Transidioethography is a
transdisciplinary
Transdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research o ...
practice that engages in a multimedia study and exploration of one's own cultural milieu through experiential fieldwork.
Definition
"Idio" is Greek from idios, one's own, personal, id·i·o·syn·crat·ic, adjective, pertaining to the nature of idiosyncrasy, or something peculiar to an individual. "Trans" is a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (transcend;transdisciplinary, transgressive); “transverse,” in trāns (adv. and preposition) across, beyond, through.
Ethnography is the scientific description of the customs of peoples and cultures.
Transidioethnography is a
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
conceived in England 2012 to describe a transdisciplinary practice that fuses autoethnographic field work, ethnographic practice and multimedia arts. The prefix "trans" suggests
liminality
In anthropology, liminality () is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they w ...
, a quality of 'in between-ness', valuing cultures 'in between' predominant cultures.
Research
Notable contributions have been Wright and Schneider's book ''Contemporary Art and Anthropology''
and more recently Berg's ''Between Art and Anthropology: Contemporary Ethnographic Practice''.
"Between Art and Anthropology provides new and challenging arguments for considering contemporary art and anthropology in terms of fieldwork practice. Artists and anthropologists share a set of common practices that raise similar ethical issues, which the authors explore in depth for the first time. The book presents a strong argument for encouraging artists and anthropologists to learn directly from each other's practices 'in the field'. It goes beyond the so-called 'ethnographic turn' of much contemporary art and the 'crisis of representation' in anthropology, in productively exploring the implications of the new anthropology of the senses, and ethical issues, for future art-anthropology collaborations..."
Hal Foster
Harold Rudolf Foster, FRSA (August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982) was a Canadian-American comic strip artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip '' Prince Valiant''. His drawing style is noted for its high level of draftsmanship ...
's essay "The Artist as Ethnographer" in ''The Return of the Real'', compares the contemporary Artist-Ethnographer with
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...
s "Author as Producer".
He notes that as the author is bound to her patron, so, often is the artist bound to her sponsor, who may re-code the work as public engagement or even 'self-critique', inoculating it from critique from outside the institution. Despite these valid points, Foster admits that the collaboration between artists and communities have often resulted in illuminating results, such as recovering suppressed histories.
The concept of
Autoethnography, a self-taught, or folk ethnography of one's own culture is discussed in Danahay's book Auto-Ethnography
can be seen as a more reflexive, subjective recording of first-hand experience, surmounting the traditional observer-observed relationship
in traditional Ethnography.
References
Ethnography
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