Nina Samuel, Felix Sattler (Hg.)

Museale Reste
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Bildwelten des Wissens
Band 18

Nina Samuel, Felix Sattler (Hg.)

MUSEALE RESTE
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1. Beschriftung im Archiv des Cranbrook Institute of Science, Michigan's Museum of Natural History, 2013.

2. Domenico Remps: Kuriositätenkabinett, um 1690. 3. Installationsansicht der Ausstellung „alles“, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, 2009. 4. Depot nicht verkaufter und nicht präsentierter Werke im 2. Obergeschoss der Kunstmesse Art Basel, 2019. 5. Holzschrank im Späth-Arboretum der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2021.

6. Rekonstruktion von Objekten aus dem Tell Halaf-Museum, Pergamonmuseum, Berlin, 2003. 7. Andrea Malanski: Ruin in Reverse, 2017. 8. Kontaktabzug Male Couples, Charlotte Brooks, 1970. 9. Asad Raza: Absorption, Installation mit Substrat aus verschiedenen Abfallstoffen, Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2020. 10. Venus von Willendorf, angefertigt von Navena Widulin aus Wachsresten des Labors für Restaurierung und Konservierung des Medizinhistorischen Museums
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der Charité, 2021. 11: Visualisierung einer zerstörten Buddha-Statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan auf Grundlage von Scandaten. 12: Oberkörper einer Doppelstatue aus der Roten Halle in Pergamon, Abzug auf Albuminpapier montiert auf beschrifteter Fotopappe, 1900. 13: Ergänzung fehlender Partien an einer Löwenskulptur, Tell-Halaf-Projekt, 2006. 14: Damien Hirst: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1999. 15: Ruinen des Berliner Schlosses mit begehbarer Ausstellungsarchitektur im Humboldt Forum. 16: Fellsammlung des Museums für Naturkunde Berlin, 2018. 17: Von Black-Lives-Matter-Aktivist:innen gestürzte Statue Edward Colstons, ausgestellt im M Shed, Bristol, 2021. 18: Leerer Sockel der Statue von Edward Colston in Bristol nach dem Sturz des Denkmals durch Black-Lives-Matter-Aktivist:innen, 2020. 19: Schattenabdruck eines Menschen nach der Explosion der Atombombe, Hiroshima, 1945.
# Inhalt

7 Editorial

11 Sharon Macdonald
Sighting the Dust: Attending to the Museum through its Residues

24 Christopher Li
Remain Human: Zum Umgang mit menschlichen Überresten im Lautarchiv

35 Martin Grünfeld and Caitlin DeSilvey
Fringe Objects: Cultivating Residues at the Museum

45 Wiedergelesen
Lorenzo Gineprini: Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

47 Emma Kowal
Spencer's Ghost: The Decolonial Afterlife of a Postcolonial Museum Prop

64 Projektvorstellung
Andrea Malanski: Ruin in Reverse. A Design Inquiry Guided by the Materiality of the Rubble

69 Projektvorstellung
Flavia Caviezel: Toxische Überreste des Sammelns

79 Angela Matyssek
Resteverwertung: zeitgenössische Kunst und das, was übrig bleibt

92 Sophia Gräfe
Bilder als Typen. Digitalfotografie der Fliege *Marleyimia xylocopae* (2014)

99 Adam Lowe and Ferdinand Saumarez Smith
Residues of Cultural Significance: The Bakor Monoliths

104 Rezension
Nina Wiedemeyer: Fernando Domínguez Rubio: Still Life. Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum, Chicago/London 2020

107 Projektvorstellung
Marie Egger, Raphael Hoffmann, Marlene Militz und Ana Nasyrova: Reflexion über das Randständige

113 Bildnachweis

116 Autorinnen und Autoren
„It [restoration] means the most total destruction which a building can suffer; a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed.“<fnref n="1" />

Der englische Schriftsteller John Ruskin (1819–1900) hat in der Restaurierung von Bau-
denkmälern einen Verlust von Zeitlichkeit gesehen – eine Form der Zerstörung, die es
unmöglich mache, historische Reste daraus zu gewinnen. Ruskin versteht unter diesen
Resten eine Spur, die auf etwas Fehlendes oder Hinzugekommenes verweist, wie der
Bildträger einer beschädigten Malerei, auf dem sich die Farbe nur noch erahnen lässt,
oder die Patina an einer Skulptur. Solche Überbleibsel lenken den Blick vom Objekt
auf das Material, vom Erhaltungszustand auf den Prozess, sie erwachsen aus der Zeit
selbst, den Umständen und damit verbundenen materiellen Transformationen, denen
ein Werk unterworfen ist und die seinen Wert mehren: „walls that have long been
washed by the passing waves of humanity“.

Auch Museen sind mit der Abgrenzung von Wertgegenstand und Abfall kon-
frontiert, die nicht zuletzt das Selbstverständnis der Institutionen und die Entscheidung
darüber betrifft, wann und unter welchen Bedingungen etwas erhaltenswert ist. Die
Kategorie der ‚Reste‘, die mit dem vorliegenden Band eingeführt werden soll, zeigt
jedoch, dass eine solche Trennung der Grundidee des Museums zuwiderläuft.

In seiner Serie von Installationen *The Ethics of Dust* untersucht der New Yorker Künstler und Denkmalpfleger Jorge Otero-Pailos seit dem Jahr 2008 solche Prozesse. Er behandelt Monumente wie den Dogenpalast in Venedig oder das Innere der Kopie der Trajanssäule im Victoria & Albert Museum in London mit flüssigem Latex. Die Oberflächen werden mit diesem Verfahren gereinigt, zugleich werden die Verschmutzungen und Rückstände von der Oberfläche des Bauwerks in Latex festgehalten. Die Patina des Bauwerks wird anschließend in räumlicher Nähe zum Original ausgestellt. ↗ Abb. 1

Die Oberfläche von Kunst- und Kulturgut beherbergt neben Staub auch Pilzarten, Sporen, Algen und Bakterien, die in enger Symbiose mit den jeweiligen Bauwerken, ihrer historischen Materialität und ihrer Zeitlichkeit entstehen. Während die Latexschicht mit den abgelagerten Zeitspuren traditionell als wertloses Beiwerk entsorgt wird, behandelt Otero-Pailos die drängende Frage, inwieweit die darin konservierten Überreste als Teil der Geschichte der Denkmäler genauso bewahrenswert sind.<fnref n="2" />

<footnote n="1">1 John Ruskin: The Complete Works of John Ruskin, hg. v. E. T. Cook und Alexander Wedderburn, Bd. 7, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, New York 1903, S. 242.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 Zum Thema Zeitspuren als eigenständiger Wert in der Konservierung vgl. Thomas Brachert: Patina. Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Restaurierung, München 1985; Caitlin DeSilvey: Curated Decay. Heritage Beyond Saving, Minneapolis 2017.</footnote>
Indem Otero-Pailos' Ablagerungen die Reste als Zeitspuren verhandeln, verweisen sie auf einen definitorischen Schwebezustand, der traditionelle Konzepte des Bewahrens auf den Prüfstand stellt.

In der Verhandlung des Begriffs „Rest“ treten auch Debatten um Autorenschaft, Autorisierung und Authentizität von Kunstwerken zu Tage. Am Whitney Museum of American Art entscheidet seit 2008 das Replication Committee über die Frage, wann Teile eines stark restaurierungsbedürftigen Werks oder das gesamte Werk reproduziert werden müssen. Das Komitee setzt sich aus Vertreter_innen der Konservierung, Kuration, Sammlungs- und Rechteverwaltung sowie des Justitiariats zusammen. Entscheidungen über Reproduktion und Restaurierung entsprechen den unterschiedlichen Annahmen über die Integrität eines Werks und den Status der anfallenden Reste. Während Restaurierung möglichst Reste vermeidet (d. h. auf Reparatur und Reintegration von Bestandteilen des Werks setzt), grenzt die Reproduktion bestimmte Teile des Werks als nicht-wiederherstellbar ab und ersetzt sie durch neue Teile. Die entfernten Teile des Originals sind nicht Abfall, sondern Rest: Sie sind nicht mehr Bestandteile des Ganzen, werden als authentische Gegenstände aber auch nicht weggeworfen. Stattdessen treten sie als parallele Erzählung neben das Werk.

In naturkundlichen Sammlungen zielen Konservierungsmaßnahmen oft nicht auf den Erhalt aller, sondern nur ausgewählter Teile eines Organismus ab, z. B. Fell und Knochen statt Weichteilen. Dennoch erhalten sich auch Reste bestimmter Materialitäten, die zum Zeitpunkt des Sammelns vielleicht noch unbekannt oder irrelevant waren. Die erst seit wenigen Jahren verwertbare *ancient DNA* fällt in diese Kategorie: Sie ist ein Rest, der mit neuen Erkenntnissen in den Fokus der Forschung gerät. Zugleich zeigt sich an der aDNA, dass z. B. eine auf die Erfassung morphologischer Merkmale abzielende Digitalisierung von Sammlungsobjekten nicht alle Eigenschaften bzw. deren Reste erfassen kann.<fnref n="3" />

Dass bei digitalen Kunstwerken Prozesse der Sicherung und Rest-Werdung nah beieinander liegen, ist für Museen eine neue Herausforderung. Speichermedien können zu Datenverlust und zur unbeabsichtigten Modifikation digitaler Formate führen, indem sie durch die Lagerung verändert werden.<fnref n="4" /> Dies führt zur Frage, ob diese Artefakte im Sinne einer digitalen Patina bewahrenswert sind. Auch die Zensur öffentlich zugänglicher digitaler Kunst durch politische Akteure kann zu immateriellen Resten führen. Das Netzkunstwerk *Les Secrets* (1997) von Nicolas Frespech, eine öffentliche Sammlung von Geheimnissen teilnehmender Internetbenutzer_innen, wurde nur vier

<footnote n="3">3 Wir danken Matthias Glaubrecht herzlich für das aufschlussreiche Gespräch.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 Whitney Media Preservation Initiative Survey, 2018, S. 1.</footnote>
Jahre nach seiner Erstellung auf Bestreb-
ben der französischen Rechten abgestellt
und ohne Sicherungskopie vom Server
gelöscht.<fnref n="5" /> Was vom Kunstwerk übrig-
blieb, waren verstreute digitale Reste, die
vom Museum als Dokumentation gesam-
melt und ausgestellt wurden, darunter eine
Kopie des prozessual angelegten Werks,
die dessen Zustand, nicht aber dessen
Funktionalität eingefroren hatte. Der
Versuch, zerstörte digitale Kunstwerke
wie *Les Secrets* durch die Aktivierung aller
vorhandenen Reste wieder zugänglich zu
machen, wurde in der Literatur als Erstel-
lung eines „zweiten Originals“<fnref n="6" /> diskutiert.

In ethnologischen Sammlungen
gerät der Begriff des Rests inzwischen
selbst in die Kritik: Sind menschliche
Knochen, Haare, Haut mit dem Tod und
ihrer Aufbewahrung im Museum zu
unbeseelter Materie geworden oder sind
es Ahnen? Von einer Bembe-Figur heißt

es, dass sie den Atem eines Ahnen enthalten hat; auf dem Weg in die Sammlung eines
Museums wurde sie geöffnet – bewohnt der Atem weiterhin die Skulptur?<fnref n="7" /> Das Muse-
um hat hierfür bislang kein Sensorium und keine Untersuchungsmethoden.

Reste entstehen durch Veränderungen in der normativen Ordnung von Samm-
lungen.<fnref n="8" /> Der Band soll zeigen, dass es zahlreiche Restbildungen im musealen Bereich

<figure><img src="image_21.png" /><figcaption>1: Jorge Otero-Pailos: The Ethics of Dust. Trajan's Column, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2015.</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="5">5 Emmanuel Guez, Morgane Stricot, Lionel Broye, Stéphane Bizet: The Afterlives of Network-Based Artworks. In: Journal of the Institute of Conservation, Jg. 40, 2017, Heft 2, 105-120, DOI: 10.1080/19455224.2017.1320299. Zur Zensur vgl. Katja Müller Helle (Hg.): Digitale Bildzensur. Bildwelten des Wissens, Band 16, Berlin 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 Guez et al. (s. Anm. 5), S. 106.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 Mary Nooter Roberts: Does an Object Have a Life? In: Mary Nooter Roberts und Susan Vogel (Hg.): Exhibition-ism. Museums and African Art. The Museum for African Art, New York, 1994, S. 49–51.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 Vgl. dazu Peter Geimer: Über Reste. In: Dingwelten. Das Museum als Erkenntnisort, hg. v. Anke te Heesen und Petra Lutz, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2005, S. 109–118. Vgl. ebenso Boris Jardine, Emma Kowal, Jenny Bangham: How Collections End. Objects, Meaning and Loss in Laboratories and Museums, in: BJHS: Themes, 2019, Heft 4, S. 1-27.</footnote>
gibt, die jenseits des „Entsammelns“, des Bedeutungsverlusts oder der Zerstörung lie-
gen. Diese Reste sind dynamisch und im Werden begriffen. Sie stoßen materielle und
begriffliche Bewegungen an, von der konservatorisch inaktivierten zur aktiven Materie,
vom Objekt zum Rest, aus bestehender Systematik in neue (Un-)Ordnungen. Reste
sind Kippfiguren, die Zuschreibungen und Zwischenräume in Dualitäten öffnen, wie
Objekt-Abfall, Original-Kopie, Gebrauch-Bewahrung, belebt-unbelebt, Natur-Kultur,
Subjekt-Objekt.

Reste können überall anzutreffen sein – im Ausstellungsraum genauso wie im
Depot, im Labor genauso wie in der Verwaltung. In jedem dieser Kontexte stehen
jeweils andere Formen des professionellen Selbstverständnisses, des Wissens und ver-
schiedene Praktiken zur Verfügung. Mit dem Rest existiert ein begriffliches Werkzeug,
das Sammlungen und ihre Gegenstände im Hinblick auf ihre Veränderlichkeit und
Instabilität erfassen kann – ohne sie vorschnell in neue Kategorien einordnen zu müs-
sen. Weil der Rest viel mehr Ausdruck einer Relation als eines Status ist, markiert er
die Unabgeschlossenheit und Potenzialität von Dingen und Materialien. Mit diesem
Band möchten wir eine Beschäftigung mit Resten anregen, die dabei hilft, den Bewah-
rungsauftrag von Museen weiterzuentwickeln und Prozesse und aktive Materialien
sowie unterschiedlichste Akteur_innen einzubinden.

Nina Samuel und Felix Sattler

mit Katja Müller-Helle, Claudia Blümle, Horst Bredekamp und Matthias Bruhn
# Sighting the Dust: Attending to the Museum through its Residues

What does it mean to sight the dust and think the museum through its residues? And are museum residues necessarily *its*? (Questions of possession always lurk, at least residually, in museums.) In this article, I consider the implications of attending to residues, such as dust, especially, but not only, for museums. What does such attention bring to light? How might it prompt seeing the museum differently or otherwise?

My concern here is with what might constitute residues in and of the museum, substantively and metaphorically (two categories that, like residues themselves, may be not so clearly only one or the other). My interest is in the analytical traction of residual attention to the museum, looking at it from the possibly grimy and dusty edges and through its by-products – what we might call museum heterology or scatology, to invoke Bataille.<fnref n="1" /> What are the effects and implications of subjecting the museum to a scatological or residual gaze? Here, I should note that in psychology, *residual attention* refers to something different from the main object of focus – it is the background or partial attention that we expend, probably without our being aware of it. Some psychologists regard residual attention as distracting, preventing us from being able to concentrate on the task at hand. My own use of the term, however, is intended to signal a focus on what is not usually noticed in academic understandings, in this case, of museums. But rather than attend to this in only partial awareness, I aim to bring this to the fore – to give full attention to the residual and the conditions of residuality.

Below, I reflect on the notion of residue, teasing out its sometimes subtle differences from related terms, such as waste and trace. This reflection leads to a phenomenology of residues, together with a consideration of their ontological implications, especially for that key museum entity, the object. The article then explores two sets of examples in which residues and the residual are variously brought to awareness in museums. The first set presents examples drawn primarily from ethnographic research on cleaning in museums. Responding to museums' anxieties over residues, especially dust, these cases variously reveal particular ontologies of materials and objects and also show how

> This work was carried out as part of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity (DFG EXC 2025), within its Object, Space, Agency theme. I thank Nina Samuel and Felix Sattler for the invitation to contribute to this volume and for their encouragement and many helpful suggestions; I am also grateful to the *Bildwelten des Wissens* editorial team, particularly Matthias Bruhn for insightful editorial input. Lynn Stern improved the text with excellent copy-editing. Gordon Fyfe guided me to the Parthenon marbles and some great references; Jennie Morgan and Margareta von Oswald allowed me to refer to their as yet unpublished work. Clemens Winkler not only gave me a tour of his exhibit but also shared a draft of his unpublished work and many ideas and enthusiasm. Mike Beaney, master of puns, came up with the main title.

<footnote n="1">1 Georges Bataille: Definition of Heterology. In: Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 35, 2018, no. 4–5, pp. 29–40.</footnote>
residues are entangled in – and afford particular perspectives on – specific hierarchies of labor and conceptions of time and moralities, including those of possession. The second set presents cases of installation works, mostly self-categorized as artistic, that have been shown in museums. In their bringing of the residual to attention, they, too, probe particular understandings of materiality and objectness, as well as the nature and potential of the museum itself.

## A phenomenology of residues

Residues are by-products of whatever is regarded as the main phenomenon or substance. They reside – as the shared etymology implies – on the side, as sediments at the bottom or scum on the top, crusting on a surface, clinging to edges. A residue is that which is left behind following some process. Although residues may be unwanted or even unpleasant, they are not so clearly designated as negative as are rubbish and waste. Neither do they get so much attention. There are rarely special bins or services to deal with them. While residues are more negligible than rubbish and waste, they are usually less delicate than traces and not so well formed as tracks. Unlike traces and tracks, residues do not invoke the glamorous role of leading to a hidden source or actor – though a residue, such as the lipstick remaining on the edge of a cup, might prove to be a trace and clue in a detective story. As this article – and indeed this volume as a whole – suggests, there is much scope for residues to be actively mobilized as clues for academic detective work.

In their left-behindness, residues differ from excess, which spills over, as an extra or surfeit of the same substance.<fnref n="2" /> Excess can feel joyously effusive or attractively risky; residues, not at all. Excesses are demonstratively present. By contrast, residues are more ambiguous, as historian Carolyn Steedman points out for dust: it is always “both there and not there; what is left and what is gone.”<fnref n="3" /> Dust, about which some remarkable volumes have been written, is not, perhaps, an obvious case of residue, especially when it is in motion.<fnref n="4" /> Nevertheless – especially if we bear in mind that the dust on an object is likely to be, in part, composed of particles of that object – it can surely be taken as such; indeed, dust is in itself intriguing to think with and through, not least for its

<footnote n="2">2 See Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan, Harald Fredheim: Too Many Things to Keep for the Future? In: Rodney Harrison, Caitlin DeSilvey, Cornelius Holtorf, Sharon Macdonald, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff, Harald Fredheim, Antony Lyons, Sarah May, Jennie Morgan, Sefryn Penrose (eds.): Heritage Futures. Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices, London 2020, pp. 155–68 for reflection and references on terms including *excess*.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 Carolyn Steedman: Dust. The Archive and Cultural History, New Brunswick, NJ 2002, p. 163.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 See Joseph A. Amato: Dust. A History of the Small and Invisible, Berkeley 2000; Michael Marder: Dust, New York 2016; and Steedman (see note 3).</footnote>
metaphoric richness and the peculiarity of it as a word, referring to both a substance and the act of getting rid of that same substance. Playing with these verbal quirks, we could say that *to dust* is to make sure that *dust bites the dust* – though as Steedman emphasizes, dust does not in fact ever vanish: “It is about circularity, the impossibility of things disappearing, or going away, or being gone.”<fnref n="5" /> This means that dust is *of* as well as *on* an object, and, as such, like other residues, it is inherently in-between, not merely blurring but also unsettling the (idea of) the object itself.

Remains and remainders are perhaps the closest to residues of related terms, but even these are not identical, since the former two are usually more well shaped and reminiscent of whatever they were before than are residues. They are less rather than more of what was there before. Residues, by contrast, are typically something else, something new. The sediment at the bottom of a wine bottle is not wine, just as the limescale inside a kettle is not water. They do not resemble them at all. Residues are something extra, something in themselves. The rim left after my bath is a new mix, of soap suds and dirt and bits of me (human remains of a sort). Margins and peripheries share qualities with residues, not least metaphorically. But residues are not primarily topographical. Moreover, whatever they are marginal or peripheral to – such as wine or (bath) water – is not necessarily even present anymore. Margins and peripheries cling to their centers more keenly and enduringly. Residues are relational, but they are so in a by-the-way mode. (This should remind us, incidentally, that figuring out different modes of relationality is an important analytical task and one to which attention to the diverse affordances and phenomenology of kinds of forms or substances has much to contribute.)

Mathematics deploys the term *residue* to describe what is left behind after a particular calculation. Most residues, however, are material. They are substances that we can touch, that we might dip our fingers into, though perhaps only warily, in case they prove to be toxic. Perhaps gritty or greasy, residues may have formed in relation to liquids or solid matter, constituting a layer, or skin, that may itself be of indeterminate or mixed consistency. Their in-between state is compounded by the fact that they are neither the main substance or object themselves, nor the air or other surface that a residue meets. Residues are doubly or even multiply liminal. Yet, sometimes it is hard to say whether something is a residue or the thing itself. Is it patina or dirt? Are both residues? Such questions have a particular valence in museums. Should that residue be considered part of an object or something to be removed? As wider scholarship shows,

<footnote n="5">5 Steedman (see note 3), p. 164.</footnote>
there are diverse views and changing practices surrounding these matters.<fnref n="6" /> By not just clinging to objects but also being produced at least partly by them – as when iron oxides exude from certain stone – residues question the ontological status of objects themselves. Where does an object begin and end?

Residues raise this question in temporal form too. As they accrete over time, perhaps over long periods, are they forming on the object, or are they part of it? At the least, residues recall process and time passing; they bear witness to there being a history to the present state. Philosopher Timothy Morton suggests that “to allow things to get dirty is to allow that things are not at war with time” – instead, they go along with it.<fnref n="7" /> Residues may become relatively stable and settled – as the word’s shared etymology with *reside* suggests – but they are likely to be still in the making, almost certainly so at a fine-gauge level, hinting also at a future, perhaps one of continuing deposition. Although residues may index a continuation of process – the accretion over time – they are also a reminder of what has gone and thus simultaneously index disappearance or finitude (a double and contrary potential of dust, which Carolyn Steedman also points out).<fnref n="8" />

This making of residues over time is not usually the result of purposeful human action and intention – or, at least, not of these alone. Rather, residues illustrate that “objects still vibrate without being pushed.”<fnref n="9" /> They manifest the activity of matter and are thus ripe for attention from the Cluster of Excellence from which this volume springs. Not just providing evidence that matter does things by itself and that objects and materials are not inert, residues raise the question of precisely what kinds of activity are involved and with what effects.

Let us now turn to some examples of residues in museums in order to illuminate a subject that is not usually given more than cursory attention by museology (the academic study concerned with the nature and capacities of museums). Residues have, however, been the concern of more practical attention, especially in the field of conservation (which is sometimes subsumed under museography, which deals with practical dimensions of the museum). I am interested in how far a focus on residues can expand beyond such existing approaches, and into museology and other fields, bringing new perspectives into and onto the museum.

<footnote n="6">6 For relevant debates, see, for example, Sarah Walden: The Ravished Image. How to Ruin Masterpieces by Restoration, London 1985; and Michael Daley: Solvent Abuse. In: Simon J. Knell (ed.): Care of Collections, London 1994, pp. 30–34.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 Timothy Morton: Being Ecological, London 2018, p. 169.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 Steedman (see note 3), p. 163.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 Ibid., p. 171.</footnote>
## Cases of cleaning cases

One of the ways in which residues manifest in museums is as problems that need to be cleared away. Little museological attention has been given to the cleaning of museums, but cleaning practices have become significant in some ethnographic research – an approach well tuned to the residual. Anthropologist Jennie Morgan became interested in discourses and practices of cleaning when these became highly contested – in what she dubbed “cleaning wars” – at her research site, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland.<fnref n="10" /> The “cleaning wars” broke out after the museum was demoted in its ranking as a visitor attraction because of being judged insufficiently clean. The offending residues, which had led to what museum staff felt to be a serious loss of status, were primarily to be found on – or sometimes in – display cases. Typically, they took the form of dust and fingerprints, or other greasy markings, on the glass of cases or within them. As Morgan explains, some of these residues were seen as emanating from the people who came to view the exhibits: “Visitors were conceptualized by staff as somewhat messy creatures who were inclined to drop litter, picnic in areas they should not, bring dirt in on their bodies, create dust by shedding hair and skin, and touch cases and objects with their ‘sticky fingers’ or ‘clawing’ hands.”<fnref n="11" /> Attending to such residues brings to light understandings of visitors as not physically contained. Defying usual museological understandings of visitors as learners or aesthetes, they appear here as embodied, unruly, and, like the residues themselves, transgressive, as Morgan points out, drawing on Michael Taussig’s idea of dust and dirt as “transgressive substances.”<fnref n="12" />

But it is not only humans who are seen to have transgressed by creating the residues that led to the loss of the museum’s status. During one meeting at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, we paused at a display, and the manager pointed out a thick layer of gray dust that had gathered in between a piece of furniture and a clear Perspex screen. A museum officer commented dryly, “What you don’t see is the dust that we have already removed [...] for some reason it’s just a very dusty building.”<fnref n="13" />

<footnote n="10">10 Jennie Morgan: Change and Everyday Practice at the Museum. An Ethnographic Study. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester 2011, p. 190.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11 Ibid., p. 194.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 Jennie Morgan: The Cleaning Cupboard. An Ethnographic Look at the Production of “Newness” in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. In: Friedrich von Bose, Kerstin Poehls, Franka Schneider, Annett Schulze (eds.): Museum X. Zur Neuvermessung eines mehrdimensionalen Raumes. Berliner Blätter 57, Berlin 2011: pp. 49–56, here: p. 51. Morgan cites Michael Taussig: My Cocaine Museum, Chicago 2004, p. xiii.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13 Morgan: Change and Everyday (see note 10), p. 194.</footnote>
The building itself is seen as active in making such matter as dust. Moreover, Morgan notes, the materials of the display cases – especially the glass – make residues such as dust and fingerprints all the more visible. Indeed, when the exteriors of cases are cleaned, the marks and dust inside them may become even more evident.<fnref n="14" /> The interaction of substances, materials and light generates attention to residues that might otherwise have remained unnoticed. Museum staff thus work with ontologies of matter as active – and not only in relation to museum objects. Matter (in this case, dust) is not simply active, however; it behaves and interacts in particular ways – on which there may be disagreement. As Morgan describes in a fascinating discussion of the work of museum cleaners, there is a dispute between those who believe that wet cleaning (using cloths, water, and chemicals) is most effective and those who say that only dry cleaning (using dusters and a vacuum cleaner) can result in properly residue-free cases. Each side claims not only that the practices of the other fail to effectively remove residues but that they merely redistribute and can lead to further ones. Such disputes are not, however, only about the supposed facts and practicalities; they are also, as Morgan shows, bound up with emotions, morals, and museum hierarchies. The latter includes a shared sense among the cleaners of their low status within the museum – that they themselves are in many ways like the dust and grime that they are tasked to clear away and out of sight. This is expressed in their resentment of how their work is limited by curators who “don’t trust us around objects.”<fnref n="15" />

Differentiations of residues and their entanglements in concerns beyond the immediately practical are revealed in Margareta von Oswald’s ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.<fnref n="16" /> In the museum, staff are much exercised about dust, which, she writes, sometimes drives “museum employees crazy.”<fnref n="17" /> There is, she observes, a kind of dust that museum staff there call “museum dust.”<fnref n="18" /> This is dust that accrues once an object is within the museum. Some staff regard this as a kind of offence to the object caused by the museum, whereas others see it as part of the object’s overall life, which includes its time in the museum as well as that before it. Here, we see different ideas not just about whether residues are part of an object but also about the museum’s role in an object’s provenance or biography. For the curators who see museum dust only as an irritant, the task of the museum is to freeze the object at the moment of

<footnote n="14">14 Morgan: Cleaning Cupboard (see note 12), p. 54.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15 Morgan: Change and Everyday (see note 10), p. 208.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 See Margareta von Oswald: Working Through Colonial Collections. An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Leiden 2022, chapter 7.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 Ibid.</footnote>
its acquisition: history is only what happened beforehand. For those more willing to
embrace the dust, an object's experience in the museum is part of its continuing life
and life story. Through the lens of dust, then, we can see not just different ontologies
of the matter involved but also different conceptions of the museum's rightful agency
and of the very idea of a museum object.

Although dust is sometimes regarded as a relatively harmless residue, Oswald
points out that it is not necessarily seen as such by museum staff, since it may harbor
damaging substances or life-forms. Other kinds of residues, especially from previous
attempts to protect and conserve objects, have also sometimes proved to be damaging
either to objects or to people (see also Cavaziel, in this volume). In the case of ethno-
logical museums, the toxicity of earlier pesticide use can interfere with the work on
objects by – or the return of objects to – their source communities.<fnref n="19" />

The restitution of objects leads us back to this article's residual concern with
questions of possession. Museums' claims for holding onto objects are based in part on
the idea that they take the best care of the objects and protect them from problematic
residues. That they introduce other residues – especially toxic ones – goes against the
grain of this reasoning, as does the removal of residues that, according to some, should
not be removed. The long-running case of the so-called epidermis of the Parthenon
marbles – a majestic frieze of marble sculptures held in the British Museum – is a cele-
brated example. The marbles were taken by Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century;
for decades, there have been calls for their return to Greece. Among the various argu-
ments made by the British Museum for keeping them has been that doing so was best
for their preservation. A major challenge to this has come, however, from revelations
of damage caused by the cleaning methods used by the museum. At different points
in time, these have included the use of caustic chemicals and acids, as well as waxes
and wire wool. An extensive cleaning in the 1930s was widely condemned – including
by a later British Museum director – for losing significant surface detail.<fnref n="20" /> All of this
was undertaken, moreover, in an attempt to remove what was assumed to be an alien
residue and restore what was imagined to be the sculptures' original pure whiteness.
Scholars have increasingly questioned the idea that the orange-brown tint on the mar-
bles was the equivalent of museum dust – that is, it only appeared after they were in
British hands. Some have suggested that it is naturally produced by the marble itself
(though this idea is no longer deemed likely) or that it is either intentional pigment or

<footnote n="19">19 See Clémentine Deliss: The Metabolic Museum, Berlin 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 See Ian Jenkins: Cleaning and Controversy. The Parthenon Sculptures, 1811–1939, London 2001.</footnote>
the remnants of original protection applied at the time of their making.<fnref n="21" /> If these are
the cause of the residues – rather than what some would consider the regular effects
of exposure to air – then, in the view of those calling for return, this is as all the more
reason for the marbles to be freed from their wrongful captivity, a captivity in which
they have only suffered further harm.

In all of the cases discussed above, the residues are never mere residues. Instead,
they are entangled with many other facets of the museum – including hierarchies
and status, emotions and morals, and the very possibilities of possession, display, and
restitution, among other actual and potential museum actions. Residues reveal ontol-
ogies – how matter and, more specifically, the object and its constitutive practices are,
perhaps, diversely and even disputably, made in the museum – and, thus, how these in
turn allow for the museum to be imagined and realized in particular ways.

Dusty installations

Ethnographic research and an anthropological sensibility are not the only means to
bring residues – and the residual work with and against them in museums – to museo-
logical attention. There are also artistic and other installation works that have focused
on museum residues – especially dust – and in doing so have likewise highlighted
entanglements and alternative ontologies. Here, I do not attempt to provide a wide sur-
vey of such works but, rather, select some for the museological insights that they bring.<fnref n="22" />

For philosopher Michael Marder, that modern art might focus on dust – or even
develop a genre that he calls “Dustart” – is logical since a key feature of modern art
is that it “relegates the forms of things to the background … while foregrounding the
materials of which artworks are made.”<fnref n="23" /> Given the honed residual attention that artists
typically bring to bear, it follows that “previously imperceptible matter/dust [comes] into
view,” opening up the possibility of it becoming part of the artwork and generating
questions about the material and temporal stability of the artwork itself.<fnref n="24" /> An early and
famous example, from 1920, is *Dust Breeding* (Élevage de Poussière) by Marcel Duchamp
and Man Ray. The very title of the work expresses clearly the idea of dust as active and
indeed proliferative. As Marder describes it:

<footnote n="21">21 See, for example, Amerimni Galanos, Yanna Doganis: The Remnants on the Epidermis of the Parthenon. In: *Studies in Conservation*, vol. 48, 2003, no. 1, pp. 3–16.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">22 For further examples see Marder (see note 4); Marijn Nieuwenhuis, Aga Nasser: Dust. A Perfect Circularity. In: *Cultural Geographies*, vol. 25, 2018, no. 3, pp. 501–7; and Marilena Parlati: *Beyond Inchoate Debris*. Dust in Contemporary Culture. In: *European Journal of English Studies*, vol. 15, 2011, no. 1, pp. 73–84.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">23 Marder (see note 4), p. 96.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24 Ibid.</footnote>
“For a year, Duchamp let dust accumulate on the back of his massive 2.75 meter-tall work – The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (1914–23), alternatively titled The Large Glass. When the layer of dust was thick enough, Ray visited Duchamp’s Broadway studio in New York that housed the piece placed by an open window. There he photographed the ‘ready-made’ with a two-hour exposure, so as to capture the fine grains of city pollution mixed with the puffs of cotton and other vestiges of the artist’s life and work.”<fnref n="25" />

Later, Duchamp removed some of the dust and covered what remained with varnish, permanently integrating the dust into the artwork.<fnref n="26" /> As with other artworks employing dust, much more is stirred up and in through its deployment. In the case of *Dust Breeding*, Marder points to its sexual connotations: dust collaborating in the “denuding and covering up” of the bride.<fnref n="27" /> Indeed, dust – and other residues to varying extents – is especially resonant in that it is multiple, as well as being from somewhere – or, better, from *manywheres* – and thus carries “reverberations” (as Steedman puts it) from other times and places.<fnref n="28" /> Artist Allison Cortson, for example, utilizes household dust from vacuum cleaners; Alexandre Orion, the residues of urban pollution in traffic tunnels.<fnref n="29" /> These residues are far from being mere media; they are integral to the artworks and their resonances.

There are other dust artworks that more directly address the museum itself. One notable example is the *Art Museum Dust Collection* begun in 1996 by artist and director of the John Erickson Museum of Art, Sean Miller. A continuing work, it has involved taking photographs of dust at microscopic scale from numerous museums around the world.<fnref n="30" /> As Miller explains, many art museum viewers and others regard dust as a “disappointment” within the art museum space: “The elusive substance flies in the face of the unconscious desires and expectations art audiences hold for the transcendent ‘white cube’ gallery or white cube space. Dust must be removed to preserve the integrity and fallacy of the timeless objective white cube.”<fnref n="31" />

<footnote n="25">25 Ibid., p. 97.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26 See Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27 Ibid., p. 100.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">28 Steedman (see note 3), p. 161.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">29 Marder (see note 4), pp. 110–13.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">30 See http://www.seanmillerstudio.net/museum-dust (as of 5/2022).</footnote>

<footnote n="31">31 Kelly Cobb, Sean Miller: Art Museum Dust Collection. Wearing Away Museum Grounds – Dust Bunnies, White Lies and New Measures. In: Textile. The Journal of Cloth and New Measures, vol. 8, 2015, no. 3, pp. 286–302.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_22.png" /><figcaption>1: Nina Katchadourian: The Dustiest Place in the Museum. 2016. Interior of the dusty closet.</figcaption></figure>

Interestingly, as Nina Samuel has observed, this idea of dust as something that Mary Douglas might term “matter out of place” is also evident in the virtual space of computers and the images they generate.32 Through the non-admittance or expulsion of dust, spaces — digital and also physical — are enacted as clean, pure, and timeless. Through his actions, however, Miller seeks to transform the denial of dust in the art museum: “Art museum dust is a hybrid of decaying art, the art institution, the art audience, artists themselves and art administrators. Due to this synthesis, it may be the most pure and beautiful presence in many museums.”33

In what might be seen as another form of dust breeding, or even of dust's "perfect circularity," artist Kelly Cobb has worked Miller's photographs of dust into woven fabrics, which are then also exhibited in museums.34 Dust can – and does – go on and on.

<footnote n="32">32 See Nina Samuel: "Do not clean off the dust specks. They are real." Über gestörte, verschmutzte und verborgene Computerbilder. In: Robert Suter, Gottfried Boehm, Thorsten Bothe (eds.): Prekäre Bilder, Leiden 2010, pp. 247–75. For Mary Douglas's term, see Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger, London 1966.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">33 Cobb, Miller (see note 31), p. 290.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">34 Steedman (see note 3), p. 16; Kelly Cobb: Art Museum Dust Collection, https://kellyacobb.tumblr.com/dust (as of 5/2022).</footnote>
Nina Katchadourian’s *Dust Gathering* (2016–17) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York likewise focuses on the fact that dust breaches the usual boundaries of space, time, objects, and persons. ⚙️ Fig. 1 As the online description puts it: “Dust consists of material from both inside and outside, from Earth and the cosmos, from places very high and very low – and at the Museum, it’s literally an intermingling of different people from around the world.”<fnref n="35" /> Alongside making this dust visible through photographs, Katchadourian, like the ethnographic works above, seeks to bring the people connected with removing dust, and their work, into awareness – though not, significantly, to sight – through audio interviews with them.

While some of these works invoke the reverberations of other times and places, and of the interactions of the contents – human and nonhuman – of gallery spaces, they do not directly investigate these.

A remarkable work that does so is a recent installation created by designer Clemens Winkler as part of the exhibition *Stretching Materialities*, produced within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence *Matters of Activity*.<fnref n="36" /> ⚙️ Figs. 2–6 Evading mono-classification as a work of only art, design, or research, Winkler’s installation entailed enlisting the cleaners of the exhibition space of the Tieranatomisches Theater (Veterinary Anatomy Theater) to collect dust samples weekly. The samples were displayed in test tubes in the gallery and analyzed microscopically to detect the components of the dust. This revealed a wide mix of sources of different scales, including cosmic dust and (as the frustrated curators in the aforementioned ethnographic examples claimed) dust that was indeed created by the building (in this case limestone), as well as other sources, such as pollens, brought in by visitors. The breakdown of each sample, displayed on the exhibition walls, charted the changing components of dust across the year, showing not

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>2: Clemens Winkler: Weekly dust samples collected with cleaning staff at the Veterinary Anatomy Theatre (TA T).</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="35">35 MoMA: Dust Gathering. An Audio+ Experience by Nina Katchadourian, https://www.moma.org/cal-endar/exhibitions/3610 (as of 5/2022).</footnote>

<footnote n="36">36 Matters of Activity: Exhibition “Stretching Materialities”. Hidden Activities in Objects and Spaces at the Veterinary Anatomy Theatre, https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/activities/6006/exhibition-stretching-materialities (as of 4/2022). I draw here also on Clemens Winkler: Atmosphere in the Making – A Cloud Microbiome, unpublished essay.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>3: Clemens Winkler: Algorithmic Weathering, Sampling Wall.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_25.png" /><figcaption>4: Clemens Winkler: Algorithmic Weathering, Sampling Wall, close up.</figcaption></figure>

only that dust is multiple but that its composition alters, carrying shifting reverberations at different times. As with the rest of this exhibition, Winkler's dust installation sought to highlight modes in which materiality could be stretched, in this case by attending to these microscopic "material sediments," as he sometimes called them, and by showing them. In so doing, the work revealed the usually hidden activity of the exhibition space - which, at a stretch, we can call the museum - itself.

## Conclusion

This article has explored cases of attending to residues in and of museums in order to consider what this might bring to light for the wider understanding of museums. For the most part, it has done so through examples of literal or material residues. Metaphorical ones are never far away, however. As noted above, the cleaners at the museum in Glasgow associated their own status with the grime that they were

tackling; the toxic residues on ethnological objects speak eloquently of the poisonous nature of colonial appropriation; and the artworks all emanate metaphorical reverberations, often multiple. By exploring attempts to exorcise and expel residues (to dust and attempt to make dust bite the dust), this article has shown these to be constitutive acts that sediment particular hierarchies, histories, and ontologies.

To attend to material residues – to sight the dust – is to attend to the materiality of museums. Often, when the museum’s materiality is invoked, this is imagined in terms of museum objects, or sometimes of their architectures. Residues, however, direct the gaze to a micro level – one that destabilizes the boundedness of the object itself, upsetting conventional ontologies. In part, what is at work here is a shift from objects to matter or materials. But it is even more radical in that it stretches this further – as the *Stretching Materialities* exhibition showed so well – beyond those materials that make up objects and into the even more unnoticed or extraneous, the residual.
<figure><img src="image_26.png" /><figcaption>5: Clemens Winkler and Skander Hathroubi: Microbiome of Air-borne Particles. Microbial sampling with Merck MAS-100 Eco Air Sampler in the exhibition space after visitors gathering.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_27.png" /><figcaption>6: Clemens Winkler: Indoor-Lockdown-Pollen Exterior Façade. SEM photography of willow pollen and limestone in the entrance area of TA T during Covid-19 lockdown.</figcaption></figure>

Residual within this article has been the issue of possession. Residues play into this in unexpected but powerful ways, as strikingly evident in the cases of the epidermis of the Parthenon marbles and of the ethnological objects whose potential restitution is deemed to be hampered by the toxic residues on them. We might also ask whether an object possesses its residues or is possessed by them. As for those arguments of figure and ground, and the potential analytical reinvigoration of shifting from one to the other, such a question does not call for an answer but is its own provocation to thinking relations otherwise.<fnref n="37" />

*Residues* is not, as yet, a term regularly employed in museological analysis. Its very residuality, however, gives it traction, bringing usually unremarked dimensions of museums to light – such as, the very fact that there are so many residues and that workers battle against them – and also revealing certain assumptions – such as, that museums should be clean and that objects should be without residues. In this article, I have sought to bring not just residues but residual attention – sighting the dust – to the fore. In a way, this is a paradoxical act, raising the question of whether the residual is still residual when it is made center stage. How the dust will settle on that question – and indeed whether it will do so – is, however, a matter that for now must remain (including in this essay) unresolved, and even residual.

<footnote n="37">37 See Marilyn Strathern: On Space and Depth. In: John Law, Annemarie Mol (eds.): Complexities. Social Studies of Knowledge Practices, Durham NC 2002, pp. 88–115.</footnote>
„Alles, was dir begegnen wird, ist leider nicht zu vermeiden.“

Søren Kierkegaard

Dass sich in einem Archiv, dessen heutiger Zweck in der materiellen Bewahrung historischer Tonträger und in der öffentlichen Zugänglichmachung resp. Erforschung der digitalisierten Inhalte dieser Tonträger besteht, auch zwei menschliche Kehlköpfe befinden, war eine unvermutete Begegnung. Denn bei den heute aktiv genutzten Sammlungsbeständen des Lautarchivs der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin handelt es sich um historische Audiodokumente und ihnen zugehörige historische Schriftdokumente. Den Bestandsmittelpunkt bildet eine Sammlung von Schellackplatten, die im Wesentlichen in drei Signaturgruppen PK, LA und AUT untergliedert werden kann:

a) Sprach- und Musikaufnahmen, welche die Preußische Phonographische Kommission (PK) in den Jahren 1915–1918 von Soldaten in deutschen Kriegsgefangenenlagern gemacht hat;

b) Lautaufnahmen (LA) von vorwiegend deutschen Dialekten, die in den 1920er-Jahren dokumentiert wurden;

c) eine Sammlung von Stimmporträts berühmter Persönlichkeiten, die Wilhelm Doegen, der im Jahr 1920 das Lautarchiv als „Lautabteilung“ an der Preußischen Staatsbibliothek gründete, seit 1917 mit Ludwig Darmstaedter als Audio-Pendant zu dessen Autographensammlung – „Autophon“-Sammlung (AUT) – aufgebaut hatte.<fnref n="1" />

Insbesondere mit Blick auf den erstgenannten Teilbestand hat die Kulturwissenschaftlerin Britta Lange vorgeschlagen, „von den Kriegsgefangenenaufnahmen als einer kolonialen Sammlung innerhalb des Lautarchivs zu sprechen – und damit von einem Kolonialarchiv im weiteren Sinne“.<fnref n="2" />

Die beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfe verwehren sich der heutigen Ordnung des Lautarchivs. Es handelt sich um Körperteile von menschlichen Individuen und sind als solche wohl kaum unter eine verallgemeinernde Sammlungskategorie zu fassen, schon gar nicht unter die Kategorie ‚Sonstiges‘. Wie soll damit umgegangen werden? Ein Anfangsverdacht, dass die Kehlköpfe „aus kolonialen Erwerbskontexten, konkret

<footnote n="1">1 Diese grobe Übersicht berücksichtigt lediglich die von Nutzer*innen hochfrequentierten Kernbestände des Lautarchivs. Im Audio-Bereich wären noch Wachswalzen, beschichtete Schallplatten, Gelatine-Platten, Magnettonbänder, DAT-Bänder und CDs zu nennen.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 Britta Lange: Gefangene Stimmen. Tonaufnahmen von Kriegsgefangenen aus dem Lautarchiv 1915–1918. Berlin 2019, S. 17/18.</footnote>
von Opfern des Kolonialkriegs gegen Herero und Nama in der Kolonie Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1904–1908, stammten“, ist bereits 2010/11 von der Afrikanistin Anette Hoffmann geäußert worden.<fnref n="3" /> Die Kehlköpfe lagen jahrelang als Trockenpräparate in einem alten Karton aus brauner Wellpappe, zusammen mit verschiedenen anderen „Resten‘ – z. B. einer Glühbirne. Wie sollen die Kehlköpfe zukünftig im Humboldt Forum aufbewahrt werden? Steht ihnen eine würdige Bestattung zu, anstatt weiter in der Sammlung zu verbleiben? Sollen sie repatriiert werden?

Diese Fragen stellen eine besondere Herausforderung an die Vertreter*innen der verschiedenen Wissenschaftsbereiche dar, die bislang Verantwortung für das Lautarchiv trugen/tragen: Aus dem mitgebrachten konventionellen Handwerkszeug eines Musikwissenschaftlers etwa – dies muss von der gegenwärtigen Sammlungsleitung des Lautarchivs zugegeben werden – kann keine Expertise oder Kompetenz im Hinblick auf einen Umgang mit *Human Remains* eingebracht werden. Es stellt aber auch den jeweilig verantwortungstragenden Menschen ganz unabhängig von jeglicher Wissenschaft vor die Notwendigkeit eines Umgangs mit dieser Begegnung. Von welchem Ausgangspunkt aus kann ein*e Sammlungsverantwortliche* r, etwa aus dem Bereich der Phonetik, Musikwissenschaft oder Musikethnologie kommend, eine Entscheidung entwickeln, welches Schicksal die beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfe in Zukunft erfahren sollen? Prämisse der im vorliegenden Artikel geäußerten Gedanken ist es, dass sich isoliert aus keiner der genannten Fachdisziplinen eine Entscheidung entwickeln ließe. Dies führt jedoch nicht notwendig zu einer Disziplinlosigkeit, sondern direkt zu der Erkenntnis, dass eine verantwortliche Entscheidung auf allen Ebenen der Universität, unabhängig von der jeweiligen fachlich-disziplinären Ausrichtung, diskutiert und mitgetragen werden muss. Der vorliegende Essay postuliert als flankierendes Denken „ethische Reflexionen“,<fnref n="4" /> welche die Gedankengänge teils mehr und teils weniger explizit durchdringen und tragen – geordnet hinsichtlich der Frage, was mit den beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfen, die sich im Lautarchiv befinden, geschehen soll. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass es nicht ‚die‘ Ethik gibt, sondern verschiedene Ethiken und Ethik-Klassifizierungen.<fnref n="5" /> Im Mittelpunkt der Gedanken, die dargestellt werden sollen, steht die Unterscheidung zwischen einer deontologi-

<footnote n="3">3 Holger Stoecker: Provenienzbericht über zwei menschliche Kehlkopfpräparate im Lautarchiv der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 31. Januar 2022, S. 9, https://www.humboldt-labor.de/de/journal/menschlichenkehlkoepfe-im-lautarchiv-die-praparate-stammen-moeglicherweise-von-kriegsgefangenen-imheutigen-namibia (Stand 5/2022).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 Zum Begriff der „ethischen Reflexion“ vgl. Thomas Gil: Ethik, Stuttgart 1993, S. 144ff.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 Ebd.</footnote>
schen Gesinnungsethik gegenüber einer konsequenzialistischen und insbesondere utilitaristischen, nutzenkalkulatorischen Ethik. Es sollte im Bewusstsein behalten werden, dass Ethik hierzulande wiederum im Wesentlichen als eurozentrische Disziplin praktiziert wird, die zwar eingedenk ihrer beschränkten Perspektive durchaus produktiv über das Schicksal der menschlichen Kehlköpfe im Lautarchiv nachzudenken imstande sein könnte, sich aber als akademische Disziplin selbst in der Gefahr befindet, von ihrer existenziellen Entsprechung zu entfernen: akademi- sche Ethik ≠ angewandte Ethik. Wesentlich für eine Entscheidung wäre also eine Ethik, die (in freier Anlehnung an Kierkegaard) als existenzielle Ethik bezeichnet werden könnte.<fnref n="6" /> In Kierkegaards Universum erscheint all das existenziell, was die „Logik nicht hineinschlüpfen lassen“ kann.<fnref n="7" /> Und die menschlichen Kehlköpfe im Lautarchiv verwehren sich qua der körperlichen Existenz ihrer menschlichen Indi- vidualität der Logik von Archivkategorien. Diese Freiheit gegenüber der Logik von Archivkategorien ist unbedingt auch für die im Lautarchiv auf Schellackplat- ten aufbewahrten individuellen Stimmen von Kriegsgefangenen aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg geltend zu machen, woran sich der gewohnheitsmäßige Umgang mit Tonträgern im Lautarchiv allerdings zuweilen erinnern muss. Die physische Prä- senz von Leichenteilen individueller Menschen ist aber schlechterdings eine laute Kritik am Archiv bzw. Kritik am Lautarchiv. Es überträgt sich der Anspruch der beiden verstorbenen Individuen, deren Kehlköpfe sich im Lautarchiv befin- den, eine menschlich würdige Behandlung zu erfahren, direkt in die existenzielle Begegnung der Verantwortungsträger mit den Human Remains dieser Individuen hinein. Insofern der Begriff „Rest“ einen relationalen Bezug zu einer vormalig abgeschlossenen Entität hat, erfordern Human Remains – zweifellos evident – einen ethisch anderen Umgang im Sammlungskontext, als wenn es sich etwa um den Rest eines Gitarrenhalses handelte, dem das Klangkorpus fehlt.

Die naheliegenden wissenschaftlichen Maßnahmen, die Kehlköpfe im Lautar- chiv von Expert*innen untersuchen zu lassen und zu versuchen, die Provenienz die- ser menschlichen Kehlköpfe sammlungsgeschichtlich zu erforschen und einzuordnen, sind in jüngerer Zeit durchgeführt worden. Die Kehlköpfe wurden im Februar 2019 durch Evelyn Heuckendorf (Institut für Integrative Neuroanatomie an der Charité –

<footnote n="6">6 In freier Anlehnung an Kierkegaard ist hier an die existenzielle Begegnung zwischen menschlichen Individuen gedacht, nicht etwa an den Begriff der ethischen Existenz, den Kierkegaard in seinem Buch *Entweder-Oder* entwickelt hat oder die Kierkegaard-Rezeption durch Albert Camus und Jean-Paul Sartre.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 Sören Kierkegaard: Der Begriff Angst. Übersetzt und mit Glossar, Bibliographie sowie einem Essay „Zum Verständnis des Werkes“, hg. u. übers. v. Liselotte Richter (dän. Orig. 1844), Hamburg 1991, S. 13.</footnote>
Universitätsmedizin Berlin) und Andreas Winkelmann (Institut für Anatomie an der Medizinischen Hochschule Brandenburg Theodor Fontane) präparatorisch und anatomisch begutachtet.<fnref n="8" /> Im Kontext eines durch das Deutsche Zentrum Kulturgutverluste geförderten Projekts hat Holger Stoecker die Provenienz der beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfe im Lautarchiv untersucht und im Herbst 2021 einen Bericht vorgelegt, der seit 31. Januar 2022 im Netz frei zugänglich ist.<fnref n="9" /> Auch an allgemeineren Publikationen zu Human Remains hat es in jüngerer Zeit nicht gefehlt: Gefördert vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung und der Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden ist im Januar 2020 der Leitfaden *Menschliche Überreste im Depot. Empfehlungen für Betreuung und Nutzung* erschienen; er ist ein Versuch, Handlungsleitlinien zu formulieren.<fnref n="10" /> Im Februar 2022 hat die Koordinierungsstelle für ein gesamtstädtisches Konzept zur Aufarbeitung Berlins kolonialer Vergangenheit, getragen von Decolonize Berlin e. V., das Kompendium *We Want Them Back* vorgelegt, welches ein von Isabelle Reimann verfasstes wissenschaftliches Gutachten zum Bestand von Human Remains aus kolonialen Kontexten in Berliner Sammlungen enthält.<fnref n="11" />

All diese Publikationen bringen ein wachsendes gesellschaftliches Bewusstsein für diese Thematik zum Ausdruck; sie geben den Sammlungen praktische Leitlinien an die Hand und diskutieren auch ethische Aspekte. Dennoch erscheint der konkrete Umgang mit Human Remains in Archiven und Museen zuweilen eigentümlich dissoziiert von diesen Diskursen. Denn es bleibt zu entscheiden, was mit den beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfen im Lautarchiv in Zukunft geschehen soll. Die Entscheidung muss sowohl auf der Grundlage des gegenwärtigen wissenschaftlichen Forschungsstandes als auch vor dem Hintergrund ethischer Erwägungen getroffen werden. Holger Stoeckers Forschungen zur Provenienz der beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfe im Lautarchiv kam zu keinem eindeutigen Schluss: „Institutionelle Strukturen, Forschungsansätze und personelle Vernetzungen machen ihre Herkunft aus dem deutschen Kolonialkrieg gegen Herero und Nama 1904–1908, ihren Eingang in die Berliner Anatomie und ihre dortige Nutzung für rassenanthropologische Forschungen plausibel, bleiben aber hypothetisch.“<fnref n="12" /> Diese Relation – ,plausibel, aber hypothetisch‘ – steht vom Grad der Validität her zwischen einer eindeutigen Schlussfolgerung, die aus Sätzen stabil

<footnote n="8">8 Stoecker (s. Anm. 3), S. 6 u. 7.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 Stoecker (s. Anm. 3).</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 Jakob Fuchs, Diana Gabler, Christoph Herm, Michael Markert, Sandra Mühlenberend: *Menschliche Überreste im Depot. Empfehlungen für Betreuung und Nutzung, 2020.*</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11 Isabelle Reimann et al: *We Want Them Back – Wissenschaftliches Gutachten zum Bestand menschlicher Überreste/Human Remains aus kolonialen Kontexten in Berlin, 2022.* Auch die Kehlkopfpräparate im Lautarchiv wurden in diesem Zusammenhang begutachtet: vgl. S. 138–140.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 Stoecker (s. Anm. 3), S. 30.</footnote>
entwickelt werden kann, und der demgegenüber instabileren Schlussfolgerung ,nicht zu beweisen, aber auch nicht auszuschließen`. Der Begriff der Plausibilität fügt der Hypothese ein gewisses Gewicht und eine Richtung bei.

Vier Möglichkeiten, die in Bezug auf das zukünftige Schicksal der menschlichen Kehlköpfe im Lautarchiv genannt werden können, sind:

a) Repatriierung im Falle eines erwiesenen kolonialen Kontextes;

b) Umlagern in eine andere Sammlung, die über Expertise und Kompetenz verfügt;

c) Behalt in der Sammlung zu weiterer Forschung;

d) Bestattung.<fnref n="13" />

Insofern es in der Ethik um die Frage nach dem moralisch richtigen Handeln geht, zeigen sich in der Diskurspraxis häufig zwei unterschiedliche Argumentationen, die getrennt oder auch miteinander verwoben auftreten können: die Argumentation, der es um das eigene moralisch richtige Handeln geht, in der die handelnde Person im Vor- dergrund steht und das Ziel des Handelns in den Hintergrund tritt (gesinnungsethi- scher, deontologischer Ansatz); und die Argumentation, die primär nach dem Ziel, Folgen oder Nutzen des Handelns fragt (teleologischer Ansatz). Zuweilen wird der Fokus mehr auf die handelnde Person gerichtet, als auf die Sache: Die menschlichen Kehlköpfe, um deren zukünftiges Schicksal es eigentlich geht, geraten ins Sekundäre, wenn sich der Diskurs mehr um die handelnden Personen dreht. Ein Beispiel: Dass Fotos der Kehlköpfe im Jahr 2017 „aufgrund der Sensibilität der Objektfotos aus dem online zugänglichen Sammlungsportal der Humboldt-Universität herausgenommen“<fnref n="14" /> wurden, zeigt einerseits ein wachsendes Bewusstsein gegenüber der Sensibilität der ganzen Angelegenheit, fordert jedoch andererseits den Argwohn geradezu heraus, das Lautarchiv habe versucht, diesen problematischen Teil der Sammlung oder Samm- lungsgeschichte zu verbergen. Auch liegt die grundsätzliche Frage nahe, wie „es sein [kann], dass [...] in so vielen Sammlungen weltweit – auch an der Humboldt-Uni- versität – Human Remains zu finden sind, aber sich lange niemand dafür interessiert hat?“<fnref n="15" /> Immerhin ist bereits seit den 1990er-Jahren bekannt gewesen, dass sich Human Remains im Lautarchiv befinden. Dass die Objektfotos nicht mehr öffentlich zugäng-

<footnote n="13">13 Vgl. die Handreichung: Handle With Care. Was tun beim Auffinden von menschlichen Überresten in universitären Sammlungen? – auch abgedruckt in: Reimann (s. Anm. 11), S. 202.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 Stoecker (s. Anm. 3), S. 9.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15 Interview von Inga Dreyer mit Holger Stoecker, 31.01.2022, https://www.humboldt-labor.de/de/journal/ menschliche-kehlkoepfe-im-lautarchiv-die-praeparate-stammen-moeglicherweise-von-kriegsgefange- nen-im-heutigen-namibia (Stand 5/2022).</footnote>
lich sind, kann vor dem Hintergrund, dass sie verstörend wirken können, gerechtfertigt erscheinen. Die Frage allerdings, ob die ‚Objekte‘ überhaupt auf dem Sammlungsportal auffindbar sein sollen, wäre eine gesinnungsethische Sichtverengung, sofern es im Kern mehr um die Gesinnung der Handelnden ginge als um die Kehlköpfe.

Hieran schließt sich eine Frage der Sprachethik an, nämlich das Hinterfragen der Verwendung von Begriffen wie „Objekt“, „Präparat“ oder „specimen“ (Exemplar, Probestück). Das verweist nochmals auf den grundlegenden Unterschied zwischen den Human Remains im Lautarchiv zu anderen Sammlungsbeständen, etwa einer Sammlung von Stimmgabeln, die sich ebenso im Lautarchiv befindet (deren Provenienz zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt noch nicht geklärt ist und die in Bezug auf die Ordnung der Sammlung gleichsam ‚zwischen den Stühlen‘ steht). Während bei der Stimmgabelsammlung sprachlich eine Verdinglichung im Archivkontext nicht nur unproblematisch, sondern sogar adäquat erscheint, ist die Rede von „Objekten“ bei den beiden menschlichen Kehlköpfen sprachethisch prekär, weil es sich hier um Körperteile von menschlichen Subjekten (Individuen) handelt. Begriffe wie „Trockenpräparat“ oder kurz „Präparat“ bzw. der englische Begriff „specimen“ weisen auf die Konservierung mit dem Ziel der Forschung am menschlichen Gewebe hin. Dies mag in der Anatomie gang und gäbe sein. Es kann zwar nicht Ziel oder Anliegen dieses Artikels sein, die Forschungs- bzw. Sammlungspraxis oder Sprachformen einer ganzen Fachdisziplin in Frage zu stellen oder gar zu versuchen, einen Präzedenzfall für den Umgang mit Human Remains allgemein zu schaffen. Entscheidend jedoch für den Einzelfall der sich im Lautarchiv befindenden Kehlköpfe ist die plausible Herkunft aus einem kolonialen Unrechtskontext. Die Unmöglichkeit der Verdinglichung und entsprechender sprachlicher Bezeichnungen ergibt sich, wenn schon nicht bereits allgemein, so doch spätestens bei der von Holger Stoecker rekonstruierten Plausibilität der Herkunft der menschlichen Kehlköpfe aus Namibia.

Die Entscheidungsoption, die Kehlköpfe für weitere wissenschaftliche Forschung im universitären Kontext zu behalten – nicht zuletzt mit dem Ziel, doch noch eine hundertprozentig eindeutige Provenienz ermitteln zu können –, folgte einer utilitaristischen Ethik. Diese könnte in zweierlei Sinn verstanden werden:

a) einem Wissenschaftsverständnis, das sich selbst als falsifizierbar und nicht abschließbar auffasst, nützt der Behalt der Kehlköpfe, um die Möglichkeit weiterer Forschung offen zu halten, etwa die einer DNA-Untersuchung, die jedoch im Zusammenhang mit Holger Stoeckers Provenienzforschung bewusst ausgeklammert wurde, da – so Stoecker – „eine Relation zwischen DNA einerseits und regionaler Herkunft sowie ethnischer und sozialer Iden-
tität andererseits ohnehin nicht erwiesen"¹⁶ sei. Eine DNA-Untersuchung würde somit Stoecker zufolge keine Eindeutigkeit in Bezug auf die Herkunft herstellen können;

b) der Behalt nützt aber auch einem offenen Wissenschaftsverständnis, ohne dass zwingend weitere Forschung betrieben werden müsste, also im Sinn einer Selbstvergewisserung der eigenen Offenheit.

Ein Denken jedoch, welches im Zusammenhang mit Human Remains primär nach dem Nutzen für gegenwärtige oder zukünftige Wissenschaft fragt, könnte nur dann als moralisch richtig gelten, wenn die Individuen, um deren Körper es geht, dieser Forschung zugestimmt hätten (etwa vergleichbar mit einer Einwilligung im heutigen Zusammenhang einer Organspende). Dies liegt hier jedoch nicht vor. Damit wären utilitaristische Gedanken, die Kehlköpfe für weitere zukünftige Forschung zu behalten, ausgeschieden und die Wissenschaft nicht-utilitaristischen ethischen Erwägungen untergeordnet. Auch das Umlagern in eine von der Sache her adäquate Sammlung, etwa die Sammlung am Centrum für Anatomie oder dem Berliner Medizinhistorischen Museum, erschiene vor diesem Hintergrund prekär, erst recht im Lichte ihrer plausiblen Herkunft aus einem kolonialen Unrechtskontext.

Human Remains am Arbeitsplatz sind auch Thema des Arbeitsschutzes: In der Gefährdungsbeurteilung für die Arbeit im Lautarchiv sind die Kehlköpfe als psychische Gefahr eingestuft. Insbesondere die Arbeit in dem alten Archivraum Am Kupfergraben bot nicht zumutbare Umstände. Dies deswegen, weil Arbeitsplätze und Archivraum nicht getrennt waren, d. h., die Kehlköpfe befanden sich in einem Schrank in direkter Nähe zu den Schreibtischen/Arbeitsplätzen und die Präsenz toten menschlichen Gewebes am Arbeitsplatz stellte eine potenzielle psychische Belastung dar. In diesem Schrank befanden sich bis September 2021 die Kehlköpfe in einem alten, säurehaltigen, gepufferten Karton aus brauner Wellpappe, zusammen mit verschiedenen anderen Objekten, was ohne jede Polemik kritisiert werden muss: Weshalb sind die Kehlköpfe nach ihrer Begutachtung 2019 durch Expert*innen der Charité wieder in den alten Karton aus Wellpappe zurückgelegt worden? Wie sind sie transportiert worden? Seidenpapier und alterungsbeständige, säurefreie Archivkartons können mit geringem Geldaufwand beschafft werden; die unregelmäßig besetzte Kustodie/Sammlungsleitung kann hier kaum als Argument gelten gelassen werden, dass die Kehlköpfe zusammen mit beliebigen anderen Sammlungsresten wieder in den Schrank zurückgestellt wurden. ↗ Abb. 1
<figure><img src="image_28.png" /><figcaption>1: Karton aus brauner Wellpappe aus dem Lautarchiv, Am Kupfergraben 5 (Raum 213, Schrank 4). Diverse Inhalte: z. B. Glühbirne, Demonstrationsobjekt zur Anatomie des menschlichen Innenohres (Kunststoff) sowie zwei menschliche Kehlköpfe (aufgrund von Triggergefahr hier nicht mitabgebildet).</figcaption></figure>

Hier zeigt sich eine tiefe Kluft, ja Abspaltung zwischen theoretischer Analyse einerseits und praktischer Handhabung andererseits, ganz zu schweigen von der Frage, ob die Lagerung zweier menschlicher Kehlkopfpräparate in der gleichen Box mit einer Glühbirne und anderen Gegenständen ethisch vertretbar ist. Wo sind die Kehlköpfe heute und wie werden sie gelagert? Die beiden Kehlköpfe befinden sich heute, mit Seidenpapier ummantelt, in zwei alterungsbeständigen Archivkartons, in einem abgeschlossenen Schrank, in einem neuen Archivraum des Lautarchivs unter angemessenen klimatischen Bedingungen im Humboldt Forum. Sie wurden am 30. November 2021 von einer Kunstspedition im Rahmen des Umzugs des Lautarchivs in das Humboldt Forum gebracht.

Wenn einerseits nicht hundertprozentig validiert werden kann, ob es sich bei den Kehlköpfen um Körperteile von Menschen aus dem Kontext des Völkermordes an den Herero und Nama handelt, dies jedoch andererseits plausibel rekonstruiert werden konnte, empfiehlt sich im Hinblick auf den zukünftigen Umgang mit den Kehlköpfen
der Einbezug von Repräsentanten aus Namibia in diese Diskussion.<fnref n="17" /> Dass als Folge kolonialistischer Missionierung im heutigen Namibia das Christentum dominiert, ist Erbschuld des Kolonialismus. Die Option einer würdigen Bestattung der menschlichen Kehlköpfe würde daher einen möglichst offenen religiösen Rahmen erfordern oder aber ohne religiösen Kontext stattfinden müssen. Eine Institution wie etwa das House of One<fnref n="18" /> verfolgt die Idee eines pluralistischen Nebeneinanders aller Religionen: „Religionen in ihrem Kult und im Austausch mit Wissenschaften, Kunst und Kultur können eine Bereicherung sein – allen Gräueltaten, die unter Berufung auf die Religionen begangen werden, ein Modell eines friedvollen Miteinanders entgegensetzend.“<fnref n="19" /> Laut Charta sieht sich das House of One einer „Kultur der Gleichberechtigung“ verpflichtet, die sich nicht lediglich auf die drei monotheistischen Religionen bezieht.<fnref n="20" /> Da die Herkunft der Kehlköpfe aus dem Lautarchiv letztlich nicht hundertprozentig geklärt ist, erschiene ein offener religiöser Rahmen für eine mögliche Bestattung als eine mögliche Option. Proaktiv vorgeschlagen wurde dem Botschafter der Republik Namibia, S. E. Martin Andjaba, entweder eine Bestattung der Kehlköpfe in Berlin (wahlweise mit oder ohne religiöse Zeremonie) in Anwesenheit von Repräsentant*innen der namibischen und deutschen Regierung sowie verantwortlichen Repräsentant*innen der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin oder eine Repatriierung der Human Remains nach Namibia und dortige Bestattung.

Wenngleich vor dem Hintergrund der nicht hundertprozentig zu klärenden Provisionenz der Kehlköpfe der Vorschlag einer Bestattung in Berlin unter namibischer Beteiligung sicherlich als eine geeignete Perspektive erscheint, so gestattet der Provenienzbericht von Holger Stoecker andererseits auch die Möglichkeit, die Gewichtung auf die Plausibilität der Herkunft aus dem Genozid gegen Herero und Nama zu legen. Wählt die namibische Regierung diese Lesart und vereinbart sie darauf aufbauend im Konsens mit der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin eine Repatriierung, bedeutete dies jedoch nicht, damit den Satz *In dubio pro reo* auszuhöhlen, demzufolge im Zweifel die Unschuldsvermutung gilt und die Besitzverhältnisse bei der Universität lägen. Denn es stellt sich die Frage, ob dieser Rechtssatz – wie auch immer er in Repatriierungsdebatten etwa im Kontext von umstrittenen Kunstschätzen zur argumentativen

<footnote n="17">17 Ein Treffen zwischen dem namibischen Botschafter (S. E. Martin Andjaba), der Botschaftsrätin (Tania Tait), der Direktorin des Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrums für Kulturtechnik (Sharon Macdonald), dem zentralen Sammlungskoordinator der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Oliver Zauzig) und der Sammlungsleitung des Lautarchivs hat am 16. Mai 2022 stattgefunden.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 https://house-of-one.org/de (Stand 5/2022).</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19 https://house-of-one.org/de/konzept (Stand 5/2022).</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 https://house-of-one.org/sites/default/files/downloads/houseofonechartadt.pdf?t=1BfFc5 (Stand 5/2022).</footnote>
Anwendung gelangt – im Falle von Human Remains überhaupt angebracht ist. Geht es doch nicht um das Recht auf ein Objekt, sondern um Rechte von menschlichen Subjekten, die nur sich selbst gehören und daher zur Humboldt-Universität in keinem Besitzverhältnis stehen. Die Frage, ob die Kehlköpfe tatsächlich aus Namibia stammen oder nicht, würde aber für den spekulativen Fall, dass die Kehlköpfe ursprünglich aus Deutschland stammen, auch den Sinn einer Repatriierung in Frage stellen. Die wiederholte Nachfrage bei Holger Stoecker, ob es einen alternativen Herkunftskontext aus Deutschland geben könne, bejahte er zwar.<fnref n="21" /> Er verwies jedoch nochmals auf die Tatsache, dass im Kontext des Genozids an den Herero und Nama menschliche Körperteile, unter anderem Kehlköpfe, zur Forschung nach Berlin gebracht worden waren, an denen im Phonetischen Labor der HNO-Klinik der Charité geforscht wurde. Des Weiteren sei hinreichend rekonstruierbar, dass in den 1930er-Jahren zwei Kehlköpfe durch den Phonetiker Franz Wethlo, der sowohl an der Charité arbeitete als auch das Phonetische Laboratorium am Institut für Lautforschung leitete, in das Institut für Lautforschung eingebracht wurden.<fnref n="22" /> Lediglich nicht bewiesen sei, ob es sich bei diesen beiden Kehlköpfen um zwei derjenigen handelte, die aus Namibia nach Berlin gebracht worden waren. Insofern ist bezüglich der Bewertung dieser Informationen ein ergebnisoffener Austausch mit der namibischen Botschaft notwendig. Dass vor diesem Hintergrund eine Bestattung in Berlin unter namibischer Anwesenheit und Beteiligung als geeignete Lösung erscheint, ist – bei gleichzeitiger Offenheit gegenüber einer gewünschten Repatriierung – daher kein suggestiver Vorschlag, sondern eine begründete diplomatische Positionierung der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Abschließend gilt es noch einmal den Bogen zur Sammlung zu schlagen: Sowohl die Option einer Repatriierung der Kehlköpfe als auch diejenige einer Bestattung in Deutschland werfen die Frage auf: Was bliebe dann vom ‚Rest‘ – hier: den menschlichen Über, ‚resten“ – in der Sammlung? Was von verstorbenen Personen stets bleiben kann, ist zunächst die Erinnerung an die jeweiligen Menschen. In diesem Fall handelt es sich um menschliche Körperteile zweier Individuen, deren Individualität jedoch aufgrund fehlender Dokumentation nicht bekannt ist. Die wissenschaftliche Praxis der 1930er-Jahre ging mit einer Entindividualisierung der Körper einher. Die Erinnerung, die also in diesem Fall bleibt, ist durch den Aufarbeitungsversuch der Provenienzrecherche vermittelt, die ihr Möglichstes leistete, um sich einer Reindividualisierung der Körperreste über eine Herkunftsrekonstruktion anzunähern. Dass

<footnote n="21">21 Telefonat mit Holger Stoecker am 16. Mai 2022.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">22 Stoecker spricht von der „am weitesten zurückreichende[n], historische[n] fassbare[n] Information über die Biographie der Kehlkopf-Präparate“. Stoecker (s. Anm. 3), S. 16.</footnote>
diese Rekonstruktion nicht restlos gelingen konnte, wird offen im Provenienzbericht kommuniziert.²³ Eine Bestattung in Berlin oder eine Repatriierung nach Namibia (und dortige Bestattung) bedeutet somit auch nicht, dass schlechterdings kein Rest als Bezug oder Spur in der Sammlung verbleibt: Es bleibt die konstruktive Provenienzrecherche als Dokument der Wissenschaft ebenso wie der braune Karton aus Wellpappe, in dem die Kehlköpfe mit anderen Gegenständen und Resten über Jahrzehnte gelagert wurden.

Die beiden Kehlköpfe aber bleiben menschlich. Und sie bleiben als Geschichte zweier Menschen, an denen wahrscheinlich Unrecht verübt wurde, in die Sammlungsgeschichte des Lautarchivs eingeschrieben. Weder Repatriierung noch Bestattung können das Lautarchiv von dieser Bürde befreien. Der ethische Konsequenzialismus, die Erinnerung an die verstorbenen Individuen in den Vordergrund treten zu lassen, ist daher nur glaubwürdig, wenn er mit der (deontologischen) Gesinnung der Handelnden einhergeht, für geschichtlich begangenes Unrecht die Verantwortung zu übernehmen und stellvertretend um Entschuldigung zu bitten.
Martin Grünfeld and Caitlin DeSilvey

Fringe Objects: Cultivating Residues at the Museum

> *"This positiveness is so complete, so compact, that it can only be expressed negatively. There is no margin, no gap, no passes, no omission, no waste, no vestiges. The fringe, the fuzzy area, the refuse, the wasteland, the open-space have all disappeared."*<fnref n="1" />

This could be a description of the sight that greets one when entering a collection storage room at Medical Museum in Copenhagen – an immediate experience of a heavy, compact presence making itself felt as total and nonnegotiable. These words from Serres do not describe museum storerooms, however; they refer to his observation of densely cultivated Chinese farming landscapes as spaces without fringes of wasteland, without weeds and untended edges. Similarly, it may seem to the uninitiated and rare visitor that the well-ordered organization of objects in museum storage rooms and systems eliminates all open space and uncertainty. Yet, it only appears this way to the untrained eye: gaps and crevices can be found everywhere. Even in such apparently orderly places as museum collections, in-between entities persist. Without a proper place, they are subject to (and a product of) disorganization and decay, muddled registration systems, and insect invasions, persisting as a kind of *residual unculture*. In this sense, they are similar to the residual unculture Serres speaks of when he contrasts Chinese with French farming, the latter of which spares fallow fields, groves, and wastelands from intensive cultivation.<fnref n="2" /> For Serres, these apparently “empty” spaces hold the promise of untended and unruly chance, time, and life. Likewise, in our work, we have found uncultivated potentials at the fringes of formal museum collections.

In this essay, we focus on the uncultivated potentials of the museum's fringes and fringe objects in order to formulate how their ostensibly negligible status affords us a unique opportunity to foster the regeneration and ref configuration of their materiality and meaning. Our discussion of the fringe and its objects revolves around an ongoing

A special thanks to conservator Amalie Schjøtt-Wieth for providing valuable comments on the manuscript and to conservator Nanna Gerdes for sharing her process of provenance research. We also want to acknowledge Amalie Schjøtt-Wieth, Anne-Sofie Stampe, Eduardo Abrantes, Kathrine Baastrup, Maria Brænder, Sara Valle Rocha, and Louise Whiteley (who has led the project together with Martin) for their contributions to *The Living Room*. We want to express our gratitude to Medical Museum for providing the objects, site, and resources to support the development of *The Living Room* and to the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research for their generous financial support. Finally, we want to thank the University of Exeter's College of Life and Environmental Sciences Global Mobility Fund for supporting our ongoing transnational collaboration.

<footnote n="1">1 Michel Serres: *Detachment*, Athens 1989, p. 5.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 Ibid., p. 8.</footnote>
experiment at Medical Museion – *The Living Room*.<fnref n="3" /> This experimental space draws on Caitlin’s (coauthor of this article) original work on curating decay to explore what happens if the museum – a place that is specifically designed around the aim to *save* artifacts, ideally for perpetuity – takes up her suggestion for developing ways of “caring beyond saving”.<fnref n="4" />

We begin the essay by discussing the concept of fringe objects with reference to museum objects and considering how they ended up at the fringes of the museum. We then discuss how *The Living Room* opens an experimental space where the fringes unfold their potentials to tell other stories, engage visitors, and invite experimental curatorial interventions that facilitate the transformation of these museum residues. Following Caitlin’s previous work, we particularly explore the potential for developing an “entropic heritage practice”, which is most potent in relation to objects (and places) that exist at the margins of conservation practice.<fnref n="5" /> Finally, we conclude by unraveling how entropic heritage practice leads to a (productive) paradox between value and disposal, forcing us to rethink the concept of *the end* as both an extended negotiation and an intentional negation.

## The fringe and its discontents

In her speculative reimagining of a future of objects outside the permanent collection, Kate Bowell describes how neglected artifacts exist on the fringes of collections, passively kept because of protocol, not purpose.<fnref n="6" /> In a similar fashion, Anna Hess, Rhianedd Woodham, and Alison Smith describe “unloved objects” as neglected objects hiding from view in museum storerooms and perhaps deemed unfit for display.<fnref n="7" /> Yet, for the most part, these unloved and neglected artifacts remain within the confines of stabilized museum collections. Meanwhile, the fringe objects that interest us in this article

<footnote n="3">3 See Medical Museion: Living Room, 2021, https://www.museion.ku.dk/en/living-room/ (as of 6/2022). The project began to take shape in 2019, when one of the project leads, Martin Grünfeld, met Caitlin DeSilvey at a conference. Realizing that we shared an interest in processes of decay and metabolic exchange, we started talking about the possibilities of developing a “compost room” at the museum. In 2020, Martin, in collaboration with conservators, artists, and fellow researchers, began developing *The Living Room* as a space for hosting life, and death, in the museum. In early 2021, Caitlin and Martin began a period of intensive online collaboration, involving virtual tours of the evolving museum space as well as a series of in-conversation events for public audiences. This article is part of our ongoing collaboration.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 Caitlin DeSilvey: Curated Decay. Heritage Beyond Saving, Minneapolis 2017, p. 184.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 Ibid., p. 335.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 Kate Bowell: Object Reincarnation. In: Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, Trevor Jones (eds.): Active Collections, New York 2018, pp. 153–61.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 See Anna Woodham, Rhianedd Smith, Alison Hess: Introduction. In: Idem (eds.): Exploring Emotion, Care, and Enthusiasm in “Unloved” Museum Collections, Amsterdam 2020, pp. 1–18.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_29.png" /><figcaption>1: Piles of cardboard boxes with fringe objects (discarded scientific and medical literature, medical instruments, and so much more) that resided in the basement room we were allocated to turn into *The Living Room*.</figcaption></figure>

exist outside of the permanent collection at the margins of the museum as residues of
collection practices; they are left uncultured yet remain valuable by association with
the museum. ↗ Fig. 1

In a basement storage room at Medical Museum, piles of disintegrating cardboard boxes sit on a cold concrete floor. Inside the boxes are stacks of stained and faded volumes of scientific and medical literature. In other boxes are various metal medical instruments and dental bowls made of colored glass. This was the sight that met us when we first entered the basement room we had been allocated to develop as *The Living Room*. The piles of objects were not, however, a manifestation of dubious or careless preservation practices but rather by-products of collection work. As Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan describe, many curators care for collections that have been established through a “rescue” mode of collecting, which can lead to the problem of excess and overrepresentation of certain types of objects.<fnref n="8" /> This state of “too-much-

<footnote n="8">8 Sharon Macdonald, Jennie Morgan. What Not to Collect? Post-connoisseurial Dystopia and the Pro-fusion of Things. In: Philipp Schorch, Conal McCarthy (eds.): Curatopia: Museums and the Future of Curatorship, Manchester 2019, pp. 29–43.</footnote>
ness” can be extremely difficult to manage, given limitations of time and space in large collections. At the fringe of the museum, this too-muchness makes itself directly felt when one encounters the displaced and unwanted objects resting on cold concrete, awaiting their final judgment and almost certain destruction.<fnref n="9" />

Borrowing a phrase from Greg Kennedy, who is expanding on Mary Douglas’ work, perhaps we can describe these fringe objects as “matter without a place.” Similar to Serres’s perception of Chinese farming as characterized by a totality of cultured surfaces, museum collections are, ideally, orderly spaces containing only objects deemed worth preserving. From that point of view, the fringe objects are just taking up space (and potentially time) from more important conservation tasks as they await disposal; they are the leftover materials from previous collection work. As Kennedy argues, waste marks a failure to preserve value and leads to detachment, leaving matter in the margins as the anonymous stuff falling between the category of valued objects and that of valueless dust.<fnref n="10" /> The basement room we are working in at Medical Museum is a marginal space characterized by the absence of preservation infrastructure: macroenvironmentally, the space lacks temperature and humidity controls; microenvironmentally, there is no attention to the states of individual objects. At the margins of the permanent collection, the fringe that interests us is marked by passivity and inattention from conservators, curators, and basically everyone else working at the museum. Objects residing here are left untouched and undisturbed by human presence while undergoing gradual material changes. At the fringe, objects lose any latent potential they may have had as museum objects and are left in a submuseum, a dark room adjacent to the street (and its associated dirt), at a remove from the collections and their associated value.

## Becoming a fringe object: inherent instability

The objects in the basement have drifted into the fringe of the museum as residues of institutional collection practices. But through what process do these objects drift to the very edges of the museum and become a residual unculture? When we spoke with conservators at Medical Museum about this process, they emphasized the underlying uncertainty involved in their decision-making and value judgments.<fnref n="11" /> Decision-making

<footnote n="9">9 In Denmark, museums generally follow ICOM's ethical guidelines § 2.16 regarding income from the disposal of collections, stating that collections may not be treated as a realizable asset. This means that deaccessioned and leftover objects from the museum collections are not sold. Usually, museums attempt to donate objects to other museums or return them to their original donors. However deaccessioned objects often end up incinerated or disposed of in landfill sites.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 Greg Kennedy: An Ontology of Trash. The Disposable and Its Problematic Nature, Albany 2007, p. 7.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11 These general statements are condensed from informal conversations with conservators at Medical Museum that took place between January and February 2022.</footnote>
ing processes are not standardized at Danish museums and thus depend on who is in
charge of a collection (historian, conservator, archaeologist, etc.) and how that person
navigates value, risk, and the museum law.<fnref n="12" /> The conservators also expressed their
discomfort with the way fringe objects work against the main purpose of their pro-
fession, to safeguard objects for the future. More generally, Morgan and Macdonald
have shown that, although disposal is not as unpalatable as it used to be in collections
management, it is still usually undertaken with some degree of ambivalence.<fnref n="13" /> Time
and space are central issues here, and collection work involves series of moments of
selection. Yet, when we began to investigate the details of the objects resting in those
boxes on the concrete floor in the basement, we realized that their trajectories cannot
simply be tied to institutional decision-making but must be understood as diverse and
dispersed. For example, some of the objects were accumulated as personal projects
carried out by retired doctors and can thus reveal a lot about informal, interest-driven
collecting practices, even if they do not necessarily have general value as part of the
collections. Other objects are surplus to broad-purpose collecting practices and have
not been integrated into the collections because they are duplicates or because missing
pieces of material or information render the objects less valuable than historical coun-
terparts already present in the collections.

Although the objects seem to have found a final resting place at the fringes of
the museum before their eventual destruction, their status is not as stable as one might
imagine. Not only do they continue to undergo material changes (partly because of
their placement in the basement), but their value also remains, to a certain extent, open
and underdetermined. A prime example is a jar of laboratory mice that, in 2017, was
part of the exhibition *Sugar Theater*.<fnref n="14" /> In a photograph of shelved objects, ⚙️ Fig. 2 the
jar appears to the left, on the second shelf from the top. The mice (possibly of the type
C57BL/6 crossbred with transgenic mice) were previously used in studies of receptors
in the gastrointestinal tract. As part of the exhibition, the jar illustrated how sugar
consumption affects health but for the past five years it has been waiting on a shelf in
the conservator’s workshop at the museum for a decision about its future – a decision
that could either bring it into the permanent collection or lead to its disposal. This

<footnote n="12">12 It is worth noting that Medical Museion is not under the cultural ministry of Denmark and thus does not work under the museum law, giving it more freedom to decide what to do with its collections. The museum still largely adheres to ICOM regulations, however, working towards long-term preservation of artifacts.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13 Jennie Morgan, Sharon Macdonald: De-growing Museum Collections for New Heritage Futures. In: *International Journal of Heritage Studies*, vol. 26, 2020, no. 1, pp. 56–70.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 See Morten Søndergaard: *Sugar Theater*, 2017, http://www.labae.org/sugar-theater (as of 6/2022).</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_30.png" /><figcaption>2: View of shelf holding our valued working collection of fringe objects in *The Living Room* including the jar of lab mice.</figcaption></figure>

uncertain status, together with its affective appeal, is precisely why we brought it into
*The Living Room*. Yet, when we began researching the trajectories of fringe objects
for this article and asked questions about the jar’s origin and use, our attention gen-
erated instability and uncertainty regarding its significance, and the jar was removed
from *The Living Room* until its status could be clarified. In her provenance research,
a conservator contacted the original donor to know more about its origin and use and
to clarify what future uses would be appropriate. The donor had no problem with
us using it, and the jar is now back in *The Living Room*. Its value, however, remains
unresolved: when *The Living Room* closes, it will either become part of the permanent
collection or be disposed of; or, perhaps it will return to the shelf in the conservation
workshop to remain in waiting indefinitely. This uncertain status enriches the jar with
an interesting backstory that engages visitors in the difficulties of evaluating objects
at the museum. Moreover, this story shows how the fringe is a dynamic and uncertain
place, where objects rest in unstable states between value and waste – unstable states
that we actively tinker with in our entropic heritage practice.
Cultivating the residual unculture in *The Living Room*

The fringe is an unstable space that holds the potential for a residual unculture to grow. Here, potential designates a state in which multiple possible pathways exist, opening a space of mystery, a gap between what is and what might be, what could be or should be.<fnref n="15" /> Poetically, we might add, following Agamben, that the color of potentiality is darkness, a darkness that comes to light in actuality.<fnref n="16" /> This way of understanding potentials can be linked to the concept of entropy, which does not necessarily involve a descent into chaos and disorganization but can also describe a state of possibility, defined as the “measure of the multiplicity of potential arrangements of matter in a given system.”<fnref n="17" /> In *The Living Room*, we work to cultivate these potentials in a liminal space in between value and waste, museum and street, collection and exhibition, research and art, where neglected objects regain attention. Itself placed at the fringe of the museum, *The Living Room* turns into a transformative space that opens the black box of the museum’s fringe, making the objects that reside there visible, knowable, and accessible for touching and tinkering.

Digging into the piles of fringe objects on the concrete floor invites us to follow their trajectories back to uncertain and dynamic processes of collecting and evaluating. Thus, the fringe itself can be seen as a potential source of knowledge; it can open up (perhaps otherwise inaccessible) knowledge about institutional practices of collecting and evaluating.<fnref n="18" /> As we begin to curate these objects and invite visitors to engage with them, they also open up the black box of the museum – making practices of collecting, conservation, and evaluating open to conversations, discussions, negotiations, and disagreements. Consequently, *The Living Room* turns the fringe into a contact zone between the residual unculture of the museum and the curators and visitors, cultivating a public museum philosophy in practice: a contact zone that not only invokes the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated historically and geographically, as James Clifford originally described the museum, but also brings

<footnote n="15">15 See Karen-Sue Taussig, Klaus Hoeyer, Stefan Helmreich: The Anthropology of Potentiality in Biomedicine. In: Current Anthropology, vol. 54, 2013, no. S7, pp. 3–14, here: p. 5.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 Giorgio Agamben: Potentialities. Collected Essays in Philosophy, Stanford 1999, p. 180.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 DeSilvey (see note 4), p. 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 Within psychology and philosophy, fringes have been framed conceptually as a potential source of knowledge. In William James's theory of fringes, for example, fringes loosely refer to a "more-ness" felt in perceptual experience. A "more-ness" that actively bridges immediate (and indefinite) perceptual experience to identify what the perceptual process analyzes and makes definite. In that way, James' fringes are placed precisely at the transition point from experience to knowledge. See Christopher Broniak: James' Theory of Fringes. In: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 32, 1996, no. 3, pp. 443–68.</footnote>
neglected objects in touch with curators and visitors and opens a space for collaboration and experimentation.<fnref n="19" />

*The Living Room* constitutes a transformative space where we can cultivate the hidden potentials of the residual unculture at the museum – the liminal objects at the fringes as well as the fringe itself. The basement becomes a contact zone, where weekly tours bring in a general public as well as specialized audiences to talk, listen, and touch. Our collection of fringe objects gain value through the application of enhanced attention that brings them to life in the hands of visitors and in our experimental curation. As Bowell argues, most of the time, collection restrictions entail items staying put, providing little active value at museums.<fnref n="20" /> No longer worthy of preservation, our fringe objects accrue new worth as objects that can be touched and encountered, allowing visitors to breach the boundaries that museums usually create between objects and bodies: no touching, just looking.<fnref n="21" /> Visitors directly touch the residual unculture even as they are touched by the uncertainties about collecting, conservation, and significance they carry with them.

Moreover, our fringe objects invite us to do other things with objects at the museum. As previously argued by Caitlin, we believe that entropic heritage practice is “more likely to occur with materials that lie at the fringes of conservation practice, or with things held in a state of limbo.”<fnref n="22" /> Pairing this with Serres’s description of the residual uncultured wasteland, where untended growth flourishes, we believe that fringe objects also hold a potential for metabolic tinkering and regeneration in collections. ↗ **Fig. 3**

We have been working with interventionist strategies of accelerated decay to cultivate the residual unculture. In these experiments, we explore how to actively seek release, regeneration, and recomposition inside the walls of a museum. For example, in the installation *Slow Show*, created by sound and performance artist Maria Brænder in collaboration with *The Living Room*, we are cultivating oyster mushrooms on a substrate of old medical texts. Our experiment in what we could perhaps call *assisted living* disturbs the presumed organic (and much slower) course of deterioration for these objects, but it also exposes the fiction of human nonintervention in the age of the Anthropocene. By bringing fringe objects into contact with hungry organisms, we accelerate their release and recomposition – processes of recomposition that we also seek through “sounding,” a method suggested by Stefan Helmreich to explore things

<footnote n="19">19 James Clifford: Routes. Travel, and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge 1997, p. 192.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 Bowell (see note 6), p. 154.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 See Clémentine Deliss: The Metabolic Museum, Berlin 2020, p. 15.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">22 Caitlin DeSilvey. Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things. In: Journal of Material Culture, vol. 11, 2006, no. 3, pp. 318–38, here: p. 335.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_31.png" /><figcaption>3: *Slow Show* (2021-) by Maria Brænder in collaboration with *The Living Room*. Mixed objects: Pink oyster mushrooms grown in discarded medical books; discarded medical equipment and other fringe objects; and JrF contact microphones allowing us to explore the sonic entanglement of objects.</figcaption></figure>

without distinct limits and forms.<fnref n="23" /> We have applied specially designed JrF contact microphones to capture the sound of the mushroom cultivation processes: decomposers effectively become composers, enabling us to listen in on the otherwise inaudible sounds of decomposition and sound art to unfold from this encounter.<fnref n="24" /> Through this metabolic tinkering, a valuable artwork grows. This attention, however, can also work against our intentions with the project and, paradoxically, risk rendering objects newly worthy of safekeeping.

<footnote n="23">23 Stefan Helmreich: Sounding the Limits of Life. Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond, Princeton 2015, pp. x–xi.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24 See Martin Grünfeld, Adam Bencard, Louise Whiteley: From Mausoleum to The Living Room. Practicing Metabolic Carpentry in the Museum. In: Centaurus. Journal of European Society for the History of Science, vol. 64, 2022, no. 2 (forthcoming).</footnote>
**Conclusion: fixing “fringiness” or fringy endings?**

Fringe objects are the unstable by-products of institutional practices of collecting, preservation, and evaluation. They rest in between value and waste, awaiting a final decision on their fate as an unstable residual unculture – but it is precisely this indeterminacy that generates their potential. The fringe objects now part of *The Living Room* retain a liminal identity: residing at the fringes of the museum, they have never been accessioned to the museum collection, or they have been deaccessioned. Such deposits of fringe objects can yield insights into institutional logics of collecting and evaluation and open the black box of tacit museum practices to the public. Furthermore, their instability invites experimentation, and the act of intervening in their fates unleashes a fundamental paradox. Even as exercise of our entropic heritage practice reveals and releases entropic potential, it also works to grant previously neglected things (and sites) attention. By touching and tinkering, and by including them in active installations and producing artistic works based on their decomposition and recomposition, we change not only their material constitution but also their status. Objects that had been overlooked and designated as excess take on new significance and meaning: as we begin engaging with them, they affect us, and we become attached to their presence. When we begin to pay attention and become sensitive to their particularities, we realize that they speak to us directly from the museum black box of institutional practices and yield other affordances for research, public engagement, and experimentation.

No longer matter without a place, the objects have found a new place and multiple meanings in this fringy space we call *The Living Room*. In some cases, this shift in status, and the prospect of impending destruction, may even engender a belated urge to save the object and remove it from the experiment. After spending our time cultivating and caring for these fringe objects, we find we have to actively resist the urge to prolong their lifespan. Ultimately, we cannot resolve this tension, and perhaps we should not try to. By leaning into the paradox, we are given an opportunity to reframe what we mean when we talk about endings – which, for objects and other entities alike, involve a period of negotiated transformation, followed by (in some cases) an intentional decision to assume that negation has been achieved (which is only ever an illusion). The fringes may get wilder and weedier, and the fringe object itself may appear to dissolve, but some residue always remains.
# Wiedergelesen

Lorenzo Gineprini

## Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

Die Kernerkenntnis fast jeder aktuellen Theoretisierung des Abfalls leitet sich aus Mary Douglas' grundlegender Studie *Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo* (London 1966) ab, in der sie feststellt, dass die Klassifizierung einer Sache als Abfall nicht aus ihren intrinsischen objektiven Eigenschaften, sondern aus einer soziokulturellen epistemologischen Zuschreibung hervorgeht. Obwohl der Einfluss des Buches „weit über die Fachgrenzen der Ethnologie“<fnref n="1" /> hinausreicht, beabsichtigte Douglas nicht, die Abfallforschung zu begründen, sondern vielmehr sich in der damaligen ethnologischen Debatte über die Bedeutung religiöser Reinigungsrituale kritisch zu verorten. Ausgehend von der Charakterisierung „primitiver“ Gesellschaften als intellektuell unterlegen, war in der damaligen Ethnologie die Idee verbreitet, dass Schmutz- und Abfallvorstellungen westlicher Gesellschaften auf rationale hygienische Erwägungen zurückzuführen seien, jene der nicht-westlichen Völker hingegen auf eine magisch-symbolische Angst vor Verunreinigung und Befleckung. „Wir töten Keime ab, sie schützen sich vor Geistern“, fasst Douglas diese Auffassung ironisch zusammen (49).<fnref n="2" />

Demgegenüber weist sie darauf hin, dass die Produktion von Abfall zum Aufbau und Aufrechterhalten einer epistemologischen und symbolischen Ordnung dient. Für jede Gesellschaft besteht die Notwendigkeit, die chaotische Erfahrung der Wirklichkeit in ein kohärentes Wissensgebäude zu strukturieren; etwas als

akzeptablen Bestandteil zu bejahren und etwas als Abfall auszusondern. Der Abfall erweist sich daher als epistemische Ausgrenzungskategorie, die etwas als außersystemisch verwirft, um eine System(r)einheit und deren Ordnungsnormen zu bestimmen und sich damit in ihren Wertvorstellungen zu stabilisieren. Der Abfallbegriff ist universell und zeitlos, da jede kulturelle und soziale Ordnung seiner bedarf, jedoch existiert er nicht als etwas Absolutes mit einer eigenen ontologischen Essenz. Was als Abfall erkannt wird, gilt nur innerhalb bestimmter symbolischer Bezugsrahmen und normativer Zurichtungen, weshalb es sich in Abhängigkeit vom Referenzsystem verändert.

Die Annahme, dass der Abfall ein hergestelltes Produkt ist, dessen Erzeugung jedem soziokulturellen System zugrunde liegt, repräsentiert Douglas' Hauptverdienst für die *Waste Studies*. Im Gegensatz zum Alltagsverständnis, dem zufolge der Abfall mit Bedeutungslosigkeit identifiziert oder höchstens als hygienisch-technische Problematik behandelt wird, betrachtet ihn Douglas als Erkenntnisfigur mit hoher Aussagekraft für soziale, kulturelle sowie religiöse Fragen.

Außerdem unterstreicht die britische Ethnologin die epistemische Ambivalenz des Abfalls, der „sowohl Gefahr als auch Kraft“ symbolisiert (124). Einmal aus dem System als unerwünschter Rest ausgeschieden, stellt er eine Bedrohung für die Stabilität etablierter Kategorisierungen dar, weswegen er als „anstößig betrachtet und vehement beseitigt“ (208) wird. Eine solche kategoriale Grenzüberschreitung ist zugleich eine Entfesselung von Kräften, die durch Rituale in gesellschaftliche Ressourcen verwandelt werden können. Was aus der Wissensordnung verworfen wurde, kann als „Kompost“ (212) wieder verwendet werden, um epistemische Strukturen kreativ zu erneuern. Das erklärt Douglas am Beispiel eines Fruchtbarkeitsrituals des mittelafrikanischen Volkes der Lele. Die Lele bezeichnen den Pangolin als unreinstes und gefährlichstes Wundertier, weil er nicht eindeutig in ihre Tiertaxonomie eingeordnet werden kann (er lebt auf dem Land, hat jedoch

<footnote n="1">1 Roger Fayet: Reinigungen. Vom Abfall der Moderne zum Kompost der Nachmoderne, Wien 2003, S. 17.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 Seitenzahlen nach der dt. Ausgabe: Mary Douglas: Reinheit und Gefährdung. Eine Studie zu Vorstellungen von Verunreinigung und Tabu, Frankfurt a. M. 1988.</footnote>
Schuppen wie Fische usw.), weshalb sie im Alltag dieses anomale Wesen mit einem strikten Nahrungstabu vermeiden. Bei einem der wichtigsten Reinigungsrituale der Lele-Kultur wird der Pangolin allerdings gejagt und gegessen, um die Fruchtbarkeit der jungen Männer zu fördern. In der Wiedergewinnung des Verworfenen stellt sich also für jede religiöse, aber natürlich auch museale oder künstlerische Praktik die Herausforderung, dieses doppeldeutige Potenzial an der Schwelle zwischen Subversion und Regenerierung zu entfalten.

Douglas' konstruktivistischer Ansatz wird durch seine Entmaterialisierung des Abfalls begrenzt. Dieser wird als abstrakter Rest gekennzeichnet, als Nebenprodukt der „differenzierende[n] Tätigkeit des Geistes“ (209), sodass die Forschung sich eher auf die Prozesse seiner Klassifizierung als auf den Abfall selbst richtet. Als Reaktion gegen einen solchen „rubbish idealism“<fnref n="3" /> haben sich die *Waste Studies* in letzter Zeit intensiver mit materiellen Erscheinungsformen und Alltagspraktiken des Abfalls befasst und auch konkrete Verwerfungsmechanismen beleuchtet.<fnref n="4" /> Douglas entwarf ein dynamisches Modell, weil sie den ausgesonderten Objekten, neben einer ordnungsbildenden Qualität, auch eine subversive Kraft zuschreibt. Trotzdem entspringt für sie diese Kraft aus dem epistemischen Zustand des Abfalls statt aus der Materie selbst, die als passives Substrat, als inaktiver Träger symbolischer Strukturren erscheint. Im Gegensatz dazu stellen viele heutige Autor*innen die *material agency* des Abfalls heraus. Trotz physischer und psychologischer Verdrängungsversuche verschwindet das

Weggeworfene nicht und stellt seine materiellen Aktivitäten nicht ein. Dagegen kann der Abfall menschliche Erfahrungen prägen, Emotionen sowie körperliche Reaktionen hervorrufen und soziale Beziehungen gestalten.<fnref n="5" /> Die zu entsorgenden, aber immer noch ‚vitalen‘ Stoffe zeitigen außerdem ökologisch toxische Effekte,<fnref n="6" /> sodass der Abfall sich als Akteur behauptet, der das menschliche Handeln und den politischen Diskurs beeinflusst.<fnref n="7" />

Douglas' Theorie durch einen material-orientierten Ansatz zu ergänzen, vermeidet die Gefahr, den Abfall als rein kognitives und abstraktes Konstrukt zu fassen und daher zu behaupten, dass er „nur vom Standpunkt des Betrachters aus“ existiert (12). Um der komplexen Phänomenalität und der empirischen Dichte des Abfalls gerecht zu werden, sollte man hingegen seine Existenz in konkreten alltagsweltlichen Bezügen und historischen Kontexten situieren, seine materielle Zusammensetzung erkunden sowie seine sinnliche, körperliche und affektive Dimension berücksichtigen. Der von Douglas zu Recht betonte erkenntnistheoretische Wert und die epistemisch generative Kraft des Abfalls, alternative Sinnkonstellationen zu produzieren, können also nur in Verbindung mit seinen materiellen Eigenschaften abgeleitet werden.

<footnote n="3">3 Martin O'Brien: *A Crisis of Waste? Understanding the Rubbish Society*, New York 2011, S. 127.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 Die Abfallforschung bildet bisher keine eigene Disziplin, sondern ein fachübergreifendes Feld mit sehr diversen Beiträgen, von Natur- bis zu Geisteswissenschaften. Der Ausdruck *Waste Studies* wird für wissenschaftliche Recherchen über materiellen Abfall und Müll verwendet, während mit *Discard Studies* Untersuchungen bezeichnet werden, die den Fokus breiter auf die Funktion von Ausgrenzungsprozessen – materieller Objekte aber auch Wissens- und Lebensformen – richten.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 S. Sonja Windmüller: Die Kehrseite der Dinge. Müll, Abfall, Wegwerfen als kulturwissenschaftliches Problem, Marburg 2002; Laurence Douny: The Materiality of Domestic Waste. The Recycled Cosmology of the Dogon of Mali. In: Journal of Material Culture, Jg. 12, 2007, Heft 3, S. 309–331; Joshua Reno: Waste Away. Working and Living with a North American Landfill, Berkley 2016 und Laura Moisi: Die Politisierung des Abfalls. Ordinary Waste. A Cultural Theory of Trash in the Modern Home, Berlin 2020.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 S. Stacy Alaimo: Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism, and New Materialism at Sea. In: Serenella Iovino, Serpil Oppermann (Hg.): Material Ecocriticism, Bloomington 2014, S. 186–202.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 S. Jane Bennett: Vibrant Matter. A political Ecology of Things, Durham 2010.</footnote>
Spencer's Ghost: The Decolonial Afterlife of a Postcolonial Museum Prop<fnref n="1" />

This is an unorthodox story of collection in more than one sense. First, it is the story of how a collector – Baldwin Spencer – was ironically collected when the museum he previously led reflexively interpreted his ambivalent legacy by putting his double in a glass case. Second, it is the story of how a prop – an item that was never intended to be part of the museum collection – ended up being collected, if only in an informal, unregulated fashion. Third, it is the story of the end of a mode of collecting, or rather the end of two subsequent modes of collecting: colonial and postcolonial. Baldwin Spencer in a glass case was intended to signify the end of exploitative, colonial relations between Indigenous people and the Western knowledge makers who collected their objects. I argue that Spencer's later decommissioning marked the end of a postcolonial mode of museology and the beginning of a decolonial period of collecting and displaying. Finally, his post-exhibition life as a highly problematic object that refused to end raises questions about the opportunities and limits of decolonial practice in museums and in historical scholarship.

Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929) grew up in Manchester, England, and studied biology at Oxford before moving to Australia, in 1887, for his chair at the University of Melbourne. He had many prominent roles in the fledgling Melbourne scientific scene, including honorary director of the National Museum of Victoria (now Museum Victoria), a position he took in 1899 and held for nearly thirty years. He was responsible for the acquisition of several thousand Aboriginal objects, including many that he collected himself.<fnref n="2" /> Today, the Spencer and Gillen collection at Museum Victoria consists of 900 manuscript items, 1,500 ethnographic items, and many other photographs and film and sound recordings.<fnref n="3" />

Spencer enjoyed over forty years in Melbourne and a lively career in biology, anthropology, museology, and Aboriginal affairs until his death while conducting fieldwork in Tierra del Fuego in 1929. During his lifetime (and for half a century afterward), his scientific achievements were seen in wholly positive terms. He put the customs of Aboriginal Australians on the world stage; he salvaged countless priceless artifacts; and he was instrumental in the development of remote reserves and urban compounds where Aboriginal people could be protected from frontier violence and be supported

<footnote n="1">1 The following paper is a substantially abridged version of Emma Kowal: Spencer's Double. The Decolonial Afterlife of a Postcolonial Museum Prop. In: Boris Jardine, Emma Kowal, Jenny Bangham (eds.): How Collections End, BJHS Themes, vol. 4, Cambridge 2019, pp. 55–77.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 See Derek John Mulvaney, J. H. Calaby: So Much That Is New. Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929. A Biog-raphy, Carlton 1985, pp. 249–54.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 See Australian National University et al.: Spencer and Gillen. A Journey through Aboriginal Australia, http://spencerandgillen.net (as of 8/2018).</footnote>
to become self-sufficient – all progressive goals for the time. But by the 1970s, Spencer began to be seen as a symbol of colonial exploitation.<fnref n="4" /> His reference to Aboriginal people as “naked, howling savages” in *The Northern Tribes of Central Australia* was not lost on critics of colonialism who identified him with an evolutionary anthropology that sought to study Aboriginal culture before its extinction.<fnref n="5" /> As Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory, from 1912 to 1913, Spencer advocated the abduction of so-called ‘half-caste’ Aboriginal children supposedly for their own good, a practice that continued until the 1970s and produced what are now known as the Stolen Generations.<fnref n="6" />

This tide of sentiment against the prodigious white collectors of anthropology influenced the museums to which many of them contributed. Motivated by Indigenous activists both within and outside the museum sector, museum studies scholars and museum practitioners in settler colonial countries around the world asked questions about museums’ colonial legacies and the possibility for museums to stimulate more positive cultural shifts toward inclusion and recognition, a movement often called the new museology.<fnref n="7" /> Important signs of these shifts include the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa (legislated in 1992 and opened in 1998); the National Museum of the American Indian (legislated in 1989 and opened in 2004); and Museum Victoria – Spencer’s museum – that was redeveloped in the 1990s ahead of the opening of a new museum building in 2000.

## Finding Spencer

At an anthropology conference in 2011, I heard a strange story. It was told by Philip Batty, senior curator of Central Australian collections at Museum Victoria. Philip had spent part of the 1970s and all of the 1980s in Central Australia as a schoolteacher in a remote community and then became codirector of a newly established Aboriginal media organization in Alice Springs. He later settled in Melbourne and began working

<footnote n="4">4 For example, Spencer features in Frank S. Stevens’ three-volume study; see Frank S. Stevens: Racism, the Australian Experience. A Study of Race Prejudice in Australia, New York 1972.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 Note, however, that Howard Morphy has argued that the now-infamous phrase “naked howling savages” was included at the behest of Sir James Frazer and is not representative of Spencer’s views of Indigenous people. See Howard Morphy: Gillen – Man of Science. In: John Mulvaney, Howard Morphy, Alison Petch (eds.): “My Dear Spencer.” The Letters of F. J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer, Melbourne 1997, pp. 23–51.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission: Bringing Them Home. Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Canberra 1997.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 Peter Vergo: The New Museology, London 1989; Tony Bennett: The Birth of the Museum. History, Theory, Politics, London 1995; Ivan Karp, Steven Lavine: Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, Washington 1991; T. J. Barringer, Tom Flynn: Colonialism and the Object. Empire, Material Culture, and the Museum, London 1998. On the new museology in the region, see Chris Healy, Andrea Witcomb (eds.): South Pacific Museums. Experiments in Culture, Victoria 2006.</footnote>
at the museum in the late 1990s, a time
when plans were well under way for the
opening of the new Melbourne Museum.
The revamped museum included an
extensive permanent Indigenous exhibit
called *Bunjilaka*, meaning “the place of
Bunjil,” the ancestral eagle-hawk, in local
Aboriginal languages. Philip worked on
*Bunjilaka*, under three curators who were
each responsible for their own distinct
section: Aboriginal academic and writer
Tony Birch (a member of the Melbourne
Koori community), who curated “Koori
Voices”; senior curator of Northern Aus-
tralia Lindy Allen, who curated the sec-
tion “Belonging to Country”; and John
Morton, an anthropologist specializing
in Central Australia.<fnref n="8" /> Morton’s section
“Two Laws” explored “issues about

Aboriginal law, knowledge and property.”<fnref n="9" /> Drawing on an idea of Tony Birch’s, John Morton planned an ingenious climax for his section of the exhibition. In a reversal of the colonial gaze that placed Indigenous people and culture on display, a statue of Spencer would be put in a glass case. ⚙️ Fig. 1 The case was specially designed to “parody the large exhibition cases often used in older museums” and stood 3.2 meters high and 12 meters across.<fnref n="10" /> Along with Spencer, it contained 112 everyday objects that Spencer and his contemporaries collected, including spears, spear throwers, baskets, smoking pipes, digging sticks, knives, throwing sticks, clubs, neck ornaments, and a canoe. Spencer wore his usual fieldwork attire, as seen in a photograph from a 1901–02 expedition ⚙️ Fig. 2: a simple suit and tie, boots, and a wide-brimmed hat, the long lines of his face

<figure><img src="image_32.png" /><figcaption>1: Model of Baldwin Spencer in the *Two Laws* exhibit, Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum, 2000.</figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="8">8 Koori (alternative spelling Koorie) is a term for Indigenous people from Victoria. Indigenous is a term for descendants of the precolonial peoples of Australia. Indigenous Australians are also known as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, a term that disambiguates Torres Strait Islanders from mainland Indigenous Australians. The working definition of Indigeneity in Australia is self-identification, descent from an Indigenous person, and Indigenous community acceptance. The words “Indigenous” and “non-Indigenous” are capitalized when referring specifically to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as per the current convention in Australia.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 Indigenous cultures brochure, c. 1998, Museum Victoria archives.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 Props and dressing brief, Bunjilaka, Melbourne Museum, 1999, Museum Victoria archives.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_33.png" /><figcaption>2: Photograph of 1901-02 expedition party, Alice Springs, May 18th, 1901. Back row, left to right: Erlikiliakirra (Jim Kite), Harry Chance, Purula (Parunda). Front row, left to right: Francis James Gillen, Walter Baldwin Spencer.</figcaption></figure>

accentuated by his signature moustache. At his feet were models of two goannas named for Spencer and his collaborator Francis Gillen: *Varanus spenceri* and *Varanus gilleni*.<sup>11</sup>

I remember seeing the model when the exhibition opened in 2000. Spencer's expression seemed somewhat bewildered, framed by a quote from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre that made the curatorial intention clear: "We do not choose to be enshrined in a glass case, with our story told by an alien institution which has appointed itself an ambassador for our culture."<sup>12</sup> At a time when Indigenous museology was

<footnote n="11">11 The label for the goannas shows how they were intended as another layer of postcolonial pedagogy. The label was entitled "Who discovered the Goannas?". It told the audience, "The name *Varanus spenceri* suggests that Spencer discovered this lizard. In fact, he acquired the first specimen for registration as a new species. The specimen was actually collected by an Aboriginal man. To this day he remains anonymous." Photocopy of Label 53, c. 1999, Museum Victoria archives.</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre: Free Exchange or a Captive Culture? The Tasmanian Aboriginal Perspective on Museums and Repatriation. Paper presented at the Museums Association Seminar. Museums and Repatriation, November 4, 1997, London, p. 21.</footnote>
being reconsidered around the world, the model of Spencer aimed to promote Indigenous agency and a reflexive reading of history against the grain of colonial collecting practice. As explained by John Morton in a briefing document, "In this way, the collector (Spencer), has been collected."<fnref n="13" /> Enclosed in his glass case, he was also caught, captured "so that you may scrutinise him (and what he stands for) along with the objects."<fnref n="14" /> In a set of interlocking reversals, the audience was invited to 'study' Spencer's scientific methods and legacy and find them wanting, especially morally. As I explore later in this chapter, reviews of the exhibition indicate that, for many museum visitors, it achieved the intended effect.

At a later anthropology conference in 2013, Philip told me that Spencer was no longer in his case.<fnref n="15" /> That area of the museum had been rebranded as the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre. The permanent exhibit within the Cultural Centre had been completely redeveloped and was given a separate name – *First Peoples* – that distinguished it from the earlier *Bunjilaka* exhibition. Created in partnership with a group of local elders, it focused exclusively on Victorian Aboriginal people and Aboriginal perspectives.<fnref n="16" /> The Spencer statue was singled out as an example of what the *First Peoples* exhibit was trying to remedy. As an Indigenous curator commented, "I'm not interested in the collectors at all."

What had happened to Spencer? “He’s still in the museum,” Batty told me, although no longer accessible to the public. At the request of some staff, he had been retained and placed in a receipt room where objects were processed before being accessioned. He sat on a trolley, taking up considerable space in a narrow, windowless lab located between staff offices on one side and the museum stores on the other – between profane and sacred areas of the museum. It intrigued me to think of Spencer on his chair, on a trolley, watching over museum staff as they enveloped objects in the infrastructure of collection – describing, classifying, entering data, labeling, maintenance planning, risk minimizing.

In 2016, I saw Philip again at a museum seminar. The conversation turned to Spencer. I asked, “Is he still on his trolley in the holding room?” “That’s an interesting

<footnote n="13">13 Props and Dressing Brief, Melbourne Museum, Lower East-Bunjilaka, November 15, 1999, Museum Victoria archives.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 Excerpt from text of *Two Laws*, February 21, 2000 version, electronic file, MV.</footnote>

<footnote n="15">15 For the remainder of the paper, I refer to the statue as “Spencer” and corresponding pronoun, following the naming practices of some museum staff (he was also called “Baldy,” short for Baldwin). While acknowledging that this risks anthropomorphizing a representation of a person, the technically incorrect terminology helps to explore my central question of what the model means to museum staff.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 See Richard Broome, Ian Hoskins, Kathy De La Rue, Shauna Bostock-Smith, Shirley Fitzgerald, Karen O'Brien, Alison Wishart: Exhibition Reviews, History Australia, vol. 11, 2014, pp. 207–223, here: pp. 207–209.</footnote>
story,” he said. I was not prepared for what came next. At some point in the previous year, Spencer had been moved from the holding room to the restricted room in the museum stores. Beginning in the 1980s, museums around Australia created restricted rooms (also called secret-sacred rooms) where ceremonial objects that should not be seen by a general audience could be kept securely.17 Australian museums seek to repatriate these objects to the source communities, but because this is a long (sometimes decades-long) process, and because some communities request that museums retain possession (but not ownership) of their restricted objects, secure storage is needed. At the Melbourne Museum, this is a shed that sits within the museum stores. It is only accessed by the (white) manager of the restricted store, by Philip Batty, and by visiting elders from remote communities in Northern and Central Australia. Spencer sat in his trolley against the far wall, between the shelves. “He’s a bit spooky,” Philip told me, “sitting there in the dark.”18

How did Spencer come to be sitting in the dark inside the restricted room, inside the museum stores, inside the museum offices, inside the museum? Philip was not clear on the details, and I did not have time to probe him further. Another year went by, and I finally took time to email a senior manager at the museum to request permission to look into Spencer's story. Permission was granted, and in 2017 I began combing through the archives of the exhibition.

Contemporary museums produce mountains of paperwork. Meetings are minut-
ed, policies are revised and circulated, objects are tracked, exhibition incidents are noted
and analyzed.<fnref n="19" /> The paper traces of the Indigenous exhibit began with academic essays
commissioned in the mid-1990s to provide intellectual guidance to those developing
the new museum;<fnref n="20" /> proceeded through hazard reports, design plans, and hundreds of
pages of spreadsheets with lists of objects; and culminated in a memo that announced
the deinstallation of the “large Spencer showcase” — the very first part of the *Bunjilaka*
exhibition to be dismantled — in June 2011.<fnref n="21" />

<footnote n="17">17 On the history of repatriation, see Cressida Fforde, Jane Hubert, Paul Turnbull (eds.): The Dead and Their Possessions. Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice, London 2002; Kathleen S. Fine-Dare: Grave Injustice. The American Indian Repatriation Movement and NAGPRA, Lincoln 2002; Paul Turnbull, Michael Pickering: The Long Way Home. The Meaning and Values of Repatriation, Oxford 2010. For an early example of a secret-sacred collection policy, see South Australian Museum Board and South Australian Museum (issuing organization): Statement on the Secret/Sacred Collection, Adelaide 1986.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18 Philip Batty, personal communication, 11/5/2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19 For example, possum droppings were found in a *Bunjilaka* display in June 2010.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">20 See, for example, Tony Birch: The Recognition of Indigenous Rights in Museum Victoria, Melbourne 1996; Chris Healy: Revisiting Histories and Mythologies, Melbourne 1995.</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21 Bliss Jensen: Phased closure of Jumbanna, electronic document, June 17, 2011, Museum Victoria archives.</footnote>
Two remarkable things about Spencer emerged from these thousands of documents, both of which underline his ambiguity. First, he is called many different things: a statue, a replica, a model, a prop, a mannequin, a set piece, or an exhibition dressing. No one descriptor is more common than any other. Second, Spencer is not visible in the exhibition management systems.<fnref n="22" /> He appears on documents relating to concept development, in prop briefings, and in plans of the exhibition. But once the exhibition was installed, Spencer disappears from any lists of display objects or props. The two goannas that sat at Spencer's feet are duly tracked through the entire exhibition and are a proxy for Spencer's archival presence. After deinstallation, they parted ways with Spencer and were transferred to the museum's department of herpetology, depriving me of even this spectral trace of the statue's location.

Tracing the story of how Spencer came to be an unauthorized occupant of a highly restricted room became partly a question of regulation. His lack of official existence was frustrating to me, but it was also an important determinant of his mobility. After deinstallation in 2011, individual museum staff could take personal initiative in deciding his location without the scrutiny applied to tracked objects. In other words, he was especially amenable to collection because he was never intended to be collected. To understand why Spencer was not tracked, I needed to learn more about props.

At Museum Victoria, the Exhibition Collections Management (ECM) team are responsible for all items on display. These items can be classified into two groups: items from the museum collection (also called the state collection or heritage collection), and props that are brought in to the museum specifically for an exhibition. Props can be items on loan (that must be tracked to ensure they are safely returned), items commissioned from an artist or a commercial prop maker, or items sourced by museum staff themselves. The division between museum collection items and props is not always visually obvious when they are on display (although a discerning visitor might notice that some items have corresponding labels and some do not). However, the exhibition management systems maintain a strict electronic separation between collection items and props, a division also maintained in physical space through separate off-storage facilities for collection items and for props awaiting reuse.

A 2015 Museum Victoria information sheet on exhibition props gives three reasons for their use: “to replace vulnerable collection items, – e. g. facsimile of old letter; to dress an exhibition case or display – e. g. replica jar of preserved fruit; to replicate

<footnote n="22">22 For context on the institutional mechanics of museum exhibitions, including the management of props, see Barry Lord, Maria Piacente (eds.): Manual of Museum Exhibitions, Lanham 2014.</footnote>
unusual, rare or important items – e. g. painted cast of Tarbosaurus tooth.”<fnref n="23" /> These three reasons readily collapse into two: to replace or replicate something that cannot be shown directly (because it is too vulnerable or valuable to show, or because the museum does not have it), and the use of “commonly found items and specimens” to provide decoration or illustration.<fnref n="24" /> Tellingly, Spencer does not fit into either of these categories.

Not all props are tracked with an ECM number. Many minor items such as curtains and tables are sourced and recycled as required. The major goal of tracking props is to maintain “a clear distinction between collection items and non-collection items.”<fnref n="25" /> A manager explained this to me by contrasting a purse bought from a charity shop and a purse in the collection that might look similar: “If something can be confused with the heritage collection, if you anticipate things could get mixed up in the future, it will be tracked.” It was Spencer’s singularity that kept him out of the ECM records. He could not be mistaken for any object in the collection, he was not loaned from anyone, and he was not particularly valuable.<fnref n="26" />

This meant that there was no record of disposal at the time of deinstallation. When an exhibition is over, items from the collection are simply returned to their home department. By contrast, props can meet one of a number of fates: they can be returned to their source; they can be accessioned into the collection;<fnref n="27" /> they can become part of the “hands-on collection” in the Discovery Centre for handling by the public; they can be distributed to whoever wants them;<fnref n="28" /> or they can be destroyed. Again, Spencer defies all of these categories. He was retained but not accessioned, disposed not to one

<footnote n="23">23 Exhibition props information sheet, Exhibition Collection Management, Museum Victoria, electronic document, May 21, 2015, Museum Victoria archives.</footnote>

<footnote n="24">24 In the *Bunjilaka* exhibit, the list of props included a facsimile of a list of rules for residents of Lake Tyers Mission, a quoll skin, and a teddy bear.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">25 Exhibition props information sheet (see note 23), p. 45.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">26 The Spencer model was made by a production company from an off-the-shelf seated mannequin and a bentwood chair. The mannequin's head and hands were removed and replaced by fiberglass casts of Spencer's head and hands. The casts were created from clay sculptures created by in-house sculptor Peter "Smiley" Williams from photographs of Spencer. Mannequin joints were fixed with fiberglass bandages, and the costume department dressed it with starched clothing. The dressed model and chair were then sprayed with urethane to create an exoskeleton 1.5 millimeters thick. To finish the model, undercuts and fabric folds were filled with resin, and the entire structure was painted with a sand-textured paint and darker highlights, forcing shadows in the folds. Interestingly, the production of the statue illustrates the history of prop creation: if it were produced now, it would simply be 3D printed. Source: email to the author from John Kerr, creative director of *Stage One Productions*, September 15, 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">27 This pathway is used by curators to obtain contemporary art and craft works by Indigenous artists – they are commissioned as props but with the unofficial intention to accession them at the end of the exhibition.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">28 For example, a pen marking on a spreadsheet of tracked props indicates that a teddy bear used in the exhibition “went to a good home.”</footnote>
person but to a loose collective of staff. Staff could only vaguely remember the meeting when the fate of Spencer and all the tracked props were discussed, and no minutes were taken. No single person claimed responsibility for the idea to informally collect him, but all those I spoke to were supportive of the decision. Looking back, staff thought the reasons he was retained were that “a lot of work has gone into it”; “it’s a historical object” marking “the moment of the exhibition”; and “people have grown attached to him.” Others attached no particular intention or meaning to his retention: “Some things get salvaged, some get ditched. It was an off-the-cuff decision.”<fnref n="29" />

Whatever happened at the disposal meeting, it is clear that after June 2011, Spencer was moved to the receipt room (as I have described). No one I spoke to could offer a clear reason or timeline for his next move to the restricted room. The best explanation I heard was that the lab had to be emptied while LED lights were installed. Suddenly homeless, Spencer was moved to the restricted room, which was seen as a safe place, “out of the way but protected.” Staff gave conflicting accounts as to how long he was in the room, with responses ranging from several years to two weeks. I noted (without surprise) that my questions about why and how long he was in the room were often taken defensively, despite my best efforts to be casual. “It was just a spot to put him,” I was told. My anthropological sensibility was never going to be assuaged by reassurances that Spencer’s placement in the restricted room meant nothing. Of course, this just heightened my belief that it meant quite a lot.

## From postcolonial prop to decolonial ghost

Ever since *Bunjilaka* opened in 2000, Spencer has asserted his significance. Despite being a mere prop, outside the bounds of museum collection proper, he is universally mentioned in reviews and critiques of the exhibition.<fnref n="30" /> Academic reviews appreciate the intended meaning of Spencer as a postcolonial pedagogical tool that inverts the power relations behind the formation of the museum and its collections. They applaud the “impressive” and “brilliant” “Two Laws” section of the exhibition as the “first time that a major museum in Australia has confronted its past to address the ethics of collecting and constructing non-Indigenous versions of Aboriginal history and culture.”<fnref n="31" /> In contrast with the warm reception offered by academics and progressive media outlets,

<footnote n="29">29 Quotes in this paragraph and the next are taken from personal communications with museum staff, 23/2/2017 and 28/3/2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">30 See John Morton: Such a Man Would Find Few Races Hostile. History, Fiction and Anthropological Dialogue in the Melbourne Museum. In: Arena Journal, issue 22, 2004, pp. 53–71.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">31 Anne Delroy: Reviews Exhibitions, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 32, 2001, no. 116, pp. 147–50; Lynette Russell: *Bunjilaka Brooding*. In: Meanjin, vol. 60, 2001, no. 4, pp. 99–103.</footnote>
the Australian right-wing press's response was predictably outraged at the indignity of putting Spencer on display. The museum was called a "politically correct Aboriginal gallery" pushing "propaganda" that sullied the good name of its founding fathers.<fnref n="32" />

Writing in 2004 in response to various criticisms of the exhibition, John Morton argued for its pedagogical legitimacy and its relevance to contemporary political debates, but he also made the point that the exhibition was intended for Aboriginal audiences as much as for the wider public, if not more so. *Bunjilaka* was the result of "extensive community consultation" regarding every part of the exhibition, he claimed.<fnref n="33" /> But the extensive community involvement did not guarantee that all Aboriginal people would endorse the result. As Morton told me, some Aboriginal staff looked on the statue of a scientist in a glass case with suspicion. The intended purpose of collecting the collector did not resonate with them. Why was Spencer still at the center of the narrative? They would prefer not to think about the collectors at all.<fnref n="34" />

When the *Bunjilaka* exhibition was succeeded by *First Peoples* in 2011, the Spencer statue was removed from public display. The publicly stated rationale for *First Peoples* contained an implicit reference to the presence of white collectors in the previous exhibition. The lead curator, Genevieve Grieves, explained the process of creating an elders' group to cocurate the new exhibition as creating "new structures which gave authority back to the people who owned the objects and the stories." She continued, "We tried to make sure stories were not divorced from *their owners* and voices were not silenced."<fnref n="35" /> The website text for the exhibition explained that the *First Peoples* exhibit "presents the Koorie experience with immense power, depth and respect in a major permanent exhibition entirely co-created with Aboriginal people."<fnref n="36" />

I interpret Spencer's decommissioning as part of the broader cultural shift inside and outside museums toward decoloniality. Decoloniality is often seen in opposition to postcolonialism and as its successor.<fnref n="37" /> This dichotomy is reflected in some museum studies literature as two models of exhibition: the *multivocal exhibition model*, a model I associate with the postcolonial, and the *community-based model*, a model I associate with decolonial approaches. Native American museum studies scholar Amy Lonetree describes a multivocal approach as characterizing

<footnote n="32">32 Andrew Bolt: A Museum of Spin. In: Herald Sun, November 20, 2000, cited in: Russell: (see note 31), p. 99.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">33 Morton (see note 30), p. 67.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">34 John Morton, personal communication, January 20, 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">35 Museums and Galleries of NSW: At Home. Genevieve Grieves, February 18, 2015, https://mgnsw.org.au/articles/home-genevieve-grieves (as of 4/2018), emphasis added.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">36 Museum Victoria website, https://museumsvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka/about-us (as of 4/2018), emphasis added.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">37 For an extensive discussion of this shift, see the longer version of this article: Kowal (see note 1), pp. 55–77.</footnote>
"the effort by the more progressive museums of the 1990s to deal more fairly with [topics related to Indigenous people]. When museum professionals were faced with presenting sensitive topics, especially those of a more controversial nature, they would present a range of perspectives and leave it to visitors to weigh the value of each."<fnref n="38" />

The community-based model, by contrast, strives to privilege the Indigenous community's view of an object or collection over other possible views (of curators, scientists, or others). In a decolonial, “indigenized” museum, exhibitions and curatorship should be controlled by Indigenous people because, as Lonetree puts it, “controlling the representation of their cultures is linked to the larger movements of self-determination and cultural sovereignty.”<fnref n="39" />

Given this context, it is not surprising that, by 2011, Spencer's double no longer had a place in a public exhibition. Although the idea was conceived by an Indigenous scholar (Tony Birch), the statue was widely considered by museum staff to be a non-Indigenous object. Birch's idea was implemented, and the statue was constructed, by non-Indigenous people. Spencer in a glass case was a product of 1990s postcolonial, satirical, multivocal museum practice, and his end had come. This suggests that the passage from postcolonial to decolonial approaches means that collectors no longer have a place in Indigenous museum collections, even as a focus of critical reflection. In the case of Spencer, his exile from the exhibition marked other shifts that had uneven effects on different groups of Indigenous people.

We can see this in the quote (a few paragraphs above) in which Grieves explains the focus of the *First Peoples* exhibit that succeeded the first iteration of *Bunjilaka*. When she talks about creating structures that “gave authority back” to the owners, she arguably refers to the traditional owners of Victoria – Koori people – and not the owners of the objects in the museum. The vast majority of the Aboriginal collection comprises objects from Central and Northern Australia, with only a small fraction from Victoria. Although the extensive inclusion of remote Indigenous stories in the first *Bunjilaka* exhibition (particularly the “Belonging to Country” and “Two Laws” sections) accurately reflected the museum’s holdings, the focus of two out of the three

<footnote n="38">38 Amy Lonetree: Decolonizing Museums. Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums, Chapel Hill 2012, pp. 169–170. The terminology of “multivocal” and “community-based” derives from Ruth B. Phillips: Museum Pieces. Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums, Montreal 2011.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">39 Lonetree (see note 38), p. 1. On the “indigenized museum,” see Moira G. Simpson: Revealing and Concealing. Museums, Objects, and the Transmission of Knowledge in Aboriginal Australia. In: Janet Marstine (ed.): New Museum Theory and Practice. An Introduction, Malden 2006, pp. 152–177, here: p. 174.</footnote>
sections on Indigenous people outside Victoria was increasingly seen as a problem. Acknowledging the embeddedness of Indigenous people in the land and the importance of reclaiming Indigenous control of their heritage, many Indigenous curators, by the end of the 2000s, felt the Melbourne Museum should stick to telling stories about local Koori communities.

In the eyes of those curators, putting Spencer in a glass case was another way to put him on a pedestal. Was the mood lighting, intended to create solemnity and reflection, really a white people's shrine to their revered scientist? Spencer's model, hollow plastic underneath the sand-textured paint, was technically silent. But his form spoke volumes and was interpreted as silencing Indigenous voices. John Morton, and certainly Tony Birch, intended for it to be ironic and not reverential, but it could be read either way.

This analysis highlights how, at the Melbourne Museum, the shift from multivo-
cal postcolonial to univocal decolonial museology worked to silence not just non-Indige-
nous voices but also nonlocal Indigenous voices. Prior to the decolonial shift, the nation-
al responsibility of an institution like Museum Victoria to Aboriginal people beyond
Victoria's borders was clear, and the importance of the museum's relationships with
Indigenous communities in Northern and Central Australia was taken for granted.
Some museum staff believe this is no longer the case. This reflects, in part, the fact that
it is exclusively non-Indigenous people that currently work with remote-community
collections. There are no Indigenous museum staff who are from the communities that
have objects in the restricted room, the place where Spencer's double eventually found a
home; so, while Indigenous visitors and non-Indigenous staff frequent the room, Indig-
enous museum staff do not pass its threshold. With the decolonization of the museum
and the subsequent focus on Koori communities, the objects and communities that are
represented by the vast majority of museum holdings have become relatively invisible.
The presence of Spencer's double in the restricted room demonstrates both the attempt
to exile certain voices from the decolonial museum and the enduring power of that
which is repressed but which stubbornly surfaces in ghostly forms.

De/collecting Spencer

Spencer's double embodies the strengths and the vulnerabilities of the postcolonial and
decolonial eras. In his time in the glass case, he resembled a Rankian double.<fnref n="40" /> He func-
tioned as a cathartic 'bad' object for progressive museum professionals, academics, and
visitors. To gaze at Spencer in the glass case produced a satisfactory sense of irony and

<footnote n="40">40 For a discussion of the (Rankian) psychoanalytic concept of the double, see Kowal (see note 1), pp. 58–59.</footnote>
historical distance from the days when the sacred objects of Indigenous peoples, and even Indigenous people themselves, were collected and circulated for the edification and entertainment of Western publics.<fnref n="41" /> In place of the dioramas depicting Aboriginal people in supposedly traditional scenes that were standard museum fare well into the twentieth century, the white audience is invited to gaze at Spencer. If Spencer is in the case and we are outside the case looking at him, then we cannot be Spencer. The glass between us promises we are different – progressive, anti-racist, postcolonial, or even decolonizing.<fnref n="42" />

Despite Morton's claim that the first *Bunjilaka* exhibit was primarily aimed at Indigenous audiences, the postcolonial mode of exhibition actively sought to cultivate progressive and reflexive non-Indigenous identities. As that mode of collection and exhibition ended around 2010, so did the place for non-Indigenous people to disparage Spencer from outside the glass. In the decolonial era, non-Indigenous allies are encouraged to stay silent and try to not take up any space.<fnref n="43" /> The local Indigenous critiques of the “white guy” taking up space in the Indigenous museum exhibit, and the political shifts these critiques represented, were more or less well known to non-Indigenous museum staff at the time of Spencer’s deinstallation in 2011. How, then, should his retention in the “backstage” of the museum be understood?<fnref n="44" /> And how should his later move to the restricted room be interpreted?

Once Spencer was released from his case and became an honorary museum object (perhaps even an honorary staff member), the Rankian relationship between the non-Indigenous viewer and Spencer's double was undone. What exactly he became then is up for debate, and I do not claim to have the definitive answer. But I am convinced that part of what he meant to non-Indigenous museum staff is captured by the notion of nostalgia, that many-layered relation to things in our past.<fnref n="45" /> Spencer the ironic post-

<footnote n="41">41 See Sadiah Qureshi: Peoples on Parade. Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Chicago 2011.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">42 For scholarship on Australian white anti-racism, see Emma Kowal: Trapped in the Gap. Doing Good in Indigenous Australia, New York/London 2015; Sara Ahmed: The Politics of Bad Feeling. In: Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal, vol. 1, 2005, no. 1, pp. 72–85.</footnote>

<footnote n="43">43 Note that what I explain here as a shift from postcolonial to decolonial could also be told through the lens of whiteness studies, the academic study of white privilege that boomed in the 1990s but has shrunk in influence, partly because of critiques that being self-reflexive about white privilege is itself a form of white privilege. Being silent is sometimes proposed as a better strategy for white people. For an Australian example, see Nado Aveling: “Don’t Talk about What You Don’t Know.” On (Not) Conducting Research With/In Indigenous Contexts. In: Critical Studies in Education, vol. 54, 2013, no. 2, pp. 203–214.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">44 “Backstage” is meant in Goffman’s sense. See Erving Goffman: The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, New York 1959.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">45 On nostalgia see Svetlana Boym: The Future of Nostalgia, New York 2001.</footnote>
colonial statue embodied a particular chronotope: a particular time, place, and politics.<fnref n="46" /> The time was a period in the recent history of collections, approximately 1990–2010, and the place was Australia and other similar settler colonies, particularly Aotearoa (or, New Zealand), Canada, and the United States. The politics that Spencer embodied was from a period when Indigenous interests in – if not outright ownership of – their heritage were firmly established, but some non-Indigenous people still had relatively unquestioned roles – significant, positive, and public roles – in telling Aboriginal stories. The Rankian projection that helped maintain the possibility of white anti-racism was difficult to relinquish, and keeping Spencer was a coping strategy.

Spencer's uncased double was more than a focus of nostalgia for postcolonial times. He also took on uncanny dimensions, especially when he entered the restricted room. Spencer became the vessel for voices that are silenced in the univocal, decolonial museum – voices including those of non-Indigenous and nonlocal Indigenous actors. This analysis raises a critique of community-based models of museum practice as articulated by Lonetree and other decolonial scholars. As many others have observed, the idea of a singular, uncomplicated 'Indigenous community' is a fantasy, especially where state or national institutions are concerned. Privileging 'the Indigenous community' necessitates delineating who and what the community consists of, a decision that will inevitably marginalize some Indigenous people.<fnref n="47" />

The hope of the decolonial museum is that local Indigenous voices are allowed to speak without distortion. Yet the presence of Spencer's double in the restricted room illustrates how decolonial approaches may struggle to stifle the many voices that found expression in previous modes of collection. Regardless of the decolonial intentions of museums, repressed traces of past collectors and curators remain embedded in the objects they handled, considered, collated, described, and displayed. This could be seen as the failure of decolonization, remediable through greater efforts to still those stubbornly persistent colonial voices. Spencer's end was deferred by people – non-Indigenous staff members at the museum – who placed him in the receiving room and then the restricted room. If those people were better trained in decolonial museology, the argument might go, they would not have done this without the specific direction of the Indigenous community.

However, the persistence of Spencer contains important lessons for decolonial museological practice that may be missed if the episode is solely attributed to incom-

<footnote n="46">46 See Mikhail Bakhtin: Form of Time and Chronotope in the Novel. In: Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, Austin 1981, pp. 84–258.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">47 For an Australian example, see Frances Peters Little: The Community Game. Aboriginal Self-Definition at the Local Level, Canberra 1999.</footnote>
plete decolonization or even racism. An alternate reading I offer is that Spencer's uncan-
ny, obstinate double shows how the difficult histories of objects cannot be disembed-
ded. Spencer is part of the thousands of objects he collected and cannot be extricated,
regardless of whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous curators or community members
are interested in his influence. Spencer's model is now part of the difficult history of
the relations between museums and Indigenous communities.<fnref n="48" /> Efforts to silence cer-
tain museum histories run the risk of promoting ghostly presences, even when these
efforts are grounded in morally and politically sound principles.<fnref n="49" /> Thus, Spencer's
decommissioning is symptomatic of the decolonial turn, but Spencer's failure to end is
symptomatic of the decolonial turn's internal tensions and contradictions.

Collecting Spencer in the restricted room reunited him with the objects he col-
lected. Seated on his chair, on his trolley, between the shelves, he was shrouded in
darkness save for rare occasions when museum staff or visiting remote-community
members entered the room and turned on the lights. Staff told me that both they and
community members were startled by Spencer's gaze: "You get a shock; it's unsettling."
"Most community members do not recognize him, but it makes sense to people that he
is there when you explain who he is," I was told. Tony Birch also told me that visiting
Indigenous community members approve of Spencer's presence, watching over their
sacred objects.<fnref n="50" />

Restricted rooms in Australian museums are a kind of shrine to a form of knowl-
edge that Western scientists believed was on the verge of extinction from almost the first
moment of contact. In his lifetime, Spencer the man sought to remedy this supposed
demise by protecting Indigenous people and culture through isolation on reserves.
The critically important efforts of the contemporary museum to counter the fallacy of
extinction and promote living Koori cultures may ironically be marginalizing other
Indigenous knowledges all over again. In a sense, Spencer belongs in this dark pseu-
do-shrine, a spectral presence eluding museum categories and databases, a mascot for
a mode of postcolonial politics whose time has passed but that refuses to end.<fnref n="51" />

<footnote n="48">48 See Sharon Macdonald: *Difficult Heritage. Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond, London* 2009; Bain Attwood: *Difficult Histories*. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Treaty of Waitangi Exhibit. In: *Public Historian*, vol. 35, 2013, no. 3, pp. 46–71.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">49 See Avery Gordon: *Ghostly Matters*, Minneapolis 1997; Avery Gordon: *Some thoughts on haunting and futurity*. In: *Borderlands*, vol. 10, 2011, no. 2, pp. 1–21.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">50 Tony Birch, personal communication, November 1, 2017.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">51 The terminology of “mascot” was suggested by Tony Birch, ibid.</footnote>
Epilogue

On my first archival visit to the museum in February 2017, I was taken to see Spencer. Earlier that day, I had sat in the office of the manager of the department explaining my interest in the story of the statue. Like many of the older curatorial staff, he was an academic and was sympathetic to my project. He confirmed that Spencer was stored in the restricted room. As many objects in the room are restricted and considered dangerous to women, I would not be able to enter. “We’ve taken him out so you can view him,” he said with a grin. “You’re going to love where he is now.”

Later, a curator with access to the restricted room came to pick me up at the desk I had been allocated for the day. I followed him through the open-plan office, through the holding room where the statue had spent a few years, and into the museum stores. At each stage, his swipe card gave us access. The stores felt like a suburban library, packed with rows of shelves that held objects instead of books.

He gestured toward the first aisle on my right, and I peered between the shelves. Spencer was there, facing me on his trolley, with a large painted Papuan statue towering over him – another disturbing and humorous juxtaposition. The Papuan statue was a sacred object, and I was not permitted to photograph it, so the curator rolled Spencer's trolley out of the aisle and into the corridor, close to the door. We looked at Spencer together. Reflecting on the model, he told me, “I’ve got quite attached to him. I’m disappointed we don’t have Gillen as well.” I asked him how Spencer came to be in the restricted store, and he referred me to another staff member for an explanation.

Seeing that he did not want to talk about Spencer, I set about photographing the statue. I circled him to catch different angles of his face, then moved the trolley slightly to make room to capture the whole figure in one frame. But Spencer rolled toward me, escaping my gaze. I pushed him back. He rolled toward me again. I put my foot out to steady the trolley long enough to take the photograph, but I could not get far enough away to fit him in the frame. The curator came to the rescue, placing his finger on the trolley. Spencer was finally stilled, and I got my shot. ↗ Fig. 3

I asked to see the outside of the room where Spencer is usually kept, and I was led down a corridor to what looked like a shed, painted gray and with the words “restricted” on the door. Some photographs of Spencer and Gillen, and photographs they took, hung on the outer walls. Pride of place among them was the 1901–02 expedition shot. ↗ Fig. 2 As I photographed the framed photograph, the curator standing behind me seemed to shift into a reflective mode: “He and Gillen knew those old people so well, they trusted him with their objects. It is right that he is in there with the things he collected.”
Since my first archival visit, Spencer has not returned to the restricted store. His place in the main stores between two aisles, below the Papuan statue, has become semipermanent. Outside the restricted room, he is more visible. A manager of another museum department I spoke to during a subsequent visit was “quite surprised to see it in the store,” having seen it “just [...] two days ago.”⁵² The future of the statue is now a subject of greater discussion among collections management staff who dislike ambiguous items. Spencer’s large dimensions make him particularly vulnerable. Pressure to decide his fate is increasing. “We’re running out of storage space,” I was told, “and we need to think carefully.”

<figure><img src="image_34.png" /><figcaption>3: Model of Baldwin Spencer in the Museum Victoria stores, February 23rd, 2017.</figcaption></figure>

There are essentially two ways to resolve Spencer's ambiguity: accession or disposal. In some of my conversations with staff, I discussed the possibility of accessioning Spencer. He would become part of the official collection, with a number, a description, and a preservation plan. One of the departments would have to propose this and argue the case at a monthly acquisition meeting. I found myself collecting reasons why he should be accessioned. I was told the History of Collections curator might be interested in recording the statue's history, but she was never at her desk when I looked for her. When I brought it up with a manager who could potentially take on the accession, she was doubtful: "It's not an object made by Indigenous people." But she left open the possibility. "Something is forming about the meaning of this object," she mused. "We must be applying some level of value because we haven't destroyed it." I was now part of this growing web of significance enveloping Spencer, perhaps creating a legitimate place for him in the decolonial museum. How it ends will depend on the kind of value that he is accumulating and how far it can travel.
<figure><img src="image_35.png" /></figure>

1: Pieces of rubble, 2017.

# Projektvorstellung

Andrea Malanski

## Ruin in Reverse. A Design Inquiry
Guided by the Materiality of the Rubble

With the development of new technologies for reconstructing artifacts and heritage sites, museum and cultural heritage practitioners have more possibilities than ever to achieve reconstruction's ultimate goal: to reconstruct the object in such a way as to make it as similar as possible to the object prior to its destruction. But what happens when we look at destruction not as an end but as a starting point of an alternative process of meaning-making? Can the representation of a destroyed artifact be as valuable as the object before its destruction? What if we consider the rubble or residue—the new shape of the destroyed object—as an artifact's or heritage site's afterlife? ↗ Fig. 1

Ruin in Reverse is a design inquiry on the relation between cultural heritage and human rights in military conflicts.¹ It aims to critically reflect on the potential of design practice to contribute to this issue and to challenge the boundaries between design, art, archaeology, and anthropology in relation to heritage practices.

The project was developed from an experimental process that connects material exploration to theoretical research. Since it was not possible to gain access to the rubble of destroyed heritage sites in areas affected by military conflicts, the rubble used in the project was collected from the site of a demolished building in Gothenburg, Sweden, and assembled on a 120 x 120 cm board in a studio at the Academy of Art and Design of Gothenburg University. Through this model, the materiality of the rubble was explored through design processes and design tools such as 3D scanning and 3D printing.

In *Ruin in Reverse*, the rubble was an active material: it was the main object, not the undesirable result of destroyed heritage—a result that can make us want to replace the destroyed object with the most reliable reconstructed object.² As an active material, the rubble informed the design of methodologies and encouraged reflection on which voices museums and heritage venues have allowed in their spaces and which voices have not.

The project centered on the materiality of the rubble in sequential phases: image/depiction, construction, mapping, deconstruction, archiving, cataloging, reconstruction, and reproduction. In each phase, a specific activity
around the rubble informed theoretical research and reflections on different aspects of cultural heritage practices. This approach connected design to other disciplines such as art, archaeology, and social anthropology and broadened the scope of design and its creative engagement in the shaping of society: less focused “on objects and their end results” and more oriented to “understanding of human practices and ways of perceiving.”³

## Rubble image and construction

The project’s entry point was the depiction in the media of sites that were destroyed by military forces – the image of the rubble – and how the repetition and mass dissemination of those images gave a sense of non-place in these destroyed landscapes.

The rubble model was built as an attempt to establish a connection to these displaced places. It also enabled the processes and methodologies explored in each of the following project phases.

<caption>Fig. 2</caption>

## Mapping and deconstruction

The rubble model was 3D scanned through photogrammetry. Each of the eight layers of the rubble was reproduced as a 3D model, and each of the 1,442 pieces was removed, cataloged, and archived. The aim of this methodology, which borrows tools from archaeological and museological practices, was to make it possible to reconstruct the rubble model in another place.

<caption>Figs. 3–6</caption>

### Reconstruction I

To reconstruct the rubble model, thirty maps were developed. With these maps, it is possible to locate each archived piece and put it back in its former layer and position, thereby reconstructing the same rubble model created in the construction phase. Fig. 7

The maps themselves are another version of the rubble. Would a reassembled rubble model, with all pieces in the same place, be a more valuable version of the original rubble than the maps? Even the most perfect reconstruction,

<figure><img src="image_36.png" /><figcaption>2: Rubble model, 2017, rubble over wood board, 120×120 cm, detail.</figcaption></figure>

with every speck of dust put back in place, would never be the same as the original: the new context would still make it different. As the artist Oliver Laric stated in his film *Versions*, “what are the many versions if not diverse perspectives of a movable event?”⁴

### Reconstruction II

In the last phase of *Ruin in Reverse*, another version of the rubble was added: a reconstruction made through the oral stories of a Syrian man whose house and neighborhood were destroyed during the war. Looking at satellite images of his neighborhood both before and after its destruction, as well as drawings and photos, he told me his story – from city to neighborhoods, from streets to houses, from rooms to objects.

## From architecture to anthropology

If an imaging satellite photographed the rubble model in *Ruin in Reverse*, it would be represented by four pixels. In satellite images, a single color pixel represents 50 cm of surface area. This resolution, defined by international regulations, makes it possible to identify and analyze destroyed buildings from an architectural perspective. Eyal and Ines Weizman describe this type of analysis as “an act of archeology of the present.” In their words, it is “an architectural reconstruction based on an analysis of images and the ways these images are composed in pixels”.⁵ Fig. 8
<figure><img src="image_37.png" /><figcaption>3: Photogrammetry 3D model process, 2017, sketch of camera positions and digital images of each layer to produce a 3D model, 2017.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_38.png" /><figcaption>4: 3D model of each layer, 2017.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_39.png" /><figcaption>5: Grid to map the position of each piece of the rubble model, 2017.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_40.png" /><figcaption>6: Screenshot of video filmed during process of mapping and deconstruction phase, 2017.</figcaption></figure>

Before and after satellite images have been used both as evidence of the destruction of heritage sites, by cultural heritage institutions, and as evidence of war crimes, by human rights institutions. However, the 50 cm per pixel resolution is not enough to show the presence of human beings, who are thus excluded from the photographic evidence.⁶

There is a gap between the before and the after in such satellite images. This gap is the human perspective. In *Ruin in Reverse*, “Reconstruction II” was an attempt to address that very gap.

The project moves from the scale of satellite images to that of small pieces of rubble, combining different tools that are usually confined to the specific practices of such fields as
<figure><img src="image_41.png" /><figcaption>7: Map locating the pieces of one of the rubble model layers, 2017.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_42.png" /><figcaption>8: Artwork illustrating the scale in pixels between the rubble model and a satellite image, 2017.</figcaption></figure>
archaeology, architecture, anthropology, and art. It proposes bringing together these different tools and knowledges as part of an alternative meaning-making process.

## Meaning-making processes and versions

There are meaningful and valuable ways to give an afterlife to destroyed artifacts or heritage sites through the representation of their destruction. These representations depict and construct meaning from the acts that caused the destruction, and they “demonstrate that in many cases, destruction is less an endpoint [...] than the beginning of a process of meaning-making.”⁷

The concept of versions – the rubble, residues, and remnants as active material, as an alternative to the attempt to reconstruct the original, and the restored artifact as an intact but limited object – switches the focus from revealing “the truth” to opening up the possibility to talk about it. In *Ruin in Reverse*, the rubble acts as a facilitator.

Bringing rubble to museums or heritage sites – and keeping it as rubble – prioritizes the events that led to the destruction of the artifact or monument over its past appearance. The destroyed object is one of the artifact’s or monument’s many versions since the beginning of its existence.

The representation of destruction is a process of reconstruction that does not aim to produce a replacement that is as similar as possible to the object, artifact, or heritage site before its destruction. Rather, it aims to produce new and diverse versions that add new meanings to, raise new questions about, and provoke new reflections on the object or artifact. Since it is impossible for a restored, reconstructed, or copied artifact to function as its original, what ultimately remains is the possibility of producing multiple and diverse versions of the lost or damaged artifact, each carrying its omissions and its emphases. Would that not be a more relevant aim of museums in our contemporary society?

1. *Ruin in Reverse* is a graduation project for an MA in Design at Gothenburg University. It aims to explore how design can bridge the concepts of cultural heritage and human rights in the contexts of military conflict and how it can help develop a framework for a critical discussion about the potential of design practice to contribute to this issue. By challenging the boundaries between design and other disciplines, it reflects on transdisciplinarity as a way to intervene in social issues. To learn more about the project, visit www.ruininreverse.com.
I would like to thank my supervisor Onkar Kular and also to Henric Benesch, Jonas Fridén and Markus Miessen for their support on this project.

2. See Tim Ingold: Materials Against Materiality. In: Archaeological Dialogues, vol. 14, 2007, pp. 1–16.

3. Mike Anusas and Tim Ingold: Designing Environmental Relations. From Opacity to Textility. In: Design Issues, vol. 29, 2013, no. 4, pp. 58–69.

4. Oliver Laric: Versions, 2010, 14:07. http://oliverlaric.com/vvversions.htm (as of 5/2022).

5. Eyal Weizman, Ines Weizman: Before and After. Documenting the Architecture of Disaster, London 2014, pp. 23–24.

6. Ibid.

7. Keith Bresnahan, JoAnne Mancini: Introduction. In: Idem (eds.): Architecture and Armed Conflict. The Politics of Destruction, London 2014, pp. 1–8.
<figure><img src="image_43.png" /><figcaption>1</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_44.png" /><figcaption>2</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_45.png" /><figcaption>3</figcaption></figure>

Flavia Caviezel

## Toxische Überreste des Sammelns

10. Januar 2022. Der Atem bildet Wolken in der kalten Morgenluft. Julian Cech, Restaurator und Kon-
servator der Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte (SKKG), empfängt mich am Eingangstor einer
Lagerhalle in der Nähe von Zürich. Es ist alles vorbereitet für die Fortsetzung der Untersuchungs- und
Reinigungsarbeiten an einem der Oldtimer-Wagen aus der Stiftungssammlung. Begleitet werden diese
Arbeiten durch die auf Schadstoffsanierungen spezialisierte Beratungsfirma Bafob, die das Niederdruck-
zelt in der Halle in Zusammenarbeit mit einer Asbestsanierungsfirma geplant und gebaut hat. Abb. 1

Vor Jahresende waren bereits verschiedene Stellen des Automobils beprobt worden. Die Laborana-
lysen hatten Chrysotil (Weißasbest) in Dichtungsringen und auf der Auspuffoberfläche bestätigt. Die
Stiftung stieß zufällig auf Astbestkontaminierung an Oldtimer-Modellen; erstmals bei der Untersuchung
eines für eine Ausstellung angefragten Stanley-Steamer-Modells, einem dampfbetriebenen Automobil,
an dessen Brennkessel Bestandteile von Krokydolith (Blauasbest) entdeckt wurden. Abb. 15 Ab Herbst

Die visuelle Forschung zu Untersuchungs- und Reinigungsarbeiten an einem der Oldtimer-Wagen der SKKG umreißt das Spannungsfeld, in dem sich Sammeltätigkeiten heutzutage ganz grundsätzlich bewegen, insbesondere bei toxischer Belastung von Sammelgütern: ein Abwägen zwischen Erhalten und Eliminieren, zwischen Restaurieren, Sanieren und Entsorgen. Es bedeutet eine vertiefte Auseinandersetzung mit Gefahren, die verursacht werden durch Schadstoffe wie Asbest, Arsen, Lindan oder Schwermetalle⁴, die aufgrund ihrer Eigenschaften – chemisch beständig, hitzeunempfindlich, bindefähig⁵ – in Objekten verbaut sind oder zu Konservierungszwecken eingesetzt wurden.

Oft werden Objekte oder deren Artefakte erst während dieser Sanierungsprozesse als ‚toxisch‘
eruiert und durchlaufen verschiedene Transformationen und Umwertungen. Sie werden zu **Überresten**
und befinden sich in einem ungewissen Zustand des Übergangs – mindestens so lange, bis der Labor-
bericht nach zwei Tagen vorliegt. In diesem ungesicherten Status, ob und wie die **Überreste** allenfalls
wieder Eingang in die Sammlungen finden, sind sie „zwischen zwei Zuständen‘, [...] eine Randzone,
die wechselnde Nutzungsinteressen, Operationen und Wertsetzungen anstößt und offenlegt“.⁶

2021 fanden erste Sanierungsarbeiten am Gefährt sowie Untersuchungen und Reinigungen weiterer Oldtimer statt.

Zum Schutz vor Kontaminationen ziehen wir im Vorraum des Niederdruckzelts einen weißen, staubdichten Schutzanzug an: ‚Unterleibchen‘, ‚Socken‘, einen Ganzkörperanzug und ‚Stulpen‘ über die Schuhe sowie sicherheitshalber zwei Lagen an Gummi-Handschuhen. Die Gesichtsschutzmaske liegt eng an und wird rundum mit Klebeband an den Rändern zwischen Maske und Anzug abgedeckt. Trotz erschwerter Sauerstoffzufuhr versuche ich, einigermaßen gelassen zu bleiben und ruhig zu atmen. Abb. 2

Durch die beiden Luftschleusen gelangen wir in den Innenraum, wo beprobt und gereinigt wird. Wir schließen uns mit einem Schlauch an Frischluft an, was eine laute Tonspur im Maskeninneren erzeugt. Atmen ist auch ohne Frischluft möglich und für Arbeiten unter dem Wagen oft notwendig, jedoch beschwerlicher. Da alle in das Niederdruckzelt mitgenommenen Objekte beim Verlassen gereinigt werden müssen, verwende ich einen sich bereits im Zelt befindenden Fotoapparat und setze meine mittransportierte SD-Karte ein.

Reinigungen werden aufgrund von zufällig entdeckten oder vermuteten, eruierten toxischen Belastungen angegangen, oftmals auch erst dann, wenn diese Arbeiten als unabdingbar für die Erhaltung eines Sammelstücks, für seine gefahrlose Handhabung, Erforschung und Integration in Ausstellungen erscheinen. Die Dringlichkeit und der Umgang mit kontaminierten Bestandteilen werden von Restaurator*innen, Sammelinstitutionen und Reinigungsspezialist*innen unter Umständen unterschiedlich eingeschätzt und erfordern Aushandlungen.

Die SKKG betrachtet die Reinigungsarbeit als Aufwertung, da die Verwendung der Objekte wieder möglich wird. Die Entscheidungsprozesse sind auch für weiterführende beabsichtigte Nutzungen der Objekte von Bedeutung, wie beispielsweise im Falle einer Inbetriebnahme der Oldtimerwagen, was zurzeit noch in Abklärung ist.

Relevanz hat auch das Wegfallen von kontaminierten Bestandteilen (Heizkessel, Aus-
pufftopf o.ä.): Aus restauratorischer Sicht spielt der Verlust der technisch-kulturhistorischen
Informationen durch das Fehlen von Originalteilen bzw. durch den Eingriff in die Erscheinung

Das Automobil steht bereit. Abb. 3 Die Inspektionen des 1901 durch die Firma Vinot & Deguingand in Puteaux/Frankreich konstruierten Wagens werden fortgesetzt. Julian Cech und der Bafob-Mitarbeiter Christian Hähni verständigen sich – so gut dies mit der lärmigen Sauerstoffzufuhr möglich ist – über möglicherweise kontaminierte Stellen, die sie visuell eruiert haben. Abb. 4 Erfahrungen, wie mit Asbest behandelte Materialien aussehen, spielen in der Analyse eine zentrale Rolle. Durch langjährige Erfahrung im Umgang mit asbesthaltigen Materialien können Cech und Hähni viele kontaminierte Stellen ohne optische Hilfsmittel erkennen. Mit spezifischem Werkzeug beprobt Hähni den Innenraum des Auspuffs durch eine kleine Öffnung, wo Asbest vermutet wird. Feine Fasern sind mit bloßem Auge sichtbar. Abb. 6–9 Bei verschiedenen Dichtungen am Motor pinselt Cech vorsichtig Staub weg, wegen sich allfällig lösender Asbestpartikel. Solche Partikel werden im Niederdruckzelt allerdings durch den Luftdruck zu den Filtern in der Seitenwand befördert. Hähnis visueller Diagnose zufolge ist Asbest an diesen Stellen verbaut. Cech trägt mit dem Pinsel eine Acrylat-Benzin-Lösung zum Fixieren der kontaminierten Dichtungen auf. Abb. 5 Eine Arbeit, die Genauigkeit, Geduld und eine ruhige Hand erfordert.

des Objekts eine zentrale Rolle. Für die Sammlungsverantwortlichen stellt sich die Frage, wie
eine ökonomische Entwertung dieser am Objekt entstehenden Lücke ‚kompensiert‘ werden
kann. Eine, wenn auch nicht spezifisch objektbezogene Möglichkeit eröffnet die im Kontext des
gesamten Reinigungsprojekts entstandene Arbeit *Brixe* des Schweizer Künstlers Pedro Wirz,
die in die Sammlung der SKKG integriert wird.

Bisher sind Reinigungsarbeiten in (musealen) Sammlungen noch wenig öffentlich diskutiert und transparent gemacht worden, obwohl, wie es auch dieser Beitrag zeigt, zahlreiche Erkenntnisse durch die Beschäftigung mit toxischen Überresten möglich sind.⁷ Spezifisch in der visuellen Forschung ermöglichen die entstandenen visuellen Materialien, Mikroprozesse aufzuzeigen, die während des Bildersammelns oft nicht direkt eruierbar sind. Bilder können Erinnerungen an Beobachtungen während des Forschungsprozesses reaktivieren und neue Fragen aufwerfen, d.h., sie agieren auch in der Funktion des ‚Katalysators‘ als Episteme. Als Repräsentanten der toxischen Überreste stehen die Bildmaterialien stellvertretend für eine nicht direkt gegebene

Die Begleitung der Arbeiten im Zelt ist für mich ungewohnt, anspruchsvoll und anstrengend. Ich beobachte die Handhabungen, foto- und videografiere und versuche, die Prozesse und die damit verbundenen Überlegungen zu erfassen. Zwischendurch notiere ich eruierte Abläufe und auftauchende Fragen zu Aspekten des Handlings von Cech und Hähni, da ich ihre Gespräche wegen des Sauerstofflärmpegels nur bruchstückhaft verfolgen und kaum direkt nachfragen kann. Meine visuelle transdisziplinäre Forschung erfolgt in Interaktion mit den involvierten Personen, den zu erforschenden Materialien und Technologien; sie ist ein Zusammenspiel aller Beteiligten, auch der mehr-als-menschlichen Akteur*innen.

Das gesamte Fahrzeug wird etappenweise und durch Verwendung von Reinigungsinstrumen-
ten wie Bürsten, Pinsel, Druckluft für Polster und Autounterseite von Staub und Schmutz befreit.
Beschwerlich ist die Reinigung insbesondere unter dem Fahrzeug, am Boden liegend, wo es eng ist
und man mit der Maske ans Gefährt schlägt. Es komme ein Gefühl von Klaustrophobie auf und
Kopfschmerzen entstehen, da durch die Liegeposition über längere Zeit keine Frischluftzufuhr
möglich sei, so Cech. Abb. 10

sensuelle Zugänglichkeit. Die Beschäftigung mit Überresten kreiert also ihrerseits digitale
Substitute für diese Überreste – mediale Fragmente eines Prozesses, der die Transforma-
tion von Objekten oder Artefakten zu Überresten aufzeigt. In der Weiterverarbeitung dieser
Materialien zum vorliegenden Essay ermöglicht die montierte Bild- und Textfolge durch ihre
prozessuale Zusammenführung produktive Neukombinationen. Montage ist hier eine vielfäl-
tige Technik und ästhetische Praxis der Arbeit mit visuellem und textuellem Forschungsmate-
rial. Bilder und Worte, Empfindungen, Informationen und analytische Kommentare werden
nebeneinandergestellt und erzeugen verschiedene Wahrnehmungs- und Rezeptionsschichten.

Die Bildmaterialien verweisen zudem durch die Inhalte, die sie darstellen, auf die Entste-
hungs- und Entsorgungsbedingungen der zu ihrer Herstellung verwendeten Medientechnolo-
gien: Verbaute Rohstoffe, die unter prekären sozialen, ökologischen, ökonomischen und abfall-
erzeugenden Bedingungen extraktivistischer Praktiken aus den Erdschichten abgetragen⁸
und nach Gebrauch als E-Waste zu Überresten der Technologie-Infrastrukturen werden.⁹

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Beim Verlassen des Raumes für die Mittagspause sind zwei Schleusen zu passieren: In der ersten wird der gesamte Körper mit Druckluft ‚abgespritzt‘, der Schutzanzug ausgezogen – als möglicherweise kontaminierter Überrest entsprechend entsorgt – und der Körper nochmals mit Luft bespritzt, um allfällige Asbestpartikel zu entfernen. In der zweiten Schleuse wird drei Minuten ‚geduscht‘, d. h. sich in der Luftzufuhr zur Kammer den Körper wie beim Duschen abzustreichen.

Nach einem halben Tag visueller Forschung im Niederdruckzelt spüre ich Ermüdung, die nicht lediglich atmungs- und lärmbedingte Gründe hat, sondern auch die schwierig fassbare ‚Bedrohung‘ durch die weitgehend unsichtbare Materie umfasst: Bereits geringe Konzentrationen von Asbestfasern oder Stäuben in der Luft sind toxisch, da sie vom Organismus kaum abgebaut oder ausgeschieden werden, und durch den jahrelangen Verbleib im Lungengewebe Erkrankungen verursachen können.¹

Am Nachmittag, nachdem wir erneut das Prozedere des Ankleidens von Schutzanzug und Maske vollzogen haben, versuchen Hähni und Cech, am Boden unter dem Wagen liegend, die verrosteten Schrauben des Auspuffs zu lösen, was nach einigen beschwerlichen Versuchen gelingt.

Der Abbau von Asbest erfolgt heutzutage vor allem in Russland, Kasachstan, China und Brasilien, er darf jedoch aufgrund seiner karzinogenen Wirkung in der EU seit 2005 nicht mehr verwendet werden; ein weltweites Verbot existiert nicht.¹⁰ Durch die Relationalität der in den Überresten enthaltenen Toxine – d. h., sie sind toxisch in Bezug auf Anderes, wie den menschlichen Körper, die Umgebung etc. – geraten immer wieder neue Akteur*innen ins Blickfeld. Sie sind alle an der Konstruktion dieser komplexen epistemischen Kategorie der Überreste¹¹ mitbeteiligt, was sich auch in den anspruchsvollen, Sorgfalt (care) erfordernden Handlungsprozessen abbildet.

Theoretisch verortet sich der Diskurs dieses sorgsamen Umgangs aktuell in Materialitätsdiskursen einer mehr-als-menschlichen Umwelt und damit verbundener gegenseitiger Verantwortlichkeit.¹² Diese Bezugnahme findet über bestehende Unterschiede hinweg statt: Das Leben aller Entitäten ist von lebenswerten Kollaborationen abhängig, und führt zu Kontaminationen, was letztlich jedoch für das Überleben aller zwingend ist.¹³ Die Konfrontation

Der abmontierte Auspuff wird in einen speziellen Asbestschutzsack gepackt und verschlossen. Bis der Laborbericht vorliegt, lagert dieser Bestandteil im Zelt. Abb. 11–13

Wie die definitiv als toxisch eruierten Überreste der gereinigten Automobile gehandhabt werden, hat die SKKG noch nicht entschieden. Zurzeit lagern sie gesetzeskonform verpackt in der Halle neben dem Objekt. Abb. 15+16 Der Weg aus dem Niederdruckzelt hinaus erfordert jedoch ein spezifisches Handling, welches die Konservatorin-Restauratorin Karin von Lerber, von der Stiftung mit der Koordination der Reinigungsprozesse beauftragt, folgendermaßen beschreibt:

„Im Zelt werden kleinere Teile in durchsichtige Polystyrol- oder Polyethylen-Dosen (PE) gelegt und die Deckel mit starkem Klebeband zugeklebt. Danach werden die Dosen außen gereinigt, auf Asbestfreiheit, freigemessen' – was der Laborbericht noch bestätigen muss – sowie fotografiert. Ein Asbest-Warnkleber und der QR-Code mit einer Unternummer des Objekts, zu welchem die entfernten Teile gehören, werden angebracht und die Dosen in einen transparenten PE-Schlauch eingeschweißt, der wiederum mit einem Warnkleber versehen wird. Größere Teile sind in zwei PE-Schläuche eingeschweißt.“

mit dem Toxischen, eine Kollaboration durch/als Kontamination, scheint unabdingbar zu sein. Eng verbunden mit diesen Ansätzen des verwobenen Zusammenwirkens sind Konzepte von Care: Eine Verschiebung des Fokus von einer anthropozentrischen zu einer mehr/anders-als-menschlichen Umwelt ermöglicht den Einbezug vielfältiger Blickperspektiven sowie Themen und Debatten, die Sorge noch nicht oft adressierten. Dieses „Gefüge vernachlässigter Dinge“¹⁴ steht synonym für toxische Überreste und deren bislang unbeachtetes Potenzial als Episteme.

In den beschriebenen Untersuchungs- und Reinigungsprozessen zeigt sich, dass der Charakter des toxischen Überrests vielfältig ist und zwischen verschiedenen Zuständen mäandert: Im Niederdruckzelt ist das abmontierte und vorsichtshalber in einen Asbestsack verpackte physische Artefakt in einer Warteposition. Sein Zustand ist ungesichert, bis die Resultate der Probenanalyse vorliegen. Und ‚reversibel‘, wie es der Konservator Cech bezeichnet, d. h., das Teil könnte unter Umständen auch wieder ins Originalobjekt eingebaut werden. Falls dieser Überrest sich als toxisch erweist – wie es bei den beiden gereinigten Wagen der Fall ist –,

Die verpackten Objekte können zukünftig so eingelagert werden, wie es die Stiftung für ihr Sammlungskonzept als sinnvoll erachtet: direkt neben oder in den entsprechenden Automobilen, z. B. im Gepäckträger oder vom Wagen separiert in Schränken, Regalen, auf Paletten oder Stapelbehältern – sozusagen als neu entstehende Sammlung toxischer Reste.²

Dort, wo der Auspuff dem Fahrzeug entnommen wurde, ist ein Loch in der Stange sichtbar. Dieses wird mit Ethafoam, einem chemisch inerten Schaumstoff, abgedichtet und das Auto fotografiert, damit der Zustand vor und nach der Auspuff-Demontage für die Sammlungsdokumentation festgehalten ist. Das Bild dient der Dokumentation als Substitut für die am Originalobjekt entstandene ‚Lücke‘.

Die Arbeiten im Niederdruckzelt sind beendet. Alle nicht mehr verwendeten Arbeitsmaterialien werden abgesaugt und in den beiden Schleusen gereinigt, bevor sie aus dem Zelt in die Halle gelangen. Auch die Säckchen mit den Fasern des Auspuffinneren für die Laboranalyse und meine SD-Karte. Sollte der Auspuff kontaminiert sein, müsste er im Asbestsack in den Schleusen gereinigt und danach in einen von außen hineingereichten, zweiten Sack verpackt werden.

wird er vorläufig beim Automobil aufbewahrt. Die Fotografie des Überbleibsels, seine visuelle Repräsentation, dient in der Sammlungsdokumentation als Substitut für die am Originalobjekt entstandene ‚Lücke‘.

Im Labor dient die physische Probe des als kontaminiert vermuteten Materials – der Rest des Überrests sozusagen – dazu, um den Nachweis von Toxizität zu erbringen. Gleichzeitig wird die Probe während der Analyse zum digitalen Bild transformiert und ist auf den Monitoren des Polarisationsmikroskops und der Rasterelektromikroskopie repräsentiert. Insbesondere diese Bilder dienen der Verifizierung von Toxizität, weil sich die Sichtbarkeit von Asbestfasern und -stäuben dem menschlichen Auge weitgehend entzieht. Der Zustand der digitalen Monitorbilder ist wie derjenige des physischen Artefakts ungesichert und flüchtig: Die Bilder dienen der kurzzeitigen Analyse, sie werden nicht gespeichert und aufbewahrt, da in der Asbestanalytik in der Regel keine Nachfrage danach besteht, und ‚verschwinden‘, sobald neue Materialproben eingelesen werden.

Das Ergebnis des Analysis Lab in Bern zeigt ein paar Tage später, dass die Probe der Innenseite des Auspufftopfs Chrysotil enthält. Eruiert wird dies durch Ausbrennen der Probe, wobei von der Materialprobe lediglich Asbest zurückbleibe, wie die Chemielaborantin Petra Kropp festhält. Diese Materialien werden unter dem Polarisatiosmikroskop betrachtet. Die physikalischen Eigenschaften von Asbest erzeugen beim Drehen des Probenhalters mittels polarisierten Lichts Farbveränderungen, d. h. Blau- und Gelbfärbungen. Ein pinker Farbfilter des Mikroskops ermöglicht, diese Farbwechsel darzustellen. Abb. 17–20 Alle sechs Asbesttypen verhalten sich nach dem Ausbrennen diesbezüglich gleich, mit Ausnahme eines Typs: Wird er nicht im Ofen ausgebrannt, verhält er sich unterschiedlich zum farbverändernden Verhalten, und identisch, wenn er im Ofen ausgebrannt wurde. Auf diese Weise sind spezifische Typen besser eruierbar. Je nach Flüssigkeit, die für die Einbettung der Fasern zur Mikroskopanalyse verwendet wird, gibt es unterschiedliche Farbveränderungen, sobald die Probe gedreht wird.

Zur Analyse der in der ersten Reinigungsphase entnommenen Proben der Dichtung des Auspuffs und des Lampenrings wurde das Verfahren der Rasterelektromikroskopie REM angewendet: Die Stempelproben werden auf dem Computerbildschirm visualisiert und vergrößert. Abb. 21–24 Einerseits wird mit

Die Temporalität des physischen Materials und seiner digitalen visuellen Repräsentation ist jedoch eine unterschiedliche, denn die toxischen Proben werden nicht ganz verschwinden: Sie werden zum Bestandteil eines anderen, abfallbedingten Überrests. Die sachgerecht verpackten Behälter werden der lokalen Kehrichtverwertungsanlage (KVA) zugeführt – oder je nach kantonaler Regelung direkt einer Deponie E¹⁵ – und in Verbrennungsprozessen der KVA zum Bestandteil der entstehenden Schlacke, also Teil eines anderen Überrests. Dieses Überbleibsel wird in Schlackendeponien des Typs D angehäuft und fristet ein langjähriges Dasein.¹⁶ Das Silikat schreibt sich somit, anders als vor seiner Gewinnung, als toxischer Überrest in Erdschichten und Atmosphären ein.

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bloßem Auge nach möglichen Fasern gesucht und in entsprechende Stellen hineingezoomt, andererseits kann mittels Röntgenstrahlen die chemische Zusammensetzung der Fasern³ eruiert werden, was weitere Hinweise auf Asbestbestandteile in der Probe gibt. Da die Fasern oft nur schwach sichtbar sind, bedingt die Analyse ein trainiertes Auge. Zwar können Laborant*innen in Sachbüchern nachschlagen, visuelle Erfahrungen sind jedoch eine wichtige Grundlage. Mit dem REM-Verfahren wurden 2021 auch die Proben des Stanley Steamers untersucht. Neben Chrysotil wurden Kontaminationen mit Krokydolith in Asbestkitmassen am Brennkessel gefunden. ↩ Abb. 14, 25+26

## Dank

Mit herzlichem Dank an alle, die zur Realisierung dieses Beitrags beigetragen haben, insbesondere die Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte SKKG (Severin Rüegg, Julian Cech), Bafob (Stephan Baumann, Christian Hähni), Analysis Lab (Petra Kropp), Prevart (Karin von Lerber) und das Forschungsteam Handle with Care durch fachspezifische Gespräche; Sasha Litvintseva durch den Austausch zu Asbest und geofilmischen Praktiken; Nina Samuel und Felix Sattler durch ihre sorgfältige redaktionelle Arbeit; der Schweizerische Nationalfonds durch die finanzielle Unterstützung des Forschungsaustauschs (Scientific Exchange Grant) sowie der Exzellenzcluster Matters of Activity der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin als Gastinstitution.

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