Staging Dioramas is an analysis of the construction of knowledge by the diorama and a reinterpretation of the display from a position of marginalized and silenced knowledge. The research was structured in different stages. The starting point was the collection of different kinds of knowledge about the diorama, its construction and its function. As part of a research trip to India a workshop on dioramas at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Bombay was organized. This museum is famous for its miniature dioramas depicting the history of urbanization and crafts in India and the workshop concentrated on the question of what the diorama can reveal regarding its hidden histories. The same kind of dioramas which are on display in Bombay, commissioned by the former British colonizers, can also be seen in the GRASSI Museum in Leipzig.
On returning to Germany, the project investigated these displays in the GRASSI Museum as a kind of experimental set up in order to find out more about the construction and production of knowledge within an ethnographic museum and certain display formats. Interviews with the museum staff were conducted by the curatorial team of Staging Dioramas, concentrating on the relationship of people's jobs in the museum to dioramas. The focus was on the question of what the people who curate, build and work with dioramas do in their practical work in the context of the display. What do they know about the diorama and what kinds of knowledge are therefore inscribed in it. How does it help to understand its potentials and its problems in order to re-stage the modes of representation articulated in and through the diorama?
In the next stage this specific knowledge was set in a wider context by discussing it during the conference and workshop Staging Dioramas 1: Memory – Representation – Fiction in the GRASSI Museum with invited guests. The historian Benjamin Zachariah, the artists Yorgos Sapountzis and Atul Dodiya reflected upon their artistic and academic practice in relation to the diorama.
In a third stage the invisible and implicit knowledge of the dioramas examined in the GRASSI Museum was embodied by rehearsing different modes of storytelling with and through the diorama. In this part, entitled Staging Dioramas II: The Re-Staging, the theatre maker Simone Dede Ayivi, Benjamin Zachariah and Yorgos Sapountzis were invited to work with the curators. By re-staging knowledge gained in the project space grüntaler9, the aim was to throw new light on how knowledge and meaning can arise from this outmoded and problematic form of display.
In future stages, Staging Dioramas will concentrate on specific aspects of the diorama, re-staging them in different artistic contexts.
Staging Dioramas I and II are projects in the context of the Masters Program Cultures of the Curatorial at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. With the friendly support of the Dresden State Art Collections – SKD, the GRASSI Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Goethe Institute, the Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and grüntaler9 – a space towards the performative.
On returning to Germany, the project investigated these displays in the GRASSI Museum as a kind of experimental set up in order to find out more about the construction and production of knowledge within an ethnographic museum and certain display formats. Interviews with the museum staff were conducted by the curatorial team of Staging Dioramas, concentrating on the relationship of people's jobs in the museum to dioramas. The focus was on the question of what the people who curate, build and work with dioramas do in their practical work in the context of the display. What do they know about the diorama and what kinds of knowledge are therefore inscribed in it. How does it help to understand its potentials and its problems in order to re-stage the modes of representation articulated in and through the diorama?
In the next stage this specific knowledge was set in a wider context by discussing it during the conference and workshop Staging Dioramas 1: Memory – Representation – Fiction in the GRASSI Museum with invited guests. The historian Benjamin Zachariah, the artists Yorgos Sapountzis and Atul Dodiya reflected upon their artistic and academic practice in relation to the diorama.
In a third stage the invisible and implicit knowledge of the dioramas examined in the GRASSI Museum was embodied by rehearsing different modes of storytelling with and through the diorama. In this part, entitled Staging Dioramas II: The Re-Staging, the theatre maker Simone Dede Ayivi, Benjamin Zachariah and Yorgos Sapountzis were invited to work with the curators. By re-staging knowledge gained in the project space grüntaler9, the aim was to throw new light on how knowledge and meaning can arise from this outmoded and problematic form of display.
In future stages, Staging Dioramas will concentrate on specific aspects of the diorama, re-staging them in different artistic contexts.
Staging Dioramas I and II are projects in the context of the Masters Program Cultures of the Curatorial at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. With the friendly support of the Dresden State Art Collections – SKD, the GRASSI Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Goethe Institute, the Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and grüntaler9 – a space towards the performative.
Staging Dioramas I
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Staging Dioramas II
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Staging Dioramas III
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Image above: American Museum of Natural History New York, Photo: Jessica Páez