Questions of Belonging

© 2019 the author(s).‘Questions of Belonging’ is a chapter in a peer-reviewed edited volume, Matters of Belonging: Ethnographic Museums in a Changing Europe, (Eds Modest, Thomas, Prilic and Augustat, Sidestone 2019), which has across its front and back covers an artwork by me, called ‘Europe the Game’ (2003-2019 ongoing). On the basis of this artwork, and 'Belonging', an audio artwork series of 12 x 10min (approx) podcasts, I was invited to write this chapter. Both artworks explore the question of belonging, one from the perspective of Europeanness and inclusion, and the other from the perspective of indigenous artefacts made elsewhere that are in Europe because of colonial contact. Both the artworks explore questions of belonging and this chapter takes the knowledge embodied in the artworks further by juxtaposing both with my own personal narrative.Peer reviewe

Corporate Censorship

A chapter in a book about censorship in the global contemporary art world edited by Roisin Kennedy, University College Dublin, and Rhiann Coulter, Trinity College Dublin, (to be) published by IB Tauris in 2018, this book was the product of a panel at the Association of Art Historians annual conference. The chapter focuses solely on London so as to avoid potentially misleading and generalised statements about the censorship and contemporary art more globally. London serves as a case study of the specific pressures under which artists practice under neoliberalism and the often-unconscious internalisation of neoliberal values by contemporary artists, including socially-engaged practitioners. The article defines censorship, distinguishing it from the ordinary operations of the art world to include and exclude, and also distinguishing it from the ordinary operations of markets, which reduce diversity in order to rationalise. Both of these have been confused with instances of censorship.Peer reviewe

Connecting with Collections: Research Internships promoting closer collaboration between University Museums

During 2013, the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) introduced an innovative research internship initiative aimed at early career academic researchers. The Connecting with Collections (CwC) scheme offered six interns from British universities the opportunity to gain hands-on museum experience, while working independently on individual research projects within the collections of the UCM consortium. This paper presents: 1. An Overview of Connecting with Connections Scheme: programme rationale, aims and funding, recruitment and project choice. 2. Training and Opportunities: group training sessions, as well as snapshots of individual experiences within the museums and 3. Internship Outputs: including an end-of-internship Symposium and other outcomes for interns. It briefly surveys the six internship projects before drawing some conclusions about the CwC programme and highlighting some of the debates around the future direction of the internship scheme for UCM

Knowing

‘Knowing’ (2015) is a 48 minute video art work made as part of ‘Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art in European Museums’, a European Research Council funded 5 year research project led by Professor of Anthropology, Nicholas Thomas. Jelinek’s area of investigation included West Papua and its colonial history. Part of Indonesia since 1963, West Papua is the western half of New Guinea. Prior to that, it was a Dutch colony. For ‘Knowing’, groups of people from Papuan, Javanese and Dutch backgrounds were invited to the historical collections of the Volkenkunde Museum, Leiden (National Museum of World Cultures). Each person was asked to talk about things from their own culture in the collection and to talk about the objects others had chosen. In this way, participants spoke about their own culture and the cultures of others. The project asks, what is knowledge and who can claim to know? Papua was my area of specialism within the larger project and my main contribution to the wider research project

In Process

‘In Process’ (2018) is a chapter for the peer-reviewed Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art and European Museums Vol. 2 (Carreau et al, Sidestone 2018) written at the culmination of a 5 year European Research Council funding project of the same name, led by Prof Nicholas Thomas of University of Cambridge (2013-2018). I was one of the team of researchers on the project based with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, and these volumes are collectively one of the project’s significant outcomes. The chapter is my own research outcome, and stands as a critique of trends in the approach of social anthropologists to their research into contemporary art practice. The chapter proposes Process Philosophy as an appropriate and sympathetic approach to understanding art and how artists operate, offering it instead of the progressivist models of an elitist art history to which social anthropologists often adhere

Knowing and Not Knowing

'Knowing and Not Knowing' is a chapter for the peer-reviewed 'Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art and European Museums Vol. 2' (Carreau et al, Sidestone 2018) written at the culmination of a 5 year European Research Council funding project of the same name, led by Prof Nicholas Thomas of University of Cambridge (2013-2018). I was one of the team of researchers on the project based with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, and these volumes were one of the project’s significant outcomes. One of the areas for research within the larger project for which I had overall responsibility was the investigation into West Papua and Papua, currently Indonesia. 'Knowing and not knowing' was an outcome of this investigation. The chapter describes the film I created, called ‘Knowing’ (2015), which investigates the entanglements of the region's colonial history

The Fork's Tale, as narrated by itself

An art novel written and drawn from the point of view of a Fijian ‘cannibal fork’ in the collection of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge was the culmination of a 5 year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Fellowship in the Creative Arts). The publication was funded by Arts Council England, designed by Marit Muenzberg and published by LemonMelon chapter by chapter throughout 2013. On 1 January 2014, once all the chapters had been published, The Fork’s Tale, as Narrated by Itself took on 2 new forms as a complete collection. The collection version was designed by Marit Muenzberg, as a collector's archival box, complete with collectors notes and a set of 12 chapters which are different from the chap book version of 2013. This was selected by David Senior, Elizabeth James and Sofie Dederen as Kaleid 2014 Best Books. The second version is a hard bound book using archival plywood and traditional coptic hand binding. Th Collector's Set of The Fork's Tale, as Narrated By Itself 2014 has been accessioned to the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chelsea University of the Arts library, Joan Flasch collection (SAIC), Brooklyn Museum Yale University, and the Haddon Library, University of Cambridge, gifted by Prof Nicholas Thomas

A Response to the issues raised in the Special Edition

Alana Jelinek, 'A Response to the Issues Raised in the Special Edition of Ethnos', Ethnos, Vol. 82 (1): 105-112, January 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2015.1028567.‘A Response to the Issues Raised in the Special Edition of Ethnos’ (2015) is an afterword to the Special Edition on ethics of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (82:1). I was invited to respond to the edition on the basis of my writing about my own art practice in relation to Leviansian ethics, by the Special Edition editors Katherine Dow (postdoctoral research associate Reproduction Sociology, University of Cambridge) and Victoria Boydell (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland). The article discusses the issues raised specifically by the ethnographies and theoretical analysis presented within the volume. Engaging with anthropological theory from the perspective of a practicing artist, the Afterword analyses other papers and positions with reference to my own research into Levinas’s idea of ethics, that is, his ‘metaethics’, and the potential for relationships between art practice and a Levinasian ethic.Peer reviewe

Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) : Prunus laurocerasus and Other Species

Alana Jelinek, 'cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus): Prunus laurocerasus and Other Species', in Khadia von Zinnenburg Carroll, ed., Botanical Drift - Protagonists Of The Invasive Herbarium (Sternberg Press, 2018), ISBN-10: 3956793536, ISBN-13: 978-3956793530.‘Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus): Prunus laurocerasus and Other Species’ (Sternberg 2018) is a chapter in Botanical Drift: Protagonists of the Invasive Herbarium edited by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll. The book explores the historicization and semiotics of species cultivation and destruction in the context of the Kew Garden botany collection. The ‘Cherry Laurel’ chapter describes relationships between species, including human and non-human species, from the point of view of a damaged Cherry Laurel tree located in a field in Essex. The thinking within the chapter was the product of an inter- and multi-disciplinary research project called ‘The Field’ (2008-2017), which was located in a 13 acre site, 1 mile north of Stansted airport in Essex. ‘The Field’ project was initiated by Jelinek in order to explore inter-species interdependence, ecological thinking and also to question the orthodoxies within Green politics. One consequence was the invitation to contribute to the Botanical Drift project.Peer reviewe