This performative installation aims to challenge the static nature of object display within ethnological museums and reevaluate the way audiences interact with cultural artifacts. By embracing movement, performance, critical voices, and alternative forms of knowledge, it seeks to deconstruct a traditional model of museal display.

My work questions the fixed stillness of objects, here using fans as objects that are omnipresent in most ethnographic collections. It explores alternative ways to convey their cultural significance and vibrancy. I seek to “breathe” life into the objects and encourage a more immersive and engaging experience for visitors. By showcasing the reciprocal relationship between the body and the object, it aims to empower visitors to reclaim agency in exhibition contexts. Through a tactile display and a performance that demonstrate how the body moves the object and how the object moves the body, I invite visitors to consider the symbiotic relationship between Qi (Chinese concept of vital energy and force), culture, movement, and materiality. By creating spaces for tactile interaction, I aim to redefine the relationship between the audience and the objects, fostering a sense of connection and intimacy.

My work aims to contribute actively to creating performative environments that dissolve a separation between performers’ or artists’ bodies and the assembled bodies of spectators. This signifies the collapse of a simple diametric power structure and disperses power relations to the micro level of multiple interactions and endless possible encounters. I recognize the emerging significance of performance within ethnological museum contexts, yet find that it is still often overlooked or underrepresented. My contributions therefore aims to bring performance to the forefront, acknowledging its value as a form of cultural expression and representation, creating awareness for this non-normative way of creating knowledge.

Format: installation and performance
Materials: silk fans, veils, plinth

About the contributor:

Jiaying Gao is a PhD student in the Advanced Practices programme (Visual Culture department) at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. She is also a dancer, choreographer and curator. Her research investigates the intersection of body perceptions and the archive, particularly within the frame of dance museums. She has extensive research experience in the field of Chinese dance, as well as cultural and ethnic policies and their impact on social and economic development at local, national and international levels. Jiaying is currently undertaking a practice-based project that aims to extend and reflect the performativity of identities and affect in dance archives and has curated several dance exhibitions.

As part of my master’s thesis, my project interprets a queering strategy implemented by the museum. From June to September 2023, I conducted field research by attending the Ethnologisches Museum’s guided tour Beyond the Norm: A queer look at gender and sexuality in the ethnological collection, analyzing the tour’s formative materials and interviewing guides and museum staff. My resulting post-it note intervention queers the knowledge, power, and positionality of the museum through integrating questions raised by the tour, myself and the museum’s participants into the permanent exhibition.

Visitors were able to respond to questions and suggestions, which I had placed as Post Its at various locations in the exhibition, with further Post Its. In a guided tour, I explored these places together with visitors and explained the background to my questions.

Format: Tour and feedback tool
Materials: Post-It notes, Beyond the Norm tour script

About the contributor:

Aria Tilove studies in the Master Research Training Program in Social Sciences at Humboldt University. In addition to writing her thesis, she is a Student Assistant at the Museum für Naturkunde, where she works within the Education and Outreach department on collaborative projects between the museum and Berlin schools.

Stumbling upon unhelpful information on individual museumized objects-subjects and their diminishing classification within the museum space, we propose an alternative: Our project endeavours to illuminate an intricate web of relations among various elements – so-called “objects”, wall texts, art interventions, media tools etc. – exhibited in the Humboldt Forum, and expand it beyond the museum space – for example to the collection’s depot or to global processes.

One of the challenges we confront is the varying description of museum objects. Some items are richly detailed, providing historical facts, provenance, materials, and usage, each creating distinct contexts. In contrast, others offer minimal information, containing only geographical origin, title, and date. This discrepancy prompts essential questions about the multifaceted nature of these objects-subjects. Are they to be regarded as art, cultural artefacts, religious items, historical relics, or are these categories not applicable at all? It also raises questions about the hosting institution itself, considering the politics of its (re)construction, dealing with collections, positioning on the outside, and surrounding local and global processes and discourses. Is all of this a product of conspicuous consumption during the colonial period, a political decision, an educational resource, or a centre for research? We question the necessity of rigid definitions and advocate for a more open, interpretive approach.

We aim to foster visitor engagement by inviting people to actively contribute to the discussion about exhibitions located in the Humboldt Forum. We have created a digital map to display connections between museum objects, which visitors can edit on their own smartphones or provided tablets. Displayed in the workshop room, it is accompanied by a discussion board where visitors can share their reflections on questions we pose. Our initiative is a response to the pressing need for enhanced contexts and accessibility of information, which in our view, should circulate in various directions between visitors and related communities, external and internal to museum experts. We are creating an open and experimental space for knowledge exchange which challenges power relations in knowledge production and gives room for diverse perspectives. We seek to break away from conventional organizational methods, fostering instead a participative and reflective approach to explore the exhibition. In conclusion, “Mapping Connections” challenges traditional museum practices, offering a novel and inclusive way to explore and respect the diverse cultural heritage housed in museum exhibitions. Our project empowers visitors to actively participate in co-creating narratives by fostering a dynamic and multi-layered collective understanding of the museum’s collections.

Format: Interactive digital board with miro, in the exhibition space: feedback board

Materials: Miro board, beamer, tablet, stickers

About the contributors:

Karina Belik is a master student of European Ethnology at the Humboldt University and a student assistant in the Department for Strategy in the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss. In her research, she explores cultures of remembrance in Russia, relations between remembrance of the WWII and the current war of Russia against Ukraine, related Russia’s colonial policies, and decolonial and solidarity initiatives as well as artistic practices.

Polina Shablovskaia is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East at Freie Universität Berlin. Her educational background is marked by her master’s in Linguistics from Saint Petersburg State University as well as a bachelor’s degree in Oriental and African Studies, which she completed at the same institution. Polina’s research interests are diverse and encompass the history and culture of the Middle East and cross-cultural communication challenges, reflecting her dedication to interdisciplinary scholarship.

When we enter an ethnological museum in the European West, we tend to forget that the objects we see were connected to emotions while in use by their former owners. One curatorial specificity of the Kunstkammer, the first art collection in the original Berliner Schloss that was kept here from about 1600-1750, was the possibility to associate diverse object correlations. There was no strict distinction between disciplines yet, according to which museums categorize cultural artifacts as for example ‘ethnographic’ or ‘art work’ today.

Let’s dive into the past and use this opportunity to associate cultural artifacts with emotions. Let us bring the presence of the Kunstkammer (partially) in our mind. As an alternative narrative, I investigate how much Kunstkammer still appears in the display of the Ethnological collection in the Humboldt Forum today and to what extend the added value of this historical exhibition practice, which lies primarily in the associative reception of the objects, can create awareness for the diverse origins of the objects.

The Kunstkammer has its imperial origin back in the 16th century and used to be conceived as a Staatsschatz (National treasury). During the 17th century, this Staatsschatz became more and more curated according to certain educational aspects. In this course, it became more open to the public and ‘museumized’ in the late 18th century. This art collection forms the basis of large parts of the whole historical museum landscape in Berlin until this day.Today, the Kunstkammer objects that are integrated in the display of the Ethnological Museum alongside objects from other contexts. The display follows a curatorial narrative that mostly addresses the origin of the objects before their existence in Berlin (if known). However, another part of these object’s biographies is constituted by their time in the Kunstkammer where the objects were surrounded by a more diverse selection of object than is the case today, which led to interdisciplinary curatorial concepts.

We must not forget that we don’t see most of the objects that were an integral part of the Kunstkammer anymore and that meanings and associations shifts according to context. What feelings do we associate with what we actually see at the museum today? Conceptualized as a tour through the Ethnological Museum, the visitor is led to artifacts that were already part of the Kunstkammer. By linking various object biographies, I attempt to tie in with the curatorial intention of the original Kunstkammer, namely to establish interdisciplinary chains of association and to recognize emotional connections between the objects that are not visible anymore.

Format: Tour

Materials: Beamer-projection of historical photographs of the Kunstkammer, object photographs printed on paper, Tour Kunstkammer, Feedbackbogen Gefühle

About the contributor:Meral Karacaoglan studied art history in Berlin, Paris and Istanbul. Currently, she writes her master’s thesis under supervision of Prof. Dr. Horst Bredekamp about representational factors of being female in 19th century painting of the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin and their effects on the collecting practices of the museum then and now. Being part of the research project Museum and Society – Mapping the Social, she put a focus on art history as cultural history as well as museum history during her studies. Meral will start a position as curatorial assistant of the UN-Secretariats’ in-house art collection in New York City in February 2024.

A castle standing next to museum island with a vast collection of objects is submerged in water one day. What is left? Unfortunately—nothing, except for a metaphor. What happens when the idea of producing “non-word-units” meets the guiding metaphor of shard? The notion of ‘shard’ is used in our collaborative work to highlight the fragmentation and incompleteness of history while challenging approaches and logics of European institutions, such as museums and archives.

Through metaphors we have also decided to explore and translate our own frustrations, while working with the collection. We refuse to engage with its objects directly in our project, whether those objects that are on display or those stored in the depot—firstly, because of institutional restrictions in terms of access. However, this predicament motivated us to ponder over our own critical enquiries: how can we find new ways of perceiving objects through the practices of caring and repairing? Can we perhaps adapt speculative and liminal aspects of object histories in order to form new modes of working with the collection?

Thus, our encounters with the Humboldt Forum and mutual reflections became a conjoint experience that evolved into both emotional engagement and dis-engagement, while working with the museum. The object and the sound installation that we are presenting are an attempt to convert the result of collaborative thinking into non-word entities.

Format: Installative sound piece

Materials: Aquarium, object (ceramics), insects (plastic), headphones

Download the text that accompies the work here: *SHARDS*

About the contributors:

Sophie Breßler studied Social and Cultural Anthropology and Musicology in her bachelor’s degree and is currently a master’s student of Art History in a Global Context at Freie Universität Berlin. Her main interest lies in the field of decolonial and diasporic approaches.

Elizaveta Fokina is a master’s student at the Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East program at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her current interests evolve around sounds, archives, and spaces.

The institution of the ethnological museum is being heavily scrutinized in current discourse in Germany. The audio tour Discussion Atmospheres features different kinds of conversations about colonialism, ethnological museums, and racism in the museum. It does so not in the sense of proposing a new curatorial program but in the form of actual spoken words. The audio tour is composed of fragments of conversations about Germany’s colonial past, the institution of the ethnological museum and the connection between the past and the present. It invites the listener to question how these conversations influence the way ‘ethnographic’ objects are displayed. Where can current discourses be seen in the presentation of objects at the Humboldt Forum?
The intention of the tour is to prompt a new perspective on displayed objects in the Humboldt Forum: to look at them not as enigmatic expressions of alien cultures but as active agents that shape and influence cultural-political life and debates in contemporary Germany.

Format: Audio tour

 

About the author:

Andreas Rumpf studies Cultural and Social Sciences in the fifth semester at Humboldt University. He is a museum enthusiast and participated in the research group as a starting point to look at museums critically from a scholarly perspective. He is particularly interested in museums as a site of knowledge creation and knowledge transfer.

The Child Beside You deals with the handling and representation of so-called museum artefacts by queering the established form of presentation. Instead of asking the audience to draw their attention to a collection of artefacts, the focus is directed to one object: a child mannequin. A video work is projected onto it, combining clips of childhood and youth memories from YouTube clips with a narrative journey into the audience’s own childhood. Rather than informing the audience how the mannequin was ‘discovered’, the meaning of this artefact is determined by the audience through proximity, contiguity and evocative materials. In essence, this project not only provides a space for reflection, but also for the activation of memories. The audience associates its past self with the present and a conversation develops between the audience and the artefact. Thus, this project places the audience (and not the museum) at the centre as a place of knowledge production.

Format: Installation with audio-video projection

Materials: Mannequins

About the contributor:

Christian Beltran is a graduate student at the Freie Universität Institute of English Language and Literature. He is interested in temporality studies, queer theory, and Joyce. He is an editor at the FU Review, and his writing has been longlisted in the Berlin Writing Prize. He works in Berlin as a nanny.

 

Possible relations within the museum context are sheer infinite. Analyzing how vitrines, light, space, sound, materials, barriers, signs and all the other inanimate and animate elements interact, revealed an unwritten rule book on how to act, perceive and shape museums for guests as well as staff, artists and all other people that do museum. A “norm” is being upheld in those big and small parts, so that when entering a museum, one senses its nudges. What would happen if we started queering the museum by just queering parts of those senses? In the course of engaging with the Humboldt Forum, I developed an interest on how the light barrier system partakes in creating barriers not only for security purposes, but also in reinforcing certain behavioral norms and ways of perceiving one self’s position when facing the displayed. By queering this system as part of the broader museum curation, I question how modifying the museum interior could establish (queer) relations between the different elements of the display and visitors.

In our installation, the light and sound barrier it is reinterpreted instead of being rejected. I suggest a different version of it coming from my perspective as a queer young woman. An object on display will invite people to come closer. In doing so, participants will detect an alternative sound that replaces the universally alarming sound with a queer language. It is a sound that some might find inviting, others may find repulsive. In interaction with the installation, people are invited to question how they feel in their bodies and how they relate to the object(s) in the museum. Informed by this new experience, the installation is an invitation to reflect on how museum visitor usually feel when visiting a museum.

Format: Interactive installation

Materials: Glass object, light sensors, audio track

About the contributors:

Alessia Oesing (idea and concept) studies human geography at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She also work in, and is passionate about club awareness. Beyond that, her interests as an artist are driven by emotions, relations and bodies underlined with an interdisciplinary approach.

Emilia Gentis (technichal implementation) studies communication design at HTW Berlin. She applies a wide range of interests to her projects, from graphic design to new media. With an open-minded approach, she thrives on experimentation and constantly seeks to push the boundaries of traditional design.