Rethinking performativity: ethnographic conceptualism

Journal of Cultural Economy. 2020. Vol. 13. No. 6. P. 672–689.

Ссорин-Чайков Н. В.

Ethnographic conceptualism takes its cue from conceptual art and uses

artistic interventions as an anthropological research tool. The term

‘ethnographic conceptualism’ was coined to sum up the method of the

exhibition project Gifts to Soviet Leaders (Kremlin Museum, Moscow

2006) as simultaneously a reflection on the vast and complex economy

of public gifts to heads of Soviet state, a distinctly post-Soviet political

and cultural artefact, and as a tool for ethnography of post-socialism.

This article explores ethnographic conceptualism’s contribution to

performativity theory. I look at how it makes visible the tension between

what such projects perform and describe. In doing so, I use

ethnographic conceptualism as a vantage point to revisit the

foundational distinction of performativity theory between the constative

and performative statements (Austin). Drawing in this artistic and

research method, I redefine the performative, not as a domain or a type

of utterance that is distinct from the constative, but as an act of drawing

this distinction.

Ключевые слова: перформативность, performativity, советское, gift theory, ethnographic conceptualism, пост-соцтализм, этнографический концептуализм, теория дара, postsocialism, Soviet