Assuntina Maria

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Version #1

Version #2

Constructing the subject/object (of visual anthropology) and the addressee of questions, talking  to spirits in an ethnographic inquiry - letter as method of (unfulfilled ) rapport 

how is the anthropologist arriving with their own self to the space of the other, how do we establish a shared space, based on what? Can we afford to have a feeling, a sentiment, a communication departing from the experience of grief and loss of self? How the intuitive is met with the analytical (how do we analyze, with what cognitive skills/apparatus)

 “Passionate detachment” (Haraway)
requires more than acknowledged and  self-critical partiality. We are also bound to seek perspective from  those points of view, which can never be known in advance,  that  promise something quite extraordinary, that is, knowledge potent  for constructing worlds less organized by axes of domination. (585)
About Tarantism:Revisited: 

Emotions, affliction, face (I understand why not to show it, while it also feels important to look again)
Approaching other women with tenderness - keeping distance (seems like an important strategy for an anthropologist)

Zielnik - Herbarium, strange way of keeping traces, compositional exercise 
Vulnerable bodies, covered with a semi transparent paper sheet to prevent sticking (viscosity as something to think about)

Hunger and shame, how anthropologists’ gifts are useless to someone who wants/needs food and soap, unwanted offerings

Shame makes me think of my female ancestors (who brought me to tarantism in the first place), there is something about the experience of poverty (and hunger), the inability to fulfill one's "potential, " being locked in a place/position one was born to, how it follows, how it is passed through generations - it is a part of the stories they told

I remember all of those objects that were shown in the film, touched by women, and generally touching things - infusing them with presence or receiving grace (holy figures), physical contact that leaves the trace, to persists, indexically. I was looking for one photo and then found pictures I took of my grandma's sewing notebook which my mum keeps in a special drawer with other belongings of my grandma, the drawer is next to my head when I sleep in my parents house (I am thinking of dreams recently, this is something I am hesitant of voicing but also hard to ignore, the encrypted containers of memories, rearranged and revealing connections - last night after the long interview about motherhood I dreamt of the small red car... in the afternoon I realized it was the first car my mum had, it was stolen and burnt (senseless violent act), found on the day when my great grandma passed away...)

I am "looking" at what happens when I look at something that carries the presence of my grandma, it becomes a holy object, a relic

In the notebook there is also this small piece of paper - a note my grandma left for my mum about her going to another town for a day, the ham is in the fridge.

Tarantate as brides of St Paul: why a bride? My great grandma Ewa wore a black dress to her wedding (my mum never understood why, but she remembers the story)

What is a wedding and how to have it without a husband (that one doesn't want, or can't chose)
What/who are they married to

Physical urge to kiss a figure of a saint

Vignette: with my friend Julek we are observing a woman preparing the altar space in Vienna, so meticulously, with so much care, in God’s house, she is a wife, then the son-priest arrives. I am thinking about my great-grandmother Ewa, whose bouquets (from her own small garden) were the most beautiful in the parish, during the day she worked in the German land  owner’s garden, she loved this job (according to my mum).

Adorning the altars with flowers, plants marking of cycles, of seasonal return

I was looking for this garden she worked in, there are only fields there now. The palace of the German family was blown up (there are various accounts in regards to who did it, my uncle says Polish people did)

I would like to tell Maria about my grandmothers (to start a conversation), so far I have been decorating her with flowers
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(I've been browsing my photos from the trip to Apulia last year to find all the altars I photographed decorated with flowers, there are many, one thing I can't find (I really can't) is the tableau in Bari commemorating Ernesto de Martino for his contribution to the city and the region... is this a sign?)