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- Convenors:
-
Barbara Plankensteiner
(Yale University Art Gallery)
Michael Rowlands (University College, London)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Benoît de L' Estoile
(Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- R4
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
The workshop aims to consider curatorial acts in constituting object collections or in archival processes in private or institutional settings. It explores the mechanisms of creating individual or public heritages and focus on the shifts of meaning in life histories of such ensembles of things.
Long Abstract:
The act of creating collections is not just a specialist museum practice but can also be understood as the mechanism in determining assembling things in private lives. Decisions of keeping or disposing of things, the form of care and presentation of such collections inscribe meaning and subsequent changes in the ensembles and arrangements are curatorial means that shift the perspective.
The workshop invites contributions that reflect the caring and collecting of objects from a broad perspective.
These could range from the creation of shrine-like arrangements of objects in private homes that constitute the self as an idealised subject to tendencies of creating private art foundations on the African continent. Such private enterprises could become powerful counterparts to the public institutions whose collections and missions date back to the colonial times, and offer new perspectives in collection-building and representation of cultural heritage. Ethnographic museums in Europe on the other hand work hard on inscribing new meaning to their assembled material belongings and experience difficulties in formulating contemporary collection strategies in the postcolonial context.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
From the perspective of an interested outsider to the curatorial profession the paper will discuss some conceptual problems, ambiguities, and contradictions in practices, and talk about, collecting and collections as experienced by an ethnographer of contemporary African culture.
Paper long abstract:
to be submitted
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the Jola Museum, a very small museum in South Senegal. The museum is curated by one person and in many respects is a one-person enterprise, attracting no more than ten visitors per week. But even so, the Jola Museum operates as an important lens for issues of representation.
Paper long abstract:
The Jola Museum consists of a collection of ethnographic objects. Most of these objects are rare and authentic, and they may be considered representative of a particular way of life. Through this collection an 'authentic' way of life is reconstructed which, while on display to foreign tourists, can be photographed. Some of the shrines on display, however, were never meant to be seen by non-initiates. The museum displays some simulacra of shrines, which it turns into objects of photographic representation. Hence, the exhibition of this collection raises issues about secrecy and revelation deeply embedded in the poetics and politics of the wider community.
Paper short abstract:
Museums have many objects lacking documentation and are thus often stored away and neglected. This paper aims to “reconstruct” the forgotten history of such a group of ignored collectibles providing them with a “fictive biography” and in this way giving them new significance(s).
Paper long abstract:
One day, a nice collection of "enchanting" and "fascinating" ceramics from Egypt caught my eye in the museum's storage room. An elongated, narrow-necked container looked like a classical Etruscan perfume flask, a jug covered with palmettes seemed to imitate a Wedgewood style jar. Card indexes and inventory books provided only basic information, such as collectors names, registration numbers, and acquisition dates, with superficial descriptions added to them. "Assiout", "Kenneh", and "Assouan" are alternatively mentioned as their places of origin. All items have been collected in the second half of the 19th century by European gentleman travelers, explorers and scientists. Though so-called Asyut earthenware has been on show in the late 19th century International World Exhibitions and has been acquired even by the most important museums in the Western hemisphere there is no serious information which makes it possible to trace their history from their place(s) of production and/or acquisition to the museums' storage-rooms. By retracing the individual and/or collective moods and memories these objects held for 19th century travel-writers on their tour through Egypt, this paper aims to lift the curtain on this hitherto neglected group of collectibles and to provide them with a "fictive biography".
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of this account is to inquire about the way different kinds of collections of images and objects can act to articulate and express social and interpersonal relationships, dissent and conflict. I will look into this topic by making reference to the research I’m carrying out in the chiefdom and little town of Bandjoun, West Cameroon. Here we can spot several practices of collecting animated by different interests, motivations and aims.
Paper long abstract:
Thinking about the different meanings of collecting.
The case of the collections of images and objects of the Bamileke's community of Bandjoun, Cameroon
The purpose of this account is to inquire about the way different kinds of collections of images and objects can act to articulate and express social and interpersonal relationships, dissent and conflict. I will look into this topic by making reference to the research I'm carrying out in the chiefdom and little town of Bandjoun, West Cameroon.
Here we can spot several practices of collecting animated by different interests, motivations and aims.
We can find the big sacred hut (nemo) which creates, by the means of the iconography of its sculpted posts, a collection of images supporting the cultural identity of the Bandjoun's chiefdom and its historical memory and, at the same time, working as a shop-window for the artists who try to shift the centre of the attention to themselves, as is clearly expressed by their signature and address, directly sculpted on the posts. So we can see, at least, two different kinds of collections, marked by conflict, but composed by the means of the same posts. What is interesting to remark is that this collection of images is not only a selected repeat of the stock of representations transmitted by the past (the "tradition"): it finds its model in the books too, in the catalogues of the western collections of African art. The "collection's paradigm" is used to offer a strategic political oriented inventory of the main elements of the "tradition" codified by the elite.
Another kind of collection is represented by the chiefdom's museum (recently renewed by an Italian ONG, the Centro di Orientamento Educativo of Milano) which, by the means of the possession of ritual objects and their exhibition, inside and outside of the museum, reasserts the centrality of the king (fo) in the social and political relationships of Bandjoun, and his symbolic "autonomy" from Cameroon's state administration. In this case the "collection" appears as a patrimonial strategy which reshapes the tradition in the international codified terms of the "heritage".
In the houses of the traditional dignitaries and nouveaux riches lastly, we can find some sets of objects and sculptures connected to the cults of the ancestors or, sometimes , a sort of cabinet de curiosité where, through heterogeneous things they display their "modernity" and they write their own autobiography. In a less spectacular way, also the humble furniture in the house of the ordinary people involves similar attitudes.
It is in this variegated context that a new cultural center now comes on the scene: we are speaking about "Bandjoun Station", a center created by Barthelemy Toguo, an artist of international renown, based in Paris and born in Cameroon. This center will be devoted to the production, collection and exhibition of contemporary art. How will this artistic milieu, this "station" where travellers from all around the world will arrive, affects all the other collections existing in Bandjoun? And how will Bandjoun Station be affected by them?
Paper short abstract:
The paper presents caring and collecting maritime remains as an everyday political practice. A curatorial vision of the beach crashes with other visions and uses. But a micromuseum will be used to give legitimacity to a maritime identity project for the town, in face of other interests.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is based on fieldwork carried out in a small town on the northeast Catalan coast of Spain, where local fishing was the main activity until the 1980s. Recently, the remains of traditional fishing -objects left on the sand- have become cultural heritage. Some towns people founded an association devoted to restoring, caring for and collecting old fishing boats and other objects, in order to preserve the town's maritime identity.
As a result of this collection, a 30 metre square museum was opened in August 2007 inside an old beach hut containing a boat pulling machine and other old fishing tackles: that is what we could call a micromuseum. However, this curatorial vision crashed with other beach uses, such as recreational fishing and other leisure uses. At the same time, the Ministry of Public Works announced the construction of a seafront promenade on the same site. This announcement caused great controversy in this apparently peaceful village. Landscape, the maritime past, and public uses of the beach were hot topics that summer.
The discussion shows how the micromuseum -and the collecting activity it implies- is used by the association who promoted it to give strength and legitimacy to their own ideas about what the beach should be like, to whom should belong its use, and finally about the village's maritime or fishing identity. We explore how collecting and caring maritime remains became an everyday political practice that people used to negotiate identity, even if that was just with a micromuseum.
Paper short abstract:
to follow
Paper long abstract:
Curating a life as a kind of 'repair job' that serves to forget the failed bits and create a narrative of care for others is facilitated by the cared environment that finally relieves one of the obligation to sacrifice. The transformation into a 'living ancestor', venerated as a holder of memory, creates shrines of material culture that family and friends may visit in a state of some reverence. Yet a similar facility for the provision of institutionalised care promotes the continued life of a renouncer, able to break with the past and take advantage of change. Here the will to be free both rejects the past and also displays irritation with those who wish to ancestralise. One can equally imagine the irritation of children and others who find the elderly irascible and unwilling to play their role. The idea that 'things' do not belong to one or can be changed or disposed of at will has the added benefit that visitors may never know quite what to expect. This idea that there is nothing fixed about cared environments whatever the assumptions behind their provision aptly summarises this need to care for objects and for objects to care in the curation of personal lives.