DECOLONISING MUSEUMS A PUBLICATION OF L’INTERNATIONALE BOOKS DECOLONISING MUSEUMS COVER CREDIT Historical exhibition display in the Museum für Völkerkunde (today Weltkulturen Museum), Oceania section. Weltkulturen Image Archive. Photo: Hermann Niggemeyer, date unknown. TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 54 113 148 Introduction Catch Me If You Can! Columbus, How Do I Get Rid From the Collection Nana Adusei-Poku of My Hangover? of MACBA, Barcelona 8 Francisco Godoy Vega The Invisible and the Visible 63 152 Identity Politics and the Economy From the Collection 119 Institutional Fever in China of Reproduction in Art of M HKA, Antwerpen From the Collection Colin Siyuan Chinnery Nav Haq Jan De Vree of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (MNCARS) 159 23 71 Lola Hinojosa Frontier imaginaries Collecting Life’s Unknows “I Guess You Guys Vivian Ziherl Clémentine Deliss Aren’t Ready 123 For That Yet… But Your Kids A Salt Box and 162 35 Are Gonna Love It” a Bracelet Conversing with a Interview: “Decolonising Museums” Ana Bigotte Vieira Painting: Decolonising Forced Closures Through the Lens of the Collections a Post-Soviet Museum in the Vivian Ziherl and Archives of the Members 96 Caucasus of L’Internationale The Culture of Coloniality Madina Tlostanova 173 Daniela Ortiz What Do We Talk About When We 37 130 Talk About Decolonisation? From the Collection of 104 From the Collection Vivian Ziherl the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven The Border of of MG+MSUM, Ljubljana Christiane Berndes the ‘Fourth World’ Walter Benjamin 186 Francisco Godoy Vega Biographies 41 135 The Dutch VOC Mentality: 108 Around the Postcolony and the Cultural Policy 1989—1992: Museum: Curatorial Practice and as a Business Model Myth and Magic Decolonising Exhibition Histories Mirjam Kooiman Francisco Godoy Vega Rasha Salti L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – DECOLONISING MUSEUMS – 3 DECOLONISING MUSEUMS INTRODUCTION DECOLONISING MUSEUMS Decolonising Museums is the second thematic publi- has become one of the most urgent civic and individ- cation of L’Internationale Online; it addresses colonial ual responsibilities in Europe. Calling upon cultural legacies and mindsets, which are still so rooted and memory and half-gone history seems to be of utmost present today in the museum institutions in Europe importance to oppose the often politically-guided and beyond. The publication draws from the confer- amnesia and ignorance. ence Decolonising the Museum which took place at When proposing the ‘decolonisation’ of the MACBA in Barcelona, 27-29 November 2014 1, and museum the first thing to clarify is what the ‘de’ in offers new essays, responding to texts published on this term actually means. As formulated in our own the online platform earlier this year. In different geo- research brief, ‘decolonising’ means both resisting political regions, there have been various degrees the reproduction of colonial taxonomies, while simul- of work to reconsider the colonial past ever since taneously vindicating radical multiplicity. These are the 1960s, the painstaking process of decolonisa- two forces drawing in different directions: under- tion and the institutionalisation of multiculturalism. standing the situation museums are in, critically and Scrutinising the complex European context, one can openly, and identifying those moments that already talk about belated processes taking place in France, indicate a different type of practice that overcomes Belgium and Holland, the genera- or resists the colonial conditioning. The term ‘decol- 1. Among the contribu- tional divides in the discussion onisation’ itself can appear somewhat forced to tors to this thematic issue, Clémentine around ‘identity politics’ and the describe these two movements as it suggests the Deliss, Daniela Ortiz and obvious dichotomies between the return to a pristine state ‘before’ colonialism, yet to Francisco Godoy Vega par- South and the North. Especially in name this double movement seems more adequate ticipated at the seminar Decolonising the Museum times when dealing with waves of than the common ‘postcolonial’. The current moment at MACBA. refugees struggling for their lives is not ‘post’, when it comes to museum practice and L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – DECOLONISING MUSEUMS – 5 DECOLONISING MUSEUMS the power imbalance that was once installed through she proposes how a museum can resist the attempt colonisation, it is still very much part of how European to produce the spectacle of the Oriental and use the societies are organised. Offering a remedy to this collection in self-reflexive ways as a contemporary situation however also will never mean a return, but resource to produce meaning. Throughout the issue, always the beginning of a new chapter. What the ‘de’ Deliss’ argument is unpacked through a series of then signifies is that it is only by addressing the past case studies: works in the collections of the muse- and how it still lingers on today, that it is possible to ums who are members of L’Internationale confeder- move onwards. ation are selected and presented by the staff of the The two opening essays by Nav Haq and collection departments. Clémentine Deliss, each in their own way, engage Mirjam Kooiman discusses recent cases of with such a confrontation. Nav Haq thinks through institutions who are ignoring to deal with the colo- the pitfalls of the traditional forms of institutional nial heritage in a critical manner in the Netherlands. critique and identity politics to arrive at a new pro- Nana Adusei-Poku points to the ‘strategic tempo- posal to address power imbalance. Instead of putting ral disjuncture’ in the attempts to counter colonial- all the emphasis on inclusion, one should first con- ism, referring to the disconnection between the sider in what space one is included. The big danger research done to raise awareness and understand- of previous attempts to rectify the damage has been ing of the colonial condition on the one hand, and the to include marginalised identities in representa- general make-up of research and education on the tional spaces which are still prevalently white, male other. Using Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s idea and heterosexual. Exploring the practice of Haegue of the ‘undercommons’, she suggests that instead Yang and other artists, he offers a new approach of correcting the existing system, it is better to con- that takes these foundations on. Deliss, who unfor- sider starting completely somewhere else, building tunately was unable to continue her work in the a parallel system that can interact with the main- Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, takes on the stream in a different way. Ana Bigotte Vieira (Part 1 museum directly and proposes a methodology she and Part 2) brings a Portuguese perspective, offer- describes as ‘remediation’, producing a shift and a ing an essay originally written for the conference remedy. Drawing from Carl Einstein’s radical writing, When Where the 80s?. She unpacks how discussions L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – DECOLONISING MUSEUMS – 6 DECOLONISING MUSEUMS around colonisation and emancipation take place from The International Art Exhibition for Palestine, in a country which was under Salazar’s dictatorship 1978 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) until 1974, demonstrating that the common black and in Barcelona (20 February—1 June 2015). Colin white division that marks anything done under dicta- Siyuan Chinnery presents an overview of the devel- torial rule as evil and everything afterwards as good, opment of museums in China and an insight into the needs to be reconsidered for a more comprehensive rapid expansion of the cultural institutions since the assessment of past and present events. 2000s. Finally Vivian Ziherl’s contributions close this Daniela Ortiz critically reflects on the role of publication with a series of interviews that took place museums in the civic debate around the migration within the framework of the Frontier Imaginaries with laws issued by the Spanish government. Analysing Mitch Torres, Gary Foley, Elizabeth A. Povinelli and the manner in which her own work was presented, Rachel O’Reilly. Ortiz points to the many indirect ways in which muse- ums take position in this charged debate. Francisco Godoy Vega was associated with L’Internationale Online as contributor to the Opinions section. His articles offer a series of shorter and timely reflections on questions of coloniality and contemporary culture. Madina Tlostanova presents another geographic per- spective, on the former Soviet countries, focusing on the manner in which heritage has been treated in that region and how the artist Taus Makhacheva “prob- lematises the museum as an imperial institution of aesthetic and epistemic control” in her work The Way of an Object (2013). Rasha Salti’s essay describes the curatorial strategies behind her recent research in collaboration with Kristine Khouri, that resulted in the exhibition Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – DECOLONISING MUSEUMS – 7 RESOURCES — L’INTERNATIONALE BOOKS THE INVISIBLE AND THE VISIBLE IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE ECONOMY OF REPRODUCTION IN ART NAV HAQ THE INVISIBLE AND THE VISIBLE – NAV HAQ “The art world stands Some questions seem to always remain urgent. I to the real world in something like would like to consider one of them: Just where are we exactly when we consider the dynamics of power the relationship in which the City in the field of contemporary art?Following the well- of God stands to the Earthly City.” documented artistic strategies of ‘institutional cri- tique’ of the 1960s and