Telepathic Objects

Catalog description

In the long durée of history, every work of material culture from art work, and ritual object to tools and other utilitarian devices, eventually becomes an artifact, unmoored from the cultural network that secured its position, and legibility, even an abstract painting shown in the white cube of an art gallery displays not only it’s aesthetic value but the social and economic framework that secure its meaning. Museums and other collecting institutions by their nature deracinate the object from cultural context. Exhibition design is the act of listening to an object speak across time and place, and to establish some measure of connection to the trace remnants of the ideological and infrastructural systems that produced it. Telepathic Objects is a class that looks at methods of display for material culture, and the context making practices of supporting objects to reveal their psychic resonance. This is a seminar class with extensive readings and discussion that explores how artworks and artifacts communicate, share their mysteries, and convey some dimensional sense of the systems that produced them. Using strategies as diverse as cognitive mapping and exhibition prosthetics this class unpacks the methods of exhibition design as executed by architects, designers and artists as they attempt to re-present material culture. In addition to classroom time, we’ll also visit a variety of institutions including art exhibitions, natural history collections and cultural anthropology / archeology museums, and talk to the professionals in the field who imagine with, and maintain these objects of cultural heritage.