Ed Notes 11/29

 

• We haven’t had any real conversations about access, no shared definition, maybe not individually either, ineffective to try to apply this reading to our exhibition, only abstract terms. Let’s plan our exhibition. Do concrete things, have concrete goals, so little time left. 
• Can we start with a title? Themes?
• But how can we be more concrete if we don’t yet have a shared definition of access?
• Different missions and visions, but we can bring it together.
• Starting to get somewhere since last Tuesday
• Go around, share few words about themes
• Thought bubbles:
  • Home
  • Authenticity
  • Displacement
  • Sacredness/desecration
  • Motherhood/womanhood
  • Representation
  • Deconstruction/reconstruction
  • Power
  • Process of initiation
  • Linage/heritage/geneology
• These themes…what do they mean? They’re things that have already come up, what connections do we see?
• Agenda:
  • Come up with title
  • Come up with mission statement
  • Decide what entryway looks like (wall text, objects)
  • Supplemental materials
  • Advertising (window space? probably can’t because of other exhibition)
• Working toward title: 
  • Power addresses everyone’s 
  • Monique’s title: Ethical: Ways of Seeing (at least consider her vision, taking into account where we’ve ended up)
  • Ethics and power of exhibiting these objects (what does it mean for us to do it/that they’ve been exhibited/bought/sold before) 
  • The more we know the less sure we are
  • Kere exhibit had separate sections but unifying theme/title—if what unifies us is the fact that we had these classes, we can talk about what it means to do the work we’re doing
    • maybe that’s a group statement thing, not everything has to be a title
  • Exhibitions of Africa: Ways of Seeing
  • Using a verb, the process (knowing, doing, making) (exhibiting africa)
  • Use a colon!
  • Exhibiting Africa: The More We Learn, The Less We Know
    • significance/meaning of “learn” “know”
  • Questioning what the narrative
  • Exhibiting Africa: Knowing (fading out)
  • “Confronting?” asking people to engage with positionally
  • Confronting what we think we know (individually)
  • Gives viewer accountability
  • We don’t need to cram everything into this because we’re going to have a mission statement
  • Don’t want to imply that we are really representing “Africa,” definitely highlight that we’re not
  • Name the places they’re coming from “We brought these objects from __, __, and __ to…”
  • (Un)covering, (un)veiling—start mission statement with this “(un)covering the past” “(un)covering histories” “querying memory” 
  • Name places of origin in every blurb

 

• • Title: Exhibiting Africa: Seeing Past/Through What We “Know"

 

• For next class period: silent discussion for mission statement (come to class with thoughts)