The Museum as Memory

Towards Multiple Ways of Remembering and Forgetting

18 May 2022, 8 PM
Iwalewahaus Bayreuth, Foyer
Wölfelstraße 2, 95444 Bayreuth
 
The discussion will be live-streamed.
 

Museums are also places for the (re)negotiation of memory and should be all the more a public space for the diverse concerns and groups within a society. Yet, which memories find their way into the institution of the museum, and which do not? How does this happen? Who shapes, founds and forms museums today and in the future? Whose memories are ignored? Who has access to the memories collected in museums? What alternatives are there? At Iwalewahaus, interdisciplinary practitioner Avni Sethi, curator Latika Gupta, artist and curator Molemo Moiloa as well as José Eduardo Ferreira Santos, co-founder and curator of the Arcevo da Laje will discuss the potential – as well as the limits - of the institution of the museum to become a space for diverse and multidirectional remembering.

José Eduardo Ferreira Santos is a resident of the railway suburb in Salvador, Brazil. Together with Vilma Santos, he is founder and curator ofis a resident of the railway suburb in Salvador, Brazil. Together with Vilma Santos, he is founder and curator of the Acervo da Laje, a collection and cultural centre which investigates the invisible art of workers from the outskirts of Salvador. José Eduardo is an educator and holds a MA in Psychology and a PhD in Public Health from the Universidade Federal da Bahia.

Latika Gupta has worked as a curator at the NGMA and KHOJ International Artists' Association in Delhi, India, besides curating independent exhibitions. She has received fellowships from the Nehru Trust and India Foundation for the Arts, and was a research fellow at SOAS, London on a Charles Wallace India Trust grant (2017). From 2016-2020 she was Associate Editor at Marg Publications. She is a part of the editorial collective of 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in 1 Object.

Molemo Moiloa lives and works in Johannesburg, and has worked in various capacities at the intersection of creative practice and community organizing. She currently works on notions of ungovernability, social infrastructures of cultural organizing, and relationships to nature. She is one half of the artist collaborative MADEYOULOOK, who explore everyday popular imaginaries and their modalities for knowledge production. She currently leads research at Andani.Africa, with a focus on open restitution debates and is one of the inaugural AfricaNoFilter Fellows 2020/2021 for this subject. She also works with Arts Collaboratory, the Market Photo Workshop, and the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation among others.

Avni Sethi is an interdisciplinary practitioner working at the cross sections of culture, memory, space and the body. She conceptualised and curated the Conflictorium - Museum of Conflict and Mehnat Manzil, Museum of Work. Trained in multiple dance idioms, her performances are largely inspired by syncretic faith traditions and sites of contested narratives. She works and lives in Ahmedabad, India.


The discussion was moderated by
Daniel Stoevesandt, Director of the Goethe-Institut Hamburg.