The Re-Staging
The core problem and contradiction of the diorama is the reduction of representational complexity into one single tableau, frozen for eternity, claiming authenticity through its realism. Instead of erasing this history of a white, Eurocentric way of producing, transmitting and fixing knowledge about the world and the supposed 'other', Staging Dioramas intended to examine the display as a system of complex assemblages. Rather than exhibiting information about other cultures and habitats, they are to be seen as a certain way of constructing the 'other' through the knowledge which it assembles and the specific way this knowledge is presented. The first step was to understand the mechanism of this specific way of producing and presenting knowledge. Another question, addressed in Staging Dioramas II, was how to make this mechanism visible within the exhibition display itself.
During Staging Dioramas I, practices of diorama production were examined. This knowledge was then applied in a workshop format together with theatre maker Simone Dede Ayivi, the artist Yorgos Sapountzis and the historian Benjamin Zachariah, in which different modes of visibility were discussed, rehearsed, and performed. This second phase took place 25-27 June 2015 at grüntaler9, a project space in Berlin.
Specific elements that remain invisible within the display were analyzed, such as authorship (Who constructed the contents? What were their sources? Who is represented and do they have a voice?), temporality (When was the diorama made? What were the political, cultural and social contexts of that time? What time period does the depicted scene come from and can it be updated?) and lastly, contexts of the diorama (Who is the intended spectator and what are they looking at and from which perspective? Where is the scene situated? What is presented around it?). These neglected parameters were reflected upon and put into practice in a number of ways in different modes and combinations.
Alongside the focus on the absent, unexamined aspects of the diorama, the workshop also confronted itself with the questions it posed to the diorama. The question of how to put the participant's own diverse authorships, temporalities and perspectives into a one diorama without contradicting one view against another. What the workshop finally revealed was that the complexity of representation in the diorama is related to the core issue within curatorship - who gets to decide what to show and how it is represented and discussed? How is it possible to represent complexity without proposing a consensus that isn't there and opening space for disagreement and differences of opinion? The final workshop presentation made the difficulties of considering and criticising the representation practices of dioramas visible: its critique was presented in the very form it was criticising. It finally reproduced the problems it examined rather than confronting them and thereby it made visible the importance and difficulty of the curators responsibility towards the treated subject not only on the conceptual level but also, and most important, towards its practical translation into an exhibition display, which demonstrates and respects the antagonistic positions of its subject and its collaborators.
The experience of this phase of the project made it clear that it is not just necessary to expand and intensify forms of practicing and rehearsing within dioramas but that they should become the mode of presentation for dioramas today. By underlining and performing different temporalities, authorships and contexts, dioramas can be a tool to demonstrate the power of representation in institutional contexts such as the museum as well as zoos, shop window and displays in shopping malls etc.
This attempt to reveal complexity and translating it into the specific form of representation of the diorama is doomed to failure. It is in representing this failure that Staging Dioramas wishes to establish a practice of continuous reflection of the antagonisms and contradictions within the diorama and its mode of representation.
A project in the framework of the Masters Program Cultures of the Curatorial at Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. With the friendly support of Dresden State Art Collections, Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and gruentaler9 – a space towards the performative.
During Staging Dioramas I, practices of diorama production were examined. This knowledge was then applied in a workshop format together with theatre maker Simone Dede Ayivi, the artist Yorgos Sapountzis and the historian Benjamin Zachariah, in which different modes of visibility were discussed, rehearsed, and performed. This second phase took place 25-27 June 2015 at grüntaler9, a project space in Berlin.
Specific elements that remain invisible within the display were analyzed, such as authorship (Who constructed the contents? What were their sources? Who is represented and do they have a voice?), temporality (When was the diorama made? What were the political, cultural and social contexts of that time? What time period does the depicted scene come from and can it be updated?) and lastly, contexts of the diorama (Who is the intended spectator and what are they looking at and from which perspective? Where is the scene situated? What is presented around it?). These neglected parameters were reflected upon and put into practice in a number of ways in different modes and combinations.
Alongside the focus on the absent, unexamined aspects of the diorama, the workshop also confronted itself with the questions it posed to the diorama. The question of how to put the participant's own diverse authorships, temporalities and perspectives into a one diorama without contradicting one view against another. What the workshop finally revealed was that the complexity of representation in the diorama is related to the core issue within curatorship - who gets to decide what to show and how it is represented and discussed? How is it possible to represent complexity without proposing a consensus that isn't there and opening space for disagreement and differences of opinion? The final workshop presentation made the difficulties of considering and criticising the representation practices of dioramas visible: its critique was presented in the very form it was criticising. It finally reproduced the problems it examined rather than confronting them and thereby it made visible the importance and difficulty of the curators responsibility towards the treated subject not only on the conceptual level but also, and most important, towards its practical translation into an exhibition display, which demonstrates and respects the antagonistic positions of its subject and its collaborators.
The experience of this phase of the project made it clear that it is not just necessary to expand and intensify forms of practicing and rehearsing within dioramas but that they should become the mode of presentation for dioramas today. By underlining and performing different temporalities, authorships and contexts, dioramas can be a tool to demonstrate the power of representation in institutional contexts such as the museum as well as zoos, shop window and displays in shopping malls etc.
This attempt to reveal complexity and translating it into the specific form of representation of the diorama is doomed to failure. It is in representing this failure that Staging Dioramas wishes to establish a practice of continuous reflection of the antagonisms and contradictions within the diorama and its mode of representation.
A project in the framework of the Masters Program Cultures of the Curatorial at Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. With the friendly support of Dresden State Art Collections, Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi and gruentaler9 – a space towards the performative.
Images: Staging Dioramas II, grüntaler9, Photos: Teena Lange, Stefan Aue, Jana Eske
Proudly powered by Weebly