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Find ways to integrate more stories into the rooms of the museum.


The museum as a machine

Look at the museum as a machine, a stage with a “mise en scène” of displays, objects and actors. Find out the set of instructions, the script.
What if we change the instructions?

The museum was a representation of the new belgian state (after 50 years of existence)
A machine for colonial representation.


Objects and stories

What if objects could tell us a story?
How they were manipulated, how they were in relationship with humans
Questions of proximity to the public, and people who take care
What they can feel through their own materiality (temperature/…)
In relation with their function (contact, movement, etc)
Question of the fiction: how fictional should it be? It is anyway fiction, but the fact of talking about relations with humans is a way to start from our perspective (and not humanize the objects too much?) and inverse the perspective.
Problematic: talking for objects is a very colonial gesture.
Would rather talk about the different stories around the objects but not inventing the point of view of the object.
Tell different stories:
- look on Wikipedia
- ask the people working here


Criteria for selecting objects:

Decide of a protocole to gather info about the object


Two objects in the shop:
Very problematic ones
Very problematic description

OPTIONS FOR OBJECTS
- Totem pole 
- The Caress of the Swan' vase of Philippe Wolvers (catalogue online)



Ask Nacha about statistics of afluence
Spaghetti representation: instruments that allows to trace the people
Used in the factory to optimize the workflow

--------------------------------------------------

Idea: to make a new version of an audioguide tour / radio programm where each of us will make talk about two (or more objects) trying to bringing up the "invisible"
The room is the one dedicated to America / Mexico
The starting point of the tour is the two statues called "Pretty ladies" then move to "Goddess of women who died in chidlbirth"
Underneat this room the collection of Emile is stocked

Room: Méso-Amérique

Cartels:

Ensembles de figurines Pretty Ladies
Mexique occidental - Guanajuato
Culture Chupicuaro
Préclassique récent
400-100 av. J.-C.
Terre cuite
In. AAM 68.14,21,22,24


Chuateatl, déesse des femmes mortes en couches
Veracruz
Culture côte du Golfe – Style El Zapotal
Classique récent
600-900 ap. J.-C.
Terre cuite
In. AAM 71.1
(must 94)

Pretty Ladies is not on the catalogue on line.
In the not online catalogue:
    


The Goddess yes and it is a "must":
    
    Statue of a female deity
    El Zapotal, Gulf Coast, Mexico


In the not on-line catalogue same informations:
    


According to the decription in the catalogue of the 100 masterpieces:
    "The acquisition of this clay sculpture put the finishing touch to a large collection of objects from the Gulf Coast of Mexico.
    Archeological excavations unearthed these female statues, reduced to fragments to indicate they had been 'sacrificed'. Completely restored, this sculpture is probably one of the finest.
    The absence of a forehead ornament makes it difficult to identify the deity portrayed, but it is probably Cihuateotl, the patron goddess of women who died in childbirth."
    
Quote from the 100 masterpieces catalogue: 
    "Choosing just one hundred works from museum's wide -ranging collection posed a tremendous challenge. In carrying out this process, we felt one criterion to be essential: accessibility to the public."

Quotes from "Mondothèque - a radiant book", essay by Geraldine Juarez
"Organizing information is never innocent" 
"The Google Cultural Institute is a complex subject of interest since it reflects the colonial impulses embedded in the scientific and economic desires that formed the very collections which the Google Cultural Institute now mediates and accumulates in its database." 
"There is no official definition of thecnocoloniamism... my use of this term aims to emphasize and situate contemporary accumulation and management of information and data within technoscientific landscape driven by "profit above else" as a "logical extension of the surplus value accumulated through colonialism and slavery".

"Words that are eyes"-version (Mia)

X-ray audio guide of the rooms underneath and above using visual and non-visual language. 

Ari: work on the absent context
A bit of research on the pretty ladies and why that name..

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-americas/early-cultures/tlatilco/a/tlatilco-figurines

https://books.google.be/books?id=8sXIAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT315&lpg=PT315&dq=mexican+figurines+pretty+ladies&source=bl&ots=y-x8bAi5OQ&sig=XJtZpruNoHoYStaR51txq_9jwLI&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8moOJ_ObQAhUFTSYKHQJkBfEQ6AEISTAN#v=onepage&q=mexican%20figurines%20pretty%20ladies&f=false

https://books.google.be/books?id=EtIQUpgo2cEC&pg=PA796&lpg=PA796&dq=mexican+figurines+pretty+ladies&source=bl&ots=eQ-NWeQCs5&sig=Ydc-Jy_EYNWyQVXQxgU-OnxHs70&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi8moOJ_ObQAhUFTSYKHQJkBfEQ6AEITzAP#v=onepage&q=mexican%20figurines%20pretty%20ladies&f=false

Analysis of the epithet "pretty ladies" and how it became the term connoting and classifying an entire type of artefacts:
https://books.google.be/books?id=YyIfmHx7fwgC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=mexican+figurines+pretty+ladies&source=bl&ots=UOaK14vGaU&sig=ppwTuTlgDi0FUkphFUPkNsBpgng&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf4I-egufQAhWJZiYKHdooBiUQ6AEIVDAR#v=onepage&q=mexican%20figurines%20pretty%20ladies&f=false

Hands on objects:
https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/C0096785.html/   Image
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/search?f%5BTYPE%5D%5B%5D=IMAGE&page=2&q=astrology&qf%5B%5D=map&view=grid
Example of human being becoming the object of the object


Findley, Sheila A. 1997. Not Just Pretty Ladies: An Analysis of Anthropomorphic Clay Figurines from the Preclassic Site of Chup ́ıcuaro, Guanajuato, Mexico. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Departement of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.
https://books.google.be/books?id=WyW9RK6l8b0C&pg=PA238&lpg=PA238&dq=pretty+ladies+figurines+clay+preclassic+Mexico&source=bl&ots=VJqTx2TNok&sig=hBIEIAhNjlwO_IpaRWy8WUF08zg&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false


Wendy
Very simple: downloaded via FTP 200 sounds on server:
“We are below the America”

Donatella
Guided tour: From Pretty Ladies to the godess. Collage of informations found on the internet
Performed “live”

Ariana
Context, background
printed images
of beamed on the vitrines

Mia
Simultaneously at two places at the same time
Merge of the architectures of the rooms
Sound from the room downstairs


spectrum of guides
different stories