The anthropology of the future: An art world perspective

Introduction

The future has been neglected as an object of anthropological study, even though our complex social, ecological, and now, with COVID-19, biopolitical crises demand novel imaginations of the ‘yet-to-come’. Moreover, anthropologists have urged the decolonisation of existing studies of the future that are often based in the global north’s concerns.

Project Overview

ANTHROFUTURE shifts the focus of the anthropology of the future to the pandemic-induced acceleration of the future into the present. The project identifies the art world – historically featuring a high degree of experimentalism, a strong future-orientation, and, particularly in emerging markets in the global south, an openness to risk and speculation – as a crucial site for ground-breaking anthropological knowledge on the future.

Impact of the Pandemic

The pandemic forced the art world to quickly develop innovative digital solutions to replace physical events; the result is a new, fully integrated physical and digital system. While pre-pandemic scholarship on the art world largely focuses on institutions, professionals, and activities as physical phenomena, there is no scholarship on this new digital-physical infrastructure.

Focus on the Global South

ANTHROFUTURE further acknowledges the global south as the most vital site for modeling the future by situating its research in India and Pakistan as active and mutually entangled art world locations.

Modes of Inquiry

ANTHROFUTURE introduces three novel modes of inquiry:

1. Systematic research on the digital-physical art world as an ethnographic site for the study of the future.
2. Innovative multimodal methodologies for studying the future that combine in-person, digital and visual ethnography, large-scale social media data harvesting, and artist subprojects.
3. Analytical and theoretical advancements on the future as a time zone in comparative terms and across the regional contexts.

Research Objectives

Embedded in anthropology, the project pursues these objectives driven by the PI’s extensive research on the past and present of the art world and the global south.