DECOLONIZATION READING GROUP

This was an intense, challenging and important conversation (fully documented here), which made me think of the importance to bring this stimulating discussion into our individual work in the investigations. In my previous research projects, I haven’t had the chance to deeply reflect on decolonization issues, and for me this is a great opportunity also to explore my unconscious biases. Following Arran’s suggestion, after the meeting I started reading ‘Me and White Supremacy’ by Layla Saad.

As a follow up to this conversation, I started asking myself how my research on sound can contribute to the decolonization agenda of museums. I feel that sound, with its different ontology and way of knowing the world, might be a really powerful medium to address issues of gaps and misrepresentation in collections, and I would like to start researching more around this area. In the Creative Lab of the Reconnect Recollect project last March I presented the soundwalks and sonic narratives as a way to connect collections, and we began reflecting on the potentialities of these formats also for the decolonization work. I look forward to exploring these opportunities further.

VISIT AT THE NATIONAL COLLECTION CENTRE

We had a wonderful day at the National Collection Centre. For me, it was the second time (I also visited the centre last year) and I was impressed by how quickly the space has grown in terms of objects displayed (entire sections were empty last year, and now full of objects) and human resources (there were three more Collection Access Facilitators and two more members in the Photo Studio). I couldn’t help but thinking that in the future the museums will also need to have a Sound Recording Studio where also the sounds, not only images, of the objects can be recorded and added to the digital collections. I love this space as it offers a new way to imagine the interaction with objects, not already pre-designed by curators, where you can create your own journey of discovery. At the same time, it feels that this space would require dedicated ways to enable interactions with objects (for example, scan the bar code to access directly the information online?) and routes across the different sections (for example, using thematic guided tour like the one we did today). Over lunch I had a lovely chat with Helen, one of the Facilitators, about potential ways to welcome visitors from the next year.

During the day, I also had the opportunity to talk with Bernard Musesengue. I shared with him the first discussion we had on decolonization, and I discovered that he was involved in a project at the Horniman museum to rethink the Eurocentric way museums describe and catalogue objects. He was fascinated by the potential of sound to suggest a different logic. He mentioned the sociologist Anibal Quijano who first coined the ‘coloniality of power’ concept and I thought this might be another suggestion for our reading group.

The bus journey was also particularly productive: I had a long chat with Daniel about the folk songs investigation and the role of sound in museums (my favourite topic!). I also shared with him the Smell Explorer, an advance search function for smell references in both historical text and visual sources developed by Odeuropa project. I recently read the most recent publication from the project (here) and I found it really clear in describing the different stages of the pipeline. I think it would be a great paper for a future Reading Group on Ontologies.

After the visit, I drafted my story ‘The Weaving Shuttle and the Steady Tune’ for the collaborative blog post on our visit. My story is dedicated to the folk songs investigation, and it connects a set of power loom shuttles to the Weaver’s song that I am annotating with Jennifer, reflecting on how this object is representative of the shift in technology that characterized the textile industry and the impact it had on the life of the workers. A shift which, in the song, is highlighted by the sonic metaphor of the ‘steady tune’ of the loom, which is never tired and always ready for another way of work. Looking forward to reading the other stories for the blog!

ORAL HISTORY INVESTIGATION Stef and I had a very productive investigation meeting on 26th May where we shared the progress in the development of visualizations and the insights we received from the Museum Analytics Conference (our presentation below).

VisOralHistory_MuseumAnalytics_20230518.pdf

We decided to arrange a dedicated meeting with Helen and Arran to discuss an Oral History workshop to be held in Autumn to extend the co-design of the visualization tool to the CE Partners. In the meantime, we will first share the investigation progress in one of the next Whole Team meetings (probably on 19 July).

DH CONFERENCE IN GRAZ

Anna Maria, Arran and I met to start discussing our presentation at the DH Conference in Graz (full programme here). We discussed the structure (overview of the project and methodology, presenting the workshop as a method, examples of collaboration from the investigations, reflections on potential and criticalities of AR applied to DH). We agreed that we will draft the presentation before Anna Maria’s maternity leave, so she can fully contribute to the ppt even if she can’t be at the Conference with us (our next meeting will be on 7th June).

NOTE ON THE NEXT WEEKS

From 13 to 23 June I will be on annual leave (I am going to Sicily for a family holiday), so next week I will be prioritizing the work on my datasheets. I am also working on three presentations for the following research and training events: