This practice-based thesis presents the results of experimental research devoted to ethnic tourism among the Kayan minority and has involved the interconnection of artistic and anthropological languages. Known worldwide for the traditional female custom of wearing a long coiled brass necklace aimed at causing a considerable extension to the neck, the Kayan are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group originally from Burma. Due to the prolonged civil war in their own homeland, a large number of Kayan recently fled from Burma to refuge in neighbouring Thailand. Here, over the past years, in response to the “incisive” tourism policy promoted by the Thai government in the northern areas of the country, some families, abandoning the refugee camps where they were hosted, have been resettled in several new villages open to tourists, on payment of a modest entrance fee. Here the Kayan, their culture and their daily life, have been transformed into an authentic tourist attraction capable of drawing about 10,000 visitors a year. Founded on a strictly “visual media primitivist” approach and inspired by its peculiar aesthetics – as systematically presented in the first, theoretical, section of the thesis –, the enquiry involves a multimedia perspective. In such a context, analogue photography and filmmaking, creative writing and sound composition have been combined to give concrete shape to an original artwork firmly grounded in ethnographic practice. The choice, far from being a solely arbitrary and subjective option, has indeed been motivated by the critical employment of specific theoretical assumptions of some of the most recent streams of anthropology and epistemology of the human sciences. The multidisciplinary methodology adopted to develop the research, as well as the multifaceted language employed to display its results, represent an innovative and experimental way of approaching the complex theme of cultural identity in present-day Asian contexts, as well as of highlighting the most aesthetic and philosophic implications connected to the revival of analogue vintage media in contemporary artistic practice.

Ce travail propose une analyse des pratiques de bénédiction et des relations de proximité dans une ville du centre-ouest brésilien. L’ethnographie dans les quartiers de Goiás permet d’interroger tout à la fois un univers mu par des formes de religiosité désignées par le terme de caseiras, et la notion de proximité telle que le quotidien des habitants la révèle. Favorisant une approche sensible des pratiques de bénédiction et des relations de proximité, la photographie est mobilisée comme outil de terrain, dispositif analytique et mode de connaissance, pour souligner la particularité des expériences ethnographiques autour du regard et des images et élaborer un récit ethnographique articulant texte et images. Sont ainsi privilégiés dans cette thèse le contenu anthropologique et les aspects esthétiques et émotionnels de la bénédiction. Ces pratiques permettent d’appréhender les relations de solidarité, conflictuelles et intergénérationnelles, qui participent à l’élaboration du lien social entre proches. Impliquant aussi des processus de transmission entre femmes, les relations de proximité sont dynamisées par des ambiguïtés affectives faites à la fois de complicités et de rivalités. Les troubles qu’elles provoquent trouvent leurs formes d’expression et de résolution à partir des religiosités caseiras, les pratiques de bénédiction étant un moyen de réguler les conflits du quotidien, du fait qu’elles prennent en charge les maux du corps et de l’esprit qui en découlent. Ces éléments d’analyse ratifient que le rapport au proche n’est pas toujours harmonieux, et valorisent des modes de connaissance et des pratiques thérapeutico-religieuses non officialisées bien que centrales pour des groupes sociaux entiers, donnant ainsi une autre image de la société goiane et donc de la société brésilienne, à partir des marges du savoir / This work presents an analysis of blessing practices and “close” relationships in a city of central-western Brazil. Ethnography in the neighbourhoods of Goiás allows to question forms of religiosity designated by the term caseiras and the notion of closeness in the everyday life of Goiás inhabitants. Promoting a sensible approach of blessing practices and of “close” relationships, photography is mobilized as a tool for fieldwork, but also an analytical device and as a form of knowledge, to emphasize the particularity of ethnographic experiences of the sight and images. It also allows to develop an ethnographic narrative articulating text and images. Anthropological content as well as aesthetic and emotional aspects of blessing practices are privileged in this research. To focus on the blessing practices allows to grasp relations of solidarity, of conflict and intergenerational relations, which participate in the development of social ties between “close” people. As they also involve transmission between women, “close” relationships are driven by emotional ambiguities based on both complicity and rivalry. The disorders such relationships can cause find forms of expression and resolution into caseiras religiosities, as blessing practices are a way to regulate conflicts of everyday life by working on body and mind illnesses resulting from such conflicts. This work demonstrates how “close” relationship is not always harmonious. It also intends to show how unofficial forms of knowledge and therapeutic-religious practices, although central for entire social groups, can give a fresher look of the goiana society and of the brazilian society from the angle of the margins of institutional knowledge.