>“The Other Nefertiti” talks about decolonizing our minds, democratizing culture, and activating artifacts. We strived to make this cultural object publicly accessible and to promote a contemporary and critical approach to how the so-called “Global North“ deals with heritage and the representation of “the Other.” We should tell stories of entanglement and deconstruct them. Nefertiti is an excellent case for telling stories that differ from the dominant narrative and seeing how they intertwine.
You can tell this is from 2015. Reads like parody nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I was into that writing too. And I'm into Nefertiti forever and ever.
Yes, and 'counter-intervention to imperial cleptomaniac continuities' is way over the top.
But I think we could do with more of that language still today: it was healthy protest. You can understand something better when you critique and reverse it, question inherent assumptions. 'Decolonizing our minds' is exactly that for a specific set of cultural backgrounds.
Whether you agree afterwards -- the conclusions you come to -- is different from the health of being able to do so.
The issue isn’t with subverting the dominant paradigm to have a look through a different perspective, it’s with the language of parallel construction, where an alternative reality is built around special phraseology that gives the user a veneer of separation and superiority (from their own perspective). This is a crude shortcut to discourse that is incredibly divisive and not at all useful at changing a society; instead it seeks to replace it - memetic colonisation, if you will.
It’s a variation on coming to a debate and refusing to speak the same language, so you can declare victory without actually engaging in the debate in a meaningful way. When you redefine words or bring new ones that frame your conclusion as the valid one, you cannot change the opinion of anyone not using your language, and presumably, if they are using your language they share your views already.
Language then becomes merely a token of group identity and not meaningfully a means of communication on the contested issues.
If you want to convince indigenous peoples that vaccinations are beneficial and necessary, you aren’t going to help many people by dropping off pamphlets in English or shouting at them in Latin. If you want to create change, use the language of the minds you wish to convince.
It actually seems to be a rare case of using the ideas intelligently. Taking a covert 3D scan of a bust, recreating it and burying it in the Sahara desert would be an act of madness without some sort of framework to explain why doing that means something.
They've managed to find a form of protest that is constructive because they thought very carefully about what behaviour they objected to. It's quite impressive that they managed to do something that is clearly subversive without inconveniencing anyone or doing anything that can be criticised. That, in turn, suggests some ingenious thinking. I doubt they'd have found it without something like a "counter-intervention to imperial cleptomaniac continuities in European museums" line of thought. The writing holds up well.
> „Artists ‘steal’ Queen Nefertiti bust by secretly scanning and releasing 3D printing data online. The scanning was an act of protest against Western museums taking artifacts from abroad and claiming them as their own.“
> -- The Independent
I feel there's value in musueums having items from other places, and I would like to see a massive spread: the world is a big place and it helps to see how big. But what bothers me is that they say the museum appeared to have scanned data of the bust for years and didn't release it, ie claimed and retained exclusive ownership of that, and that is something it's harder to support.
A physical item has to be somewhere, in one location. Digital can be shared.
Secretly scanning and releasing the data about an item of immense importance is a wonderful act of protest, specifically because it highlights what the museum should have done, and did not.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 11.0 ms ] threadYou can tell this is from 2015. Reads like parody nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I was into that writing too. And I'm into Nefertiti forever and ever.
But I think we could do with more of that language still today: it was healthy protest. You can understand something better when you critique and reverse it, question inherent assumptions. 'Decolonizing our minds' is exactly that for a specific set of cultural backgrounds.
Whether you agree afterwards -- the conclusions you come to -- is different from the health of being able to do so.
It’s a variation on coming to a debate and refusing to speak the same language, so you can declare victory without actually engaging in the debate in a meaningful way. When you redefine words or bring new ones that frame your conclusion as the valid one, you cannot change the opinion of anyone not using your language, and presumably, if they are using your language they share your views already.
Language then becomes merely a token of group identity and not meaningfully a means of communication on the contested issues.
If you want to convince indigenous peoples that vaccinations are beneficial and necessary, you aren’t going to help many people by dropping off pamphlets in English or shouting at them in Latin. If you want to create change, use the language of the minds you wish to convince.
They've managed to find a form of protest that is constructive because they thought very carefully about what behaviour they objected to. It's quite impressive that they managed to do something that is clearly subversive without inconveniencing anyone or doing anything that can be criticised. That, in turn, suggests some ingenious thinking. I doubt they'd have found it without something like a "counter-intervention to imperial cleptomaniac continuities in European museums" line of thought. The writing holds up well.
> -- The Independent
I feel there's value in musueums having items from other places, and I would like to see a massive spread: the world is a big place and it helps to see how big. But what bothers me is that they say the museum appeared to have scanned data of the bust for years and didn't release it, ie claimed and retained exclusive ownership of that, and that is something it's harder to support.
A physical item has to be somewhere, in one location. Digital can be shared.
Secretly scanning and releasing the data about an item of immense importance is a wonderful act of protest, specifically because it highlights what the museum should have done, and did not.