Tracing the Genealogical Self: Entanglements of drawing with Tim Ingold's Lines

Abstract

Abstract The Genealogical Self Project is a component of a basic drawing course open to undergraduates from diverse disciplines and cultures, and engages students in critical drawing activities at Koç University, a liberal arts college in Īstanbul. By introducing a chapter from Tim Ingold's book, Lines: A Brief History, to the course, we aim to revisit the elements and processes that constitute drawing education, and what lines and mark-making mean in art and daily life. Thus, Tim Ingold's anthropological approach to elements of drawing opens a door to the expanded capacity of this art in general and invites students to interact with a text that handles parallel topics such as line. The project offers students an experimental way of building a drawing via inspiration from the text covered in the course and by inspiring them to base their work on myriad sources from their life going beyond drawing physical objects.