权益分类	功能权益	普通用户	{{item.name}}会员
{{category.name}}	{{benefitItem.name}}

Museum affordances: activating West African ethnographic archives and collections through experimental museology

博物馆可供性：通过实验博物馆学激活西非民族志档案和藏品

基本信息

批准号：
AH/P014615/1
负责人：
Paul Basu
金额：
$ 102.58万
依托单位：
School of Oriental and African Studies
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2018 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FP014615%2F1
关键词：
Museum affordances activating West African

项目摘要

What do museums afford? What repertoires of action do they make possible? This project investigates the latent possibilities of museum collections, curatorial interventions, and innovative exhibition practices, focusing on the material legacies of colonial-era anthropological fieldwork and collecting. It explores how museums can activate such historical collections as catalysts for intercultural understanding, for recovering lost histories, repairing past injustices, building relationships, exchanging knowledge and engaging creatively across social and cultural boundaries.Subject to sustained postcolonial critique, historical ethnographic collections have often been withdrawn from display and have lain dormant and inaccessible in off-site stores. More recently, renewed academic and museological interest has been provoked by the continued presence of these collections. Can they transcend the colonial contexts of their collection and be used as resources for decolonisation? The project is concerned with investigating and unlocking such 'action possibilities' latent within ethnographic collections. It seeks to activate the unrealized potential of collections through a series of experimental 'museum methods' we characterize as 'reassemblage', 'recirculation' and 'reconfiguration'.The focus of the project's experimental museology is a remarkable, but largely unresearched, assemblage of objects, photographs, sound recordings, field notes and publications that constitute the legacy of a series of anthropological surveys conducted in Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915. The surveys were undertaken by N. W. Thomas, the first professional anthropologist to be employed by the British colonial authorities to gather ethnographic data intended to support policies of indirect rule in West Africa. Despite, or perhaps because of, Thomas's achievements as an ethnographer, his work was perceived to have little value in colonial governance. Within a short time, the rich ethnographic database Thomas assembled was disarticulated and dispersed, ending up in diverse institutions including Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), Pitt Rivers Museum, National Archives, Royal Anthropological Institute and British Library. Building on our pilot studies, the project will fully reassemble, for the first time in a century, Thomas's collections, rearticulating object, sound, image and text in order to understand their past, present and future-oriented affordances.The concept of affordances has been developed and applied in the fields of perceptual psychology, interaction design and material culture studies. Perception of the affordances (the latent action possibilities) of environments, technologies, things and practices is relational, situational and perspectival. The project will investigate the distinct affordances of this unique ethnographic archive at different times and for differently-situated actors. Through innovative curatorial interventions that seek to recirculate the collections, and exhibitionary strategies that reconfigure them, the project explores what 'governmental' actions the collections were perceived to afford when they were originally assembled, and, importantly, what positive and negative 'heritage affordances' they possess today: for present-day populations in the places where they were collected; for diasporic Nigerian and Sierra Leonean communities in the UK; for contemporary artists engaging with colonial pasts; for educators; for general audiences.Project activities include collections-based research across various institutions; fieldwork and 'ethnographic restudy' along the routes of Thomas's original itineraries in West Africa; collaboration with contemporary artists and multimedia producers; international knowledge exchange events bridging museum scholarship and practice; and the staging of innovative 'exhibition experiments' designed to engage with diverse publics.

博物馆能提供什么？它们使什么样的行动成为可能？该项目调查了博物馆藏品，策展干预和创新展览实践的潜在可能性，重点关注殖民时代人类学实地考察和收集的物质遗产。它探讨了博物馆如何激活这些历史收藏品作为跨文化理解的催化剂，恢复丢失的历史，修复过去的不公正，建立关系，交流知识，并跨越社会和文化界限创造性地参与。受到持续的后殖民批评，历史人种学收藏品经常被撤出展览，并在场外商店中处于休眠状态。最近，这些藏品的持续存在激起了学术和博物馆学的新兴趣。它们能否超越其收藏的殖民背景，并被用作非殖民化的资源？该项目关注的是调查和释放民族志收藏中潜在的这种“行动可能性”。它试图通过一系列实验性的“博物馆方法”来激活未实现的收藏潜力，我们将其描述为“重组”，“再循环”和“重新配置”。该项目的实验博物馆学的重点是一个显着的，但在很大程度上未经研究的对象，照片，录音，实地记录和出版物，这些记录和出版物是1909年至1915年在尼日利亚和塞拉利昂进行的一系列人类学调查的遗产。这些调查是由N. W.托马斯是第一位被英国殖民当局雇佣来收集人种学数据的专业人类学家，这些数据旨在支持西非的间接统治政策。尽管，或者也许是因为，托马斯的成就作为一个民族志，他的工作被认为是没有价值的殖民统治。在很短的时间内，托马斯收集的丰富的民族志数据库被拆散和分散，最终在不同的机构，包括剑桥大学考古学和人类学博物馆（MAA），皮特里弗斯博物馆，国家档案馆，皇家人类学研究所和大英图书馆。在我们的试点研究的基础上，该项目将在世纪首次全面重组托马斯的收藏品，重新表达物体、声音、图像和文本，以了解它们过去、现在和未来的启示。启示的概念已经在感知心理学、交互设计和物质文化研究领域得到发展和应用。对环境、技术、事物和实践的启示（潜在的行动可能性）的感知是关系的、情境的和视角的。该项目将调查这个独特的民族志档案在不同时间和不同位置的演员的独特启示。通过创新的策展干预，寻求再循环的集合，并重新配置它们的展览策略，该项目探讨了什么样的“政府”行动的集合被认为是负担得起的，当他们最初组装，以及，重要的是，什么积极和消极的“遗产启示”，他们今天拥有：为今天的人口在他们收集的地方;为散居在英国的尼日利亚和塞拉利昂社区;为从事殖民地过去的当代艺术家;为教育工作者;为普通观众。项目活动包括在各个机构进行基于收藏的研究;沿着托马斯在西非的原始行程路线进行实地考察和“民族志再研究”;与当代艺术家和多媒体制作人的合作;连接博物馆学术和实践的国际知识交流活动;以及旨在与不同公众互动的创新“展览实验”。