#littleethnographies

[weirdmirrors]

Dragon's Eye / Roots #littleethnographies

[vasilinaorlova]

Planetarium in Austin (Cedar Park) This is how the Little Bear and the Big Bear constellations look in the night sky in this part of the Northern hemisphere: they peep just over the horizon; the Big Bear not fully emerges. Another miracle is that, apparently, in Texas the little Bear has a lovely, long, furry tail becoming a squirrel. #littleethnographies

[vasilinaorlova]

Something so strange happened to me in this city as I went along the street. All of a sudden I had a sense of similarity, of familiarity, like I had been there—here—before, like I know it, or used to know it, almost as if I visited it before (in one of my previous lives, or, more precisely, when I was particularly young and demanding, expectant of the world, happy and smug in my supreme entitlement). It was a smell that produced such a work in me, but what smell was it? Hard to define, as is not unoften with odors. It contained ginger and fried chicken, was somehow connected to perfume but also to aroma sticks. Where was I? All of a sudden as if not in Washington DC at all, but in Saint Petersburg and also London. It triggered nonexistent memories in me, which instantaneously came into existence. Someone said, we only learn cities in connection to the cities (and other places) we already visited. I recalled a dark space of the long-closed restaurant Moscow—Berlin in Moscow. It was dark in there: apart from several uncertain sources of light, candles, I think, and lamps, nothing interrupted the darkness of the place. Was it not this moment, this very moment, that I anticipated back then though? Did not I see it already, many years ago? Was not I capable to predict this sighting? I should have known that I will come to live this moment, didn't I? Didn't I? A strange moment of recognition predicated on having never seen the place. Washington DC does not look like a particularly welcoming or easy-to-live place. But somehow I knew I would wake up here, if such was my destiny, not to notice it—you know what I mean—like you don't notice the face of your loved one, or you don't notice your room, or you don't notice your city, precisely because everything in there functions in a way you anticipate it to function. ~ And now I am in some place where the only food you could order is melted cheese. Sounds like something this city would do to you. Again predictable. #littleethnographies

[weirdmirrors]

paranoiacs /public computer at UT/ #tape #everydayness #littleethnographies

[vasilinaorlova]

So here, people of earth, is the next exhibit of our Museum of All Things in the World and Slightly Beyond: a bookshelf with seemingly discarded and orphaned books, booklets, and journals found at the grad lounge of socio-cultural anthropologists at UT, November 2017. No item was displaced for this photo session, everything pictured as it grew naturally over the years into the present noteworthy agglomeration. What leads people to put objects in quite this way? Or perhaps, to the contrary, it is the clandestine ways of objects that trigger people to arrange things in these enigmatic garlands? Why and how has this pile been constituted, and what does it tell us about the meaning of the universe and our lives? This is my next research project. Stay tuned. #littleethnographies #books

[vasilinaorlova]

A happy story. Things given away at the laundromat of a student apartment complex. #littleethnographies #objects

[vasilinaorlova]

Everything for performance of American exceptionalism, white supremacy, and toxic masculinities in your local store. Sales of discounted ideas. Glass eyes, plushy brains, and stone hearts. Post-Trump sincerity.

Little visual ethnography: Americana, paraphernalia, ephemera

#littleethnographies

[vasilinaorlova]

Austin place. Also, refreshing #misandry (alas, employed for capitalistic purposes of the bike shop promotion) #littleethnographies #Austin (at Cycleast Community Space)