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- Convenors:
-
Elizabeth Hallam
(University of Oxford)
Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
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- Format:
- Workshop
Short Abstract:
This workshop creatively and critically explores modes of unwriting in/of museums, focusing on material, spatial and sensory dimensions. In an Aberdeen museum setting we will explore how and why museums unwrite, and consider the significance of unwriting for museums and anthropological practices.
Long Abstract:
Erasure, loss, removal and disappearance are often occluded in museums that prioritise preservation and keeping. Yet we can productively consider such backgrounded or disregarded processes in museums as forms of unwriting. They can unfold in practices of collecting, conserving, storing and exhibiting, for example, as well as in digital media that display and document museums, their architectures, galleries and holdings. Even as museums produce and disseminate written texts, including catalogues, reports and labels, and even when aiming to be comprehensive, inclusive or critically reflexive, museums make absent significant perspectives and aspects that are often submerged or made invisible in their activities and spaces. Furthermore, when exhibitions are deinstalled and museums are reconfigured, closed or destroyed, these material deletions and shifts also entail instances of unwriting.
This workshop will examine modes of unwriting in/of museums from perspectives in anthropology, with reference to three areas of debate: studies of writing as material and embodied (e.g. Nakamura 2017, Schacter 2019); work on and in museums that addresses their colonial histories and power dynamics (e.g. Hallam 2016, Macdonald 2023); and analyses of absence and disintegration (e.g. Bille et al 2010, DeSilvey 2017).
Grounding these ideas in a specific museum setting and opening them to critical reflection, this workshop invites participants to creatively explore a museum site in Aberdeen (site to be confirmed in advance). We will test hands-on experimental methods, using sketching, note-taking, and digital photography for instance (e.g. Hallam 2020, MartÃnez 2021), to consider forms of unwriting in this material and sensory context.