Diagramming relations: Exploring gaps, breaks, and disconnects in abstract visual devices.
Tristan Partridge
Hugarflug annual conference on artistic research
11. - 12. September 2025
Iceland University of the Arts
Artist-anthropologist Tristan Partridge presents a selection of his visual work, critique, and analysis of diagrams and their use in visualizing a wide variety of social, conceptual, and relational worlds. The abstract realm of diagrams depends on shared forms of human knowledge or understanding in order to be communicated – something that appears to be beyond the reach of AI and which also invites practitioners to re-imagine diagrams in their full aesthetic and political potential. The apparent definition and fixity of diagrams suggests an impossible timelessness to the worlds they depict – breaks and forms of disconnect from the dynamism of lived experience. What are the ethical, political, or epistemological implications of these gaps? What have been – and what might be – re-imagined roles for diagrams, for example as visual method, as representational technique, or as conceptual tool? This presentation will explore ideas for potential futures in diagrammatic work and (re)visualizing social worlds.
Tristan Partridge
Artist and Anthropologist
Tristan Partridge is the founding director of Gather-To-Tell, an ethnographically informed, justice-focused documentary media initiative. Tristan’s ethnographic work draws on aural anthropology and visual methods: he has written text scores for The Center For Deep Listening and his fieldwork photography has been exhibited internationally. His books include Burning Diagrams in Anthropology: An Inverse Museum (punctum 2024) and the collaborative documentary photobook, Mingas+Solidarity (Pazmaen 2024). Tristan is also a lecturer in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently developing both visual and sound art works in collaborations with Iain Findlay-Walsh (Scotland) and Santiago Borja (Mexico).