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Bringthemback.org’s Cheeky Response to the Parthenon Marbles Controversy

January 26, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

If you want to see the Parthenon, you go to the Athenian Acropolis. If you want to see the sculptures, however, you have to go to the British Museum. For two hundred years this has been one of the most visible legacies of the “Age of Imperial Collection.” (Of course nearly every museum has objects collected from others under unequal power relations—“missing pieces” that match “holes” all over the world from which they were taken.) Last week a colleague of […]

Categories: Collecting, Empire, Museums, Objects of Power • Tags: Athenian Acropolis, Athens, Big Ben, bringthemback.org, Elgin Marbles, Parthenon, Parthenon Marbles, Parthenon Sculptures, the British Museum, vandalism

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A Practical Science of the Singular

January 19, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This morning I finally finished The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 2: Living and Cooking. I don’t have time to write a commentary, but did want to post some choice quotes from the short essay at the end by de Certeau reflecting on the study of everyday life, “A Practical Science of the Singular.” In the short essay his emphasis on culture as everyday human practice and creativity is clear—much of it a summary of points he made in the […]

Categories: Books, Consumption, Everyday Life, Photo Essays, Quotes • Tags: communication, culture, Luce Giard, Michel de Certeau, orality, practice, technology, The Practice of Everyday Life

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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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“A Cuisine of Gestures and Words”

January 16, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“…communication is a cuisine of gestures and words, of ideas and information, with its recipes and its subtleties, its auxiliary instruments and its neighboring effects, its distortions and its failures. It is false to believe henceforth that electronic and computerized objects will do away with the activity of users. From the hi-fi stereo to the VCR, the diffusion of these devices multiplies ruses and provokes the inventiveness of users…and, thus become producers of their own little “cultural industry…In turn, this […]

Categories: Quotes, Technology • Tags: communication, Michel de Certeau, technology, The Practice of Everyday Life

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University Avenue: One Street, A Thousand Dreams

January 15, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This morning, while doing some preparing for this spring semester’s visual anthropology class, I located an online posting of the locally produced documentary, University Avenue: One Street, A Thousand Dreams. The documentary, which premiered on our local Public Television Station in late 2012, provides a nice historical context for the area in which the Hamline-Midway neighborhood is located. Once again this semester, my students are going to do short video ethnographies of everyday life in the Hamline-Midway. I’m going to have them […]

Categories: Documentary, Urban, Visual Anthropology Class • Tags: documentary, Hamline-Midway Neighborhood, Minnesota, Public Television Station, Saint Paul, TPT, University Avenue, Visual Anthropology Class

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Amanda, The Computerized Telemarketer Who Insisted She Was Human

January 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans.”― Isaac Asimov, I, Robot I just had the strangest conversation with a telemarketer. Well, actually I’m not sure I can consider it a conversation—because I’m sure the telemarketer was not even human. It was an exchange that quickly turned into a kind of Turing test, with a […]

Categories: Cyborgs, Fakes and Forgeries, Language, Scripts • Tags: Issac Asimov, lifegivingmoments.com, robocalls, Sarah Palin, telemarketing, Turing test

120

The Content of the Form

January 14, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

I just reviewed course evaluations from last semester. Overall they were quite positive, with useful feedback. My favorite comment from my Development to Globalization class: “The teaching style was my favorite. I’ve never seen anybody draw and write such illegible things that end up making me understand exactly what is being said. It’s quite funny to me.” While I wouldn’t say all of my whiteboards are illegible, and I would tend to blame the low quality of whiteboards and markers […]

Categories: Development to Globalization, Teaching • Tags: course evaluations, student comments

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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

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Air France: Real Simple

January 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

In the summer of 2012 I wrote a short post about a breakfast that I was served on a United Airlines flight back from China—how the meal’s plastic beauty fascinated me and how intrigued I was about the mix of exotic processed proteins that had been used to create it. For me, the inflight fakery evoked comparisons to meals served in dystopic science fiction futures. Yesterday while on an Air France flight from Casablanca to Paris, however, I was served […]

Categories: Care, Food, Random Reflections • Tags: Air France, airplane food, breakfast, cheese, croissant, faux food, inflight meals, meal, real meal, United Airlines

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“Moroccan” (Tourist) Things

January 8, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: Collecting, Material Culture, Photo Essays, Representation, Souvenirs, Tourism • Tags: Morocco, Orientalism, souvenir, tourism, tourist experience, travel

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