nonsite

Reading Marc Augé’s Non-Places: Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity, I am still struck by how clearly the contemporary art world fits into ethnographic research and I’m trying to understand the distinction between ethnography and ethnology. As an cultural anthropologist, Augé makes the distinction between the Near and the Elsewhere and articulates how his focus has shifted to the near.

I like his observations about our over investment of meaning: What is new is not that the world lacks meaning, or has little meaning, or less meaning than it used to have; it is that we seem to feel an explicit and intense daily need to give it meaning: to give meaning tot eh world, not just some village or lineage. This need to give meaning to the present if not the past, thi price we pay for overabundance of events corresponding to a situation we could call ’supermodern’ to express its essential quality: excess.

This essay is very useful for me as I consider how deeply my nonsite project relates to the insider aspects of autoethnography.