Talk on Extreme Collecting
Posted on February 22, 2008 - Filed Under Media, Research |
Shaun Hides, Principal Lecturer in Media and Communication, was recently invited to give a talk as part of a series of events organised by the British Museum and University College London, (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council), entitled “Extreme Collecting”This the second of four seminars held in the Sackler Rooms at the British Museum, was specifically about the strangeness of collecting everyday objects. Shaun Hides’ talk “Collecting nothing, collecting denial” examined the small gap separating ‘normal’ museum collecting and the collections of rubbish or trivia made by hoarders as well as the relationships between the two. His work examines what such “abnormal” collections mean in our consumer culture, the media fascination with them, and why there is a concern to control them. The talk also linked the almost sacred value attached to such trivial things with the controversy raised by improper treatment of human remains – in hospitals and museums – which also acquire ‘sacred’ status.Other speakers included Prof. Jack Lohman Director of the Museum of London, and Robert Opie founder of the Opie Collection, the Museum of Brands and packaging, There are two more workshops in the series Scale, Size and the Ephemeral and Collecting and Source CommunitiesThis area of research follows on from a series of three international workshops orgnaised by Shaun Hides, Val Hill and Dr Nirmal Puwar of Goldsmiths College Media Lab on Pirvate Media Media and Objects in the Public Domain, at the Herbert Gallery in Spring 2007. This work will form part of a book currently being developed by Shaun to be published in 2010.
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