Do museum objects always want to be displayed and looked at, interpreted and categorized, conserved with any means available and preserved for the (human) future, as the history of the Western museum seems to suggest? Or can objects actually stare back at us? Resist interpretation, categorization, and aestheticization? Perhaps even demand to be destroyed? Indeed, can objects act as (quasi-)subjects? This course will take an object-centered approach to agency. It will analyze museum objects – or, rather, things kept in the museum – as actants belonging to various networks of relations, temporalities, cosmologies, and knowledge systems. The seminar will ask whether such ‘object-subjects’ can speak for themselves, what effects they have on other/human actors, and how museums impact and limit their agency.
The theoretical-practical seminar will consist of three parts. In the first one, participants will learn and discuss key theoretical and methodological approaches to thinking about museum objects as subjects. The second will comprise a group visit to a museum, where the theories and methods from the first part will be tried out in situ, with the purpose of choosing objects and collecting fieldwork material for subsequent class work. The third part of the seminar will be dedicated to various kinds of individual and group work with the chosen objects, aimed at ‘listening’ to these objects’ voices and creating ‘an exhibition’ of what they have to ‘say.’
The course will be conducted in English, with some readings and the possibility of participation in German. Please let me know if you have any special needs.
The theoretical-practical seminar will consist of three parts. In the first one, participants will learn and discuss key theoretical and methodological approaches to thinking about museum objects as subjects. The second will comprise a group visit to a museum, where the theories and methods from the first part will be tried out in situ, with the purpose of choosing objects and collecting fieldwork material for subsequent class work. The third part of the seminar will be dedicated to various kinds of individual and group work with the chosen objects, aimed at ‘listening’ to these objects’ voices and creating ‘an exhibition’ of what they have to ‘say.’
The course will be conducted in English, with some readings and the possibility of participation in German. Please let me know if you have any special needs.
- Lehrende:r: Andrei Zavadski
- Lehrende:r: Hannah Zühlke