‘ Uurga shig ’ – What is it like to be a lasso? Drawing figure–ground reversals between art and anthropology

Abstract

How might a singular object, a herdsman’s lasso known as the ‘uurga’, facilitate a fresh understanding of cosmology and human–animal relationships in nomadic Mongolia? ‘Uurga shig’ re-evaluates the performance of an object as an agentive social participant and the role of drawing as an anthropologically relevant method, outlining the need for interdisciplinary exchange between the fields of participatory art and anthropology. With a starting point of Alfred Gell’s thesis of ‘Traps as artworks and artworks as traps’ (1996), the lasso presents an alternative point of view to the western ‘zoological framing’ criticized by Massumi (‘What animals teach us about politics’, 2014). Instead the uurga functions as a non-Euclidean drawing tool, a frame through which to better understand the fluid relationships underpinning human–animal codependency on the Mongolian steppe.

From the line on a page to the ‘drawing through’ of a thread in a needle and the ‘drawing in’ of a wild horse in nomadic Mongolia, the author explores the application of drawing as an intimate method for analyzing moving relationships. With a focus on the drawn line as a connecting device that lends itself to figure–ground reversal, she extends the application of drawing as a prosthetic technology, one that might be used to catalyze a perspectival shift into the worlds of other animals.