The Bureau hosts meetings and events all over campus at UT Austin. Some of our events are hybrid. We try to maintain a regular meeting place in WCP 4.120.

Open Lab Hours:

Open M-F from 9am-4pm except when classes and seminars are being held. Schedule changes each semester.

The room may be locked. To get a key, contact Craig Campbell or someone in the main Anthropology office.

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Witnessing the Subterranean

April 20, 2026
Announcement, Events

UT Austin – Dept. of Anthropology &
The Bureau for Experimental Ethnography
present

Witnessing the Subterranean
Printmaking as an Ethnographic Method of Haptic Abstraction

a talk by Pablo Aguilera Del Castillo
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Trinity University

 Noon on Monday, April 20 
UT Austin – Dept. of Anthropology
Room: WCP 5.118 

Photographic image looking down on a group of people. Their hands are visible and they are working with paper and crafts.

What does printmaking offer as its own method of anthropological inquiry? What are the analytical affordances of collectively producing prints as a way of documenting social life? Can printmaking allow anthropologists a different way of witnessing and remembering space? What can printmaking as its own distinct practice teach us about modes of attunement?

Based on long-term fieldwork in the region and a series of printmaking workshops organized in the Yucatán Peninsula in 2023, this talk explores the ethnographic possibilities of printmaking as a form of witnessing and remembering the space of the subterranean. Framed by the ongoing struggles of Indigenous communities over territorial sovereignty and Indigenous autonomy, this talk explores the potential of enlisting printmaking as a useful tool of anthropological intervention. Building on previous research on multimodal anthropology, ordinary ethics, and witnessing, this talk seeks to offer new ways of theorizing Indigenous sovereignty through the practice of collective printmaking.