Using emotion to breathe life into museum collections
Journalist and filmmaker Wana Udobang reflects on her conversations with fellows and staff at the MK&G Hamburg who took part in the first NEO Lab Fellowship.
For centuries, museums have been a treasure trove of memories, cartographers of histories and curators of heirlooms. Throughout this process our relationships to these cultural institutions have often been one of reverence and power. They dictated the stories being told, the importance of the objects and determined value through its collections.
Overtime we have watched how these spaces, their objects and collections have kept some in and left others lurking outside its gates. Museums have often reinforced this gatekeeping by speaking to themselves and working with those who dwell within their already fortified walls. But the Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe Hamburg through its NEO Lab Fellowship intends to better serve the needs of its communities and users of its digital collections.
An invitation to experiment
The online fellowship is a platform for multidisciplinary practitioners to work on questions and provocations. Five teams were selected, then paired with colleagues in different departments to develop concepts that would turn to prototypes.
Through a series of workshops the fellowship is an invitation to experiment with new ideas and methodologies. By working with communities both internally and outside of museum culture, it aims to transform storytelling and how collections are conceived and experienced.
Rethinking collections collectively
Curator of the musical instruments collection at MK&G Olaf Kirsch explains that discussing the fellows’ different access points to a museum’s collection from their different perspectives was an inspiring and view widening experience. He adds further that:
“in our discussion we reflected on the crucial importance to offer points of contact to different user groups connecting their life experience to the historical objects and issues present in the museum’s collections”
By proposing a series of provocations around accessibility, emotional connection, relevance, and participatory storytelling, teams of multidisciplinary artists, researchers, designers and activists responded through an open call with a variety of concepts and ideas to stimulate newer kinds of interactions with the MK&G’s digital collections. Concepts ranged from the exploration of friendship and audio stories to accessibility toolkits, spatial integration and even rethinking design. One thing has been clear, underscoring all the concepts is emotional language, connectivity and belonging.
These ideas and methodologies are using emotion as a point of departure, to breathe life into the often static and stoic nature of the collections. By imbuing them with living memories, histories and inviting the audience to participate in the storytelling process, we move from casually looking to seeing. Hearing to listening. Making the passive more active, enabling a vital exchange between audiences and objects. Fostering community is at the centre of these provocations and community as we know is where belonging resides.
The view from outside
Many of the fellows come from outside of the museum ecosystem. A welcome departure from the systems of the old guard. Something that many of the fellows allude to is the intimidation that comes with working with a museum. Artist and animator Azam Masoumzadeh aptly describes this kind of intimidation as “intellectual shame”. It describes how both the language and user experiences of museums can make us feel like we don’t have the right credentials to engage with objects and spaces, essentially leaving us with a feeling of inadequacy or rejection.
Olaf believes that the experience of non-museum professionals has been essential to being able to address different groups of users and visitors as well as avoiding the redundant discourse in the institutions. A thing that can serve as a blueprint for other museums to follow.
Artists, researchers, designers and activists were invited to play, tinker with ideas, easing the pressure of coming up with a solution but rather a plurality of concepts that could be further deconstructed. This freedom to create is something many fellows have applauded and intend to incorporate into their own practice.
Placing humanity back into the museum
For fellows like Janine Georg and Calum Perrin who live with invisible illnesses, much of this work of connection and belonging is about placing humanity back into the museum and for them much of that lies in the other side of the room within the programming.
Antonia Stergiou also reflects similar ideas stating that making a safe space is crucial to how art is created. In their concept together with Konstantina Bousmpoura they are integrating the Freiraum, the MK&G’s open project and meeting space with the museum and its digital collections. Bringing in QR codes to make contemporary the experience of digital collections and connect the digital space to the physical.
For Konstantina Bousmpoura, she says:
“I think the MK&G is creating a new way of participating in the museum, a way of seeing people not only as visitors but also as users and content creators”
The NEO Collections project has been as much about the objects as it has been about reframing a practice and making meaning. It is taking what is often seen as ordinary and giving communities a visceral experience saying to them that they belong here now and always.
Wana Udobang is a storyteller whose work exists in writing, poetry, performance, filmmaking and curatorial projects.
Click here to watch her conversations with the five fellowship teams.
For more articles on NEO Collections check out our Medium page.
NEO Collections is funded by the Digital Culture Programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Funded by The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
