The Vernissage is the second component of the three-part multi-media exhibition, Ethnographic Object Lessons, organised by the ANSO Department as part of the ANSO@10 events. The Ethnographic Object Lessons project brings together a diverse set of objects that mediate, produce, emblematise, and memorialise a host of social, political, economic and affective arrangements that are central to the research of ANSO Faculty. Inspired by the materialist pedagogy of “object lessons”, developed by the Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi in 1798, faculty members of the ANSO Department have selected an object that is central to their research. These objects, in one way or another, are key ethnographic material and/or have led to theoretical insights.

Several photographs of 13 objects are already on display at various spaces at the Institute—the cafeteria, near classrooms of Petal 1, the ANSO Department floor, the library, and other places. If you are curious to learn more about these objects and learn more about why and how these objects speak to the research interests of ANSO faculty, we invite you to join us at the Interpetal (Level 1, Petal 2) on 25 November 2021 at 18h00.

Faculty will convene with their objects and discuss them with you. These lessons provide avenues for our audience to engage with the images, the objects and the constellation of relations that are generated and negotiated by them vis-à-vis the research projects of ANSO faculty.