This is not thick description: Conceptual art installation as ethnographic process

What happens when an ethnographer takes up the idiom of contemporary art installation to explore an ethnographic problem? Building on performance ethnography as developed by Dwight Conquergood and D. Soyini Madison, in which the research process itself is cultural performance, this article describes a methodological innovation that encourages a rethinking of ethnographic outputs. Contemporary art installation is generative as well as representational, and challenges ethnographers to think by doing. This article describes one such project to show that while a minimalist installation aesthetic does not on the surface constitute ‘thick description’ in the Geertzian sense, it can be a generative part of a dialogic practice of ethnographic knowledge production. Integrating the interpretive tradition with feminist disability studies, my argument is that art installation offers a possible mode for ethnographers to work through ideas, solicit participation from academic audiences and research participants, create semiotic relationships, and come to know by doing.