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National Museum Akure As a Spectator of Cowry Head Cult in Akure Kingdom

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National Museum Akure As a Spectator of Cowry Head Cult in Akure Kingdom ©Journal of Applied Sciences & Environmental Sustainability 3 (8): 127 - 138, 2017 e-ISSN 2360-8013 Research Article Performative Culture: National Museum Akure as a Spectator of Cowry Head Cult in Akure Kingdom Olufemi Timothy Ogunbode1, Yakubu Aminu Dodo2, Ezekiel Babatunde Ogunbode3 1National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Museums Department, Curatorial Unit, Akure, Ondo State. Nigeria. 2Faculty of Built Environment, Department of Architecture, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. 81310, Skudai. Johor Bahru. Malaysia. 3School of Environmental Technology, Department of Building, Federal University of Technology Minna, Niger State. Nigeria. Corresponding Author: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO A b s t r a c t This study is to re-enact the past objects in the museum store that has been Article history kept mute over years due to the absence of an action that brings to limelight Received: 15/07/2017 exhibition in the museum practice. This action is what makes museum a Accepted: 05/08/2017 spectator and not a player. It is the art of researching into the unconscious past that is made conscious through continuous probing into the object in the museum store. This study is not really interested in the external visitors but the inner visitors (Museum Officers). Therefore, the Cowry Head Cult which is found in the store of the National Museum Akure in Akure Kingdom of Ondo Sculpture, Assemblage, State is studied. The art of spectating comes first before the art of playing that Being-Culture, Performative comes thereafter. There is no doubt that, the head was/is considered the most Culture important part of the human body by generations then and now. Thus, it is of great influence to the being of any culture in performance. This being of culture in performance, is a sample of critical visual interest; negative and positive attitude occupying spaces. This research emphasizes living heritage; intangible and tangible. There is no tangible heritage that could exist without the counterpart of the intangible vis-a-vice. Of course, one could argue that every being-culture in performance has an oral or performative background. Performative culture and the recognition of this intangible cultural heritage makes alive the thought of man in sculpture or in the tangible. This study has therefore considered Cowry Head Cult that makes National Museum Akure a Spectator. Thus, National Museum Akure is a spectator of Cowry Head Cult under the Assemblage Sculpture of Akure Kingdom being-culture in performance. © Journal of Applied Sciences & Environmental Sustainability. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Alexander (2004) opines that, performative is understood as the constitution of meaning through acts or practices. However, not all acts are necessarily performative; imitation may lack a constitutive effect on 127 | P a g e ©Journal of Applied Sciences & Environmental Sustainability 3 (8): 127 - 138, 2017 e-ISSN 2360-8013 reality. Recently, certain researchers have described our whole culture as performative. Also, the performative research method observes, the conditions of meaning-production through detailed analysis of the social, spatial, structural, and physical conditions of the act, whether it is intentional or unintentional (Alexander, 2004). This paper negates the ideology of detached culture in all spheres, that is to say, separation of subject and object of a culture from the culture being of Cowry Head Cult in performance. Performance in this sense, is the probing into an object in National Museum’s store not the exhibition parse that comes thereafter. Therefore, information are gathered by Curator or Exhibition officer concerning an object in view. This ideology of detached subject and object of culture, for ages this has been a discourse in the traditional media, in the study of culture, against the Performative Culture of construct and interpretation. In addition, Performative Culture creates the being in every culture either as a Player or Spectator. Therefore, one thing is true, and every individual is a performer actively involved in the being-culture of any existence. Gadamer, (2011), articulates the mode of being of art, history and language in one of his works and emphasized them as cultural phenomena. So, in understanding the mode of being of culture in performance in this essay. It fits to follow Gadamer (2011) conceptual selection, which he developed, to articulate his understanding of art, history and language as dynamic change that retains the being in culture while in performance. Thus, all culture is a culture played and viewed by a being, the maker of the culture either in the past or in the present. Culture is playing and spectating of a being of the past then and past now, what keeps a being- culture is the cultural materials; tangible or intangible. In the opinion of this paper, Culture is limited to presenting itself as a being of spectator and player respectively. Also, its mode of being is self-presentation for post-production. Thus, visitors to the Museums Galleries, visit to observe the transformation that the being-culture has gone through in the past and now which can be in assemblage, casting, modelling, textile, and carving forms. In this mode of performance, Museum is the player in the performative culture, because of the visitor that has come to spectate the cultural objects on exhibition in the gallery. In other words, it is what the Museum plays that the visitor sees as being-culture. Moreover, when there is no Exhibition and the Museum is making plan to present a being-culture to the audience, the Museum stands as a Spectator in its strategy of what to select, how to arrange it and the theme that best fit the being-culture to be mounted for Exhibition as either permanent or temporary (Agarwala, 2011). On this note, this paper hangs on culture as a being and Museum as a spectator of the being of a culture. Nonetheless, Museum and visitor belong to the same culture of a being, spectator. But in order to save conflict, the level of engrossment in culture differs, based on the role of the mode of a being of a culture that is temporal and historical in the nature of a being-culture. Thus, the spectator of the play that has taken place in the past, is in itself would be player of the play that is continuing now in the being of a culture. So, 128 | P a g e ©Journal of Applied Sciences & Environmental Sustainability 3 (8): 127 - 138, 2017 e-ISSN 2360-8013 it is in the Museum Practice, the usage of sculptural material at its disposal for spectating. The play of a being-culture is moral and ethical like the sittlichkeit of Hegel and ethos of Aristotle. This explains why a player has to be first a spectator and a spectator has to be a player thereafter. This is a permanent claim that always needs to be concretized as placed by being-culture to which we belong. Performative Culture here is a structure of the past then available for interpretation now (Agarwala, 2011). We all belong to a being- culture that is active always not a passive one. Belonging refers to the transcendental relationship between being and truth. Therefore, belonging is knowledge conceived as an element of being itself and not primarily as an activity of the subject according to Gadamer (2011). This article will concentrate on Cowry Head Cult an artefact made for the being Dada also known as Dreadlock in modern terms, it represents assemblage in pretence. Hence, Beauty makes an object pleasing to the spirits, the beauty of Cowry Head Cult appease the spirits of the being-culture of locks (Dada). 2.0. Concept clarified 2.1. Cultural Object Cultural object is a heritage which encompasses the entire corpus of national life of a community. In other words, UNESCO World Heritage Convention 1972 observes it as the manifestation of human ingenuity in the past or in the present as the case may be. This cultural object has the capacity or potential to contribute to our understanding or appreciation of human story which is an important part of continuing cultural tradition in a spiritual and emotional sense; positive and negative space. So, people their perceptions, values, and aspirations are therefore at the centre of cultural object, and movable cultural heritage is a cultural object of sculptural material too (Mumma, 2008). In addition, Ndoro and Kamamba (2008) observes that, in English speaking Africa perspective, cultural object according to the legislation of states is referred to as antiques. Also, cultural object is movable objects which include archaeological object of stone, wood, metal and other materials which depict the historical and cultural development of man from the earliest period till date. Also included in this category are human skeletal remains, both the fossilized remains of hominids and the skeletal remains of more recent populations (Ndoro and Kamamba, 2008). 2.2. Sculptural Material Artist Adolph ‘Ad’ Reinhardt an American, 1913–1967 once commented, ‘Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.’ Despite Reinhardt's belief in the pre-eminence of painting relative to sculpture, three-dimensional works of art have withstood the test of time literally and figuratively (Getty, 2013). Sculpture according to Hugo Weber is a three-dimensional of human thoughts, emotions, and desire. Sculptural material is a work of art that has the features of three-dimensional or two- dimensional art creation especially by assemblage, carving, modelling, and casting at the same time a 129 | P a g e ©Journal of Applied Sciences & Environmental Sustainability 3 (8): 127 - 138, 2017 e-ISSN 2360-8013 cultural movable heritage. In other words, Frances (2000) claims that, it is a value depicting the culture in a mild way in order to safeguard the antique of the object depicted in sculpture, in form of line, volume, plane, colour and texture.
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