Vanessa at work on the operating table, with her instruments plunged into her brain, seated at the binocular microscope. The giant screen shows what she is seeing, allowing the head surgeon to supervise her. Copyright: Drawing by Maxime Le Calvé, digital, 2019
A Newly Published Peer-Review Research Article in Graphic Anthropology on an Experimental Neurosurgical Simulation by Maxime Le Calvé
How to prepare those aspiring to make a profession of cutting into a living human brain? In this article, Maxime Le Calvé recounts, drawing on ›live‹ graphic field notes, the development of a neurosurgical simulation. This narrative is contextualized and theorized through a literature review on the anthropology of doing, the formation of habit, and the technologization of skill transmission in surgery. The peer-reviewed research article in graphic anthropology on an experimental neurosurgical simulation is published in French in »Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances (RAC)«.
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Paper Fieldwork, Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
Exhibition of Drawings by Maxime Le Calvé in Steglitz
We kindly invite you to the Vernissage of »Sketching Brains« at Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin. »Sketching Brains« is a collaborative exhibition-as-research project that nurtures new conversations around the neurosurgical practice. Based on a series of fieldwork within the Neurosurgical Department at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin by graphic ethnographer Maxime Le Calvé and the research of neurosurgeon and cultural scientist Anna L. Roethe, this initiative takes the form of graphic-based stories, presented and continued both onsite and online. The texts are comment-enabled to make the community react and question the descriptions. The »participant exhibition« becomes a vibrant collaborative forum to understand more profoundly the implications of neurosurgery in people’s lives, on both sides of the scalpel.
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Article Stretching Materialities
Open Access Peer-Reviewed Article Published on the »Stretching Materialities« Exhibition's Process
»TATour« is the title of a virtual exhibition based on preliminary fieldwork we conducted in 2020 at the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin). This collaborative inquiry served as a preamble to creating a physical exhibition in a museum space based in a former veterinary anatomical theater (Stretching Materialities, 2021-2022). Constrained by the COVID crisis, we invested our efforts in creating a digital tour that focused on the visible and invisible activities that remained there even when visitors could no longer access them. This recent paper by exhibition curators Maxime Le Calvé, Natalija Miodragović, Nina Samuel, Felix Sattler, Christian Stein, and Clemens Winkler, published in ethnographiques.org, issue 47, presents the production process for this immersive work, describes the creative process underlying this immersive work and its unusual approach to doing fieldwork through 360° fabulations inside an exhibition space, using sketching as a primary method.
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Cover, Bild: Maxime Le Calvé, Gestaltung: Caroline Lei. Copyright: transcript
Maxime Le Calvés Buch über die Atmosphäre, Netzwerke und Reputation in einem Hamburger Nachtclub erschienen
Nach über dreißig Jahren ist der Golden Pudel Club noch immer ein wichtiger Treffpunkt im Hamburger Stadtteil St. Pauli. Cluster-Mitglied Maxime Le Calvé zeigt anhand dieser Institution, wie eine lebendige Nachtclubatmosphäre aus der Interaktion zwischen Personal und Publikum in einem musikalischen und materiellen Umfeld entsteht. Anhand von umfangreichem und bisweilen unterhaltsamem ethnografischem Material zeigt er, wie dieser spezielle Raum neue Netzwerke, Stile oder Reputationen hervorbringt und fördert. Dabei wird deutlich: Der Pudel schafft eine transformative Atmosphäre, die den beeindruckenden Einfluss des Clubs auf die lokale und internationale Musikszene erklären kann.
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Workshop »More than Human Sketching 1«, Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, May 2024. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé.
Immersive Performative Guided Tour Developed by MoA Members
You can now experience the collections of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin through an immersive performative tour developed by MoA members Elaine Bonavia, Maxime Le Calvé, Kotryna Šlapšinskaitė, Paulina Greta Stefanovic, and Nayeli Vega Vargas. Small groups of visitors are equipped with augmented reality headsets and invited to sketch in 3D (in augmented reality and on paper), following a score inspired by design research, graphic anthropology, and experimental anatomical pedagogy. Register now for your 3D drawing tour in July or August!
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Maxime Le Calvé, Sketching at Kunstgewerbemuseum, More-Than-Human Sketching 2.0 Workshop, 2024. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
Results of »More-Than-Human Sketching« Workshop Exhibited
The results of the »More-than-Human Sketching« project, a participative design anthropology research process by Elaine Bonavia, Paulina Greta Stefanovic, Maxime Le Calvé, and Nayeli Vega, will be on display from July 12th as part of the second set of the »Intervention Wunderkammer« at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin. Based on the findings of this work, guided tours of the Kunstgewerbemuseum are now being offered for the first time using augmented reality headsets. Visitors are invited to sketch in 3D (in augmented reality and on paper), following a score inspired by design research, graphic anthropology, and experimental anatomical pedagogy.
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Copyright: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum / Gestaltung: cyan Berlin
More than Human Sketching 2
How can we reshape our perception of crafting as the more-than-handiwork of more-than-human makers? Inspired by textile artifacts used for encoding and conveying knowledge, artist and designer Nayeli Vegas will guide us through various perspectives on understanding the objects within Kunstgewerbemuseum's (Museum of Decorative Arts) collections as knots and networks of information. The SpecLab, affiliated with the Department of Neurosurgery at Charité in Berlin, will demonstrate how neurosurgeons navigate the complexities of the brain using maps of knots and streamlines. Imagine if we could map and weave insights from creating museum objects into textile-like diagrams. Using 3D sketching tools and drawing from the intricate informational structures of knotted systems and the brain, we will invite museum visitors to explore spatial methods of encoding movement and understanding. The workshop is part of a series of events of the new discursive platform »More than human. Design after the Anthropocene« curated by MoA member Claudia Banz.
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Workshop »More than Human Sketching 1«, Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin, May 2024. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé.
Report of the First »More than Human Sketching« Workshop at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin
The first event of the »More-than-human Sketching« series was a great success. Not only were the workshops fully booked, but the SpecLab team also spent two days developing a new immersive performance for the museum's visitors using augmented reality glasses and spatial drawing software. The performance, »Drawing as Digestion: Spatial Knowing Processes,« was be presented to the public soon after. Short lectures and activities by Elaine Bonavia, Paulina Greta Stefanovic, and Maxime Le Calvé provided an unusual framework for participants to engage with the embodied and transformative power of tracing lines and being traced by them.
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Non-trivial music instrument at Boch Digital Vorspiel, 2 February 2024. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
Workshop and Participatory Concert
The NTMI (NonTrivial Musical Instrument) embodies the idea of making complex sound worlds playable by intuition. It enables children and laypersons to explore many sound synthesis processes playfully and allows expert musicians to realize their sonic imagination by adapting/expanding its open-source architecture. In the workshop on April 18th, organized by MoA member Maxime Le Calvé and conducted together with Alberto de Campo, Professor for Generative Art / Computational Art (Berlin University of the Arts), sound researcher Nico Daleman, and the Speculative Realities Lab, the team explained and demonstrated the central concepts, then dedicated time to hands-on playing, experimenting, and improvising, first on individual setups, and finally as multiple sources of influence on a single NTMI environment.
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Micro Phenomenology Crash Course, Workshop 7-9 February 2024, Stone game by Katrin Heimann. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé.
Detailed Workshop Report Out Now
From February 7-9th, 2024, the Micro-Phenomenology Crash Course, instructed by Katrin Heimann, Associate Professor at the School of Culture and Society - Interacting Minds Centre of Aarhus University, took place at the Cluster. The event, organized by MoA members Maxime Le Calvé and Zeynep Akbal, had to objectives: first, providing participants with tools to dissect intricate first-person experiences of all kinds, secondly, analyzing collectively the benefits and the challenges of VR and Mixed Reality experiences to bridge art and science.
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Paper field notes at the University of Oxford, November 2023. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
Maxime Le Calvé Reports on his Time as Visiting Scholar Funded by OX:BER Flex-Fund Scheme
In 2023, Maxime Le Calvé spent nine weeks as an invited scholar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography of the University of Oxford, funded by the OX:BER »Flex-Fund« scheme (BUA). He presented an exhibition with twenty-eight ethnographic drawings from his study of neurosurgical experience at the ex-Tylor Library, co-curated with Elizabeth Hallam. Maxime was invited to give an accompanying research seminar at the Visual and Material Museum Anthropology program at the Pitt-Rivers Museum: »Sketching Brains. A Participant Graphic Anthropology of Neurosurgery.« As a supporting program to the exhibition, he and Elizabeth Hallam conducted a series of workshops for researchers and students on drawing and 3D sketching, as well as a writing class for the DPhil of the Medical Anthropology program.
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Site-Writing Technologies of Capture. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
Two-Day Workshop and Installation on Mixed Reality Crafting at Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin
In December 2023, the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin will host the workshop »Site-Writing with Technologies of Capture« in partnership with the ExC »Matters of Activity«. This workshop, curated by Maxime Le Calvé, is a collaboration between the Speculative Realities Lab (MoA, Charité), Shauna Janssen, a visiting scholar from Concordia University in performance studies and site-specific practices, and the Berlin-based artist duo MELT. The dual focus of this two-day workshop is an interdisciplinary exploration of the notions of border and dis/orientation, and the first presentation of Subcortical Matters, an immersive brain data visualization platform developed by the SpecLab.
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Still of documentation of the workshop »Anthrologies of Technique, Techniques of Anthrology«. Copyright: Xu Ding
Multimodal Ethnographies of Making
The Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé and Sharon Macdonald organized the final workshop presentations of the seminar »Anthropologies of Technique, Techniques of Anthropology: Multimodal Ethnographies of Making« on Friday, July 14th, in the Objekt Labor of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik. The students introduced the participants ›hands-on‹ to techniques that they have explored during the semester, such as etching, live photos, sketching, dancing, self-portrait or lorming (a technique for tactile communication with people who have both visual and hearing impairments).
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Visual Writing Workshop, Stuart McLean, May 2023. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé, Matters of Activity
Writing Workshop on 11 May with Anthropologist Stuart McLean
What new possibilities for thinking and living might result from extending the notion of creativity beyond the human realm? The worlds that humans often pride themselves on creating are not and have never been exclusively human but are dependent upon and inflected by a multitude of other-than-human powers and presences, including animals, plants, geological formations, weather systems, and a range of humanly manufactured artifacts fashioned from a variety of materials. On May 11th, from 11 am–3 pm, Stuart McLean, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, is invited by Cluster member Maxime Le Calvé as part of the stretching senses school (Cutting/OSA) to give a writing workshop on multimodal anthropological fabulations – you're kindly invited to join!
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Maxime Le Calvé, Fieldwork Charité, 2022. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé, Matters of Activity.
Maxime Le Calvé Invited to Teach alongside Alice Jarry at Concordia University, Montreal
Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé will travel to Montreal for a short research and teaching stay at the Milieux Biolab and the Milieux Speculative Life Cluster at Concordia University. He is invited by Prof. Alice Jarry, an assistant professor of Design and Computation Arts (Concordia University, Montréal) who holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Practices in Materials and Materiality.
Together, they will conduct the workshop »More-Than-Ethnographic Probes«. This workshop is a fieldwork and a platform for the development of collaborative sketching, writing, and documentation methods. The workshop will be followed by a roundtable panel at the »Uncommon Senses« Conference at Concordia on May 4th. The panel will be chaired by anthropologist Stefan Helmreich (MIT). Moreover, Maxime will present a paper on the »Sensory Ethnography« panel at the »Uncommon Senses« conference, with the title: »Sketching a Sense of Presence: Graphic Ethnography as Speculative Sensorial Attunement to Neurosurgical Practice«. more
Together, they will conduct the workshop »More-Than-Ethnographic Probes«. This workshop is a fieldwork and a platform for the development of collaborative sketching, writing, and documentation methods. The workshop will be followed by a roundtable panel at the »Uncommon Senses« Conference at Concordia on May 4th. The panel will be chaired by anthropologist Stefan Helmreich (MIT). Moreover, Maxime will present a paper on the »Sensory Ethnography« panel at the »Uncommon Senses« conference, with the title: »Sketching a Sense of Presence: Graphic Ethnography as Speculative Sensorial Attunement to Neurosurgical Practice«. more
Poster Workshop 3D Sketching, 2023, Image: Maxime Le Calvé. Copyright: Matters of Activity
Workshop at Charité on 13 April 2023
During this workshop on 13th April 2023, organized and led by Paulina Greta Stefanovic (HTW) and Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé and Thomas Picht (MoA) within the Speculative Realities Lab (Charité), we will initiate a group of students and researchers to one of the latest VR sketching tools. Together, we will experiment and discuss the hands-on practice of thinking in space with lines and volumes in VR. We will then further challenge the group to translate the ideas generated during the workshop into a virtual installation sketched into 3D space.
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Sketch by Maxime Le Calvé, 2022, Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé, Matters for Activity
Maxime Le Calvé Presented Paper at the Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Posting graphic fieldnotes can be brewed into a method to broker some attention from busy professionals. But what are the benefits of the practice? And for a potential publisher? What are the drawbacks and inconveniences? What’s the best practice in this domain? A paper, presented by Maxime Le Calvé at the Film Festival of the Royal Anthropological Institute (London, UK), on March 7th, 2023, focuses on the collaborative ethnographic process conducted within a neurosurgery department as a »radical open-access« pre-publication.
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Epistemic Dizziness in STS, 5056x2944 px, DALL•E 2, 2022, Copyright: Lucius Fekonja, Maxime Le Calvé, Matters of Activity
Maxime Le Calvé Contributed to the Science & Technology Studies Hub 2023 in Aachen
Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé convened a special topic panel titled »Epistemic dizziness. Coping with the side effects of the fast-paced circulation of metaphors and figures in STS« with his colleagues Britta Acksel and Jonna Josties of the laboratory for Human Environment Relations (HU Berlin) at the Science & Technology Studies-Hub from March 15-17th, 2023, in Aachen.
Together, they introduced the notion of epistemic dizziness in a collective paper, followed by hands-on dizziness-inducing exercises. The contribution featured an AI-generated artwork created collaboratively by the Cluster members Lucius Fekonja and Maxime Le Calvé. more
Together, they introduced the notion of epistemic dizziness in a collective paper, followed by hands-on dizziness-inducing exercises. The contribution featured an AI-generated artwork created collaboratively by the Cluster members Lucius Fekonja and Maxime Le Calvé. more
Sketching brains. Copyright: Maxime Le Calvé
An Ethnographic Participant Exhibition at the Neurosurgery Department of Charité in Berlin
»Sketching Brains« is a collaborative exhibition-as-research project which intends to trigger new conversations around the act of sketching in and about neurosurgical practice. Based on a series of fieldwork within the Neurosurgical Department at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin by graphic ethnographer Maxime Le Calvé and on the research of neurosurgeon and cultural scientist Anna L. Roethe, this initiative takes the form of conversations based on graphic-based stories, presented and continued both onsite and online. In German and English, the texts are comment-enabled to bring the community to react and question the description. The ›participant exhibition‹ becomes a vibrant collaborative forum, choreographed by the ethnographer, to understand more profoundly the implications of neurosurgery in people’s lives, on both sides of the scalpel.
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Field/Works. Copyright: Antart
Series Curated by Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé
For anthropologists and artists »doing fieldwork« in contemporary worlds, art can be much more than an object of investigation. Curation and creation through visual, audio, or performing arts are at the heart of their work, extending the established anthropological interest in writing as a medium of thought and knowledge sharing. The exhibition »Field/Works« presented works by anthropologists and artists who broke disciplinary boundaries, and whose practice foregrounded experimental, and open approaches to the theme »field/works«. This series was curated by Jen Clarke and Cluster Member Maxime Le Calvé.
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»Many Virtual Hanboks: Traditional Korean Garment Provoking Alternative Ways of Being in This World«. Copyright: Yoonha Kim
Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé and Yoonha Kim Contribute to Virtual Group Exhibition at UCL's Multimedia Anthropology Lab
UCL's Multimedia Anthropology Lab (UCL MAL) presented »Multimedia Encounters«, the latest exhibition created to coincide with UCL MAL’s first academic conference took place January 12th - 15th, 2021. Multimedia Encounters attended to the relationship between anthropological thought and virtual intelligence. Our Cluster Members Maxime Le Calvé and Yoonha Kim had ethnographic artworks shown in a virtual group exhibition called »Multimedia Encounters: Experimental Approaches to Ethnographic Research« using the digital platform Mozilla Hubs.
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Antart Exhibition Project. Copyright: Antart
Call for Contributions for ANTART Network Exhibition at EASA
Cluster members Maxime Le Calvé was co-organizing the exhibition »Field/Works. Kaleidoscopic Activities Between Anthropology and Art« togehter with the ANTART Network at EASE and they were seeking contributions. The submission deadline was MAy 22nd. The event took place virtually July 21st to 24th, 2020.
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