Keywords

performing arts, material things, bodies

Objectives

Since the 1980s, anthropology has moved beyond simply examining how objects are used by humans, and the way in which humans assign meaning and value to them. Contemporary anthropology now seeks to examine the processes that form through events generated by the interaction between humans and objects, as well as how objects work on humans. Similarly, the issue of how materiality relates to these processes is gaining in importance. This study seeks to uncover new vantage points within research on the performing arts by highlighting the interest shown in the "anthropology of materiality". The performing arts discussed here range from so called "folk art" to contemporary art. This study also examines the environment surrounding the human body and the performances people give. The primary objective of this study is to redefine the performing arts as a sphere of activity woven together by humans and objects, and to use this definition to consider how objects relate to human expression and transmission of art form.
Attention is also paid to the various characteristics of performing arts, such as the interpenetrative ways humans and objects are "brought together" (such as by masks, musical instruments, or the bodies of others), as well as the processes by which interaction with objects stimulates the imagination and creativity. The second objective is to further the advancement of anthropology by examining the characteristics of the relationship that plays out between humans and objects within the realm of motion, sound, and story.

Research Results

Under this research project, we repeatedly reviewed each researcher’s study by paying attention to material things used. As part of this process, based on specific cases or one’s own experience, discussed were new expressions set off by uncontrollability of material things (for example, changes in sounds of a musical instrument due to expansion and contraction of bamboo, an unexpected tune output by PC that is complicated to operate); the workings of material things that mediate the workings of invisible presence, such as godhood; an impact that unchanging nature of material things (crowns or masks that are handed down from generation to generation) has on tradition; the fact that the emergence of new material things (cameras, tuners or PCs) changes the relations between sounds and performers or those between performers and the audience; matters that social meanings material things take on (wheelchairs, PCs, etc.) bring to performances; a certain level of embodiment that material things require and new forms of body expressions that are generated by snuggling up to them, being restricted by them or resisting them.
The interest of this research project was also directed to “those which are not material things but show aspects like them from time to time” that exist around material things. They included sounds, images, recording and fixed roles (stock characters). The sounds of an Aeolian harp that makes sounds before the wind appear not only to have been an event caused by the musical instrument but to have been transformed into presence closer to material things from the wind to sounds (in the sense of being perceivable by hearing and touchingwith the five senses). When recorded, it takes a more solid form of material things and can become an object of processing. As for typical roles (stock characters) used in theatrical entertainment in Bali, when represented as material things, such as puppetsdolls or crowns, they are fixed, shared and handed down. Though we fell short of studying this ambiguous presence generated around material things that travel back and forth between material things and matters in detail and theoretically, we were able to find a new question as to what possibility will be brought to anthropology of materiality by paying attention to the presence of these.