Papers by rossella ragazzi
ECOLOGIA DELLA SALUTE ES3 - PDF. AIEMS, 2021
Attraverso numerosi anni di lavoro di campo presso comunità Sámi in Sápmi, tramite insegnamento e... more Attraverso numerosi anni di lavoro di campo presso comunità Sámi in Sápmi, tramite insegnamento e apprendimento, scambio e lavoro di conservazione e mediazione del patrimonio immateriale di questo popolo, nel museo della mia università, ho sentito il bisogno di scrivere un testo eterogeneo, di condivisione con i colleghi del gruppo sistemico narrativo italiano, che ha una commissione di lavoro sui concetti olistici di salute. L’esplorazione del concetto di salute in un’ottica ecologica in questo testo,
è un’occasione per presentare una visione delle interconnessioni che
determinano ma anche liberano possibilità di equilibrio fra individui,
coppie, collettività, e il loro ambiente. Il concetto di salute lo intendo qui
come uno stato a cui si tende, per mantenersi in equilibrio, all’ascolto del
sé e dell’altro, nella ricarica della vitalità, nell’aspirazione all’espressività,
nel rispetto di forme di libertà simmetriche, fra individui e gruppi di tutte
le età. La salute non è uno stato permanente, ma un processo che si arresta
solo con la morte (nella maggior parte dei casi) ma non necessariamente,
visto che molti, anche quando non ci sono più, continuano a vivere nella
celebrazione dei vivi.
Nordic museology 2022 • 1, s. 5–24, 2022
Abstract: Curated by socio-cultural anthropologist Fuyubi Nakamura,1 the exhibition entitled A Fu... more Abstract: Curated by socio-cultural anthropologist Fuyubi Nakamura,1 the exhibition entitled A Future for Memory: Art and Life after the Great Japan Earthquake at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in British Columbia addresses the sociocultural role of art produced in situ in the aftermath of the triple disaster which occurred in the Tōhoku region of northeast Japan in 2011. The exhibition’s curatorial project was born in the affected regions through anthropological research, and the selections of works brought to British Columbia are by The center for remembering 3.11; Lost & Found Project; Lost Homes Scale Model Restoration Project; Chihiro Minato; Atsunobu Katagiri; Masao Okabe; Rias Ark Museum of Art; Tsunami Ladies film project team. This article engages with the conversations that the curator, artists, and collaborators wove through the exhibition. The construction of social memory building on the experiences of a
drastically changing environment is its main theme.
Keywords: Japan Earthquake, art, disaster, public scholarship, community projects, social memory, photography, Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.
IN: ESPACES, SENSORIALITÉ, DISSONANCE, edited by Simona Bealcovschi, 2023
https://diffusion.banq.qc.ca/pdfjs-1.6.210-dist_banq/web/pdf.php/9HbePHvxA6TY5dJv1KTT0Q.pdf
Nordisk Museologi
Curated by socio-cultural anthropologist Fuyubi Nakamura, the exhibition entitled A Future for Me... more Curated by socio-cultural anthropologist Fuyubi Nakamura, the exhibition entitled A Future for Memory: Art and Life after the Great Japan Earthquake at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in British Columbia addresses the sociocultural role of art produced in situ in the aftermath of the triple disaster which occurred in the Tōhoku region of northeast Japan in 2011. The exhibition’s curatorial project was born in the affected regions through anthropological research, and the selections of works brought to British Columbia are by The center for remembering 3.11; Lost & Found Project; Lost Homes Scale Model Restoration Project; Chihiro Minato; Atsunobu Katagiri; Masao Okabe; Rias Ark Museum of Art; Tsunami Ladies film project team. This article engages with the conversations that the curator, artists, and collaborators wove through the exhibition. The construction of social memory building on the experiences of a drastically changing environment is its main theme.
linking some of the articles. In her critical study of the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, M... more linking some of the articles. In her critical study of the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, Marte Spangen shows how the Sámi have disappeared from the prehistoric and Viking exhibitions there. For fear of talking about ethnic categorizations and national identifications at a time when there were no nations, early Sámi history has been left without a trace in the Museum's presentations. Vidar Fagerheim Kalsås article is a critical comparison of how the Sámi and the Romani peoples are represented in two Norwegian museum exhibitions. While Romani history may be a relatively new topic for the heritage sector, the history of the Sámi has for long been both displayed and collecteda difference that has been reflected both in the design and in the content of the two exhibitions. One aspect of the Sámi history of being on show is Cathrine Baglo's discussion of the impact of the touring "living exhibitions" in the 1800s. She argues that these phenomena provided models for the dominant mode of display in the following folk museums -the reconstructed setting. This is indeed a seldom acknowledged legacy. Another recurring theme in the articles featuring in this issue are exhibitions of art, handicraft and Sámi duodji, as expressions of ethnic identity and as political tools. Anne Heith analyses a Sámi art project, as a part of the Swedish city Umeå's year as the Cultural Capital of Europe 2014. Heith's focus is on two of the participating artists, each with a political agenda, taking issue with racial biology and the exploitation of natural resources in Sápmi, respectively. Charis Gullickson and Herminia Wei-Hsin Din dedicate their article to the exhibition Sámi Stories: Art and Identity of an Arctic People, produced in Norway and later travelling to New York and Alaska, thereby making a Sámi contribution to a circumpolar indigenous context. As a consequence of the national assimilation policies, many Sámi have experienced a loss of language, cultural heritage, and corresponding identities. With the help of museums, initiatives have been taken to counter these effects -not least locally. In her article, Liisa-Rávná Finbog focuses on a Norwegian area and its people, where traditional knowledge and heritage work are used to support the creation of a modern local Marke-Sámi identity. Similarly, Kajsa Kuoljok, in her project report, describes how Ájtte, the Swedish Mountain and Sami Museum in Jokkmokk, worked together with young Sámi in order to find ways to integrate the Sámi language in everyday contexts of the city. Sámi cultural heritage is not only about traditions of the past, it is also contemporary and urban. As the final contribution to the Sámi theme of this issue, a current Swedish research project is presented by Jonas M. Nordin and Carl-Gösta Ojala. The project explores the collecting of Sámi material culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Critical issues will be raised concerning colonial histories and relations in Sápmi as well as the rights to Sámi cultural heritage and its management today and in the future. Taken together, the contributions in this issue offer a range of fresh perspectives, both theoretical and curatorial, on the representation and curation of Sámi cultural heritage in museums. We feel confident that they will help to enhance the understanding of the roles that museums have played and can play in the (re)definition, interpretation, and representation of Sámi cultures. In this way, this special issue also aims to contribute to a broader debate on Sámi cultural heritage and museums. At the conference in Oslo, this emerged as a much needed and critically important factor in the development of future museological research, practice, and policy pertaining to Sámi cultural heritage.
Living with Camera in between Barn and Kitchen
Challenging situatedness: gender, culture and the …, 2005
Living with Camera in between Barn and Kitchen Phenomenological Perspectives on the Making of the... more Living with Camera in between Barn and Kitchen Phenomenological Perspectives on the Making of the Ethnographic Film At Home in the World 1 ROSSELLA RAGAZZI Some years ago I started fieldwork on Sørøya, one of the northernmost islands in North Norway, thanks to the ...
Una serie di flash back vérité
Parler, et plus encore ecrire sur Jean Rouch n'est pas une chose facile du fait de la complex... more Parler, et plus encore ecrire sur Jean Rouch n'est pas une chose facile du fait de la complexite de la figure intellectuelle, et l'est d'autant moins en l'occasion de sa disparition, au moment ou la certitude du manque enveloppe aussi bien les sentiments que l'horizon reflexif; il n'est pas facile de parler d'un maitre tel que fut, est et sera Rouch et qui continuera, a travers ses films, a nous enseigner, a enseigner a tous, meme a ceux qui n'ont pas ete ou ne pourront plus etre ses eleves, la fascination mais aussi la clarte de ses films ethnographiques aussi bien que narratifs. Ainsi, pour comprendre quelque peu ce qui fut un travail fait aussi de charisme tout a fait personnel, il est utile de connaitre Jean Rouch a travers le recit de quelques unes de ses eleves, en particulier des eleves italiennes qui aujourd'hui enseignent l'anthropologie visuelle en universite a travers l'Europe, donc a travers les textes de Silvia Paggi et de Ros...
Supper for the Dead Souls/La Cena delle Anime
Visual Anthropology, 2020
Living and dead people did not belong to different categories, but the first were the reverse of ... more Living and dead people did not belong to different categories, but the first were the reverse of the latter. Shadows of life, they could keep relationships and passions from their original conditio...
Sápmi, en nasjon blir til is the first exhibition ever made taking the stand to present the socia... more Sápmi, en nasjon blir til is the first exhibition ever made taking the stand to present the social-history of an indigenous political movement, by visualizing elements of a national discourse about ethnicity and assimilation, in which the main focus is not "material culture" nor art objects. By discourse I utilize Foucault's French philosophical and political definition of "discours" (1995) intended here not as purely verbal-oral construction, but as institutional and material practice. When I first visited Tromsø University as guest lecturer in 1993, I immediately became acquainted with the distinctive Norwegian term "Formidling" (Mediation of Knowledge). The paradox of such term is that it means different concepts in the languages I know (some Latin languages but also in English) and it is hard to find an allfit translation for it: it must be understood in context. Sometimes as "mediation", sometimes as "dissemination", others as "interpretation" and even as "negotiation". One thing is plausible: it is a core concept in Scandinavian academic practices of production of social scientific knowledge. Still, it triggers scholars to explore its meaning. It is a strong theoretical stand of a certain Norwegian social anthropology. In this way the aim of my fieldwork at Tromsø Museum is to gather and analyze examples of contextualization and to reflect upon how representation is affected by it. Moreover, this can become a reflection about how inclusive or exclusive for different audiences, such "museal" cultural politics may be. For this aim, I start by analyzing failures and scores of existing projects, in order to provide a lively representation of these practices, which connect academics with civil society at large, not in general terms, but in the analysis of dynamics that researchers, social actors and specific audiences create together when they encounter and react to these representations: an inclusive and dialogical practice from one and side and a constructive, strident or simply dialectical critique on the other side. These are important aspects because they provide the context to understand further how meaning is made beyond the commodity "exhibition", and how it is transformed or negotiated/omitted/exalted, etc. Moreover, manifold narratives are elicited through the meeting with the audience. These representations are context-of-reception dependant. A scrutiny of the modalities of these meetings, from the fieldwork's reflective practices, to the feed back sessions with social actors; from follow up exhibitions or productions of new media (books, films, catalogues, etc.) to surveys and monitoring of the exhibitions themselves, from local-national discursive debates, to transnational discursive representations, is my research's agenda.
The article analyses how we, as a team of visual anthropologists from the University of Tromso (S... more The article analyses how we, as a team of visual anthropologists from the University of Tromso (Sapmi-Norway), worked with two young Saami musicians (S. M. Gaup and L. Somby) who are themselves researchers in the “joik” tradition. Sapmi is the term of the imagined nation of the Saami people, covering a territory that goes across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Northern Russia. The joik is the specific form of Saami chanting. It coveys lyrics, melody and throat singing techniques, with a high level of abstraction in rendering the relation to people, natural sites, places, animals and events, that we attempted to understand contextually and historically.[more in the pdf]
Nordisk Museologi
This article focuses on the set up, reception, and social scientific discursive fields that have ... more This article focuses on the set up, reception, and social scientific discursive fields that have informed two exhibitions about Sámi culture curated over time by Tromsø University Museum. They were curated in two different periods in the recent history of the Sami (end of 1990s and 2013–15). In our anthropologicallyinformed analysis we take a second look at the way in which researchers and curators have constructed, performed, and narrated certain aspects of Sámi material and immaterial heritage, in times of change and political awareness. The recent exhibitions have contributed to articulate essential issues concerning ethnic identity and cultural belonging in conversation with or critique towards the previous representation of Sámi ethnography at the museum, especially the renown Sámekulturen curated by Ørnulf Vorren. How did these exhibitions handle the representations in which Sámi people would mirror their history, identity and aesthetics? How did they speak on behalf of the Sá...
Firekeepers
Journal of Anthropological Films
Sápmi is the term of the imagined nation of the Saami people, covering a territory that goes acro... more Sápmi is the term of the imagined nation of the Saami people, covering a territory that goes across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Northern Russia. The joik is the specific form of Saami chanting. It coveys lyrics, melody and throat singing techniques, with a high level of abstraction in rendering the relation to people, natural sites, places, animals and events, that we attempted to understand contextually and historically. The cultural complexity emerging in this multivocal and multisited project shows the embodiment of verbal recollections, gestures, conversations, lyrics, chants, improvisations, outbursts and secretive features of the Saami chanting endeavor. Among the socio-political issues that the film addressed is the poignant reality of fading away languages: Southern Saami is today spoken by less than 500 speakers in Norway.
Social Anthropology, 2016
Social Anthropology, Nov 1, 2016
Muzealnictwo 53 , 2011
Interview by Karolina Dudek to Rossella Ragazzi
Living with Camera in between Barn and Kitchen Phenomenological Perspectives on the Making of the Ethnographic Film “At Home in the World”, 2005
Merleau-Ponty, in his last text discussing the phenomenological perspectives he had explored in ... more Merleau-Ponty, in his last text discussing the phenomenological perspectives he had explored in his philosophical work, stated:
"We wish that Science’s way of thinking Science, a way of flying over, a way of the ‘object in general’, would put itself in a position of ‘here and now’, in the site where one is, on the ground of the sensitive world and of the acted world; as these worlds are in our lives, for our bodies, and not for the potential, virtual body, which has become an information machine. I’m talking about the body, which is mine, the watcher that is connected to my words and acts (Merleau-Ponty 1967:16).
Although this text was written in 1960–61 and published posthumously in 1967, I still find it relevant in ethnographic filmmaking practice, especially in its use of the concept of “watcher”, a person attuned to others and the environment. One of the things I am attempting to look at in my own film "At Home in the World" is to compare the ability of the “watcher” with the skills of the dweller and then, by seizing the epistemological freedom which my field of practice advocates, to compare the ability of attuning oneself to others and the environment with the skills required by an attentive film maker.
I propose for filmmakers to observe, to experience, to tune "into" another body, other bodies, human and non-human, the filmmaker's body at work. All of these bodies are living, inhabiting the space-time of their life and relating to other lives. The environment, as Lakoff and Johnson (1999:267) put it, is not a mere “collection of things” or beings that we encounter, it is part of our being. A great part of our acknowledgement of being in the world takes place through empathy or projection. The article looks at the making of this particular film and the encounter with Else Marie Juliussen on the island of Sørøya.
Sápmi, en nasjon blir til is the first exhibition ever made taking the stand to present the socia... more Sápmi, en nasjon blir til is the first exhibition ever made taking the stand to present the social-history of an indigenous political movement, by visualizing elements of a national discourse about ethnicity and assimilation, in which the main focus is not “material
culture” nor art objects...
Challenging Our View of Temporality
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2014
Uploads
Papers by rossella ragazzi
è un’occasione per presentare una visione delle interconnessioni che
determinano ma anche liberano possibilità di equilibrio fra individui,
coppie, collettività, e il loro ambiente. Il concetto di salute lo intendo qui
come uno stato a cui si tende, per mantenersi in equilibrio, all’ascolto del
sé e dell’altro, nella ricarica della vitalità, nell’aspirazione all’espressività,
nel rispetto di forme di libertà simmetriche, fra individui e gruppi di tutte
le età. La salute non è uno stato permanente, ma un processo che si arresta
solo con la morte (nella maggior parte dei casi) ma non necessariamente,
visto che molti, anche quando non ci sono più, continuano a vivere nella
celebrazione dei vivi.
drastically changing environment is its main theme.
Keywords: Japan Earthquake, art, disaster, public scholarship, community projects, social memory, photography, Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.
"We wish that Science’s way of thinking Science, a way of flying over, a way of the ‘object in general’, would put itself in a position of ‘here and now’, in the site where one is, on the ground of the sensitive world and of the acted world; as these worlds are in our lives, for our bodies, and not for the potential, virtual body, which has become an information machine. I’m talking about the body, which is mine, the watcher that is connected to my words and acts (Merleau-Ponty 1967:16).
Although this text was written in 1960–61 and published posthumously in 1967, I still find it relevant in ethnographic filmmaking practice, especially in its use of the concept of “watcher”, a person attuned to others and the environment. One of the things I am attempting to look at in my own film "At Home in the World" is to compare the ability of the “watcher” with the skills of the dweller and then, by seizing the epistemological freedom which my field of practice advocates, to compare the ability of attuning oneself to others and the environment with the skills required by an attentive film maker.
I propose for filmmakers to observe, to experience, to tune "into" another body, other bodies, human and non-human, the filmmaker's body at work. All of these bodies are living, inhabiting the space-time of their life and relating to other lives. The environment, as Lakoff and Johnson (1999:267) put it, is not a mere “collection of things” or beings that we encounter, it is part of our being. A great part of our acknowledgement of being in the world takes place through empathy or projection. The article looks at the making of this particular film and the encounter with Else Marie Juliussen on the island of Sørøya.
culture” nor art objects...