Relationships in the Making. Negotiating Knowledge Through Documentation

Abstract : Museums these days work hard to document their collections through field research. They also work hard to negotiate the meaning and implications of holding their collections. Conventional Enlightenment conceptions of knowledge form part of the context for these negotiations. These sometimes result in outcomes that are inaccessible or unusable to the people we claim to know about, potentially perpetuating inequalities. Reite villagers on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea practice ‘knowledge as relationship’. Drawing on field experience with them, the lecture will reflect upon documentation itself as a process and a relationship, and ask a question about how we might approach the practice in a manner that is responsive to different conceptions of knowledge and its value.