rice news

 Latín american encounters, anthropology at rice. By David kaplan

Edited by abdel Hernández San juan

The first large-scale encounter between art and anthropology, featuring Latin American artists, will appear at Rice Universityt, this spring. The nine-week multimedia course “Artists in Trance” will explore a variety of social issues in South American and Caribbean countries and includea art exhibitions and live performances.“ Artists in Trance,” a unique series of lectures and events, will run from Jan. 15 to March 26. The evening course is free and open to the public. The works of the 10 artists are charged with social energy. Visceral, exhuberent and sometimes humorous, they express the concerns of communities within Latin American cultures. What makes these artists“anthropological” is that they use social dynamics as their primary materials. In the process they become voices to the issues and problems facing the people in their communities. In some instances they allow other members of the communities-including those who are typically overlooked-to become their collaborators. For example, Abdel Hernandez of Caracas will re-create a Venezuelan marketplace which will be installed on the Rice campus. Before building his 27-by 27-foot, cross-shaped, covered marketplace, Hernandez took part in extensive dialogues with a variety of people who sell at Venezuelan markets. Those dialogues became the basis for his artwork. One of his conceptual collaborators was a man who’s been selling bananas there since the ’40s. Hernandez’s work is not a replica of the South American market; he has instead used his artistic imagination and anthropological perspective to creates something more epic and dramatic-a world with its own brand of mystery and surprise. Notes Hernandez, “We’re teaching a parrot to say a phrase in English.” For the building of the marketplace creation he joined in partnership with ther renowned Venezuelan set and lighting designer Fernando Calzadilla. Rice is a fitting location for the “Artists in Trance” non-credit illustrated lecture series because the university’s Department of Anthropology and the participating artists are champions of the same philosophy. Beginning in the early ’80s, George Marcus, department chair, and other Rice anthropologists helped lead an ideological revolution which challenged the basic anthropologicalbapproach to the study of culture. The traditional anthropological view is that an anthropologist should research another culture as a detached and neutral observer. However, Marcus and others believe anthropology should be a more collaborative endeavor. These Latin American artists are dedicated to a similar idea. The “Artists in Trance” lectures will be held each Wednesday at 7 p.m. A different art exhibition and/or exhibition-performance will appear every 15 days. Lectures and exhibits will be held in the Rice Media Center and the Farish  Gallery. Performances will be at Hamman Hall. Each lecture and exhibit is self-contained; therefore members of the public can attend some or all of the events. The course is being offered by Rice’s Department of Anthropology and the Transart Foundation in Houston, with the participation of Rice’s Department of Art and Art History, the Rice Media Center and the School of Architecture. The curators of the program are Abdel Hernandez of Caracas and Surpik Angelini of Houston.