Video clips | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Why Don’t Minnesotans Have a Word For This Thing That Gives Us So Much Joy?

March 6, 2021 by Museum Fatigue

Every year as late winter begins the transition to early spring, Minnesotans enjoy a morning landscape punctuated by a unique ice formation. The ice I’m referring to exists as a function of the melting winter snow, when daytime temperatures rise well above freezing creating puddles on the sidewalks, and the partial refreeze as evening temperatures dip for a good portion of the evening. The result are early morning encounters with cold wet puddles capped by thin sheets of ice. When […]

Categories: Everyday Things, Video clips • Tags: chice, Minnesota, winter

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Banjos of Marrakech

January 2, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While walking in the central market of the medina of Marrakech I was surprised to find two different groups of Berber musicans playing their music with a banjo! One was even hooked up to an amplifier. I have never seen a banjo outside of the US and when I bought mine to China many years ago I got lots of curious inquiries. It would be interesting to learn the history of these instruments in Morocco and how and why they […]

Categories: Music, Video clips • Tags: banjo, Berber, Marrakech

The Undying Chinese

November 4, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

It is an unfortunate title for a reasonably good rebuttal to the recent Jimmy Kimmel episode with the famous “kill everyone in China” comment. I’d love to know more about the person or people who produced it. No time today, however, for commentary or analysis of the clips assumptions about “Chineseness.”

Categories: China, Video clips • Tags: "kill everyone in China", Jimmy Kimmel

God(zilla) Will Destroy L.A.

January 10, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Just a few days after the New Year, while in Los Angeles, we visited Hollywood Boulevard. While I don’t imagine the beautiful people do a lot of hanging around in that particular neighborhood, it is sacred ground for the global mythology of Hollywood. Visiting the “walk of fame” is, after all, what tourists are expected to do when they visit L.A. So we went to see the stars—more specifically the traces they have left behind—their handprints and their footprints and the concrete […]

Categories: End of Times, Movies, Mythologies, Random Reflections, Tourism, Video clips • Tags: Fundamentalism, hollywood, Religion

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Midway Conversations: A Neighborhood Documentary

October 27, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Last Wednesday night, Midway Conversations premiered at the Turf Club. The film was the final project of a collaborative neighborhood-based research project done by the Spring 2012 anthropology senior seminar at Hamline University. The premiere wasn’t without a few last-minute snafus—not least of which was a missing segment in the final copy of the film—but by about 5:45 the popcorn popper was full of hot popcorn and we had a high stack of Checkerboard Pizzas ready to serve. Following a brief introduction, the lights […]

Categories: Documentary, Teaching, Video clips, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: Anthropology, Hamline Midway, Hamline University, Saint Paul, senior seminar, teaching film

油条: The Simplicity of Oil and Dough

October 26, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

I have always been impressed with the charm of the Chinese youtiao (油条). I find poetry in the simplicity of taking a strip of dough, plopping it in a wok of hot oil and frying it to a golden brown. No spices, no salt, no sugar. No fuss. Just hot oil and dough doing their thing. Youtiao are quick, easy and utilitarian. They are made of the most basic ingredients, can be effortlessly produced by the dozens, and quickly snatched up […]

Categories: China, Everyday Things, Food, Video clips • Tags: food, translation, youtiao

The Mona Lisa: Art in the Age of Digital Consumption

August 3, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

The Mona Lisa is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable images in the world. Perhaps second only to the Eiffel Tower, it is an icon of the tourist experience of Paris. So, when we arrived at the Louvre with thousands of other tourists, of course, the first thing we did was go to see it. I have heard that often when tourists first see the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre, the portrait is much smaller than they expect. The idea, […]

Categories: Museums, Random Reflections, Tourism, Video clips, Visual Anthropology • Tags: art, Mona Lisa, Photography, Pierre Bourdieu, tourism, visual anthropology, Walter Benjamin

An Afternoon Lunch at the Zhiqing Villa

June 27, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

Ten years ago this month I finished my PhD dissertation, “Remembering Red: Memory and Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution in Late 1990s China,” in the anthropology department at the University of Washington in Seattle. My dissertation research examined nostalgia and memory of the Cultural Revolution among members of the generation who were most active in it. Specifically I looked at memorial practices of former “educated youth” or zhiqing who were sent down to the Chinese countryside beginning in the fall of […]

Categories: Fieldwork, Video clips • Tags: chinese countryside, food, nostalgia, video, zhiqing

Jinling Buddhist Publishing House (金陵刻经处)

June 21, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

This morning I was invited by some of the folks that have been helping me with my research to go on a trip to visit the Jinling Buddhist Publishing House (jinling kejing chu) in downtown Nanjing. I can’t really say that I am that interested in ancient Buddhist texts, but I was looking forward to seeing how they carve the wooden blocks, print and bind books in the classical way. It takes nearly a month to carve one panel and […]

Categories: Museums, Video clips • Tags: Buddhism, buddhist texts, China

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Making Zongzi

June 20, 2012 by Museum Fatigue

While walking in some of the back streets of Nanjing just days before the Duanwu Festival I came upon a woman preparing zongzi for sale. I have eaten the bamboo leaf-wrapped rice many times over the past two decades, but until then had never seen how they were made. I was fascinated by how the simple ingredients of rice and red beans were deftly filled and wrapped by her experienced hands. It took her about half a minute to make […]

Categories: Food, How To, Video clips • Tags: China, cooking, food, zongzi

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