Under the Skin

A Theatrical Exploration of Art, Politics, and Fieldwork Dynamics

Authors

  • Maruška Svašek

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14712/12128112.2403

Keywords:

ethnographic drama, Czechoslovakia, performance art, state-socialism, censorship, Jiří Kovanda

Abstract

Under the Skin is a play that explores art production in state-socialist Czechoslovakia during the normalization period. It investigates the slippery meaning of the word politics in relation to totalitarianism and performance art, and discusses how internalized taken-for-granted social rules can be made evi­dent through artistic inquiry. The script offers insights into the improvisational nature of fieldwork, and invites producers and consumers of ethnographies to reflect on the ethical and affective dimensions of anthropological labour and knowledge production.

Author Biography

Maruška Svašek

Professor of Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests include art, politics, migration, emotions, and experimental ethnography. Her books include Ethnographies of Movement, Sociality and Space: Place-Making in the New Northern Ireland (2018, with Milena Komarova); Creativity in Transition: Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe (2016, with Birgit Meyer); Emotions and Human Mobility: Ethnographies of Movement (2012); Moving Subjects, Moving Objects: Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions (2012); Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production (2007); Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe (2006); Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feeling (2005, with Kay Milton).

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Published

2022-07-01

How to Cite

Svašek, M. (2022). Under the Skin: A Theatrical Exploration of Art, Politics, and Fieldwork Dynamics. Lidé města, 24(2), 269-293. https://doi.org/10.14712/12128112.2403

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 2 (2022)

Section

Creative Ethnographies

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.