What Should We Let Go? Curating, Ethnography, and the Work of Confluence

Join anthropologist and curator Alex Ungprateeb Flynn as he asks a deceptively simple question: what do we need to let go of to see the world differently? And what becomes possible when different ways of knowing meet without losing what makes them different?

The talk introduces the concept of “ethnographic confluence,” a way of thinking about what happens when different practices of making and knowing—from art and curating to ethnographic fieldwork—meet without being absorbed into one another. Drawing on the Brazilian thinker Antônio Bispo dos Santos, confluence asks how different ways of knowing might gain force through encounter while maintaining their differences.

We will travel across continents, looking at how collective stories, relationships, and ways of knowing take form. Through examples ranging from art and São Paulo’s housing movements to artistic practices, spirits, and everyday life in Thailand, we will explore what happens when familiar boundaries between art, ethnography, and lived experience begin to shift.

These examples ask what kinds of knowledge can take form when different practices of making and knowing meet without being reduced to one another—and what each may need to let go of for that encounter to become transformative.

Alex will conclude by bringing this conversation to Berlin, introducing his new project, Ghost Archives. He will share the project’s initial framework, exploring how communities draw on inherited forms of art, ritual, and spiritual expression not simply to preserve the past, but to imagine and create different futures.

Join us at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on Unter den Linden for a 60-minute lecture, followed by a 30-minute conversation with the speaker.

This talk is featured in the lecture series “Addressing Heritage Loss,” hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.