Conference Review
Art and Agency: Ten Years On
15 November 2008
Summary Abstract
“Art and Agency: Ten Years On” was held on 15 November 2008 to mark the tenth anniversary of the posthumous publication of Alfred Gell’s groundbreaking “anthropological theory of art” (1998). The first interdisciplinary symposium of its kind, it drew together speakers and participants from anthropology, archaeology, art history, text studies, museology, social and political sciences and other related fields to discuss the impact, influence and creative potential of the theory over the last decade. The result was a day of reflection, critique and innovation, which featured intriguing presentations (covering everything from Mausolus’ tomb to digital music experiments) and lively and often heated discussions. The event was both a timely tribute to and a much-needed critical re-engagement with this now-iconic work. It was also an interesting exercise in interdisciplinarity, with many delegates finding common ground and space for future collaboration.
b) Conference Review
Held to mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of Alfred Gell’s “anthropological theory of art”, Art and Agency (1998), this symposium was both contemplative and provocative in its outlook. Although Gell’s theory has now become an almost axiomatic reference point in social anthropology, archaeology, art history, museology and many other fields, only a handful of events or publications have explored it in a sustained, critical manner. The aim of “Art and Agency: Ten Years On” was thus to encourage a concerted (re)engagement with the theory which would benefit from the previous decade’s reflections, critiques and new developments. More than assessing Art and Agency’s impact and influence over the last ten years, the symposium also sought to push it into new conceptual and disciplinary territory.
The symposium consisted of three themed panels and a summation. The first panel, titled “Reflections”, featured ruminations by anthropologists Susanne Küchler and Eric Hirsch – both colleagues and intellectual peers of Gell. While Küchler’s paper offered an overview of Art and Agency’s place in recent cross-disciplinary conversations about objects, materiality, sociality and cognition, Hirsch’s honed in on the vital element of temporality in Gell’s theory, which he further extended using examples from Papua New Guinea. The second panel, “Art”, featured a dazzling range of examples from comparative art history and text studies, both of which brought Art and Agency’s framework and insights into hitherto unexplored realms. While Jeremy Tanner’s paper examined the use of figurative representation in the tombs of two ancient rulers – Mausolus of Caria and China’s First Emperor – through the lens of Gell’s theory, Warren Boutcher approached Renaissance literary artefacts, including the Basilicon Doron, as agents and indexes of social relations. In the final panel, “Agency”, Georgina Born used Art and Agency to examine several different musical ontologies, including classical music, jazz and global digital music collaborations, while Chris Gosden drew and elaborated upon Gell’s theory in an attempt to deal with technological and ontological change. The symposium was brought to a close with a short summation by Stephen Hugh-Jones, who was himself involved in the publication of Art and Agency after Gell’s death.
A number of key issues remained prominent throughout the symposium, and served to anchor the discussions that followed. First, it was impossible to escape the fact that Art and Agency itself is a multi-faceted piece of work; as Chris Gosden noted at the end, it was obvious that each speaker had read a slightly different book. The broad consensus was that there were at least two distinctive sections within Art and Agency itself: the first half, in which he rejects a conventional “semiotic” or “aesthetic” approach to art and lays out his action-oriented framework of agents, patients and indexes, and the second, in which he meanders into the complex themes of style, temporality, cognition and sociality. Between these two portions existed tensions and contradictions; and while some sought to reconcile them, others revelled in the challenges that they presented. Second was the acknowledgement that Art and Agency did not necessarily have “art” at its core: an obvious but pivotal point in a symposium which moved the theory into areas which even Gell might not have anticipated. In problematizing, as Gell did, the very concept of “art”, the participants broke through an invisible thematic barrier which had hitherto defined many earlier engagements with Art and Agency. Third was the overarching theme of change, creativity and modification – touched on effectively in many of the presentations – particularly in the context of artefactual agency. Related to this was an implicit and explicit concern with temporality in various guises, whether as an internal/inherent process, the historical passage of time, or, in Gell’s terms, as a series of “retentions” and “protentions”. Finally, the abiding concerns of Art and Agency, including personhood, sociality, cognition and materiality, were constantly present throughout the discussions.
We received excellent feedback from the speakers and participants, and are currently planning to publish the papers, together with further material, in an edited volume or a special journal issue. We are also looking into the possibility of establishing an online collaborative website which would serve as a Gell/Art and Agency resource and platform for global exchange and discussion.
