Between Memories and Possibilities


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Together with philosopher Hanune Shalati I work with representatives of the Kogi people from Columbia, the traditional owners of the famous Tairona goldworks. Most of their holy relics were taken from their sacred sites in the 20th century and sold to collectors all over the world. To the Kogi people the theft of those hallows means nothing less than the loss of their gods.

The western art context usually treats such holy relics like simple art objects: aestehetically separated, isolated and installed like sculptures their cultural significance as part of a ceremoial performative is being almost completely ignored. But does the aesthetic approach of degrading such hallows to "extra-European art" not reduce our understanding of them to mere superficiality? And if so, how could we ever reach a deeper understanding of such "things" if not by asking those who "made" them?

Under the umbrella of the foundation Culture & Development e.V. we have developped a program that aims to acquire Tairona goldworks from the art world by motivating art collectors to purchase and donate such hallows to their traditional owners, thus becoming patrons of Kogi heritage.

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image source: www.precolumbiancultures.com/images/TAIRONA

None of Your Business


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Today's Australian mass media often include depictions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. Some of them are sensitive material that may require certain restrictions on access for spiritual reasons. These sensitivities have greatest force when the materials include records and/or depictions of secret and/or sacred information which may have been recorded with or without permission.

Audio-visual records of deceased persons are a taboo amongst many indigenous communities. An item may not be seen by everyone. A sacred site may have to stay secret to only an initiated few elders. Amongst the various indigenous nations in Australia, some consist of different "dreaming" groups, all of them restricted to only their own images, songs, rituals and artefacts. Furthermore, each group is separated into women's and men's business thus creating a complex system of restrictions and privileges.

There are both published and archival materials which contain such secrets which should have never been made generally available. How can society deal with secrets it was never meant to learn?

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Ethnographic Objects are Objects of Ethnography


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Art institutions have been considering for years their methods of presentation as a reflection of their own ideals, interests and aims. With the dawn of conceptualism in the 60ies they began to understand the white cube no longer as a neutral space without context but started to accept it as a producer of meaning, following socio-political ideologies and economic interests.

Today, an ever-growing movement of curators demands that ethnological museums follow up with their cousins, the art institutions. But while some of them tend to simply install a few contemporary artworks next to extra-European artefacts in order to appear modern, others begin to realise that the future of the ethnological museum is uncertain if it doesn't incorporate that very institutional self-criticism.

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