As part of the Mediated Anthropology course, my group and I were challenged to produce an 'object lesson' about the future of the ethnographic Werldmuseum in Leiden, previously known as the Volkenkunde Museum and its objects through four generations - 2023, 2048, 2073, 2098.
Design Statement:
During the course, we have learned to use all our senses and more (digital aperture) to discover the world around us. Therefore, we took ‘the senses’ as an entry point to this assignment, not only our own but also those of the Mixtec turquoise mosaic skull.
Sight is the dominant sense in our society and is perceived as superior to others. Sight is enabled by light, relating it to energy, truth, and the ‘real’. However, we are starting to acknowledge that there is a world beyond the visible. Our current time is marked by listening to people who have not been seen enough in the past. We wonder, after hearing/listening, will we open more of our senses to our surroundings? As Geismar states: “The intimacy of touch, smell and other kinds of sensuous engagement with things provides another way into collections to the usual focus on text and visual narrative as read from the contents of glass display cases” (2018:6). Will museums take a more embodied approach to registering our surroundings? And if so, what will happen after that?
the object chosen: mixtec skull
