CfP: Working on Things. On the Social, Political, and Economic History of Collected Objects
Working on Things: On the Social, Political, and Economic History of Collected Objects
International Conference, Berlin
November 21–22, 2016
Organizer: “Dinosaurs in Berlin. Brachiosaurus brancai
as an Icon of Politics, Science and Popular Culture”, funded by the
Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in cooperation
with the base project “Mobile Objects” as part of the German Research
Foundation’s cluster of excellence “Image Knowledge Gestaltung: An
Interdisciplinary Laboratory”.
“Art
is beautiful, but it’s a lot of work.” Karl Valentin’s aphorism can be
applied to all kinds of collected objects, regardless of whether they
belong to the fields of art history, natural
history, ethnography, archaeology, or history. Various kinds of work
have to be invested in objects before they become worthy of collection,
before they can be researched, preserved, and exhibited. Work on the
dinosaur skeleton of
Brachiosaurus brancai in Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde, for
example, extended far beyond the decades of the fossil’s preparation in
the Museum. This object’s history also includes the colonial forced
labour on cotton plantations in German East Africa
at the beginning of the twentieth century that produced the packing
material necessary for transporting the findings to Europe. Such
figurations of work across time and space form the focus of the
conference “Working on Things”.
The
conference thus builds upon studies in the history of science and the
sociology of knowledge that have shifted the attention from the contents
of knowledge to its practices. Science as
a practice has been considered in terms of the “fabrication” or
creation of facts and its functioning as a major enterprise has come to
the fore in recent studies. The conference will take the potential of
this
practical and material turn seriously yet at the same time
proposes to expand it. By analysing the work that is invested in
objects of knowledge, the very concepts of practice and of object can be
opened into broader social, cultural, juridical,
political, and economic dimensions. Practices as work are thus
understood as technical, administrative, artisanal, artistic,
classifying, or maintenance activities, which are strongly defined by
economics and which in turn produce economies of their own. They
are shaped by political and social contexts, cultural conventions,
hierarchies, and regulations, and should therefore be questioned with
regard to their function in creating values, and social in/equalities.
The goal of the conference is to combine an object-focused
history of knowledge with approaches in social and political history
that move beyond classical narratives of social history or the history
of collections and institutions.
The
conference therefore intends to open a discussion about collected
objects from the fields of natural history, art history, ethnography,
archaeology, and history as focal points for often
globally distributed and historically specific work settings from the
mid-nineteenth century onwards: which kinds of materials and immaterial
labour had to be invested in order to acquire or produce a given object,
in order to transport it, examine it, exhibit
it, or valuate it? What existing knowledge, and which social,
political, and legal conditions characterized this work? How was the
work remunerated and categorized? What types of materials, tools or
techniques were used? Who were the actors? What types of
complications occurred in object-related work settings?
The
conference encourages examinations of work settings relating to
collection items both within and beyond institutions in order to better
understand their historical peculiarities. Furthermore,
it aims at describing global and local interdependencies of very
different kinds of work on objects.
Our leading questions are:
˗
Working on objects in a global context: what global policies are incorporated in the work on objects?
How were/are global forms of work rendered visible or invisible?
˗
Working on objects and
mobility: what type of labour has to be performed in order to transport
the object and what infrastructures are required? What happens to
collection items when the work-flow is interrupted?
What kind of work can lead to the object becoming stabilized in a
museum or library setting?
˗
Working on objects and
the economy: which processes of valuation and value creation influence
work on the object or are a result thereof? How has work on objects been
evaluated and how have these evaluations
changed? Who worked on the object and under which socio-economic
conditions?
˗
Working on objects and
institutions: how did work on the object develop within the collecting
institutions? What types of work have been and are being carried out in
order for objects to become a part of collections
or exhibitions?
With
this call for papers we would like to invite scholars from various
disciplines: from the history and theory of science, art history,
cultural studies, social and economic history, the
history and theory of collections, as well as museology. We welcome
contributions which explore historical or current object-related work
settings from the mid-nineteenth century onwards and which discuss them
from diachronic or systematic perspectives.
The
conference language is English. A publication is planned. Please send
applications together with an abstract (max. 500 words) and a CV to
pan@mfn-berlin.de no later than March 18th, 2016.
For further information please contact
Mareike Vennen (mareike.vennen@tu-berlin.de)
Ina Heumann (ina.heumann@mfn-berlin.de)