Arantxa Echarte: performance and installation artist

My area of interest lies within anthropological and ethnographical study. As an artist I engage with places and people, immersing myself within specific “situations” offered by the surrounding environment (anything from a scene at a local café to conversations shared between people), and developing what an ethnographer would call ‘field work’. As John Monaghan and Peter Just say in “Social and cultural anthropology”: “Ethnography is to the cultural or social anthropologist what lab research is to the biologist, what archival research is to the historian, or what survey research is to the sociologist”. Judging by these statements, I believe that the term “what practical research is for an artist” is equally legitimate.

I believe that self participation in the aforementioned “situations” is the most effective way of understanding the ways in which other people see the world and interact with it. Being able to observe the event first hand, I am able to record these interactions and explore their social and cultural implications. I choose to bring my observational research into my every day activities as, usually, I encounter the most significant social phenomena accidentally. This process automatically implies cross-cultural comparisons and contextual engagement with the spectacle in question.

Therefore, my methodology is based on social observation from which I gather information in several formats: photographs, diaries, digital sound, conversations, or interviews. Because of the previously defined methodology, my work revolves around projects in which I am required to actively participate, and whose ending results are unpredictable.