A Topography of Loss

Sam Hopkins (1) , Simon Rittmeier

1 Kunsthochschule für Medien - Köln

In this contribution in three parts, artists Sam Hopkins and Simon Rittmeier present and discuss their piece A Topography of Loss (2021). Part one and two are excerpts from an installation they developed within the context of the International Inventories Programme (IIP); part three is a synthesis of various different conversations in which the artists register and try to reflect upon the research process and the questions that it brought to the fore: how to deal with loss, and particularly the loss felt by "others"? What responsibilities does it require? Is there a fair distance to work with an ethnographic museum? What kind of work does this entail? IIP is a project developed over three years (2018-2021) by The Nest collective, the National Museum of Kenya (Nairobi) and SHIFT collective (Sam Hopkins, Marian Nur Goni, Simon Rittmeier), in collaboration with the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (Cologne) and the Weltkulturen Museum (Frankfurt am Main), in which they collectively developed a database and investigated a corpus of Kenyan objects held in museums outside Kenya.

Mots clés: Installation -- Art; Ethnological museums and collections; Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum für Völkerkunde (Germany)

Domaines: Héritage culturel et muséologie; Art et histoire de l'art

Sam Hopkins, Simon Rittmeier. A Topography of Loss. Trouble dans les collections , 2023, En hériter, 4. ⟨hal-04063875⟩