Doing nothing: Anthropology sits at the same table with contemporary art in Lisbon and Tbilisi. (December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Martínez, Francisco
• Is Part Of: Ethnography. Volume 20:Number 4(2019)
• Page Start: 541
• Page End: 559
• Publication Date: 2018-12
• Subjects: ethnographic installation -- art and anthropology -- urban ethnography -- experimental methods -- performance of fieldwork -- Pessoan anthropology -- ecology of attention -- static journey; Ethnology -- Periodicals; 305.8005
• DOI: 10.1177/1466138118782549
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1466-1381

Abstract

This article proposes an artistic performance to reflect on the labour of fieldwork. The experimental method consists in installing myself at a café in Lisbon and Tbilisi for 35 hours beyond the reach of smartphones and laptops and then doing nothing. Across this exercise, time slows, opening a clearer window into ordinary life. The intervention raises questions about the way digital technologies transform the temporality and experience of ethnographic fieldwork. The essay sets up to make a methodological contribution to a growing literature on 'inactivity' and about experimental methods, reminding us that observation is a tiring physical experience and that slow time is correlated with anthropological quality. Doing nothing appears as a slow time being in front of others, which enables a break of consciousness, suspends politics of relevance, and leaves space for serendipity and embodied imagination.