MUSEUM FATIGUE

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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Mummy or Corpse?

August 3, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

For years the Field Museum in Chicago has had the desiccated naked body of a child on display—at child viewing level no less—in their Inside Ancient Egypt exhibit. For over a decade I have used this as an example in lectures in my Museums, Exhibitions and Representations class as an example of the power of museums to reframe objects. Put a dead body on the street and the police will be looking for a murderer, put it behind glass in a […]

Categories: Bodies, Exhibitions and Fairs, Exhibitions and Representation, Museums, Objects of Power, Representation • Tags: Ancient Egypt, Chicago, children, corpse, display, Egypt, Field Museum, Field Museum in Chicago, mummy, museum object

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Mystery Object #20: The Goat Almighty

August 2, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

The first night of this summer’s road trip we stopped in Chicago and enjoyed a meal at The Little Goat. As I often do, I asked the waiter to suggest something on the menu that is unique to the restaurant that I would regret not trying. Our server suggested the “Goat Almighty” a huge stack with a goat burger, braised beef, bbq pork, pickled jalapeños, salsa verde, onion rings and cheddar cheese. It was really a crazy thing to […]

Categories: Consumption, Food, Mystery Objects • Tags: burger, excess, Goat Almighty, The Little Goat

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Korean Cheese Ramen

July 29, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Ever since reading The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food into the Twenty-First Century (Errington, Gewertz and Fujikura 2012) late last year, I have somehow never been able to get ramen out of my mind. Then again, I have always enjoyed eating ramen. So imagine my surprise when I heard that there is a Korean version that is made with cheese. Ramen with cheese sounds very unappetizing, but when I heard that a restaurant in town that serves it, […]

Categories: Food • Tags: cheese, Korean, ramen

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Raise the Quality of Civilization (提高文明素质), Shanghai Pudong 1997

July 28, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: Bodies, Select Photos • Tags: 素质, governmentality, Shanghai, social quality

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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

Xi Jinping Meets Che Meeting Mao

July 23, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While the Chinese media featured a photo of Xi Jinping meeting a geriatric and ancient-looking Casto—the Chinese leader in a dark business suit clashing with the revolutionary’s casual retirement whites—Venezuela’s newspaper El Universal offered an entirely different image. It featured a photo of Xi face-to-face with an image of Mao meeting Che Guevara. One can only wonder what Xi thought.

Categories: China, Politics • Tags: Che Guevara, Cuba, Mao Zedong, Revolution, Xi Jinping

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Essentializing Eastern and Western Culture Through Infographics

July 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

While going through some old files on my computer this morning I came across a file I had saved with a collection of graphic illustrations of differences between “Eastern” and “Western” culture. Drawn a few years back by a Chinese artist named Yang Liu in Germany, some of them are very humorous and thoughtfully executed. For folks who have experience crossing the differences between, say, China and Europe or the US, some of the images certainly seem to capture something useful. […]

Categories: Anthropology, Culture, Representation, Scripts • Tags: infographic, Liu Yang, The East, The West, visual culture, Yang Liu

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Museum Fatigue Reads, July 12, 2014

July 11, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

The Origins of Office Speak The Affective Economy: Producing and Consuming Affects in Deleuze and Guattari The Case Against the Sharing Economy Laurie Taylor on the endangered art of ethnography Sidney D. Gamble Photographs How China’s Selden Map Rewrote History Digital Resources for Sinologists 1.0 Future Islands MET Museum Collection Online Brazilian Man Becomes Korean After 10 Plastic Surgeries We Are All Made of Stars How Did We Get Here (University Hall) at this Point of Time (the “Anthropocene”)? The […]

Categories: Museum Fatigue Reads • Tags: bodies, China, drones, ethnography, faculty, higher education, internet, jobs, language, Photography, rolling coal, sharing economy, virtual life

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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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