Experimental Ethnographic Forms

This talk explores exhibition-making as an experimental ethnographic practice, emphasizing collaborative and spatial dimensions of knowledge making, and articulating contemporary art in Brazil as prefigurative social practice. Drawing on research conducted between 2016 and 2017 at São Paulo’s Residência Artística Cambridge, alongside curatorial research for the upcoming exhibition Construction, Occupation to be held at the Fowler Museum, the talk reflects on a radical urban vocabulary that blurs art and activism to address questions of infrastructure and vulnerability, circulation and segregation, and the body in public space. Methodologically, it examines how curatorial practice can dismantle long-standing hierarchies within ethnographic work and foster a community-led research process.

Speaker:

Alex Ungrateeb Flynn is Associate Professor in Art and Anthropology at the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, UCLA. He is the author of Taking Form, Making Worlds (University of Texas Press, 2022) and Pathways to Utopia (Indiana University Press, 2025)