Mythologies | MUSEUM FATIGUE

What The Photograph Takes, What the Photograph Misses

June 12, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Fujiazhuang Beach in Dalian presents a dizzying array of of activities and actions, social and personal trajectories of participation and involvement—all jostling up against one another on a small strip of sandy shore. My first day there, as I walked its length I saw a huge group of Russian children having a squirt gun fight next to Chinese couples cuddling nearly fully clothed on beach blankets. While some young men fished at the shore, a large group of retirees sat sunning […]

Categories: China, Mythologies, Photography, Scripts • Tags: Dalian, wedding photographs, 婚纱

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Shen Yun Buys The Front Page—Promises Authentic, Beautiful, Old “Culture”

February 2, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

As if junk mail spam-bombing college faculty and advertisements stuck up on community bulletin boards everywhere weren’t enough—this morning I awoke to find that the front page of our local community newspaper, The Saint Paul Pioneer Press had an advertisement for Falun Gong’s Shen Yun dance troupe. These guys have some seriously deep pockets and lots of energy to get out their message. OK, technically the advertisement wasn’t *on* the front page, it was the front page—enveloping the whole Sunday […]

Categories: "Swords and Silk", Bodies, China, Mythologies • Tags: advertisement, culture, Falun Gong, Orientalism, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Shen Yun

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Ghosts in the City

January 16, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This month I am finally whittling away at a few of the books in my pile. Among these is the second volume of The Practice of Everyday Life—Living and Cooking. I have been meaning to read it since visiting de Certeau’s grave back in 2012. And now that I am in the middle of it, I’m embarrassed that I waited so long. I didn’t expect that most of the book consists of two projects by the book’s co-authors, Pierre Mayol and Luce […]

Categories: Consumption, Everyday Things, Mythologies, Photo Essays, Urban • Tags: Ghosts in the City, Michel de Certeau, museums, neighborhood, nostalgia, Pierre Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life, urban planning

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Elkader, Iowa and Pioneer Cosmopolitanism

January 12, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This morning I was doing a bit of light reading and “Google map traveling” to follow up after our recent trip to Morocco. Mostly I was reading about the history of the African Maghreb, French colonialism and some geographic details about the countries that border Morocco—including the disputes about the Western Sahara. Imagine my surprise when, while reading about French Algeria, I came across an article that circled back to the Midwestern, United States—to the small town of Elkader, Iowa. Apparently […]

Categories: Cosmopolitanism, Geography, Mythologies • Tags: Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Abdelkader El Djezairi, Algeria, Elkader, Google Maps, Iowa, Karal Ann Marling, pioneer, The Colossus of Roads

Moon Nostalgia

December 21, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

This past week there have been quite a few articles focusing on the breakthroughs, accomplishments and historical firsts of the manned Apollo missions. Among my favorites are a recent article in Slate telling the interesting, untold story of the first sculpture on the moon and coverage of the influential 1968 Earthrise photo and how it almost didn’t happen. Popular Science ran an article about alternate Apollo mission plans. The Verge reminded us all of the Apollo Image Atlas with its 17,000 photos and […]

Categories: Memory, Mythologies, Nostalgia • Tags: 1968, Apollo 11, Apollo 8, Apollo missions, China, 玉兔, Earthrise, Mao Zedong, moon landing, Neil Armstrong, space missions, yutu

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Shen Yun Performing Arts as Falun Gong’s “Wild East Show”

December 13, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

This past week I went to my mailbox in the social sciences divisional office and was surprised to find every faculty mailbox had been stuffed to overflowing with a 2014 calendar of the Shen Yun dance troupe. It would be treating the “calendars” with too much respect to call them junk mail—much more respect than was shown to our faculty by the person who dumped them there—despite our administrative assistant’s warning that most would end up in the trash. We […]

Categories: "Swords and Silk", China, Mythologies, Random Reflections, Representation • Tags: Buffalo Bill, Chinese Culture, dance, Falun Gong, Orientalism, Shen Yun

Oriental Torture Cabinet

September 3, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

For folks in the Twin Cities the last weeks of August leading up to Labor Day is the time for the “Great Minnesota Get Together”—The Minnesota State Fair. Perhaps on of the only rituals truly shared by a large diverse cross section of Minnesotans, the fair hosts hundreds of thousands of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. It brings together rural and urban, old and young, people of different ethnic and cultural groups, new immigrants and old. It is […]

Categories: Bodies, Consumption, Exhibitions and Fairs, Gender, Mythologies • Tags: Minnesota State Fair, Orientalism

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The Weight of Creation(ism)

August 31, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

“…it is an inherent characteristic of common-sense thought precisely to deny this and to affirm that its tenets are immediate deliverances of experience, not deliberated reflections upon it…common sense rests its [case] on the assertion that it is not a case at all, just life in a nutshell. The world is its authority.”—Clifford Geertz, “Common Sense as a Cultural System” “Wherever we turn, there is the Face of God…” —Harun Yahya Last week a colleague of mine in the Religion […]

Categories: Anthropology, Books, Education, Mystery Objects, Mythologies, Religion • Tags: adnan oktar, Atlas of Creation, Clifford Geertz, common sense, Creation Museum, Creationism, Global Publishing, Harun Yahya, Richard Dawkins, weight

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“Welcome to Chinese Walmart”: Emailing Oriental Curiosities

April 28, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Over the past few years a number of friends, colleagues and acquaintances have forwarded an interesting email to me. The email, usually titled “Welcome to Chinese Walmart” features a series of images taken at Walmart stores in China. Judging from the number of times the email is indented—indicating that it has been quoted and forwarded–each of the emails circulated many dozens of times. Folks send it to me with good intentions because they know that I have spent some time […]

Categories: China, Food, Mythologies • Tags: culture, curiosities, email, exotic, Orientalism, sensational images, Walmart, walmart stores

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June 4, 1989: Report on Putting Down Anti-Government Riot

April 25, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Last week while looking for a book on my bookshelf I happened upon a slim, blue-covered pamphlet wedged between two larger books. The moment I pulled it out I recognized it as something I hadn’t seen in many, many years—the Report on Putting Down Anti-Government Riot (关于反政府暴乱的报告). It was the official government account, in English, of the government response to the student protests in Tiananmen Square during the late spring and early summer of 1989. The book is a first […]

Categories: China, Mythologies • Tags: June 4 1989, student protests, Tiananmen Square, 六四

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