Space | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Haunting the Campus 2016

April 29, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday morning at 8am students in our Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists class spread out across campus, took empty spaces and narrated them into existence—haunting the campus with the likes of pirates, magical ravers, Paul Bunyan and revelations of improbable things just below the surface. The rainy weather wasn’t ideal, but the signs did attract a great deal of attention. Once again the sudden appearance of unknown narratives were a kind of collective campus curiosity test. “What are all of the yellow […]

Categories: Assignments, Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Space, State of Emergency • Tags: classroom experience, Hamline University, Michel de Certeau

Zuccotti Park: Passive Recreation Only

October 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This past weekend, while in New York City I walked through Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of Occupy Wall Street. I couldn’t help but notice the new notice that was clearly much more recently installed than the earlier weathered notice beside it. Rather than the simple, familiar text of “No Skateboarding, Rollerblading, or Bicycling Allowed in the Park”—one that leaves all other activities open to public interpretation—the new text reads with the detailed care of a legal document. The notice clarifies […]

Categories: Space, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: passive recreation, private space, public space, Saskia Sassen, Zuccotti Park

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Why I Love the Gideon Bible People

September 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Every school year begins with the anxiety of meeting new people, starting new classes and getting into the rhythms of higher education. For nearly as long as I have worked at our school it has also been the time of the return of the Gideons. During the first few weeks of school, before the weather gets too chilly, a few of them usually visit campus for a few hours in late morning to mid afternoon. They stand on the sidewalks […]

Categories: Bodies, Objects of Power, Space • Tags: belief, freedom of speech, Gideon Bible, public space, Religion

Urban Demolition: Jiuyanqiao, Chengdu, June 2014

June 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

My hotel room offered a nice perspective on the demolition of the building next door. The bulldozers were tearing down an old Mao-era building clearing the space for future redevelopment. No doubt the space will become something like the other buildings near it—perhaps a shopping mall, office building or hotel. Off in the distance, across the bridge and to the right is the “preserved” old buildings of the entertainment “bar street.” I remember when the original Jiuyan Qiao was demolished in […]

Categories: Ruins, Space • Tags: Chengdu, China, demolition, 拆

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Haunting the Campus, Making Spaces

April 30, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

In spite of the overcast skies, students in Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists fanned out across campus to renarrate its spaces in an application of concepts we have been discussing in class. This is the second year I have done this with the class and it seems to be an enjoyable exercise. This year I also went to great pains to alert any possible member of the campus control, command and management authority that we were doing this activity—so that students would […]

Categories: Assignments, Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Space

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Simulating Victor Turner’s Liminal of Pilgrimage on Campus

February 22, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Every other year I offer one of my favorite and longest-running classes, Pilgrims, Travelers and Tourists—a class which surveys different genres of travel and voyaging historically and cross-culturally. Since travel and movement—questions of who travels, where, why and how—are central to the experience of being a person these days, I find the interesting theories and cases we examine in class to be easy for students to connect to their everyday experiences. Studying something as interesting and exciting as travel—something that is so […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Education, Pilgrims, Travelers, Tourists, Space • Tags: assignments, campus space, liminal, pedagogy, Peter Haakon Thompson, pilgrimage, spatial practice, teaching, university, Victor Turner, www.tentservices.org

Mystery Object #10: Brass Private Property Sign

August 3, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Last week, while walking on the sidewalk up the street toward Market Square in Pittsburg, PA, I noticed a small brass plaque mounted in the brick sidewalk at the edge of the street at the corner of Forbes Ave and Delray Street. It simply said, PRIVATE PROPERTY. The brass and brick made the simple message—about the size of a business card—seem proper or even classy. That it was written in all caps and even needed to be there in the first place, however, […]

Categories: Discipline, Mystery Objects, Space, Surveillance • Tags: Occupy Wall Street, Pittsburg

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