When imagining alternative, more care-ful futures for the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm and its collection, which is so weighed down by colonial baggage (material and intellectual), we have often returned to the thought experiment of an Afropean Museum. What would a museum for the African Diaspora in Europe be like? Would it be possible? What would it take to create such an institution, in this case using the handed-down collection from the African continent in Stockholm? This collection was, after all, amassed for very different purposes. We have sensed that the required reimagining cannot be achieved using "the master's tools" of conventional museum praxis. Nevertheless, in a five-year project called Ongoing Africa at the ME in Stockholm, we have tried out some collaborative ways to travel in the general direction of this idea. All of them implies museum work imbued with a "hosting and hospitality approach" (Odumosu 2020) and openness towards “relational ethics” (Sarr & Savoy 2018). The presentation considers such approaches through some practical examples from the Ongoing Africa project.
Dr. Michael Barrett is an anthropologist, researcher, and curator of the African collections at the National Museums of World Culture (NMWC) in Sweden. His current research focus is on the colonial history of the collections as well as on the representation of Africa and people of African descent in museum displays in past, present, and future Sweden. Recent curatorial work includes Ongoing Africa (2017–2022), a project which attempted to critically reflect on and develop research, exhibitions, outreach, and public programming in relation to the vast collections from the African continent at the NMWC.
Politics of Storytelling is a series of lectures/seminars focusing on politics of storytelling as an artistic research methodology. In particular, the lecture will consider storytelling as a way to rethink and explore different perspectives, voices, entanglement and world-making processes in connection with practice-based artistic research. Storytelling in artistic research is thus intended as a particular mode of engaging with the real world that has a potential to dissolve structured power relationships between subject and object. As Donna Haraway states, “it matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.” Together with the invited speakers, different approaches to practice-based artistic research will be discussed, from material stories, work stories to museum colonial object that takes into account of non-human voices.
Organised and moderated by Prof. Dr. Nicolas Cheng
To register for the lectures/seminars:
*The lecture will be held in English.
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Past Events:
Tuesday, 18.04.2023 – 16:00
Mårten Snickare (SE)
Professor of Art History and Director of Accelerator
Stockholm University
Tuesday, 31.01.2023 – 10:00
Caroline Slotte (FI)
Professor of Ceramic Art
Oslo National Academy of the Arts
Tuesday, 15.11.2022 – 10:00
Magnus Bärtås (SE)
Professor of Fine Arts, head of research and deputy vice-chancellor
Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm
Tuesday, 05.07.2022 – 10:00
Craig Mcintosh (NZ)
Jewellery artist and Pakeha stone carver, Dunedin