1.5 Blog Post Four: Digestable Texts and Images Edition

After a short holiday, the group is simultaneously expecting to prepare a simple display of campaign ideas and images for next week, so this week, we’ll be completing the screening and validation of the images in anticipation of putting them together next week.

Based on the large number of essential comments James gave in our last submission of the initial text draft, this week, we will re-edit the text content and make the following changes:

General Goal: to provide information and history in a digestible format

  1. Ties to colonisation and enslavement
    Natural history museum
    Funding structures
    Who actually built it
  2. Weird stories
    Puma/animal inhabitants
    Old societies
  3. Where to go from here
    How can people continue to engage with the space
    What areas to dig into that we haven’t
    Reflection space for visitors

 

At the same time, reflective work is going on in parallel.

-How are we going to structure decolonisation?

The decolonisation of art museums has been in high demand since the 21st century, and the group’s research on decolonisation was mainly in the buildings and collections of the Old College, the predecessor of the Natural History Museum.

-What kind of image display do we need?

In this five-part narrative text, James inspired us with a hand-drawn diagram. He suggested that by placing the Old College building in the centre of the image, the ” backstory ” could be unfolded like a radiogram, like a tree of knowledge.

James’ Suggestion for structuring the text

 

David Hockney once suggested that “collage” is “about the bigger picture.” This led to the idea that we could refer to Dadaist artist Hannah Hock’s well-known work Excising Germany’s Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Era with a Dada Chopper by collaging images into overlapping, irregular forms.

Exciting Germany’s Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Era with a Dada Chopper, Hannah Hock, 1919 – 20, a montage of photographs, collage, mixed media, 114 x 90 cm, Neue Staatliche Kunsthalle, Berlin, Germany

Maryam also showed us some URLs with her suggestions, which impressived us a lot:

https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/facility/reprographics

https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/news/travelling-exhibition-highlights-campaigns-fair-housing-conditions-scotland

* Derry Film and Video Workshop, led by Sara Greavu in collaboration with Ciara Phillips

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/483946/field-notes-zach-ngin-on-asia-art-archive-the-black-archives-and-archives-des-luttes-des-femmes-en-algrie-documenta-15/

https://mapmagazine.co.uk/voicing-archive-edinburgh-sculpture-workshop

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