Paper short abstract:

The paper intends to show how morality and material culture can be related to each other. This will be demonstrated via a specific art project which deals with issues of feminism, (fiber) art, and activism against sexual violence. The project reflects on how a consent culture could be created.

Paper long abstract:

Since the beginning of the 21st century the craft- and DIY-culture have been booming, from non-political grassroot revolution phenomenons like yarn bombing to social critical crafting projects like The Monument Quilt. A new wave of handcrafters is reclaiming and ocuppying the urban space with various political fiber works. A lot of different scholars and artists have created art shows, panels and have written publications about the (critical) crafting movement. So there exists a wide range of artificial and scientific approaches to the subject, but there are still some blankspaces left which my paper will discuss.

The Monument Quilt is an adequate example to show how material culture deals with issues of morality. The handcrafted artwork, which is made of thousands of quilted stories of rape survivors, is settled on the intersection of moral issues, material culture, and art. The activist project is trying to intervene in how society treats survivors of sexual violence and rape. True to the motto "every tool is a weapon, if you know how to use it" the Quilt's inventors (Force-Campaign) conquer the urban space and try to bring rape culture into the mainstream dialogue.

How can a critical crafting campaign like The Monument Quilt influence common social practices? Which tools are they using for aiming their goals? Is this an utopian idea or can general habits be modified? My paper reveals how moral issues can be materialized in a piece of fabric; it also will discuss the campaign's various activist strategies.

Paper short abstract:

Karl With’s incomplete book Functional Integration in the Arts and his exhibitions challenged the question how to present artistic value of objects from different cultures. His struggle to sublate art historical and ethnological methods gives us insights on the morality of material culture studies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss the art historical and curatorial practices of German scholar Karl With (1891-1980), whose lifelong concern lied in the problematics of how to describe/present artistic objects derived from a culture that was not yours.

Inspired by ethnological methodology, his early writings on material culture of Japan, Bali and Java, were written from his viewpoint that understanding of art from different culture required understanding of their religion and custom. While they addressed positively to the Western readership stimulating further interests; they at the same time became "instrumental" in exposing the local culture to the "destructive evils of tourism," for which he later "c[ould] not help but feeling guilty."

His awareness of the inconsistency embedded in the both practices, either qualifying aesthetic value for those objects or relegating them to the materials for ethnographic study, lead him to explore a new formulation to integrate cultural items under the concept of "function." Negating the Western dichotomy between fine and applied arts, With redefined artistic value as something "rests upon the functional fulfillment of serviceability and purposefulness." Although his book project "Functional Integration in the Arts" had to remain manuscript due to the deep-rootedness of the inconsistency, in his ceaseless efforts to reconcile the contradiction in installations and in his deliberation and hesitancy of his writings, are the signs from where we could start discussion of the scholarly morality of material culture studies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore categories of seeing for Warlpiri people in Central Australia with particular reference to uses of karntawarra, a yellow coloured ochre used predominantly in specific ritualised contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Karntawarra, a yellow coloured ochre, is crushed and used by Warlpiri people in a number of ritualised contexts. Unlike red and white coloured ochres, karntawarra is not commonly used in other areas of Warlpiri life, perhaps as it is heavily associated with death but also as it carries some kind of special, and somewhat secretive quality. Anna Wierzbicka (2008) has passionately argued against universal concepts of colour, and has presented evidence from the Warlpiri Semantic Domain Dictionary (Laughren, Hale & Warlpiri Lexicography Group 2006) to show that instead of colour terms, Warlpiri people have four 'categories of seeing' not determined by colour. She places karntawarra into a category where rather than seeing its 'yellowness' as is assumed by an English speaker, Warlpiri people are seeing instead something which 'stands out against a background' (Wierzbicka 2008: 414). In this paper I will draw on this idea to show how karntawarra is used in a number of contexts to 'bring something into sight again which has previously been unseeable'. I will predominantly focus on ritual uses of karntawarra in ceremonies where it is most prevalent and then will extend the discussion to include uses of yellow material culture items in other areas of Warlpiri life.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the limits of community consultation through a case study based on the works of Dennis Nona in order to explore the added responsibilities that museums and galleries take on when displaying Indigenous material culture.

Paper long abstract:

Earlier this year, art historian Sasha Grishin took the National Gallery of Australia to task in an opinion piece for the Conversation about their decision to take down the works of Dennis Nona (8 April, 2015). Calling it the erasure of Nona from Australian art history, Grishin asked, "should the punishment of an individual extend to the censorship of that person's art?" (ibid). This paper attempts to tackle this question.

The representation of Indigenous material culture in major museums and galleries typically includes some semblance of community consultation (Harrison 2013). Consultation is meant to help develop exhibitions in order for the objects to be displayed in ways that are in congruence with Indigenous cosmologies and with respect for the stories such objects encompass (Fienup-Riordan 2011). Although the application of the consultation process is something up for debate (what it is, how should it be done, and what is 'successful' consultation), all consultation presupposes a source community that is relatively homogenous in its understanding of 'correct' community representation. This paper will explore what happens when morally challenging works are suddenly in doubt as to their appropriateness for display and the incredible amount of pressure put on communities to 'solve the problem'. This paper will explore the limits of community consultation through a case study based on the works of Dennis Nona in order to explore the added responsibilities that museums and galleries take on when displaying Indigenous material culture.

Paper short abstract:

Along with curators and historians, designers are responsible for determining how stories are preserved and communicated in museums. This paper examines the moral issues surrounding the representation of peoples and their experiences under the current paradigm of “experiential” museum design.

Paper long abstract:

Since the emergence of the "experiential" museum style in the early 1990s, designers have played a substantial but under-recognized role in helping museums restructure interpretive approaches and compete in tourism markets. Within this paradigm, interpretation of cultural material has come to emphasize the "stories" of the peoples associated with it—a shift that can be read as an attempt to appeal to publics increasingly desirous of entertaining and personalized experience. With experiential museums, designers achieve this by composing traversable narratives, collaging and poeticizing objects, images, and multimedia design elements throughout an exhibit's architectural space to create an opportunity to "experience" history. Thus, a particular formal technique addresses both pedagogic and entertainment-based goals of new museums.

This paper examines the moral issues surrounding the representation of peoples and their experiences under the current paradigm of "experiential" museum design. Design is becoming an integrated part of the formation and transmission of public history—negotiating stakeholders' interests and historical material, and ultimately giving form to the spaces in which publics experience information. However, the design strategies that this paper critiques tend to favor order: lucidity over messiness; good storytelling over objectivity. This blending of "objective" historical documentation with storytelling techniques favored by mass media problematizes assumptions about the authority of museum narratives. I end by proposing that this area of design be acknowledged as an act of nonfiction media creation, and that as such, today's designers are obligated to reexamine the moral principals of "nonfiction" in the creation of visual representations for museums.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the veracity of applying a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary approach to the preservation of Indigenous cultural material in museums; and highlights the way in which the significance of two bark paintings shifted as a consequence of this dialogue.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on a project at Museum Victoria that sought to test the efficacy of applying a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research model, one well-embedded in curatorial practice, to the conservation of Indigenous cultural heritage collections. The primary question was to make a decision as to culturally appropriate treatments for two Gupapuyngu clan paintings from Arnhem Land - not just whether they should be conserved or how but whether they should be preserved at all. The approach was to bring key Gupapuyngu elders together with the conservator and curator and draw together the skills and knowledge and perspectives of all three parties.

The project established an environment for informed decision making regarding the future of these paintings, one that was based on a more nuanced understanding of the importance of these historically and culturally. While the works might be considered to have limited relevance given their condition and the fact the detailed designs continue to be perpetuated by Gupapuyngu artists, a detailed examination of the works together with close interrogation of associated records resulted in the recovery of the context of their creation and a remarkable elevation of their significance. This paper discusses the efficacy of such an approach not just for the preservation of Indigenous cultural material but for revealing the potential of research on what are often disregarded as "hollow remnants" of the colonial past and the capacity to ensure their relevance into the future.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Melbourne Museum's attempts to repatriate an object that divided the recipient community. I suggest museums have replaced religious institutions as sites where the moral rectitude of the Australian state is tested and maintained, if ambiguously.

Paper long abstract:

All Australian state museums are involved in the repatriation of Aboriginal ceremonial objects, based on the essential notion that such objects were taken 'without the consent'. However, the actual process of repatriation can go far beyond such notions. Identifying the owner of an object may be impossible and where they are identified, they may prefer to leave their object in the museum. Sometimes objects are returned to a community, only to be damaged or stolen. In this paper, I wish to discuss attempts by Melbourne Museum to repatriate an object to a community that led to a highly contentious outcome that divided the community on a number of cultural and political levels. It not only raised issues concerning the project of repatriation itself, but about the general role of museums in the fraught relationship between settler Australia and its indigenous inhabitants.

In examining these events, I will suggest that with the secularisation of Australian society, museums and other public institutions have tended to replace religious institutions as sites where the moral rectitude of the Australian state is tested, delineated and maintained, if somewhat ambiguously. Here, divinely ordained laws regulating moral behaviour have been subsumed by elaborate policies, procedures and 'vision statements' meant to provide both a moral code and 'moral guidance' for museum curators engaged in projects such as repatriation. As with the attainment of moral worth in general, the preservation and adherence to these moral codes is the central issue, notwithstanding the success or failure of their application.