LIAS Workshop: Beyond Restitution: Indigenous Practices, Museums, and Heritage
07. Feb
Friday, February 7th 2024, 12pm - 7.30pm
Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg | C40.704
Language: English, with simultaneous translation from and to Spanish and Portuguese
Please register at lias.event@leuphana.de by 29 January 2025.
This workshop connects Indigenous representatives, artists, and researchers with European collections. One of the most salient characteristics of European collecting and musealization was to separate so-called objects from Indigenous peoples and their practices. This workshop asks what is needed to undo this violent separation.
Regarding collections from South America, Germany has a special responsibility: Since the burning down of the Museu Nacional da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in 2018, for example, Germany has been one of the biggest holders of objects from the Upper Rio Negro (Amazonia) Indigenous communities.
The main questions of the event are:
What does it take
… to collect without owning?
… to restitute meaning?
… to return practices?
… to respect Indigenous approaches to care?
… to facilitate ritual practices?
Among the experts invited are: Glicéria Tupinambá, anthropologist and artist, Serra do Padeiro, Bahia, Brazil; Francy Baniwa, anthropologist, Içana River, Amazon, Brazil; Francisco Huichiaqueo, artist and filmmaker, Wallmapu, Chile accompanied by members of the Mapuche Community of Bollilco; Mama José Shibulata Zarabata and José Manuel Sauna Mamatacan (representing the Kággaba, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia); Christine Chávez, Curator of the Americas Collections, MARKK Hamburg; Romy Köhler, Department of Anthropology of the Americas, Bonn University; Stefanie Schien, Curator of the South America Collection, Ethnologisches Museum zu Berlin; Frank Usbeck, Curator for the Americas at the State Art Collections Dresden / Ethnographic Collections Saxony; Carla Jaimes Betancourt, Professor of Cultural Heritage, Department of Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn (moderator).
The workshop is made possible by collaboration with the research training group “Cultures of Critique”, the Leuphana University Kunstraum, and the São Paulo-based project “Decay Without Mourning: Future Thinking, Heritage Practices”, funded by Volkswagen Foundation, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Wallenberg Foundation, and the RiksbankensJubileumsfond.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Susanne Leeb