Agency, Ambivalence, Analysis
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agency, ambivalence, analysis Approaching the Museum with Migration in Mind edited by Ruth Noack Agency, Ambivalence, Analysis Books Agency, Ambivalence, Analysis Approaching the Museum with Migration in Mind edited by Ruth Noack Books 4 — agency, ambivalence, analysis: approaching the museum with migration in mind mela books 06 – rf04 curatorial and artistic research Published by Politecnico di Milano © March 2013, The Authors This work is provided on line as open access document under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. The work is protected by copyright and/or other applicable law. Any use of the work other than as authorized under this license or copyright law is prohibited. For additional information http://creativecom- mons.org/. isbn 978-88-95194-09-7 This Book ensued from the Research Project MeLa - European Museums in an age of Migrations funded within the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (SSH- 2010-5.2.2) under Grant Agreement n° 266757. Project Officer: Louisa Anastopoulou mela consortium Politecnico di Milano (Coordinator), Italy – Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, Denmark – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche ITIA, Italy – University of Glasgow, United Kingdom – Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain – Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, France – The Royal College of Art, United Kingdom – Newcastle University, United Kingdom – Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’ Orientale,” Italy. www.mela-project.eu english editing Ruth Noack graphic design Zetalab — Milano layout Octavia Reeve, Sarah MacDonald legal notice The views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. agency, ambivalence, analysis: approaching the museum with migration in mind — 5 Contents 7 Acknowledgements 9 A small number of useful contributions towards building an argument about the role of museums in a migratory society that takes into account artistic practices, collections, exhibition- and audience-making Ruth Noack 19 Cleaning House (Analysis of Power) 21 To Each Present, Its Own Prehistory Peter Osborne 35 The Raft of the Historical Image: Dierk Schmidt’s Painting Against Painting Clemens Krümmel 45 Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (Self-Reflection) 47 Lidwien van de Ven, Untitled (London), 2012 Geneviève Frisson 51 Über Zugang Hinaus: Nachträgliche einführende Gedanken zur Arbeitstagung ‘Kunstvermittlung in der Migrationsgesellschaft’ Carmen Mörsch 63 From There to Here (Transformation) 65 Loomshuttles/Warpaths: Not Dressed for Conquering John Barker 83 Curating Performance/Translating Poetry: Regina José Galindo The Body of Others Clare Carolin 97 I’m Already Here (Migrating the Museum 1) 99 Stored Code: Remediating Collections in a Post-Ethnographic Museum Clémentine Deliss 6 — agency, ambivalence, analysis: approaching the museum with migration in mind 111 Eldorado – Topologien einer Projektion: Mythos, Tapete, Video Kristen Marek 127 Part of the Pie (Migrating the Museum 2) 129 Learning from Kassel Ays¸e Güleç 137 Gastarbajteri – 40 Jahre Arbeitsmigration: Ausstellung mit der NGO Initiative Minderheiten im Wienmuseum (vormals Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien), 2004 Gangart 147 A Hierarchy of Taste (Museum Modernisms) 149 From Cultural Diversity to the Limits of Aesthetic Modernism: The Cultural Politics of National Collection, Display and Exhibition Andrew Dewdney, Victoria Walsh 165 A MagnificentTomb! Ethnographic display on History of Art according to H W Janson and History of Modern Painting according to Herbert Read Branislav Dimitrijević 175 Another Museum (Display and Desire) 177 The Migration of a Few Things We Call − But Don’t Need to Call − Artworks Roger M Buergel 189 Lukas Duwenhögger, Perusal of Ill-Begotten Treasures, 2003 Pablo Lafuente 194 Index of Authors and Artists 201 Illustration Credits agency, ambivalence, analysis: approaching the museum with migration in mind — 7 Acknowledgements This book grew out of the work of the Research Field 04 ‘Curatorial and Artistic Research’ led by the Royal College of Art in London, Head of Curating Contemporary Art Ruth Noack within the European project MeLa – European Museums in an age of Migrations. MeLa is a four- year interdisciplinary research project funded in 2011 by the European Commission under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities Programme (Seventh Framework Programme). Adopting the notion of ‘migration’ as a paradigm of the contemporary global and multicultural world, MeLa reflects on the role of museums and heritage in the twenty- first century. The main objective of the MeLa project is to define innovative museum practices that reflect the challenges of the contemporary processes of globalisation, mobility and migration. As people, objects, knowledge and information move at increasingly high rates, a sharper awareness of an inclusive European identity is needed to facilitate mutual understanding and social cohesion. MeLa aims at empowering museums spaces, practices and policies with the task of building this identity. MeLa involves nine European partners – universities, museums, research institutes and a company – who will lead six Research Fields (RF) with a collaborative approach, and this book is meant to report about the preliminary findings of the first research phases. The following collection of essays and images could not have been assembled in what was an unbelievably short time span without the generosity of a great many people. Authors agreed to write their papers in a few weeks or supply previously published texts; Amy Patton translated with speed and precision; artists graciously allowed us to use their work freely; while colleagues from Afterall helped out with image sourcing. Both institutions involved in this research publication, the Royal College of Art in London and Polimi in Milano, lent their full support and shared their resources liberally; Naren Barfield, Jane Pavitt, Jamie Gilham, Áine Duffy and Francesca Lanz paved the way. My family was kind enough to forgive my absences from real life. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to them all. But chiefly, I have to thank Octavia Reeve, Sarah MacDonald and Anna Clifford, who toiled with me to bring the book about. agency, ambivalence, analysis: approaching the museum with migration in mind — 9 A small number of useful contributions towards building an argument about the role of museums in a migratory society that takes into account artistic practices, collections, exhibition- and audience-making æ ruth noack æ i ‘Today, the contemporary (the fictive relational unity of the historical present) is transnational because our modernity is that of a tendentially global capital.’ I advance this quote from Peter Osborne’s essay ‘To Each Present, Its Own Prehistory’ at the very beginning of this research publication on issues of museums and migration, because its assertion is fundamental. Were we less prone to obfuscate the power relations surrounding topics that, if looked at honestly, threaten to put the privileged in uncomfortable positions, we might bypass the stating of Osborne’s assertion. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In the face of a discourse that more often than not aims to create an entity called ‘the migrant community’ in order to benefit another constructed entity, that of the ‘majority, i.e. citizens’, and in the face of a practice that more often than not serves to identify and target a migrant audience for its need of education and integration rather than to approach people on equal terms, it must be emphasised: all of us are – from different positions but nevertheless inextricably – involved in the signification of nationality and ethnicity, because none of us are outside of a postcolonial capitalism that performs transnationally. Contemporary art, which is the focus of this previous page — book, as well as institutions such as art history, museums and exhibitions, ‘documenta 12’, Roger M perform in relation to this transnational capitalism. How then do we, art Buergel, 2007 works and institutions connect? When starting to approach the museum with migration in mind, I was reasonably confident that I could bring some competences to this endeavour. More than aware of the discussions around the cultural 10 — agency, ambivalence, analysis: approaching the museum with migration in mind diversity of museum audiences, I had previously spoken in opposition 1 to Germany’s policy of ‘cultural education’. Against this term (and its governmental rationale of creating social cohesion without granting equal rights to all members of its populace), I had posed the idea of an ‘emancipated audience’. Questions of audience were thus going to be a focus of this publication from the outset. As a curator, I had also found many instances in which artists were confronting these issues with an ethos and understanding of social and political responsibility, which − to my mind − should have been, but seldom were reciprocated by art institutions. Only a few of these artistic practices appear in this book, but those that do are to be understood pars pro toto, by which I mean to indicate that there resides in art a potential that might in future be brought to the discussion. This publication should be seen as a starting point. I offer no more than a small number of useful contributions, stones from a vast quarry. Some of the stones, dealing with questions of audience or interpreting artistic practices, make sense within the existing discourse on museums and migration. They are chosen above others because of a particular urgency or quality of their argument. But some of the stones, pertaining to the issue of collections, I have obtained solely in the hope that they can be utilised in building a future argument about the role of the museum in what remains for me the most urgent question: how do we want to live together? These contributions are all sound in themselves, yet my extraction of them and compilation in this book, is speculative. I do not have a ready argument, just a thesis, which I can only start to put forth, and which will have to be articulated further, beyond this book, before it can be substantiated or refuted.