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Ines Kleesattel: SF: String Figures as Hexenspiele,
SF: String Figures as Hexenspiele, "Witches' Games"
(p. 223 – 243)

Ines Kleesattel

SF: String Figures as Hexenspiele, "Witches' Games"
Mattering Figurations of Relational Aesthetics

  • game / play
  • theory of science
  • theory construction
  • history of technology
  • ethnology
  • cultural history

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Ines Kleesattel

Ines Kleesattel

is an art theorist and philosopher, teaching and researching at Zurich University of the Arts. Her research interests are political aesthetics, critical theories, situated knowledges in artistic research, aesthetics of post-colonial translocality, and the poetics of theory. Among the books she (co)authored are: Politische Kunst-Kritik. Zwischen Rancière und Adorno (Turia+Kant, 2016), The Future is Unwritten. Position und Politik kunstkritischer Praxis (Diaphanes, 2018); Polyphone Ästhetik. Eine kritische Situierung (transversal texts, 2019).
Ines Kleesattel (ed.), Pablo Müller (ed.): The Future Is Unwritten
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Ines Kleesattel (ed.), Ruedi Widmer (ed.): Scripted Culture
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Ines Kleesattel (ed.), Ruedi Widmer (ed.): Scripted Culture
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Other texts by Ines Kleesattel for DIAPHANES
Mario Schulze (ed.), Sarine Waltenspül (ed.): String Figures
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Mario Schulze (ed.), Sarine Waltenspül (ed.)

String Figures
A Cultural Practice between Art, Anthropology, and Theory

Softcover, 400 pages

PDF, 400 pages

Stretched between eight fingers and two thumbs, sometimes between teeth and toes, lengths of string make shapes. String figures can do many things: they tell stories, they pass the time, they make the unsayable showable, they connect people. Whatever else they may be, they have often been explored by artists, ethnologists and theorists: as an aesthetic practice, as something to collect, as a non-Western way of thinking.

In recent years, string figures have gained prominence in cultural theory. Donna Haraway promotes string figures as a method of thinking and collaboration between both disciplines and species. Rather than the technicist and rigid metaphor of the network, Haraway’s string figures provide a playful, process-oriented, embodied, performative (and non-Western) mode of thought in which responsibility and collaboration are foregrounded.

Looking at ways of playing together on the ruins of our history the publication brings together different threads and seeks to weave connections between world regions and disciplines.

Works by Maya Deren, Harry Smith, Mulkun Wirrpanda, Nasser Mufti, Katrien Vermeire, Caroline Monnet, Toby Christian, Maureen Lander, Andy Warhol and contributions by Paul Basu, Seraina Dür and Jonas Gillmann, Mareile Flitsch, Rainer Hatoum, Ines Kleesattel, Robyn McKenzie, Nasser Mufti, Mario Schulze, Rani Singh, Henry Adam Svec, Éric Vandendriessche, Sarine Waltenspül among others; developed by Mario Schulze and Sarine Waltenspül in collaboration with the Museum Tinguely Basel, Switzerland

Content

  • 7–45

    An Introduction to String Figures between Art, Anthropology, and Theory

    Mario Schulze, Sarine Waltenspül

  • 49–67

    Recollections of the String Figures of Yirrkala

    Robyn McKenzie

  • 69–91

    Exhibiting Colonial Entanglements . String Figures and Material Metaphors

    Paul Basu

  • 93–122

    Who Owns the Films? Who Shows the Films?. A Film of String Figures in a Web of Relationships

    Sarine Waltenspül

  • 123–135

    Ajarorpoq and TseLtse'no. On the Trail of Franz Boas' Cross-Cultural Fascination with Cat's Cradle

    Rainer Hatoum

  • 137–150

    Ethnomathematics of String Figure-Making Practices

    Eric Vandendriessche

  • 151–167

    Hesitant Hands on Similar Loops. Some Reflections on the Embodiedness of String Figures

    Mareile Flitsch

  • 171–189

    Shall We Rather Do String Figures Than Think in Networks?. Donna Haraway's SF Method

    Mario Schulze

  • 191–207

    From Buffalo Skin to Intertwined Snakes. The String Figures of Harry Smith

    Rani Singh

  • 209–221

    The Pliability of Form. Remediation in the String Figure Works of Jean Paul Riopelle and Vera Frenkel

    Henry Adam Svec

  • 223–243

    SF: String Figures as Hexenspiele, "Witches' Games". Mattering Figurations of Relational Aesthetics

    Ines Kleesattel

  • 245–257

    For an Aesthetic of Relating

    Seraina Dür, Jonas Gillmann

  • 305–308

    A Reflection on String Figures and That One Time They Went Viral. On My TikTok Channel

    David Ket'acik Nicolai

  • 309–312

    Powered by Indigenous Life and Grit. On Caroline Monnet's Mobilize

    Adam Piron

  • 313–316

    Strings, Relations, Associations. On Figures from the Upper Rio Negro

    Diana Guzmán Mirigõ, Andrea Scholz

  • 317–320

    A Door to the Imagination. On Andy Warhol's Screen Test: Harry Smith

    Andres Pardey

  • 321–324

    Members on All Continents. On the History of the International String Figure Association since 1994

    Mark Sherman

  • 325–329

    The Disappearance of a Female Ethnographer. On Diana Dreyfus

    Ellen Spielmann

  • 333–340

    Entangling Forms of Knowledge Production. On Vilma Chiara, Harald Schultz, and the String Figures of the Krahô People

    Maria Julia Fernandes Vicentin

  • 341–347

    Reconfiguring the Encyclopaedia Cinematographica. On the E-EC Interfaces

    Moritz Greiner-Petter

  • 349–352

    Connections in Time and Space. On Katrien Vermeire's and Rudolf Haefelfinger's String Figure Films

    Stephan Claassen

  • 353–358

    Te whai waewae a Māui. On Maureen Lander's String Games

    Moya Lawson

  • 359–363

    Multispecies Obscenity. On My Poster Multispecies Cat's Cradle

    Nasser Mufti

  • 365–371

    Cinema and String Figures. On Maya Deren's Witch's Cradle

    Ute Holl

  • 373–378

    Against Immediacy. On Toby Christian's Stringer

    Lynton Talbot