Staging the gaze in museum ethnography

The museum apparatus does not simply exhibit ethnographic objects, but stages the ethnographic as its own object (even if hidden in plain sight), as its “epistemological technology” (Preziosi, 2006: 75) reproduces a supposed knowledge by means of, precisely, exhibitions. Making this a visible concern of and for ethnographic (or museological) enquiry has often been done by employing artists to make (temporary) “interventions” (as by Fred Wilson) – where, nonetheless, curatorial understanding of the institution remains largely unaffected. In this presentation, I explore ongoing debate at the Humboldt Forum’s Africa Galleries – at least, that aspect which is staged publicly. At one end of the current exhibition, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ film, "Les Statues Meurent Aussi", plays on a loop, exemplifying the anthropological heritage that Marc Augé called its “double relativity” (“for, as we know, others also define what is for them ‘the other’” [1998: xvi]); and, at the other end, there is a gallery addressing the ethics of photography (as an instance of the gaze in ethnography), under the indicative curatorial title “omissions”. The distinctly temporary feel of these galleries – with questions concerning how and why (and for whom) the museum’s Benin artefacts are “presented” in the rooms in-between – testifies to an unravelling of the Humboldt Forum’s “mission” as a so-called World Museum. Intended for a global tourist gaze (“edutainment”) this is challenged here, becoming an object of and for theoretical reflection (Lippard, 1999) in the ostensibly paradoxical project of a (potentially) decolonial curatorial practice (Mignolo, 2011).