MUSEUM ON THE COUCH

Reflexive and creative explorations

Progress report Winter and summer semester 2016

Bernard Müller

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Aworking sessioninthegarden oftheGrassi museum,10thofJune 2016

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Goals

This report is to draw the first general lessons learned from the two semester

that took place at the Grassi Museum for ethnology in Leipzig in collaboration

with the Institue for ethnology zu Leipzig where this workshop was registered as

modul BA-03-ETH-1026 (for more details see appendix 1).

The focus of this workshop is to highlight the dynamics and the contradictions

that are facing most of the European ethnographic museums today, through the

prism of the Grassi museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig.

Resting preferably upon objects of Ethnographic Collections of Saxony (SES), on

related past projects or connected topics, the participants of the workshops will

implement genuine museum projects (ethnographic propositions, artistic

installations, performances, small exhibitions, multimedia devices, and outside

the wall actions, such as guided tours in town, for instance). These student works

are to be presented to the public in Grassi’s permanent exhibition, at the end of

each cycle/semester.

Considering the form of the ethnographic exhibition as a theatre of objects (the

latter not necessarily being material, as in "intangible culture" or "oral history"),

we propose to approach the biography of the object by the multiplicity of

appropriations and variety of uses/usages to which it is subject/object, as

expression of the variety of temporalities it relates to…

The workshop is part of a larger programme (see appendix 3), whose

general aim is to promote new formats in a post- post colonial approach

(i.e. beyond reparation, restitution and epistemic violence trying to

develop symmetric modes of knowledge production), trying to create

the best possible conditions for dialogue and collaboration around the

disentangled ethnographic object.

In order to move away from disciplinary compartmentalisation, this workspace

is envisioned as a collaborative platform, a place that aims to gather

ethnologists, artists, writers, philosophers, historians, art historians, curators,

mediators, designers / architects and various professions, in collaboration with

several partners (Museums, Research departments, etc.), on an international

base, especially with the countries of origin of the objects.

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PRESENTATION OF THE STUDENT WORKS IN THE PERMANENT EXHIBITION

WiSe2016

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Methodology: an experimental workshop

“Museum on the Couch” is basically a workshop: a place dedicated to a form of

experimentation. As such, it “simulates for real” all the steps of a real exhibition:

pre-conception, note of intent, concept mapping, installation, mediation,

dismantling, making of/subsequent report, reflexive and critical analyse and

writing, etc.

Didactically, the implementation of a comprehensive exhibition conceived and

produced by the students is the focus of this workshop. This process trace all

the steps of the production of an exhibition, from the inception of the idea of the

installation to the dismantling of the resulting exhibition. As a participative

experience and thought provoking approach, the problems encountered are

entirely part of the didactic process, and should be integrated as such, in order

to bring to light the real mechanisms of a museum of that kind. By doing, the

students are invited to create their own path, from the idea to the display,

negotiating their project in the group, with the curators, technicians, etc.

If the theoretic frame is given by the teacher, each students is actually analysing

the theoretical stakes of his/her installation. This reflective approach is to be

rendered in the « Hausarbeit ». In this “making of” kind of exercise, the students

are to expose the knowledge they produced, and critically confront it to other

analyses, in the limits of the theoretical frame (see bibliography).

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SoSe 2016

NOTA BENE : for more details, better images and explanations, please surf to:

http://ethno.gko.uni-leipzig.de/index.php/en/museum/collaboration-grassi-museum

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WiSe 2015

NOTA BENE : for more details, better images and explanations, please surf to:

http://ethno.gko.uni-leipzig.de/index.php/en/museum/collaboration-grassi-museum

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The workshop is simulating in real conditions all the steps of a real exhibition:

here a sample of an object label (with its translation)

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Recommandations

✓ Due to its particular nature in the present academic landscape and to reach its

didactic objectives, i.e. to answer to reflexive issues with creative solutions via

experience and participation, the Museum on the Couch workshop needs to

reassert its experimental principle.

✓ Thus, the methodologic, epistemological and theoretic stakes, should be

more clearly settled in the introduction and during several special sessions all

along the semester (this methodologic specificity should also be stated in the

written program).

✓ Although, the participation to the workshop of some members of the

scientific team of the museum, technicians and other participants brings

an excellent dynamic in the workshop (which allows the students to discover the

inner workings of the museum engine), some sessions in the semester should be

specifically dedicated to these interventions.

✓ It should be underlined that the student installation proposals, which result of a

collective process, are difficult to evaluate individually. This implies a special

importance given to the qualitative appreciation of each proposal and its

collective discussion, all along the process but also AFTER the submission of the

Hausarbeit (at least one session).

✓ In order to foster a transdisciplinary dialogue, the workshop should be

attended by students of other disciplines than ethnology: visual artists, theatre

practitioners, etc. In that perspective, the collaboration with the Institut für

Ethnologie zu Leipzig, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) and Institut

für Theaterwissenschaft (Universität Leipzig) should be developed and

formalised.

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Next steps

1. April 2016. Begin of the Summer semester: the workshop in collaboration

with the Institut für Ethnologie zu Leipzig, Hochschule für Grafik und

Buchkunst (HGB) and Institut für Theaterwissenschaft (Universität

Leipzig) or other local partners in Saxony.

2. Suggested topic for the upcoming semester: This year the students are

invited to conceive an outdoor project in the city of Leipzig such as walks,

visitor’s itinaries, urban wanderings, inspired by the object of the so called

ethnographic collections and performed in town.

3. Boost of the students exchanges with The « Laboratory of Excellence in

Arts and Human Mediations ». This Laboratory is part of the “Investments

for the future” program since 2011. As part of this program, its members

conduct research following three main lines: situations, technologies,

hybridization. See :

http://labex-arts-h2h.fr/spip.php?page=presentation&lang=en

4. Development of the existing collaborations, especially with IRIS (Paris,

France), Institut Marc Bloch (Paris/Berlin), The Laboratory of Excellence

in Arts and Human Mediations and the University of Ibadan (Nigeria).

5. Publications

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Appendix 1: Sessions

WiSe 2015

8 sessions (32 Hrs), Time : 11 AM to 15 PM, Schedule : Tue. 20th, 27th of Octobre, 3rd,

10th, 17th and 24th of November, 1st and 15th of decembre 2015.

Opening of the exhibition with 6 installations: 12th of January 2016 at 6 : 30 PM (till 24

th of January)

Students (16): Inga Albrecht, Amélie Bader, Paula Betz, Jana Cording, Judith Desantis,

Clarisse Destailleur, Berenike Eichhorn, Bastian Gottschling, Franz Kühne, Dipika

Nadkarni, Anna Panagos, Iga Przygrodzka, Josefine Spürkel, Antje Velasquez,

Katharina Wischer, Felix Zehdnicker

http://www.mvl-grassimuseum.de/ausstellungen/2016/museum-on-the-couch/

SoSe 2016

8 sessions (32 Hrs), Time : 11 AM to 15 PM, schedule : Fr. 15th, Fr. 29th of April, Fr.

13th and Fr. 20th of May, Fr. 3rd , Tue. 14th, Fr. 17th and Fr. 24th of June 2016

Opening of the exhibition with 8 installations: 29th of june 2016 at 6 : 30 PM (till 30th

of september)

Students (8): Laura Breuer, Jacqueline Ehms, Christine Faget, Natacha Fournier, Anna

Lauenstein, Lena Löhr, Chantal Schöpp, Julia Wichmann.

More : http://ethno.gko.uni-leipzig.de/index.php/museum/kooperation-grassi/474-

museum-on-the-couch-im-ss-2016

Conduct of the workshop

Discovering various aspects of the ethnographic museum from inside, discerning its

professions and social /political complexity.

Introduction, Presentation, Session with scientists of the museum (curators),

Presentation of the projects of the students, Finalisation of the projects and submission to

the director of the museum, Conception of various informative supports, installation on

site of the projects, opening of the exhibition, dismantling, submission of the written

student works and final discussion.

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Appendix 2: Readings

Appadurai, A. (ed), 1986, The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge

Bazin, Jean, Die Gabe der Sache, Trivium, 17 | 2014: http://trivium.revues.org/4925, Édition

originale : La chose donnée, in: Critique, Nr. 596-597, 1997, S. 7-24; wieder in: ders.: Des clous

dans la Joconde, Paris: Anacharsis 2008, S. 547-568.

Bechtler Cristina und Dora Imhof, 2015, Museum of the Future, JRP & les presses du réel, Zürich

Benjamin, Walter, 1939, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen

Reproduzierbarkeit. deutsche Fassung 1939, in: ders., Gesammelte Schriften. Band I, Frankfurt am

Main 1980, S. 473, online einsehbar als pdf-Datei von ominiverdi.org

Bonnot, Thierry, 2009, Objects and Memories. Territorial identities and Heritage ("patrimony") in

France”. In Frank Muyard, Liang−Kai Chou, Serge Dreyer (eds.), Objects, Heritage and Cultural

Identity, Nantou (Taïwan), Taiwan Historica, pp. 45−69.

Clifford, James,1997, Museums as Contact Zones, in Clifford, J. Routes: Travel and Translation in

the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, pp.

188-219

Derrida, Jacques, 2003, Artaud Moma - Ausrufe, Zwischenrufe und Berufungen, Peter Engelmann

Verlag, Frankfurt

Fleming, Daniel, 2010, Social history in museums: 35 years of progress?, Journal of the Social

History Curators Group, 34, pp. 39-45

Karp, Ivan, & Lavine, Steven, 1991, Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display,

Smithsonian Institution Press ; Washington DC

Kopytoff, I. (1986). The Cultural Biographies of Things : commoditization as process, In: A.

Appadurai (ed.): The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, S. 213 (Übersetzung aus dem Englischen, Ursu-la Rao), pp. 64-94

Latour, Bruno, 2001, Wieso kann die politische Ökologie die Natur nicht bewahren ? (Kapitel 1), in :

Das Parlament der Dinge. Für eine politische Ökologie Edition Zweite Moderne, Suhrkamp Verlag :

Kapitel, pp. 22-73

Müller, Bernard, 2010, Including contemporary art at the musée du quai branly: a way of coming to

term with the colonial past à la française, in : Beyond the Turnstile – Making the case for museums

and sustainable values, Selma Holo & Mari-Tere Alvarez, Altamira Press, pp. 61-63

Müller, Bernard, 2007, Koloniale Beutekunst - Wohin gehört Montezumas Federkrone?, Le Monde

Diplomatique Deutsche Ausgabe , N°7

George Perec, 1989, Ein Kunstkabinett. Geschichte eines Gemäldes. Aus dem Französischen

übersetzt von Eugen Helmlé. Hanser, München

Purkis, Harriet, 2013, Making Contact in an exhibition zone: Displaying contemporary cultural

diversity in Donegal, Ireland, through an installation of visual and material portraits, museum and

society, March 2013. 11(1), pp. 50-67

Rao, Ursula und Stefanie Mauksch, Vom Wissen der Objekte. Auf der Suche nach reflexiven

Ausstellungskonzepten in der Ethnologie' In Katharina Hoins & Felicitas von Mallinckrodt

(Hg.): Macht. Wissen. Teilhabe. Sammlungsinstitutionen im 21. Jahrhundert, pp. 109-125.

Thomas, Nicholas 1991. Entangled Objects. Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the

Pacific, Harvard University Press. Cambridge (MA)

Tyradellis, Daniel, 2014, Die Institution Museum : Prinzipien aus dem 19. Jahrhundert (Kapitel II.),

in Müde Museen - Oder: Wie Ausstellungen unser Denken verändern könnten, Edition Körber-

Stiftung, Hamburg, pp. 57-81

Weiner, Annette, 1992, Inalienable possessions : the paradox of keeping-while-giving, University of

California, Berkeley

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Appendix 3: The Program

The “museum on the couch” workshop is part of a broader cultural and scientific

program, which has been conceived in order to articulate various activities related to

on-going debates disrupting the ethnographic collections and their display in museums.

The program’s content is about organising conferences, seminars, workshops,

exhibitions, interventions, encounters and publications in order to contribute to the

formulation of practical solution and its theoretical frames.

In a critical but humorous

tone, we want to invite the

ethnographic museum, the

objects it curates, the

policies it conducts or the

people that work in it, to lay

down on the couch of an

imaginary Freud, to whom

we’ll entrust doubts but also

– all overall – dreams and

projects.

Thus, this program wants to open an area for discussion at the core of the ethnographic

museum presently facing the renewal of its mission, in order to foster a constructive

confrontation of various visions and different museums’ practices, all having the future

of such holdigs as focal point.

The program gathers many different actors drawn of different horizons, mingling various

professions, cultures and generations, of differing status, with or without academic

backgrounds. As such, it founds an international network of ideas and initiatives, in the

sense of a joined up and evolving platform.

The program proposes to implement the following activities:

✓ The present workshop

✓ A dedicated room in the permanent exhibition, Grassi, Leipzig

✓ A surrounding program of conferences, “Cartes blanches” and

several micro exploratory events: Actions “outside the walls”,

Performances, exhibitions trails, guided visits, Virtual seminars,

on-line workshops, 3D or 4 D projects, etc.

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