“The Digital”: new publication

A new publication will be available soon, co-authored by Kate Hennessy, Hannah Turner, Jaimie Isaac, and Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien). We take up the term “The Digital” in Chris Wright and Rupert Cox’s International Handbook of Methods in Visual Anthropology (2025).

Abstract: In this entry we further an understanding of the digital through a description of our collaborative decolonial curatorial work, speculative thinking, and media production around Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw artist Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien)’s practice between weaving and the digital. We describe the curation of her woven robe Sky Blanket for the traveling exhibition Boarder X (2017–2023) and our collaborative development of a media work to take the place of Sky Blanket on display. The creation of Wrapped in the Cloud highlights the potential of collaborative digital production methods to support relationships between curators, artists, scholars, and media producers and the continuity of cultural and ceremonial life. By describing our digital process and its attention to the materials, infrastructures, and cultural practices that enable our collective project, we position the digital as a highly contextual and materially contingent process that deserves attention in the study of methodologies in anthropology and art practice. We theorize the digital, through the lens of practice, with the interrelated concepts of thick representation and merged objects. The merged object, articulated in theory and practice through thick representation, affords new possibilities for return.

Hennessy, K., Turner, H., Isaac, J. and Jaad Kuujus (O'Brien, M.) (2025)
Digital. In International Handbook of Methods in Visual Anthropology. Chris Wright and Rupert Cox, Editors. Routledge. Pp. 245-253. [link]