Presented as part of the HRC Seminar Series

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In this talk I will use examples of crossings between art and anthropology to tease out moments in both disciplines when my ways of relating to others (human and non-human) coalesced into something the psychoanalyst W. Bion might have called reverie. Bion argued that conscious experience remained ‘undigested fact’ until processed by dream-work and turned into a memory (L.J. Brown. 2012). Dream-work is a daytime activity as well as a night-time visitation and according to Bion, is a crucial part of the carer/infant relationship. It is through reverie that the good-enough mother/carer is able to contain (introject) the infant’s feelings – their love and hate objects - and to hold onto these long enough to modify them. The notion of dream-work in which ‘objects’ are held and modified (or, alternatively, when there is a failure to do so), is uncannily familiar to me from both creative practice and fieldwork. Bion emphasised the importance of the analyst, like the artist, putting aside objective facts and learning to endure long periods of not-knowing (Vapenstadt, 2013). At a time of growing interest in shaping a more artistic anthropology, could cultivating reverie - with interlocuteurs, places, materials and one’s own internal imagery - be helpful? If so, where might the anthropologist begin?

Dr Amanda Ravetz is a visual anthropologist with research interests and expertise in the interdisciplinary connections between anthropology and art/design; the theories and practices of observational cinema; and artist's development. Her most recent book Collaboration Through Craft (2013), an edited volume with Alice Kettle and Helen Felcey, offers a challenging new argument for the collaborative power of craft, analysing the philosophies, politics and practicalities of collaborative craft work. Observational Cinema: Anthropology, Film, and the Exploration of Social Life (with Anna Grimshaw), was published by Indiana University Press in 2009. Her edited volume with Anna Grimshaw, Visualizing Anthropology was published by Intellect Books in 2005 and investigates new collaborative possibilities between anthropology and other fields, linked to image-based work. Amanda's films have been screened in the UK, Finland, Latvia, Portugal, Germany, Majorca, USA and India. Amanda is currently a Visiting Fellow at the School of Art and the Humanities Research Centre at ANU