Palpable Pasts: Affect, Materiality, and ASMR in GLAM

ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, is a “sensory phenomenon in which individuals experience a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli” (Barratt & Davis, 2015, p. 1). First identified in 2010, ASMR has since evolved into a popular genre of audiovisual content in which ASMR “artists” record themselves performing a range of actions thought to “trigger” ASMR such as whispering or tapping. More recently, museums like the Victoria and Albert have adopted ASMR in their public-facing content to demonstrate the interactions that museum staff, curators, conservators, and visitors have with collections. Archival materials are not inanimate or “senseless” but physically and emotionally affective. By interfacing the body with the material qualities of archival collections, ASMR represents an embodied information practice that reproduces the affective power of such objects. Taking up David Howes’ (2022) argument that “the focus on materiality needs to be augmented by attention to the sensoriality of things,” my proposed presentation will reflect on the nature of ASMR as a multisensory perceptive phenomenon and its affordances as a strategy of embodied engagement with the digitized past

Giovanna Paccillo dos Santos (Social Anthropology, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil)
Sensing Attention and Compassion in Mindfulness Meditation in Brazil

This paper aims to discuss the role of bodily senses in mindfulness meditation. More specifically, it seeks to examine how qualities such as attention and compassion are enacted through the senses, and how this process reconfigures the relationship between body and mind, as well as between objectivity and subjectivity. Mindfulness is a meditation practice focused on present-moment awareness, created by Jon Kabat-Zinn—a molecular biologist and ordained Buddhist —in the 1970s. His goal was to adapt certain Buddhist concepts and practices to secular contexts. By doing so, he developed an eight-week protocol that was later revised and adapted multiple times for various purposes. Over time, mindfulness gained traction and became popular worldwide, eventually being institutionalized as a unified public policy in the United Kingdom and integrated into healthcare systems in countries such as Canada, France, and Brazil. This paper focuses on eight-week mindfulness courses in Brazil, as well as retreats conducted between 2020 and 2024, which are based on the premise that cultivating compassionate present-moment awareness promotes good health and quality of life. This perspective sheds light on how mindfulness intersects with broader discussions about health, personhood, and suffering. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to the field of the anthropology of the senses, health, and emotions.
Keywords: Mindfulness; Health; Attention; Compassion; Senses