Arnd Schneider and SAI hosted the workshop at the University of Oslo on November 29th. TRACES (Transmitting contentious cultural heritages with the arts) investigates contentious heritage sites in various European locations in relation to their communities, and the policies of the heritage providers. It specifically investigates and intervenes into these contested heritage sites through ethnographic and artistic means, by creative co-productions which involve heritage providers, communities and ethnographic and artistic researchers.
Need to be creative
The workshop provided a platform for participants to get better acquainted with each other’s research and for discussing their research progress, with special attentiveness to challenges in the field. During this workshop the participants discussed reflexivity and ethics when doing ethnography, creative co-production and the notion of ‘contentious’. The ethnographers gave presentations on the status of their research.
The challenges of doing ethnography in a dispersed field, ethical questions arising from working with contentious objects along with what made the different fields contentious, were some of the topics explored in depth.
Part of the discussion concerned the ethnographers’ role and how to do fieldwork in a dispersed field. A recurring argument was how the ethnographer needed to be creative in constructing the field, and include people, buildings and collections which might be relevant for the research.
Status of their research
TRACES is structured around five experimental art-based research actions – Creative Co-productions. The ethnographers at the workshop each held a longer presentation of the status of research with the CCPs, following a round of feedback with discussion about the preliminary findings, challenges in the field and how to overcome them.
The participants were:
Katarzyna Maniak; Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Jani Pirnat; Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana
John Harries; Edinburgh University
Alenka Pirman; University of Ljubljana.
John Harries; University of Edinburg
Matei Bellu; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Blaž Bajič; University of Ljubljana
Laura Mac Atackney, University of Aarhus.
Marion Hamm; Universität Klagenfurt
Arnd Schneider, Ingrid Straume, Magnus Godvik Ekeland; University of Oslo