Affective Artefacts proudly announces

Dr Ludovic Coupaye (UCL), Technicity against “Technology”: An Anthropology of Technical Objects

25 April 2023, 4–5.30pm, Samuel Alexander Building, A112

For this public lecture, please register here.

Dr Ludovic Coupaye will also lead a reading group session on cutting-edge material culture theories of technical objects on 26 April. If you wish to attend this session, please get in touch with Dr Stefan Hanß (stefan.hanss@manchester.ac.uk).

These events are generously funded by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library.

Dr Ludovic Coupaye is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Material, Visual and Digital Culture Section and Curator of the Ethnographic Collection at University College London. He also serves as Programme Lead (Material and Visual Culture) and Director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Technics and Technodiversity (CATT), and on the editorial boards of Journal of Material Culture and Techniques & Culture. His research has shaped the fields of material and visual culture in Oceania; art and aesthetics among the Abelam; the anthropology of techniques, skills, and materiality; as well as the anthropology of technology and modernity. More recently, he presented ground-breaking theoretical and empirical studies on material cultures of technicity.

His publications include:

Coupaye, Ludovic. “‘Things ain’t the same anymore’: Towards an anthropology of technical objects (or ‘When Leroi-Gourhan and Simondon meet MCS’).” In Lineages and Advancements in Material Culture Studies, edited by Timothy Carroll, Antonia Walford, and Shireen Walton, 46–60. London: Routledge, 2020.

Coupaye, Ludovic. “Realising Fantasies: Objects as Contexts, Processes and Presence.” In Object Fantasies: Experience and Creation, edited by Philippe Cordez et al.  Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018.

Coupaye, Ludovic. “The Problem of Agency in Art.” In Style and Meaning: Essays on the Anthropology of Art, edited by Anthony Forge, Alison Clark, and Nicholas Thomas, 243–302. Sidestone Press: Leiden, 2017.

Coupaye, Ludovic. “Yams as Vernacular Methodology? Approaching Vital Process through Technical Processes.” In: Des êtres vivants et des artefacts. L’imbrication des processus vitaux et des processus techniques, edited by P. Pitrou, L. Coupaye, F. Provost, 2016. Online http://actesbranly.revues.org/647.

Coupaye, Ludovic. “Chaîne Opératoire, Transects et Théories : quelques réflexions et suggestions sur le parcours d’une méthode classique. ” In André Leroi-Gourhan «l’homme, tout simplement», edited by Philippe Soulier. Paris: Éditions de Boccard – Travaux de la MAE – Maison de l’Archéologie et de l’Ethnologie, René-Ginouvès, 2015.

Coupaye, Ludovic. Growing Artefacts, Displaying Relationships: Yams, Art and Technology amongst the Nyamikum Abelam of Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Berghahn, 2013.

Image credits: Ludovic Coupaye, “Décrire des objets hybrides: Les grandes ignames décorées du village de Nyamikum, province de l’Est Sepik, Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée,” Technologies 52–53 (2009), https://doi.org/10.4000/tc.4730

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