veblen attended after graduating from Carleton College, he was exposed to the teaching of C. S. Peirce. At the University of Chicago he encountered the work of John Dewey and his circle. These experiences clearly had an impact on Veblen. Perhaps because he was an outsider, Veblen was keenly attentive to ethnographies and evolutionary theory, which aided him in developing an alternative view of economic processes. Judging by the historical schemes he used, Veblen was infl uenced by Morgan (1963), but I can fi nd no citations. There is no mention of Engels’s work (1972) on the family and private property that was infl uenced by Morgan, although Veblen was very familiar with Marxist thought and provided sparkling discussions and critiques of it (1942a, 1942b). Like Marx, Veblen roots his social analysis in the conditions of production. Like Morgan, his social evolutionism starts with technological change. Veblen fashions an intellectual break with his materialist predecessors, however, because he sees technology and change as functions of pragmatic activity, which joins him to the tradition of Pierce and Dewey. He further argues that symbolic processes accompany pragmatic behavior. His many commentators have largely ignored this part of his thought, which he illuminated by drawing upon early ethnographies, although I think it provides a key to his theory, his pessimism, and his social critiques. In The Theory of the Leisure Class Veblen satirizes and critiques conspicuous consumption and leisure in modern economy. The idea of ‘beauty’ fi gures prominently. Veblen shows again and again that market items considered beautiful depend not so much on their intrinsic qualities as their cost. His examples range from sumptuous spoons and grand entertainment, to shoes, buildings, jewelry, furniture, the female body, animals, and shifting fashions (especially female dress). All are examples of invidious comparison and honor that bring a good name. With the wealth of others continually on display, the average person feels perpetual dissatis- faction. Beauty alone is valued, says Veblen, but we confl ate it with cost so that “the marks of expensiveness come to be accepted as beautiful features of the expensive Beauty and economy 349 articles” (ibid 130). Often the expensive ornamentation of a beautiful item, such as a spoon, clothes, or shoes, hampers its serviceability or effi ciency in use. Veblen’s argument about competitive consumption and display is familiar, but something is missing. What underlies the mystifi cation of cost as beauty other than the desire to display prowess and wealth in capitalism? More pointedly, what activity provides economy’s foundation? Veblen’s underlying theme of disutility, ineffi ciency, and waste of the beautifully expensive item provides the clue. The Instinct of Workmanship seemed designed to answer the question. Veblen considered The Instinct of Workmanship to be his most important book (Dorfman 1966, 324). It was also the most diffi cult for him to produce. Ignored by most observers and unpopular with the public, the book (not surprisingly) is Veblen’s most anthropological piece. Many of his prior essays touch upon ethnographic issues, but after publication of Workmanship his writings are nearly devoid of anthropological references. The book marked a watershed in his thinking, required an immense intellectual effort, and took seven years to write. In it, Veblen displayed his view of all economies and connected economic activity to cultural or symbolic form. Veblen offers an active view of the human, not as a means to ends planner or seeker of pleasure but as a material maker who engages in careful activity for its own sake. It is a pragmatic perspective. Ceaselessly fi ghting utilitarian, hedonistic, and rationalistic assumptions in economics, Veblen developed a different model of economic man, for which a pragmatic view of the human had its uses. Veblen’s attraction to workmanship undoubtedly had much to do with his background. He was raised on small farms, fi rst in Wisconsin, then in Minnesota. Veblen surely was inspired by the image of a worker making real things needed for the survival of himself and his family. Workmanship, exercised by the independent artisan in possession of his tools, was an ideal and lever that Veblen used to analyze all social forms. It was the exemplar of beautiful work. Workmanship for Veblen constitutes the most important human proclivity or instinct because it serves all behavior. Lacking an end, workmanship has to do with how an action is performed and with careful management of resources.1 Workman- ship does not create wealth through new technology but controls its use to achieve savings. It means achieving effi ciency, taking pains, and being creative, and is directed to the serviceable, not the wasteful (1914, 90). At various times in his life, Veblen turned to making furniture, and perhaps all along he had in mind the furniture maker who, without waste of materials or ornamentation of style, makes a useful and durable item. So consequential was the instinct of workmanship for Veblen that he elevated it to central importance in the rise of human culture. This instinct, he offers, has “brought the life of mankind from the brute to the human plane, and in all the later growth of culture it has never ceased to pervade the works of man” ( ibid 37). The activity of workmanship gives rise to two forms of knowledge. Workman- ship begins with a matter of fact appreciation of the material world. These facts and knowledge are gained through experience and accord well with the state of things. Workmanship proceeds and thrives on “matter-of-fact” knowledge that enhances 350 Stephen Gudeman the effectiveness of pragmatic activity. Inevitably, however, this knowledge is infected by a second, symbolic knowledge that “deranges” workmanship. Such knowledge is secured on grounds other than “workmanlike experience” and has little to do with what can be done with the material at hand (1914, 40). This second form of knowledge has various sources. Much of it comes through symbol making coupled to predation. The two categories of knowledge are different in how they are acquired and in their effects (ibid 55). Veblen went further than defi ning two modes of knowledge. The second emerges from the fi rst, but the pairing of this knowledge with matter of fact observations leads to “self-contamination.” The argument runs something like this. Curiosity, an innate propensity, leads humans to expand their knowledge. Given its centrality, workmanship provides the “measure” for it (ibid 53).2 In his words, “The growth of institutions and the accumulation of knowledge have led to an extension of its [workmanship’s] scope and of its canons and logic to activities and conjunc- tures that have little traceable bearing on the means of subsistence” (ibid 37). In earlier societies, this metaphoric attribution of workmanship takes the form of animism: “the most obstructive derangement that besets workmanship . . . is that conduct, more or less fully after the human fashion of conduct, is imputed to external objects . . . Such anthropomorphism commonly means an interpretation of phenomena in terms of workmanship” (ibid 52–53). These secondary formations, in turn, have a refl exive effect on workmanship. The instinct of workmanship exerts a triple effect: directly on the organization of material practices, then on the organization of new experience, and fi nally on itself via the attribution of workmanship to other persons or beings in economy. This fi nal twist is a derangement. The circular process from workmanship through symbolic formations leading back to workmanship occurs at all stages of society where the symbolic attributions hinder the initial activity. Both forms of knowledge are connected to the institutional structure of society. Empirical information is secured through “industrial” endeavors in which workmanship is directly involved. The corrupted form of knowledge is linked to the “business” structure that benefi ts from the workmanship of others. In early society elders turned the process of workmanship to their benefi t through animism and other symbolic projections that gave them power.3 When industry developed, workers and owners became separated, each acquired more functions, and a wedge was driven between industry and business (“fi nance”). Today the benefi ciaries of workmanship are fi nanciers who have little to do with technology and much to do with monetary gain. The instinct of workmanship is now contaminated, not by animistic thought as in earlier times, but by “ideals of self-aggrandisement and the canons of invidious emulation” (ibid 217). Workmanship is rated less by its real effects and more by its monetary results. In turn, a symbolic reversal or mystifi cation has taken hold. The fi nancier or businessman has little knowledge of technological processes and is “incompetent to exercise an effectual surveillance of the processes of industry” (ibid 222), but the pervading preoccupation with pecuniary matters has led to seeing businessmen as expert workmen (ibid 221–227) just as the desire to Beauty and economy 351 secure monetary gain is attributed to workmen. Through symbolic attribution and feedback, workmanship has become self-contaminated, while beauty in economy is attributed to fi nancial acumen. This reversal is capitalism’s derangement. With this conclusion, Veblen fi lled out the argument fi rst presented in Theory of the Leisure Class . He adds another point that was developed in subsequent books. The captains of fi nance may be attributed with workmanlike qualities, but they add nothing serviceable to the economy. Financial workmanship means effi ciency in securing monetary gains, and this is accomplished by withholding production or creating monopolies. Ultimately, Veblen concludes, through refl exive contamination by the symbolic capacity, material workmanship has brought capitalist ineffi ciency! The only hope is to restore the mentality of beautiful workmanship and engineering control, which is what Veblen argued in one of his fi nal books, The Engineers and the Price System (1921).

Beauty as satire With his critique of beauty as founded on monetary accumulation and as a mystifi cation of workmanship, Veblen is practically the fi rst analyst to treat material life as a symbolic system. At least one of Veblen’s commentators portrays him as a satirist, in the tradition of Swift and Voltaire (Lerner 1976, 19). If Veblen can be said to have produced satire, however, it was different from his predecessors’, because Veblen was not writing a text in which human actions are made to look ridiculous. Veblen was claiming that human action and society are ironic and that humans satirize themselves. For humans to attribute workmanship to fi nanciers and predation to working people, encapsulated by the way we fi nd beauty in displays of wealth, is the greatest irony, and a living one more powerful and infl uential than anything the social critic may offer. Veblen was not a social critic who happened to use tropes to some effect. He was an anthropologist, studying and displaying the tropes that we make of ourselves. This social theory placed Veblen at a great distance from the premise that economy is a product of a rational persons selecting among preferences. If I have reservations about Veblen, it is with his focus on individual workmanship. He gave insuffi cient attention to the social relationships that make up economy either in industry or outside markets, as in house and communal formations (Gudeman 2016). After Veblen, however, it becomes diffi cult to use the word ‘beauty’ when coupled with markets.

Afterthought What would Veblen, the furniture maker, have said about the statement attributed to Steve Jobs who founded and ran Apple, which produces beautiful products and has the world’s largest market capitalization: “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so 352 Stephen Gudeman you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” Beautiful workmanship does sell. But let the buyer beware when purchasing items of beauty, for he or she may be deranging the foundation of economy and society, which is workmanship.

Notes 1 “The functional content of workmanship is serviceability for the ends of life” (1914, 31). 2 It furnishes the “canons” on which consciousness draws its plans (Veblen 1914, 88). All “the facts of observation are conceived as facts of workmanship, and the logic of workmanship becomes the logic of events . . . human knowledge is of a ‘pragmatic’ character” (Veblen 1914, 54). 3 Veblen often speaks of “imputation” and “anthropomorphism” for this metaphoric process that brings in the institutional order.

References Biddle, J. E., and D. S. Hamermesh. 1995. Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination: Law- yers’ Looks and Lucre, NBER Working Paper No. 5366. Dorfman, J. 1966 [1934]. Thorstein Veblen and His America . New York: Viking Press. Engels, F. 1972 [1942]. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State . New York: International Publishers. Gudeman, S. 2016. Economy and Anthropology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grossman, Ron, and Liam Ford. 16 March 2002. Ex-Merc Site May Be Razed. Chicago Tribune . Keynes, J. M. 1931. Essays in Persuasion . London: Macmillan and Co. Keynes, J. M. 1964 [1936]. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money . New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Lerner, M. 1976. Introduction, 2–48. The Portable Veblen , ed. M. Lerner. New York: Penguin. Morgan, L. H. 1963 [1877]. Ancient Society , ed. E. Burke Leacock. Cleveland: The World Publishing Co. Nasar, S. 1998. A Beautiful Mind . New York: Simon and Schuster. Schumacher, E. F. 1975 [1973]. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered . New York: Harper & Row. Veblen, T. 1922 [1914]. The Instinct of Workmanship . New York: W.E. Huebsch. Veblen, T. 1942a [1906]. The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers, I, 409–430. The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation . New York: Viking Press. Veblen, T. 1942b [1907]. The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers, II, 431–456. The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation . New York: Viking Press. Veblen, T. 1953 [1899]. The Theory of the Leisure Class . New York: Mentor Books. Veblen, T. 1983 [1921]. The Engineers and the Price System . New Brunswick: Transaction Books. 23 Mysterious equations Formulating good design for Textiles U.S.A.

T’ai Smith

The pervasive writing on design in contemporary life – found among Web pages, industry magazines, and museum catalogues – is plagued by a defi nite-yet-hazy formula that binds certain variables: style, function, and effi ciency. These are the taken-for-granted qualities that, added together, make up the ineffable calculus known as “good design.” Everywhere, it seems, design is treated as a delicate balance of formal and functional features that magically results in a pleasing or “successful” product, and that conforms to a stylistic Zeitgeist whose parameters, also somehow magically, are universally agreed upon at any given moment. This seemingly simple formula (expressed something like: good style + good function + material effi ciency = good design) remains the doxa of the design complex, a powerful force in the marketing of a whole range of products, from furniture and wearables to lifestyle choices (or business models) and military programs – from the Aeron Chair to Apple Watch to Lululemon to drones.1 Good design, the quality that designers embrace and marketers aim to calculate, is used to justify a whole range of products, however helpful or pernicious they may be. Products like the iPhone simply are beautiful in their seamless and beautiful joining of style and function. The smooth edge of the MacBook Air just feels right – it makes sense ! The fact that such items are made with materials like Coltan extracted from mines using forced labor in the DRC . . . or that they fi nd their way, as fashion and forced obsolescence dictate, into an e-Waste republic like Ghana, where the valuable and often toxic raw materials are extracted and sent back to developed countries, does not seem to be part of this equation. Good design seems only to apply to the “new” end of the consumption cycle. The balance of style, function, and effi ciency, attributed to the space occupied by the plus sign, exists in some ethereal zone – or perhaps for a few months, maybe a year, after it is initially consumed. And so it is “good” in spite of its otherwise unethical planetary impact – and this, in spite of attempts to clean up various sectors of the design industry, with labels like LEED and GREENGUARD Gold Certifi ed pointing us, again somehow magically, to a set of products we can feel good about buying. Good design – that illusive and seemingly timeless category of modern culture – is used to gloss over the tensions within design’s political economy. Thus, good design continues to meet its standard effi ciently, effortlessly, as though without work. Design is “good,” as in moral, as in beautiful; it is an 354 T’ai Smith aesthetic-moral-economic category. The plus sign in the good-design formula provides a space holder for ineffable beauty and, at the same time, is a calculation. It is both qualitatively abstract (elusive) and quantitatively abstract (rendering each variable in the equation a formal or monetary value). Found in this plus sign, the beauty of design is something like the mystery described by Marx in the algebraic expression that inhabits the commodity chapter of Capital – the “whole mystery of the form of value,” which “lies hidden in [the] simple form” of an equation, or how x of commodity A becomes equivalent to y of commodity B.2 It is at once concrete and illusory. Indeed, a certain idea about good design has persisted for nearly a century. Although the historiography of art history has obsessively traced the philological movement of the terms form and style , along with beauty and good taste (terms that were based in Ancient Greek philosophy and were ultimately fused in the Enlightenment discourse of the 18th century3 ), and design history has done much to unpack the slipperiness of the words function , purpose, and utility (as they were theorized by architects and critics in the early-to-mid-20th century4 ), the apparent formula that generates this compound concept has received little analysis over the years. 5 If it is acknowledged that “good design” was a phrase that consolidated in a specifi c moment in postwar America, insuffi cient attention has been paid to the method by which curators, architects, and designers, in collaboration with marketers and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) created this compound concept. The history of good design has made a job of forgetting the illusive space of the plus sign, and the means by which it came into being. I am not, therefore, so interested in what was deemed “good” in design (the particular style) at a particular moment, or that was universalized throughout mid-century American life (to answer this formally: it was a distilled version of European modernism for the American market). Rather, I want to explore how a set of exhibitions formulated this concept as a method. I want to consider how the notion that good design could be determined through an equation (the proper balance of style, function, and effi ciency) came into being – that is, how a concept became a formula, how a formula became the norm. The purpose here is to consider what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari might call good design’s “plane of reference,” its (formulaic or scientifi c) condition of possibility. This is the topological domain wherein good design fi lters the aesthetic (the sensate) through “functives” (the elements that make up scientifi c functions), into an advertorial “concept.”6 Thus no longer the province of philosophy, in which it was always a multiplicity or infi nite linkage of inseparable components, the (good design) concept joins forces with “art” in the domain of ad men, the new “poets and thinkers.”7 The height of good design in America is witnessed in the language offered by MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design in a series of annual exhibitions held from 1950 to 1955, under the directorship of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. and co- sponsored by the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. Given the explicit mark of “Good Design” through a simple orange-and-black logo painted on the entry wall, the exhibitions were executed to market the principles of modern design. In the 1950 Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 355 catalogue text for the fi rst in this series, What Is Modern Design?, Kaufmann declared that while design generally conceives and “gives form to objects used in everyday life,” modern design, more specifi cally (and seemingly in keeping with U.S. Cold War policy), is “intended to implement the lives of free individuals.”8 So not just “to create an atmosphere of ‘the good life,’” but to establish “‘a brave new world.’” To achieve this concretely, Kaufmann listed the “twelve precepts” by which modern design “should” abide: a set of 12 bulleted sentences, peppered generously with the ideals of simplicity and honesty.9 A more concise formula had been established ten years earlier, in a museum press release from November 28, 1941.10 The fourth in a series of exhibitions “of well-designed useful objects available in retail stores,” held over three years, MoMA presented, due to “public demand,” Useful Objects Under $10 . The 1941 show displayed approximately 150 carefully chosen objects, but more importantly it provided a guide for assessing their value: “a small section demonstrating the elements of good design and suggesting criteria which the spectator himself may apply in judging the design of other objects.” On a “large Placard . . . hung above a display of four objects taken from the exhibition . . . the four elements of design” were given as a simple formula:

1 respect for function 2 material 3 method of production or manufacture 4 the contemporary sense of beauty with which the ﬁ rst three elements are combined.11

Bound through the ﬁ nal element, the emulsifying agent of beauty, good design’s quasi-mathematical calculation of “respect for function, material, and method” (in 1932, apparently the question of production still mattered) achieved a successful chemical reaction. Toward the end of this era, in a juried exhibition of textiles held at MoMA in 1956 and co-curated by Arthur Drexler and Greta Daniels, the execution of good design’s simple algebraic expression now functioned effortlessly (Figure 23.1). By this time, through the force of this linguistic complex – the additive space in which functional design becomes beautiful, good design becomes honest – the shape of this concept was presented as always-already given, a ready-made recipe, scripted according to perfectly formulated methods. Through an analysis of the Textiles U.S.A. exhibition and catalogue, along with several, earlier texts, I will trace how the particular threads that made up this matrix were conceived, offered to the public, and woven into a tight sieve. Tight and yet, as we shall see, this concept’s ground was rather retextured in a set of articles written, published, and reprinted by one member of the Textiles U.S.A. jury, former-Bauhaus student and textile designer Anni Albers. In these essays, seemingly in response to MoMA’s Good Design exhibitions, the concept was identiﬁ ed according to the parameters established by this American model, but also, perhaps somewhat in spite of her intentions, undone. 356 T’ai Smith

Figure 23.1 Installation view of the exhibition Textiles U.S.A.; August 29, 1956 through November 4, 1956; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; gelatin-silver print; 7 3/4 × 9 1/2 in. (19.7 × 24.1 cm) Photograph. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

Design education: the moral-aesthetic economy Before this narrative can be elaborated, however, it helps fi rst to unpack the question of “good,” as in “moral” and/or “beautiful,” that pervaded MoMA’s discourse and persists, for example, in the annual Good Design Award®.12 Good design continues to be the basic, prescriptive model that design students adopt for their class projects. The formula is reiterated again and again – different but the same, individual yet universal – the paradox apparently lost on even the most sophisticated designers and consumers (the maligned hipsters, who are often both). Just as good taste, or the proper judgment of beauty, was once an Enlighten- ment Bildungsbegriff – a conceptual approach that could be adopted with the proper education, regardless of social standing – with design education, good taste is no longer the province of an elite; it is a seemingly classless principle that, through savvy marketing (the new form of Bildung ), can be successfully sold to and adopted by the masses. Of course, with good design, beauty is no longer a category of aesthetics framed by the historically specifi c conditions of the European Enlightenment (say, in the debates between Hume, Burke, and Kant). Beauty is no longer a Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 357 feature of judgment specifi c to art – that which, “free” from subjective desire or need, could be recognized autonomously and freely in itself (with proper education). This is because design, fi rst of all, is heteronomous; it is subject to a “law outside itself,” and so has a rather vexed relationship to the aesthetic dynamic. (Kant differentiated painting and sculpture from the applied arts, claiming that the latter suffered from their usefulness and ubiquity – the repetition of style.) But as Jane Forsey recently points out in The Aesthetics of Design, while external purpose ( Zweck) engenders design’s exclusion from the autonomous realm of art or disinterested pleasure, it does not disqualify it from the larger “genus” of beauty entirely.13 Even Kant attempted to defi ne this kind of beauty, calling it “dependent beauty,” a vague and contradictory method he uses to discuss what is “meant to be” in objects with purposes. While free beauty “presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; [dependent beauty] does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith. The fi rst is called the (self-subsistent) beauty of this or that thing; the second, as dependent upon a concept (conditioned beauty), is ascribed to objects which come under the concept of a particular purpose” (§16, 65). (As noted by Forsey, whether this feature belongs to the realm of reason or judgment, is up for debate.14 ) The beauty of design, having been reframed as “dependent,” is determined according to a new algorithm, insofar as the ability to (perfectly) function against or with something else is calculated into the aesthetic equation. Regardless, as applied to design, (dependent) beauty remains a question of moral goodness and it is an ahistorical truth: universal beauty in a nutshell, a clean package. And this is the case, even as beautiful or good design is both predicated on its “usefulness” and is subject to the fl uctuations of fashion (or the market). Indeed, the language of good design perfectly encapsulates the paradox of Kantian aesthetic judgment, as George Simmel once pointed out in his essays on fashion and style – what Jukka Gronow has referred to as Simmel’s “somewhat ironic commentary on Kant’s idea of a sensus communis .” 15 Fashion, which is repeated by social individuals who seek to express their individual style (or taste), is also, paradoxically, a question of universal, and repeated, formal values. Thus, while beauty, for Kant, resided in a single subject’s perception – that is, in his or her individual taste – design is able to rationalize, produce, and market beauty on mass scale for a mass audience. Arbiters of good taste (themselves educated by the market, or “focus groups”) claiming to have a certain purchase on the best way to “harmonize” forms, colors, and functions work to fashion beauty into palatable products, or good design, for distinct market sectors, or individuals. Or, with good design, beauty, as an effi cient combination of form (or style) and function, is determined and sold to a consumer, an individual, who is also framed as one of many. The designed (commodity) object – the sole bearer of value, before its contemplation (or use) by an individual observer – is calculated by a group (say, a company) and demonstrated (sold or taught) to a public. 358 T’ai Smith We might say after Herbert Marcuse, then, that what good design does is to consolidate Kant’s aesthetic principle into an abstract, democratic-market concept. This is the moral height of Kant’s “bourgeois epoch”:

Free competition places individuals in the relation of buyers and sellers of labor power. The pure abstractness to which men are reduced in their social relations extends as well to intercourse with ideas. It is no longer supposed to be the case that some are born to and suited to labor and others to leisure, some to necessity and others to beauty. Just as each individual’s relation to the market is immediate (without his personal qualities and needs being relevant except as commodities), so his relations to God, to beauty, to goodness, and to truth are relations of immediacy. As abstract beings, all men are supposed to participate equally in these values. As in material practice the product separates itself from the producers and becomes independent as the universal reiﬁ ed form of the “commodity,” so in cultural practice a work and its content congeal into universally valid “values.” By their very nature the truth of a philosophical judgment, the goodness of a moral action, and the beauty of a work of art should appeal to everyone, relate to everyone, be binding upon everyone. Without distinction of sex or birth, regardless of their position in the process of production, individuals must subordinate themselves to cultural values.16

Although Marcuse had the 18th-century bourgeois system of Kantian aesthetics in mind when he published this in 1937, we might say that good design at MoMA would bring the aesthetic-moral economy he described into full relief. As a Bildungsbegriff , good design seamlessly moved from a corporate (universal) qualitative judgment to a quantitative rationale, corresponding to the number of people who were compelled to buy a particular item. The efﬁ ciently designed object, democratically available to a properly trained audience, is now, in itself, expressive of all that is good, is “moral.”

Consumer engineering: why goods became good If the Good Design exhibitions of the 1950s sought to master the formula as a Bildungsbegriff for the mid-century American public, the system that underscored this educational model had been honed by certain businesses a bit earlier. This is to say: the principles threaded through the structure that created MoMA’s “high-quality, fi ne-mesh sieve” 17 were defi nitely determined by 1932, the same year the museum held its fi rst Modern Architecture show, curated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. This is when good design became wedded to an American, entrepreneurial logic – one in which its goods became good. The business tool (or “business science”) that precipitated the rush to good design in America was perfectly described that year by Earnest Elmo Calkins. As design historian Carma Gorman explains, Calkins “promoted ‘artifi cial obsolescence’ as an answer both to the economic woes of the Great Depression and to Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 359 the question of how to increase Americans’ standard of living.”18 Head of the New York advertising fi rm Calkins and Holden, he determined that the objective was to use packaging and advertising to generate “free spending.” Consumer engineering, then, was the strategic “shaping [of ] a product to fi t more exactly consumers’ needs or taste, but in its widest sense it include[d] any plan which stimulate[d] the consumption of goods.” 19 Plans, for example, included the ceaseless perpetuation of fashion cycles (so that “clothes that go out of style . . . are replaced long before they are worn out”), but also applied to other products, from motor cars to bath- rooms to refrigerators. In other words, the principle of “obsolitism” was a central “device for stimulating consumption.”20 Concluding that “[g]oods fall into two classes, those we use, such as motor-cars or safety razors, and those we use up , such as toothpaste or soda biscuit,” Calkins argued that “[c]onsumer engineering must see to it that we use up the kind of goods we now merely use.” 21 In order to match the “rapid-paced age” of distribution – a system in line with simpler methods of machine-made products (and simpler or “better taste”) – Calkins calculated an equivalent consumer model, a kind of balance sheet, through the mechanism of “artifi cial obsolescence.” In striving after all that is good, therefore, design would – again and again, one aesthetic revolution after another – yield the seamless consumption of a seamless stream of goods. Hence by 1941, on the precipice of war and in spite of material shortages, the museum was working hard to increase the consumption of (good) objects. At the Useful Objects Under $10 show, the museum offered its visitors a “guide” to the process of selection, or buying. Again, the museum’s press release for this show offered a formula (on a placard) that could be applied to a range of design objects from imbalanced to “balanced” – Calkins’s calculus now apparently as integral to the object as it was part of its marketing:

The four objects shown under the placard will be chosen to illustrate the fact that in any one object the four of the design elements may not be completely balanced. Each of these objects will be used as an example to illustrate how the controlling element may be material, function, production method, or the designer’s personal handling of form. It is hoped that this concrete presentation of abstract design principles will act as a guide to the public for its future selection of useful objects, thereby creating a demand which will tend to increase the number and general availability of well-designed objects.22

With the objective of increasing American consumption habits in line with the principle of consumer engineering, MoMA gambled that the aesthetic principle of good design would pave the way. MoMA formulated Good Design as a Bildungsbegriff , to be sure, just as the philosophical concept was seized as a tool for consumer engineering. Deleuze and Guattari describe the situation best:

[The] moment came when computer science, marketing, design, and advertising, all the disciplines of communication, seized hold of the word concept 360 T’ai Smith itself and said: “This is our concern, we are the creative ones, we are the ideas men! We are the friends of the concept, we put it in our computers.” Informa- tion and creativity, concept and enterprise: there is already an abundant bib- liography. Marketing has preserved the idea of a certain relationship between the concept and the event. But here the concept has become the set of product displays (historical, scientiﬁ c, artistic, sexual, pragmatic), and the event has become the exhibition that sets up various displays and the “exchange of ideas” it is supposed to promote. The only events are exhibitions, and the only concepts are products that can be sold.23

Synthetic aesthetics Despite, or perhaps because of, its presentation of a universal system of good design, Textiles U.S.A. presented a strange assortment of woven and knitted artifacts from various sectors of the industry.24 And it yielded an even stranger catalogue – the only time the museum outsourced its production to an industry magazine. American Fabrics published the catalogue as it would any other issue, with glossy black-and-white photographs – and, as determined by its unique marketing scheme, with actual fabric samples pasted to several of the magazine’s pages ( Plate 21 ). Seemingly split between two overarching themes – beauty and

Plate 21 Page spread from American Fabrics 38: Special Issue: Textiles U.S.A. (Fall 1956), 60–61 Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 361 industry, or fabrics for fashion at one end of the spectrum (in the fi rst section, on “Apparel”), and textile products developed by and for the military on the other (in the third section, on “Industry”) – the catalogue demonstrated the entwinement of these terms in mid-century American life. Interior decoration occupied the second, or center category, and so the language used in the articles that circumscribe this sector functioned something like a hinge between one zone and the other: adornment with a (domestic) purpose. Consider the fi nal page spread of magazine photographs ( Figure 23.2 ), found at the end of the third section, which seems to sum up the exhibition’s curatorial argument. Side-by-side are two fi gures – a fashion model and a soldier – each body of the same scale and in parallel, but occupying its own page. The fi rst is described as “Body Molding” – that which shapes and contains the (female) body according to a stylistic outline. The second is described as “Body Armor” – a product that functions to shield and protect the (male) chest, replacing traditional metal armor. Apparently unharmed and unaware of the camera, the soldier inspects a rupture in his jacket’s fabric. The model, by contrast, looks at the viewer and holds up the inverse of a sculpted bathing suit, a form that eclipses the lower part of her face and fi gure. So we have, on the one hand, the “frivolous” standard whereby “novelty is its own excuse”:25 cushioned fabrics are used to hide the reality of the woman’s (perhaps less-than-perfect) form; and on the other, “durability,” a truth revealed by the structure of the fabric’s threads, visible on the surface of the soldier’s jacket.

Figure 23.2 Page spread from American Fabrics 38: Special Issue: Textiles U.S.A. (Fall 1956), 58–59 362 T’ai Smith Under the slick formatting of the magazine (the catalogue), the military’s new postwar identity is made into a shop window, a museum vitrine. Something of a propagandistic tool, a marketing of American products to an American and international audience (in the era of the Marshall Plan, which supported the export of American products to Europe in the name of “good will”), Textiles U.S.A. simultaneously helps frame its textiles as advanced products of technological acumen and softens the military’s image. Indeed, the theme derived from the juxtaposition is so obvious as to be a platitude: as beautiful, the military’s products are “good.” American textiles thus serve a two-fold (gendered) industry: fashion and function. Or: the female body that is styled; the male body that functions – passive and active. But also, these two realms are such that they cross over into the other. Whether used for molding braziers or soldiers’ armor, advanced fabrics made of materials like Dacron, Fortisan, Sarano, Velon, or Nylon 66 (and perhaps treated with Day-Glo to create an “eye-splitting luminosity”26 ) have seamlessly bound the logics of fashion and war: together, in harmony, they synthesize the principle of good design.27 As then-Director of the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA Arthur Drexler says in his introduction, the jury’s goal was clear – whether choosing samples from apparel, interior decoration, or industry, “such conventional standards as suitability of construction within the requirements of a given category, originality and quality of design, and variety and subtlety of color, were successfully met by all the fabrics selected for the exhibition.” (Of course, in the next breath, he writes: “Synthetics lack a quality of their own. But quality, in that sense of a thing being more like itself than like something else, of its being intensely unique, and pure, no longer describes the real virtues of modern textiles.” In other words, unique yet repeatable, individual yet universal.) Thus, a military item might be as beautiful in its functionality as a fashionable fabric is beautiful in its frivolous adornment of a female ﬁ gure. 28 As Drexler wrote: “Industrial fabrics rarely if ever are designed for aesthetic effect, yet they seem beautiful largely because they share the precision, delicacy, pronounced texture, and exact repetition of detail characteristic of 20th century machine art.” What we see is a situation in which three different categories of textiles can be evaluated according to a basic, common standard, a hazy-yet- clear formula comprising the efﬁ cient use of materials, functional strength, and formal beauty: a synthetic aesthetic.29

Marketing: three methods If the world of good design had coalesced into a perfectly deﬁ ned, synthetic (yet sufﬁ ciently mysterious), system by 1956, then it might be asked: how did MoMA execute the formula for this Bildungsbegriff ? With Textiles U.S.A. , three (educational-marketing) methods were deployed:

(1) The ﬁ rst method was the appointment of a “jury,” which included museum director René d’Harnancourt, curator Arthur Drexler, architect Philip C. Johnson, weaver Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 363 and designer Anni Albers, fashion designer Claire McCardell, Sears fashion director Mary Lewis, and American Fabrics publisher William C. Segal. With this list of industry experts, prominently advertised, the museum was bolstered by a peer review system, a group of people deemed worthy to pick out the 185 “exceptional” textiles from the 3,500 received submissions. The jury weeded out those other designs whose styles or functions were deemed not-so special (that had already been repeated ad nauseam in the marketplace), or lacked the principle of good, aesthetic-economic, design.

(2) The second and arguably the most important method was the strategic use of an industry magazine, American Fabrics , to distribute the museum discourse. While it may seem somewhat radical to us now to think that MoMA (the bastion of high culture in America) would have participated so seamlessly in the realm of consumer culture, in 1956 it was the industry’s explicit backing that secured the universal validity of the museum’s aesthetic-rational judgment. The use of a magazine – with its advertisements for Knoll Associates’ international showrooms and McCall’s Givenchy-designed paper patterns alongside paintings by Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, and Piet Mondrian from the museum’s collection – suggested the exhibition had established a domain of agreed upon good taste. In other words, it was not just that MoMA lent aesthetic credence to the textile industry, but that the core of the industry machine lent value to MoMA’s juried choices. And so the magazine’s abundant, though short, essays by prominent designers of the time – like Anne Klein, Pauline Trigère, Alexander Girard, Florence Knoll, or George Nelson, somewhat regardless of what they actually said or wrote – created the authority of the brand for MoMA’s marketed products on display. Designers and industry experts were harnessed as the savvy authority of the marketplace, the voice of visions oriented toward a better future. The museum and the market joined forces in the perfectly branded space of a magazine’s pages. Ian McCallum, then-editor of Architectural Review, did much to sum up the role of the American marketing apparatus harnessed by the museum:

I believe credit for the vitality of American interior design should go both to the magazines that promote it and the public that buys it. The former for establishing a rigorous rule of taste, which, though it may tend to the stereotyped, seldom descends to the pallid or the overblown; the latter for submitting to this rule in all humility, and for its willingness to listen to and pay the expert. A very different situation exists in Europe where “I know what I like-ism” has put mediocrity on a pedestal and spread all around it an unhappy mixture refl ecting anarchy and inertia. . . . [In America, there] is an endless variety of new textures, simple woven pattern and subtle printed designs available in American textiles, many of which have not yet received the intelligent exploitation they deserve. This is partly due, no doubt, to the diffi culties designers nowadays everywhere encounter, 364 T’ai Smith of digesting the enormous output of those industries catering to their activities. The Museum of Modern Art is, therefore, once again performing an invaluable service by passing part of this superabundance through its high-quality, fi ne-mesh sieve.30

Through magazine articles (or catalogue essays), experts further reiterated the exhibition’s common formula. In a puff piece on Florence Knoll, an anonymous writer extolls the Knoll principle, derived from European, apparently Bauhaus, origins: “In their furniture designs they sought the honest use of new and old materials and applied new sci- entiﬁ c technique to furniture making.” And citing the designer herself: “Florence Knoll believes that ‘good design is the sum of a designer’s experience. It results from the ability to analyze and solve problems by organized thinking and imagination.’” In other words, the article and quotes suggest, good design is achieved through the simplest mathematical approach, resulting from an “ability to analyze and solve problems,” combined with a bit of esoteric “imagination” along the way. Good design, the author assures the reader, is at once intrinsically located in the matrix of the brand – the designer, who somehow encompasses the creative thought and experience of a corporate team – and is achieved through a scientiﬁ c formula. And the algorithmic process designers follow to create good design is mirrored in the consumer’s acquisition of good taste, her education. Here is the value system that backs the American iteration of good design as a quantitative- qualitative entrepreneurial procedure. A short piece written by designer George Nelson, found at the physical center of the magazine-catalogue, does the work of creating the exhibition’s theoretical (quasi-philosophical) binding:

When the poetically inclined talk about “the fabric of the universe” they are talking about a structure. Its components consisting of tension lines stretching for light years are largely invisible. But it is a structure nonetheless. I happen to be interested in structures, both visible and invisible, and therefore tend to look at fabrics in the same way. It may seem strange to deﬁ ne a fabric in these terms, but there are good reasons for doing so.31

Nelson goes on to posit the revolutionary role of textile structures within modern design. What excites him is the fact that a “fabric is a structure,” whose applications could be expanded beyond textiles proper. With new inspiration from thread-based systems, he claims, “society . . . has been busily revising its concept of structure” from compression (or “stone on stone”) to one of tension (using cables). Thus, fabric, according to this designer, is not simply one of many design products; rather a recognition of its characteristic softness and “pliability” was helping to generate a new method of thinking about the problems of architecture in the postwar period: “we are beginning to see [fabrics] as new things for which we may presently have unexpected uses in our continuing struggle to do more with less. Out of this changing vision, not yet sharply focused, new areas of activity Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 365 will develop.”32 Good design, found in new uses of threads and fabric structures, Nelson suggests, exempliﬁ es a future, forever changing under cycles of development, a quasi-philosophical horizon that is always out of sight. Thus, through several articles – some shorter, some slightly longer; some poetic, some prosaic – the magazine pitched Textiles U.S.A. as a perfect formulation (or summation) of all that is good, all that had been achieved by 1956, in modern American fabric design.

(3) While the formula of good design was sharpened and rendered seemingly natural in the special issue of American Fabrics, we might say the additive quality of beauty (the space of the plus sign) was best found in architect Bernard Rudofsky’s installation design (Figure 23.3). This third method, it turns out, acted as the exhibition’s synthetic principle – the thing that cohered good design as a question of aesthetics.

Figure 23.3 Installation view of the exhibition Textiles U.S.A.; August 29, 1956 through November 4, 1956; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; gelatin-silver print; 7 3/4 × 9 1/2 in. (19.7 × 24.1 cm) Photograph. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY 366 T’ai Smith Here, an entrance hall rained down shiny, synthetic threads, while corridors introduced gleaming industrial fabrics made of metallic threads, preciously set behind vitrines. In one area of the interior, a 23-foot-wide umbrella made of diverse cloth strips created a bloom of color, a three-dimensional painting, juxtaposed with fabrics, stretched over wire, that created Brancusi-like, sculptural forms. The fl oor was covered in a soil-resistant men’s suit material, providing a luxurious, quietly sensuous environment. Meanwhile, in the museum’s garden, industrial fabrics allowed what Rudofsky called “a glimpse into an altogether new, synthetic world.” Although manufactured “for padding, laminating, reinforcing, insulating or fi ltering and, therefore, not meant to appeal to the eye,” the architecture took advantage of their metallic, luminescent properties: “The star of the collection,” he later wrote, “was a spectacular gold-blonde material resembling a curly wig; it is used to reinforce automobile tires.”33 Architectural historian Felicity Scott has described the logic of the architect’s plan best: “To counter the endless commodifi ed ‘change’ that functioned, in his words, as ‘a promissory note on happiness,’ Rudofsky offered a set of ‘impon- derables.’”34 Thus, in a lecture given in Japan concerning the work he had done for MoMA, he declared that “he sought ‘exhibition design with a sting,’ an approach which, he suggested, ‘pricks our complacency . . . [and] puts doubts into our heads.’”35 Scott argues that Rudofsky, over several projects including this installation or in his critical account of modern footwear, was adamant about combatting the lack of sensuality in modern design. But we might also note that such mystery and ambiguity of purpose – highlighting visual properties to create “eye-splitting” installations – also functioned quite well in Textiles U.S.A. to sell the apparently ineffable beauty of industry. In an architectural environment shaped by transparent, stretched, and billowing fabrics, Rudosky’s special ingredient or emulsifying architectural agent rendered all textiles – whether for banal typewriter ribbons, tow targets, or fashionable suits – mysterious objects. Even if it was also that which stung or pricked the visitor’s complacency, the installation did much to advance good design’s overlap of terminology. Here, the aesthetic space of the plus sign allowed seemingly “superfl uous” fabrics to join forces with apparently strong and industrial ones: each working to validate and adorn the other.

Anni Albers’s other design It seems useful, in the end, to turn to an alternative understanding of good design from this mid-century moment, by a studio practitioner and teacher, Anni Albers, if only to concede that there was some tension in the fi eld. Design is rarely, if ever, as perfectly balanced as its marketing agents would have us believe. Less interested in design as a noun than as a verb, Albers had been crafting arguments since the 1920s about the complexities and problems found in the crevices of the textile design process. In particular, through several essays drafted between 1933, when she arrived in America, through 1965, when she published her fi nal volume On Weaving , the weaver fi xated on the way the maker-designer might at once grasp and enable textile experience.36 Thus, a fabric’s pliability, mobility, Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 367 softness, formal beauty, and texture were not objective, empirical variables that could be predetermined and calculated, but rather conditions that emerged in varying degrees through a sensitive, tactile practice. Contradicting the Kantian principle of beauty, which located this experience in the relationship between the observer-consumer and the object, Albers outlined a Bildungsbegriff through an emphasis on “tactile sensibility” and laborious activity. In this way, beauty was intimately bound in a fabric’s making. Indeed, “good design” as articulated by Anni Albers for an essay she initially published in 1947 and republished (slightly edited) in 1960 under a new title, means something quite a bit different, less formal or quantitative, than it had for MoMA’s marketing team. The essay, originally published in Magazine of Art as ‘Design: Anonymous and Timeless’ and later given the title ‘On the Designing of Textiles and the Handweaver’s Place in Industry’ in American Fabrics in 1960, was also reprinted in Anni Albers: On Designing (originally published in 1959). In the fi nal iterations of this essay, we might say, Albers at once scripted, absorbed, and rejected the good-design paradigm she found collapsed in the Textiles U.S.A . discourse. Good design, for Albers, is a seemingly universal principle, but as “anonymous and timeless,” it refuses the cycle of trends, of artifi cial obsolescence generated by packaging and brands. Indeed, the version of her essay found in American Fabrics magazine apparently creates an aura of modernist validation (of “wholeness” versus fragmentation), but it also seems to respond to what she saw as the exhibition’s failures, in spite of her input on the jury. In the later print- ings, she repurposed an older essay (one perhaps written in light of earlier Good Design exhibitions at MoMA) in order to speak to an audience now-fully trained in all that was “good” in American textiles, but also to make them reimagine the indeterminate role of the handweaver in the whole affair. The longer version published in the original article and in the 1959 book pin- points the problem with good design’s appropriation of Bauhaus-modernist values: while it attempts to seek unity, it does so through the quantifi cation of separate- but-equal variables. She diagnoses the problem:

[T]he miraculous event that is changed from addition to sum – the fusion of parts into a whole – is indeed a rare event. No one organizer is any longer at work. A staff of specialists, sectional professions, has taken the craftman’s place. . . . The product of contributions from scientist, engineer, ﬁ nancier, market analyst, production manager, sales manager, workman, artist is the addition of these many factors.37

Perhaps what Albers sought to do was take back the concept of good design from the ad men, to make this Bildungsbegriff less a medium of marketing than a space tethered to practice, in a classroom, on a loom. “Design is often regarded as the form imposed on the material by the designer.” Instead, she declares, designers need to “cooperate with the material,” or “approach it unaggressively” in order to begin “learning by working it.”38 Indeed, after reading Albers’s text, one is left feeling the impossibility of an experience of beauty that resides outside of an 368 T’ai Smith interface with materials. Beautiful or good design is no longer the thing strategically designed by the draftsmen, ad men, and marketers for consumption and experienced by the consumer – as it had been for Kant (perhaps the ﬁ rst successful marketing agent of European consumption habits). Instead, if beauty can be found in some ineffable matrix (perhaps called good design), it is experienced haptically and momentarily by a maker, perhaps at some point along the way, but rarely afterward, in that which was made. The consumer (or museum visitor), it turns out, is no longer central to the abstract equation; he no longer evaluates nor judges the degree to which the object adheres to the good design formula, after the fact. She may ultimately “use” the object, but at best it is an unquantiﬁ able experience. “The complete form is not the mixture of functional form with decoration, ornament, or extravagant shape,” Albers argues, “it is the coalition of form answering practical needs and form answering aesthetic needs.”39 This coalition is a merging, an alliance, not a calculated addition based in a system of equivalence.

Acknowledgment The opportunity to conduct research in 2011 at the Museum of Modern Art Library and Archives was made possible by the Stanley A. Rosen Grant, Maryland Institute College of Art. I am grateful for their support.

Notes 1 Lululemon Athletica, a Vancouver-based yoga gear company, has employed a business model that claims to sell a lifestyle, based in the “lessons” of the consulting company Landmark’s seminars in “personal and professional growth.” See www.vancouversun. com/life/Companies+like+Lululemon+take+different+approach+relationships+with+ employees/8562925/story.html and www.landmarkworldwide.com/who-we-are/ company-overview. 2 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. I , trans. B. Fowkes (New York: Penguin, 1976), 139. 3 From Aloïs Riegl and Heinrich Wölffl in to Ernst Gombrich and David Summers, art historians have examined the relationship between beauty or aesthetics (as a realm of philosophy explored by the likes of Kant and Hegel) and form or style. For a sense of these discussions, see Donald Preziosi, The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 4 For a concise analysis of the term function and its various subcategories (structural, physical, psychological, social, and cultural function) that pervade German and Ameri- can architectural discourse in the early-20th century, see Larry L. Ligo, The Concept of Function in Twentieth-Century Architectural Criticism (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1984). Rosemarie Haag-Bletter traces the specifi c contributions made by modern and postmodern architects to the debate in her “Introduction” to Adolf Behne, The Mod- ern Functional Building (1926), trans. Michael Robinson (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Research Institute, 1996). 5 The best analyses of the historical and ideological underpinnings of the “good design” program at MoMA are found in Mary Anne Stanisweski, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge, MA: Mysterious equations: Textiles U.S.A. 369 The MIT Press, 2001); and in Gay McDonald, “The ‘Advance’ of American Postwar Design in Europe: MoMA and the ‘Design for Use, USA’ Exhibition 1951–1953,” Design Issues 24, no. 2 (Spring, 2008), 15–27. 6 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Gra- ham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 118. Importantly, Deleuze and Guattari differentiate concepts, found in philosophy’s “planes of immanence,” from functions and functives, found in science’s “planes of reference,” and which can be discerned and calculated. Art, guided by “precepts” or sensate thought, also represents a different mode. 7 Deleuze and Guattari, 90, 99. 8 Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., “What Is Modern Design?” (1950), in The Industrial Design Reader , ed. Carma Gorman (New York: Allworth Press, 2003), 147, 150. 9 Ibid 148. 10 Museum of Modern Art. Press Release, Nov. 28, 1941: “‘Command Performance’ for Pots and Pans [. . .] and Other Household Objects at the Museum of Modern Art Fourth Annual Useful Objects Exhibition Opens December 3,” 1. Available at: www.moma. org/learn/resources/press_archives, accessed Aug 3. 2015. 11 Ibid . 12 See the Good Design Award® site for a sense of its language: www.good-design.com. 13 Jane Forsey, The Aesthetics of Design (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2013. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199964369.003.0003), 138. 14 Ibid 141. Forsey cites Paul Guyer, Donald Crawford, and Philip Mallaband among several others. 15 Jukka Gronow, The Sociology of Taste (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 13. 16 Herbert Marcuse, “The Affi rmative Character of Culture” (1937), in Herbert Marcuse, Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Vol. 4: Art and Liberation, ed. Douglas Kellner (London: Routledge, 2007), 86. 17 Ian McCallum, “A Distinguished Visitor Looks at the American Decorative Scene,” Textiles, U.S.A. 38: Special Issue: Textiles U.S.A. (Fall 1956), 48. 18 Carma Gorman, ed., The Industrial Design Reader (New York: Allworth Press, 2003), 130. 19 Earnest Elmo Calkins, “What Consumer Engineering Really Is” (1932), in Industrial Design Reader , ed. Carma Gorman (New York: Allworth Press, 2003), 130. 20 Ibid 131. 21 Ibid 132. 22 Museum of Modern Art. Press Release, Nov. 28, 1941, 2. 23 Deleuze and Guattari, 10. 24 “A delicate-looking mesh fabric used in radar targets, an opulent rayon ‘cloak’ that is actually from the inside of a tire, brilliantly striped cotton and wool upholstery, faded blue denim and regulation Army twill, acetate jersey coated with 2k karat gold, hand- woven tapestries and light dacrons, printed dress silks and combed cottons are among the 185 examples of American fabric designs on view.” Museum of Modern Art. Press Release, Aug. 28, 1956: “Textiles U.S.A. Opens at Museum of Modern Art.” Available at: www.moma.org/learn/resources/press_archives. Accessed Aug. 3, 2015. 25 Arthur Drexler, “Textiles U.S.A.,” Textiles U.S.A. 38 (1956), 3. 26 Ibid 4. 27 Thus, a much-lauded fabric designed for laundry bags (which “is strong and durable . . . dyes beautifully, and is inexpensive”) may be used for casement curtains (the “transparent character of its mesh construction . . . admits light, yet cuts glare and allows privacy”). Russell Wright, “Russell Wright Adapts an Industrial Fabric for Drapery,” Textiles U.S.A . 38 (1956), 38. 28 Drexler, 4. 370 T’ai Smith 29 “Aesthetic qualities of construction, color and design were the criteria by which fabrics were chosen in three categories: home furnishings, apparel and industrial uses.” Museum of Modern Art. Press Release, Aug. 28, 1956: “Textiles U.S.A. Opens at Museum of Modern Art.” Available at: www.moma.org/learn/resources/press_archives. 30 Ian McCallum, “A Distinguished Visitor,” Textiles, U.S.A. 38 (1956), 48. 31 George Nelson, “Structure and Fabric,” Textiles U.S.A. 38 (1956), 33. 32 Ibid . 33 Felicity D. Scott, “An Eye for Modern Architecture,” in Lessons from Bernard Rudofsky: Life as a Voyage, ed. Moniker Platzer and Wim de Wit (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2007), 197. 34 Ibid 193. 35 Ibid 197. 36 See Anni Albers, Anni Albers: On Designing (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971); and Anni Albers: On Weaving (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1965) 37 Anni Albers, “Design: Anonymous and Timeless,” in Anni Albers: Selected Writings on Design, ed. Brenda Danilowitz (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 37. 38 Ibid 38. 39 Ibid 34. 24 Engineering as a process of beauty

Ian J. Ewart

Seeing production Anthropological writing has historically explored perceptions of beauty as an aesthetic response to a physical object, stemming perhaps from the discipline’s early links with collections of exotic curios and ethnographic museums (e.g. Phillips 1998). The fundamentally aesthetic approach to objects can be seen in Morphy and Perkins’s excellent compilation of essays (Morphy and Perkins 2007), which shows how anthropology rejoices in objects as caricatures of culture, and has done so since the century before last. But look carefully among the pages about representation and symbolism, style and form, and you may be lucky enough to take in the chapter by David Guss, ‘All Things Made’ (ibid 374–386), which goes some way to bringing in the act of making to a bookful of gazing and thinking (see also Guss 1990). Fortunately there have been a number of scholars who have recently engaged in projects to bring production to the fore, including notably Ingold (e.g. 2013) and Marchand (2009, 2016), although they are severely outgunned by the aestheticians so I add here my own modest reinforcement. With a specifi c focus on engineering, my aim in this chapter is to suggest that the act of production is beautiful, as much as the artefacts that are made; that there is a sense of beauty in the care and effort of production, as well as, or even instead of, a visual pleasure. To an engineer, workmanship trumps aesthetics. The goal of engineering is to make something that works. This may or may not be at the expense of its attractiveness, but the physical appearance of the artefact is determined to a large extent by the constraints of the necessary function. Size and shape are determined by the space available and the stresses of operation; combinations of materials chosen for their physical properties; production made effi cient through the use of appropriate tools; and so on. Where engineering has to satisfy the twin roles of functioning mechanism and attractive object this usually results in compromise or disguise. As Don Norman tells us, the iconic Philippe Starck lemon juicer on the cover of his book (Norman 2004) does not actually work very well, and some editions actually come with a warning not to use them for squeezing lemons at all, as the surface would be damaged by the acidic juice! On a larger scale, Tower Bridge in London is iconic for its faux-gothic brickwork, no more than a decorative façade intended to conceal the magnifi cent and monstrous 372 Ian J. Ewart Victorian industrial engineering that raises and lowers the bascule drawbridge (Cruickshank 2010, 297–8). Even the monumental beauty of the Clifton suspension bridge is not all it seems. Brunel’s original design was half as big again, but rejected as unbuildable by Thomas Telford, the design competition judge. Telford’s own subsequent suggestion was rejected as being too ugly. The design fi nally chosen, from Brunel, had to be stripped of its Egyptian-esque ornamentation during construction as money ran out, and the bridge eventually stumbled to completion after Brunel had died (Cruickshank 2010, 239–43). In these examples and in many others, the popular notion of beauty in engineering is related uncompromisingly to the aesthetics of the resulting artefact, and not the process of production and workmanship. To explore the notion of engineering as a process of beauty, the example I use is that of a team of volunteer engineers restoring a steam locomotive, and a description of the work that went into producing a set of bespoke copper lubrication pipes. Admittedly quite an esoteric choice, but that is the point: to most people, bent copper tubes hold limited attraction, and yet their function – moving oil from one part of a machine to another – can be easily understood and appreciated. Engineering is literally and essentially functional, and the primary goal of an engineered part is not its form but its purpose; in engineering there is less sentiment for artistry than workmanship. Of course engineers themselves are not insensitive to aesthetics, but there is a particular engineering sense of beauty that responds to the work required to produce something well. So my suggestion is that an affi nity for engineering generates an appreciation of beauty through empathy for the work of production, rather than a response to the visual aesthetics of the engineered artefact.

Ugly engineering In the news recently there has been a great deal of attention on space exploration, with remarkable pictures coming back from Mars, Pluto and even from the surface of a comet. As achievements in engineering these are undoubtedly of the highest order, and yet the machines that have given us these pictures are not usually referred to in terms of their attractiveness – they are not what one might call ‘beautiful’ in the usual sense of the word. Freed from the constraints of gravity and air resistance, they have no need to follow the organic principles that Nor- man describes as offering visceral attractiveness (Norman 2004). On planet Earth, whether on land, in the air or under water, moving objects have to contend with the forces associated with friction and gravity, which we try to overcome with ingenious solutions (quite often by blatantly copying nature). Streamlined shapes and limited contact with the ground make some things possible and everything else more effi cient, but in space these rules do not apply; there is no air resistance to hinder fl ying objects, and there are no naturally evolved shapes for the designers to copy. Since the cost of getting space objects into their environment is literally astronomical, the defi ning criteria are size and weight. Small and light objects can be economically feasible, without a specifi c need to attend to their external appearance. The appearance of the object is a by-product of the various functions that are Engineering as a process of beauty 373 necessary to make it work: solar panels, instrumentation, data-gathering devices, protection and so on. And usually with such a complex and expensive engineering project, responsibilities are divided among international teams, each of whom will produce a specifi c instrument or function. The fi nal artefact ends up being shaped according to functional principles and political compromises between the various parties involved, producing a package of parts that does not need a coherent or defi ning visual framework. When you see a satellite being assembled by teams dressed from tip to toe in disposable overalls, it looks ungainly and confusing, with skinny pieces of metal poking out in all directions and shiny gold-covered sections next to a confusing mass of exposed wiring and collapsed solar panels (Plate 22). The only allusion to beauty seems to be in the remarkable pictures of distant worlds that they beam back. And yet in interviews with the engineers, they would often describe the satellite itself as beautiful. So what are they seeing; what scales of judgement are they applying? Beauty, the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps, as with any parent describing their own child, the satellite engineers have a biased view. Or perhaps the aesthetics per se are not the most signifi cant factor in ascribing

Plate 22 Satellite under construction 374 Ian J. Ewart beauty to the object; there is some other sense of beauty they are experiencing, a sense of pride in production, an understanding of the effort and diffi culties that underlay the process. Of course I am not the fi rst to suggest that encountering an object can elicit an emotional response. The art world lives on that very principle, which allowed Gell, in his anthropology of art, to demonstrate the need for studies of material culture to move away from the focus on what things mean to the effect things have on us. The classic example is his description of ‘enchantment’ (Gell, in Hirsch 2006, 159–86) where his intention was to “wrest the anthropological study of artworks away from the soggy embrace of philosophical aesthetics” (ibid 17). For Gell, an art object had the ability to ‘enchant’ if it fell outside the boundaries of experience of the casual observer, who is rendered unable to comprehend the techniques and skill of the maker. The artist may even deliberately demonstrate her technical prowess by executing her artistry in ways that are beyond the experience of everyday folk, like an illusionist performing an apparently impossible trick. Conversely, when seen by a knowledgeable observer, able to recognize the subtleties of the work, the parts that are truly innovative or diffi cult, the same object still elicits a sense of admiration and respect. This may go some way to explaining why an engineer, looking on a complex piece of work such as an ‘ugly’ satellite, might see it as beautiful. The use of the word ‘beautiful’ might be in reference to something other than the object’s appearance, more a way of offering a respectful nod to the producers, recognizing the workmanship and dedication as much as the fi nished object itself. Here, I need to extend Gell’s enchantment idea, since he explicitly says that “art objects are the only objects around which are beautifully made, or made beautiful ” ( ibid 163). He is making the distinction between things that occur naturally, such as sunsets or people, and things that have been made as products of techniques. The veracity of such a distinction, between natural things and made things, is of course questionable, since any boundaries are blurred and contextual, if they exist at all (Ingold 2013). Such a broad defi nition of art seems to want to lay claim to all kinds of things, including, for example, the cattle groomed and dressed by the Sudanese Dinka, the subject of a debate with Jeremy Coote (see Hirsch 2006, 215–31). He refutes the contention made by Coote that these cattle are a product of a Dinka visual aesthetic governed by their immediate environment: a ‘marvel of everyday vision’. The cattle are man-made (by oiling, horn shaping, decoration, etc.) but with a social objective in mind – to provide their owners with a forum for competitive performance of poetry and display, to increase their social prestige. Gell says that what is chosen to be appreciated is contingent on the social milieu, and might have been very different: “It always turns out that if people want things to look one way rather than another, it is for reasons which cannot be stated in terms of just how things look” (ibid 231). However, to draw such close ties between the deliberate production of objects to be beautiful, and the consequent emphasis on their aesthetics, is quite restrictive. We might say that not all art objects are either beautiful or beautifully made, or conversely that not all beautifully made objects are art, either for the producer or the observer. So I come back to the question I raised earlier, when looking at ugly engineering: how can it still be beautiful? Engineering as a process of beauty 375 Knowledgeable observation We can see the ‘marvels of everyday vision’ debate as more than just a discussion of sensory aesthetics, since both sides to the argument begin with a similar contention, which is that to understand what is seen as beautiful depends on an understanding of what it means to be beautiful. For Coote, the beauty of Dinka cattle comes from an ongoing cultural engagement with the environment, and for Gell the artist’s corpus, including the cattle, poems and performances, are carefully presented in an act of political gamesmanship. The common theme is knowledgeable behaviour as the underpinning notion of beauty: doing the right things, and doing them well, is what is being lauded and not just the aesthetic consequences. In the fi rst half of 2015, the British Museum exhibited a collection of ancient Greek art under the title De fi ning beauty: the body in ancient Greek art (Jenkins 2015). This was a collection of artistic representations of the human body, offering an insight into the classical Greek enthusiasm for idealized beauty. In the exhibition, Socrates is quoted as saying, “In portraying ideal types of beauty . . . you bring together from many models the most beautiful features of each”. So although these sculptures are realistic in the sense that they look like a human body, they are idealized in that they are not what one would expect to have seen walking the streets of Athens 2,500 years ago. However, to the ancient Greeks, the idealism represented in these sculptures was not simply visual, since the achievement of a body beautiful was seen as the manifestation of a morally upstanding life. In classical Greece the notion of kalon , usually translated as ‘beautiful’, merges two apparently distinct ideas: beauty and morality. For Plato and Aristotle in particular, the links between the aesthetics of an object and its virtue are diffi cult to untangle. Aryeh Kosman, a renowned scholar of classical Greece, quotes Aristotle in saying that “lives marked by the virtue of courage and by virtue in general are to be sought after in order that such lives should exhibit beauty” (2010, 342). Although kalon is not used to describe the wonders of nature, neither is it a direct equivalent to our notion of artistic beauty, as in the beauty of an object. It is more closely associated with what we might call ‘admirable’ and specifi cally how something admirable is manifested. In Plato’s Hippias Major , the usefulness of objects is part of their kalon , as well as their ability to bring joy (ibid ), so there is a sense that for something to be seen as beautiful, it must fulfi l a worthy purpose, and do so well, a sentiment rejuvenated by the UK ‘Arts and Crafts Movement’ and especially William Morris in the late 19th century (Coleman 1988). Any object, however humble, whether a wooden spoon, or in the case of the British Museum exhibition a human body, is seen as beautiful not for its aesthetic appeal, but as proof of an idealized purpose. The achievement of a body beautiful was a manifestation of a life well-lived, a life abiding by the classical Greek ideal of desire informed by reason: we desire appropriately and then act on those desires (Kosman 2010, 356). The use of one word kalon to mean both something that is beautiful and something that is morally good presents something of a philosophical puzzle. It seems to suggest that either all beautiful things are virtuous and moral, or that one who 376 Ian J. Ewart is able to recognize beauty can similarly recognize what it is to be moral. This is not an idea restricted to classical Greece, however; Kant has also famously written of the sensations of beauty and their association with personality traits in his ‘Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and sublime (1764)’ (in Frierson and Guyer 2011). Kant discussed two similar ‘fi ner feelings’, for the beautiful and for the sublime, which he considered to be distinct from both higher intellectual feelings and lower basic feelings. An intermediate feeling, such as for the beautiful or the sublime, was a “sensuous feeling of which the more common souls are also capable”, but was nonetheless “fi t for virtuous impulses, or because it is a sign of talents and excellences of the intellect” (Frierson and Guyer 2011, 14). He suggests that these feelings are created by both the thing being observed – the beauty of a sunset, or the nobility of a mighty oak – and also by the character of the observer. His ideas for exactly what those characteristics are seem archaic in a modern context, such as his use of the four human temperaments (melancholic, sanguine, cho- leric and phlegmatic); the outrageously sexist Third Section (a woman who strives to overcome “laborious learning or painful grubbing, even if a woman could get very far with them . . . might as well also wear a beard” [2011, 36–7]); or the xenophobic Fourth Section on national characteristics (“Holland can be regarded as the land where this fi ner taste is fairly unnoticeable” [2011, 50]). However, we are in no more a position to judge Kant’s 18th century social attitudes than we are able to see our own absurdities, and so it would be foolish to dismiss the crux of his argument on that basis. He is to some extent agreeing with the Greek notion of the observation of beauty, or the sublime, requiring appropriate understanding. For the ancient Greeks, it was an understanding of moral living, and in 18th century Germany it was an appreciation of intellect and social standing. Where Kant differs from the ancient Greek notion of kalon is in his efforts to separate out the decorative or adorned (beauty) from the noble or admirable (sublime). As we have seen, scholars of ancient Greek have struggled to agree on how to interpret kalon , simply because it merges these feelings and beliefs into a single concept. The space satellite might satisfy the ideology of kalon , as a product of exemplary behaviour (i.e. good engineering), and provide Kant with an example of the sublime, but would struggle to fulfi l his criteria for the beautiful. But what is missing from Kant’s philosophical musings about these ‘fi ner feelings’ is any feeling created through or by the process of production, unlike the Greek appreciation for living and growing in a moral way. Whether beautiful or sublime, his various examples of the sight of a mountain, the prospect of a meadow, the description of a storm or Milton’s depiction of hell, a comedy or tragedy, even the Egyptian Pyramids or St. Peter’s in Rome, all of these are visualizations, either literal or metaphorical. There is no sense of the beauty of the process that went into their production or growth (which it has been argued are in fact one and the same, e.g. Ingold 2011). The feeling generated by observing the beautiful is one that comes from a snapshot experience, a fl eeting moment in time, lacking the process of becoming. Missing from the ‘prospect of a meadow’ is the population of fl owers with their pollination, seasonal growth, bursting into colour, going to seed and dying back. Or the thought and practice, writing and rehearsals that go Engineering as a process of beauty 377 into producing a comedy, whether formally on the stage or informally as a dinner table anecdote. By observing the Great Pyramids, as an ideal example of sublimity, surely it is blindingly obvious that our admiration is, to a great extent, of their process of production, and not simply of the aesthetics of large geometric shapes?! Of course I am not suggesting that it is not possible to appreciate beauty ‘in the moment’, or only through an understanding of the growth or production of that which is observed, but I am suggesting that the process of becoming is generative of feelings of beauty, especially in those with appropriate understanding.

The Didcot Railway Centre To illustrate this suggestion of beauty as inherent in production, I want to turn to the idea of something ‘well-engineered’. There is a popular understanding of what that might mean, by relating to a feeling of quality and robustness, but to an engineer there are further subtleties such as ingenuity, simplicity and an understanding of dif- ﬁ culty. Most of the objects that we encounter are not of course Gell’s ‘art objects’, that we might judge according to our personal measure of beauty; most objects are consumer products, marketed to persuade us into ascribing them with higher value than their production might deserve. They are all ‘engineered’, even if we are unaware of the extent or method of engineering that has gone into them, and through general familiarity, we might feel able to pass judgement to some degree on whether the object is ‘well-made’. Of course our judgement can always be called into question, and even manipulated by the producer to create an illusion of quality – adding weight, for example, even if that is unnecessary, or with clever packaging. For an engineer, whose task is overcoming practical problems with simple and yet ingenious solutions, there is a sense of ‘good engineering’ that does not necessarily relate to those illusory tactile or visual cues offered in a consumer product. So for my example, I will keep as far away as possible from the worlds of art and consumerism, and stick to traditional engineering. I will draw on my experiences as a volunteer at the Didcot Railway Centre, helping in the restoration and resurrection of a steam locomotive: engine number 6023 ‘King Edward II’ ( Plate 23 ). I will also base some of my observations and assertions on many years spent as an industrial engineer. The Didcot Railway Centre is a surprisingly large site, hidden away behind the mainline railway station of an anonymous town in southern England. If Didcot is famous then it is for one of two things: the large power station with its impos- ing cooling towers, until recently visible for many miles (sadly these icons of industrial architecture are in the process of demolition), and the town’s links to the Great Western Railway (the local football team are known as ‘the Railwaymen’ in homage to the historic importance of the railway to Didcot). Lying roughly at the intersection of the east-west routes between London and Bristol (and onwards to America), and the north-south routes between the south-coast ports and the traditional industrial heartlands of England, Didcot was established as a railway town in the 1840s. Although the history of the UK’s railway is turbulent, convoluted and fraught with political interference, and not something to be covered in any detail here, a few key facts are useful to set the scene. After leading the 378 Ian J. Ewart

Plate 23 GWR locomotive 6023, ‘King Edward II’ world in the development of steam technology from the early 19th century, the UK railway system grew rapidly until, by the 1930s, a plethora of local operators had been absorbed into the so-called ‘big-four’ regional rail companies, including the Great Western Railway (GWR). Co-ordination between the big-four during WW2 demonstrated the advantages of a single national rail system, which, along with increasing competition from road transport, resulted in the creation of British Rail- ways (BR) in 1948. There followed a series of ill-planned modernization attempts, including a hasty move away from steam power to the more modern diesel and electric engines, all of which served only to illustrate how cumbersome the rail network was. Ultimately the infamous ‘Reshaping of British Railways Report’ of 1963 by Dr Beeching signalled the ﬁ nal demise of steam power along with the closure of half of the stations and one third of the track (Whitehouse and St. John- Thomas 2002). The last scheduled BR service powered by steam ran in August 1968, by which time most of the stock of steam engines had been decommissioned and sent to scrapyards where they were stripped for parts or cut up for scrap metal. At the same time, around the country groups of steam enthusiasts were club- bing together to buy up and maintain old steam locomotives. The Great Western Society, formed in 1967, was one such group, taking over the Didcot locomotive depot, closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts, to form the Didcot Railway Centre (DRC) with the intention of saving the heritage of the GWR. Today, the DRC houses an impressive collection of GWR locomotives, some active rail track, a museum and education centre. At the heart of the site is the large 1930s engine Engineering as a process of beauty 379

Figure 24.1 6023 in the workshop during renovation Author’s photo shed, where maintenance and restoration take place, carried out by teams of volunteers, and where a ‘King’ class locomotive, No. 6023, ‘King Edward II’, went through a substantial rebuild and restoration ( Figure 24.1 ). As with most steam locomotives, 6023 had been worked hard. Commissioned in 1930, it ran over 1.5 million miles between London and the west of England until it was condemned in 1962. It had a complex maintenance history, with many of its major components being replaced several times – it had 13 different boilers during its working life – along with a series of repairs and upgrades. Unusually, 6023 was retained by BR post-Beeching; tethered to its sibling, engine 6024, ‘King Edward I’, the two engines formed a deadweight used to test the strength of bridges until 1980. So although it escaped the initial purge and destruction of steam locomotives in the 1970s, when it reached the scrapyard it was rapidly stripped to feed the many restorations of other GWR locomotives by then underway. When it ended up at the DRC in 1995 for restoration it was in a sorry state of disrepair and eventually took over 20 years to bring back to life.

The morality of good engineering Large parts of 6023 had to be sourced or re-manufactured, as far as possible according to the original drawings from the 1930s, still available from the archives of the GWR. This made the process especially challenging as many of the tools 380 Ian J. Ewart and techniques had been lost in the intervening years. One of the large driving wheels had been cut away and had to be re-cast, the fi rst time this had been done in over 40 years, using a specifi cation of steel that was no longer available, and machined on equipment that had also long been decommissioned. To make the whole job more diffi cult, the team of volunteer engineers had set themselves the goal of making 6023 ‘mainline-ready’. In other words this would be a steam locomotive that could be used on the national rail network and not just be restricted to heritage rail lines. Modern electronic safety systems had to be incorporated, and the height of the driver’s cab and chimneys lowered by four inches. The engineers made strenuous efforts to disguise these changes, hiding the electronics out of view in the cab, using existing control levers instead of modern switchgear, carefully shaping new bodywork and so on. Any work done on the project was done in the spirit of the original, even though virtually all of the machine was either new, borrowed or changed. This causes a perennial problem for restorers of steam locomotives, treading a fi ne line between re-creating something that can be considered truly authentic, and yet having to rely on a whole range of re-worked or modern replacement parts and materials. In the heritage railway industry this can fall foul of the self- appointed guardians of authenticity – so-called ‘rivet counters’ – who will check every detail of a restoration down to the last detail, such as the number of rivets holding two pieces of metal together. Furthermore, the recent nostalgia surrounding steam locomotives has created a new milieu in which the engineers have to work: they are no longer the technological marvels of the 1930s, the workhorses of the 1950s or the scrap metal of the 1970s; now they represent an idealized past, a jealously guarded icon of a ‘golden age’. However, the engineers on 6023 were more concerned with authentic engineering practices than ultimate authenticity of appearance, and especially a sense that they were respecting the engineering that had gone into 6023 through its construction and subsequent maintenance. Much of the work was carried out at weekends by a core team of about eight, many of whom were experienced in restoration, including some who owned their own steam locomotives. The work was roughly divided according to experience, where some of the more technical tasks were taken on by the more experienced engineers, and the simpler tasks went to people like me with little or no specifi c experience. So I spent many hours rubbing down paintwork and following instructions as best I could, while my colleagues took on the more technically diffi cult tasks. One such task, requiring great skill and patience, was the replacement of extensive runs of copper and steel tubing. These had been almost entirely stripped from 6023 following decommissioning since they were inherently valuable because of their raw material. As was common in engineering in the 1930s, when 6023 was originally made, quite large parts of the production process were left to the skills and experience of the individual engineers, and the installation of most of the tubing was one of them. The GWR was in fact a pioneer of component standardization, so that the same part could be used in different engine types, but still, some parts were bespoke to each individual engine and not necessarily drawn in great detail. Engineering as a process of beauty 381 Pipes on a steam locomotive have a number of purposes, including carrying steam to and from the engine, and distributing lubricating oil to all of the moving parts. The lubrication system consisted of a reservoir, a mechanical lubricator and a series of delivery pipes, running from the lubricator to the dozens of lubricating points around the machine. The route of the tubes is convoluted, wending their way around the complex inner workings of chassis and running gear, for distances of several metres with numerous joints and bends along the way ( Figure 24.2 ). Although 30 of these King class locomotives were manufactured at GWR’s Swindon works, along with another 171 of their parent design the Castle class, and 73 of the similar Star class, each was individual, and the development of interchangeable parts, put in place by GWR in the 1920s, did not extend to the copper tubing for the lubrication system. So each piece of each copper tube had to be custom-made to fi t around the many obstacles between the mechanical lubricator and the lubricating point. In total this meant hundreds of pieces of tubing, each bent individually into complex three dimensional shapes, fi tted and checked, re-bent, re-fi tted and checked again until it was an accurate fi t. Virtually none of this system is visible, since it is hidden by the bodywork and metalwork of the engine, and yet the engineers carrying out this task were concerned with the standard and accuracy of every bend in every part of every tube. To some extent this is understandable and necessary, since a failure in the lubrication system could result in a catastrophic failure of a moving part of the machine with possibly dire consequences. However, the quality of workmanship went well above what was necessary to produce a functioning and robust system.

Figure 24.2 Part of the 6023 lubrication system Author’s photo 382 Ian J. Ewart Copper tubing is still widely used in, for example, domestic central heating systems, and tools are available for plumbers to quickly and easily bend it to shape. However, our volunteer engineers did not bend their tubes like this. Instead, they produced a series of wooden jigs, heated the section of tube to red hot with a gas blowtorch, then whilst still red hot, the tube would be bent around the jig and cooled in water. The subsequent bend was then put in place and inspected for its fi t. Where the shape did not meet the approval of the engineer, the tube would be removed and adjusted by heating and bending until the fi t was correct. This procedure was repeated for each of the multitude of copper lubrication pipes and the larger steel steam pipes, all hand-made to fi t into, through and around specifi c spaces in the chassis of the engine. To understand the complexities and persever- ance needed to fi nish this job, it is worth noting that when these locomotives were being produced by GWR in the 1930s, an entire locomotive would have been produced in about two months; on 6023, this piping work alone took two men 18 months to complete.

Engineering as a process of beauty So, what is the relationship between bending pipes and beauty? Copper tubing falls outside conventional aesthetic measures since it is primarily functional and its form is dictated to a large extent by the needs of that function: lubricating oil needs to be transferred from point A (the mechanical lubricator) to point B (the moving part that should not wear out). And constraints in the shaping of lubrication pipes are signifi cant. Copper piping is expensive, hence its absence from 6023 when rescued, so the route must be as short as possible to keep costs to a minimum, especially considering the limited fi nances of heritage railway restoration. There are also good engineering and design reasons to dictate the path of the copper pipe: increasing the length introduces pressure losses through friction, so shorter is better; tight bends are less effi cient than gentle curves; lubricant viscosity (the ‘thickness’ of the oil) needs to be predictable but is affected by heat (warm oil is ‘thinner’ than cold oil), so close proximity to hot parts needs to be avoided; pipes must avoid the many moving parts that could cause damage; and so on. Given all these constraints, the resulting set of copper lubricating pipes can only have a limited number of fi nal forms, and they can only ‘look’ a certain number of ways; this is not a blank canvas for artistic expression. Indeed the fi nal look, one would think, is largely irrelevant, since it will be essentially invisible, buried deep inside the machine, a minor component of a much larger entity. The aesthetic of the steam locomotive lies not in its components – the shape of copper lubricating pipes weaving their way around the chassis – but in its entire size and shape, its sounds and smells, the emotions it evokes. And yet, looking at this particular copper piping one can appreciate the work that has gone into it. The accurate lengths, parallel bends and even-splay of sets of pipes as they leave the mechanical lubricating box all speak to a degree of care and attention that was not strictly necessary. Contained within those objects are the manifestation of considered and skilful engineering. Choices were made to decide Engineering as a process of beauty 383 the best route; the brutal heat of a gas blow torch controlled to soften the copper until it was just pliable enough to bend; careful hand-bending around home-made wooden jigs; checking, re-heating and trying again. The engineers doing the work were not artists or even artisans, despite the fact that their accumulated skills made the routing decisions and shaping of pipes more or less second nature over time. They were making no particular concessions to the way they did their work, and their intention was not particularly to produce an artefact that would be considered beautiful in the sense of an object to be looked at and admired. However, it was clear that they felt responsible for their work, which they knew played a small part in the way the locomotive would function, but greater than that was the feeling that the quality of their work was also representative of the engineering standards set by the team of volunteers. Regardless as to whether or not any individual bend in the pipe was ever noticed, there remained a depth of commitment to good engineering. Good engineering is an activity of beauty. In the same way as we have seen classical Greek notions of beauty being entwined with notions of idealized, virtuous behaviour, and the context of beautiful Dinka cattle as a cultural production process, so for something to be ‘well-engineered’ depends on a beautiful process. That is to say, even though an engineer looking at the copper piping may see it as beautiful, he is not seeing a secret aesthetic, hidden from the general population, but is rather seeing the act of production as beautiful; he is seeing something well-engineered. This is not enchantment, in Gell’s sense of bemusement at magical skills, but recognition of perfectly secular dedication, skill and cultural understanding, and the objects are proof of that commitment to a process of beauty. Note that I am saying it is the process that is the act of beauty, and not that the resultant object has been beautifi ed. Nor am I saying that the physical movements of the engineers when bending the tubes is analogous to a beautiful dance. Unlike a dance performance or an art object, this was not intended to be aesthetically pleasing for the observer and by most measures, lubrication systems, however carefully made, are not particularly beautiful. But for the engineers who were responsible for the copper lubrication pipes of 6023, there is beauty in the production experience, and to the knowledgeable observer the quality of engineering is recognisable in the objects. The beauty is in what they did, and not what they produced.

References Coleman, R. 1988. The art of work . London: Pluto. Cruickshank, D. 2010. Bridges: Heroic designs that change the world . London: Collins. Frierson, P. and Guyer, P. (eds.) 2011. Immanuel Kant: Observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime and other writings . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guss, D.M. 1990. To weave and sing: Art, symbol and narrative in the South American rainforest . Berkeley: University of California Press. Hirsch, E. (ed.) 2006. The art of anthropology: Essays and diagrams by Alfred Gell . Oxford: Berg. Ingold, T. 2011. Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description . Abingdon: Routledge. 384 Ian J. Ewart Ingold, T. 2013. Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture . London and New York: Routledge. Jenkins, I. 2015. Deﬁ ning beauty: The body in ancient Greek art . London: British Museum Press. Kosman, A. 2010. Beauty and the Good: Situating the Kalon . Classical Philology 105(4): 341–357. Marchand, T.H.J. 2009. The masons of Djenné . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Marchand, T.H.J. (ed.) 2016. Craftwork as problem solving: Ethnographic studies of design and making . Farnham: Ashgate. Morphy, H. and Perkins, M. (eds.) 2007. The anthropology of art: A reader . Oxford: Blackwell. Norman, D.A. 2004. Emotional design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things . New York: Basic Books. Phillips, R.B. 1998. Trading identities: Souvenir in native North American art form the northeast, 1700–1900. Washington: Washington University Press. Whitehouse, P. and St. John-Thomas, D. (eds.) 2002. The great Western railway: 150 glorious years . Newton Abbot: David and Charles. 25 Collaborative forms

Wendy Gunn

Design anthropology and collaborative forms I draw upon eleven years’ experience of practising design anthropology as a member of a research design group, located in southern Denmark. Since 2005, I have been a team member within a number of research projects concerned with designing products, systems and infrastructures. My research inquiry has involved challenging assumptions about peoples’ everyday practices, reframing relations between designing and using, broadening understandings of products and systems, and bringing critical engagement to engineering design processes and practices. Research projects I have worked on include USEC: User Supported Embedded Confi guration (2005–2008), Indoor Climate and Quality of Life (2008–2011) and the design of SMART grid energy systems (2012–2013). A central aspect of my research has been concerned with the temporal aspects of engineering designing and how design as a process of inquiry can increase participation between a diversity of people (including researchers) within design processes and practices. Redström has argued that practitioners working in the emerging fi eld of design anthropology “cannot leave the design object behind, just because we cannot weave practices unfolding over time into our notion of form” (2012, 95). How then do forms made through collaborative design processes and practices come into being? How do peoples (including researchers) make sense of them during a design process? How do they establish a broader understanding of engaging with the social and what does that mean, for example, within the design of indoor climate? What role does aesthetics play here (if at all) in design as a process of inquiry? And how do we build continuity between the past, present and future into processes and practices of designing? A central aspect of my research practice is to be involved in the designing, enactment and tracing of the reception of inter-relational forms across multiple sites and over extended periods of time. My role as a design anthropologist within a research team involving engineers, interaction designers, interaction analysts, forum theatre practitioners, researchers from innovation and business, and research participants from both the public and private sectors has not been to conduct user studies, nor provide information for usability studies, nor provide ethnographic materials for designers. Rather, it has been to make sense of, and fi nd ways of 386 Wendy Gunn documenting, the various research activities that are going on during collaborative design activities within my research group. Here, I attend to what defi nes the orientation and processual aspects of making and building, and attempt to fi nd ways of tracing and following up on learning between peoples during collaborative design processes. Focus here is given to reception of different kinds of knowledge and how to register and respond to what occurs through integrating fi eldwork and design practices. The research projects in which I have participated to date range between three to fi ve years.

Aesthetic judgements In recent years there has been a move towards non-object orientated forms of design, such as social design and strategic design. In interaction design, for example, a move towards the non-object has led to design practitioners recognising that their role is not confi ned to making industrial products. Instead of judging the quality of a fi nal product on aesthetic impressions alone, attention is deferred to universal, social aspects and contextual use.1 An increasing focus is being given by design practitioners to pragmatic aesthetics and how artefacts emerge out of a dynamic interaction with a user, that is someone who has had experience with a product. Current discussions concerning aesthetics of collaborative forms have a tendency to draw upon theoretical models built upon a philosophy of art and art history. Increasingly, however, in design anthropology, design studies and among design practitioners themselves there is a need of theoretical discussion specifi c to emergent design processes and practices of designing, especially, when linked to issues of sustainability. My research is therefore concerned with the temporal aspects of designing and the learning that goes on between peoples during collaborative design processes and practices. Here focus is given to the movements within design practice, while searching for new forms in response to changing conditions. Both as an individual and as a member of a research design group, I believe discussions of beauty in a Kantian sense are not part of the making and building of the collaborative forms we make with people who otherwise would be excluded from design processes. Forms made during our research investigations are considered as an integral part of our research processes and not considered as having value only in terms of their fi nal forms. As such, the participatory inquiries we are engaged within consider design processes alongside the conditions of making and building as part of collaborative design practices. In this regard, aesthetics, and not beauty, are considered in Baumgarten’s sense, that is aesthetics as belonging to social practice play an important role during collaborative designing (Beiser 2009). Baumgarten proposed that human beings judge based upon our sensorial and bodily understanding and that we train our senses over time by learning with other people. What is important here, as Friberg2 has argued, is the aesthetic element is connected to training the body how to judge in a particular situation. So there is sensorial bodily formation of knowledge informing a faculty of judgement. As Baumgarten discussed, after Kant (1952 [1790]), aesthetics became very often Collaborative forms 387 linked with art objects per se, rather than by how interacting with aesthetic objects was a way of training the body to judge particular situations (Buchenau 2013). Aesthetics considered from the latter perspective are integral to social material practices of making and building, whereby aesthetic values, perception through senses, visual and spatial thinking and socio-cultural interpretation are interlinked and only exist within relations (Barad 2012, 77). Design-as-a-process-of-inquiry involves making collaborative forms in order to bring to the surface unarticulated refl ections-in-action, and to bring resonance between various participants within collaborative design processes into play. Through making and building together we are learning, and the process of making enters into relationships of interpretation. This kind of inquiry involves combining methods such as writing, drawing, collage and sketch modelling, and adapting these methods to the specifi cities of differing sites and changing conditions. As a process, design-as-a-process-of-inquiry attempts to engage with the hard to imagine social aspects of designing possible futures. Understanding the role that aesthetic relation in design-as-a-process-of-inquiry plays in the forms made during collaborative processes of designing involves tracing how the forms come into being and articulating the qualities of the things made along the way. ‘Relation’ as I use it here is understood as being active rather than purely intellectual (Dewey 1934), and ‘aesthetic qualities’ here refers to the non-visual qualities of collaborative forms, bringing into question aesthetics as only being connected to the visual. Instead, tactile is sensorial and sensorial is perceptual. My experience (2005–2017) of being a design anthropologist within multidisciplinary research teams has involved reframing relations between designing and using – to develop anthropological capacities in people – and recasting assumptions – to call into question dominant ideologies that have infl uenced design engineering and innovation design. In this way, my own research practices aim towards instigating refl exivity within engineering design practices in order to improve these practices in some way. This requires juxtaposition of methods and co-analysis where ‘composition’ is an analytical concept. Here composition is used as an analytical concept to explore reception of the social and to fi nd out where and when design-as-a-process-of-inquiry establishes a wider understanding towards improving engineering design processes and practices (Clausen and Gunn 2015).

Tracing traces Baumgarten was a German philosopher born in 1714 in Berlin. His work was fi rst translated into English surprisingly recently, in 2009. He was interested in the science of sensorial knowledge and discussed aesthetics as belonging to social practice and not a conception of knowledge. He proposed that human beings judge based upon our sensorial and bodily understanding and that we train our senses over time by learning with other people – in other words, we train our bodies to perform in a social context. What is important here is that the aesthetic relation is connected to training and forming in knowing how to judge in a particular situation. So there is sensorial bodily formation of knowledge informing a faculty of 388 Wendy Gunn judgement. In a Kantian sense, the question remains, ‘How is such a faculty of judgement established and made legitimate?’ According to Baumgarten, a faculty of judgement that is pure and more legitimate happens in a social context. Remem- bering, then, that the kind of pure aesthetics Baumgarten is referring to is not the same in all places at all times, how then do we know some form of learning is generated through collaborative processes and practices of designing? When and where can we trace moments of learning between people? And what has this got to do with the social and aesthetic material relations of making and building? When several people are engaged in design-as-a-process-of-inquiry, it is not always clear what is produced. If participants are to become aware of moments of learning between each other, it is important that they end up with something.3 What is made often resembles an open-ended conversation and the making is for the moment. Activities are play-like, non-result based and led by the conditions of materials vs. rules. Materials may not have fl ow, which means that participants often have to make do with resources at hand. Activities themselves are often organized beforehand based upon collaborative research activities by the facilitator and research team. Some would argue this leads to a determined notion of collaboration and thus it is doubtful if we can call these engagements collaboration – rather a process given, to be done.4 A process of collaborating conducted in this way is dependent upon the rules of invitation and rules guiding collaborative activities. This means that the facilitator and/or members of the research team are often looking for, and attempting to register somehow, an idea emerging and/or shifts in positioning of participants as a direct result of engaging with other participants during collaborative activities. Participants are, in the research projects in which I have participated, being asked to imagine differently, and that requires a broader understanding about how people intra-act with, for example, products, architecture, energy systems or digital infrastructures (Barad 2003). One factor that remains continuous is the aim of the research activities to instigate refl ection and refl exion within engineering design practices utilizing tangible design materials. These temporal places (at their best) bring attention to the limits of individuals’ understandings. An important aspect of sharing different understandings between participants is for expert participants to admit that they do not know all of the time. Often participants are uncertain of the ambiguity that characterizes the activities they are involved within. Ambigu- ity here, however, is not a lack – ambiguity is a place we inhabit.5 Thus, how ambiguity is interpreted, plays off each participant and allows people to see things differently is central.6

A drawing together While tracing the affect of participating in temporal places of learning, it is important to make dialogic products in the form of research tools, which can respond to the ongoing transformation of relationships made between people. Enactment of the dialogic products could be considered as contributing to the conditions necessary to instigate dialogic contexts of ‘intra-action’ and result in a particular Collaborative forms 389 kind of drawing together or mapping (Anusas and Ingold 2013; Barad 2003). Design-as-a-process-of-inquiry involves dialogical products to relate to emerging research issues, perhaps unarticulated but present. An ongoing responsiveness to changing conditions according to the specifi cities of differing sites and peoples that are participating within the research is central to making and building relations and relationships. Inquiry, understood in this way, attempts to engage with the generation of fl exible categories. And it is the designing of fl exible categories, I argue, that allows for different participants to collaborate. Through our own attempts to design fl exible categories in collaboration with fellow researchers and engineering design students, we have attempted to fi nd ways of registering transformation of engineering knowledge practices. The following collaborations illustrate this process. I must emphasize that the design processes and practices I present in this chapter are not descriptions of individual designers involved in design practices, whereby aesthetic intervention is conceived, followed by drawing something imagined, the object created appealing to aesthetic guidelines and ending up as a codifi ed object worthy of consumption. Rather, they are outcomes of the engaged practices I outlined earlier.

First collaboration The workshop focused on collaborative making of provotypes to instigate interdisciplinary dialogue on indoor climate. Participants included engineers, designers, architects, artists and anthropologists. The Designing Environments for Life (DEFL) programme consisted of four workshops and introduced a new way of thinking about design that is orientated to process rather than product; is open-ended rather than end-directed; is dictated by hopes and dreams rather than fi xed targets; associates creativity with growth rather than novelty; emerges from dialogical relations both among people and between them and materials; and is democratic rather than based on systems of command and control. The programme was co-convened by Tim Ingold and Mike Anusas, supported by the Scottish Institute for Advanced Studies and hosted by the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Sept – Dec 2009. The Indoor Climate and Quality of Life Project (2008–2011) was an attempt to make partial connections between peoples’ everyday practices of dwelling in homes, offi ces and nurseries to the designing of systems and controls that regulate those indoor climate environments (Gunn and Clausen 2013; Clausen and Gunn 2015). The project had two main objectives: 1) to demonstrate how innovative indoor climate systems could improve peoples’ quality of life and 2) to lead to new directions for the development of energy effi cient indoor climate products and systems in the building industry. It was a public research project, running over three years from August 2008 to July 2011, and involved fi ve Danish companies from the building industry and two Danish universities. As such, the project brought together researchers from environmental engineering, user centred design, interaction analysis, interaction design, design anthropology, company partners, families, children, offi ce workers and nursery teachers. Within this diverse set of 390 Wendy Gunn backgrounds from both the public and private sectors, an aspiration within the project was to work collaboratively towards building relations between individual/ group perceptions of indoor climate, techno-scientifi c discourses, everyday experiences of inhabiting indoor climate and wider systems of environmental control. Many of our project company partners came from engineering backgrounds and were interested in the possibility of changing energy use behaviour through the use of technical devices. Creating a technical change became synonymous with changing behaviour. Changing behaviour meant changing users’ motivations and meant changing existing behaviour to something new. This approach is not new in the design of energy effi cient technologies. For example, a plethora of studies of electricity use and consumption, as Strengers reminds us, aim towards understanding how technological interventions can infl uence human behaviour (2013). In order to test if the intervention or device does in fact change user behaviour building in some form of continuous feedback is a requirement. These interventions or devices should make feedback more precise. The techno-practice perspective expectation of the user, or occupant of homes, offi ces and kindergartens, usually anticipates that the user is an individual who will react to something as it happens. Importantly, focus is given to changing end user behaviour and/or educating the user rather than considering radically different ways of designing energy effi cient technologies. Devices for measuring and predicting future behaviour based upon current behaviour are involved in collecting real time energy consumption data. Based upon analysis of the data and measurement guidelines, researchers provide recommendations on how to improve the indoor climate or/and reduce energy consumption. Our research group, however, was interested in a different way of designing indoor climate, which looked beyond changing end user behaviour (see Figure 25.1 ). My main contribution to the Indoor Climate and Quality of Life project involved collaborating with a researcher with a background in engineering. Our collaboration involved tracing the movement and transformation of end user knowledge into the engineering companies and indoor climate research units of technical universities who were partners within the wider research project (Gunn and Clausen 2013; Clausen and Gunn 2015). We showed how participation in the form of research partner workshops challenged assumptions (albeit slightly) and reframed “existing engineering and model oriented user conceptions towards a more user orientated perspective” (Clausen and Gunn 2015, 91). However, this reframing was limited by path dependent innovative practices, business strategies and dominant designs. Our research concluded that confi guration of the temporary intermediary places for sharing knowledge and the design of inter-relational forms are “closely intertwined and mutually dependent” (Clausen and Gunn 2015, 91). Importantly, these inter-relational forms considered as research tools and later discussed as dialogical products bring attention to the role aesthetics can play in building relationships between the ways people conduct research collaboratively and the learning that ensues as a result. In this respect, The Indoor Climate and Quality of Life research project described earlier thus provides us with an illustration of Baumgarten’s theory of aesthetics and links with Bergson’s suggestion (1907) that creativity Collaborative forms 391

Figure 25.1 Designing Environments for Life Workshop 2, Provotypes Workshop, October 2009 © SPIRE comes through our engagements with others and a striving to learn from each other, which links to a different sense of form and beauty whereby aesthetics are an emergent process.

Second collaboration Løgstrup (2014) in her doctoral thesis argues for a different way of designing a future Energy SMART grid, and gives focus to the importance of reframing the relation between the private end user and the energy company (2014). While working as a company employee for seventeen months at a Danish energy company, Løgstrup came to realize that employees are often prevented, due to reproduction of existing design processes and practices, from learning new ways of learning. As such, propositions for new ways of designing a future Energy SMART grid are limited. Therefore, the learning that Løgstrup wanted to instigate in the company was ‘deutero learning’, which entails learning to learn (Bateson 1973, 14; Gunn and Løgstrup 2014). She attempted to instigate such learning by involving tangible research tools during her research with the energy company employees, as can be seen in Figure 25.2 . Here the tangible research tool helped Løgstrup to engage company employees in reﬂ ecting over past, present and future ways of designing 392 Wendy Gunn

Figure 25.2 Løgstrup and company employees working with the research tool Photography by Wafa Said Mosleh an Energy SMART grid. The research tool was tangible, included narrative elements, was beautifully crafted and was involved to instigate dialogue between the researcher and company employees to open lines of inquiry regarding what role could end users play in the future design and use of the future Energy SMART grid. Exploring the idea of the interaction design studio as an extension of fi eld sites, Løgstrup, two graduate students (Nelson and Mosleh), the author, a grouping of fi rst year interaction design engineering students and a professional model maker worked towards the making and building of a tangible research tool, later referred to as a dialogic product (Løgstrup, Nelson, Mosleh and Gunn 2013). The purpose of the research tool was to generate anthropological capacities of refl exivity in the company concerning assumptions and familiar modes of thought informing design practices of the Energy SMART grid (in Rabinow after Fou- cault 2005:52; Gunn and Løgstrup 2014). This required the actual form of the research tool to generate awareness of the main principles underpinning existing engineering design processes and practices, including the fact that many of these processes and practices were detached from the social (Knox and Harvey 2015). In so doing she wanted to highlight how existing design processes and practices were in fact limiting the possibility of reframing the role of electricity users in the design and use of a future Energy SMART grid infrastructure whereby users in the future could become user-producers instead of consumers of their own electricity (Ingold 2012). During this dialogue with company employees she tried Collaborative forms 393 to encourage company employees to question why they were continuing to bor- row private electricity end users’ fl exibility. In so doing, she tried to encourage the energy company employees to attend to what was actually limiting people’s agency in the supposed co-development of a future bi-directional infrastructure. Løgstrup’s main aim within the company was to instigate refl ection and refl exivity about the logic behind existing relations between practices of designing the future Energy SMART grid and private end users’ electricity use in the energy company (Løgstrup et al. 2013; Gunn and Løgstrup 2014). This necessitated fi nding ways of reframing the company’s relation to the private energy end user. Importantly, this form of critical positioning to designing collaborative forms does not rely on negation but offers suggestions for active engagement and ongoing learning between the company employees and the researcher reminding us once again of Baumgartens’s theory of aesthetics whereby creativity comes through engagement and ongoing learning. At the same time, the relationship Løgstrup established with the company employees involving the tangible research tool to instigate refl ection and refl exivity about their design processes and practices indicates that an engaged and collaborative way of future making is possible.

Third collaboration During the third collaboration, the author and two graduate students, Andersen and Mosleh, worked in collaboration with fi rst year interaction design engineering students, and set out to make, build and involve dialogic products for use in the beginning of a workshop involving a large EU funded project, UserTEC (see http://sbi.dk/usertec).7 Our aim was to create awareness of the differing and similar positionings about users and use underpinning the research partners’ judgements of the possibilities of knowledge derived from engaging with users and potential users of energy effi cient technologies. By bringing this awareness of difference and similarity to the forefront, our goal has been to propose different kinds of questions among the UserTEC research group in order to imagine the future design of energy effi cient building technologies. The dialogic products we involve within our inquiries have a critical role and aim towards bringing attention to the limits of understanding of a grouping of people engaged within a research project. An important aspect infl uencing the designing of the dialogic products (see Figure 25.3 ) was to involve the dialogic products within a workshop towards focusing on the generation of fl exible categories that are sensitized to people’s everyday engagements with products, systems and services. Working in collaboration with interaction design engineering students Gunn, Andersen and Mosleh set out to make, build and involve dialogic products in a workshop involving UserTEC project participants held in April 2014. The dialogic product, for the UserTEC research workshop, was developed through several iterations of engagement and activities, between the authors and fi rst year interaction design engineering students. To inform the making of the dialogic products, materials from a previous UserTEC partner workshop conducted 394 Wendy Gunn

Figure 25.3 Generating fl exible categories involving dialogic products © Gunn, Andersen and Mosleh in October 2013 were co-analyzed and coded together with the interaction design engineering students, to identify opposing conceptualizations when the research project partners talked about users and use. In the end, we made a series of 3-D towers. The 3-D towers provided a tangible way to enter into negotiations about possible alternative and collaborative directions for the future design of energy effi cient building technologies, while also allowing opposition and disagreement to be present, to know where a collaborative direction is not possible, while at the same time documenting these processes of negotiating. Inherent in the 3-D tower form lies a spatial orientation towards prioritizing by ranking positions high or low. When a process of negotiation takes the form of a tower, the partners are encouraged to take a position, and to place their specifi c arguments in relation to other participants’ arguments from the different categories, in so doing mapping out the relations between the different categories. Three recurring opposing categorizations emerged from a process of co-analysis of the workshop documentation involving the dialogic product: 1) users as being fl exible vs. technology as being fl exible, 2) users as passive consumers vs. users as active co-creators, and 3) educating users vs. learning from users. During our explorations, dialogic products (see Figure 25.3 ) brought to the surface underlying issues related to construction of hierarchy among different knowledges in the UserTEC research project team. These dialogic products in this sense bring attention to limits and potentials of different knowledge traditions working together and Collaborative forms 395 help address and identify different kinds of questions, instead of answering one overall pre-set question or solving a specifi c problem towards, in this instance, the future design of energy effi cient building technologies. While designing dialogic products both researchers and the people they were involving within design-as-a- process-of-inquiry recognized the importance of attuning the tools to the specifi c- ity of the conditions of the fi eld sites vs. applying the same tool in the same way across different sites. Aesthetic responses during processes of designing in this way are thus concerned with building ongoing relations through and with materials and the unfi nishedness of collaborative forms made along the way. The dialogic products made by researchers, students and the people for whom they were carrying out research were involved during a research workshop in such a way to ensure the researchers were not external to the research inquiry. Instead, we were a “part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity” (Barad 2003, 828). By inviting students to be a part of co-analytical activities, towards the generation of fl exible categories and designing dialogic products for fi eld working, design engineering students were encouraged to develop argumentation about the different processes and practices involved in gathering and co-analysis of empirical materials to open lines of inquiry, and thereby encouraged to observe and explicate the underlying conditions for designing dialogic products. Importantly, they were confronting their own hesitancy about entering into a design process whereby the outcome does not end with a fi nished product. Students and researchers were therefore encouraged to refl ect before action and to refl ect on the future as a form of refl exivity giving focus to the changing nature of their own and others’ future making practices. Adopting such an approach whereby design-is-a-process-of-inquiry gives focus to the learning that results between people by engaging different people within a research process, not as informants but as people the researcher is conducting research with . In order to do this it requires a different kind of relationship between the researchers, students and project partners involved, as discussed in the two previous collaborations. The relationship is dependent upon correspondence being established (Gatt and Ingold 2013). Carrying out research in correspondence with people, however, is not about creating a shared language, or even coming to a consensus, but about becoming familiar with another’s approach in such a way to open lines of inquiry to inform future design directions. This is in consonance with Gatt and Ingold who state that designing environments for life is about giving directions rather than specifying endpoints (Gatt and Ingold 2013, 139).

Bringing resonance into play Bringing peoples from universities and companies together who have different skills, practices, knowledges and competencies towards processes of collaborative designing of future products, system and infrastructures is not easy to do in practice. While creating conditions for the meeting of differences, compositional aspects of making places for learning from each other, metaphors from musical composition rather than technical composition are important. Here social dynamics 396 Wendy Gunn are inter-relational and intra-actional. Rhythms and tempos embedded in collaborative designing are both fast and slow. Within collaborative design engineering processes and practices concerned with the design of energy effi cient products, systems and infrastructures remembering the past in the present towards imagining the future design materials can evoke remembering. Through rememberings of past, present and future there are moments during designing when you have to stop time. This requires forgetting in order to avoid reproducing past design processes and practices, at the same time realising failures as an important resource. Finding ways of instigating ongoing refl exivity and refl ection on future actions is important for design practitioners throughout their working lives. Returning for a moment to my discussion concerning the aesthetic relation in design, is it possible to create refl ection through aesthetic experience?8 By asking participants to engage in a similar experience, in order to build relations between designing and using within a design process, making abstract thinking tangible enables participants to relate to different concepts of meaning. The kind of crafting with tangible materials towards designing future energy effi cient products, systems and infrastructures presented in this chapter is both different from and similar to the individual designer working on an object for consumption. Both involve experiment, action and practice-based exploration. But they differ in the way that collaborative designing is an integral part of a wider action research process which considers ongoing use by many people, moves between micro and macro scales, involves crafting with different types of materials and challenges the role of the designer. When you involve people within collaborative processes of designing it is diffi cult to show evidence that people actually are learning from each other while participating. One of the diffi culties in tracing the affects of learning between people within these temporal meeting places is that participants do not register what they have learned until long after the activity is over. As a researcher, you have to fi nd ways of continuously critically refl ecting, before, during and after, on your own ways of conducting research and the nature of research practice itself, while working with the people with whom you are carrying out research. You learn to respond to someone with care in order to do something. Through corresponding with the people you are carrying out research with , it is important to remember there is no pre-set agenda of how to conduct fi eld studies. Instead, improvisation and realization that the conditions for inter-relationality and collaborative forms made will play different roles, at different places, at different times. Perhaps this is where aesthetic judgement plays a part.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Chris Heape for organizing the Design Anthropology seminar at the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, 9–10 December 2013. Pre- sentations and resulting discussions by seminar participants helped to formulate the intellectual framing of the chapter. An earlier version of the chapter was presented at the plenary panel Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design, Anthropology and Collaborative forms 397 Enlightenment ASA 2014, Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth Conference Decennial Conference, Edinburgh 19–22 June 2014. I would like to thank Stephanie Bunn from the Anthropology Department at St Andrews University for inviting me. I also would like to thank my colleagues at SDU Design in Kolding. Our seed project on design aesthetics, specifi cally my colleagues’ expertise in this area, has helped me greatly in formulating my initial thoughts concerning aesthetics and collaborative forms. Thanks to Zoy Anastas- sakis for organizing the round table in Design Anthropology at the 29th Brazilian Anthropological Meeting (RBA) in Natal, Brazil, 6 August 2014. Her determina- tion to bring Design Anthropology to the attention of Brazilian anthropologists is timely. I would also like to thank students and staff from the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, for the invitation to present a version of the chapter at their seminar on Design Anthropology, 4 March 2015. Thank you to the Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Hamburg, 17 June 2015, who provided valuable critique during the latter stages of writing the chapter. In both instances, I was inspired by both the enthusiasm and perhaps curiosity shown by students and staff towards the fi eld of Design Anthropology. Thanks also to Anke Schwittay for inviting me to present a fi nal version of this chapter and deliver a workshop for staff and students from the University of Sussex and University of Brighton, 12–13 April 2016. Finally, many thanks to Christian, Louise, Maren, Wafa, Pernille, Charlie and Zin, who I continue to learn from in terms of both the potentials and limits of collaboration.

Notes 1 Anders Munch’s comment made during the second aesthetics seed project meeting held as an integral part of SDU Design research seminars, The Aesthetic Relation in Design , Kolding, September 2014. 2 Carsten Friberg delivered a lecture on the aesthetic relation in design as part of a wider Design Studies conference on Aesthetics at the Kolding campus, University of Southern Denmark, March 2014. 3 Mette Kjærsgaard’s comment made during the Design Anthropology seminar organized by Chris Heape, December 2013, Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, December 2013. 4 Tim Ingold’s comment made during the Design Anthropology seminar (as earlier). 5 Ricardo Nemirovsky’s comment made during the Design Anthropology seminar (as earlier). 6 Chris Heape’s comment made during the Design Anthropology seminar (as earlier). 7 Pernille Viktoria Andersen and Wafa Said Mosleh conducted a workshop with the UserTEC project partners, April 2014. They engaged the UserTEC partners by involving dialogic products in the form of a tangible research tool designed in collaboration with fi rst year interaction design engineering students as part of the students’ deliverables for the fi rst year course in Design Anthropology. The course lasted fourteen weeks and addressed the question: how do you engage teenagers and UserTEC research participants in building continuity between past, present and future in the designing of future public libraries and energy effi cient building technologies? 8 Anne Louise Bang and Vibeke Riisberg raised this question during our second SDU Design seed project seminar, The Aesthetic Relation in Design , Kolding, September 2014. 398 Wendy Gunn References Anusas, M. and Ingold, T., 2013. Designing environmental relations: From opacity to textility. Design Issues , 29 (4), 58–69. Barad, K., 2003. Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 28 (3), 801–831. Barad, K., 2012. Intra-actions: Interview by Adam Kleinman. Mousse Magazine , 34 (June), 76–81. Bateson, G., 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind . London: Fontana. Beiser, F.C., 2009. Baumgarten’s science of aesthetics. In Diotima’s Children: German Aesthetic Rationalism from Leibniz to Lessing , 118–155. Oxford: Oxford University Press Bergson, H., 2007. Creative evolution [ L’ évolution créatrice, 1907]. Trans. A. Mitchell, Ed. K. Ansell Pearson, M. Kolkman, and M. Vaughan. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Buchenau, S., 2013. Baumgarten’s Aesthetica : topics and the modern ars inveniendi. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment: The Art of Invention and the Invention of Art , 137–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clausen, C. and Gunn, W., 2015. From the social shaping of technology to the staging of temporary spaces of innovation – a case of participatory innovation. In R. Williams, S. Liff, and M. Winskel, (eds.). Special Issue on The Politics of Innovation for Environmen- tal Sustainability: Celebrating the Contribution of Stewart Russell (1955–2011): Part II Science & Technology Studies , 28 (1), 73–94. Available online at: https://sciencetechnology studies.journal.fi /issue/view/3900 (Accessed 21.09.17). Dewey, J., 1934. Art as Experience , reprinted in 1989, John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953 . vol. 10. Ed. J. Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Gatt, C. and Ingold, T., 2013. From description to correspondence: Anthropology in real time. In W. Gunn, T. Otto, and R.C. Smith, (eds.). Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice , 139–158. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gunn, W. and Clausen, C., 2013. Conceptions of innovation and practice: Designing indoor climate. In W. Gunn, T. Otto, and R.C. Smith, (eds.). Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice , 159–179. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gunn, W. and Løgstrup, L.B., 2014. Participant observation, anthropology methodology and design anthropology research inquiry. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education , 13 (4), 428–442. Ingold, T., 2012, 2016. Introduction: The perception of the user-producer. In W. Gunn and J. Donovan, (eds.). Design and Anthropology. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception Series, 19–33. London: Routledge. Kant, I., 1952 [1790]. Critique of Judgement . Trans. J.C. Meredith. Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press. Kjærsgaard, M., 2013. (Trans) forming knowledge and design concepts in the design workshop. In W. Gunn, T. Otto, and R.C. Smith, (eds.). Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice , 51–67. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Knox, H. and Harvey, P., 2015. Virtuous detachments in engineering practice – on the ethics of (not) making a difference. In T. Yarrow, M. Candea, C. Trundle, and J. Cook, (eds.). Detachment: Essays on the Limits of Relational Thinking, 58–78. Manchester: Manches- ter University Press. Løgstrup, L.B., 2014. Reconceptualising understandings of agency: Within the designing of demand-side management in a future electricity SMART Grid. Unpublished Thesis (PhD), Kolding School of Design: Denmark. Collaborative forms 399 Løgstrup, L.B., Nelson, M.M., Mosleh, W.S. and Gunn, W., 2013. Designing anthropological refl ection within an energy company. In: Proceedings of Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, EPIC , 15–18 September 2013, London, UK, 91–103. Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association. Available online at: http://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/10.1111/epic.2013.2013.issue-1/issuetoc (Accessed 07.07.15). Rabinow, P., 2005. Midst anthropology’s problems. In A. Ong and S.J. Collier, (eds.). Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems , 40–53. Maldon: Blackwell. Redström, J., 2012, 2016. Introduction: Defi ning moments. In W. Gunn and J. Donovan, (eds.). Design and Anthropology . Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception Series, 83–100. London: Routledge. Strengers, Y., 2013. Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life: SMART Utopia? New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Part VIII Beauty as synthesis

26 Appropriation, imitation and creation Glass beadwork among Panará people

Elizabeth Ewart

There is considerable evidence from Lowland South America to suggest that ‘making things’ goes well beyond the simple production of material goods; and whilst this may be true of ‘making’ the world over, the specifi cs of what else is involved in the context of indigenous making in central Brazil is what interests me here. What is at stake amongst Panará people, who are central Brazilian indigenous people, is an ethos that often seems to value collective processes of working together over and above individual creativity; to value sitting together in companionable productivity over and above the fi nal objects produced. Beauty in this ethnographic context is about ways of doing things, about processes of production, much more than about fi nal completed objects. Material things are evaluated as either beautiful or ugly ( inkiin or nangka in Panará language) but more than objects, particular ways of relating to one another are frequently subject to this language of aesthetic judgement. To work together with others, to show care for a child, to sing and dance with others during rituals, to sit together and talk; all such behaviours may be identifi ed as beautiful (inkiin ) and a person behaving in these sociable ways is consequently a beautiful person. For Panará people, a person can be both visually as well as morally beautiful and this beauty is about their affective disposition towards others as much as it is about their bodily appearance. To be beautiful in short is both an aesthetic as well as a moral judgement, much in the way that Joanna Overing so eloquently formulated in her article on the aesthetics of production amongst the Venezuelan Piaroa (Over- ing 1989, 159). As I will discuss later on in this chapter, beautiful (inkiin ) and ugly (nangka ) as moral-aesthetic qualities are linguistically and experientially connected to moral-bodily qualities denoting energy, and sociability (suakiin ) and its opposite, a lack of energy usually accompanied by social withdrawal (suangka ). First, though, we should address the place that creativity and invention hold in Panará productive practices. In keeping with other ethnographic cases in Amazo- nia I suggest here that creativity is understood by Panará people fi rst and foremost in terms of processes of transformation rather than creation ex nihilo. Indeed, it has already been pointed out that such making of things out of nothing is a largely unfamiliar concept in Amazonia. As Viveiros de Castro has variously put it:

Things and beings usually originate as a transformation of something else . . . Wherever we do ﬁ nd notions of creation – almost never ex nihilo anyway, but 404 Elizabeth Ewart as the fashioning of some prior substance into a new type of being – it seems to me that what is stressed is the imperfection of the end product. (Viveiros de Castro 2012, 57)

In the case of glass beadwork crafted by Panará women, it is not so much the case that the end product is ‘imperfect’ (though certainly some women may say this of their work some of the time), but rather that the end product does not seem to be all that important to them. Indeed, as I wish to show here, the lifespan of the end product is often rather short. And further, even the idea of ‘end product’ may be problematic in the case of glass beadwork since in some respects the glass beads are understood as a kind of end product, and a hugely desirable one at that, from the point of view of Panará women in particular. Indeed, Panará people, both men and women, were considerably interested in fi nding out from me exactly how glass beads (amongst many other things) were made. Thus during my fi eldwork I was frequently confronted by the stark disjuncture between my own ignorance of productive processes and Panará people’s clear expectation that as a representative of hipe (non-Panará person, latterly usually denoting ‘white’ person1 ) I would be well-informed regarding the processes that go into making hipe things. While Panará people were on the whole deeply interested in knowing how glass beads were made, from another vantage point they also considered these beads as the raw material, or point of departure, for fashioning new objects in the form of bracelets, necklaces and all sort of other glass bead objects that particularly younger Panará women produce on a regular basis. To some extent then, glass beads are prime material for the “fashioning of some prior substance into a new type of being”, as argued by Viveiros de Castro earlier, albeit in his case with respect to mythology. And further, I suggest, it is precisely the qualities of beads that lend themselves to the repeated fashioning and re-fashioning of ever new objects. As such the material properties of glass beads are ideally suited to what seems to be a fairly wide-spread Amazonian indigenous concern with transformation and producing things out of other things. Such ideas of making, and re-fashioning, remind us of a big theme that runs through much Lowland South American ethnography, namely the relationship between transformation and continuity in one form or another. Here Crocker’s work on the aroe and bope spirits of the Bororo (Crocker 1985) could stand as an example, as could Christine Hugh-Jones’ rich descriptions of Barasana concepts of body and person (Hugh-Jones 1979). The fi nal incentive for this chapter arises out of my feeling that ethnographic evidence from Amazonia would seem to suggest that we can fruitfully think about objects not simply in terms of material things, bound by their apparently given and solid nature, but rather in terms of qualities or characteristics, whereby such qualities become features of multiple aspects of society.2 This would imply that the object as ‘thing’ becomes less prominent and is replaced by a foregrounding of the object as an assemblage of particular qualities. Thus, for example, amongst the Panará, the quality of ‘hardness’ (tâti ) is a valued property of certain objects such as beads, asphalt roads or machetes but Appropriation, imitation and creation 405 is also considered an important property acquired by a growing child. The same quality of hardness is an admired feature of young men while also being an aspect of effective speaking. Here then hardness becomes a quality that is characteristic of both material and non-material features of the world. Hardness becomes the ‘object’ as it were and the material or non-material base (beads, speech, bodies, machetes) becomes the carrier or base of the quality.3 Beauty is then one more such quality, both aesthetic as well as moral, and a possible property of things, of modes of behaving but also of particular productive processes. Persons in relation to one another may be either positively evaluated as intersubjectively available ( suakiin ) characterised by energy and sociability or as unavailable and lacking in energy (suangka ). For somebody to behave beautifully they must also be feeling energetic and willing to engage with others, and indeed as I will describe later, the beauty of material things also seems frequently to reference the fact that the object so described is connected in origin to somewhere else. Beautiful things are very often things that either come from elsewhere or where the knowledge of how to produce the object comes from elsewhere. Glass beads are quintessentially objects that come from elsewhere, being as they are intimately associated with the history of conquest and colonisation of the Americas. In the following, this chapter will focus on Panará people and their enduring and intensive interest in glass beads which over the past fi fteen years has, if anything, intensifi ed. Glass beads are owned and worked by women who try and accumulate large quantities, which they preferentially store, hidden from sight in suitcases in the eaves of their houses. Beads are evaluated in terms of size and shape, the very smallest size of beads being the most prized. By far the most valued beads are Czech beads from a small town called Jablonec nad Nisou which is at the heart of the Czech glass bead making industry. Over the past decade or so, this industry has apparently declined dramatically, overtaken by Japanese and latterly Chinese beads which are signifi cantly cheaper but which Panará people consider to be very much inferior.4 Panará women acquire glass beads, normally in half-kilo packages, bought by husbands, fathers or brothers during trips to the city, or more often brought by visitors either as presents or in exchange for something else, such as Panará beadwork. Such half-kilo packs are then either sub-divided or stored away directly. Later, packs of the same colour of bead may be strung onto long threads to be wound in large loops and then worn by women during rituals, diagonally across the body. From such loops, a smaller quantity of beads can sometimes be taken in order to be used in making smaller items of beadwork such as a necklace or bracelet or other item. Most women will keep a relatively small quantity of beads that they store usually in an old dress, together with some nylon fi shing line and a few unfi nished or partially unpicked pieces of beadwork. This bundle is normally stored in the top of a woman’s mosquito net, out of harm’s way but easily accessible when she wants to work on beads. By their own accounts, Panará women learned glass-beading techniques from their former enemies and latterly neighbours, the Kayapo. More precisely, a young Panará man learned the technique and taught it to the women. This is noteworthy in 406 Elizabeth Ewart so far as beadwork today is exclusively women’s work and aside from the historical narrative of how Panará people learned to work with beads, men’s involvement in beadwork is limited to their role in sometimes buying glass beads and then as wearers of beadwork produced by wives, sisters or mothers. The knowledge of how to work with beads would have been acquired in the late 1970s/early 1980s when the Panará were living in the Xingu Indigenous Park, after their extremely traumatic contact with Brazilian national society in 1972, which precipitated a massive decline in population and the subsequent removal and relocation of sur- vivors to the Xingu Park in 1975. In the Xingu, one young man watched Kayapo women working glass beads and according to his own account he taught this knowledge to Panará women. At the same time, according to the elders’ accounts, Panará people found their own material culture to be ‘ugly’ (nangka ) in comparison to what they found in the Xingu. Quite quickly they seem to have abandoned their own basket weaving techniques, body painting designs, hair styles and ritual practices. While Panará people say their ‘things’ (soti ) were considered ugly, it would be erroneous to understand this statement as purely a commentary on perceived visual aesthetic qualities. As mentioned previously, in many instances things that are beautiful are also things that come from elsewhere. Here the identifi cation of Panará produced baskets, body designs or rituals as ugly can also be understood as the negative evaluation of something whose production is not premised on relations to outside others. This association is not one that Panará people made explicitly, but it would seem to resonate with the related personal characteristics of being suakiin or suangka respectively, as described earlier. For something to be truly beautiful is for that thing to be in some way connected to others. In this context, and particularly in trying to understand why Panará people were so quick to reject their own rituals, body arts and material culture as ugly, it may also be important to remember the role played by memory in productive processes. For the Panará, making things and performing rituals are also a moment in which those from whom things have been learnt, or those who performed the rituals in the past, are very much present. The sadness evoked by watching people perform a ritual that was in the past performed by people now deceased is on occasion quite explicitly commented upon. It is also witnessed by the fact that it is not uncommon for an individual to retreat into the house and wail loudly as he or she is fl ooded by a memory of a now dead loved one, who once took part in the ritual. In light of the very high mortality rates during the contact phase of the 1970s, the sadness and pain associated with the knowledge and skills required to produce Panará things may indeed have rendered the things of Panará ‘ugly’ in the sense that continuing to manufacture such items inevitably forced people to remember those from whom the skills had been learnt and who were now dead. In fact, in Panará language the death of a dear one and the process of messing up a design, object or dance are captured by the same expression ti ho titati which one might translate into English as ‘messed up’. The loss of a loved one messes up those who are left behind, in the same way as placing a bead in the wrong place on a bracelet messes up this bracelet. Appropriation, imitation and creation 407 However, beyond the rejection of their own things as ugly, and thus their replacement with the things of others, it is also true to say that Panará oral narratives frequently mention how things were obtained from others, not just in the phase following contact and re-location to the Xingu Park. Instead, origin myths of Panará rituals, such as the big food sharing ritual sâkjâri as well as accounts of raiding, all talk about the value of things obtained from outside which continues to be an important factor in the way Panará people relate to non-indigenous people and the wider economy. This in turn resonates with a more generally identifi ed Amazonian indigenous concern with the generative value of alterity (Fausto 2000; Vilaça 2002, 2010; Viveiros de Castro 1996). Imitation and appropriation of techniques and skills as well as material objects have thus long been central to Panará ideas about glass beadwork as well as being important to other cultural practices such as body modifi cation and ritual.

Imitation and transformation A brief reﬂ ection on the place of imitation in the arts may here be useful for in a very different context and time we ﬁ nd some echoes of the idea that transformation and creativity may in some way be connected. Notwithstanding later insistence on creativity as the property of individual genius,5 early considerations of the development of decorative arts seem to resonate with the Amazonian situation described by Viveiros de Castro. Thus the idea that creating or making is closely connected to imitation is one developed in the late nineteenth century by Henry Balfour, curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum from 1891 until his death in 1939. In his volume The evolution of decorative art he observes:

Imitation is the mother of art, and is the outcome of this desire to possess some object or to reproduce some effect which is admired; it is inherent in our nature and is perhaps the principle stimulus in the early development of the ﬁ ne arts. (Balfour 1893, 22)

Whilst I am here not concerned with the question of evolution or development, it is the emphasis on imitation that is interesting to me as it takes us away from the idea of individual creative genius which western convention would so easily associate with the idea of being an artist. For Amazonia, as was suggested earlier, creation ex nihilo is a rare occurrence, the more common form of creative production being that of transformation, or in Balfour’s terms ‘variation’, which he further subdivides into ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious variation’. Certainly this is borne out by indigenous narratives of ‘learning’ beadwork from their former enemies, the Kayapo, and several Panará myths that tell how certain rituals were learnt from others. In practice also, Panará interest in performing other people’s rituals and painting other people’s body paint designs suggests that other people are a hugely important source for their own creative production. In a completely different context and time, we ﬁ nd in Balfour’s work the suggestion that imitation 408 Elizabeth Ewart and – connected to imitation – variation or transformation should be seen as properties of being creative more generally. An example of how copying and transformation may occur is then illustrated in an experiment that Henry Balfour ( Figure 26.1 ) describes, in which through successive copying a snail crawling across a twig is turned into a bird on a branch. The

Figure 26.1 The evolution of decorative art From Balfour 1893, 26 Appropriation, imitation and creation 409 key moment for Balfour being between copy 12 and copy 13 when the drawing is fl ipped upside down in order to ‘make sense’ of it. Now, copy 12 was drawn by what Balfour describes as a ‘skilled artist’ who was asked to ‘interpret’ what no. 11 represented. No. 13, being unable to make out what 12 was identifying, ends up inverting the image, fl ipping it by 180 degrees, at which point the image has transformed from a snail crawling across a twig to a bird sitting on a branch. Here then we are faced with the interesting question of how imitation and innovation might relate to one another and in particular how change then occurs. For Balfour the answer seems at least implicitly to lie in the presence of a ‘skilled artist’, somebody with the creative and technical abilities to make sense of an indistinct sketch and turn it into something recognisable. Thus the artist through his or her skill innovates and turns the snail into a bird. Evolu- tion in art for Balfour proceeds then by a process of copying and imitation, where each copy is a somewhat imperfect image of the former, a sort of visual version of Chinese whispers, until a skilled individual re-aligns the image into something that is recognisable once more. Arguably Balfour emphasises the involvement of the skilled artist given that the fi nal object, the drawing, and in particular the relationship between the fi rst drawing of the snail and the fi nal drawing of the bird, matter to Balfour and his argument about how art evolved. Unconscious variation in copying, coupled with creative innovation (the artist ‘making sense’), give rise to a new image. Looking back over the series, he is able to reconstruct the evolution from snail to bird, though of course it is worth reminding ourselves that in that snail lie dormant countless other possible variations and transformations which the fi nal bird and Balfour’s evolutionist narrative have forever erased. This resonates in turn with Ingold and Hallam’s observations in the Introduction to their edited volume on creativity and improvisation (Hallam and Ingold 2007) where they question the assumed opposition between copy and creative innovation. Instead they argue that imitation or copying relies on improvisations in order to bring forth a copy of an object or practice in a world which is never just as it was when the purported ‘original’ was made. They therefore question the idea that innovation necessarily and by defi nition should imply the production of something that was not there before. In Balfour’s example, the snail (itself of course also an arbitrary starting image) already contains the possibility of the bird along with innumerable other possibilities.

Copying or imitation, we argue, is not the simple, mechanical process of rep- lication that it is often taken to be, of running off duplicates from a template, but entails a complex and ongoing alignment of observation of the model with action in the world. In this alignment lies the work of improvisation. The formal resemblance between the copy and the model is an outcome of this process, not given in advance. (Hallam and Ingold 2007, 5, emphasis in original)

Indigenous Amazonians might well recognise this idea, resonating as it does with their own versions of creation as re-fashioning or transformation and the relative absence of concepts of creation out of nothing. 410 Elizabeth Ewart Where Balfour cherishes the fi nal outcome and emphasises the process of producing art as one of imitation, copying an image or design and reproducing it, Panará processes of creative production are primarily involved with imitating ways of doing things. Such ways of doing are equally subject to evaluations in terms of beauty (at once a moral and aesthetic concept), as much as the objects produced. Thus where Balfour was primarily concerned with the relationships of identity and transformation between different versions of a fi nal drawing, Panará people seem rather more interested in the actual processes of making and ways of doing things. Final products, here beaded objects, seem by contrast to be of less importance to them. As has been much illustrated for Amazonia, so too for Panará people, processes of learning skills are processes of watching and imitating other people doing things. My request to be taught complicated beading techniques was thus always met by passing me a length of fi shing line and a pile of beads, on the assumption that learning technique was a matter of simply watching, with no explanations expected or required. Indeed as much as Panará women were delighted by the fact that I learned how to do some forms of beadwork so too they were quite uninterested in overtly teaching me how to actually do it. Instead they clearly expected that I – like they had themselves – would simply pick up the techniques by watching and by trying things out for myself. For Balfour, and indeed artists trained in the western tradition, it seems to me that acquiring the skills of an artist is about the disciplined repetitive copying of designs or objects rather than the imitation or copying of what your artist peers are doing. Life drawing classes, for example, are about copying the model, not copying what the rest of the class is doing. And technical skill while sometimes emphasised as important to the artist’s metier is never on its own suffi cient in qualifying somebody as ‘artist’. The idea of ‘art’ seems to be inextricably linked with the idea of a fi nal object, be it material or an object in the form of a performance, and it is by their oeuvre that artists seem to be judged, much more than by their skills in the process of producing their artworks. Amongst Panará people, I suggest, the emphasis is placed more on processes of making and much less on evaluations of the fi nal product or material object. Elsewhere I have shown how the emphasis on the pleasure of doing rather than on the fi nal product is also expressed in the fact that Panará women often make and then unmake objects in order to use the same beads to make some other object. Similarly many hours can be spent stringing beads onto long lines to be worn crosswise across the body during dances, only to then pull off lengths of beads to use in the making of bracelets or armlets. In fact most beads go through the process from little plastic packet to long string of beads to little pile wrapped in a woman’s dress to bracelet and from there back to the little pile wrapped in the dress and so forth. And we should of course not forget that it is a specifi c property of beads, their hardness and hence durability, that lends them to being almost infi nitely transformed from one object into another. And indeed the repertoire of possible objects seems to be expanding rapidly, from simple bracelets through necklaces, pen-holders, holders for cigarette lighters, little bags and so forth. Here too, there is a remarkable instability of form, in Appropriation, imitation and creation 411 the sense that objects are invented or made as copies of objects seen elsewhere, but in many cases soon fall out of manufacture again. For example, small pouches of beads, that could be hung around the neck and in which cigarette lighters could be kept, were made for a time, but were soon discontinued. Equally, for a brief period of time, glass bead pen-holders were being made by women all around the village and worn by young schoolteachers. These too though were discontinued after a relatively short period of time. So here again, just as with objects of everyday usage more generally, rapid turnover and innovation are important in tracing what people do with glass beads. When I asked young Panará women and girls what they liked about beads, they frequently answered by telling me that they liked “doing beads” (nangkâ wayani ). Taking seriously this answer moves us inevitably away from a focus on designs – a subject that never seemed of very much interest to Panará people who do not on the whole draw from a stock or repertoire of designs in their beadwork. In other spheres too, visual design is barely associated with specifi c names or traditions. When women painted their bodies and faces with the black dye, pjutí (Genipa americana), they rarely commented on the actual designs and did not attribute specifi c names to them. Instead they were more likely to comment on the origin of the design as originating with other people, Suya or Kayapo, for example. In more recent years, however, a greater self-consciousness regarding Panará body painting designs has emerged. By Panará designs are meant those designs that were painted by the Panará in the olden days, swankjara , by which people usually mean the time before the 1970s contact and stretching way back into a distant time which takes both a temporally as well as spatially distant aspect. The more recent appropriation of bodily designs as their own designs seems to be associated in some measure with the emerging sense of cultural distinctiveness and the very idea of ‘culture’ itself.6 Thus in the late 1990s, questions regarding designs used in body painting were almost always answered with reference to other people (usually Kayapo, but also Suya and others) from whom such designs had been learnt. And equally, a good number of songs and dances were explicitly connected to such other people. This changed slightly by the early 2000s, and more recently, festivals are often quite explicitly connected to Panará culture and are recorded audio-visually as records of Panará culture. While visual design and indeed the fi nal end product recede somewhat from what Panará women value about beadwork, the processes of making and the act of handling beads seem to be central to the value of beads. What women seem to most enjoy is the often companionable sitting together in close physical proximity, working on beadwork, sitting usually just outside a house from where the village plaza is visible and goings on across the village can be observed and commented on. Companionable working together shapes a woman’s day and it is rare for a woman to spend any length of time doing anything on her own. Indeed where she does so, she is very likely to lament the fact that she has nobody to help her or bring her water to slake her thirst and so forth. Instead, women in clan groups, meaning sisters, and their adult and adolescent daughters will go 412 Elizabeth Ewart together to their gardens which are very often adjacent or at least close to one another. They will likely harvest and return with the same produce and may well spend the rest of the day together preparing food. Earth oven cooking is an important part of Panará productive life and here too clan sisters are very likely to fi re up one earth oven for all their manioc pies. Equally, when shop bought foods are prepared such as rice or spaghetti, several sisters or an adult daughter and her mothers (all women identifi ed by a woman as her mother’s sisters [napie ton ] being identifi ed by the term ‘mother’ [napie ]) will share a big pot. What is very noticeable, however, is that the rice or manioc or whatever is being cooked is always understood to have one specifi c owner, whilst it is the productive process that is collective. Here making something together does not imply joint or collective ownership; what is jointly ‘owned’ is the process of making, not the fi nal object or product. As such it is the owner of the rice who will share out her potful, and in a jointly built earth oven, each woman will know exactly which manioc pies are hers and she will retrieve them accordingly and share them out amongst others once baked. And so it is with beadwork too. Working together collectively, possibly even copying one another’s design or working on the same kind of objects, is highly valued, while the beads themselves are always and very clearly understood to be owned by specifi c women. Beyond that, acquiring more beads from one another is a rather delicate matter as open requests are frowned upon and very rarely made amongst Panará women. This is in striking contrast to ways of asking for things from non-Panará people where people may demand things very explicitly and directly as I have argued elsewhere (Ewart 2013a). While working on beadwork together is appreciated as a valued sociable activity where skills in terms of beading technique may be learned by watching one another, actual designs in the sense of colour combinations and graphic designs on beadwork have more recently begun to be explicitly claimed as individualised knowledge. The question of where a specifi c design was learned is therefore nowadays and in contrast to the 1990s and before, frequently it seems to me, answered by saying, “I saw this design in my own head” and “nobody else knows this design”. The emphasis on individualised origins of designs as a form of intellectual property may well be connected to the wider process of coming to recognise culture and cultural practices as properties that are specifi c to individual groups of people, though more research would be necessary to fully substantiate such a claim. Indeed over the past twenty years, Panará people have been quite intensively exposed to discussions of what characterises ‘Panará culture’ and ways of reviving or reinvigorating this thing – ‘culture’ – that is meant to be theirs. The Panará term for culture, soti , refers more generally to ‘things’ and on the whole it is the case that soti refers by defi nition to something that has an owner. This includes both material objects as well as non-material things in the form of knowledge or practices. As one woman once said to me as we talked about gardening practice and knowledge of how to plant in a garden, “Panará yõ soti inkyet ” (“the things of Panará are many”). Appropriation, imitation and creation 413 In sum, working in company with one another shapes Panará daily life, but a clear distinction needs to be drawn between the collective aspects of working with one another and the idea of individual ownership of produce and implements used in working with one another.

Qualities of things Alongside the sociable working together afforded by doing beadwork, what Panará people explicitly value about beads are their hardness and their regularity of form and shape. Indeed, when commenting on whether beads are ugly or beautiful, Pan- ará women primarily reference regularity in shape, diminutive size of individual beads and then secondarily also specifi c colour. Hardness and regularity, in turn, are qualities that are identifi ed across many media. Gardens with their emphasis on regular planting patterns, asphalt roads, cement fl oors and regularity in a line of dancers who look the same are all examples of hardness or regularity. Hardness is a property of certain kinds of people, and hardness is a quality of particular kinds of speech. Witnessing something clearly is to see hard.7 Infant development is conceived of as a process of gradual hardening of the bones; being strong is expressed as having hard bones; to speak effectively and persuasively in public is to produce hard speech; soldiers, much admired but also feared by Panará people, are called “hard white people” (hipe tâti ).8 The hardness of beads makes them almost infi nitely re-usable, and it is this same hardness that guarantees their uniformity of size and shape and hence their uniformity of appearance when strung on a long line. Indeed uniformity on a line is not just valued in beads but is also an important aesthetic criterion for rows of dancers during rituals. Here it is important for everyone to look the same, most powerfully evident when women line up in long lines, with white cotton wrapped around their legs below their knees. The cotton bands form what looks like a single line all along the row of dancers (see Plate 24 ). At the same time, though, as this strong emphasis on uniformity and evenness of shape and appearance is important, Panará people also seem deeply concerned with the production of difference and the avoidance of identity. For example, at ‘fi rst contact’9 in 1972, Panará people lived distributed across six or seven villages, which collapsed into a single village, before the relocation of the entire surviving population of seventy-nine people to the Xingu Park in 1975. In the following years, even as Panará people came to see themselves as part of a bigger group identifi ed as Indians, they started to identify white people as “really different” and even as Panará people came to see themselves as part of Brazil, they produced North Americans as still more different. At the same time as the multi- village system of the 1960s collapsed, new versions of difference were produced which involved identifying other neighbouring indigenous groups as similar but different to themselves as Panará people (Ewart 2013b, 147–173). In parallel to the production and identifi cation of social difference in the form of differentiat- ing ethnonyms, Panará people also began to produce certain cultural objects and 414 Elizabeth Ewart

Plate 24 Beads and partially complete beadwork kept in an old dress (Photo by E. Ewart, 2010) practices that they increasingly identifi ed as unique and specifi c to themselves. To this end they have over the years engaged actively with various educational initia- tives aimed at recording their myths, developing an orthography of their language as well as working on the production of school text books in Panará. They have also variously been involved with indigenous mapping exercises identifying territories occupied currently and in the past by Panará people. Furthermore a number of younger Panará individuals have also been involved in fi lm making projects documenting their daily lives, stories and rituals.10 Within this broader context, ideas about collective and communal working together come into play with ideas about individual ownership and associations between new designs and individual creativity as aspects of unique cultural identities. Here glass beads offer a powerful image of processes of identifi cation and differentiation. While beads as individual objects, though ideally always in massive quantities, are evaluated in terms of their identity to one another, so on the other hand graphic designs are increasingly and explicitly claimed as unique and designed in each young woman’s head. Really beautiful beads for Panará people are identifi ed as being extremely small in size and above all regular in shape. At the same time, Panará women are intensively engaged in the exploration of what it is technically possible to make with glass beads and a single length of nylon Appropriation, imitation and creation 415

Plate 25 Aesthetics of uniformity: Panará men and women dancing (Photo by E. Ewart, 2003)

fi shing-line. The pleasure of working on beads is also the pleasure of inventing new objects, and exploring new arrangements for beads and colours. Such exploration has in recent years gone beyond simply two-dimensional explorations of different possibilities for graphic designs. Rather nowadays, three-dimensional possibilities are also being explored, as are techniques that leave gaps in the beadwork, resulting in almost lace-like appearance. So we fi nd both diversity in designs and increasing diversity in terms of colour choices as well as a strong preference for uniformity and sameness as being part of what makes beads and beadwork of such enduring value. If creating or making things for people like the Panará is really principally a process of transformation, and if objects in Amazonia are frequently characterised by imperfection as argued by Viveiros de Castro, then the objects made from glass beads seem to capture, embody and refl ect these ideas perfectly. Beads by virtue of their nature as enduring materials lend themselves precisely to a potentially unending process of fashioning, undoing and re-fashioning. And by the same token, the fi nal objects are always potentially imperfect, not quite right and may thus be undone once again. By looking at beads and the way Panará women engage with them we get a chance of seeing a creative process and a pleasure in making in which the fi nal object is decentred and where being creative lies almost wholly in the doing rather than in the object made (see Plate 25 ).

Notes 1 I here use the term ‘white’ person in keeping with the way Panará people translate hipe into the Portuguese term branco by which they above all mean ‘non-indigenous’ person irrespective of skin colour. 416 Elizabeth Ewart 2 This idea of qualities cutting across material and social domains is of course not in itself novel, owing much to structural analysis understood here as analytical method. 3 It should further be noted that this tracing of qualities across domains should properly not stop at group boundaries either but rather may be traced across peoples and other beings in Amazonia. 4 This is based on what traders in São Paulo’s Avenida 25 de março have told me, and on my own empirical observation that it is increasingly diffi cult to fi nd the much more expensive Jablonex/Preciosa brand beads in São Paulo, while Chinese brand beads are in ample supply. In 2013 there seemed to be only one trader still supplying Jablonex/ Preciosa beads. 5 For a clear account and critique see e.g. Hallam and Ingold (2007). 6 There is a considerable literature on this topic with respect to indigenous Amazonian people; for examples, see (Jackson 1995; Oakdale 2004; Turner 1991). 7 Interestingly English does not allow for the expression of vision as being hard. We cannot see ‘hard’, and indeed something that is ‘hard to see’ refers to visual diffi culty rather than the positively evaluated quality of hardness of vision that Panará people express. 8 Or more properly ‘hard enemies’ though the term hipe which forms a generic category of ‘non-Panará’ or enemy-other is nowadays usually understood to refer to white people, in the sense of non-indigenous people. 9 Elsewhere I problematise this concept of ‘fi rst contact’ with respect to Panará history (Ewart 2013b) (Ewart 2015), 200. See also the work of (Giraldin 1997). 10 For examples, see Kierasy yõ sâtí, and Para os nossos netos, both fi lms fi lmed and directed by Panará fi lm makers under the auspices of the Video nas aldeias indigenous video project that has run for many successful years in Brazil (www.videonasaldeias. org.br/2009/, accessed 10/11/15).

References Balfour, Henry. 1893. The evolution of decorative art . London: Rivington, Percival & Co. Crocker, Jon Christopher. 1985. Vital souls: Bororo cosmology, natural symbolism, and shamanism . Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Ewart, Elizabeth. 2013a. Demanding, giving, sharing, and keeping: Panará ideas of economy. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 18 (1):31–50. ———. 2013b. Space and society in central Brazil: A Panará ethnography, LSE monographs in social anthropology . London: Bloomsbury. ———. 2015. Coisas com as quais os antropólogos se preocupam: grupos de descendência espacial entre os Panará. Revista de Antropologia 58 (1):199–221. Fausto, Carlos. 2000. Of enemies and pets: Warfare and shamanism in Amazonia. American Ethnologist 26 (4):933–56. Giraldin, Odair. 1997. Cayapó e Panará: luta e sobrevivência de um povo Jê no Brasil Central, Série Pesquisas . Campinas, SP, Brasil: Editora da Unicamp. Hallam, Elizabeth, and Tim Ingold. 2007. Creativity and cultural improvisation, A S A monographs . Oxford: Berg. Hugh-Jones, Christine. 1979. From the Milk River: Spatial and temporal processes in northwest Amazonia . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, Jean. 1995. Culture, genuine and spurious: The politics of Indianness in the Vau- pés, Colombia. American Ethnologist 22 (1):3–27. Oakdale, Suzanne. 2004. The culture conscious Brazilian Indian: Representing and rework- ing Indianness in Kayabi political discourse. American Ethnologist 31 (1):60–75. Overing, Joanna. 1989. The aesthetics of production: The sense if community among the Cubeo and Piaroa. Dialectical Anthropology 14:159–75. Appropriation, imitation and creation 417 Turner, Terence. 1991. Representing, resisting, rethinking: Historical transformations of Kayapo culture and anthropological consciousness . In Colonial situations: essays on the contextualization of ethnographic knowledge , edited by G. Stocking. Madison: Univer- sity of Wisconsin Press. Vilaça, Aparecida. 2002. Making kin out of others in Amazonia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8 (2):347–65. ———. 2010. Strange enemies: Indigenous agency and scenes of encounters in Amazonia, cultures and practice of violence . Durham, NC; London: Duke University Press. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1996. Images of nature and society in Amazonian ethnology. Annual Review of Anthropology 25:179–200. ———. 2012. Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere. HAU: Master- class Series vol. 1 , ed G. da Col. 27 The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu Kinship and continuity on Paama Island

Craig Lind

Vanuatu’s sand-drawings are complex geometric designs made from a single uninterrupted line that begins and ends at the same point, creating a self-enclosed form. Drawn with a fi nger directly on the ground, in sand or ash, sand-drawings epitomise the evanescence of things while manifesting personal qualities, enliv- ened in the moments of their creation. While ‘offi cial’ representations stress ‘original social function’ (UNESCO 2008), tending to view sand-drawing as a repository (USP 2013) for retaining and conveying socio-cultural information intact, Paama Island sand-drawers describe their experiences of sand-drawing in a way that is deeply personal. Indeed, each time a sand-drawing is created anew, the drawer recalls specifi c people, places and shared activities and abilities. From this perspective, the qualities, impact or ‘beauty’ of sand-drawing are latent and emergent in the moments of their creation, during which the simultaneity of a drawer and their predecessors’ shared capacity to create become tangible and present aspects of these compositions; sand-drawing reveals shared qualities that, for Paama Islanders, intimate a sameness, or ‘oneness’ (tai ), that in idealised form is shared by siblings born within a territorial clan. I suggest that a sand-drawing’s ‘beauty’ is momentarily apparent in its creation and evanescence, because these conditions manifest its lived, relational qualities (Bateson 1972); qualities that reveal and recreate bonds that are important to the continuity of Paama Island’s agnatic clans.

Evanescence Impermanence is one of the most striking aspects of sand-drawing; additionally, its visual complexity means that sand-drawings are not easy to recall, and they are diffi cult to reproduce. Both of these conditions, evanescence and complexity, are important to what I have to say here and both play an important role in sand- drawing’s visual impact and how it might be said to be an art, or thing of beauty. Lacking resilience or stability, sand-drawings do not exist long enough to be con- templated in the same way that a visitor to an art gallery might view a painting or sculpture; both of which are created in an enduring medium and located in a protected environment designed to ensure their longevity. If sand-drawings offer The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 419 a basis for contemplation, it is restricted to the space and time of their creation. Given the fl uidity and malleability of the material from which sand-drawings are made, it is imperative that a viewer is present in the moment during which they pass from creation to destruction. From the point of view of a sand-drawer or observer, evanescence, the ebb and fl ow of a sand-drawing’s making and unmaking, is as signifi cant, if not more signifi cant, than its fi nished form (Ingold 2010). This is because a sand- drawing reveals capacities that are known to originate from beyond any single drawer. Each time a sand-drawing is created it inescapably recollects, adds to and transforms (Wagner 1986) one’s experience of the designs. Moreover, sand- drawing exhibits an aesthetic of fl ow and containment that is particularly common in Paama Islanders’ descriptions of kinship and marriage; it is an aesthetic that aligns people and stresses their unity while simultaneously rendering them distinct from people associated with other clans. Crucially, though, sand-drawing does not manage this by reiterating some blueprint for social grouping; rather, sand-drawing achieves this by drawing people together because of shared experiences, personal recollection of the things that render sand-drawing signifi cant for them. That such personal recollection might expand in scale to recreate a clan is by virtue of the commitments that sand-drawers feel towards following (Ingold 2010) their predecessors. Sand-drawings could not achieve this if they were fi xed in form because they would become simple references; as ephemera, and like people, they do not endure; as such their existence depends upon the commitment that each subsequent generation adopts to follow the lines that their predecessors taught to them. If we consider sand-drawings from this point of view, as a process, an ongoing activity rather than an object to be completed, then we can lay aside the question of what a sand-drawing means. Indeed, in order to understand what sand-drawing does, we must turn from the idea that it is concerned with conveying meaning, and, instead, consider how its personal investments, conscious and unconscious motivations and signifi cances (Bateson 1972) draw sand-drawers to commit signifi cant periods of time to following a practice taught to them by their now dead kin. This approach moves from a semiotics of sand-drawing to consider how sand-drawings are done and what they do (Strathern 1988; Gell 1998).

Resisting sand-drawing Paama is the smallest island in the Malampa province of Vanuatu, a Y-shaped archipelago of eighty-three islands in the south-west Pacifi c, 1576 miles north-east of Sydney, Australia. It is with the people of Paama Island that I learned about what they call tisien teni atan (lit.: ‘write/draw/sketch upon the ground’), a practice more commonly known as ‘sand-drawing’ in Vanuatu, academia, and among heritage experts (Vanuatu Cultural Centre 2015; Huffman 1996; UNESCO 2008). Arriving on Paama in March 2002, I had no interest in sand-drawing. I had come to Vanuatu to study inter-island mobility, migration and the continuity of Paama 420 Craig Lind identity in the capital, Port Vila; sand-drawing seemed irrelevant. None-the-less, the subject became inescapable and eventually central to my understanding of Paama people in Vanuatu. Moments after I arrived in my host village, Lulep Netan, east coast Paama Island, John, a young man around twenty years old whom I discovered to be my adoptive brother (tuak ), sat in front of me and created a sand-drawing. Focused on migration and travel, however, I chose not to enquire about it. Even after many of the young male and female children that I was taught to call siblings (also tuak ) inundated me with crayon drawings of multi-coloured sand-drawing designs, I was still resolute that it lay outside of my research interests. Within weeks, I became aware that every child and young adult seemed to be interested in sand-drawing, though their parents were most often disdainful of the practice as a waste of time; they were nice to look at, sure, but they were nothing of any importance. This lack of interest in sand-drawing exhibited by John’s parental generation was matched by their lack of ability to create sand-drawings. My friend, Joe, a Presbyterian church elder in his mid-sixties, explained that they had been absent from Paama Island when they could have learned how to create sand-drawings. Opportunities to travel for work, new demands to earn money to pay for school fees, etc. encouraged migration from Paama, and helped sever the intergenerational connectedness through which, I was told, sand-drawing had been passed along in the past. Consequentially, their children, such as John, left behind to live with their grandparents, learned how to draw in the sand. As such, these parents’ disinterest refl ects their own intergenerational detachment from kin and from their island home at a time when they would have expected to learn about things like sand-drawing. Those most interested in sand-drawing comprised a small number of young men aged from around fi fteen to thirty years old and it was one of these, my adoptive brother Harris ( Figure 27.1 ), who drew my interest to sand-drawing. At fi rst, I remained convinced that the subject was peripheral to my research, and although Harris very patiently took it upon himself to teach me how to draw in the sand, my interest was not academic. I warmed to sand-drawing because of the friendships that grew from learning and practicing these designs with my siblings and I enjoyed sand-drawing as a way of occupying myself during the empty hours that accompany anthropological fi eldwork. Looking back, it strikes me that my naive approach to the subject offered me a novel understanding; lacking scholarly urgency to relate the subject to academic themes, I began to understand the motivations and signifi cances that sand-drawing had for drawers themselves. When my Paama friends taught me about sand-drawing it did not appear as a system of communication, a kind of writing, a repository for oral history (UNESCO 2008; USP 2013). Rather, they taught me that their sand-drawings were deeply personal and bound to the time they spent with people, in particular places. Moreover, they taught me that they felt a commitment to continue to pass on their sand-drawings so that the memory of the people who taught them would live on in future generations, so that their children would know where and who they came from. The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 421

Figure 27.1 Harris Kamen draws. Lulep Netan Village, Paama Island, Vanuatu

Paama sand-drawing As elsewhere in north-central Vanuatu, Paama Island’s sand-drawings are created in the sand or volcanic ash covering the ground; the specifi c qualities of the ground in one’s own place are important to a sand-drawer. Paama sand-drawers, living 100 miles south in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, say that the ground there is very different to the volcanic ash in the north of their island and that this makes it very diffi cult to create sand-drawings well in places other than the village they acknowledged as their place of origin. Signifi cantly, people and places are coterminous in Vanuatu; Paama people observe they came out from the ground of their place, and they are not alone in this (see Jolly 1994). Many, throughout Melanesia, make similar acknowledgements, leading some scholars to observe that kinship “is, in a sense, geography” (Leach 2004, 212) and that people can be considered to be “a material manifestation of . . . [their] place” (Toren 1994, 164). The associations that people have with their place are also manifest in their expressions of creativity. That is, a person’s capacity to create things, and the knowledge that this entails, is known to stem from within places. Furthermore, a person’s ability to glean knowledge and abilities from places is gendered; indeed, women, who are expected to move to their husband’s place following marriage, are said to be able to grow, thrive and access knowledge far from their place of 422 Craig Lind birth (Bolton 1999), while males, who should ideally remain within their clan’s territory, access knowledge that reinforces their rights to dwell. Signifi cantly, irrespective of gender, individual people are not regarded as the source of innovations or creative expressions. Rather, these always originate from outside of the person and they are known to be transmitted to people through others, either knowledgeable kin or non-humans, located in and able to convey knowledge belonging to particular places (ibid 1999; Weiner 1991). These observations are important for understanding how and in what ways sand-drawing might be said to be beautiful.

Are sand-drawings beautiful? Discussing the relationship between female creativity, and place, on the island of Ambae, Vanuatu, Bolton (1999, 44) explains that her observations concerning the “beauty of a view, or the splendour of a sunset nearly always . . . [invoked] a puzzled, non-assenting response”; in Bolton’s experience, such things simply did not appear especially worthy of remark for ni-Vanuatu (people of Vanuatu). Instead, “ni-Vanuatu reserve verbal appreciation for the made environment” (ibid ), that is, an environment that reveals the effi cacy of human encounters with a place. Similarly, while Paama Islanders do not wax lyrical when confronted by a sunset, they take time to express satisfaction when looking at a well-kept garden, which, in Paama estimation, is a garden cleared of debris and organised so that crops are grown apart; so that taro, for example, is not allowed to grow alongside manioc/ cassava. Gardens lacking these qualities are commonly derided for being olaboat (‘all about’, disorganised) and for the way they refl ect their maker’s carelessness and lack of respect for maintaining Paama ideals. Ideally, crops should be contained within designated areas, separate from others. Put bluntly, ni-Vanuatu fi nd aesthetic satisfaction, or beauty, in things that evince the effi cacy (Gell 1998) of well confi gured relationships (Bateson 1972; Hirsch 2004). I do not want to suggest that ni-Vanuatu reserve aesthetic appreciation for things that evince engagement as an “intervention of humans into what . . . [might be] imagined as ‘natural’” (Hirsch 1994, 6), because this would not be true at all. In fact, the places that Paama Islanders occupy are active participants in their encounters with humans, because each clan territory is occupied by non-human creatures who infl uence human behaviour and extend to them emplaced capacities. Daeman , for example, are non-human creatures who dwell on the thresholds of clan territories. Daeman are noteworthy for their desirable capabilities, such as the ability to heal people, and attract wealth. However, daeman do not possess abilities in their own right; their miraculous capacities are carried by a small stone, which daeman contain in their chest or navel. To be clear, it is the stone and not the daeman that is a source of ability. In fact, a daeman ’s capacity to express various capabilities depends on its connection to this stone. Capabilities exhibited by a daeman , then, are actually qualities of a place, which a daeman embodies by containing the place itself, materialised and scaled to the size of a stone; qualities originating in a place, then, are detachable and transactable. Commonly stories about daeman concern The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 423 encounters with humans who attempt to trade, persuade or coerce it to give up its stone, after which the daeman is rendered powerless, its abilities transferred to the human bearer of the stone. Many different kinds of non-humans inhabit the islands of Vanuatu, though daeman are notable for the stones they contain, stones that objectify processes in which humans can take on qualities belonging to a particular place. Many other benevolent or ambivalent non-humans can also transfer emplaced abilities, though they often do so without any direct object of mediation; such creatures include those described by Bolton (1999), who extend capacities to people directly or in places that render people suggestive to non-human infl uences (Lindstrom 1990; Weiner 1991). In each case, these creatures bestow humans with characteristic behaviours and capacities that are grounded in the landscape of a place, such as a clan territory. Knowing that people animate distinctive emplaced qualities, ni-Vanuatu commonly acknowledge people in terms of their place. Joe Onis made this clear to me when he explained: “I still do not know Scotland, but when I look at you, it is the same as me looking at Scotland” (fi eld recording, 08.2003, Lulep Village, Paama, Vanuatu). Such observations are common and ni-Vanuatu often drew my attention to another’s characteristics by referring to them in terms of a place; hemia Malekula , hemia Mataso, (that is Malekula Island, that is Mataso Island) and this, without further detail, was suffi cient explanation for a person’s idiosyncratic behaviours. These observations are important for what I say here concerning the ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ of sand-drawing, not least so because both ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ need to be considered in the specifi c context of the visual and aesthetic sensitivity that I have just outlined for Paama Islanders. It would, in Bateson’s (1972, 150) terms, be “a mistake to think of . . . art as being about any one matter other than relationship”. Here, sand-drawing is expressive of an ecology of Paama subjectivities in which particular locations; people, living and dead; non-human creatures; and how people experience their being/belonging to a place are all important to the way sand-drawing is perceived. Moreover, the forming activity of sand-drawing, its fl owing lines and its self-contained forms, evinces an aesthetic germane to Paama Islanders’ perception of kinship and a person’s rights and obligations. In a simple sense, Paama sand-drawings could be described as compositions that express an ideal form, which, much like a well-kept garden, is concerned with defi nition/ unity and separation/specifi city. This interest in unity, ‘oneness’ (tai ) (Lind 2010), is important here; such oneness is expressed when people present themselves as a clan working towards a single end in ceremonial exchange and, signifi cantly, people who do so are acknowledged as kin (Lind 2010; Rio 2007). To leave things at this, albeit ethnographically justifi able level would fail to convey what I think is most important about sand-drawing; the way that Paama sand- drawers experience infl uences and personal signifi cances. Thus far, the description is too broad to engage with how such ideals are expressed and formed in more intimate associations in which sand-drawers learn their ‘art’ and embody their commitments to follow their teachers by continuing to draw in the sand. 424 Craig Lind The intimacy of sand-drawing Sand-drawings are created in intimate settings and this is common throughout north-central Vanuatu (Zagala 2004). Commonly a drawer runs through their repertoire of designs alone, or in the company of a few others, who watch, copy and learn, or make sand-drawings themselves. It is unusual for a drawer to create sand-drawings for a large number of viewers. Only rarely and recently, when arts or cultural festivals encourage large gatherings, have sand-drawings been created for more than a few people to witness. When Paama Island sand- drawers spoke to me about their involvement in such events, they did so with both a sense of pride and reservation. One of my teachers, Mansen, explained that he was very proud that others could see that his grandfather, Morrison, had chosen him to carry on creating sand-drawings. However, he was concerned that viewers might copy him. Mansen’s grandfather was clear that he should not share his sand-drawing with anyone other than his siblings (tuak ), and, in time, his children (ē hon ) or grandchildren (havuk ). This was agreed upon by all the people I spoke with; despite the differing appreciations of sand-drawing’s importance, everyone agreed that they should not be shared with people outside their ā mal (agnatic clan). Siblings epitomise sharing and co-operation within a clan; they are said to be tai (one) ( Figure 27.2 ), undifferentiated, and sharing is an expectation of this oneness. Indeed, all the sand-drawers I knew recognised one another as siblings. Sharing is so germane to siblingship that siblingship itself is expressed in acts of sharing and co-operation within a place (Lind 2010); moreover, siblingship is not a biologically constituted or genealogically continuous relation (Bamford & Leach 2009). Indeed, people from several north-east Paama clans share siblingship when they come together to conduct an exchange vis-à-vis others, such that each person’s relational status is not stable. Alec made this clear during wedding preparations around one year into my research. Introducing himself, he said, “today I am the groom’s avop (mother’s brother), though usually, I am his ited (father)”. Mansen explained:

because we come here today to work together (m ūm, also cooperate/share), we are the groom’s avop . It does not matter that my fathers, my uncles and my brothers are all here. Today we are all the groom’s avop , because we have come together to prepare him for his wedding. ( ﬁ eldnotes, November 2003)

One might say that it is the work, among other things, that people share that makes the person and not the person who makes the work. A person can be recognised as a sibling for a single event, or more enduringly, should they express a commitment to continue to share responsibilities. To stress the point, those who exhibit shared commitments through shared activities, and this includes sand-drawing, are acknowledged as sharing the same, or similar, personal qualities which infer degrees of kinship. Figure. 27.2 Lumali Timi – the two siblings/twins, pencil on paper, by Mansen Kenet, Etout āmal, Luli Village, north-east Paama Island. The sand-drawing is created in two parts. The fi rst, by one sibling, is completed by a second sibling in an expression of their oneness Kenet & Lind 2009 426 Craig Lind Practicing and becoming a sand-drawer Each Paama sand-drawing begins with a simple grid; despite preceding, and remaining visible throughout the process of making a sand-drawing, this grid is not considered to be a part of the sand-drawing itself, which is circuitous and made by the continuous movement of a drawer’s fi nger passing through sand. The fl uidity of this line forming movement is important and the quality of a sand-drawing is, in no small part, dependant on a person’s capacity to make this line forming movement in a fl uid and continuous way, so that the sand-drawing is composed entirely from an unbroken, or ‘never-ending line’ (Layard 1937, 118). However, some sand-drawings feature extruding lines ( Figure 27.3 ), seemingly contradicting the ideal that they should be completed in a single fl uid movement. However, Paama’s sand-drawers express no concern for ideals and insist that any extrusions are decoration imposed upon a form that is produced by a single, uninterrupted line, that ends where it began, resulting in a self-enclosed form. I mentioned that enclosed forms or containment is concerned with unity. This unity is analogous to the oneness of siblings and, more generally, of the agnatic distinctiveness of a clan vis-à-vis other clans. Similarly, a sand-drawing’s fl owing continuous line intimates the movement of women who enter a clan in marriage and who leave, as daughters, and marry in each subsequent generation. This aesthetic of movement and containment is, in many important respects, analogous with descriptions of marriage and birth which foreground movement and emplacement as processes through which the life of a clan is perpetuated (Lind 2014). Almost as soon as a sand-drawing is completed, it is swept away by the drawer. Neither longevity nor permanence is admirable or desirable qualities of Paama sand-drawing. These forms are ephemera, fl eeting things, not meant to dwell in the eyes of their observers for more than a few moments. Bernard Deacon is very clear on this point:

I have photographed and got native drawings of some of the designs, but to the native these are not interesting, what is interesting is my execution of the

Figure 27.3 Ah – Black Crab, pen on paper, by Morrison Hungahari (deceased), Etout āmal, Luli Village, north-east Paama Island Kenet & Lind 2009 The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 427 designs . . . the great thing is to move smoothly and continuously through it from starting-point to starting-point. (1934, 1–2)

It is clear that a person’s movement is an appreciable quality of sand-drawing itself (ibid ) and this supports Gell’s (1998) observation that sand-drawing should be seen as a display of effi cacy. Signifi cantly, since a person’s creative abilities do not originate from within themselves, sand-drawing exteriorises a person’s inner, or unseen, qualities (see Strathern 1979). Thus, the drawings register another person; that is, one’s predecessor and teacher in sand-drawing, the kinship they share with the drawer and their shared connection to a place. Signifi cantly, this kinship expresses the drawer’s oneness (tai ) and shared origin from within a clan stemming from a particular place. I turn to elaborate these points by discussing how I came to learn about sand-drawing and what it meant to my teachers to be a sand-drawer.

Learning to draw in the sand My lessons began informally when Harris visited my host village, Lulep Netan, from neighbouring Luli. Harris frequently came to Lulep Netan to share news with my adoptive father, Silas, spending the night in my house before returning the following day. This day, having spoken with Silas, Harris told me that he wanted to show me how to create a simple sand-drawing. We walked to a place away from the eyes of anyone passing through or nearby Silas’s yard. Concealed, Harris took a short, dried central blade from a banana frond that he had stolen from the large bunch comprising one of the household’s brooms. He squatted and swept the ground in front of him, clearing it of all but the smallest grains of volcanic dust. This space defi ned, he began to draw the simple grid that formed the basis of this sand-drawing: four intersecting lines making a form that anyone who has played the game of noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) will be familiar with; the grid looked familiar, though what followed seemed so complex I was sure I would mess it up. Harris placed his right index fi nger at the top-left intersection and then drew a diagonal line towards the top-right extruding line. Once here his fi nger traced a long curve through the top-right intersection, on through the left continuing to the top-left extruding point. His fi nger never left the black sand as he moved smoothly, following a confusing path of diagonal and curved lines through the grid, until his fi nger returned to the place in which his drawing had begun and now ended. Returning to this ending/starting point, Harris lifted his fi nger from the sand and said, “This is water taro pudding. Now you try it.” I copied Harris, drawing the simple grid before beginning to attempt the sand- drawing while Harris watched. My concentration and fi rst attempt at sand-drawing were broken by an almost inaudible “Tut” followed by a handful of volcanic ash thrown over my effort. Harris laughed, then said, “It’s ok, this is what our grandfathers did when we messed it up . . . we all mess it up at fi rst”. “Now”, he said, “you start again . . .” 428 Craig Lind I learned that the ability a person has to create a sand-drawing relies on closely following another’s movements until the route is familiar. Then the work is recreation; my teachers insisted that I must recreate sand-drawings every day or I would forget; the complexity of sand-drawing can only be recreated by one person’s commitment to practicing and recreating the movements of another over and over. I recall the abstract, general features of which a sand-drawing is composed for sure. It is easy enough to remember a circle, a diagonal line, a small loop or a curve; it is much less easy to recreate the specifi c route through which a line must travel to create a specifi c sand-drawing anew. To achieve this with fl uid dexterity, a drawer must commit to continually recreating their sand-drawings, and in doing so, they also recreate the movements of their predecessors. Signifi cantly, this recollection contains more; my own recollection of sand-drawing is bound to time spent with my Paama friends; the two are inseparable – each draws on the other, so to speak. I cannot create a sand-drawing without also recalling the sounds of waves breaking upon Lulep Village’s shoreline; the sound of Harris laughing as he threw volcanic dust across my early attempts; the feel of the dust under my fi nger tip; the smell of smoke and food wrapped up in leaves, cooking among red hot stones; the interest my learning elicited in others; and the friendships I made through sharing these experiences with the men I learned to call tuak (brother). This should be obvious; of course the two cannot be detached any more than a sand-drawing can be appreciated as a collection of abstract geometric forms. The young Paama men who shared their knowledge with me also spoke about the memories they have of the, now dead, men who taught them how to draw on the ground. In the moments when they recreated the lines of a sand-drawing and in the pauses between the creation and destruction of these designs, they told me the names of their grandfathers, they spoke about their affection for them, the hours spent by their side, the special treats they were given, the stories they were told, where they walked and what they learned about their place from these men. Some told me that they felt their grandfathers must have considered them especially important to have taught them how to draw in the sand; others told me how they followed their grandfather closely, never leaving their side, being rewarded with the time, comfort and knowledge they were given in return; they all laughed when they told me about the remonstrations they received when they failed to do a sand-drawing properly or when they boasted or showed-off their knowledge to others. Each sand-drawing is surfeit with the personal recollections of the young men who create them; young men who evince the presence of their predecessors and the way knowledge of who they are and where they come from was passed to them. This time and commitment, shared from grandparent to child, remain a perceptible aspect of sand-drawing; each time a sand-drawing is created it reveals the presence of another; one person’s capacity to produce sand-drawing evinces the work that another put into making them the person/sand-drawer they are. Indeed, sand-drawing is important for the way that it creates a person by binding them up in and revealing the qualities they share with others, qualities that make them appear as one (tai ). Such a person, like a sand-drawing, is both a recreation and a The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 429 unique person in each birth; that is, a person of a particular place (a clan) exhibiting the qualities and knowledge of that place in a way that reveals the simultaneity of Paama people through their shared capacity to create together. A short ethnographic vignette makes the point I am concerned with here much more clearly:

I recall an afternoon in mid-2003 when I sat practising sand-drawings with Mansen, a young Paamese man and tuak (brother) of mine. We sat in his father’s yard when Amos, Mansen’s brother, approached holding a wooden cross under one arm. I asked Amos who the cross was for and he replied simply that it was for the old guy. I knew that a Paamese chief called George had died a few weeks ago and so I asked Amos if this cross was for George’s grave; “No, it is for that old guy”, he said, pointing at the sand-drawing Man- sen had just completed. Amos meant that the cross was for Mansen’s grandfather, Morrison, the man who taught Mansen how to draw in the sand. Morrison was recalled and his presence strong enough in the geometrical ﬁ gure that Mansen had produced that the drawing, and not his name, was presented as the identity of the man for whom the cross was intended.

Mansen quickly swept the drawing away. Gone now, the drawing could accumulate no more of these moments in the present. In removing this sand-drawing, it was as if Mansen was hiding his fond childhood memories, placing them apart from Morrison’s death and keeping them alive so they could be spoken about again in the future, perhaps when he, as a grandfather, chose to reveal this knowledge to his grandson.

Sand-drawing as object of analysis and human heritage Before concluding, I should say a little about how sand-drawing has been understood in anthropology, and about its appraisal as heritage and human genius (e.g. UNESCO 2008 has not considered the importance of the personal perspectives I describe here [though see Rodman 1991]). Kirk Huffman, former curator of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, has this to say about the subject:

[Sand-drawings] . . . can sometimes have different levels of meaning depending on the context in which they are done . . . Some refl ect stories of the animal . . . and natural world, others humorous or risqué human affairs. Some depict material objects . . . Others depict aspects of the spirit world or historical events. Many are linked to other activities – string fi gures, games, songs, messages, fl ute or drum rhythms, dance patterns, tattoo and mat designs, body paint and mask designs, mythical heroes, specifi c geographical features, spirit travel and the world of ancestral spirits, membership of secret societies and so on. Some can even combine almost all of these aspects at the same time meaning different things or levels, depending on who is watching or participating and at what time. (1996, 249–250) 430 Craig Lind Here, sand-drawing appears to represent a complex ‘layered’ model of society; a vehicle for the retention of ‘cosmology’, ‘ceremony’, ‘kinship’, ‘history’, ‘ritual’, ‘initiation’, ‘art’ and ‘myth’, among many other things (Deacon & Wedgwood 1934; Layard 1935, 1937; Zagala 2004). However, such categories are removed from the lived temporality and reality of sand-drawers themselves. Signifi cantly, Huffman (1996) is very clear about the fact that sand-drawing cannot be properly appreciated or understood in a static form. However, the analytical categorisation, through which it is made to appear meaningful, produces its own semantic fi xity on these evanescent fi gures. More recently, in 2003, UNESCO recognised sand-drawing as representative of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” (2008). The Vanuatu Cultural Council (VNCC) responded, establishing a national action plan, and the Vanuatu National Museum and Cultural Centre (VKS) made the preservation of sand- drawing for future generations a priority. Such moves have done a great deal to take sand-drawing out of the intimate surroundings in which it is conventionally practiced, so that its signifi cance can be shared with a larger, global audience (Zagala 2004; UNESCO 2008). Moreover, sand-drawing has emerged as a subject of expertise; knowledgeable artists have been identifi ed from among its practitioners and enlisted to exhibit their dexterity and knowledge of sand-drawings for tourists and school parties. A strict set of criteria has emerged, establishing offi cial defi nitions regarding the qualities and signifi cances both of sand-drawers and sand-drawings. Draw- ers are now placed in a hierarchy of ability: “A master sand drawer must . . . possess not only a strong knowledge of graphic patterns but . . . should have the ability to interpret the drawings for spectators” (ibid ). Retention has been made crucial if Vanuatu is to avoid “the loss of the tradition’s deeper symbolic signifi cance and original social function” (ibid ). It is hard not to view sand- drawing as a social charter, a textual account of rules governing social conduct and serving social functions. In UNESCO terms, sand-drawing is a “means of communication [that operates] among the members of some 80 ethnolinguistic groups”; it is presented as a kind of “multifunctional ‘writing’” (ibid ). In such terms, sand-drawing appears a vehicle for retaining, controlling and conveying important cultural knowledge. In short, sand-drawing has been apprehended as a complex form of communication, a subject for objects in nature, culture or society, making sand-drawing appear as a signifi er for some pre-existing piece of information, or purpose. The connection between sand-drawing, meaning and communicative function has encouraged heritage experts to reduce the complexity that Huffman’s (1996) account expresses, in order to reinforce what is taken to be its “original social function” (UNESCO 2008). Sand-drawing is thus emerging in offi cial representations as a kind of text whose function it is to preserve encyclopaedic-like knowledge concerning traditional life.

Vanuatu has a cache of a couple of thousand sand drawings and each motif has its own accompanying story or legend, songs, music and accompanying The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 431 dance or traditional game. This makes the art of sand drawing one of the most powerful vehicles for the storing and transmission of oral histories. (USP 2013)

This tendency, to look for a more signifi cant, singular or static form of information at the heart of sand-drawing has several implications. First, it enables the formation of a hierarchy of knowledge, which diminishes the signifi cance of multiple or competing understandings concerning sand-drawing. Second, it allows for a hierarchy to emerge in which experts and artists can be identifi ed and set apart from others as individuals (see UNESCO 2008). Such ‘offi cial’ representations threaten to disenfranchise many ni-Vanuatu from a practice they feel very strongly about for the way that it evokes things of personal signifi cance; such personal claims or associations differ from authorised accounts which stress the general, cultural or human signifi cances of the practice. Although Huffman (1996), Zagala (2004) and others have insisted that sand- drawing’s signifi cance rests in its active or lived practice, the emphasis placed on meaning or communicative content and function has lent itself to heritage concerns which has sought to refi ne and reify the practice as an object with specifi c content and meaning. In turn, this has led to sand-drawers’ being represented as individual artists and custodians of specifi c and discrete forms of knowledge. Such description errs with fi ndings that Melanesian sociality is characterised by an absence of overarching or pre-established order or ‘society’ (Bamford 2007; Crook 2007). Recourse to an abstract form of order or society is ethnographically problematic in a Melanesian context where “the world is not seen to rest upon a ready-made system of cultural distinctions in need of being perpetuated”, and where “it is the act of constituting those distinctions in the fi rst place that is . . . primary” (Bamford 1998, 168).

Ending at the beginning I said that sand-drawing epitomised the evanescence of things, and this is a crucially important aspect of the practice; its fl owing in and out of presence is important to how sand-drawing is experienced. Indeed, the ephemerality of these fi gures places a demand on the commitment of a drawer who must continually create or lose what has been shared with them. From the personal perspectives discussed here, sand-drawing is not representative of a system of kinship or communication. Rather, sand-drawing is constitutive of kinship, identifi able as a unique creation each time it is made while enmeshed in its associations with others. In such terms, sand-drawing is not best understood as a ‘subject’ for a preformed ‘object’. Such a relationship belongs within a ‘tradition’ of semiological analysis which clashes with accounts of Melanesian sociality, in which there are no pre-formed social relationships and in which relationships must be created through human and environmental activities (Wagner 1977; Leach 2004; Bamford 2007). Evanescence and recreation are important aspects of sand-drawing because each time a sand-drawing is created moments spent with those others, through 432 Craig Lind whom one is enabled to create sand-drawings, emerge. As confi gurations, or relata (Bateson 1972), gathered in an effective form (Strathern 1988), sand-drawings have an appreciable quality, an impact or beauty. However, each sand-drawing evinces multiple confi gurations; not because each potential confi guration points to discrete social phenomena; because the associations are personal and steeped in the varying experience that viewers and drawers have. The specifi city of each rendering is crucial; if the recreation of time spent among others is an aspect of sand-drawing, which it undoubtedly is, then it is this that compels one to continue to follow one’s predecessors. As an inescapable outcome of doing so, one recreates commitments to an agnatic clan; sand-drawers do not reinstate a model or system amounting to an abstract entity such as society, when they draw. Rather they reconstitute the very personal associations that bind them to the commitments they feel towards their predecessors, and these commitments establish the very basis upon which Paama clans experience their continuance or their oneness (tai ) across generations.

References Bamford, S. 1998. Humanized Landscapes, Embodied Worlds: land and the construction of intergenerational continuity among the Kameaof Papua New Guinea. Social Analysis , 42(3), 28–54. Bamford, S. 2007. Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Refl ections of Life and Biotechnology . California: University of California Press. Bamford, S. & Leach, J. 2009. Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Method Reconsid- ered . New York: Berghahn Books. Bateson, G. 1972. Style, grace, and Information in Primitive Art. In Steps Towards and Ecology of Mind , 128–156. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bolton, L. 1999. Women, Place and Practice in Vanuatu: A View from Ambae. Oceania , 70(1), 43–55. Crook, T. 2007. Anthropological Knowledge, Secrecy and Bolivip, Papua New Guinea: Exchanging Skin . Oxford: OUP/British Academy. Deacon, B. & Wedgwood, C. H. 1934. Geometrical Drawings from Malekula and Other Islands of the New Hebrides. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland , 64, 129–175. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: an anthropological theory . Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hirsch, E. 1994. Introduction. In The Anthropology of Landscape , E. Hirsch & M. O’Hanlon (eds). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hirsch, E. 2004. Techniques of Vision: Photography, Disco and Renderings of Present Perceptions in Highland Papua. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1(1), 19–39. Huffman, K. 1996. “We Write on the Ground”: Sand-Drawings and Their Associations in Northern Vanuatu. In Arts of Vanuatu, Joel Bonnemaison, Kirk Huffman, Christian Kaufmann & Darrell Tryon (eds.), 247–253. Bathurst: Crawford House. Ingold, T. 2010. The Textility of Making. Cambridge Journal of Economics , 34, 91–102. Jolly, Margaret. 1994. Women of the Place: kastom, colonialism and Gender in Vanuatu . Victoria: Harwood Academic Publishers. Kenet, M. & Lind, C. 2009. Wan Smol Buk Blong San-Droing . Vanuatu Cultural Centre Archive. The beauty of sand-drawing in Vanuatu 433 Layard, J. 1935. The Labyrinth in the Megalithic Areas of Malekula, the Deccan, Scandi- navia, and Scotland: With Special Reference to the Malekulan Geometric Drawings Col- lected by Deacon. Man , NS 35, 13. Layard, J. 1937. Labyrinth Ritual in South India: Threshold and Tattoo Designs. Folklore , 48(2), 115–182. Leach, J. 2004. Creative Land: Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea . New York: Berghahn Books. Lind, C. 2010. Placing Paamese: Locating Concerns with Place, Gender and Movement in Vanuatu. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis: University of St Andrews. Lind, C. 2014. Why the Future Is Selfi sh and Could Kill: Contraception and the Future of Paama. In Paci fi c Futures: Projects, Politics and Interests , W. Rollason (ed.), 71–95. London/New York: Berghahn Books. Lindstrom, Lamont. 1990. Knowledge and Power in a South Pacifi c Society . Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Rio, K. 2007. The Power of Perspective: Social Ontology and Agency on Ambrym, Vanuatu . New York: Berghahn. Rodman, W. 1991. When Questions Are Answers, According to the People of Ambae. American Anthropologist , 93(2), 421–434. Scott, M. 2014. Collecting Makira: Kakamora Stones, Shrine Stones and the Grounds for Things in Arosi. In The Things We Value: Culture and History in Solomon Islands , B. Burt & L. Bolton (eds.). Canon Pyon, UK: Sean Kingston Publishing. Strathern, M. 1979. The Self in Self-Decoration. Oceania , 49(4), 241–257. Strathern, M. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia . Berkeley: University of California Press. Toren, Christina. 1994. Seeing the ancestral sites: transformations in Fijian notions of the land. In The Anthropology of Landscape, E. Hirsch & M. O’Hanlon (eds). Oxford: Clar- endon Press. UNESCO. 2008. Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2003) Stable, www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?RL=00073 See also: http://archive.is/CSwkg 06.06.15. USP. 2013. Transmitting History through Sand-Drawings. Suva: USP, www.usp.ac.fj/news/ story.php?id=1246 25.07.15. Vanuatu Cultural Centre. 2015. Sand-Drawing Database: Intangible Cultural Heritage of Vanuatu . Port Vila: VKS, http://vanuatuculturalcentre.vu/heritage-section/ 25.07.15. Wagner, R. 1977. Analogic Kinship: A Daribi Example. American Ethnologist , 4(4), 623–64. Wagner, R. 1986. Symbols That Stand for Themselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wagner, R. 1991. The Fractal Person. In Big Men and Great Men: Personifi cations of Power in Melanesia, M. Godelier & M. Strathern (eds.), 159–173. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Weiner, J. 1991. The Empty Place: Poetry, Space and Being among the Foi of Papua New Guinea . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zagala, S. 2004. Vanuatu Sand Drawing. Museum International , 56(1–2), 32–35. 28 The beautiful and the blessed Brightness, balance and bones in Kyrgyz shyrdak felt

Stephanie Bunn

Kyrgyz shyrdak is a special kind of cut-out mosaic felt textile. Such Central Asian felts have long been made by women in the region as fl oor coverings, wall hang- ings or tent decorations, as dowry gifts, for the home and as presents for relatives. The use of felt for domestic artefacts in Central Asia and Mongolia links to longstanding nomadic herding in the region, where sheep’s fl eece is a basic raw material for felt production. When I fi rst visited Kyrgyzstan in the 1990s, Kyrgyz friends took me directly to see their shyrdaks as the form of Kyrgyz felt-making at its fi nest, the example par excellence of their textile art. “Kracivo ”, they’d say in Russian, to the English anthropologist. “Beautiful”. And I took this description for granted. Shyrdaks evoke what many Kyrgyz feel proud of in their cultural heritage, and indeed, in the past 20 years they have become so internationally acclaimed that Kyrgyz shyrdaks and ala ki’iz have recently gained UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. Following up this enthusiasm, I learned as much about shyrdaks as I could, including how to make them during my fi eldwork, and have always thought I knew what made a ‘good shyrdak ’, and the qualities that friends would cite in support of this claim. But when I came to consider whether this amounted to what English language speakers would call ‘beauty’, I was not so sure of my ground. And if the appreciation that my Kyrgyz companions had of their shyrdaks did not compare to what we call ‘beauty’, then what did their appreciation amount to, and what can we learn about our own values of ‘the made’ and ‘the beautiful’ from the answer to this question? At the time, just post-independence, when I fi rst worked with Kyrgyz felt- makers, I did not realize I was seeing a signifi cant moment in Kyrgyz felt-making history, where a few middle-aged or elderly women in village communities were still making shyrdak as wedding gifts, for presents for members of their families or for domestic use. Nor did I anticipate how independence would affect things. Today, although still made, and occasionally still for domestic use and other reasons within the family, the most usual motivation for making shyrdak now is for sale to tourists and other foreign buyers, as encouraged by NGOs and other international agencies. This has to a degree changed the felt-making process, its motivations and intentions, and also the look of the felts produced. This chapter focuses on its more domestic uses (see Plates 26 and 27 ). The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 435

Plate 26 Kyrgyz shyrdak, from Bishkek, made by Kulacyl Jainakova, early 20th century Courtesy the Kyrgyz National Art Museum, Bishkek

Plate 27 Balanced work in classical Kyrgyz shyrdak , made by Toktobubu Abyldaeva, early 20th century Courtesy the Kyrgyz National Art Museum, Bishkek

Making shyrdak beautiful Shyrdak is a technique and style of making felt textile fl oor coverings and other homely artefacts which entail simultaneously cutting out two identical motifs from pre-dyed felts of different colour, inserting one motif into the background left by the other, then sewing them together and rhythmically outlining the pattern edge with quilting and cord. Shyrdak patterns feature curving spiral rams’ horns intertwined with dogs’ tails, antlers, bird wings, swans’ necks, ravens’ claws and other animal forms, evoking local animals and other features of the Kyrgyz environment in a composite and interwoven system of design. 436 Stephanie Bunn From what I learned in my early fi eldwork, there seemed to be, on the one hand, a technical aesthetic of how to make a classic Kyrgyz shyrdak , an agreed understanding of what made it good quality, and on the other hand, there was an agreed visual aesthetic, both of which were somewhat overlapping (cf. also Portisch 2010 on Kazakh syrmaq ). The felt itself must be hard and well-fulled; then it does not wear out quickly. This alone takes one to two hours of great physical work to transform the great rolls of raw fl eece into fabric, by adding boiling water, and beating and rolling the wool. It requires the effort of more than one person, so neighbours and relatives will be coaxed and cajoled into helping, adding person hours, body weight and mens’ heavy boots to hasten the process. As a reward, helpers are often invited to a feast afterwards. The link between this effort and the reciprocal sharing relationship, ashar , of assistance, or work, for food and other gifts through family networks is refl ected in the Kyrgyz proverb, “If you don’t want to help make our felt, don’t come to our feast.” Once made, the felt is dyed, then two different coloured pieces of the felt are laid on top of one another, the pattern is drawn and then both pieces are cut-out simultaneously with a knife. Once cut, these are then inserted into the space left by cutting out the motif from the opposing colour. The pattern’s edges are sewn together. Hand- spun edging cords, the je’ek , are sewn on all around the pattern edges, ostensibly to cover and join these edges, and also to attach the top pattern layer to an additional base felt, thus further strengthening the textile. In terms of execution, there should also be a lot of quilting, again joining the top patterned layer to the base felt, and evenly contouring the pattern edge, making the felt yet stronger and more durable. This quilting should be sewn with shona thread, hand-spun wool thread twined at one end into sewing cotton, the making of which is a skill in itself, a sign of an usta or master (Bunn 1995–6). Finally, there should be no visible sewing or fastenings off on the back, which is both aesthetic and pragmatic, since large stitches would not embed in the felt as small ones would, but would lay on the back surface, and would thus wear quickly. Failure to achieve these tasks indicates laziness, a lack of effort or araket , and a lack of skill and of strength in the felt. Felt from Naryn, or Kochkor, or Issyk-kul, I was told on many occasions, was beautiful, kracivo , and strong because it was well quilted and evenly sewn, not like that felt from the west, or the city outskirts, which had little or no quilting, and which was therefore weak and poor quality. Again this is refl ected in a proverb, “A good woman is fi ne, like the twist at the end of her shona , a good man is strong, like a well-made felt.” The visual aesthetic of Kyrgyz felt is not entirely separate from its practical execution. Key features, as I have understood, are ‘balance’ and ‘brightness’, which are particularly evident in the pattern. Critically, the pattern must be balanced, so that one cannot distinguish the motif from the background – motif and background are intertwined, interconnected and indistinguishable. To achieve this lies in drawing the pattern. To create a balanced pattern requires the ability to draw both the external form of the motifs and their internal negatives as the pattern develops and unfolds, and in doing so, to be able to relate the relationship of the parts to a whole. The drawer does not use a stencil, or trace the pattern; indeed the ability to draw Kyrgyz pattern is not something anyone can do. Drawing is said to be a ‘birth skill’ The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 437 and is assigned to a master, or usta , a cheber – skilled artisan, who is invited in to help when a woman wants to make a shyrdak for a family member. Her work will again be reciprocated, through some form of gift, other work or food. This balanced, rhythmic pattern is additionally enhanced by use of complementary colours in the felt pattern pieces (complementary on the ‘colour wheel’) for motif and background, so that the interchanged colours set each other off in contrast, creating a pulsating kind of zing, a little akin to 1960s Bridget Riley inspired pop art. Quilting, done for strength, in contouring the patterns also further enhances this effect, adding vibrancy, rhythm and movement to the imagery. Simi- larly, sewn-on edging cords, je’ek , may strengthen the join between the inserted patterns, but the use of this third, bright coloured cord also further enhances the brightness. All these factors work towards giving the shyrdak both a balanced, ‘positive and negative’ effect and a brightness that makes it zing and move (see Makhova and Cherkasova 1968). There is also little wastage of materials since the felt remaining from the cut-out patterns provides material for a second shyrdak in a reverse image of the fi rst. Balanced pattern drawing may be an aesthetic, but it is also linked to economy of materials. This interplay between technique and visual appreciation was a consistent feature of Kyrgyz felt shyrdak appreciation when I was doing fi eldwork.

Beauty: effort, skill and blessing Kyrgyz notions of beauty are encapsulated by the terms sulu’u , which is usually only used when referring to women, and körk , which denotes beauty, elegance and grace, and is more often used when describing felt. Both terms are translated as kracivo in Russian, ‘beautiful’ in English. This might make a linguistic translation seem fairly clear cut, and yet the term körk alone does not denote the skill and effort in the execution, the reciprocal nature of the making process, the ritual aspects of its gifting, its animal pattern forms, and the creativity and vibrancy in the shyrdak, all of which contribute to appreciating the fi nal outcome as beautiful. For this, one needs to take a more pragmatic approach, allowing that the experience of beauty here cannot be defi ned by an Enlightenment, rationalist view (cf. Kant 1960), but may also encompass skill, effort, ethics, emotion, poetics and aspects of belief (cf. James 1896, 134–5), along with qualities we may be more familiar with as aesthetic, such as brightness, balance and an animate form of patterning. While none of my Kyrgyz friends could explain why sulu’u was only applied to women, appreciation of shyrdak still clearly entails a great estimation of the value of women’s work. The term sulu’u suggests a possible derivation from the root word su’u, water, and indeed, women are estimated highly if they are strong but gentle, powerful in a fl uid way, and soulful, deep in wisdom, in the way that water is. (This is seen, for example, in descriptions of Kanikey, the wife of the Kyrgyz hero Manas; in Melis Ubuke’ev’s representation of women in fi lms such as his classic White Mountains ; and in the recent fi lm of Kyrgyz warrior queen Kurmanjan Datka.) The work put into felt refl ects the textile skills that, in past Kyrgyz society and to some degree today, a woman was expected to have. That is, 438 Stephanie Bunn the ability to do hard work; put in effort; be dexterous and productive in making textiles; be a cheber , skilled artisan; and create textiles that would denote hospitality, visibly present in the tent or house, on the fl oor, for seating and in the bedding pile, on the trunk, in the place of honour. These skills, and the value given to such work, are even articulated through poems and songs composed to felts and to and by their makers. The miracles created by the hands of the makers, Its beauty (körk ) extends through the land ( jer ), encompassing the sentient world. These ideas (oy ) and visions ( körköm ) are recollected, and inscribed by the people Directed by the patterns (oymo ) of shyrdaks . (Chochunbaeva 2016, 231, my translation)

One cannot discuss the beauty in shyrdak without ﬁ rst considering its quality, sapat, and that quality entails work and skill. This is not exactly a ‘Protestant work ethic’ kind of work, because it is not done for pay or to make a living, although there are parallels. Rather, it is more the kind of work that Olivia Harris describes in her What makes people work (2007), or Stephen Gudeman describes (this volume) as something people are pleased and proud to be able to do, and do with care. On the one hand, making felt requires hard physical effort, araket , as discussed, but on the other, this effort is valued and articulated. Thus, the kind of effort put into shyrdak indicates a certain kind of moral person, especially if that person is a new wife or daughter-in-law, who is expected to be skilled and work hard at all things, from cooking, to childbearing, to animal management, to craft. Féaux de la Croix comments, “To give her best is particularly important for a kelin (daughter-in-law) and wife. She is often watched for signs of diligence” (2014, 86). Portisch comments in similar vein for Kazakh daughters-in-law, “sitting about idly is considered ill-mannered . . .” while a woman “who creates and maintains a beautifully decorated home is admired as hard-working and gifted” (2010, 568). This view is summarized in the proverb “Araketke bereket” – “You will be blessed if you try hard” (Féaux de la Croix 2014, 91). This effort, skill and even the blessedness are then manifest in the result. A weak felt might last two to three years, but a good shyrdak , with its basis of strong felt, strengthened further by stitched cords and quilting, can last more than 30, even a life-time. Similarly, a hard-working daughter-in-law will enhance the endurance of the family, bringing bounty in terms of children, animal produce and the ability to provide textiles for the home and hospitality for guests, all of which will bring status and prosperity. Such kind of effort cannot be forced upon a person, but is rather a quality or an aptitude that emerges, perhaps through some encouragement, which enables them to learn and pick up a new skill if they show an interest, at which time it will be fostered. This is in keeping with a wider Kyrgyz apprentice-style approach to learning and upbringing, tarbiya , where a skilled hand-worker, cheber , would not expect their children to follow their craft, but rather would wait until a child begins to watch, becomes interested and asks to learn. Such a kind of learning requires self-discipline, tartyp , and self-motivation, aspects of character that people admire The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 439 and are pleased to see emerge in their children. Assistance with such work in the past, through family network obligations, ashar , was also admired as contributing to family and kin productivity. Thus, if you helped your relatives prepare for a wedding or a funeral in some way, you might ask them to come and help do some stitching on your shyrdak at a later date. Ironically, such a family- or neighbour- centred reciprocal approach to work was dismissed as exploitation by the Soviets, while more state-focussed productive work was subsumed into the Soviet work ethic (a close parallel to Protestant work ethic), seen, for example, in the classic exhortation “Our hard work is for you O motherland” (Nash trud tebe, rodina ). The hard work put into shyrdak , and for the many other textiles made for an off- spring’s wedding, is then gifted as part of the many blessings and gifts contributed to the new family at such times. The good intent, effort and care sewn into shyrdaks are articulated, sometimes in discussion about what goes into them, sometimes in blessings when they are given. When I asked about the felt I was making with my teacher Kenje, she pointed to a motif and described it thus, “This is a man saying ‘Ahmeen, Ahmeen’. And these are all the people helping your work here, Stephanie, all the people here, in Kyrgyzstan, and in England helping Stephanie, all this care for you goes through the patterns.” Kyrgyz blessings, bata, are expressed vocally at feasts, and at all life-cycle events. Blessings can be expressed as poems, toasts, or just sung or spoken. They can be simply positive wishes, or more subtly expressed to encourage Kudai’s, God’s, help and support. Chochunbaeva proposes that in shyrdak , “Each pattern is a visualization of blessings and wishes for well-being by the artisan” (2016, 255). “At weddings, the shyrdak is shown to the groom’s relatives, accompanied by

Figure 28.1 Kyrgyz shyrdak , wedding felt, featuring pattern of the heart Photo by S.J. Bunn 440 Stephanie Bunn an explanation of the wishes and blessings embedded in the patterns” (ibid 259). This is why people keep their shyrdaks , and do not sell or give them away, and is perhaps why, in the past, they were not made for sale. Although they are now often sold, on my early visits, people said it was shameful to sell such felts, which were expressions of a mother’s love and good wishes, made for life and given for one’s wedding, or for other occasions, such as moving to a new home or a child’s birth. The special signifi cance, and even power, of felt for such events extends even to its qualities as a fabric. In the past, felt was used to inaugurate a new leader or khan, who was “raised on the white felt” (Bunn 2010 [ii]). In the Kyrgyz home, whether felt tent, boz üy , or apartment, shyrdaks may be positioned formally at special meals to denote seating places and status, including that of the guest of honour. Felts were also formerly used as funeral shrouds to wrap the body. Lauren McGough, a recent PhD student studying Kazakh eagle training, even tells of an eagle who had had an untimely end being wrapped in felt and left on the mountain crags by her fi eld companions (personal communication). Thus, the effi cacy of felt is bound up with both the effort and the moral sentiments embodied in it, both of which are blessed through the making and giving, linking it through good will and good work to fortune and prosperity.

Beauty, brightness and balance There is a possible contradiction in Kyrgyz people’s views on artisanry, since although being a felt-master is considered to be a skill gleaned through hard work and effort, it is also a ‘birth skill’. To be a master shyrdak maker, an usta or cheber, may require effort, but it’s also in the blood. Such birth skills, like that of the shaman, hunter or epic singer, are highly respected. Here one meets the multiple perspectives encompassed in Kyrgyz understandings of human creativity and their attendant appreciation of beauty. Körk , beauty, is linked to the root word ‘kör ’, ‘to see’, and in shyrdak , the visual experience is expressed through brightness, jaryktyk , and balance, or the ‘positive- negative’ quality of the shyrdak . This is not so much a beauty observed through dispassionate contemplation, since there is a profound visual impact on seeing and experiencing shyrdak , which literally zings and dazzles the eye. Seeing shyrdak is to experience it in an almost visceral way, to be affected and entranced, almost overwhelmed, so that vision in this aesthetic is engaging not distancing. The whole intent is that, in contrast to the understated and subtle impression of the white or grey Kyrgyz boz üy, the felt tent, as seen from outside, on entering the Kyrgyz home the senses are exposed to brightness, vitality, and bathed in the richness of a wife’s productivity when inside. This brightness is achieved through colour, juxtaposing complementary hues on the colour wheel in the mosaic pattern, such as red and blue, or orange and brown, and enhanced further by, for example, yellow cords outlining the pattern join, and through multiple lines of sewn quilting, rhythmically contouring the pattern edge. The usta’s aim, to balance the pattern and background so that neither stands out, complements and works with the zinging effect of the complementary colours and The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 441

Plate 28 Kyrgyz tur shyrdak, illustrating the balanced symmetry of the patterning and use of complementary colours Photo by S.J. Bunn quilting, so that brightness and balance are synthesized in the aesthetic impact of the shyrdak. As discussed, her skill requires the ability “to draw symmetrically the inside and outside of each traditional pattern” (see Bunn 1995–6, 78). Portisch describes this process as attempting to draw “two mirroring patterns using two pens simultaneously with the right and the left hand” (2010, 573). The result is not so much coherence, something the viewer can make sense of, because the senses are assailed with two advancing and receding, dancing images at once, but more a kind of “fi gure-ground reversal” (cf. Wagner 1987). While this may seem irresolvable for an observational approach to aesthetics, through being affected by the dual aspects of the image, the viewer is drawn in and becomes a part of it, so that the pattern creates a kind of motif-to-fi eld gestalt. This balanced pattern, and its transformation through brightness and colour into such affective work, transforms also the viewer, and refl ects the birth skill of the usta .

Beauty, balance and bones The question of balance, when coupled with the animate imagery in Kyrgyz shyrdak pattern, resonates with the complex relationship of Central Asian herders and their environment. This relationship is at once pragmatic, practical, almost empirical, yet it also entails an understanding of sentience within the landscape which is included in human relationships with animals and with the wider environment in a more than practical way. It parallels the human-environment relationships held by many other groups in the region, including Kazakh, Altai, Tuvan and Mongolian herders. Two signifi cant features here are the way Kyrgyz herders may treat their animals as social beings like themselves, and their understanding of the place of humans within the wider sentient environment. 442 Stephanie Bunn Thus, the knowledge herders have of each species’ herding behaviour refl ects an understanding of the animals’ sociality. So, for example, herders use the stallion’s role as herd leader of the milking mares to manage them, and also separate these from the gelding herd, using them in full sympathy with animal needs and habits, allowing foals to drink where possible, while directing the mares’ productivity also to human ends. There is a kind of reciprocity between humans and animals, a giving and sharing of milk and hay, and many mutual learning processes between the different animal communities through signals and signs by which animals know when to come home, or when to be milked. In my fi eld site, I witnessed the herds come home every evening, the signs, whistles and calls used in bringing home sheep, through subtle signals between herder and herd, or delegated to goat leaders of herds, or to dogs in cross-species collaborations, achieving a full cooperation from the herd. Natasha Fijn describes a similar form of communication between humans and herds in Mongolia and indeed she describes it as almost linguistic, so that the people use such vocal calls, songs and signs that each species seems to understand (2011). Humphrey proposes that this integration and sociality between humans and animals are intergenerational, pointing to the important parallels between human and animal families, genealogies and the land on which both groups live and which both groups may have co-inhabited and have been co-hefted to in their own ways over centuries (see Waddington-Humphrey 1974). She shows how, through selection, breeding and exchange of Mongolian horse herds between families, animal social groups and genealogies are linked in parallel with those of any human family on one pastureland over generations. This temporal identifi cation between families, land and their herds suggests it’s quite possible that generations of humans and animals have effectively been co-hefted onto similar pastures for centuries. The Kyrgyz word for herd, üyür , illustrates the extent of this social understanding. Üy means home, so the boz üy is the grey home, felt tent, for example. Üy is also the root word for a whole host of meanings associated with family, from home to marriage, while üyür can equally refer to a pack of wolves, or other non-herd animals, and also to a group of people in the context of social circle, or family, thus pointing to the parallel sociality perceived in relations between wild, domesticated and even human social groups. That this cooperative and intimate understanding of the relationship between humans and animals extends to wild animals is telling, since Kyrgyz herders, like other groups in the region, also hunt, which gives their relationships with animals a particular cast, or level of understanding. With hunting comes a particular understanding of the ethics of killing animals and the infl uence that the sentient environment at large, including animals and other powers within it – even springs, or rocks, or trees – may have on this human practice. Such a view is closely associated with that of neighbouring northern hunting peoples, such as Evenk or Eveny, who take a more shamanistic approach to living in the environment. Tani points out that among many northern hunters and associated peoples, there is a special animal ‘mistress’ or ‘master’ for each kind of animal (such as the Deer Mother of the Evenk), with whom the shaman has to negotiate for the numbers of The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 443 animals which can be hunted (1996). In this hunting philosophy, or ‘ideology of nature’ as Tani calls it, the ‘master’ is responsible for the care and reproduction of the animal world. Thus humans are not separate from, or above, nature, as they are believed to be positioned in Abrahamic religions, but are part of an interconnected nature that is perfectly capable of ordering itself. Within this context, humans do not dominate animals, but the relationship is more balanced. Linked to this view, a similar philosophy, described by Tseren (1996) as ‘balance with nature’, emphasizes the interconnection between human actions in the world and its surroundings. Roberte Hamayon also discusses this ‘balance’ in relation to the animistic beliefs of hunting and herding peoples in this region. According to Hamayon, Central and Inner Asian hunting is directly related to human health and well-being because hunting animals involves the repayment of human souls for animal souls (1990, 20). But, such abundance must be repaid in some form, if not by illness and death within one’s own community, then from another. Hence the importance of the shaman, who has to somehow defl ect this possible danger, and work to establish a balance in the relationship between hunting and health in these communities (ibid ). Broz, working in the Altai, similarly talks in terms of kire, the “share, portion or balance of animals a hunter can shoot within a particular period” (2007, 298). For my own fi eld companions, such a notion of balance was considered to be at play when my host’s daughter fell ill, and the znax , or extra-sense, required her father to put away his rifl e in the family trunk, and hunt no more. My companions used the terms ‘garmonia c prirody ’ (harmony with nature: Russian) and ‘taraz ’ (scales: Kyrgyz) in discussion with me, in an attempt to explain this simply. In such cases, there is a kind of ethic of how much to take from the environment, and the notion of fortune takes on a kind of causal cast, in that human destinies are closely bound up with those of other living beings and what they take from nature. Here the Mongolian view of ‘nature’ applies, where baigal contains “all that there is in the world” (Batchuluun 2000), including human society. Thus, there is an implied ethic associated with one’s destiny, since the very question of fortune, or luck, is not random, but linked with how to behave within one’s environment (cf. Broz and Willerslev 2012). This understanding of balance links to the pattern in shyrdak , not only because the motifs are balanced, but also because of what the patterns depict. As discussed earlier, the patterns include many animate forms, further emphasizing the interconnected relationship between people and their environment. These include curving spiral rams’ horns, kochkor muyuz, intertwined with dogs’ tails, iit koyruk, bird wings, kush kanat, swans’ necks, kaz oyum, and ravens’ claws, karga tyrmak , evoking local animals and other features of the Kyrgyz environment in a composite, interlinked and balanced system of design. It is remarkable how skilled pattern drawers can exactly fi ll the fi eld with such pattern elements which consistently reveal positive and negative aspects of the same motifs, and reveal the world in both a positive and negative way. A core motif in shyrdak is the ram’s horn, kochkor muyuz, found on all Turkic felts in multiple combinations. When I asked one companion why the ram’s horn 444 Stephanie Bunn was so important, she said that the horn was the man, and that the heart into which it transformed was the woman holding him up. While one could accept this expression of male and female interdependence as yet another manifestation of balance, the intertwining of the rams’ horn pattern with almost all other pattern forms, including hearts, in shyrdak also refl ects the incorporation of horn and bone into many aspects of life, sacred and mundane, for pastoralists in this region, and as my companion commented, these often relate to the male line, and its enfolding into the female. Among Kyrgyz herders, rams’ horns and other sheep bones are used in multiple ways (Bunn 2010 [i]). Rams’ horns are positioned on tent exteriors for prosperity, or felt versions are sewn on to tent covers as amulets, Sheeps’ shoulder blades are used in divination; sheeps’ knucklebones, upay , are given to children for luck and used in games of chance played by adults and children alike. Sheeps’ forearms, karjylyk , are suspended above house entrances to protect sons – one friend had a plastic bin bag of them over his front door. Even features of the landscape are called after body parts, hips, backs and so on. At celebratory meals, specifi c cuts of meat called ustukans , each with their own name, are distributed in accordance with people’s seating position in the tent, so as to convey the specifi c kin and other social relationships at the occasion. This link, to a time-honoured use of social space, where men sit to the west, women to the east, the place of honour at the back (north) and the work place near the door (south), is paralleled exactly by how the sheep’s body is cut up and distributed (see Humphrey 1974, Shakhanova 1992). Thus, bone in social practices, from feasting to notions of protection, denotes the profound identity people perceive between humans and animals in the environment. The very term for bone, sö’ök , is also used for ‘relative’, and Kazakhs and Mongols (although not Kyrgyz) refer to different branches of their nation as the black and white bone. Tellingly, once when eating a cut of sheep at a celebratory meal, I noted that the sheep’s backbone almost mirrored the Kyrgyz felt pattern kyal oyum , dream pattern, in that the vertebrae form contained the ram’s horn form within it. My host commented, “Yes it is kyal oyum, and the ram’s horn is in the backbone, everything

Figure 28.2 Kyrgyz shyrdak illustrating bone imagery, early 20th century, Bishkek region Courtesy of the Kyrgyz National Art Museum, Bishkek The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 445 comes from the backbone.” This pattern and its composite form are one illustration of the interpenetration that is perceived to exist more widely between people, animals and the environment, both socially and between sentient forms, so that features of the land may be called after parts of the body, people are given cuts of meat according to how they are related (and positioned in the tent in the same way) and such interconnectedness is also expressed through the intertwining, composite imagery on shyrdak patterns. This interpenetration, and identity, between humans and animals, is such that the ‘animal’ element in the creative form of shyrdak could be seen as the human element, and vice versa .

From blessings, to bone, to beauty I began by talking of shyrdak in terms of skill, and effort, and showed how this transforms into blessings through the gifting of shyrdaks to the future generation. I showed how the balanced, bright patterns are both affective, through their visual gestalt, and also relate to destiny through the balanced patterns, and the importance of balance in Kyrgyz relations with the environment. This is revealed through the parallels that Kyrgyz herders consider to exist between human and animal sociality, and more broadly, the interpenetration that exists between human and animal destinies in relation to the life-energy that humans take from animals which at some point has to be balanced, and which gives a more causal relationship to their understanding of fortune than our own. These relationships come full circle when one appreciates how all these factors are at play when a woman works on her wedding felt with her mother. When we

Figure 28.3 Wedding felt made for Kenje Toktosunova’s marriage, including hearts quilted in and diamond-shaped tabak forms, Issyk-kul region Photo by S.J. Bunn 446 Stephanie Bunn talked of my shyrdak teacher K’s marriage felts, her shyrdaks and her ala ki’iz , she talked of them in terms of the ideas or aims (oy ) she had put into the felts, how each tabak , central diamond, was the past, the present and the future, but that it was also the family through which these came, her old family and her marriage and her future children, and her hopes for them all. She looked at details of the pattern (oyum ) and talked of the whole design as being like destiny, as if her future was mapped on to it, how many children she would have, grandchildren, deaths in the family and so on. She said she had intuited these meanings. From the quilting, where she had stitched in hearts for hopes and blessings for her marriage, to the traditional motifs, the entire shyrdak embodied her hopes for a fulfi lling future life and also held what fate had in store. And in order to do this, it also contained her past. When talking to an extra-sense woman from a neighbouring village, she gave a broader view, saying, “In the pattern of shyrdak , each tabak is the family, the house, life, nature. Shyrdak is like life, it doesn’t fi nish. The old Kara Kyrgyz send their ideas, their way of life, through the pattern, oyum . Through the pattern, oyum , they send their philosophy and ideas – oy .” She continued, “Everything is alive, the rocks, the land, air, water. Nature is alive. Children must live happily. The beginning of pattern is life. And it must be connected through the family, or nothing will live happily.” Thus, the beauty in shyrdak entails a synthesis of aesthetics, the family, the environment, the past and the future – much of what is meaningful in life. In regard to Piro design, Peter Gow says, “How is it that a visual art form can have ‘too many meanings’?” (1999, 243). He goes on to describe Nancy Munn’s account of Walbiri sand designs (1973), Morphy’s work on Yolngu bark paintings (1992) and Kuechler’s work on malanggan from New Ireland (1987). The point he is making is that in all these cases there are features in common. These include the metaphorical use of body parts in central elements of the art form, the artefacts’ place at the centre of ritual action and a spatio-temporal frame where the cosmic order is linked to embodied experience in ritual action. It is, he says, as if locals are seeing everyday experiences “transformed into the enchanted technology of art” (see also Gell). And in all four cases, “the act of fabrication is intrinsically meaningful”. I have always found this analysis to be something quite profound, and so perhaps I would see a resonance with the case of Kyrgyz shyrdak . Nevertheless, in shyrdak there is resonance between humans and animals through bone – a body part, in Kyrgyz pattern; the role of shyrdak , and of bone, at feasts, especially at weddings, a signifi cant ritual event; and the frame of balance which extends across from the drawn patterns, to the experience of seeing them, to the perception of the wider cosmic order. Finally, the act of transformation is in itself intrinsically meaningful, through the admiration of effort in creative work, and its transformation into blessings. So, if an explanation or insight is required for the interpenetrating forces at play in the action that creates and manifests Kyrgyz beauty through human acts of making and living with shyrdak , then I think it lies here. The beautiful and the blessed: shyrdak felt 447

Plate 29 Dazzling topchu (button) shyrdak from At Bashi region Photo by S.J. Bunn

Acknowledgements Many thanks to all Kyrgyz friends and companions for all the help and insights they have provided over the years. Thanks also to Jeanne Féaux de la Croix and Peter Gow for reading earlier versions of this chapter.

References Batchuluun, L. 2000 Felt art of the Mongols. Ulan Bator: Mongolian University of Arts and Culture. Broz, L. 2007 Pastoral perspectivism: A view from Altai. In Inner Asia 9 291–310. Broz, L. & Willerslev, R. 2012 When good luck is bad fortune. In Social Analysis 56 (2) 73–89. Bunn, S.J. 1995–6 Kyrgyz shyrdak . In The Textile Museum Journal 75–91. Washington: The Textile Museum. Bunn, S.J. 2010 (i) Animal knowledge: thinking through deer and sheep in Kyrgyzstan. In Animals and science: from colonial encounters to the biotech industry, M. Bolton & C. Degnen (eds) Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. Bunn, S.J. 2010 (ii) Nomadic felts . London: British Museum Press. Chochunbaeva, D. 2016 Shyrdak: Kyrgyz felt rug . Bishkek: CACSARC. Dewey, J. 1934 Art as experience . New York: Putnam. Féaux de la Croix, J. 2014 After the worker state: Competing and converging frames of valuing labour in rural Kyrgyzstan. In Laboratorium 6 (2) 77–100. 448 Stephanie Bunn Fijn, N. 2011 Living with herds . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gow, P. 1999 Piro designs: Painting as meaningful action in an Amazonian lived world. In Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5 (2) 229–246. Hamayon, R. 1990 La chasse a l’ame: esquisse d’une theorie du chamanisme siberien . Nanterre: Publications de la Societé d’Ethnologie. Harris, O. 2007 What makes people work? In Questions of anthropology , R. Astuti, J. Parry, and C. Stafford (eds). Oxford: Berg. Humphrey, C. 1974 Inside a Mongolian tent. In New Society , 273–275. James, W. 1896 Works: Essays in psychical research, 131–132. In William James, on consciousness beyond the margin , E. Taylor (ed). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kant, I. 1960 Of the beautiful and sublime . Berkeley, LA: University of California Press. Kuchler, S. 1987 Malangan: Art and memory in a Melanesian society. In Man (N.S.) 22 238–255. Makhova, E.I. and Cherkasova, H.B. 1968 Ornamentirovaniye izdyelia iz voyloka (Orna- mental Felt Work). In Narodnoe Dekorativno-Prikladnoe Iskusstvo Kirgizov (Popular Decorative Applied Art of the Kyrgyz) . Trudy Kirgizskoy Arkheologo-Etnografi cheskoy Ekspeditsii (Works of the Kirghiz Archaeological-Ethnographic Expedition), Vol. 5. Frunze: Nauka. Morphy, H. 1992 From dull to brilliant: The aesthetics of spiritual power among the Yolngu. In Man (N.S.) 24 (1) 21–40. Munn, N. 1973 Walbiri iconography: Graphic representation and cultural symbolism in a central Australian society . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Portisch, A.O. 2010 The craft of skilled learning: Kazakh women’s everyday craft practices in western Mongolia. In Making Knowledge, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Insti- tute , Special issue 2010, S62–S79. Shakhanova, N. Zh.1992 The yurt in the traditional world view of Central Asian nomads, 157–183. In Foundations of empire, G. Seaman (ed). Los Angeles: Ethnographics Press. Tani, Y. 1996 Domestic animal or serf: Ideologies of nature in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 387–415. In Rede fi ning Nature, R. Ellen and F. Fukui (eds). Oxford: Berg. Tseren, P.B. 1996 Traditional pastoral practice of the Oirat Mongols and their relationship with the environment, 147–159. In Culture and environment in Inner Asia, Vol 2, C. Humphrey and D. Sneath (eds). Cambridge: The White Horse Press. Waddington-Humphrey, C. 1974 Horsebrands of the Mongolians. In American Ethnologist 1 (3) 471–488. Wagner, R. 1987 Figure ground reversal among the Barok. In Assemblage of spirits; idea and image in New Ireland , L. Lincoln (ed). Minneapolis: Minneapolis University Press. 29 From the North with my cello, or, fi ve propositions on beauty

Tim Ingold

From forms to relations What makes some things beautiful and others ugly? In western philosophy, aesthetics is the area of study that seeks answers to such questions. Although different approaches to aesthetics yield varied and contentious answers, they rest on the common premise that beauty is to be apprehended as a quality of fi nished things. To speak of the beauty of these things is, then, to understand each as an object of regard that stands, fully formed, before the beholder. In art, this is to seek beauty in the gallery, where work is on display, and not in the artist’s studio or workshop. In architecture it is to contemplate the completed building rather than to witness the commotion of the construction site. For a landscape to be treated as an object of aesthetic appreciation it has likewise to be distilled from the elemental forces and activities of inhabitants that have shaped it, and imagined as a ready composed scene. Even the body, in order to be judged a thing of beauty, must be divorced from the practices of quotidian domesticity through which every human being is raised and sustained. Aesthetics, in short, does not look for beauty ‘behind the scenes’, in the workshops of life, but in the products that are turned out from them. In addressing the theme of beauty, orthodox approaches in the anthropology of art do not depart signifi cantly from the western philosophy of aesthetics, insofar as they set out from a division between the viscerality of immediate sensation and the rationality of its judgement and interpretation, attributing the former to innate psychic universals and the latter to the conceptual or cognitive models of an acquired culture (see, for example, Morphy 1996; Coote and Shelton 1992). They differ from the mainstream only in rejecting the ethnocentrism of much academic art history, emphasising that judgements of style and form in non-western societies may be based on criteria other than those familiar to western analysts. With both the anthropology and the history of art, things are there to be sensed before they are judged – the one can follow from the other only because the thing itself is complete at the point of apprehension. In what follows I aim to establish an alternative to this aesthetics of fi nal forms. Its guiding ambition is to resituate the generation and apprehension of beauty within a relational ontology that accords primacy to processes of growth and emergence rather than to the things to which they fi nally give rise. Sensing the world, in this approach, is not prior to the exercise of 450 Tim Ingold judgement but inseparable from it, and both sensibility and judgement depend on skills of perception and action nurtured in the course of ontogenetic development. The inspiration for the approach comes from two sources. The fi rst lies in the experience of anthropological fi eldwork in regions of the circumpolar North – which, in my case, was among Saami people in northeastern Finland. The second lies in my attempts, over the past several decades, to master the violoncello. There is a peculiar connection between learning from the Saami and learning with the cello, beyond the happenstance of my involvement in both, and I hope by the end of the chapter to have established what that connection is. I want to suggest, however, that the approach I draw from these sources offers a way of understanding the perception of beauty that applies quite generally, even to people in nominally ‘western’ societies – and not only to the musically inclined among them. Rather than appealing to the duality of human nature and its cultural infl ections, we begin by acknowledging the positioning of every human being as an undivided centre of attention and awareness within a continually unfolding fi eld of relationships. It is this positioning within a universe of relations, I suggest, and not the superimposi- tion of cultural rules and representations upon a bedrock of universal dispositions, that gives rise to differences in the ways in which beauty is generated and apprehended in the course of everyday social life. Taking this suggestion as a starting point, I aim to establish fi ve propositions concerning beauty, and to exemplify each of them with reference to the experience of peoples of the North, and of cello-playing. I begin, however, with a separate introduction to each.

High latitudes In the western imagination the North has long fi gured as a region profoundly hostile to human habitation, inducing in visitors a feeling of isolation and fragility in the face of the immensity of nature. Throughout the history of contact, visitors to the North (barring those few who got to know its inhabitants well) have commented on the rudeness of its aboriginal peoples, on their unkempt appearance and ramshackle dwellings, their primitive arts and uncouth speech. Supposedly condemned to live on the margins of survival, their harsh living conditions were thought to leave virtually no scope for the refi nement of aesthetic sensibilities. The sublime beauty of northern landscapes, that inspired such awe in travellers, apparently left no impression on native minds. Even collectors, folklorists and ethnologists who, by training and profession, were more ready to acknowledge the artistry of native productions have been inclined to suppose that it takes their own eyes and ears to recognise beauty that is not apparent to the producers themselves. For the latter, it seemed, only the imperatives of survival mattered, and the value of everything was measured by that end. However, my own experience, which is shared by the majority of ethnographers who have spent time living with indigenous peoples of the far North, is that these peoples are no less concerned with beauty than are those of us schooled in occidental aesthetics. Their concern, however, is one that does not alienate things from processes, or achievements from persons and relationships. Whereas in the From the North with my cello 451 ‘eye’ of the West, beauty lies in the distanced contemplation of fi nal forms, beauty from the North – if we can call it that – is to be found in the close interweaving of material fl ows and sensory awareness wherein persons and things mutually bring each other into being. There is beauty, for example, in the close, almost myopic concentration of the seamstress as she stitches pieces of prepared hide into a garment or decorates it with beadwork, thinking all the while on the person for whom the garment is intended; this beauty is appreciated by the animals that the wearer will subsequently herd or hunt – it draws them to him (Chaussonnet 1988; Bodenhorn 1990; Wachowich 2014). The hunter or herdsman, in turn, senses the beauty of the animals not in the perfection or majesty of their appearance but in the affection of their regard, or in the way the animals are disposed towards him (Ingold 2000, 61–76). There is beauty, too, in the lay of the land, apprehended not as picturesque scenery but as a mesh of paths which afford opportunities for productive activity or for the creation of kinship. The familiar, well-trodden path has a beauty of its own, as does an old fi replace or tent-ring that betokens the presence of ancestors, and the things left lying around that make it possible for stories to be told. The stories themselves are beautiful, not just because of their form or construction but because of the memories they evoke and the persons they bring back to life (Nelson 1983). Finally, there is beauty in a dwelling: in the care of its construction and in the gathering, at its hearth, of the lives of inhabitants and of the materials for their subsistence (Anderson, Wishart and Vaté 2013). In short, beauty from the North inheres in the movements, cadences and attune- ments of skilled practitioners whose conduct responds fl uently, and with sensitivity and precision, to the nuances of their relationships with both human and non- human others.

Low notes Now over the years I have also been trying to achieve beauty in my cello-playing. Of course, we might observe that the instrument itself is an artefact of great beauty, a product of consummate craftsmanship. For the player, however, the beauty of the instrument does not lie in the perfection of its appearance; indeed most well- played instruments look pretty beaten-up, full of scratches and cracks, multiply repaired, which tell of a rich and eventful life. Mine, for example, still bears the scars of having been once left behind on a train when I was a boy. Protected only by a soft canvas case, it was returned to me with a six-inch crack at the bottom ( Figure 29.1). Of the cello of the greatest player ever, Pablo Casals, it is said that it looked the worse for wear, that it was full of matches which had fallen into the sound holes when Casals had paused to light his pipe, and that it had a piece of paper wedged under the bridge for support and a broken matchstick stuck under a string in the pegbox to keep it taut (Siblin 2009, 158–9). But this imperfect, patched-up thing of wood and strings begs to be played. The cellist is not content to look at the instrument, like a visitor to a museum. He or she longs to be with it. Like everyone and everything else, however, the cello has 452 Tim Ingold

Figure 29.1 My cello Source: Author its on-days and off-days. Almost as soon as I set my bow to the strings, I know what kind of day it is. On some days it sings, apparently requiring almost no effort from myself. On other days it grinds and grumps, or responds to my coaxing with a sharp-edged whine or sandpapery scratch, as though it were suffering from a sore throat. I have never been able to understand the causes of this moodiness; all I know for sure is that the ﬂ uctuations of the cello’s moods are quite unrelated to mine, so that the occasions when we are both in a good mood, at the same time, are relatively rare. But these are beautiful moments, of pure exhilaration, when I and my cello and the world seem in perfect accord. At such times, it seems, anything is possible. Beauty, then, lies in the act of playing itself. That, at least, is how it is for me. Most often I practice by myself, and there is no-one else within earshot. How might it be, then, for listeners? One of the frustrations of playing an instrument like this is that you never know. Everyone who has ever heard a recording of their own voice realises that it sounds quite different, to others, from hearing oneself speak. It is the same with the cello. Because you are so close to it, and because its harmonic resonances course through your own body, it is impossible to hear with the ear of a distanced listener. I can therefore only respond to the question of how it sounds to listeners in terms of my own experience of hearing the cello played, From the North with my cello 453 in concert, by another performer. And my experience is that the sound draws me in. I think this is not unlike the way in which the beautiful clothing of the hunter attracts his prey. It is, I suppose, a kind of enchantment. Precisely what this means is a question to which I return later in the chapter.

Beauty is attentional One essential item of equipment that Saami reindeer herdsmen always carry with them, slung in a coil across the shoulder when not in use, is a lasso (Ingold 1993). It consists of a length of rope, half a centimetre thick and some twenty metres in length, tied at one end to a sliding toggle through which the other is looped. I carried one too, whenever I attended roundups, though more for show than anything else since I never became a competent user (Figure 29.2). Casting the lasso in the roundup enclosure, so as to catch a chosen animal by the antler or back-leg when it is running at full tilt in the throng, is a skill that takes years to acquire. This is not just a matter of mastering a particular movement, involving a throw of the arm, a ﬂ ick of the wrist, a tug on the rope and digging in with the feet to take the strain. Above all, it involves ﬁ ne judgement: of pitch, velocity and direction; and of just the right moment to throw so as to ensure that the trajectory of the rope with its evolving loop is perfectly timed to answer to the running of the animal.

Figure 29.2 My lasso Source: Author 454 Tim Ingold This timing is exemplary of what in ancient Greece was called kairos : the moment that must be seized in any process of skilled work, when “human action meets a natural process developing according to its own rhythm” (Vernant 1983, 291). Nurtured in practice, timing is intrinsic to the action itself, and is what marks it out as fundamentally concentrative. To concentrate is to gather concurrent movements into a focus, and to seize the moment of their convergence. It is to be ever-alert to a world that is continually incipient – where nothing is given, and everything just on the cusp of being given. Among Saami people – even among those not actively involved in herding – skill with the lasso is greatly appreciated, so much so that lasso-throwing competitions are popular fi xtures on festive occasions. An impressive throw is greeted with acclaim. The beauty of it lies in the way in which a simple manual gesture, expertly performed, is converted into the lively form of a fl ying noose. Perhaps this is one instance in which the cliché ‘poetry in motion’ genuinely applies. For the form is literally made in movement. It is not given at the outset, nor does it outlast the throw, as a fi nal outcome. It exists only in the moment, or on the fl y. But when I play the cello it is just the same. To play is to pull a pitch from the instrument and to cast a line in sound (Ingold 2015, 109). Like the form of the fl ying noose, the musical phrase is shaped in a movement which it does not outlast. It shares with speech, and with the cast of the lasso, the property of ephemerality that linguists call “rapid fading”. As the literary scholar and philosopher Walter Ong wrote of the sounds of speech, musical sound “exists only as it is going out of existence” (Ong 1982, 91). And again, the ability to play the cello, like the ability to throw the lasso, is not just a matter of mastering the right movements. Judgement is everything, and this calls for constant attention. The beauty of the performance lies not in the compositional form of the music as such, as if the job of the instrumentalist were only to deliver the form, ready-made, to a receptive audience. Nor does it lie in the manual dexterity of the player, in its technical execution. It lies rather in what might be called ‘feeling’. By this I mean a quality of attention by which, as the line is cast, the performer’s gestures – felt, for example, in the pressure of the bow against the string and the vibrato of the left hand – are ever responsive to the perceived tonality of the resulting sound (Ingold 2000, 413). Feeling means simply that I listen as I play, just as with the lasso, I watch as I throw. Now as varieties of action, both playing and throwing may be intentional, in so far as they are tasks I set out to perform, and for which I am prepared. But in the action itself it is their intrinsic attentionality , and not the intentionality which precedes and informs them, that marks them out. As theatre scholar George Home-Cook has pointed out, “‘attention’ is inherently associated with the notion of stretching ”. Etymologically, the word comes from the Latin ad-tendere , meaning ‘to stretch towards’ (Home-Cook 2015, 2). Playing the cello and throwing the lasso are evidently ways of stretching, implying an element not only of effortful movement but also of elasticity. This elasticity means that in stretching towards we also hold back, thus building tension into the line, be it of rope or sound. In casting the lasso, I dig in my heels, even as the force of the ensnared animal tugs From the North with my cello 455 at the noose; in pulling a pitch from my cello, I hold my nerve even as the swell of sound threatens to tear me away (Ingold 2011a, 139). This is how forms are held suspended in performance: not through the im position of prior conceptual design on passive substance, but through the contra position of equal and opposed forces, of stretching and holding, attention and retention (Ingold 2013, 25).

Beauty is in the unity of affects Even for the most adept of practitioners – the most skilled herdsman, the most accomplished cellist – the stretch of attention is fraught with risk (Ingold 2015, 138). Reaching out beyond what is already to hand towards that which is not yet present or even imaginable, it forsakes the security of the fragile centre that we may have drawn around ourselves for an uncertain and unknown future. “One ventures from home”, write philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, “on the thread of a tune” (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 344). Thus to attend is not to take up a position but to be pulled out of it. “It is about exposition”, as the philosopher of education Jan Masschelein explains; “about being out-of-position”. Or, in the most literal sense, attention is a practice of exposure (Masschelein 2010, 278). Masschelein is describing the act of walking, but what he says is equally true of throwing a lasso or playing the cello. The beauty of exposure lies not in the ﬁ nessed display of forms from which all evidence of their production has been assiduously erased or covered up, so as to make it look as though they had magically appeared ex nihilo, but in an opening up of the inner workings of things which turns the lives of practitioners inside out. Abandoning the realms of studied perfection in which everything is complete but nothing is what it seems, we cast off into the aleatoric indeterminacy of a world-in-formation whose very imperfections afford possibilities for continuation. This casting off – this opening up of the self, from the inside – amounts to an offering. And it can be erotically charged. Among indigenous peoples around the circumpolar North, the most powerfully erotic sentiments arise in connection with activities of hunting (see, for example, Willerslev 2007, 89–118, on the Siberian Yukaghir). The hunt often begins with a dream, in which the animal is revealed to the hunter as a beautiful woman. She beckons him on. Enchanted, he follows. On waking, roused by a desire for this fugitive vision, the hunter resolves to head off in pursuit. Successful hunting demands an intimate knowledge of the ways of the animal. You have to know how it perceives and how it acts, what it seeks and what it avoids, the things that make it nervous or frightened and the things that will calm it down. With this knowledge you can anticipate the animal’s every move, and steal a march on its progress. But hunting also involves an element of deception. Dressed from head to foot in garments made from hides of the very same creature, and imitating its characteristic gestures and vocalisations, the hunter comes close to passing as one of its kind. In the moment of encounter, deceived into thinking of the hunter as a lover, the animal offers itself up to him and meets its death. For the hunter, however, this lure is replete with existential ambivalence. For in taking on so much of the animal’s character and behaviour, he is at risk of actually becoming the animal, and of losing 456 Tim Ingold his human bearings. Indeed the episode could equally end with his own death, rather than that of the animal. Many stories are told of how the hunter, seduced by his voluptuous prey, eventually drifts into the prey’s world, in which the animals appear to him as human. There he carries on his life while lost, presumed dead, to his own people. Just like in hunting, to play the cello means putting one’s existence on the line, albeit not with the same potentially life-threatening consequences. And just as the hunter needs to understand the dispositions of prey animals, so the cellist needs an intimate knowledge of the temperament of the instrument, and to respond to its moods as best he or she can. Although rumours of an erotic relationship with my cello are greatly exaggerated, historically such relationships have been reported often enough. In the embrace of both male and female performers, the cello has been credited alternately with feminine and masculine attributes. The cellist and musicologist George Kennaway cites an extraordinary review, in the magazine Country Life , of a performance by the former pupil and one-time partner of Casals, Guilhermina Suggia, in 1927, in which she is portrayed as a sexual dominatrix seeking fulﬁ lment from the “tortoise between her knees”, and emerging enraptured from the experience. But it could work the other way too, as in the case of a devout cellist from the Isle of Man, Tom Taggart, known for playing hymn-tunes in his local church, who was said to have stroked the brown wood of his instrument while remarking apologetically: “Herself here has never what you could really call sinned to – but I’m admitting she likes a lively tune!” (Kennaway 2014, 201–3). Old Tom had a point. I don’t know whether the cello ever appeared in his dreams, but from time to time it does appear in mine. A persistent theme of these dreams is that the instrument has fallen apart, along with what I experience in the dream as a dissolution of my own self. The cello is in pieces and I am lost. So when I sit down to play, I have to pull myself and the instrument together again. This pulling together, however, is not a matter of bolting my body to the instrument so as to produce the equivalent of a centaur, with human arms and head, a trunk of wood and strings, and a tailpin for a leg. On the contrary, in the moment I begin to play the instrument seems to explode into its constituent materials – of wood, varnish, metallic strings, rosin, bowhair and resonant air – just as it did in my dream (Ingold 2015, 108–9). In the playing these materials respond to one another, and to my touch and gesture, in particular ways. That is to say, they correspond . And what comes out from this correspondence is musical sound. There is certainly a sense, here, of me and the cello having become one. But this unity is not anatomical or organic. It is a unity of affects . Or in a word, it is an enchantment. When it works it is beautiful, and I become an enchanted being.

Beauty is enchanting In the unity of affects, respectively with the instrument and with the animal, both the cellist and the hunter are at risk of enchantment. This is to take the word ‘enchantment’, however, in a rather literal sense. The chant, after all, is a song, and to become enchanted in this sense is to enter with the singer into the song, to join From the North with my cello 457 with it in its temporal unfolding. The victim of enchantment, as we say, becomes spellbound, hooked like a fi sh on the cast-line of vocal intonation. Thus it was, in classical Greek and Roman mythology, that the fabled Sirens could draw sailors to their deaths on rocky shores. It was the song of the Sirens that lured them in: once caught, they could not tear their attention away from it. So too the northern hunter would lure his prey, or the prey the hunter, depending on a balance of affects that could tip either way. And likewise when I play, my gestures, my touch and my awareness are comprehensively caught in the resonances and reverberations of the instrument. When, alternatively, I listen to the performance of another player, my auditory attention is coupled with that of the performer, and even though I scarcely move, I nevertheless feel the performer’s movements in my limbs. I am drawn into them, even snared by them, as is a beast of prey by the movements of the hunter. I should stress that this allure has nothing to do with technical virtuosity, as Alfred Gell would have it in his notion of the “enchantment of technology”. By this, Gell means “the power that technical processes have of casting a spell over us so that we see the real world in an enchanted form” (Gell 1999, 163). Gell’s approach to aesthetics is utterly conventional in so far as it apprehends beauty as a value attributed to the objects of our regard, be they sunsets, horses, human bodies or artworks. He thinks artworks are special because unlike the phenomena of nature, they are the products of artifi ce, of skilled making. If sunsets attract by virtue of their sensational colours, horses by the strength and majesty of their bearing, and human bodies by their poise and perfection, for artworks it is the skill invested in them that gives them their particular aura. However, the song, whether vocal or instrumental, is not to my mind an object of perception at all. It is a way of perceiving. It offers a path for my attention which I can follow, or even one to which I am compelled to submit. In precisely the same way, the animal offers a path for the attention of the hunter. Enchantment, then, lies in following the path, in the affective correspondence of movements, not in the gravitational pull of any objects in which – were we to look back upon a path already travelled – we might see these movements resolved. This is, in effect, to move the apprehension of beauty upstream, from the contemplation of fi nished things to a kind of dwelling in the moment, at which beings are on the verge of appearance and sounds on the verge of release. It is as if, at every such moment, one were to open one’s senses to the world for the fi rst time. Arguably, whether beauty is apprehended ‘upstream’ or ‘downstream’ depends on properties of the sensory register in which it occurs. It would be no accident, according to this argument, that path-following is auditory and looking-back visual, for hearing uniquely affords passage upstream, whereas vision is destined to fall behind, in its wake. I shall presently seek to challenge this distinction between hearing and vision, but before I do so, let me fi rst set out the terms in which it is commonly proposed. Numerous scholars have drawn attention to the intrinsic temporality of hearing and to the fact that music or song requires of listeners that they immerse themselves in the currents of its production. Thus what is disclosed over time is also apprehended over time. Philosopher Hans Jonas, for example, insists that with hearing, “the duration of the sound heard is just the duration of 458 Tim Ingold the hearing itself ” (Jonas 1966, 137). With vision, by contrast, you have only to open your eyes and the world is already there, spread out in all its range and depth for you to see. Vision reveals the manifold, as Jonas puts it, “in a fl ash” (1966, 136). Whereas every view affords a snapshot of being, hearing alone affords entry into the world’s becoming. Rather as in a game of grandmother’s footsteps, the movement of things goes on in the dark, or behind one’s back. On the instant that you turn to face the world, things momentarily freeze. Paradoxically, the very instantaneity of vision means that you are always too late to catch them in their incipience. Like the grandmother, one who was reliant solely on vision might be able to witness the totality at a glance, but would forever be excluded from full participation in the ongoing birth of things. They could not help but arrive, like a visitor, after the fact.

Beauty is in hearing and seeing Northern circumpolar scholarship, at fi rst, seemed to offer confi rmation of this contrast. In a classic study of the Inuit people of Southampton Island, in the Cana- dian Arctic, the anthropologist Edmund Carpenter (1973) argued that in the Inuit world, nothing is ever complete or ready-made. To inhabit this world is not to look out upon a space of objects, arrayed in their proper locations, but to participate from the inside in the perpetual movement of their generation. Everything there is – people, animals, tools and implements, materials, winds and weather – establish and reveal their presence by way of what they do, in their ongoing actions. This was enough to convince Carpenter that for Inuit people the world is defi ned, above all, by sound rather than sight (Carpenter 1973, 33). There is a direct parallel, then, between singing and hunting: both, we could say, are practices of enchantment in which lines of song mingle with the ways of animals. Among the Saami people with whom I worked, the same commingling is evident in the form of singing known as the joik , in which the voice of the singer travels through the terrain, resonating as it goes with diverse animals, with the paths of the land and with the spirits of ancestral persons who continue to inhabit it. Yet while sound and hearing are evidently important for northern circumpolar people, Inuit and Saami alike, the inference that vision is correspondingly down- played in their sensory register is ethnographically unfounded. Even Carpenter admitted to having been amazed by the visual acuity of his Inuit companions (Carpenter 1973, 36). That there is a close association between seeing and hunting is confi rmed by another seasoned ethnographer of the Inuit, Jarich Oosten. It is through his clear and penetrating vision, Oosten shows, that the hunter initiates an encounter with the prey, which is in turn consummated with the latter’s self-surrender to the hunter (Oosten 1992, 130). Working with Saami reindeer herdsmen, I was similarly impressed by the importance of vision to herding operations, and by their skills of observation, whether in scouring the distant horizon for signs of movement or in identifying particular animals from their earmarks in the dense melee of the roundup – something that requires years of practice and that I could never learn to do. And while this kind of “skilled vision” (Grasseni From the North with my cello 459 2007) is generally far removed from its target (albeit mitigated through the use of binoculars), there are other kinds, such as in the close-up work of stitching and beading normally undertaken by women, in which attention binds tightly with the weft of the materials. Is vision, then, really so different from hearing, or watching so different from listening? Is not to watch, also, to enter into the movements of things, into their growth and formation? To answer this question, let me return to music. In learning to play the cello, as indeed any musical instrument, it is common for the novice to be accompanied by the teacher. To accompany is to join with another in the activity of performance. In a recent study of learning to play jazz trumpet, Eitan Wilf (2012) describes how trainees are required to copy from audio-recordings of solos by the great jazz masters of the past. Attending to all the nuances of rhythm, tone and timbre, they are instructed to tailor their performances to the model as closely as they can. Ideally, they should be able to achieve such perfect correspondence that the recording effectively ‘disappears’ into the student’s performance. In these moments the student does not just join with the master-work but inhabits it, experiencing from within the ever-advancing swell of incipient sound on the verge of release. For the student, this is an experience of almost mystical fusion with the master whose work he is copying. He is indeed enchanted! But it is an enchantment, according to Wilf, that is uniquely afforded by the aural modality. It could not happen, for example, in learning to paint. Here again, the novice may be instructed to copy the works of past masters, but since in painting the work is given all at once, in its totality, rather than unfolding over time, the novice cannot enter in the same way into the real-time dimension of its production (Wilf 2012, 37–8).

Beauty is sensed along the path of presence Perhaps not, in painting. But in the art of calligraphy, which also employs the visual rather than the aural register, this is precisely what happens. Like novice instrumentalists, novice calligraphers are also trained to copy past masters. But with calligraphy the source text, too, unfolds in time, as does the manual gesture that produced it. As anthropologist Yuehping Yen has shown, in a study of the power of calligraphy in contemporary Chinese society, one cannot observe a work of calligraphy, let alone understand it, merely by looking at it. One has to inhabit it, and to reunite one’s vision with that of the calligrapher in the production of his or her “inked traces” (Yen 2005, 89–90). The calligraphic mark, in short, is not an object of vision at all. It is rather a way of seeing. It offers a path for the reader’s visual attention to follow, and in so doing it reignites, in his or her limbs, the sensation of the gestural movements that give rise to it. As I have already shown, this has its exact counterpart in listening to the sound of the cello. This sound, too, offers a path for the listener’s aural attention, and reanimates his or her limbs with the gestures of its production. In effect, the listener is a silent accompanist . Listening with music, as seeing with calligraphy, is a mode of correspondence, not of objectifi cation; a mode that – as Deleuze and Guattari put it – is not given over to representation but “entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact 460 Tim Ingold with the real” (Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 13). It is not then the prioritisation of vision, ostensibly characteristic of western modernity, which leads us to see beauty in fi nished things or in a world of completed being. It is rather the enrolment of vision in the modern project of objectifi cation – a project that turns the movements of life, and the traces they leave, into bounded continents of experience. It is for this reason that I take issue with much recent writing in what has come to be known as ‘the anthropology of the senses’, which starts from the premise that the worlds people inhabit, depending on their cultural provenance, are themselves marked by sensory qualities (see, for example, Howes 2003). Thus there are said to be ‘visual worlds’, ‘auditory worlds’, ‘haptic worlds’ and so on. In this conversion, the senses are effectively turned from open-ended modalities of exploratory perception, or ways of sensing the world, into self-contained experiential domains or worlds of sense (Howes and Pink 2010; Ingold 2011b). And by the same token, the eyes, ears and skin cease to fi gure as organs of a body that, as it makes its way in an environment, attentively looks, listens and feels where it is going, and come to be regarded, instead, as instruments of playback that aim to capture a world in its totality and render it back to the self-consciously refl exive subject. In vision, for example, it is as though the eyes opened not upon the real, but upon a simu- lacrum whose objects already bear witness to the experience of sight and return that experience to us in our gaze. These objects, as art historian James Elkins puts it, “stare back” (Elkins 1996). They are images. This is why, for many students of visual culture, seeing has nothing to do with the observational accompaniment of real life and everything to do with the interpretation of images. For them, as indeed for most art historians, without images there is nothing to be seen. All viewing, then, is re -viewing. But if all one can ever see is itself a refl ex of vision, how can one ever see the world itself? Are we so blind to what is going on around us? A principal claim of the anthropology of the senses, of course, is to have dethroned vision from the sovereign position it had allegedly held in the intellectual pantheon of the western world, and to highlight the contributions of other, non-visual sensory modalities, above all to the sensory formations of non-western peoples (Howes 1991). It is therefore ironic that in ‘rediscovering’ these modalities – of hearing, touch, smell and so on – anthropologists of this persuasion have implemented exactly the same manoeuvre as students of visual culture. To the world of images conjured up by the latter, they have simply added worlds of sounds, of feelings and of smells. So if the eyes return the world to us in its visual image, conceived in art-historical terms as a landscape, then likewise the ears reveal a soundscape, the skin a touch- scape, the nose a smellscape and so on. These multiple ‘scapes’, however, refer not to the practically and productively inhabited world but to the virtual worlds conjured up when experiences of habitation – captured for posterity – are rendered back, in artifi cially purifi ed forms, for interpretation and consumption. Expelled from the temporal movement of perception and action, aesthetics re-enters here on the rebound. Yet in reality, the northern hunter, as he makes his way through tundra or forest, is alive to the surroundings through all his senses. His environment is no more sliced up along the lines of the sensory pathways by which he ventures within it From the North with my cello 461 than is the environment of the cellist who likewise listens and feels as he or she plays. For both hunter and cellist, to look, to listen and to feel are to pay attention to one undivided and indivisible world, rather than to inhabit multiple scapes in parallel. There is beauty in the ‘worlding’ of this world, by which it becomes vividly and vitally present to us, and not only in the postcards we send ourselves back from the places that we have visited along the way. The sliced-up world, by contrast, is a recreation of the retrospective, post-performance multi-media animation or slideshow. I am at one, therefore, with literary theorist Hans Gumbrecht, in pleading against the systematic bracketing of presence, along with the uncontested centrality of interpretation, in contemporary discourses of aesthetics, above all in the academic disciplines of the arts and humanities (Gumbrecht 2004, xv). It is perhaps the great illusion of our age to have mistaken the slideshow for reality, and to have consequently abandoned presence for interpretation, and the judgements of perception for the mediations of semiosis.

Five propositions Let me conclude by rounding up my ﬁ ve propositions.

1 Beauty is attentional. Brought forth in time along a path of movement, beauty is manifested in the fl uency of this movement and in the concentration and judgement through which it is attuned to the variable conditions of the task at hand. It is suspended in the tension between opposed forces of stretching forth and holding back. 2 Beauty is in the unity of affects. It lies not in outward appearances but in an opening up towards others, on the inside, that puts one’s very existence on the line. Every such line establishes a relational pathway for the fl ow of affect. Beauty arises when these lines are united in correspondence. 3 Beauty is enchanting. Enchantment comes not from the gravitational pull of objects invested with magical charm through the artfulness of their production but from the correspondence of movements of attention. To be spellbound is to be caught in a mesh of affective relations. 4 Beauty is in hearing and seeing. Enchantment literally refers to the singer’s joining with the song, in its temporal unfolding. It would therefore seem to be specifi c to the aural register. However, to look is also to enter into the movements of things in their formation. Enchanting beauty may therefore be experienced in vision as in hearing. 5 Beauty is sensed along the path of presence. The apprehension of beauty is not about the refl exive interpretation of worlds already endowed with sensory (visual, aural or tactile) attributes. It is about sensing the world through active looking, listening or feeling. It is therefore judged in perception rather than evaluated in retrospection.

These fi ve propositions contain the clues to why, at least in my experience, what I have learned from Saami people and from my attempts to master the cello have 462 Tim Ingold so much in common. First, both have taught me of the importance of attentionality. I have come to understand that paying attention is not about shining a spotlight on this or that object in the world, but about going along with things, opening up to them and doing their bidding. Intention is premised upon attentionality, not attention on intentionality. Second, I have learned what it means to inhabit a world in which all things – animals, people, music – exist only in so far as they go along, following paths that answer to one another or correspond. This is a world not of objects but of affects. Indeed, only because objects fall apart can affects be pulled together. Third, I have understood what it means to be enchanted: not to stand in awe before the congealed monuments of either nature or art, but to join with things, or accompany them, in the movements of their formation. It means working our way upstream from a world of appearances to the very appearing of things. To be enchanted is never to be awestruck, but it is continually to be fi lled with wonder. Fourth, the experience of playing the cello might have led me to think that enchantment is exclusively aural. But working with the Saami made me realise that it can be visual as well, and that seeing and hearing are not as different as they are commonly made out to be. Fifth, and fi nally, I have learned that the only way to grow in skill and wisdom is through an education of perception and judgement that better enables us to attend to what is going on, and to respond with sensitivity and precision. It is a matter of fi nding things out for oneself, not by holding a mirror to the world and seeing it only in its refl ections, but through a direct, practical and experimental exposure to the vagaries of real.

Acknowledgements This chapter began life in 2009, when I and my colleagues put together a proposal for a programme of research entitled ‘Beauty from the North’. The proposal fell by the wayside, but I would like to thank Arnar Arnason, Tanya Argounova-Low, Alex King, Nancy Wachowich and Robert Wishart for helping me develop my ideas. I ﬁ rst presented the chapter in its present form as a Warnock Lecture to the Art History Department at Northwestern University, Illinois, and would like to thank Professor Jesús Escobar and his colleagues for their hospitality. I also have Eleanor Peers to thank for her very helpful comments on the penultimate draft. The writing of the chapter was made possible by an Advanced Grant (323677 KFI) from the European Research Council. I am most grateful to the Council for its support.

References Anderson, D. G., R. P. Wishart and V. Vaté, eds. 2013. About the Hearth: Perspectives on the Home, Hearth and Household in the Circumpolar North . Oxford: Berghahn. Bodenhorn, B. 1990. I’m not the great hunter, my wife is: Inupiat and anthropological models of gender. Etudes Inuit Studies 14(1–2): 55–74. Carpenter, E. 1973. Eskimo Realities . New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Chaussonnet, V. 1988. Needles and animals: Women’s magic. In Crossroads of Continents: Cultures of Siberia and Alaska, eds. W. Fitzhugh and A. Crowell, 209–226. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. From the North with my cello 463 Coote, J. and A. Shelton, eds. 1992. Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , trans. B. Massumi. London: Continuum. Elkins, J. 1996. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster. Gell, A. 1999. The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams, ed. E. Hirsch. London: Athlone Press. Grasseni, C., ed. 2007. Skilled Visions: Between Apprenticeship and Standards . Oxford: Berghahn. Gumbrecht, H. U. 2004. Production and Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey . Stan- ford, CA: Stanford University Press. Home-Cook, G. 2015. Theatre and Aural Attention: Stretching Ourselves. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Howes, D., ed. 1991. The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropol- ogy of the Senses . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Howes, D. 2003. Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Howes, D. and S. Pink 2010. The future of sensory anthropology/the anthropology of the senses. Social Anthropology 18(3): 331–340. Ingold, T. 1993. The reindeerman’s lasso. In Technological Choices: Transformation in Material Cultures Since the Neolithic , ed. P. Lemmonier, 108–125. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill . London: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2011a. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description . Abing- don: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2011b. Worlds of sense and sensing the world: A response to Sarah Pink and David Howes. Social Anthropology 19(3): 313–317. Ingold, T. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Abingdon: Routledge. Ingold, T. 2015. The Life of Lines . Abingdon: Routledge. Jonas, H. 1966. The Phenomenon of Life . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kennaway, G. 2014. Playing the Cello, 1780–1930 . Farnham: Ashgate. Masschelein, J. 2010. The idea of critical e-ducational research – e-ducating the gaze and inviting to go walking. In The Possibility/Impossibility of a New Critical Language of Education , ed. I. Gur-Ze’ev, 275–291. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Morphy, H. 1996. Aesthetics is a cross-cultural category: For the motion (1). In Key Debates in Anthropology , ed. T. Ingold, 255–260. London: Routledge. Nelson, R. K. 1983. Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ong, W. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word . London: Methuen. Oosten, J. 1992. Representing the spirits: The masks of the Alaskan Inuit. In Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics , eds. J. Coote and A. Shelton, 113–134. Oxford: Clarendon. Siblin, E. 2009. The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece . New York: Grove Press. Vernant, J. P. 1983. Myth and Thought among the Greeks. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Wachowich, N. 2014. Stitching lives: A family history of making caribou skin clothing in the Canadian Arctic. In Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts , eds. E. Hallam and T. Ingold, 127–146. Farnham: Ashgate. 464 Tim Ingold Wilf, E. 2012. Rituals of creativity: Tradition, modernity, and the “acoustic unconscious” in a U.S. collegiate jazz music program. American Anthropologist 114(1): 32–44. Willerslev, R. 2007. Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Yen, Y. 2005. Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society . London: RoutledgeCurzon. Index

Page numbers in italic indicate ﬁ gures.

2001 (fi lm) 207 agency 70–74, 77, 78, 82–85, 90–91, 157, 3-D towers 394 183, 228, 233, 242, 272, 278–288, 319, 4′33″ (Cage) 271 393, 398; abduction of 5–6, 85, 89; cinematographic 209–212; critiques of Aalto, A. 299 93–96 Abeokuta 176 aging 243 Aberdeen 292, 303 Ah – Black Crab 426 ability 194–195, 264–266, 422–423 Ahlberg-Yohe, J. 64n5 Abstract Expressionism 60–63 Ájluokta 190–193 Abyldaeva, T. 435 Ala 168–169 Acoustic Ecology research 132 Alaari 170, 171, 181 Adire 169 Alake 176 Adoji 170 ala ki’iz 434, 446 advertisements 344–345 Albers, A. 16, 355, 363, 366–368; Anni aesthetic approach 2–3, 36–39, 67–68, Albers: On Designing 367; ‘Design: 189, 371, 449–450 Anonymous and Timeless’ 367; ‘On aesthetic praxis 204–216 the Designing of Textiles and the aesthetic relativism 242–245 Handweaver’s Place in Industry’ 367; aesthetics: design 365–367, 386–387; On Weaving 367 enactment of 258–259; engineering aletheic gaze 312–313, 321 and 383; as faculty of judgment 234; alienation 236, 299–300, 307 as form of competence 221–224; allegories 225 ideal 251–253; of intertextuality Allerston, P. 316 310; Kantian 263, 272, 358, 367, ‘All Things Made’ (Guss) 371 386–387; of the known 313; of Almendros, N. 213 life stories 116–117; occidental Alschuler, A. 344 450–451; organisational 205–209; Altai herders 441–443 philosophical 1; radical 264, alterity 28–32, 407 272; synthetic 360–362; technical Alton, J. 213 436; tradition and 307–308; āmal 424 as verb 264 Amazonia 17, 403–417 Aesthetics of Design, The (Forsey) 357 American approach 1, 7, 16–17, 23–25, 271 affective vision 264, 271 American Cinematographer 209 affects, unity of 455–456, 461–462 American Fabrics 360–368, 361 Agamben, G. 321, 321n1–2; ‘The American in Paris, An (fi lm) 213 Melancholy Angel’ 307–308 analogy 101–105, 149 agbada alaari 176 Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara agbada etu 172 ¯154–156 466 Index Anaphe silk worms 170 assemblage 30–31 an cantaireachd 109 assertoric gaze 313 an ceol mor 6, 108–110 Athabascan language 53 ancestors 17, 56–57, 154–156, 168 Athapaskan 331 ancient Greece 40, 375–376 attentionality 453–455, 461–462 an cruanthla 110 attractiveness 236, 239–244, 345 Andersen, P. 393 attunement 7, 120, 126 Angelus Novus (Klee) 307 aura 307, 316, 321 aniline colours 149 Australian Indigenous Western Desert animal sacrifi ce 6, 82–83, 86–96, 92 people 149–156, 159–163 animism 350, 443 authenticity 100, 175–176, 380 Anishinaabe 325–326, 329–336 authorship 17, 107 An Leabhar Mòr 309 autism 11, 262–275 Anni Albers: On Designing (Albers) 367 Autism and Talent (Happé and Frith) an piobaireachd 108 265–267 An Sùileachan (Maclean) 318–321 auto-estima 241 anthropological approach 1–2, 23–35, 77, autonomy 36–40, 53, 192–193 190, 249, 449–450; colour and 148; avant-garde 62, 68, 175, 264, 271 fl eshly beauty and 233–247; Fuyuge gab Avatar (fi lm) 214 and 82–97; sand-drawing and 429–431 avop 424 anthropological philosophy 234–237 avve 197 anthropology museums 335–336 Ayers Rock 156–160 anthropology of the senses 460 Azawagh Arabs 235–236, 243 anthropomorphism 350 anti-aesthetic 215 back beams 219 anti-ocularcentric bias 211 Badiou, A. 26–27 Anusas, M. 298–300, 389 bagpipe music 107–109 Aoyama 288 baigal 443 apprenticeship 196, 226–227 Bakhtin, M. 310 appropriation 403–417 balance 57–62, 434–448 Arad, R. 296 Balfour, H.: The Evolution of Decorative araket 436–438 Art 407–410, 408 architecture 13, 160, 279–305 ballet 251 Arendt, H. 15 Balze, R. 98, 102 Aristotelian logic 40 Bankole-Race, E. 8 Aristotle 7 Barasana 404 Arman 314 bark painting 17, 446 Armstrong, I. 272 Baron-Cohen, S. 266, 273n4 aroe spirits 404 baskets 330–331, 336 Art and Agency (Gell) 24, 95 bata 439–440 artefact 5, 14–18, 27–31, 82–84, 151, 210, Bataille, G. 296 371, 386, 434 Bateson, G. 4–8, 23, 67–68, 302, 423; artistas 240 Style, Grace and Information in artistic licence 101–102 Primitive Art 70–72 Arts and Crafts movement 15, 189, 375 Bateson, M. 119 asa 178, 183 Baudrillard, J. 159, 311 Ascher, M. 27 Bauhaus 367–368 ashar 436, 439 Baumgarten, A. 386–393 Asian art 25 Baxandall, M. 226 aso asiko 178–181, 181 bayeta cloth 54 aso-ebi 179–181 beading 333–335, 403–417 aso ilu oke 170 beaten cloth 166, 172 aso-oke (aso-ofi ) 166–186 Beautiful Mind, A (fi lm) 38 aso olona 173, 175 Beautiful Mind, A (Nasar) 342 Index 467 beautiful otherness 267 Blumenbach, J. 235 beautiful theorems 342 Boas, F. 23, 178, 235 beauty: approaches to 1–3; the body, bodily heat 249 performance, and 10–11, 233–275; body modifi cation 235, 407 grace and 4–6, 53–111; history of body movement 115–130, 248–261 67–68; pattern and 3–4, 23–50; body painting 406–407, 411 perceiving 6–8, 115–186; problem with body standards 250–253 23–35; propositions on 449–464; skill Bogdashina, O. 265 and 8–10, 189–229; in space and time Boi, L. 48 12–14, 279–338; as synthesis 16–18, Bolton, L. 422–423 403–464; unexpected gift of 67–81; bone 434–448, 444 work, design, and 14–16, 341–399 bope spirits 404 beauty industry 345 Bororo 404 beauty-in-the-making 257–259 Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation 64n3 beauty pageants 227, 341–342 Boswell, J. 99–101 beauty stones 88 Bourdieu, P. 78, 151, 224, 243, 294–296, beaux-arts 67–68 299–300; Distinction: A Social Critique Becher, B. 344 of the Judgement of Taste 258–259 Becher, H. 344 boxing 249 Beeching, R.: ‘Reshaping of British boz üy 440–442 Railways Report’ 378–379 brain science 123–125, 221 Begay, D. 58–59, 63, 64n6 Braque, G. 311 beleza 239–240 Brazil 11, 233, 237–245, 403–417 Belize 227 breast implants 238 belonging 324–338 Bredekamp, H. 26 Benally, L. 57–58 Breton, A. 72, 314, 318 Benjamin, W. 4, 26, 159, 307 bricoleur 310 Berger, J. 226 brightness 434–448 Bergman, I. 212 British Museum 325–327, 375 Bergson, H. 2, 12–13, 264; Matière et British Railways (BR) 378–379 Mèmoire 308–309 Brown, D. 328–329 Berlant, T.: The Navajo Blanket 62–63; Broz, L. 443 Walk in Beauty 62–63 Brunel, I. 372 Berleant, A. 295, 301 Bryson, N. 148 Berlin 131–133, 143–146 Buckley, J.: ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Berlo, J. 331 Over’ 256 bespoke designs 179, 372 Buddhist temples 280–281 Bhaltos Community Trust 321 buildings, as text 285 Bhuller, D. 254 built environments 292–305 Big Ben 135–136 Bunn, S. 17–18, 194 Bildungsbegriff 356–363, 367–368 Burnside, J. 309; A Catechism of the Laws biologism 242 of Storms 309, 311–312 Birmingham 138–139 button blankets 328, 328–329 Bjørkvold, J-R.: The Muse Within 116 black beauty 238 cabinets of curiosity 314–318, 321 Blackfoot 331 Caduveo 102, 235 Blacking, J. 259 Cage, J. 264; 4′33″ 271 Blackman, L. 266–268 Caillois, R. 314, 318, 323n3 Blair, L. 14 Calkins, E. 358–359 Blanchett, C. 214 calligraphy 281, 459–460 blankets 53–66, 55, 59, 61, 328, 328–329 camera movement 209–210 blessing 434–448 Camerimage International Festival of the Blessing/Beauty Way 5 Art of Cinematography 204 Blessingway ceremony 57 Cameron, J. 214 468 Index Campbell, J. 63–64, 98 Clifford, J. 74 Campbell, R. 176 Clifton suspension bridge 372 Cannon, R. 108 Close, C. 150–156, 159, 162–163 canoes 28–29, 82 cochineal dye 54 capacity, beauty as 189–203 Coleridge, S. 311 Capital (Marx) 105–106, 354 collaboration 154, 204–215, 385–399; capitalism 13–16, 150, 243, 343–352 cross-species 442, 445 captivation 82–97 collectivity 86–92, 248–261, 403, 413–414 Carbuncle Award 292–294, 302 Collison, V. 326 carbuncles 292–305 colonisation 94, 150–152, 405 Cardinal, R. 272 colour 3, 8; accent 151; aniline 149; Cardoso, F. 237–238 anthropological approach to 148; of Caro, A. 63 clans 331; complementary 441; digital Carol (fi lm) 214 150–152, 159–163; in fi lm 210–214; Caron, L. 213 hierarchies of 236; landscape 213–214; Carpenter, E. 458 natural 157; open 163; palettes 54, Carson, K. 64n3 148–165; as processual 151; smiling 160; Cartesian dualism 263–265 standardisation of 149; surface and 148 carving 334 commodifi cation 309 Casals, P. 451, 456 commodities 344–345 Catechism of the Laws of Storms, A commodity fetishism 78 (Maclean and Burnside) 309, 311–312 common sensing 217–229 Caucasian, as term 235 communal life 193–194, 413–414 Cauchy, A-L. 45 communicative musicality 115–130 cellos 449–464, 452 companionship 120–127, 411–413 ceremony clothing 168, 172, 191–192 comparative approach 23–24, 26, 32 Chadwick, L. 76 composition 209, 387 change 12, 98–111 consciousness 123–125 Changing Woman 55–57, 64 Constructivism 68, 242 chant 456–457 consumer engineering 358–359 Charbonnier, G. 102 consumption 14, 349 Châtelet, G. 45 contact improvisation 257 Cheape, H. 106–108 contemporary dance 248–261 cheber 437–440 continuity 404, 418–433 Chemero, A. 9 Cook Islands 30–31 Chicago Mercantile Exchange 344 Coote, J. 374–375 chief blankets 54–55 copper tubes and pipes 372, 381–383 Child Born of Water 61 Cornell, J. 312–316, 318 children, communicative musicality and cosmetic surgery 11, 237, 241–243, 249 115–130 cotton 168, 170 chimera principle 25–26 cotton mills 10, 217–227 Chochunbaeva, D. 438–440 Counsel (White) 67–70, 74–79, 75 Christianity 31, 160, 168 counter-narrative 316 chroma 149–150, 159 Country Life 456 Chua, L. 83, 95 Coy, M. 17 churro sheep 54 craft-making 189–203, 346–347 Chushoin 287 craftsmanship 9, 15 cinematography 9–11, 204–216 Crawford, J. 321 circumpolar North 189, 450–451, 455–459 creation 403–417 Clapperton, B. 176 Creation Ancestors 154–157 Clarke, D. 170 creative control 212–214 Classicism 1–2, 6, 99, 233 creative imagination, autism and 265 Classic-period Navajo weaving 53–55, 59, Creativity and Cultural Improvisation 59–62 (Hallam and Ingold) 307 Index 469 Cree 325–326, 329–331, 336 design education 356–358 Cresson: Centre for Research on Sonic Designing Environments for Life (DEFL) Space & Urban Environment 132 programme 389, 391 critical theory 311 designo et colore 148 Crocker, J. 404 Dewey, J. 2, 264–266, 269–271, 348 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 266, 273n7 d’Harnoncourt, R. 62, 362 Cuaron, A. 213–214 diagrams 45 Cubism 68 dialogic products 388–389, 394, cultural imperialism 238 394–395 cultural intelligence 125–126 Didcot Railway Centre (DRC) 377–379 ‘Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The’ Diderot, D. 99 (Jameson) 312 Diebenkorn, R. 63 cultural relativism 235 difference 413–414 cultural ridge 105, 108 digital colour 150–152, 159–163 cultural transmission 307–308 digital music 159 Currie, G. 265, 273n5 Diné 54, 58, 63–64; see also Navajo Cusack, P. 2, 7–8 Dine, J. 63 Dinka 374–375, 383 Dadaism 68 Dion, M. 314 daeman 422–423 directors of photography 204 daily use clothing 168, 191 disability, social model of 266–267 D’Alessandro, J. 5 disfi guring practices 235 Damasio, A. 125 disinterest 234–235, 241 dance 6, 11, 82–97, 248–261 Dissanayake, E. 125 dance aprons 327–328 dissociation 325–326 dancers, preparations of 83, 88–89 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Daniels, G. 355 Judgement of Taste (Bourdieu) Dante 160 258–259 Danto, A. 76–77 ‘Distinctive Features of Navaho Religion’ D’Arcy Thomson works (Maclean) 316 (Reichard) 58 da shealladh 316 Diyin Dine’é (ancestors) 56–57 da Vinci, L. 296 Dod Mantle, A. 207 Days of Heaven (fi lm) 213 dog sled fi gure 334 Deacon, B. 27, 84, 426–427 Donald, M. 125 de Botton, A. 295–296 Doré, G. 309, 311 Defi ning Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Douady, A. 42, 43, 48 Art (exhibition; British Museum) 375 Douglas, F. 62 DEFL (Designing Environments for Life) Douglas, M. 105, 108 programme 389, 391 Dowell, K. 326, 329 de Freitas, E. 2–5 Downton Abbey (television show) 214 Deleuze, G. 47, 148, 354, 359–360, 455, Doyle, C. 206, 209 459–460 drag performance 226–227 Demarco, R. 316 drawing 148, 436–437 Demes, M. 421 DRC (Didcot Railway Centre) 377–379 Denetdale, J. 57, 63–64 Dream of Ossian, The (Ingres) 98–102, derangement 350–351 109–110 Describing the Contemporary Sound Drexler, A. 355, 362 Environment (Paquette) 132 Dreyfus, T. 41 design 14–16, 341–399 Driftwood (Maclean) 312 ‘Design: Anonymous and Timeless’ Driftworks (Maclean) 314 (Albers) 367 droppers 219 design anthropology 385–399 dualism 148, 263–265 design-as-a-process-of-inquiry 387–389, Duchamp, M. 68, 75–77, 79n1, 264, 271, 395 314 470 Index Duke, B.: Pave Up Paradise (dance piece) engine number 6023 (steam locomotive) 250, 254–259, 256, 257 377–383, 379, 381 Duncan, I. 259 engine number 6024 (steam locomotive) Dunn, D. 309 379 dwellings 451 English approach 23 Dwyer, M. 220 Enlightenment 1–2, 72, 98–111, 356, 437 dyes 54–56, 170, 411 Enshugomi 284 Enskillment at Sea (Palsson) 9 early Modern period 67–68 enskilment 217, 221 earth oven cooking 412 equilibrium theorem 342 Earthships 298–301 Ernst, M. 309, 311–312 Eastern tradition 264 erotic, the 233–237, 241, 244, 455–456 East Wemyss caves 320 essentialism 266 ebi 177, 182 Esu 172 Echo Objects (Stafford) 224–227 ethnographic approach 28, 32, 166, 190, eco-buildings 298–299, 302 205, 211–212, 217, 224, 233–235, Ecology Centre 297–298, 301 249–250 ecology of beauty 72–74 ethnological museums 325 ecology of mind 71–73 Etu 170, 181 ecology of relations 221–222 Euclid 40 economy 14–16, 301, 341–352 Euclidean geometry 12, 29 Edmonds, A. 11 eugenics 235 Edumare 182 eureka moments 37 effi cacy 85, 422, 427, 440 European Acoustic Heritage Project 132 effi ciency 117–123, 353 European approach 1, 7, 17, 67–68, 271 effort 437–440, 445–446 European Noise Directive (2002) 132 Egyptian Pyramids 376–377 evaluative approach 2–3 Eisenberg, T. 41 evanescence 17, 418–419, 430–432 Eisenstein, S. 279 Evans, J. 77–79, 79n2 elasticity 454–455 Evans, S. 78, 79n2 Eliot, T. 311 Evans-Pritchard, E. 12 Elkins, J. 460 Evenk (Eveny) 442–443 Elliot, M. 83, 95 everyday labour 16 El Pinto, A. 54 Evolution of Decorative Art, The (Balfour) embellishment 167 407–410, 408 embodied mathematics 42–48 ewa/ewa inu/ewa ode 183 emergentes 237 Ewart, E. 17 Emeriewen, K. 167 Ewart, I. 5, 16 Emigrant Ship (Maclean) 310 e-Waste 353 emotional harmony 117–123 exoticism 285 emotions, feelings and 125 exotics of the known 316–318 empathy 5 experiential approaches 3 enactments 264 eye (celebration) 183 enamb u bab 88 enchantment 5, 70–73, 83–84, 87–88, facades 297–298 152–154, 374–375, 456–462 fade 90, 91 end products 404 fame 83–84 energy 403–405 family status 172 Energy SMART grids 385, 391–393 fashion 150, 178–181, 357, 361–362 Engels, F. 348 Fastré, P.: ‘Notes on the Manners and engineering 16, 371–384 Customs of the Fuyuge’ 82–94 Engineers and the Price System, The fattening 235–236 (Veblen) 351 Fauvists 213 Index 471 favelas 240 freedom, beauty as 300 Favourite Sounds Project 7–8, 131–147 French approach 23 feature fi lm cinematography 205 frequencies 118 Féaux de la Croix, J. 438 Freud, S. 100, 234 feelings, emotions and 125 Freyre, G. 237, 245n1 Feinn, the 99 Friberg, C. 386 felt, Kyrgyz shyrdak 17–18, 434–448, 439, Friedrich, C. 104 441, 444, 445 Frith, U. 273n4; Autism and Talent female/feminine beauty 82, 234 265–267 feminist critique 236–238, 249 Fry, M. 107 Fennoscandia 189 function 353–354, 362 fetishism 68, 78 Fundamental theorem 342 fi eld recordings 132–133 funeral shrouds 440 Fields of the Cloth of Gold 176 Futurism 68 Fife 297, 320 Fuyuge 6, 82–97 fi gure-ground reversal 441 Fijn, N. 442 gab 6, 82–97 fi lm crews 204, 207–208, 211 Gablik, S. 268 fi lm industry 205–206 Gaelic oral tradition 100–104 fi lmstocks 213 gaffers 208 Fingal 99–100, 103 Gage, J. 151, 160 fi nger-weaving 192, 196 Gàidhealtachd 306, 309–310 fi nishing 293, 299–300 Gakkinoma 287 Fiore, M. 214 Gallese, V. 24 First Nations 2, 14, 325, 328, 331 Galt, R. 214–215 First Story Toronto 331–332 Game of Thrones (television show) 214 First theorem 342 ganko (fl ying geese) formation 287 fl ags 152 gáppte 191–196, 192 Flanders poppies 152 garawa ofi fo 172 fl eshly beauty 11, 233–247 gardens 87–88, 280–281, 284, 287–289, fl oating patterns 166 412, 422 fl ow 273n7, 388, 419 garmonia c prirody 443 fl uorescent light 160 Gate of Honour 280 Flusser, W. 15 Gatt, C. 395 fl ying geese (ganko) formation 287 Gavron, S. 208 fl ying shuttle looms 218–219 gbariye 176 Foley, M. 308–309 Geddes, P. 308 Forest of Symbols (Turner) 3 Geku 281 forgery 100, 103 Gell, A. 1–2, 5–6, 13, 28–29, 68, 72, form 249–253, 354, 449–450 76–77, 108, 152, 210, 258, 374–377, Formalism 62 427, 457; anthropological approach of formalization 24–28, 32 82–97; Art and Agency 24, 95 Forsey, J.: The Aesthetics of Design 357 Gellner, E. 105 Foucault, M. 103, 249, 314 General Theory of Employment, The found objects 68 (Keynes) 341–343 Four Corners 54 generative beauty 3–4, 234, 238–242 Fox, J. 173 geometry 3, 12, 27–30, 42–47 fractal geometry 42–47 Gérard, F.: Ossian 98 fractal mating rabbits 42, 43 Gerdes, P. 3 framing 204–205, 209 Gere, R. 213 Francis I 176 gestures 31–32, 116, 126–127 Frazer, J.: The Golden Bough 105 Gherardi, S. 206 free beauty 12, 357 Gibson, J. 7–9, 12 472 Index Gift, The (Mauss) 342 Gunn, W. 16, 393 Gilks, A. 213 Guss, D.: ‘All Things Made’ 371 Gilot, F. 68 Gustafsson, A. 9–11, 191 Girard, A. 363 GWR (Great Western Railway) 377–382 Givenchy 363 Glass, A. 326 habit 70–73, 78 glass beadwork 403–417 Hachijo Imperial family 284 Global Financial Crisis 162 Hacking, I. 40–41 Goethe, J. 99 Hackworth, N. 76–77, 79n3 Golden Bough, The (Frazer) 105 Haddon, A. 23 Golden Mean 12 Haida Repatriation Committee 325–326 Golden Section 295 Haidas 325–329, 336 golpe de bau 240 Haile, B. 57 Gomez: ‘Tijuana Lady’ 256 Hakim, C. 241 good design 353–368 Hallaig (MacLean) 316 Good Design Award® 356 Hallam, E. 16–17, 269–270, 409; Good Design exhibits (Museum of Modern Creativity and Cultural Improvisation Art) 355, 358–359 307 goodness 117, 125, 356–358 Hamayon, R. 443 Gorman, C. 358 hands-in-craft 189–203 gorowa 86, 90, 94, 96n4 Handsworth, Birmingham 138, 138–139 Gottlieb, A. 62 Happé, F.: Autism and Talent 265–267 Gow, P. 6, 446 Happenings 271 grace 4–6, 53–111, 115–130, 268 Happy Valley (television show) 214 Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology haptics 9, 225 218 Haraway, D. 242 Grande Odalisque (Ingres) 99 hardness 404–405, 413 graphic elements 28–32 Harkness, R. 13 Grasseni, C. 9–10; Skilled Vision 211, 226 harmony 57–62, 117–123 Grassmann, H. 45 harp music 106–109 Grau, E. 208 Harris, O. 17; What Makes People Work gravestones 31 438 Gravity (fi lm) 213–214 harvesting 222 Great Depression 358 Hasse, C. 210 Great Lakes regions 331, 335–337 Hatcher, E. 64n7 Great Pyramids 376–377 Haudenosaunee 331 Great Western Railway (GWR) 377–382 Hay, D. 125 Great Western Society 378 Haynes, T. 214 Greek mythology 457 healing 126–127 Greek National Theatre 248 hearing 7, 457–462 Greek traditions 295 Hegel, G. 235, 271 Greenberg, C. 75 Hegelian aesthetics 272 Greenhalgh, C. 9–11, 17 Heidegger, M. 8, 222; The Origin of the Grimshaw, A. 211 Work of Art 318–321 Gronow, J. 357 Henry VIII 176 Gropius, W. 282–284 Heraclitus 1–2 Guardian 251 herders 13, 441–445, 451–454, 458–459 Guatemala City 346–347 Higashida, N. 264–266, 273n6 Guattari, F. 148, 354, 359–360, 455, Higgin, M. 5–6 459–460 Higgins, L. 109 Gudeman, S. 14–16, 438 high culture 67–68, 77 Guillem, S. 250–252 Highsmith, P.: The Price of Salt 214 Gujarat 104 Hinkson, M. 156 Gumbrecht, H. 461 hipe 404 Index 473 Hippias Major (Plato) 375 Industrial Revolution 14–16 hiririn 98 industry 344–345, 350 Hirsch, E. 2, 5–6 inequalities 234 Hirst, D. 77, 314; The Physical infants, communicative musicality and Impossibility of Death in the Mind of 115–130 Someone Living 78 ingenuity 330–335 Hitchcock, A. 297 Ingold, T. 2, 5–7, 12, 16–18, 72, 148–149, Holbraad, M. 2 152, 194, 210, 221, 249, 269–270, holism 78 297–300, 371, 389, 395, 409; Creativity holistic building practices 299–300 and Cultural Improvisation 307; Lines 296 Hollywood 207–208, 213 Ingres, J. 6; The Dream of Ossian 98–102, Holy People 56–58, 63 109–110; Grande Odalisque 99 homage 208–209, 214 inheritance, of beauty 239–245 Home-Cook, G. 454 inherited cloth 176 Homo ludens 15 inhibition 266 Horrocks, C. 159 insect dyes 54 House Beautiful 345 Instinct of Workmanship, The (Veblen) hózhó/hózhóón 53, 57–61 347–351 hozhóó/hozhóóji 5 institutionalist economics 348 Hsu, E. 7 intellectual property 208–209 hue 149–151 intention 462 Huffman, K. 429–431 interactive architecture 160 Hugh-Jones, C. 404 interactive sound maps 138, 138–139 Humans (television show) 214 inter-subjectivity 115 Hume, D. 104–105 intertextuality 310–311 Humphrey, C. 442 intra-action 388–389 Hungahari, M. 424, 426, 429 Inuit 320, 325, 458–459 hunter-gatherers 149, 151 invention 46 hunters and hunting 442–443, 451, 455–461 Ipsos MORI 294–295, 302 hyperrealism 30 Iqwaye 3–4 Ise shrine 281, 284 identity 206, 413–414 Ishimoto, Y. 285 idolatry 85 Islam 168 Ifa 173 Isle of Lewis 306–308, 320 Ifun 170 Isozaki, A. 282–287 iit koyruk 443 Istomin, K. 220 Ijebu 170, 173, 175–176 ited 424 Ile-Ife 167 It’s a Wonderful Life (fi lm) 208 illuminated Medieval manuscripts 160 Iversen, M. 79n1 imagines agentes 24 iwa 183 Imagining Autism project 11, 262–275 iyi 183 imitation 403–417 imperfections 200–201, 404 Jablonec nad Nisou 405 Impressionists 213 Jackson, M. 1–2 impression management 29 Jacob, S. 296 indexes 75–77, 83–87, 90–94 Jacobite Rising 99, 106 India 85, 198 Jainakova, K. 435 Indian Art of the United States exhibition James, W. 2, 5, 13 (Museum of Modern Art) 62–63 James Caird works (Maclean) 307, 316 indigo dye 54, 170 Jameson, F. 311–312, 321; ‘The Cultural individualism 77–78 Logic of Late Capitalism’ 312 individuality 58 Japanese architecture 13, 279–291 Indoor Climate and Quality of Life Project Japanese International Architectural 385, 389–391 Association 285 474 Index Japanese palettes 150 ‘King Edward I’ (steam locomotive) 377–383 jaryktyk 440 ‘King Edward II’ (steam locomotive) Jávo, C. 193 377–383, 379, 381 je’ek 436–437 kinship 27, 179, 418–433 Jewell, E. 62 Kirby, M. 271 jewellery 176 Klee, P. 363; Angelus Novus 307 Jim, R. 57–58 Klein, A. 363 Jobs, S. 351–352 Knoll, F. 363 Johns, J. 63 Kobori, E. 284 Johnson, P. 362–363 kochkor muyuz 443–444 Johnson, S. 99–104, 107–109 Kokū 286 John-Steiner, V. 207 kōlam 307 Jóhpnaa’éí 61 Koons, J. 314 joik 458 ‘k’ori mi san mi’ 168 Jonas, H. 457–458 körk 437–440 Jordan, M. 345 Koshoin 287 Joyce, J. 311 kracivo 436–437 Judd, D. 63 Krmpotich, C. 14 judgemental approach 2–3 Krull, W. 39 Kubrick, S. 207 Kahlenberg, M.: The Navajo Blanket Küchler, S. 3–4, 18, 446 62–63; Walk in Beauty 62–63 Kudai 439 kairos 454 Kühl, O. 122 kala 151 Kūkan 286 kalon 375–376 Kula 29, 85 Kamen, H. 421, 427–428 Kuma Kengo Architects 288–289 kangarooing 120–121, 121 kush kanat 443 Kant, I. 6, 12, 104, 189, 234–235, 244, kwe 331–333 271, 348, 357–358, 368, 376, 386–388 kyal oyum 444–445 Kantian aesthetics 263, 272, 358, 367, Kyrgyz shyrdak felt 17–18, 434–448, 439, 386–387 441, 444, 445 Kaprow, A. 271 Kara Kyrgyz 446 Labbai mat weavers 198 karga tyrmak 443 lac dye 54 karjylyk 444 Lacemaker, The (Vermeer) 82 Katatjuta 156 Lachman, E. 212–214 Katsura Rikyu 279–289 låhtåt 196, 197 Kaufmann, E., Jr. 354–355 Lancashire looms 218–220 Kayapo 405–407 Land Raiders of Reef 321 Kazakhs 13, 438–441, 444 Langer, S. 122 kaz oyum 443 Language and Art in the Navajo Universe Keats, J. 264, 270, 298 (Witherspoon) 62 Kelly, G. 213 lassos 453, 453–455 Ken 286 Latin America 16, 345–347 Kenet, M. 424, 425, 429 Latour, B. 40 Kennaway, G. 456 Lavalley, J. 330–331 kere dancers 89–90 Lave, J. 9, 16–17 Keynes, J.: The General Theory of Lawal, B. 183 Employment 341–343 Laws of Storms theory 309 Ki-ke-in 336 Layard, J. 84 kimona 150 Layton, R. 95 kinaesthesia 249 Leach, J. 75 kin-based sociality 151 LED (light emitting diode) lamps 160, 163 Index 475 Lee, A. 213 Storms 309, 311–312; D’Arcy Thomson Leibniz, G. 26, 46 works 316; Driftwood 312; Driftworks Lens of Dreams (NGO) 240 314; Emigrant Ship 310; James Caird Leslie, A. 273n4 works 307, 316; Leviathan Elegy 315; Lethaby, W. 14 Method Net 316, 317; Nomad Trace Leven, M. 320 313; ‘Pages from a Library’ 312; Leviathan Elegy (Maclean) 315 Portrait of Angus Mackenzie 311; The Levin, D. 313 Ring Net 308, 316–317; Sabbath of the Lévi-Strauss, C. 23–28, 100, 107, 235, Dead 316 310; Look, Listen, Read 101–103; MacLeod, J. 321 Mythologiques 102; Tristes Tropiques 102 MacLeod, J.A. 321 Lewis, M. 363 Macnair, P. 326, 335–336 Lichtenstein, R. 63 Macpherson, E. 99 Life of Pi (fi lm) 213 Macpherson, J. 99–109 Life of Pi (Martel) 213 Mad Men (television show) 214 life stories 116–117 Magazine of Art 367 light 7–8, 159, 167 magic hour 213 light capture 166–167, 171, 178 Magritte, R. 316 light emitting diode (LED) lamps 160, 163 Maier, V. 214 lighting 204–205, 209–210 maku inma religious ceremony 156 Lind, C. 17 maku/witchetty grubs 156 lines 148, 426 Malakula people 84–85 Lines (Ingold) 296 malanggan 29–30, 446 Lipset, D. 94 male beauty 82 Liverpool Biennial (2006) 74, 77 male gaze 234 Llinás, R. 125 Malick, T. 213 Lockhart, P.: A Mathematician’s Lament 37–39 Malinowski, B.: The Sexual Life of Lodeveans collection 79n2 Savages 105 logic 40–42 Mall, A. 307 logicist movement 40 Malloch, S. 7, 17, 117 Løgstrup, L. 391–393 Manchester 131–133, 142–143 London 131–146, 152, 258 Mandelbrot, B. 42, 45, 48 londondance.com 254 Manning, E. 36 lookbooks 214 manuscripts 103–105 lookism 239 Maori meeting houses 86 Look, Listen, Read (Lévi-Strauss) 101–103 Mara, R. 214 looms 56, 218–220 Marchand, T. 371 ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ Marcuse, H. 358 (Buckley) 256 marketing 362–366 lovi 244 markets 342, 348–349, 358 Lowland South America 403–417 Marquesas Islanders of Polynesia 25, 28 Lubezki, E. 214 marriage practices 243–244 lubrication systems 372, 381, 381–383 Martel, Y.: Life of Pi 213 Lucas, R. 13 Martin, A. 309, 317 Lulesámi 9–10, 189–203 Marx, K. 348; Capital 105–106, 354 Lumali Timi 425 Marxism 312, 348 lurex 166, 171, 182 Masschelein, J. 455 Lutterbie, J. 264 Massim 28–30 mass production 14 Ma 286 materialism 38–39, 45, 348 MacLean, S. 309; Hallaig 316 material labour 36–50 Maclean, W. 14, 306–323; An Sùileachan materials 148–149, 152, 194–195, 318–321; A Catechism of the Laws of 312–313, 388 476 Index Mathematician’s Lament, A (Lockhart) Miranda, C. 213 37–39 mise-en-scène 204 mathematics 2–4, 23–28, 36–50, 342 Mississippi River 344 Matière et Mèmoire (Bergson) 308–309 mnemonic systems 25–27 matter-of-fact knowledge 349–350 modelling 240 Mauss, M.: The Gift 342 Modern Architecture show (Museum of McCall’s paper patterns 363 Modern Art) 358 McCallum, I. 363 Modern art 62–64, 68 McCardell, C. 363 Modernism 68, 108, 237, 264, 284–286, McGough, L. 440 289, 311–312, 321 McTaggart, W.: Sailing of the Emigrant modernity 94, 178 Ship 310 modulation 47, 117 Mears, A. 241 Moffat, S. 308 media events 45–48 Moffat, Z. 226–227 media facades 160 Molotch, H. 178 medium, cinematographic 209–212 MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) 62–63, ‘Melancholy Angel, The’ (Agamben) 353–368, 356, 361, 365 307–308 Mondrian, P. 363 Melanesia 6, 29, 82–97, 421, 431–432 Monet, C. 213 melody 118 money displays 93, 94 memory 24–28, 308–309, 406, 428–429 money-shots 213 Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections Mongolian herders 434, 441–444 programme 329–336 Monster Slayer 61 Meno (Plato) 46 montage 279 mental growth 117 Moore, H. 76, 297 Merchandise Mart 354 moral-aesthetic economy 356–358 Merker, B. 125 moral-bodily qualities 403 Merleau-Ponty, M. 2, 6–7, 117, 258 morality, engineering and 379–392 Mesequer, R.: Pave Up Paradise (dance Morgan, L. 348 piece) 250, 254–259, 256, 257 morphological analysis 23, 125 mestiçagem 237–238 Morphy, H. 94–95, 371, 446 metaphysics 263 Morris, W. 15, 189, 375 metatexts 310 Mosleh, W. 393 Method Net (Maclean) 316, 317 Moss Garden 289 Métis 325 motifs 30, 55, 59–62, 162, 435–444 metonymy 345 motor system 9 micro-perceptions 47 movement: body 115–130, 248–261; Midewiwin 331 camera 209–210; contemporary dance Mies van der Rohe, L. 344 and 248–261; in Japanese architecture military industry 361–362 279–291; quality of 252 Millennium Walkway 223 Muir, W. 306 Mill, J. 348 multiplicity 28–32 Millet, J-F. 213 Munn, N. 10, 13–14, 28, 446 Milton, J. 376 Munsell, A. 149 mimesis 122 Munsell Chart 149–151 Mimica, J. 3, 14 Murik art 94 mimicry 47–48 museology 316–317, 321 Mimili 156 Museum of Inuit Art 332 mindful beauty 172 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 62–63, Minimalism 63 353–368, 356, 361, 365 Mining the Museum exhibition 324 museums 324–336 Minneapolis 343–344 Muse Within, The (Bjørkvold) 116 Minnelli, V. 213 music 13, 24–25, 107–109, 124, 159, 459 Index 477 musicality, communicative 115–130 Northwest Coast peoples 331 Musselled Moore (Starling) 297 nostalgia 344, 380 mysticism 263 ‘Notes on the Manners and Customs of the myth 63–64, 100, 104, 457 Fuyuge’ (Fastré) 82–94 Mythmakers 62 novices 196–200 Mythologiques (Lévi-Strauss) 102 Nowhere (theatre piece; Papaioannou) 248 mythopoeia 3 Nuba 235 number 3–4 Nachleben 26 number systems 27 Nagy, P. 214 nursery rhymes 122, 122–123 Naiku 281 Nykvist, S. 212 names and naming 84 nylon yarns 166 Napoleon 98–99, 108–109 Nara gate 284 Oba 167 narratives 116–117, 126–127, 204–205, Obatala 168, 169 316, 407 objets trouvés 68 Nasar, S.: A Beautiful Mind 342 obsolescence 14–16, 358–359 Nash, J. 38, 342, 345 occidental aesthetics 450–451 National Autistic Society School 262 Oceania 27–32 National Museum of the American Indian Oduduwa 167 332 offensiveness 292–293 National Museum of Natural History 332 Ogboni Chiefs 166 Native Canadian Centre of Toronto 331 Ogungbe, J. 176–177 Navajo 2, 5, 53–66 ola 175 Navajo Blanket, The (Berlant and Old Shoin 283 Kahlenberg) 62–63 Olgas 156 Navajo Night Chant, The 53 Olodumare 173 Navajo weaving 53–55, 59, 59–62 Olorun 183 Nelson, G. 363–364 Oloye 167 neon light 160 Omatseye, B. 167 Ness, K. 314 Ondo 170 Netz, R. 40 oneness 418, 423, 432 neuro-diversity 266 Ong, W. 454 neuroscience 24, 124–125, 224–225 Onis, J. 423 neurotypicals 264–266, 273n6 ‘On the Designing of Textiles and the New Contemporaries exhibition (Liverpool Handweaver’s Place in Industry’ Biennial) 74, 77 (Albers) 367 Newman, B. 62 On Weaving (Albers) 366–367 Newton, M. 106–108 Oosten, J. 458 New York School 53, 62–63 Opa Aro 170 New York Times 62 oral narratives 407 Nezu, K. 288 oral traditions 100–104, 167 Nezu Museum 288–289 Oresme, N. 45 NGOs 240, 434 organisational aesthetics 205–209 ni-Vanuatu 422–423; see also Vanuatu Ori 168 noise 132 Orientalism 285 Noland, K. 63 Origin of the Work of Art, The (Heidegger) nomadic communities 13 318–321 Nomad Trace (Maclean) 313 Ori-inu 168 non-human creatures 422–423 Orisa 166–168 non-object orientated design 386 Ornelas, B. 59 normality 266 Oshugbo society 175 Norman, D. 371–372 Ossian 99–109 478 Index Ossian (Gérard) 98 Physical Impossibility of Death in the Overing, J. 403 Mind of Someone Living, The (Hirst) 78 overtones 118 Piaroa 403 Owo 170 pibroch 98, 108–110 Oyo-Ife/Katunga 176 Picasso, P. 68, 311, 363 oyum 446 Pictish language 320 Pictorial World 309 Paama Island sand drawing 17, 418–433 pigments 151 ‘Pages from a Library’ (Maclean) 312 pig sacrifi ce 6, 82–83, 86–96, 92 paietua 31 Pink, S. 211 painting 148, 154, 160 Pinney, C.: Visual Culture 167 Palazzo de Quirinale 98 Piro design 446 Pallasmaa, J. 196, 312–313, 321 pitch-plots 118, 118–119 Palsson, G.: Enskillment at Sea 9 Pitt-Rivers, J. 23 Panama 346 Pitt Rivers Museum 325–328 Panará people 17, 403–417 pixelate/pixelation 160 Pankespp, J. 125 pixels 154 Papaioannou, D.: Nowhere (theatre piece) pjutí 411 248 Place, The 254 Papamichael, P. 209 place-making activities 222 Papunya Tula artists 162 place/work/folk nexus 308, 321 Paquette, D.: Describing the plain-and twill-weave techniques 54 Contemporary Sound Environment 132 Plains Cree 331 Pareto Welfare theorem 342 Plains Indians 54 Parker, H. 332 Plannette, J. 208 Participatory Art 321 Plante, D. 4, 264, 268 pastoralists 54 plastering 298–299 patching 30–31 plastic surgery 11, 237, 241–243, 249 paths 222, 451 Plato 40, 295; Hippias Major 375; Meno patience 199–200 46; Phaedrus 233 patriarchy 236–237 Platonic ideas 9 patterns 3–4, 23–50; balance and Platonic solids 2 brightness of 434–448; irregularity in play 115–116, 125–126, 220, 272 200–201; motif-to-fi eld 441 Poincaré, H. 38 Pave Up Paradise (dance piece; Duke and polag 91 Mesequer) 250, 254–259, 256, 257 Poldark (television show) 214 paving stones 282 Pollock, J. 62–63 Peak Art Cyber Café 222 polymer paints 154 Peirce, C. 348 Polynesia 25, 29 Pels, P. 73 poncho serapes 54–55, 60 perceptions 6–8, 11, 47, 115–186, 205, pop culture 237 226, 265–266, 450, 457 Popenoe, R. 235–236 performance 10–11, 222, 233–275; drag poppies installation 152 226–227; with infant partners 118–123 popular aesthetic 294 Perkins, M. 371 Portisch, A. 438, 441 Peter the Great 314 Portrait of Angus Mackenzie (MacLean) Petyarre, K. 162 311 Phaedrus (Plato) 233 Positive Soundscapes Project 133 phenomenological approach 1–2, 7, 258 possessive individualism 77–78 Phillips, R. 331 Post-Impressionists 213 philosophical aesthetics 1 post-industrial design 14 Phoenix Dance Theatre 254–255 Postmodernism 311–312, 321 physical anthropology 235 post-production, fi lm 207 Index 479 Potter, C. 11, 17 Rebecca at the Well (Poussin) 101–103 Pound, E. 311 recognition 266 Poussin, N. 6; Rebecca at the Well 101–103 redness 152 Powell, S. 214 Redström, J. 385 power 86–92, 236 Reef Raiders 321 pragmatism 2, 348–350, 386, 437 referents 23–24, 28 praise songs 169 Refl ected programme 255 prehendere 41 refl ection and refraction 178 pre-production, fi lm 207 refl exivity 392–393, 396 presence 459–462 regularity 413–414 presencing 321 Reichard, G. 57; ‘Distinctive Features of prettiness 212–215 Navaho Religion’ 58 Price of Salt, The (Highsmith) 214 Reid, B. 326 primary process 71 relation 25, 85, 387, 449–450 Primitive, the 68 relational approaches 3, 210 printed texts 107 relativistic approach 2, 233–235, 242–245 printmaking 154 religion 78 priors 265–266 Renaissance 99, 108, 148, 151 privatisation 293 repetition 47–48 process 410 representation 45, 418 processual, colour as 151 ‘Reshaping of British Railways Report’ production: engineering 371–372; fi lm 207 (Beeching) 378–379 proportion 12 resistance 324–326 Protestant succession 99, 106 resonance 395–396 proto-conversations 117–123 Resonance FM 131 prototype 26–28, 83–84 resplendence 166–186 public installation 152 Revised Catechism of the Laws of Storms 309 public opinion 294–295, 302 rhymes 122, 122–123 Pueblo peoples 54–56 rhythm 47, 122–123, 199–200 pulse 117, 121 Richam-Odoi, T. 254 Pumani, N. 154–156, 159, 163 Ricoeur, P. 238–239 pure sense 36 rikina 151, 154 purifi cation 88 Riley, B. 437 purpose 354 Ring Net, The (Maclean) 308, 316–317 Putney Guardian 76 Rio Grande weavers 55 Pye, D. 9 ritual: body modifi cation and 235–237; Pythagoras 295 cloth and 173; gab 6, 82–97; Panará 407; proto-conversation and 122–123 quality 117, 377, 413–415, 436 rivet counters 380 quilting 435–441, 445, 446 Rochberg-Halton, E. 266 Roepstorff, A. 221 race 11, 234–238 Roman mythology 457 racial anthropology 235 Roman traditions 295 radical aesthetic 264, 272 romantic love 244 rainbow fl ags 152 Ronzon, F. 226 Rancière, J. 36–38, 303 Rössler, O. 42–48 Rapier looms 218, 228n3 Rössler attractor 42, 44 rationalism 437 Rota, G. 39–40 Rauschenberg, R. 63 Roth, I. 264–265 Ravenscroft, I. 265, 273n5 Roth, W.-M. 47 ready-mades 68, 75–77 Rothko, M. 62 Rear Window (fi lm) 297 Rouch, J. 227 reason and the reasonable 104 Rousseau, J-J. 105 480 Index Royal British Columbia Museum 326 Sennett, R. 9, 15 Royal Mail stamps 223 sense-scapes 223 Royal Ontario Museum 332, 335 sense/sensation 9–10, 36–39, 42–47, Rudofsky, B. 365–366 217–229, 265, 460 Ruskin, J. 297–298 sensory-motor body 124–125 Russell, B. 4, 39 serapes 54–55, 59, 60, 61 ryokan 280 Serres, M. 46–48 seseg 82 ‘Sa’ah naaghái, Bik’eh hózhó (SNBH) seseg yu 89 56–58, 64n1 setting 83–84, 87–88, 204 Saami people 450, 453–454, 458, Severi, C. 24–26 461–462 sexual captivation 82–83 Sabbath of the Dead (Maclean) 316 Sexual Life of Savages, The (Malinowski) Saiho-ji 280–281, 289 105 Sailing of the Emigrant Ship (McTaggart) sexuality 233, 236 310 sex workers 240–241 Sailor’s Horn Book 309 shamanism 442–443 St Paul’s Cathedral (London) 135 Sheets-Johnstone, M. 48 St. Peter’s (Rome) 376–377 Sherlock (television show) 214 Saito, Y. 287 Shetland (television show) 214 saki 166 Shields, B. 213 sâkjâri 407 Shingoten 287 sakoku 285 Shining, The (fi lm) 207 Saltillo serapes 54–55 Shinkinen Sengu ceremony 281 Sámi 189–203 shocoto 176 sand drawing 17, 27, 84–85, 418–433 Shoin Zukuri 286 Sansi, R. 299–300, 303 shoji screens 287 Sanyan 170, 170, 172, 176–177, 181, 181 Shokatei pavilion 283 satellites 373–376 shona thread 436 satin 195 Showa period 150 satire 351 shrines 281, 284 savagery 235 shyrdak felt 17–18, 434–448, 439, 441, savant abilities 264–266 444, 445 Savarese, R. 266–268 sibling 424–426 Sawyer, W. 38 Sierra, X. 293 scale 302 signifi ers 310 scarifi cation 235 similitude 149 Scarry, E. 233, 239 Simmel, G. 357 Schumacher, E. 301; Small Is Beautiful: Simmons and Simmons (law fi rm) 77–79 Economics as If People Mattered simplicity 295 342–345 Simpson, E. 104 Schwitters, K. 310 simulacra 311 Scotland 14, 98–111, 306, 316 singing 458 Scott, F. 366 Sioux 54 Seagram Building 344 Sirens 457 seeing 461–462 Sisi, Madame 226 Segal, W. 363 siubhal 109 Self 115, 123–126 skill 8–10, 189–229, 326, 409–410, self-contamination 350 437–440, 445–446, 458–459 self-deception 178 Skilled Vision (Grasseni) 211, 226 Self-decoration in Mount Hagen (Strathern slow architecture 301 and Strathern) 95–96 Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People self-esteem 241 Mattered (Schumacher) 342–345 self-surveillance 236 SMART grids 385, 391–393 Index 481 smiling colour 160 stepping stones 282 Smith, A. 117 Stern, D. 122 Smith, D. 47 Stewart, D. 103 Smith, I. 321 Still, C. 62 Smith, T. 14–16, 63 stock market 341–342 Smithsonian 332–333 Stoller, P. 2 Smollett, T. 105 Strathern, A. and M.: Self-decoration in SNBH (‘Sa’ah naaghái, Bik’eh hózhó) Mount Hagen 95–96 56–58, 64n1 Stratz, C. 235, 245n1 Snyder, A. 266 Strecker, I. 211–212 sociability 403–405 Strengers, Y. 390 social anthropology 23, 234–238 style 24, 70–71, 102, 105–109, 353–354 social class 106 Style, Grace and Information in Primitive social constructionism 233, 238, 242 Art (Bateson) 70–72 social dynamics 395–396 suakiin/suangka 403–406 social relationship, architecture as subjectivity 115, 124–125 288–289 sublime 6, 99, 104, 110, 280, 376 sociality 78, 151, 159, 173, 431, 442 Sublime Savage (Stafford) 100 socialness, of pattern 25 Suffragette (fi lm) 208 Socrates 375 Suggia, G. 456 Sofola, J. 179 Sukiya Zukuri 286 ‘Song of the Sky Loom’ 55–56 sulu’u 437–438 song-poetry 6, 106–109 suodar 190 sonho 240 Sura, I. 70–72 sonic categories 136–138 surfaces 13, 148, 279–280, 292–305 sonic diversity 135 surprendre 41 sö’ök 444 surprise 40–42, 262–275 soti 412 Surrealism 68, 310, 314–318 sound 2, 6–8, 131–147, 457–459 sustainability 386 sound maps 138, 138–139 su’u 437 soundscape research 132 swankjara 411 Southend-on-Sea 131–133, 141–142 Swift, J. 351 South Pacifi c 27–32 Swindon works 381 Soviet work ethic 439 Sydney Town Hall 161 space 12–14, 209, 217–220, 248, symbolic logic 40–42 279–338 symbolism 234, 348 space exploration 372 symmetry 57–61, 441 spatial cognition 221 sympathy 5 spatial relations 28 synchrony 121 spectrographs 118, 118–121, 121 synthesis 16–18, 403–464 Spider Man 56 synthetic aesthetics 360–362 Spider Woman 55–58, 64 spirituality 56–64, 78, 168 tabak 446 split representation 25, 28 tacit knowledge 8, 195 Stafford, B.: Echo Objects 224–227 Taggart, T. 456 Stafford, F.: Sublime Savage 100 Tahiti 31 Stanley, D. 41 tai 424 Stanley Kubrick Archive 207 Tange, K. 282–286 Stapleton, O. 206, 209, 211 Tani, Y. 442–443 Starck, P. 371 tapestry weaving technique 54 Starling, S.: Musselled Moore 297 taraz 443 status 166–167, 171–178, 236 tarbiya 438–439 steam locomotives 372, 377–383, 379, 381 Tardits, M. 282, 286–287 Stella, F. 63 taskscape 221 482 Index taste 6, 36, 68, 78–79, 102, 149–150, 294, trance 47–48 354–356 transformation 403–404, 407–413 tatami 279–280, 286 transformative palettes 152 Taussig, M. 71 transforming art styles 98–111 Taut, B. 282–286 translation 26–27 tea ceremonies 287 transmission, paradigms of 306–323 technicity 36–41 travesti 240–241 Technicolor 213 Trevarthen, C. 7, 17, 117 technology, enchantment of 457 Trigère, P. 363 teikan style 285 Trimingham, M. 11 television industry 205–208 Tristes Tropiques (Lévi-Strauss) 102 Telford, T. 372 Trobriand Islanders 28–29, 82 temperaments 376 Troncoso, V. 54 tempi 121 Truffaut, F. 214–215 temporality 27, 279–291 Tseren, P. 443 Tewa 56 Tsing, A. 302 textiles 8, 17–18, 166–186, 195 tuak 428 Textiles U.S.A. exhibit (Museum of Tuan, Y-F. 293 Modern Art) 353–368, 356, 361, 365 tupqujaq 320 Theory of the Leisure Class, The (Veblen) Turkic felts 443–444 347–351 Turner, K. 254 theory of mind 266–267, 273n4 Turner, V. 116; Forest of Symbols 3 Thin Threads (fi lm) 217–218 tur shyrdak 441 Third Eye Centre, Glasgow 317 Tuvan herders 441 Thompson, E. 13 thresholds 13, 279–291, 307 Uexküll, J. von 12, 225 tidibe 86 ugliness 190, 293, 301, 372–374, tidiness 63 406–407 ti ho titati 406 Uluru 158, 160, 163 ‘Tijuana Lady’ (Gomez) 256 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Till, J. 295–296 status 430, 434 time 12–14, 279–338 uniformity 413 time-keeping 117 University of the Arts London 207 tisien teni atan 419; see also sand drawing unspecialized eye 45–48 tivaivai 30–31 upay 444 tjábbát 190, 201 Urban Realm 292 tjintu tjarpangyi 156 urban sounds 2, 7–8 Tjukurpa 156 ùrlar 109 Toktosunova, K. 445 USEC: User Supported Embedded Tokugawa shogunate 287 Confi guration 385 Tokugawa shrine 284 Useful Objects Under $10 exhibit Tomasello, M. 16 (Museum of Modern Art) 355, 359 topchu (button) shyrdak 446 user-producers 392–395 topographies 156 users, expectations of 390 topological imagination 27–29 UserTEC research workshop 393–395 Torr Vale Mill 217–227 usta 436, 437, 440–441 Toshihito, Prince 284 ustukans 444 Toshitada, Prince 284 Ute 54 touch 9 utility 354 tourist art 162–163 utterances 118–121, 120, 310 Tower Bridge 371–372 üy/üyür 442 Tower of London 152 Tower of the Winds 160 valag 82 tradition 307–309 value 149 Index 483 Vanuatu 17, 27, 84–85, 418–433 Western tradition 36, 67–68, 85–86, 95, variation 407–409 149, 243, 263–264, 449–451 Veblen, T.: The Engineers and the What Is Modern Design? catalogue 355 Price System 351; The Instinct of What Makes People Work (Harris) 438 Workmanship 347–351; The Theory of White, D. 5–6, 67–79; Counsel 67–70, the Leisure Class 347–351 74–79, 75 Venkatesan, S. 198 White, K. 309 Vermeer, J.: The Lacemaker 82 whitening 237–238 viewer-object divide 5 Wilf, E. 459 violin music 107–109 Wilk, R. 227 virtuosity 55, 82, 178, 204–212, 457 Willink, R. 60, 63 vision 6–8, 204–216, 457–459 Will Maclean: Collected Works 308 vistas 287–288 witchetty grubs 156 Visual Culture (Pinney) 167 Witherspoon, G. 57–62; Language and Art visual onomatopoeia 4, 18 in the Navajo Universe 62 visualisation, collaborative 205–209 die Wohnende 222 visuality 211 women 6, 31, 54–57, 82–83, 87–89, vitality 149–151 156, 179, 180, 191–201, 234–243, 307, Vitruvian ideas 12 404–406, 411–414, 421–422, 437–438 Vitruvius 295 wonder 314 Viveiros de Castro, E. 403–404, woollen cloth 195 407, 414 word clouds 138–144, 139–141, 143, 145 vocalisations 118–123 work 14–16, 190, 253–257, 341–399 Vogl, J. 45–46 workmanship 16, 345–352 Voltaire 99, 351 works of art: creation of 115; grace and vuoddaga 197, 199–201 4–6, 53–111 world cinemas 208 Wacquant, L. 249 written language 103 Wada, S. 150 wunderkammer 314 Waka 170 Wyeth, A. 213 Walbiri 28, 446 Walk in Beauty (Berlant and Kahlenberg) Xingu Indigenous Park 406–407, 413 62–63 Walters, H. 61–62 yams 86–90 Wandsworth 76 yarns 54, 166, 170 Warburg, A. 26 Yeats, W. 262, 311 Warhol, A. 63 Yolngu 446 Warlpiri drawings 156 Yoruba prestige textiles 8, 166–186 water 88–89 Yoruba terms 186 way-fi nding 221 Young, D. 3, 8 wearing blankets 54–55, 55 youth culture 241 weaving 5, 9–10, 53–66, 59, 166–186, 192, 197, 198–200 Zagala, S. 431 wedding felt 445 Zande hunting nets 77 weddings 175–178, 439–440 Zarate-Salmerón, Father 64n2 weft-fl oat designs 175 znax 443 welfare theorems 342 Zolbrod, P. 60, 63 well-being 123–125 Zumthor, P. 293, 297, 300–302 Wesley, D. 334 Zunshine, L. 266–268