intervention in the digital collection of the British Museum; lambda c-prints, various sizes, 2009
Art spaces and museums have been considering for years their methods of presentation as a reflection of their own ideals, interests and aims. Today, an ever-growing movement of curators, ethnographers and artists also see a vital importance for ethnological museums to put themselves into the equations of their research and their presentations. They understand them as producers of meaning, following political ideologies and social interests.
In 2009 the British Museum began working on an online archive of its collection. Every single object, both on and off display is currently being digitized, photographed or scanned and so made available to the public. But readymade photographs and preformatted information not only allow for a broader community to participate in scientific and conceptual research; they are also an honest move towards a deeper understand of the museum’s methods of producing meaning. This series of "textual interventions" highlights these very methods.
„Ethnographic objects are objects of ethnography. They are artifacts created by ethnographers when they define, segment, detach, and carry them away. Such fragments become ethnographic objects by virtue of the manner in which they have been detached. They are what they are by virtue of the disciplines that „know“ them, for disciplines make their objects and in the process make themselves. For this reason, exhibitions, whether of objects or people, display the artifacts of our disciplines. They are also exhibits of those who make them.“
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,
Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; (University of California Press, 1998)
ethnographic objects c-print, glass, wood, 210,0 x 90,0 x 130,0 cm, 2009
In the British Museum's online archive I also found lots of photographs of pebbles from various cultural backgrounds. Some are believed to be tools because they were found scattered in the vicinity of ancient camp sites. Some are of unknown origin but were obviously of some importance to someone at some point in the history of the museum. Some of those pebbles are labelled with ethnographic information like “used to make wearer invulnerable” or “stone of invisibility” although all knowledge i.e. about how they can do that, was forgotten over time. Aesthetizisation made them cross-culturally comparable but also degraded them to mere pebbles that carry no cultural significance other than being an object in a museum. I asked myself what would remain if you peeled off the labels?
Profanierungen I: Beten Verboten! „Es ist bekannt geworden, daß eine Bauersfrau ihre gelegentlichen Stadtgänge dazu nutzte, ins Museum zu gehen und vor einem Marienbild eine kurze Andacht zu verrichten. Die Frau hatte, wie sie später erklärte, zu dieser Maria seit ihrer Kindheit gebetet. Damals stand die Skulptur in der Kirche ihres Heimatortes; später kam sie ins Museum. Eine Zeitlang beobachteten die Museumsleute das Tun der Frau ziemlich hilflos; dann entschieden sie sich, Andachten im Museum nicht zuzulassen. Die Frau wurde abgewiesen.“
Kemp, Wolfgang: Kunst wird gesammelt. In: Funkkolleg Kunst. Eine Geschichte der Kunst im Wandel ihrer Funktionen. Hrsg.: Werner Busch. | Band 1 | München 1987. (Serie Piper. 735), S. 185-204.
