Call for Presentations
Seminar: Film in Ethnographic Exhibitions
National Museum of Denmark, October 8-9 2015
Contemporary Ethnographic Museums increasingly use film material in exhibitions.
Evocative or explanatory, experimental or exemplary, moving images and sounds
complement visitor experiences, appealing to the senses, it is often assumed, in ways
alternative to what displayed objects or images or written texts can do. In the exhibition
room the moving images often play a powerful role in guiding audience perceptions,
bringing to life what is otherwise only glimpsed: The moving image holds potential to
transfer the ethnographied body across time and space and into the museum space,
otherwise inhabited by motionless objects.
Whether produced with an exhibition room as its intended destiny, or post-produced to fit
into an already given museum environment, the film material challenges the curator whose
task it is to integrate these faces and bodies of living or deceased people in museum
environments. In recent decades, technological developments and a rising media
consciousness have allowed most ethnographic museums to integrate audiovisual media
better, more frequently and in multiple ways. At this prosperous stage in time, we may dwell
with the politics and poetics of using films in ethnographic exhibitions: What status do
museums assign to film in relation to other elements in the ethnographic exhibition? How do
curators respond to ethical implications of screening ’faces and bodies of living or deceased
people’? How can we exhaust the potential of films in our endeavors to engage the senses of
our audiences? And how can the medium of film support dialogues between source
communities, curators and audiences in museum contexts?
The National Museum of Denmark (Ethnographic Collections), in collaboration with the
University of Copenhagen (Department of Crosscultural and Regional Studies) invites
curators and scholars for a two-day seminar on the usages of films in ethnographic
exhibitions. The aims of the seminar are to 1) stimulate a creative exchange of experiences
between colleagues and 2) create an arena for discussion of the practices, politics and
poetics of employing films in ethnographic exhibitions.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Mary Bouquet, University College Utrecht
Prof. Arnd Schneider, University of Oslo
Dr. Steffen Köhn, Freie Universität Berlin
Venue
The National Museum in Copenhagen, October 8-9 2015.
Call for presentations
Presentations may or may not include visual media. They should not exceed 30 minutes.
Abstracts for presentations are not to be of more than 250 words.
Abstracts must be submitted before 1 June to [email protected]
Please direct any questions to the same address.