James Leach

Extending Contexts, Making Possibilities: An Introduction to Evaluating the Projects

ABSTRACT The author, an anthropologist, discusses his role as an observer attached to a collaborative arts/science research fellowship program. He examines the role of collaboration in research and in the Fellowships and explores new ways of conducting collaboration so that the research process itself becomes part of a projects output.

Recognising and Translating Knowledge: Navigating the Political, Epistemological, Legal and Ontological

What does it mean to call something ‘knowledge’ today? What does this recognition or translation require? And what does it entrain? This introduction makes a novel synthesis of contributions to the Special Issue and advances observations regarding the ‘mythic’ qualities of intellectual property law, the precipitation of ‘nature’, and the importance of attending to what is lost when things and practices are also called ‘knowledge’. The papers cohere around a timely set of observations and critiques: critiques of the way the knowledge economy makes demands and defines expectations about value; of how intellectual property law lies behind and shapes exclusions, inclusions, and inequalities; of the ‘mythic’ status of assumptions informing laws about ownership; and the implicit hierarchy contained within types of knowledge as understood through the categories of western epistemology. By taking up effect rather than veracity and certainty, contributors leave the definition of knowledge to ethnographic subjects. That is, they attend to where and how things come to be called knowledge, and for what reasons, noticing how equivalences across practices, made for the purpose of creating the possibility of exchange value (and thus of encouraging circulation) does its work at the expense of multiple aspects, values, and relations that are also discernable in social processes that produce ‘knowledge’.

Leaving the Magic Out: Knowledge and Effect in Different Places

In 2010, Porer Nombo and I launched a book about indigenous Papua New Guinean plant knowledge to a large audience at a university near to his village on the north coast of that country. Members of the audience commented that the book made a record of important practices. But they asked if those practices were dependent on secret magic to be effective? What gave us the right to include such secrets? Or, if there was in fact something fundamental missing from the book (magical formulae to activate the processes described), then what was the use of publishing the book? Thinking through their questions suggested the need to analyse what ‘knowledge’ is in different places, and why plants might be effective in some, but not others. In this paper I attempt an explanation that does not rely on a ‘social’ explanation of magic but instead suggest that what we call ‘magic’ are mechanisms whereby a gardener (or healer, or hunter) positions an action, or a thing in relation to other things. I liken the way myth works in these systems to the way intellectual property law provides a comparable ‘mythic’ structure that locates effect in the places that have developed ‘knowledge economies’ and I conclude by asking; if places embody their history and politics, and generate different understandings of effect, then what are the implications of calling Porers practices with regard to plants, ‘knowledge’?

Dance ‘Becoming’ Knowledge

In this article the authors discuss the possibility of presenting the unique qualities of “the body” in contemporary dance practice through tailored digital choreographic objects. They reflect on some implications of abstraction in cognitive science and on “the body” as a site of exploration and knowledge in the realm of social, moral and relational being.

Foreword from the Editors

Foreword of the Special Issue: Matter(s) of Relations: Transformation and Presence in Melanesian and Australian Life-cycle Rituals

‘Retracing Steps’: An interview with choreographer and artist Tanya Voges

Tanya Voges is an Australian-based choreographer and dance artist. Over the past 5 years, Tanya has developed a number of interactive dance works inspired by concepts, and the experience, of human memory. ‘Retracing Steps’ is a dance theatre work about one’s sense of self and its association with place, home and community. It draws on individual and collective memories of the community in which the work is made and presented. ‘Retracing Steps’ refers to a suite of interconnected performances that invite the audience to be co-creators in an immersive experience. The works have been developed and presented at the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne; Blacktown Arts Centre, Sydney; Canberra Theatre, Canberra; Movement Research, New York; and Critical Path, Sydney. In an early version of the work, Tanya would mingle with audience members before the performance and record their spoken answers to questions about their earliest memory. During the performance, audio excerpts in random order would be presented to Tanya through her iPhone’s earbuds, and she would shadow or say aloud the audio feed as she heard it while improvising movement material (Figure 1). In a subsequent performance of the work, the audience and Tanya travelled some distance to the venue by bus with that excursion being part of the performance and a source of memories. When ‘Retracing Steps’ was further developed at Critical Path in 2014, Tanya and visual artist collaborator Kellie O’Dempsey used dance and live performance drawing to create an interactive performance environment. Tanya brings people into a space where they share something usually considered ‘internal’ (early memories) or private (domestic spaces) with her, and through her, with others at the show. This context is a central element of ‘Retracing Steps’ (and subsequent works). The ‘public’ or ‘visible’ nature of movement with, or around, or visible to others makes the experience very different