Contribution short abstract:

The exhibition project looks not at specific objects of a collection but at the emptiness. How does emptiness manifest itself in? What does it tell? The exhibition addresses different questions concerning the emptiness in a collection by exploring and conveying this through audio-visual media.

Contribution long abstract:

Within the framework of a series of exhibitions at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, five questions are raised looking at different collections along the key topics of context, provenance, skill, contemporaneity, and reconnecting.

The exhibitions of the workspace series invite us to look closely at objects from different collections and aim to open a dialogue about and around these: What do we want to know? What did we use to want to know in the past - and what did we ignore? Where are the blind spots? What is- or should be - the focus of our work today?

In the framework of this exhibition series, I have the chance to curate an exhibition space. In my project, I have a closer look, not at specific objects, but at the emptiness: at what is missing and what the things not there/not seen can reveal.

My intent is to look closer at a collection/object by using audio-visual media. The aim is, on one side, to generate ethnographic knowledge. On the other, to create material that can be used in the exhibition space to convey different aspects around the topic of emptiness in a collection. By March, the project will be at the stage of elaborating a concept for the exhibition. I hope to get feedback and input on this. More specifically, on the possibilities which audio-visual media can offer in the exhibition space.