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- Convenors:
-
Anna Kajander
(University of Jyväskylä)
Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto (University of Jyväskylä)
Kristiina Korjonen-Kuusipuro (South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences)
Viktorija L.A. Čeginskas (University of Jyväskylä)
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- Formats:
- Panel Workshop
- Stream:
- Material Culture and Museums
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This panel and workshop focus on the impact of materiality in our lives and biographies. We explore the affective potential of materiality, and the entanglements of materiality and sensory experiences in affective atmospheres, for example processes of creating a sense of home and belonging.
Long Abstract:
Materiality in terms of tangible objects, physical materials and environments but also sensory elements such as scents and sounds form an important part of our everyday lives. Material elements impact on our feelings, actions and choices but often this remains unnoticed. Recent research on materiality and affect emphasizes the entanglement of materiality and senses. Certain objects or assemblages of objects reinforce sensory experiences that create affective atmospheres such as feelings of belonging.
In this panel we discuss the potentials of affective materiality and atmospheres of belonging in our everyday lives. We invite papers that discuss the impacts of materiality and sensory experiences, how particular objects and environments help us to create meaningful atmospheres, or how certain physical elements embody negative feelings and can be perceived as disturbing. We are also interested in autobiographical materiality, objects that people appreciate, treasure and keep with them. Some of these maintain a connection with the past, while some other help us to imagine the future.
The panel will be followed by an experimental workshop in which we explore objects connected to belonging and feeling at home. We ask the workshop participants to take along an object, such as a memento, a book or a photograph, which makes them feel "at home", and to describe the sensory experiences and memories connected to them. The aim of the workshop is to create a pop-up exhibition by photographing the objects.
Maximum number of papers: 8.
Maximum number of workshop participants: 15.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper considers how materiality in multiple forms becomes a crucial component of kinship belonging in the narratives and life experience of transnationally adopted people.
Paper long abstract:
Transnationally adopted people, once adults, make an effort to reconnect to their roots and country of birth through enquiring, researching, and sometimes travelling to their motherland. Those who manage to travel, return back to the adoptive country carrying several objects that become extremely evocative and keep acquiring layered meaning and relevance. Those who cannot travel but happen to know someone who does, request for some specific objects to be brought to them, as a way to quench, and soothe, a deeply felt sense of longing, and belonging. Objects also travel between adoptees and their estranged mothers and viceversa, via a third party – the anthropologist. This paper follows the route of different materialities in the lives of a cohort of Chileans adopted by Italian families some 40 years ago. Tangible objects such as pictures, jewellery, a lock of hair, a stone; and intangible (names) or sensory (smells, sounds) ones, become the embodiment of meaningful connections to people, places, identity, and silently but eloquently materialize a sense of belonging that is often controversial and transgressive to express.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the interplay between a feeling of imprisonment and a sense of home among asylum seekers in Zagreb. A special emphasis is on the materiality of everyday life at the reception center and how objects and sensory experiences contribute to creating a sense of place.
Paper long abstract:
With Reception Center for Asylum Seekers in Zagreb (Croatia) "Porin" as a starting point, this paper analyzes Porin's tenants' efforts to create a meaningful place and a sense of continuity and home from what was "just an empty room" upon their arrival. The special emphasis is on the materiality of everyday life in Porin - on objects people use to decorate their rooms and arrange them according to their needs, as well as on exploring the impact of this materiality in the place-making processes. Based on the lived experiences of asylum seekers and their practices, this research aims to highlight complex, blurred, and versatile interconnections and relations between a feeling of imprisonment and confinement on the one hand and a sense of home and belonging on the other. Furthermore, moving on from Porin to its immediate surroundings and the Dugave neighborhood in which it is located, the paper explores the importance of the environment and sensory experiences in creating meaningful atmospheres and senses of place. Taking into account that Porin is located at the periphery of the city, near a railway yard and a landfill, and that the building complex itself is surrounded by the newly built fence, the author looks into the roles that specific sounds, scents, and vistas play in everyday life of Porin's inhabitants as well as in meanings that they inscribe into the reception center. In so doing, the paper deals with the interaction between physical materials and affective atmospheres.
Paper short abstract:
Objects and spaces in archaeological open-air museums may bridge an immense time-gap by triggering autobiographical memories or homy feelings. I want to discuss these phenomena in connection with both contested images of prehistory in Germany and a new longing for a “"prehistoric" lifestyle.
Paper long abstract:
Encounters with (reconstructed) everyday objects, like whisks, and spaces in prehistoric open-air museums may trigger autobiographical memories or “homy” feelings. While meaningful connections to exhibits from the last few decades in open-air museums dedicated to rural or urban forms of living may seem pretty feasible, this might appear surprising considering a time-gap of several thousand years. Speaking of objects, this gap is bridged by a familiarity with form and material. When it comes to spaces, a multisensual combination of form, materiality and location is involved.
In fact, the relation between hominess and such museums is not a new one. During their first heyday in Germany under the Nazi-regime, making the visitors feel ‘at home’ was a major purpose of archaeological open-air museums. The aim was to create an effect of belonging, of identity via detailed, immersive settings. In the decades following WWII the idealized, “patriotic” representations of the 1930s and 40s have been criticized and detailed, “atmospheric” reconstructions seemed to be no longer suitable. This, however, doesn’t mean that they’ve disappeared completely.
Parallelly, a new longing for a simple, rustic, sustainable “prehistoric” lifestyle has evolved over the last decades, comprising diet, workout routines, stress management, a close relation to nature and simple, durable household goods made of ‘natural’ materials. In fact, some of the new, “traditional” items offered by specialized stores would fit perfectly into the displays of archaeological open-air museums.
Paper short abstract:
The paper discusses the relations between the pre-war German heritage and Poles who appropriated it as a result of post-war decisions. It proposes the term “espoused heritage” to grasp the phenomenon of hostile objects that became appreciated and paradoxically served to create a sense of belonging.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is based on the ongoing research on the pre-war materiality and its meanings for the contemporary inhabitants of Western Polish territories. The discussed region, before World War II belonged to Germany, was incorporated to Poland as a result of the Potsdam Agreement. The border change evoked massive migration of both: people leaving and coming to the region together with their belongings. New inhabitants of the region settled into abandoned houses, filled with objects of everyday use that were owned by their war enemies. The objects provoked many contradictory emotions, they were foreign but also useful in the post-war time of deficiency. We analyze feelings and affects induced by pre-war German heritage in Poles: from the sense of temporality and disturbance to the feeling of mine-ness (Traba, Jemeinigkeit Heidegger). The focus is put on the objects that, while unknown or even hostile at the beginning, were finally appreciated, incorporated into the family history to fill the gap of personal lost (homeland, family, objects). We propose the term “espoused heritage” to underline the ties and feelings evoked in the object-person relation and the role of objects in creating a sense of belonging. The paper is based on theories developing the concept of heritage through the situation of inheritance and analyze the entanglement of disinheritance and appropriation of the legacy of others (Ashworth G., Graham, B., Tunbridge, 2007). We will also explore the relations between affects, emotions and heritage (Smith L., Wetherell M., Campbell G. 2018).