What’s imagistic about an image (Stevenson 2014)? Can we think of images as something more than a form of representation of our ethnographic and philosophical work? Are images (and other aesthetic approaches) a form of thinking? These were questions at the core of the research project “Aging and the Human Condition” (https://projects.au.dk/thegoodoldlife ), which ran from 2017-2022. In this presentation we will reflect on the collaborations with two artists, Maria Speyer and Tove Nyholm, which deeply impacted existing collaborations between a group of phenomenologically oriented philosophers and anthropologists. Our interdisciplinary exchanges emerged around the creation of a research exhibition “Growing Old” and the writing of the book ”Imagistic Care. Growing Old in a Precarious World” (Mattingly and Grøn 2022). We will show images and film clips from the exhibition and the book – as well as the process of their making. We end by introducing what we have termed ‘imagistic inquiries’ in the introduction to the book (Grøn and Mattingly 2022). Our imagistic inquiries led us to additional questions: How might images aid concept-creation by troubling concepts? How might they disturb common sense assumptions about, for example, old age? We consider what images offer to ethnographic theorization by using our own collaboration and engagement with the artists as an example.
Cheryl Mattingly is a Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Philosophy, Aarhus University and an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Southern California. Her primary interests are in critical phenomenology, the anthropology of ethics, medical and psychological anthropology, narrative, chronic illness and disability, health disparities, race and minority health. Her primary research has been in the United States. She has received an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Publication awards in anthropology include: the 2015 New Millennium Book Prize for Moral Laboratories, the 2011 Stirling Book Prize for The Paradox of Hope, the Victor Turner Book Prize for Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots and the Polgar Essay Prize.
Lone Grøn is Professor (WSR) at VIVE—The Danish Center for Social Science Research. Her primary interests concern the lived experience of chronic diseases, obesity, kinship, aging, and dementia and in phenomenological and aesthetic approaches. She has conducted fieldwork in Denmark. She is the PI of several collaborative research projects, e.g. “ALTER US: Kinship, Cognitive Difference and Care in the 21st Century Danish Welfare State” and “Aging as a Human Condition. Radical Uncertainty and the Search for a Good (Old) Life.” She has published numerous articles and book chapters including several coedited volumes, e.g. “Aging Time Beings. Temporality and Ethics in Old Age” (Grøn and Meinert forthcoming, JRAI), “Imagistic Care. Growing Old in a Precarious World (Mattingly and Grøn 2022, Fordham University Press); “Contagious Kinship Connections” (Grøn and Meinert 2020, Ethnos).
How to cite this webinar
Please cite as: Lone Grøn and Cheryl Mattingly. 2025. “Imagistic Inquiries: Artistic Collaborations and Concept Formations,” webinar by Images of Care Collective, AAGE, AgeNet and VANEASA. 6 February 2025, available at:https://youtu.be/gYnoZr0JU5U?si=RTq9uu-B3u2esdBc