Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies, Columbia University, New York City, USA

But when they asked for what we had…

This lecture uses two artistic projects to reflect on the complex museological desires circulating around exhibitions whose focus is the ontological other and its magical realisms: namely, installations around the Karrabing Film Collective’s The Family & the Zombie and my recent installation of The Museum of Tardigrade Prehistory. This lecture does not seek to reveal a web of bad intentions lurking under the surface of the alternative cosmologies and ontologies embraced by museums and galleries, suddenly revealed in a rise of white nationalisms. Instead, it seeks to understand the potentialities that were/are in play, the subtle plays of critical misdirection, and the stubborn present in artistic futurologies.

Biography:

Elizabeth A. Povinelli is an academic, artist and filmmaker. She is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University, a founding member of the Karrabing Film Collective, Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Antwerp/Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts.

Her eight academic and books include Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism, winner of the Lionel Trilling Prize, and The Inheritance, a graphic nonfiction memoir. She has made over ten films with the Karrabing Film Collective. The Collective has received multiple prizes including: Eye Award, Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam; the Visible Award; and the Cinema Nova Award Best Short Fiction Film, Melbourne International Film Festival.

Povinelli’s drawings have been shown in multiple galleries. A collection of her drawings is on permanent display at the Museo della Civiltà, Roma.