How does an ethnography unfold? What happens when we refuse the linearity of the academic paper and let our materials bend, crease, or overlap?
In my new contribution to Cultural Anthropology’s Fieldsights series, I explore the gesture of folding and unfolding as both a conceptual and material operation of ethnographic practice. Written within my project Tarde and the reflections I have had in Studio Ethnography, this text proposes des-plegar—to unfold—as a way of thinking through the spatial, temporal, and sensorial textures of research.
Zines, prints, and studio experiments become not only methods of dissemination but also devices for thinking—ways of touching the world otherwise. Drawing on experimental ethnography, multimodal practice, and speculative design, this short essay reflects on what happens when ethnography moves off the page and onto paper, surfaces, and folds.
Des-plegar is part of “Vocabulario para la experimentación etnográfica”, a beautiful collection of concepts, gestures, and operations that emerge from practice: process, co-fabulation, and eclectic assemblage among them.