March | 2014 | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Museum Fatigue Reads, March 22, 2014

March 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Social media offers an easy and satisfying way to quickly share interesting information with friends, students and colleagues. When I first joined Facebook, for example, I loved the fact that it was a passive way to post things without the temptation to impose myself on the inboxes of others. Read something interesting. Post. Someone likes it. They read it. Share. Frictionless joy all around. As the accretion of shares grown over years, however, finding an old post can be frustrating. […]

Categories: Museum Fatigue Reads • Tags: Facebook, high pants, Laura Croft, Michel Foucault, North Korea, selfie, Target, Umberto Eco, unions, value, video games, 打鬼子

Michael Taussig on Field Notebooks—I Swear I Saw This

March 17, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“I think of the hard work I have done and even more of all the waiting and boredom as not exactly irrelevant but as nothing more than a necessary prelude for chance to show its hand” (Taussig 2011:59). Last night I finished reading Michael Taussig’s reflections on drawings in anthropological field notebooks (namely his) in his 2011 book, I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (University of Chicago Press.) Similar to my experience with most of his […]

Categories: Anthropology, Drawing, Fieldwork, Quotes • Tags: drawings, fieldnotes, Georges Bataille, I Swear I Saw This, Joan Didion, John Berger, Michael Taussig, notebooks, roland barthes, Walter Benjamin

HU Visual Anthropology Class in the Local Newspaper

March 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I was really excited an proud to see that this semester’s Visual Anthropology class got a writeup in this past Monday’s local newspaper. Mila Koumpilova, an education reporter at the Pioneer Press, visited our class the week before, sat through some student projects, interviewed students and then went to observe a filming session with a student and neighbor. Her article, “Film anthropology class bridges gap between Hamline U and neighborhood,” does a great job summarizing the history, goals and pedagogy of the class in a […]

Categories: Anthropology, Teaching, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Hamline University, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, neighborhood, news, Robert Flaherty, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, student projects, Visual Anthropology Class

(Simple) Mobile Visual Ethnography Equipment

March 13, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I’m often telling folks that the goal of my visual anthropology class is not to make filmmakers, but to use basic equipment to have my students make films together with others… For the past few years, students in my class have been working with local volunteers from our university neighborhood—The Hamline Midway—to make simple films together. During the first half of the semester they get to know one another, and the students get to learn the equipment, by making a […]

Categories: Anthropology, Fieldwork, Gear, How To, Visual Anthropology • Tags: FlipCam, FurryHead Windscreens, iPhone, visual ethnography, Zoom H1

Native Wear (for White Kids)

March 11, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While shopping last week I snapped an image of some clothing that feature Native American imagery. Nearby were other items of clothing with some kind of faux native cloth or rug design. I’m surprised that such imagery still sells—retains some kind of exotic value—with the white middle class customers that I am sure are its target market. I guess the upscale “tribal fashion” trend of the past few years has finally arrived a the local mall. *UPDATE: Heidi Klum’s Redface […]

Categories: Consumption, Value • Tags: clothing, Native American, red face, tribal fashion