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Tarek Elhaik

Education

  • Ph.D., Anthropology, UC Berkeley, 2007

About

My work is based on participant observation in several domains of practice: visual arts, curation, cinematic arts, and experimental media. It is also a contribution to the anthropology of the contemporary. I conducted my first fieldwork in Mexico City where I was attentive to the image-work and writings of artists, as well as to the concept-work of curators who care about them. I've particularly engaged those artists and curators whose practice provocatively signals an ongoing breakdown and rethinking of modernist cultural forms and historical figurations of the New Man in Mexico (eg. Mestizaje, Mexicanidad, cosmopolitan-nationalist modes of existence, avant-garde aesthetics).  The outcome of this fieldwork experience and experiment is a book length study titled The Incurable Image: Curating Post-Mexican Film & Media Arts (Edinburgh University Press, February 2016).
I've also collaborated on various public programssymposia, and editorial projects that examine what I call the "zone of mutual intrusion" between anthropology, art, and philosophy.  I also direct AIL: the Anthropology of the Image Lab in Young Hall 226,  a space for conversations with interlocutors in adjacent disciplines committed to fostering inquiries through the curation of images and concepts. I'm also the host of the radio program "Cogitations". 

Research Focus

My new book, Anthropology & Aesthetics: Cogitations (Routledge, 2021), is now out.  

By Tarek ElhaikThis book focuses on the reconfiguration of aesthetic anthropology into an anthropological problem of cogitation, opening up a fascinating new dialogue between the domains of anthropology, philosophy, and art. Tarek Elhaik embarks on an inquiry composed of a series of cogitations based on fieldwork in an ecology of artistic and scientific practices: from conceptual art exhibitions to architectural environments; from photographic montages to the videotaping of spirit seances; from artistic interventions in natural history museums to ongoing dialogues between performance artists and marine scientists. The chapters examine the image-work, ethical demands, and aesthetic struggles of interlocutors including artists Mathias Goeritz, Mounir Fatmi, Silvia Gruner, Joan Jonas, and Patricia Lagarde.  

Selected Publications

  • Elhaik, T. & Marcus, G. (2019) "Curatorial Designs" in The Anthropologist As Curator, Ed. Roger Sansi, Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 17-34.
  • Elhaik, T. (2016) The Incurable-Image: Curating Post-Mexican Film & Media Arts, Edinburgh University Press.
  • Elhaik, T. "What is Contemporary Anthropology?" (2013) in Critical Arts: Journal of Media & Culture Studies vol. 27.6. London: Routledge: 784-798.
  • Elhaik, T. "A Bloc of Sensation In Lieu of Geography" in Sweet Sixties: Specters and Spirits of a Parallel Avant-garde; Editors: Georg Schöllhammer & Ruben Arevshatyan (Sternberg Press, 2014), p. 217-228.

Teaching

  • ANT191: Media Anthropology
  • ANT210: Aesthetic Anthropology
  • ANT201: Graduate Pro-Seminar
  • ANT136: Anthropological Cinema

Awards

Co-director of the research program Future Flourishing (2023-2028) that won the 2023 competition for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Global Call entitled the Future of Being Human.

Member of the research and curatorial program Experimental Cinema in Latin America (2014-2017) funded by the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time initiative.