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DIY Slums and Overpopulated Dystopias

October 12, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

This morning I received a most interesting advertisement in my Instagram feed, an appeal to sell me a software package of digital assets of “Future Slums” so that I can “create the overpopulated metropolises of sci-fi dystopias or shantytowns of a not-so-distant future for the largest cities in the world today.” We know that these topographies are tropes of SciFi movies and games, but I suppose until I saw an advertisement for an actual kit of prepared building materials to create […]

Categories: Mythologies • Tags: Digital Culture, dystopias, Kowloon Walled City, Science Fiction

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This School’s COVID-19 Video Has Filled Me With Dread

July 22, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

After watching this video I feel even worse about the upcoming semester. I am overcome with dread. I’m sure this school designed this video to make their students feel confident about the fall, but it’s a joke. It could have been made by The Onion or SNL. What is left behind in the quest to deal technically with the problem of a poorly managed pandemic is pretty much everything that makes teaching and learning in person valuable at all. No […]

Categories: Higher Education, Mythologies, pandemic, Uncategorized • Tags: COVID-19, pandemic

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Taiwan Election Sickness (March 21, 2000)

November 2, 2018 by Museum Fatigue

Many times over the years I have shared an anecdote with various colleagues who work in China about an article I once read in the Mainland Chinese newspaper, The Global Times, about “Election Sickness” in Taiwan during the second presidential election in March 2000. The article was memorable for its recounting of the deleterious effects that the democratic elections were having upon the bodies and minds of the electorate. I remembered clipping the article and saving it, but had forgotten […]

Categories: Bodies, Mythologies • Tags: democracy, election, sickness, Taiwan

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Two Iron Trunk Boxes Containing the $18.5m USD

June 15, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

FROM sunil GUEI Dearest One, I am the first duaghter of an ex military/ex president been an opposition party to the present Government of COTE D`IVOIRE. On the 19th sept 2002 my father/mother including every members of our family was murdered by the unknown REBELS during the time they attack our house by shooting and looting, even this is one of the things that contributed to the present crisis in our country today. God so kind I was not in […]

Categories: Mythologies • Tags: spam

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Cultural Categories: Christmas Lights

December 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: Mythologies • Tags: Christmas, Christmas Carol, holidays, lights, Nativity Scene, Santa Claus

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Representationally Hacking a “Life Group” at the Royal Ontario Museum

August 9, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

You have a phrase called “Golden Age.” We do not want to be depicted the way were were, when we were first discovered in our homeland in North America. We do not want museums to continue to present us as something from the past. We believe we are very, very much here now, and we are going be very important in the future. —George Erasmus, Chief, Assembly First Nations 1992. While visiting the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) this past August […]

Categories: Exhibitions and Representation, Museums, Mythologies • Tags: display, first nations, hacks, life group, Mohawk, native peoples, Royal Ontario Museum

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Roots of Chinese Culture Research Center

August 3, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While walking in Chicago Chinatown I passed by a nondescript doorway in an old brick building. Next to three old doorbells was a small piece of white paper taped up with heavy layers of weathered scotch tape. On it were written the words: “The Roots of Chinese Culture Research Center” It was a great mystery and seemed like the location for some kind of Lovecraftian adventure story. I wish that I had had time to stop in and get a […]

Categories: "Swords and Silk", China, Mythologies • Tags: Chinese Culture, mysteries

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“Sing Red to Fight Darkness”: Chinese Urban Development as Apocalypse

July 23, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“Yes, people are constructed by their material world, but often they are not themselves the agents behind that material world through which they must live” (Miller 2009: 84). “The apocalyptic describes not just the spilling forth of the unseen, but also of the undifferentiated matter of the possible, of what could have been and was not, of what neither came to be nor what went away” (Williams 2011: 6). While in Dalian last month I found myself with a free […]

Categories: China, End of Times, Material Culture, Mythologies, Photo Essays, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: apocalypse, Chinese Communist Party, corruption, 红色年代, Dalian, Daniel Miller, Evan Calder Williams, 钉子户, homes, Mao Zedong, nail houses, neighborhood, Omega Man, security, slogans, surveillance, tea, urban planning, 口号, 拆, 人情味

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Selling Lucky Telephone Numbers in Shanghai

July 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

  “13661588868” “I want to bring forth wealth, wealth! I want fortune, fortune, fortuuunnneeee to arise! Let fortune flow!” While going through images on my office computer, I found some photos I shot in Shanghai quite a few years ago that I should post here to share. Following up on previous posts about lucky red sashes on cars in Shenyang and avoiding unlucky floor numbers in a hotel in Chengdu I thought I should post some of the images of this young […]

Categories: China, Everyday Things, Mythologies • Tags: 1, 6, 8, fortune, good luck, lucky numbers, superstition, telephone numbers, wealth, 八, 六, 一

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Adjusting Floor Numbers to Avoid Bad Luck in a Chengdu Hotel

June 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

When I teach Introduction to Anthropology I often like to use simple examples to relativise taken-for-granted categories. “Common-sense” examples usually communicate these the best—so I might talk, for example, about what categories of animal constitute food or how daily life is inflected by tiny habits, rumors or superstitions. I often mention, for example, lucky numbers in China—most often used for phone numbers or car license plates that have variations of one, six and eight in them. I usually also mention […]

Categories: China, Everyday Things, Mythologies • Tags: 4, bad luck, Chengdu, Chengdu Qixin Da Jiudian, elevator floors, hotel elevator, superstition, unlucky numbers, 四, 死

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