Podcast CARMAH
Haidy Geismar - 'Objects Otherwise' - Public Lecture - July 26th, 2017

This talk takes as its focus four objects from different collections that I have worked with
over the past years. A box. A cloak. An Effigy. A pen. Each object opens up a host of
questions about the interaction between old collections and new technologies, about
processes of translation, remediation, and representation, about the legacy of nineteenth
century colonialism and collecting within twenty-first century new media; and about the rearticulation of locality and cultural difference within museum technologies. How do new
technologies, such as 3D-printing, scanning, social media, and new web-based interfaces
alter our understandings of what a collection is, how objects encode knowledge and
meaning, tell stories, and what spaces are being created for cultural differences?
synthesise my work over many years with ethnographic collections from the Pacific, with
photography collections, and with new media, to explore the object lessons and politics of
perspective that are emerging for the twenty-first century collections.