Non-normative relations wanted: Testing queer methods at the Berlin Ethnological Museum
Topic outline
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Framing of topic, establishing ground rules of working together, introductions within the group, talking about the seminar plan as it stands now, brainstorming: what is this seminar about, what ideas do we have already, what do we know, what do we want to do. Isabel introduces the framework of their own research, within which this group takes place.
Round of introductions: Short informal input about yourself: what do you study, why are you interested in this seminar, how does it relate to your other interests / background / study focus? Do you already have ideas what you want to do here?
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Please read one of these short texts (options in German and/or English) on the spot to have an initial discussion about the topic and what this seminar might achieve. Select one text and find other people who also want to read it. Take 15-20 minutes to read and then we will share insights in the plenumWe will exchange our knowledge of all texts in the session.
1) “Über Das Reparieren Hinaus: Eine Antirassistische Praxeologie Des Kuratierens.” In Kuratieren als antirassistische Praxis. Edited by Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński and Nora Sternfeld. De Gruyter, 2017
2) Knoll, Hedda O. »Ich fände es schön, wenn sich Museen verletzlich zeigen!«.” In Das Museum dekolonisieren? Kolonialität und museale Praxis in Berlin. Edited by Daniela Bystron and Anne Fäser, 65–71. Edition Museum. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022
3) “Vital Relations” In Deliss, Clémentine (2020): The metabolic museum. Berlin: Hatje Cantz.
4) “Act VI” and “Act XII” In Ndikung, Bonaventure S. B. Die Gestorben Sind, Sind Niemals Fort: Über Die Aufrechterhaltung Der Vorherrschaft, Das Ethnologische Museum Und Die Verstrickungen Des Humboldt Forums. AB pamphlet 1. Berlin: Archive Books, 2018.
ENGLISH VERSION here (also available as PDF in the folder):
https://southasastateofmind.com/south-remembers-those-who-are-dead-are-not-ever-gone/ -
Here we can write down collective notes during or also after the meeting to see where we are at as we are beginning this research group. We will come back to this at the end of the term to see what our journey together was like and where it has led us.
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In this session we are going to look at a theoretical position from the field of anthropology, namely Alfred Gell’s Art Nexus Model, and think about how this could help us to develop a queer methodology of thinking and creating relations around objects in ethnographic museum collections.
Gell’s theory is highly complex and one could do an entire seminar just on it – which is not what we are doing here. Instead, the aim is to understand the basic ideas and think about how this might be developed into something new, also before the background of a still often quite elitist, anglophone, male and white curriculum (all of which Gell represents). We also discuss how we work with ancestors in our disciplines and how we can take their ideas forward and make them our own, despite the biases that they also represent.
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Reading for this session:
1) Gell, Alfred. “The Problem Defined” and “The Theory of the Art Nexus” In: Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.
2) Küchler, Susanne, and Timothy Carroll. "Aesthetics and the Ethics of Relation" In: A Return to the Object: Alfred Gell, Art, and Social Theory / Susanne Küchler, Timothy Carroll. 1st. London: Routledge, 2020.
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We are jumping to our main line of inquiry, which asks how a queer methodology in the museum can be implemented, what it can mean and how it can help us in our research group to think about non-normative relations in the context of the ethnological museum.
For that, we will discuss what methodology means, what queer can mean and what relations in the context of the museum mean. We will discuss Isabel’s initial framing of their general project, based on our discussion of Gell in the previous week, and will read about what queering in the museum context may mean.
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Please read Isabel’s text and select one out of the two additional texts. Two groups who have read these texts will jointly and in a relaxed atmosphere of the reading group tell the others what the text they did not read is about. You are of course also welcome to read all texts
1) For all: Bredenbröker, Isabel. Queering Alfred Gell’s Art Nexus Model: Conceptualising non-normative relations and queer methods in the art and museum context. Forthcoming with Ikonotheka, University of Warsaw Press.
2) Either: Sullivan, Nikki, and Craig Middleton. “From LGBTQ+ inclusion to queer ethics” In Queering the Museum. Museums in focus. Abingdon, Oxon, New York, NY: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.
3) Or: Browne, Kath, and Catherine Nash. “Queer Methods and Methodologies: An Introduction” In Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research / Edited by Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.
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Details to be confirmed closer to the date
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This session introduces us to the murky origins of ‘the genealogical method’ or kinship studies in anthropology, as represented in a turn-of-the-century text by British anthropologist W.H.R. Rivers. We are reading this text to get a sense of how (kin) relations were initially viewed in this field, also closely tied up with the colonial-imperial project and negative projections of culturally ‘Other’ people. Incidentally, this was also written at a time when many museum objects were collected.
We are then jumping ahead in time to the 1990s and the so-called New Kinship Studies which viewed the study of relatedness differently, showing how different kinds of relations and their social institutions (such as gender roles, marriage, blood relation etc.) produce norms and can change them, often leading to surprising results in the kinds of roles and relations that emerge. In a revision of these ideas, key figure Janet Carsten offers an overview of what happened since…
This session will discuss how we can view relation, origin and belonging through kinship.
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1) Rivers, W. H. R. “A Genealogical Method of Collecting Social and Vital Statistics.” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 30 (1900): 74.
2) Carsten, Janet. “The Stuff of Kinship.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Kinship. Edited by Sandra Bamford. Cambridge University Press, 2019. In Bamford, Sandra, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Kinship. Cambridge University Press, 2019.
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This session looks at ways of thinking about, through and with kinship differently. This may mean questioning established models of family, established family roles or applying these models in contexts different to blood relations. It introduces anthropological thought about ‘relations’ as a concept of many concepts, specifically through the works of British anthropologist Marilyn Strathern and French-Carribean poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant. We will exchange on these two authors and think about what similairy, dissimilairy, connection and distance mean when thinking about relations within and beyond kinship.
Mary Bouquet offers a take on how to combine thinking about museum collections and kinship studies, which was published in the landmark edited volume by Janet Carsten that came to represent the new kinship studies. In a second movement, this session will seek to combine our thoughts on all texts and probe into the actuality of Bouquet’s suggestions.
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1) For all: Bouquet, Mary. “Figures of Relations: Reconnecting Kinship Studies and Museum Collections.” In Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship. Edited by Janet Carsten. 1. publ. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000.
Please also have a look at this link (to get a sense of the current discussion): https://www.materialculture.nl/en/events/taking-care-recreating-kinship-ethnographic-museum-europe
and then one of the two texts (of course you are welcome to read both)
2) “Distancing, Determining” and “The Black Beach” In Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr, 1997
3) “The Dissimilar and the Different” In Strathern, Marilyn. Relations: An Anthropological Account. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2020.
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Taking forward the ideas and impressions from our previous session, this session will look at what queer relations and kinship may mean, look like and how this different way of relating and identifying may help us to think about methodologies and representation in the museum context. We have 4 texts this time – Judith Butler is for all and then select one out of the three other texts, same process as usual, we will introduce them to the others who have not read them.
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1) For all: Bradway, Tyler, and Elizabeth Freeman. “Introduction Kincoherence / Kin-Aesthetics / Kinematics.” In Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form. Edited by Tyler Bradway and Elizabeth Freeman, 1–24. Theory Q Ser. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
AND Select between
2) Butler, Judith. “Kinship Beyond the Bloodline.” In Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form. Edited by Tyler Bradway and Elizabeth Freeman, 25–47. Theory Q Ser. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
3) Davis, Heather M. "Queer Kin" In Plastic Matter. Elements. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022
4) TallBear, Kim. “Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex and Family.” In The material kinship reader: Material beyond extraction and kinship beyond the nuclear family. Edited by Clementine Edwards and Kris Dittel. Onomatopee 208. [Netherlands]: Onomatopee, 2022.
Additional reading (voluntary and for further research)
5) Scott, Lwando. “"Sy Is ’N Eendjie Van ’N Ander Dam": Race, Class and Sexual Identity Intersections in Same-Sex Marriage.” In Beyond the Mountain: Queer life in "africa's gay capital" Edited by b camminga and Zethu Matebeni. Routledge/UNISA Press series. [S.l.]: Routledge, 2023.
6) Lewin, Ellen. ““Natural” Achievements: How Lesbian and Gay Families in North America Make Claims to Kinship.” In, 253–76.
7) Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “White Possessions.” In The material kinship reader: Material beyond extraction and kinship beyond the nuclear family. Edited by Clementine Edwards and Kris Dittel. Onomatopee 208. [Netherlands]: Onomatopee, 2022.
8) https://humansandnature.org/kinship/ - Link to a great 5 volume edited book series and an amazing book club / podcast!
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This session gives hands-on advice and instructions on how to do ethnography in a public institution. What are we interested in and how can we learn about it? What is the museum, actually and where can we experience it? What if everything looks banal and the thing we are after does not show up? We meet at the museum! Possible guest: Dr. Ranja Bhowmik
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1) Macdonald, Sharon. “Doing Diversity, Making Differences. Multi-Researcher Ethnography in Museums and Heritage in Berlin.”in Macdonald, Sharon J., ed. Doing Diversity in Museums and Heritage: A Berlin Ethnography. 1. Auflage. Cultural heritage studies volume 1. Bielefeld: transcript, 2022. https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6409-6/doing-diversity-in-museums-and-heritage/?number=978-3-8394-6409-0.
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This session will be conducted in collaboration with a researcher from the Ethnological Museum and will give us some insights into how provenance research, among other things, is an important part of how relations via ancestral links (such as in previous ownership, origin, inheritance etc) become tangible and important in the ways in which museum objects are treated, shown, restituted etc. We think about the idea of origin and belonging as these are produced around collections aided by Erika Lehrer’s text on material kin and communities of implication as well as Margareta von Oswald’s text on provenance research at the Ethnological Museum Berlin.
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1) Lehrer, Erika. “Material Kin : “Communities of Implication” in Post-Colonial, Post-Holocaust Polish Ethnographic Collections.” In Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Edited by Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, 288–323. Leuven University Press, 2020.
2) Von Oswald, Margareta. “Troubling Colonial Epistemologies in Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum: Provenance Research and the Humboldt Forum” in Post-Colonial, Post-Holocaust Polish Ethnographic Collections.” In Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Edited by Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, 107–129. Leuven University Press, 2020.
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This session investigates how artistic interventions around ethnographic collections have taken place and are being conducted. How can we in this group actively invite or create non-normative relations around objects? What kinds of formats or approaches are possible? Isabel and Adam Pultz Melbye present their collaborative artistic project Queer Sonic Fingerprint.
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Read one of these texts for preparation:
Schneider, Arnd. “Art-Anthropology Interventions in the Italian Post-Colony: The Scattered Colonial Body Project.” In Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial.. Edited by Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius. Leuven University Press, 2020.
Deliss, Clémentine. ““Against the Mono-Disciplinarity of Ethnographic Museums”: A Conversation with Clémentine Deliss.” In Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial.. Edited by Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius. Leuven University Press, 2020.
Luntumbue, Toma Muteba. ““Finding Means to Cannibalise the Anthropological Museum”: A Conversation with Toma Muteba Luntumbue.” In Across Anthropology. Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Edited by Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius. Leuven University Press, 2020.
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We meet at 10.00 in Schlüterhof. Discussions of texts will run until 10.40, then we are taking the Beyond the norm Tour of the museum which ends at 11.45.
This session thinks about what ancestors can be, both in inter-human and more-than-human contexts as well as in the museum context. We will read a short excerpt from Nkunzi Zandile Nkabinde’s autobiography about becoming a lesbian traditional healer in a South African Zulu context and the first Act of anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli’s autobiographical graphic novel.
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1) „Act 1“ In Povinelli, Elizabeth A. The Inheritance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.
2) „The Ancestors don’t mind“ In Nkabinde, Nkunzi Z. Black Bull, Ancestors and Me: My Life as a Lesbian Sangoma. Johannesburg, London: Jacana, 2009.
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Meeting time: 10. am, meeting point in Dahlem, in the driveway to Fabeckstraße 18-20!
We are getting a tour of the depot of the East and West Africa Collections of the Museum in Dahlem. In order to prepare for this, please think through and investigate the norms that guide and constitute the Ethnological Museum, based on research and documents. Please do some individual research, based on these websites and documents. What do these tell you about institutional structures in the museum landscape, about norms and about the evolution of those?
https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/
https://www.smb.museum/museen-einrichtungen/ethnologisches-museum/home/
https://www.humboldtforum.org/de/In the folder, just skim through this and see what seems interesting:
Ahrndt, Wiebke, Hans-Jörg Czech, Jonathan Fine, Larissa Förster, Michael Geißdorf, Matthias Glaubrecht, and Katarina Horst et al., eds. Guidelines on Dealing with Collections from Colonial Contexts. Berlin: Deutscher Museumsbund e.V, 2018. https://www.museumsbund.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/dmb-guide-contextes-coloniaux-2018.pdf-
https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/
https://www.smb.museum/museen-einrichtungen/ethnologisches-museum/home/
https://www.humboldtforum.org/de/
In the folder, just skim through this and see what seems interesting:
Ahrndt, Wiebke, Hans-Jörg Czech, Jonathan Fine, Larissa Förster, Michael Geißdorf, Matthias Glaubrecht, and Katarina Horst et al., eds. Guidelines on Dealing with Collections from Colonial Contexts. Berlin: Deutscher Museumsbund e.V, 2018. https://www.museumsbund.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/dmb-guide-contextes-coloniaux-2018.pdf.
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For example for a pop-up exhibition, in a talk, or a podcast. The aims is to present our work at the end of the summer break, with more options further along the line depending on the possible continuation of the seminar and the interest of participants to continue with it. Our exhibition may be an intervention in parts of the museum exhibit or take place at the HZK (as well as other possible venues). Details remain to be discussed among the group and with the museum team.
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Discussion of work process, review of methodological tools found during the workshop, feedback and ideas for the future. Planning of eventually coming exhibitions or the likes.