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.