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- Convenors:
-
Uta Karrer
(Fränkisches Museum Feuchtwangen)
Inés Matres (University of Helsinki)
Hester Dibbits (Reinwardt Academy for Cultural Heritage)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Heritage
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel examines participatory and collaborative cultural heritage in retrospective. It explores the aftermath of the participative turn in terms of communities, digitalities and institutions. How has it or should it break the rules of established cultural heritage practices?
Long Abstract:
Participation as a way to break up hegemonic structures in cultural heritage arenas has been a main methodological and theoretical subject of examination to previous SIEF congresses. Several decades after its introduction into the heritage field it is time for retrospection. This panel will discuss the aftermath of participatory and collaborative cultural heritage practices. We welcome studies based on empirical work that examine if and what ground rules and practices of participation have been established, challenged, broken, and subsequently how participation has led to reinventing new heritage practices.
We encourage proposals on the following topics:
1) Communities' perspectives:
What has the participative turn meant for communities? Has it led to their empowerment and sense of ownership towards heritage? Have their perceptions of the workings and work of cultural heritage changed? How about the visibility and sustainability of community initiatives of folklore, intangible heritage and performance? What is the role of heritage institutions and professionals in these cases?
2) Digital mediations:
Especially relevant in a Covid-19 world, what new and possibly digital methods facilitating participation are emerging? Are there new rules for ethnographic work in participative cultural heritage?
3) Institutional changes:
In terms of museum and heritage practice, how can the outcomes of participation be integrated in the everyday work of heritage professionals? Can or should the idea of collaboration and a more ethnographic approach in heritage work impact our organisational structures? How can participative and collaborative practices open new perspectives and ways of dealing with sensitive societal issues?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 24 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This presentation focuses on participatory affordances of digital photo to engage youth in meaningful cultural heritage experiences. Based on three participatory projects involving digital photo my research examines how curators and museum educators perceive communities that engage in participation.
Paper long abstract:
The digital age has brought about new ways of enabling cultural heritage institutions to mediate their content and engage with their audiences. A sequel to increasing accessibility and interactivity, participation embodies a more intense way to engage (Jenkins & Carpentier, 2013). In museums, both digitisation and participatory culture have grown in parallel though not necessarily as intertwined as in other contexts such as media or political participation. That is because participation has been regarded more of an on-site activity - e.g. communities contributing objects and interpretations for exhibitions or taking over the museum space. Now that much of the on-site activity in museums has moved to digital realms and new forms of digital participation are possible or necessary, it is time to inquire how digital participatory culture has rooted in cultural heritage institutions beyond a certain experimental character. In my ongoing study, I focus on three case studies where digital participation has become a recurrent method or common practice of the museum team. Based on thematic interviews with museum educators and curators, this presentation focuses on participatory campaigns that involve digital photography and young people. This is important to acknowledge, because the language and rules of participation will steer the project outcomes and the relationships forged between participants and institutions, as Nina Simon found. With this study I show that in its digital, participatory dimension, photo is a rich and complex medium that allows for a deeper knowledge of the communities that engage with it.
Paper short abstract:
There is a gap between participatory museum work and its extension into the online realm. This paper considers processes of 'democratisation' in museums and on social media to examine the tensions that hinder participation by reinstating project boundaries across the museum’s different spaces.
Paper long abstract:
Participation has become an increasingly important element of museum work (Simon 2010), yet associated practices and outcomes are usually bound within specific projects, and not usually part of these projects from beginning to end. Participatory practices aim to ‘democratise’ museum work, whilst at the same time social media are perceived as tools for museums to easily and passively reach that same goal. Despite the alignment in redistributing power across different processes, the incorporation of participatory practices has been especially challenging within the context of museum social media work. Museums are frequently critiqued for using social media primarily for ‘marketing’ and ‘broadcasting’ rather than as part and parcel to participation and related social goals (Iwasaki 2017; Kidd 2011). How is participation conceptualised and taking place across museum work? And in what ways are the approaches and content limited to the designated ‘spaces’? This paper reveals the gap between participatory work and its extension into social media spaces, and considers the underpinning factors that shape the potential of exhibiting and collecting practices both in the museum’s physical spaces as well as online. The analysis of exemplary projects in Germany and the UK surfaces defining tensions between the translation of participatory practices across mediums which can reinstate project boundaries, prohibiting the incorporation of such practices in other forms of museum work. The future of participation in museums relies on breaking boundaries; it requires a different understanding of the role of social media and a stronger connection between what happens online and on site.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the mediation of artistic heritage through social media practices. I argue that digital participation needs to be examined in relation to the actors' implicit media knowledge. My research investigates how personal narratives challenge established routines of art interpretation.
Paper long abstract:
"My generation is accused of not being interested in culture, museums or art, but actually we want to be more than just visitors, we want to be a persisting part of this world (...)." This excerpt from a conversation about the rather controversial hashtag #museumselfieday directly addresses the key-argument of this paper: Digital image technologies and visually shaped platforms such as Instagram prompt new practices of participation in the context of artistic heritage, which in many cases challenge established practices of perception, appreciation and valuation.
Based on my ethnographic research within the DFG-funded project "Curating Digital Images", I argue that it is in particular the habit of using Instagram (and related social-media-platforms or forums) for everyday communication that contributes to the mediation of artistic heritage on the basis of exchange and participation. The emerging practices of digital participation in museum spaces are therefore not only understood as influenced and shaped by the digital infrastructures but also as integrated into broader socio-cultural contexts and most crucially as based on incorporated knowledge and practical sense.
The detaching of artworks from their institutional framework creates the possibility to integrate the depicted objects into new, more personal narratives and alternative contexts. The participatory negotiation of meaning then withdraws the museum's sole control and its authority to define the "appropriate" interaction with art and art history. Therefore, digital participation and (re)contextualization of artistic heritage can be interpreted as a practice of counterbalancing hegemonic structures.
Paper short abstract:
To participate, yes – but in what? The lecture presents a project that takes a museum as its starting point, but understands it as an actor of more fundamental concerns than participation. What interests a place of rapid change? What stories of relevance can be told with it and for its inhabitants?
Paper long abstract:
Participation in cultural heritage and by relevant institutions is a declared goal of contemporary cultural policy that is hardly ever questioned in public. But what if there is none with relevance for the society concerned? Respectively what heritage is of interest to local civil society if it has few ties to the place and has little to do with its past?
The lecture presents a project located in the agglomeration of Zurich, a place that has changed dramatically in several waves in the post-war period. In the last fifteen years, it has undergone an unprecedented post-industrial transformation; economic and structural change has been accompanied by growth and an exchange of population through diverse forms of migration. In the midst of all this, there is a traditional museum, whose presentations depict a distant local past but stays quite invisible. Our project proposes to create a real life-laboratory at and with this museum, in which not only relevant objects and narrations are sighted and collected, but also the question of the possibilities of participation is raised. Can such a museum today still contribute to developing a sense of belonging? And can kind of a new cultural heritage emerge through participation, which perhaps no longer has much to do with its traditional local shape?
The lecture explores the challenges of ethnographic museum studies using participatory experimental arrangements. It investigates the necessity of expanding museum methods and seeks to discuss first proposals for creating socially relevant local memories in fluid social and spatial figurations.
Paper short abstract:
The PTI is a new reference model for the art world that can help art institutions to become more inclusive equitable institutions. It is based on participatory economics, demarchy and referendums, allowing it to represent the taste and knowledge of a bigger number of art world participants.
Paper long abstract:
The current art world is undemocratic and unequal when it comes not only to museums and art galleries, but also art press, research and the art market. Recent events from Covid pandemic to black lives matter amplified the centralization of power in the hands of a few players, racial discrimination, gender bias, corruption, traffic of influence, all of which hold back museums from being inclusive equitable organizations and hinder the growth of the art world. This paper sheds light on the current challenges in the art word and reflects on the possibility of a new way to measure the value of art through the Pure Taste Indicator (PTI). The PTI is a new reference model for the art world, created by the Organization for the Democratization of Visual Arts(ODBK) in response to the current state of the art sector. This reference model is based on participatory economics, demarchy and referendums, allowing it to represent the taste and knowledge of a bigger number of art world participants composed of artists, art world professionals and art lovers. By dismantling the hierarchical power structures that characterized art for so long, the PTI mechanism can change how the art ecosystem functions and help the art world minimize inequality. This grass root initiative aims to help art institutions respond to the demand to be more inclusive, to support women artists and artists of color, and implicate a larger number of individuals in decisions pertaining to contemporary art.