THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 30.j
TEN
The Artist as Ethnographer?
Hal F0.r.k~
My title is meant to evoke "The Author as Producer," the text of which Walter
Benjamin first presented at the Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris in Apd
19%. There, under the influence of Berthold Brecht and Russian revolutionary
culture, Benjamin (1978)called on the artist on the left "to side with the proletariat."'
In vanguard Paris in April 1934this call was not radical; the approach,
however,was. For Benjamin urged the "advanced" artist to intervene, like the revolutionary
worker, in the means of artistic production-to change the "techniques"
of traditionalmedia, to transform the "apparatus" of bourgeoisculture. A
correct "tendency" was not enough that was to assumea place "beside the proletariat."
And %hat kind of place is that?" Benjamin asked,in lines that still scathe.
"That of a benefactor, of an ideologicalpatron-an ifnpossibEe place."
Today there is a related paradigm in advanced art on the left: the artist as
ethnographer. The object of contestation remains, at least in part, the bourgeois
institution of autonomous art,its exclusionary definitionsof art,audience, identity.
But the subject of association has changed: it is now the culturaland/or ethnic
other inwhose name the artist often struggles.And yet, despite this shift, basic
assumptionswith the old productivist model persist in the new quasi-anthope
lo$cd paradigm. First, there is the assumption that the site of artistic transformation
is the site ofpolitical transformation, and, more, that thissiteis always located
ebmhm,in the field of the other: in the productivist model, with the social other,
the exploited proletariat; in the quasi-anthropological model, with the cultural
other, the oppressed postcolonial, subaltern, or subcultural. Second, there is the
assumption that this other is always ouMe, and, more, that this alterity is the primary
point of subversion of dominant culture. Third, there is the assumptionthat
ifthe invoked artist is not perceived as socially and/or culturally other, he or she
has but ltnaittdaccess to this transformative alterity, and, more, that ifhe or she i.r
perceived as other, he or she has automat& accessto it. Taken together, these three
assumptionslead to another point of connection with the Benjamin account of the
author as producer: the danger, for the artist as ethnographer, of "ideological
~atronage."~
A strict Marxist might question this quasi-anthropological paradigm in art
because it tends to displacethe problematic of class and capititlistexploitationwith
that of race and coIonialistoppression.A strict postsmcturalist would question it
for the opposite reason: because it dms not displace this productivist problematic
enough, that is,because it tends to preserveits s t r u m of the politicd-to retain
the notion of a subject of history, to define this position in terms of truth, and to
.locatethis truthin terms of alhp. From thisperspective the quasi-anthrop010gical
paradigm, like the productivist one, fails to reflect on its re&t asstunphm:that the
other, here postcolonial, there proletarian, is in the real, not in the ideological,
because he or she is sociallyoppressed, politically tr~formative,and/or materiallyp~oductive.~Often
this realist assumptionis compounded by apmit& fmatmy:
that the other has accrss to primal psychic and social processes Fromwhich the
white (petit)bourgeois subject is b10cked.~Now, I do not dispute that, in certain
conjunctures the realist assumption is proper and the primitivist fantasyis subversive.
But I do dispute the automatic codingof apparent Werence as manifest identity
and of othernessas outsideness. This codinghas long enableda cultural politics
of mzrgiwlip.Today, however, it may disable a cultural politics of tinmmmce,
and this politics may well be more pertinent to a postcolonial situation of muItinationalcapitalismin
which geopoliticalmodels of center and periphery no longer
hold.5
Theprimitivistfantasywas active in two precedents of the quasi-anthpological
paradigm in contemporary art: the dissident Surrealism associated with
Georg-es Bataille andMichel Leirisinthe late 1920s and early 'gos, and the &ptrdt
movement associated with Leopold Senghor and Aimi: Ctsaire in the late 1940s
and early '50s. In different ways both movements connected the mansgressive
potentiality of the unconsciouswith the radical alterity of the culturalother. And
yet, both movements came to be limited bythiswry primitivist association.Just as
dissident surrealism expIoredcuhral othernessonly inpart to indulgein a ritual of
selfsthering, so the nipgm&movement naturalized cultural otherness only in part
to be constrained by this second nature. In quasi-anthropological art today this
primitivist fantasyis only residual.However,therealist assumptian--that the other
is $CIRF le m'-remains strong, and often its effect,now as then, is to dhur the artist.
What I mean is simpler than it sounds.Just as the productivist sought to stand in
the reality of the proIetariat only in part ta sit in the place of the patron, so the
quasi-anthropological artist today may seek to work with sited communities with
the best motives of political engagement and institutional transgression, only in
part to have this work recoded by its sponsors as socialoutreach, economic development,public
relations ...or art.
This is not the facile complaintof persond co-option or institutional recuperation:that
the artistis onIy tactical in a careerist sense, or that the museum and the
304 HAL FOSTER THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 305
medm absorb everything in pure malevolence (indeed we know they cannot).
Rathermy concern is with the s h h r a l &ch ofthe realist assumption in political,
here quasi-anthropologicd, art, in particular with its siting of political truth in a
projected alrerity.I mentionedthe problem of automaticcoding of artists I&-A+vis
alterity, but there are additionalproblems here as well:hst, that thisprojection of
politicsas other and outsidemay detract from a politics of here and now. And second,
since it is in part a projection, this outside is not other in any simple sense.
Let me take these two problems one at a time. First, the assumption of outsideness.
If it is true that we live today in a near-global economy, then a pure outside
can no Ionger be presupposed. This recognition does not totalize the world system;
instead, it specifies resistance to it as an immanentrelation rather than a transcendental
one. And, again, a strategicsense of complex imbrication is more pertinent
to our postcolonial situationthan a romanticproposalof simpleoppo~ition.~
Second,the projection of alterity.As this alteritybecomes aiways imbricated with
our own unconscious, its eEect may be to "other" the selfmore than to "selw"
the other. Now it may be, as many critics claim today, that this self-othering is
crucial ta a revised understandingofanthropoIogy and politics alike; or, more circumspectly,
that in conjuncturessuch as the surrealist one the tmping of anthropology
as auta-analysis (as in Leiris)or social critigue (as in Baraille) is culturally
mnsgessive, even politically signifcant. But there are obvious dangers here as
well. Then as now such self-othering easily passes into self-absorption, in which
the project of "ethnographic self-fashioning"becomes the praciice of philosophical
narci~sism.~To be sure, such reflexivity has done much to disturb reflex assumptionsabout
subjectpositions,but it has also done much to promote a masquerade
of the same: a vogue for confessiondtestimony in theory that is sometimessensibility
criticism come again,and a vogue forpseudoethnographic reports in artthat
are sometimes disguisedtraveloguesfrom the world art market. Who in the academy
or the art world has not witnessed these new forms ofjclnh?
What has happened here?What misrecogmitionshave passed between anthropology
and art and other discourses?One can point to a whole circuit of projectionsand
reflectionsover the last decade at least. First, some critics of anthropology
developed a kind of artist-envy (the enthusiasm ofJames Clifford for the
juxtapositions of "ethnographic surrealismJ'& an influentialinstance).' In this envy
the artistbecomes a paragon of formal reflexivity,sensitiveto difference and open
to chance, a self-aware reader of culture understood as text. But is the artkt the
exemplar here, or is this figure not a projection of a particular ideal ego--of the
anthropologist w collagist, serniologist,avant-gardi~t?~In other words, might this
artist-envybe a self-idealization?Rarely doesthisprojection stop there, in anthrw
pology and art,or, for that matter, in cultural studiesor new historicism. Often it
extendsto the object of these investigations,the cultural other, who also reflects an
idealimage of the anthropobgist, artist, critic, or historian. To be sure, this projection
is not new to anthropology: some classics of the discipline (e.g., Paftenrs of
Cuktwe by Ruth Benedict) presented whole cultures as collective artists or read
them as aesthetic "patterns" of symblic practices. But they did so openly; current
critics of anthropology persist in this projection, onlythey call it demystification.'O
Today thisenvy has begun to run the other way too: a kind of ethnographerenvy
consumes artists. Here as well they share thisenvy with critics, especially in
culturalstudiesand new historicism,who assume therole of ethnographer,usualIy
in disguised form-the cdtural-studies ethnographer dressed down as a fellowfan
(for reasons of political solidarity-but with what social anxieties!);the new-historicist
ethnographer dressed up as a master archivist (for reasons of scholarly
respectability-to outhistorianthe historians)." But why the particular prestige of
anthropology in contemporary art? &am, there are precedents of this engagement:
in Surrealism,where the other was fi@ as the unconscious; in art k t ,
where the other represented the anticivilizational; in Abstract Expressionism,
where the other stood for the primal ardst; and variously in the art of the 1960s
and '70s (thePrimitivismof easthworks,the art world as anthropological site, and
soon). But what is particular about the present bun? First, anthropologyis prized
as the science of dtm&;in this regard it is second onlyto psychoanalysisas a lingua
franca in artisticpractice and critical discourse alike.12Second,it is the discipline
that takes w h m as its object, and it is this expanded field of reference that postmodemistart
and criticismhave longsought to make their own. Third, ethnography
is considered cotttr?rtual,the rote demand for which contemporaryartistsshare
with many other practitioners today, some of whom aspire to fieldworkin the
everyday.Fourth, anthropologyis thought to arbitrate the &drjciplin~~~another
rote value in contempomy art and theory.I3Finally, fifth,it is the sef-cmcm6a'qwof
anthropology that renders it so attractive,for this critical ethnography invites a
reflexivityat the center even as it preserves a romanticism of the margins.For all
these reasons rogue investigationsof anthropology,like queer critiques of psychoanalysis,possess
vanguard statustoday it is alongthese lines that the critical edge
is felt to cut most incisively.
This turn to the ethnographic, it is important to see, is not only an external
seduction; it is also driven by forces immanent to advanced art, at least in AngloAmerican
metrapoles, forces 1can only sketch here. Pluralists notwithstanding,
this art has a trajectoryover the last thirty-five years, w h h consistsof a sequence
ofinvestigations: from the objective constituents of the art work &st to its spatial
conditions of perception, then to the corporeal bases of this perception-hifts
remarked in minimalist work in the early 1960sthrough conceptual art, performance,
body art, and site-specificwork in the early '70s. Along the way the institution
of art could no longerbe describedshp1y in termsof physical space (studio,
gallery, museum, and so on): it was also a ~ ~ S G U G V ~network of other practices
and institutions,other subjectivitiesand communities. Nor could the observer of
art be delimited only phenomenologically: he or she was also a social subject
defined in various 1anguag.e~and marked by multiple differences (sexual,ethnic,
306 HAL FOSTER
and so on). Of course these recognitionswere not strictlyintmai to art.Mw crucial
were dserent socia1 movements (feminismabove all) as well as diverse theoretical
developments (theconvergence of feminism,psychoanalysis, and fdm; the
i
recovery of Gramsci; the application ofAlthusser; the influenceof Foucault; and so
on), The important point is that art thuspassed into the expanded field ofculture I
chat anthropologyis thought to survey.
And what are the results?Oneis that the ethnographicmapping of a given institution
or a related community is a primary form that site-specific art now assumes.
This is all to the good, but it is important to remember that these pseudoethpographiccritiques
are very ofien commissioned, indeed franchised.Jmt asappropri- I
ation art became an aesthetic genre, new site-specific werk threatens to. become a
museum category, one in which the institution m$orts critique forpurposes of inoc- I
dation (against an immanent critique, one undertaken by the institution, within
the hstihltion). This is an irony i d e the institution; other ironies arise as sites
p c s c work is sponsored mhde the institution, otten In collaboration with local
p u p s . Here, values Gke authenticity, originality, and singularity,banished under
critical taboo from postmodernist art, return as properties of the site, neighborhood,
or community engaged by the a h t . There is nothing intrinsically wrong
with this displacement, but here too it is important to remember that the sponsor
I
may regard these '>mpertiesmasjust t h a t a s sited values to dwelop.14Ofcourse
the institutionmay also exploit such site-specific work in orderto expand its operationsfor
reasons noted above (socialoume-each,public relations, economic development,
and art tourism).l5 In this case, the institution m y displace the work that it
otherwiseadvances:the showbecomes the spectaclewhere culturalcapitalcolIects. 1
I am not entirely cynical about these developments. Some artists have used I
these opportunities to collaboratewith communities innevatively:for instance, to
recover suppressedhistories that are sited in pardcuh ways, that am accessed by
some more effedveIythanothers.But I am skeptical about the a c t s of the pseudoethnographic
role set up for the artkt or assumed by hhim or her. For this setup
can promotea presumption of ethnographic authority as much as a questioningof
it, an evasion ofinstitutional critique as often as an elaboration of it.
Consider this scenario,a caricature, I admit. hartist is contacted by a curator
about a site-speciftcwork. He or she is flown into town in order to engage the
community targeted for collaboration by the institution.However, there is little
time or money for much interaction with the community(whichtends to be consbcaed
asreadymade for representation). Neverthdess,a project is designed, and
an installation in the museum and/or a work in the community follows. Few of
the principles of the ethnographc participant-observer are observed, let alone critiqued.
And despite the best intentions of the artist, only limited engagement of ,
the sited other is effected. Almost naturally the focus wanders from collaborative
investigation to "ethnographic self-fashioning," in which the artist is not decentered
so much as the other is fashioned in artistic guise.'"
Again, this projection is at work in otherpractices that often assume,covertlyor
THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 307
otherwise, an ethnographicmodel. The other i admired as one who plays with
representation, subverts gender, and so on. In alIthese ways the artist, critic, orhitorian
projects his or her practice onto the field of the other, where it is wad not
onIy as authentically indigenousbut as innovativelypolitical!Of course, h s is an
exaggeration, and the application of these methods has illuminated much. But it
h also obfiteratedmuch in the field of the other, and in its very name. Thb is the
opposite of a critique of ethnographic authority, indeed the opposite of ethnographic
method, at least a?I understand them. And this "impossible place" has
become a common occupation of artists, critics, and historians alike.
NOTES
I. The fact that Stalin had condemned this culture by 1934is only one of the
ironies that twist any readingof "The Author as Producer" (Benjamin [1g34]1978) L
today (to say nothing of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduchon"
[[Benjamin rg6&1).My title may also evoke "The Artist as Anthroplogist"by
Joseph Kosuth (1975)~but our concerns are quite different.
2. This danger may deepen rather than diminish for the artist perceived to be
other, for he or she may be asked to assume the role of native informant as well.
Incidentally, the charge of "ideological patronage" should not be conflated with
"the indignity of speakingfor others." Pronounced by Gilles Deleuze in a 1972
conversation with Michel Foucault, this taboo circulatedwidely in American criticism
of the left in the 1g8os,where it produced a censoriousdent guilt asmuch as
it did an empowered alternative speech. See Foucault (rg77:2og).
3. Tkisposition is advancedin an early text by the figure who later epitomized
the contrary position. In the concIusion ofMytRolo&s, Roland Bartheswrites:
There is therfore one language which is not mythical, it is the language ofman as a producer:
wherever man s p e h in order to @ansfomreality and no longer to preserve it as an image,
wh-r he h k s hislanguage to the makingofthings, metalanguageis referred to a languagobject,
and myth is impossible.This is why revolutionary language proper cannot be m y h cal.
I[1957I 19fz:146)
4. This fantasy also operated in the productivist model to the extent that the
proletariat was often seen as "primitive" in this sense too.
5. For a related discussion of these problems, see Foster (1993).
6. It is in this sensethat criticslike Homi Bhabha have dweloped such notions
as "third spaces" and deferred times.
7. James Cliffbrd developsthe notion of "ethnographic self-fashioning" in 7h
B~&mmtofCulture (19881,in part from Stephen Greenblatt (1980).This source
points to a commodity between the critique of ethnography in new anthropology
and the critique of history in new historicism (onwhich more below).
8. Clifford also develops this notion in 7h RedcQnmt of Cultme: ' l s not every
ethnographer something of a surrealist, a reinventor and reshder of realities?''
(1988:y7).Some have questioned how reciprocal art and anthropology were in
308 HAL FOSTER THE ARTIST AS ETHNOGRAPHER? 30.9
the surrealist milieu. See, for example,JeanJamin (1986)andDenisHollier (1992).
g. Is there not, in other words, a poststructuralist projection a h to the stmcturdkt
projection critiquedlong ago by Pierre Boudieu in Esquissed ' w &de Ea
Pa* (1972Y
re. Incidentally, this artist-envy is not unique to new anthropology. It w a s at
work, for example, in the rhetoricalanalysisof historicaldiscourse initiated in the
1960s."There have been no significant attempts," Hayden White wrote in 'The
Burden of History" (rg66), "at surrealistic,expressionistk, or existentialist historiography
in this century (exceptby novelists and poets themselves),for alE of the
vaunted 'artistry' of the historians of modem times" (White1978:43).
I I. OErviously there are other dimensions of these crossings+ver, such as the
curricular wars of the last decade. First some anthropologists adapted textual
methods from literary criticism. Now some literary critics respond with pseudoethnographiesof
literary culhres. In the process some historians feel squeezed
on both sides. This is not a petty skirmishat a h e when univasityadrmnislxators
studyenrollments &sely--and when some advocatea return to the OMdisciplines,
while others seek to recoup interdisciplinaryventures as cost-effective moves.
12. In a sense, the d i q m of these two human sciences is as fundamental to
posmodern discourse as the eEahmahn of them was to modern discourse.
13. LouisAlthusser (rggo:g?) writes of hterdiscipharity as "the c m o n k e d ical
&logy that silentfyinhabits the 'consciousness' of allthese specialists . ..osdlahg
between a vague spiritualismand a technocratic positivism."
14. 1am indebtedin these remarhto my fellowpardcipan~in "Roundtableon
Site-Specificity,'' h m n t s4 11%): Renee Green,Mitchell Kane, Miwon Kwon,
John hdell, and Helen Molesworth. There Kwon suggea that such neighborhood
place is posed against urban space as difference against sameness. She also
suggeststhat artists are associatedwith places in a way that connects identity politics
and site-specific practice-the authenticityof the one being invoked to bolster
the authenticity of the other.
15. Some recent examples of each: socialoutreach in 'Cdtufe in Action," a
public art pmgam of Sculpture Chicago in which selected artists collaborated
with community groups;economic development in "42nd S ~ e tArt Project," a
show that could not but improve the image of Thes Square for its f u ~redevelopment;
and recent projects in several European cities(e.g., Antwerp) in which
site-specificworks were deployedin part for touristicinterat andpoIitical prom*
tion.
16. Consider, as an example, one projed in 'Woject Unite," a show of sitespecific
works by someforty artists or artist pupswithin the Le Corbusier Unit2
#Habitation in Firminy, France, in summer 1993.In this project, the neo-conceptudduo
GlemandG u m asked theUnit6 inhabitantsto contribute favorite
cassettes toward the production of a discothtque. The tapes were then edited,
compiled, and dispiayedaccording to apariment and floor. The sociologicalcondescension
in thisfacilitated self-representationis extraordinary.
REFERENCES
Althusser, Louis
1990 "Phiimphy and the SpontaneousIdeology ofthe Scientists." In &&sopipa
d & Spomknmw Jdeobpof& Scienh~sd0thFays. 1andon:
Vem.
Barthes, Roland
[I9571 1972 M~fnulogis.Trans.Annette Lavers. New York:Hilland Wang.
Benedict, Ruth
1934 Partepnr of Cuhre.New York: HoughtonMi&.
Benjamin,Walter
1x9341 1978 'The Author as Producer."In R e j P m h . Ed. Peter Demetz,trans.
EdmundJephcott, pp. 2 2 ~ 2 3 8 .New York: Harcourt Brace.
I$3 'The Work ofArt in the Age of MechanicalReproduction." In ZUmllra-
I
h:&says aadRc&&, ed. Hannah h n d t , trans. Hany Zohn, pp.
2 ~ 7 1 5 1 .New York: Schmken Rooks.
Bourdieu, Pierre
I972 f i p i s s e d'uw h h i e de hprattqw. Paris:Droz.
Clifford,James
1988 i% &dimmend ofCuhw: J m ~ - ~E,hqr&y, IH'krirhm,mdArt.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Foster, Hal
1993 "The Politics of the Signifier:A Conversation on the Whimey Biennid.'"
October 66(4):~28.
Foucault, Micbel.
I977 b g t q y , t%mk&femwy, bEiEt. Itrhaca:Cornell UniversityPress.
Gremblatt, Stephen
1980 A h a i r s m e SeCf-F~uhmmg.Chicago:Universityof Chicago Press.
Hollier,Denis
1992 "The Use-Value of the hpossible." O c h h 60(2):324.
Jamin,Jean
1986 "L'ethnographie m d e d'inemploi.De quelquesrapportsde l'ethnologie
avec la malaise dam la civilisation."InJ. Hainardand R. Kaehr, eds.,IL
m l d h h h r . Neuch%iel:Mute d'ethnographie.
Kosuth,Joseph
I975 "The Artist as Anthropologist." Fox I. 1991.ReprintedinArt After Plm'loso$y
md*, Co/kckdWdkgr,rg6&1gp, pp. 107--128.London and
Cambrid~,b.:MT Press.
White, Hayden
1978 'The Burden of History."In T i s ofDfscwse, pp. 27-50. Baltimore:
Johns Hopldns University Press.