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.