Repenser les arts et les musées. L’objet entre histoire coloniale et voix autoch

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- The concepts of "art" and "museum" have to be rethought in the light of studies of artifacts made in the Americas, Africa, Asia or Oceania in the context of colonial history (16th-19th centuries) and now held in European collections. This specific context of the circulation of consumer goods on a global scale must encourage us to consider things in motion and to highlight the history of the construction of values that have been attributed to them over time (Kopytoff, 1986). The study of these objects must be integrated into a political, ideological and aesthetic history of paradigms that determine both their trajectory, their conceptualization in the colonial context and their reception today. The different materials that make up these objects, the forms that illustrate them and the gestures that accompany them testify to their hybridity (Biro, Étienne, 2022), having been isolated, modified or reinterpreted. These objects carry meanings and values that are constantly changing. Material culture studies allow us to understand these changes in "the social life of things" (Appadurai, 1986). How are different "ontologies" (Descola, 2021) configured at the crossroads of the object? How can they be analyzed in the light of Indigenous intangible heritages (Paré, 2003)? What are the traces of different relationships to the world, or even of different forms of cultural interaction? What processes enable them to be activated (Gell, 1998) and what material evidence testifies to their successive reappropriations? The political economy, the commodification of cultures and the emergence of tourism in connection with colonization allow us to understand how these objects were described and translated until the middle of the twentieth century in a system of classification that has long hierarchized European and non-European artistic productions. Material histories of objects allows us to better understand the hierarchies between artistic productions as well as the relationships and systems of exchange that exist between different regions of the world. It will then be a question of identifying the interactions between Western representations and Indigenous material culture, from transposition to translation or resistance. What are the material particularities of these objects that were imposed as soon as they entered collections in Europe and what is their link with general concepts linked to a certain definition of "art" (authenticity, aestheticism) (Phillips, 2020)? Can we observe exchanges between scientific illustration, and more generally the history of Western images, and these artifacts, or note direct impacts, for example on their modes of exhibition in Europe ? The aim of this panel is to present models of provenance research by placing isolated artifact trajectories within a global geopolitics, which takes into account the specificities not only of the main empires of Europe, in particular France, but also their links with agents in bordering countries, such as Switzerland (Brizon, 2023). The proposals will also highlight innovative study and research methodologies to apprehend the polysemy of these objects, drawn for example from the new museology and participatory research (Simpson, 2016) in a perspective of decolonization of knowledge in the humanities (Smith, 1999). Interventions : Marion Bérengère BERTIN - Les « objets ambassadeurs de la culture kanak » : repenser les collections culturelles kanak conservées dans des musées Carole DELAMOUR - Repenser l’éthique de recherche collaborative à travers l’étude biographique de tambours ilnus (Québec, Canada) Jonas LENDENMANN - La numérisation des collections coloniales dans les musées suisses Lotte ARNDT - Toxicité La vie altérée des collections coloniales Seloua LUSTE BOULBINA - Matières prémières, les statues meurent aussi (1953) … Claire BRIZON - Modération : Repenser les arts et les musées. L’objet entre histoire coloniale et voix autochtones