Paddle ? Congo, Chalmers expedition
I've just been looking through a big folder of stuff in the Rotherham Ethnographic collection. It was all a bit disapointing really I've no idea what I expected to find but it all looked a bit car boot sale on the photoes. I like this Paddle entry - their is a picture of a woman holding it in a pair of white gloves - I'm going to google Chalmers expedition and see if I go anywhere it's funny to think that 15 years ago I'd have had to say I'm going to the libary for a month to try and find out about it.
The thing about heart of Darkness which struck me is that it's clearly a metaphorical journey but it feels really important that it's based on fact. Is this because the journey parrallels a personal journey into the inner self and both experiences are based on personal experience? Can you help me out Kate I like this parallel because it's really silly in a daft post modern ironic way but it links closely to this idea of the importance of truth in objects narratives and interpretations.
posted by spodsheff @ 8:21 AM
2 Comments:
I wonder about this idea of truth. I have been thinking about it too (see fake tales of San Fransisco) There is a debate at the moment in the blogging worlds about whether it is OK to make up what you did on your blog.
My take on it is that if texts are traces of social practices, then it is interesting that the link between the text and the practice is narrative, in your mind.
But then again, the reason that I like artifacts is that they are real.
I liked the weird ethnographic artifact in Doncaster because at one point it was something else, not a musuem object, but part of somebody's cultural system (that was the mask type object).
So it does matter where you trace the object back to and I think those resonances have meaning.
Is everything a fake object?
The object is real and it exists in the present - it's past and future are dependant on conjecture - I think you would like to build a set - the next time I'm doing this kind of work you should pop down for a couple of hours.
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