School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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Item'Race portraits' and vernacular possibilities: heritage and culture(Cambridge University Press, 2001)'Heritage' is a term both broad and slippery. Beyond the literal meaning of property passed between generations, its contemporary evocations include 'inherited customs, beliefs and institutions held in common by a nation or community . . . [and] natural and "built" landscapes, buildings and environments held in trust for future generations' (Davison et. al. 1998, p. 308). Even this elemental definition strongly associates cultural institutions and heritage. Most cultural institutions articulate inherited customs and beliefs through a sense of heritage which, in turn, certifies their authenticity and legitimacy. Parliamentary conventions, halls of fame and honour boards, much judicial ritual, the use of uniforms, anniversary commemorations of all sorts and university degree conferring ceremonies are strong examples of such practices. At the same time the more material and codified notion of heritage as things held in trust explicitly organises the work of many cultural institutions.
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ItemChained to their signs: remembering breastplates(Pluto Press, 2001)At first glance, breastplates might seem to be just another device in the technology of colonial capture in Australia. Take the photograph of Bilin Bilin wearing a plate inscribed 'Jackey Jackey - King of the Logan and Pimpama'. The plate, the chain and the conventions of photography produce a Yugambeh elder as a shackled criminal on display - he is both a primitive in tableau and one of 'the usual suspects'. The image seems to both document captivity and evoke those 'frontier photographs' of Aboriginal prisoners in the desert bound together with heavy chains attached to manacles around their necks. This initial impression is right in that it recognizes some of the ways in which colonial captivity is not only about actual imprisonment but equally about how captivity is understood, represented, interpreted and made historical. Still, in this chapter I want to persuade you that breastplates and photographs of breastplates performed other roles: as cross-cultural objects and signs.
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ItemExperiments in culture: an introduction(Monash University ePress, 2006)The last two decades have witnessed an explosion in the development of new public and private museums throughout the world. If this is surprising it is only because, for much of the last 50 years, museums have been regarded by many scholars and cultural critics as, if not extinct, then certainly archaic institutions far from the cutting edge of cultural innovation. This judgment is being proved wrong across the globe as innovative and distinctive museums are staking out new territory for themselves as vital, dynamic, public and civic cultural institutions. Nowhere is this most striking than in the South Pacific where large, new or significantly expanded public museums and cultural centres have opened since the 1990s, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum of Australia, the Melbourne Museum, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Museum of Sydney, the Gab Titui Cultural Centre in the Torres Strait, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. Many more museums in that region have undertaken major renovations. South Pacific museums: Experiments in culture brings together a collection of outstanding analysis of these museums by cultural, museum and architectural critics, and historians. A series of snapshots introduces the reader to key museums in the region while the essays explore these museum developments in the broadest possible terms. The museums under analysis are part of the complex field of heritage, where national economies meet global tourism, where cities brand themselves, where indigeneity articulates with colonialism, where exhibitionary technologies and pedagogies meet entertainment, where histories are fought over, where local identities intersect with academic and popular knowledge, where objects and provenance are displayed and contested, where remembering and forgetting dance their endless dance.
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ItemFiona Foley. Silent witness?(Humanities Research Centre, ANU, 2003)Of course Fiona Foley is a witness! In one sense her work is all about determined efforts of remembering – bearing witness to both specific instances and pan-Aboriginal experiences of colonialism – and refusing to remain silent. I want to consider and elaborate this characterisation as relevant to what I’ll call Foley’s historical art works. But I also want to take Fiona Foley’s art as an incitement to ask some different questions: What is witnessing? How have Aboriginal people been called upon to bear witness? What are the relationships between silence and witnessing? What kinds of connections can be made between witnessing, human rights and other kinds of rights: rights to knowledge, to land or perhaps even silence?