Starting from the crossroads of political science, sociology and anthropology, The Sociological Life of Exhibitions focuses on field research in two different regions (Kuwait/France),in order to the study of the life of art exhibitions. 

Anahi Alviso-Marino works on a specific collection of art archives located in Kuwait. These archives –  digitized, photographed and filmed – are at the heart of several projects which concentrate on writing, mapping, and creating audiovisual works that function a scientific publications, as well as objects to be integrated within an exhibition. She is conducting ethnographic research in the studio of artist Neïl Beloufa in Paris, with the initial goal of studying an exhibition that integrates archives from my research in the Arabian Peninsula (The Enemy of My Enemy, held at the Palais de Tokyo in 2018). As a follow up, the study of this exhibition allows her to conduct ethnographic-type research on the life of new exhibitions and thus explore different methods of combining art and political sociology. These experiments continue with the study of Beloufa’s installation at the Venice Biennale in 2019, which [that is the study or the installation?] becomes a new field of hybridization and exchange between the practice of this artist and the socio-political and methodological questionings that I bring to the project. This field diversifies data collection through audiovisual recordings of objects and practices observed in Beloufa’s studio and elsewhere, within his exhibitions in Venice or Paris.

This double research field links research experiments with which she goes into greater depth in the study of sociological narratives anchored in an approach concerned with micro-events and micro-histories. This experience gives her the possibility to go beyond the initial geographical specificity of the narratives and makes it possible to take my methodological interest further by experimenting with the way knowledge is produced, and also through the formats of dissemination and publication created at the interface of art and social sciences. 

Biography

Anahi Alviso-Marino is a teacher-researcher with a doctorate in political science from the University of Paris 1-Sorbonne and the University of Lausanne. She holds degrees from the Complutense University in Madrid and Columbia University in New York. Her research is rooted in the discipline of political sociology and focuses on the study of visual arts from a multidisciplinary approach that links political science, sociology, anthropology, history, and artistic expression. Her main fields of investigation are in the Arabian Peninsula and the Arabian Gulf: Yemen during my master’s and doctoral studies, and Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates in my postdoctoral work. Within the framework of methodological research focused on research-creation, she invested – contributed to or breathed new life into or created or invested in/ devoted herself to? a new field in France. Within her doctoral and post-doctoral research, she implements the use of audiovisual recordings by making short anthropological films, filmed and recorded interviews, and sound recordings. The moving images as well as the still images she collects and produces in the field feed other film-oriented projects. Some examples include the creation of sociological films and short films that trace the biography of art objects and archives or the sociological life of an artist’s studio. These images also integrate sociological, archival and contemporary art exhibitions. Her archives and research material were exhibited in Paris in 2018 at the Palais de Tokyo (for the exhibition L’ennemi de mon ennemi / The Enemy of my Enemy by Neïl Beloufa), at the Villa Vassilieff in 2017 (Une histoire parmi d’autres: Les mondes de l’art au Yémen / One Story among Others: Art Worlds in Yemen) and at the Bétonsalon Center of Art and Research in 2011 (with the group exhibition De Menocchio nous savons beaucoup de choses/ Of Menocchio, we know many things). Her recent publications include chapters in several books such as Modern Art of the Arab World: Primary Documents, (eds.) Anneka Lenssen, Sarah A. Rogers, and Nada Shabout, (New York, The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 2018); Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East, Anthony Downey (ed.) (Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2017); and Les lieux de la colère. Occuper l’espace pour contester, de Madrid à Sanaa /The Places of Anger: Occupying Space to Protest, from Madrid to Sanaa, H. Combes, D. Garibay and C. Goirand (Paris, Karthala, 2016). She is also a teacher at the New College of Political Studies (NCEP) and the International School of Audiovisual Creation and Production in Paris (EICAR).

PROJECT TEAM

Tutor: Violaine Roussel (Paris 8, University)