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Billets educação patrimonial

The Fallen Angel and the lessons of history for a decolonial heritage

In a postcard placed on the Museum list, our colleague Pedro Cardoso Pereira warns of the process of relevance in heritage.
His thesis, with which we are in agreement, is based on the idea that today, what we call Heritage (which in fact is already due to its inheritance complexity) has undergone a paradigm shift. As such, it argues what we call Heritage (s) has lost relevance. The question of the structure of relevance in heritage is one of the contributions of this colleague of ours to the Studies of Heritage. These contributions are worth reading and knowing. But that is not what caught our attention.
The issue that interests us here is the paradigm shift. The question of the paradigm is another complex issue that since Tomás Khun affects the philosophy of Science. In other words, the thesis is that in the face of a paradigm transformation, the structure of relevance (the complex of socially constructed values) also changes. In other words, a given historical time has a set of characteristics (social values) that we can observe through the respective heritage, or set of social objects that have been left to us. Now, the question that is worth discussing is knowing what to do with legacy objects, which in a given transition process cease to have the social relevance attributed to them. Symbolic, political or legitimacy relevance.
In metaphorical terms, this is Walter Benjamim’s IX thesis on the Philosophy of History, where the Angel of History analyzes the “angelus novus”. Time, progress, development, civilization, inevitably turns the past into ruins.

Paul Klee: Angelus Novus, 1922 Fotograma do Museu de Israel

The maelstrom of destruction is inevitable. Winners destroy losers, reducing them to silence. The problem is that as Walter Benjamim observed in his time (that of the rise of Nazism in Germany) it is to realize that “what constitutes horror to those who contemplate the triumphal procession of the winners, those who humiliate the bodies of the losers, (as a metaphor for their victory) is that they do not understand that this humiliation is at the same time the negation of their triumph and their civilization ”.

Now if I understand Benjamin’s theses (with all the messianism that they incorporate), it will be necessary to overcome this cycle of destruction and violence by a cycle of understanding creativity. The overcoming of colonialism (of thought) and racism (in society) is not a discussion about whether or not it exists, but a discussion about how we are going to create other assets that are relevant in the present.

I really like to mention the case of the heritage built by the Portuguese in Mozambique. To simplify, I will use the example of the statue of Salazar that is in the Mint of Maputo. What the Mozambicans did. They punished me. Facing a corner. It hadn’t destroyed it, or it melted (it’s bronze). So they did with inherited heritage. It is undoubtedly contested, controversial, violent. But only by recognizing it was it possible to build a new heritage. These assets are like fallen angels, which, after having been useful, dissolve in the dust of time, to reconfigure themselves again.

In another thing, our colleague Pedro Cardoso Pereira is also right. Our universities are responsible for exaltation in dealing with questions of history. The grain of simplicity in problematizing heritage issues makes them co-responsible for violence in society. The inability to read the real (they are also institutions from other times) left them besieged in the “activist” pedagogies of the narratives of the politically correct ”and of the fashions imported from the American continent. It would be necessary for this to be an assertive pedagogy, which instead of proclamations and public acts of personal affirmation, would focus on decolonial pedagogy, working on the disputed inheritances on the basis of a culture of peace. Uprising is useless without liberation. But that will be for another occasion.

Categorias
Billets

Liderança adaptativa

Como criar sentido aos sinais de dados complexos e por vezes conflituais da realidade?
Como filtrar o relevante ?

1º Passo

Identificar as lacunas : Qual é a diferença entre o atual real e a aspiração (o que deve ser – teste de conformidade. Coragem na análise. Temos estruturas participativas para incluir a voz das pessoas que servimos. Como obtemos informações atenticas de honestas (diferença entre intenção e resultado

Pensar a longo prazo .  A falha é uma possibilidade de ação. Uma possibilidade de resolver uma tensão de forma criativa.

2º passo –  criar uma matriz para identificar lacunas ou desafios (o GAP)

Identificar os conflitos ou tensões –

Critérios de observação.

  • Tendências
  • Atores em jogo
  • Conflitos entre atores
  • Valores em jogo

Identificar a lacuna que necessita de ser resolvida

3º passo para assumir a liderança.

  • Refletir se quais os passos que no passado foram dados para resolver a lacuna
  • Identificar os passo dados por cada um (pelo eu)
  • Cuidados a ter com a ilusão do “mito quebrado)
    • os processos estão mal, o sistema está mal.
    • Um sistema, ainda que parece funcional está funciona num dado equilíbrio. As pessoas que estão incluindo no sistema estão em iteração e fazem com que ele seja assim, e não o querem mudar, mesmo que a longo prazo, as perspectivas não sejam boas.

4º passo – desenhar um plano

  • Um plano tem que ser desenhado a partir das dinâmicas instaladas
  • O sistema convive com a lacuna entre o valor desejado e o resultado
  • As praticas instaladas são realidades e mudar as praticas será doloroso para os atores instalados
  • O plano terá que ter em linha de conta a integração diferentes opções estratégicas para envolver os diferentes atores.
Categorias
Museus e Cidade

ICOM in shrapnel with the discussion about the “sex of angels”

The discussion of what a museum is is a discussion that is identical to the discussion of the Sex of Angels that took place in Constantinople in the 15th century, while the Turks besieged the Bosphorus city gates.
In the last days of June, the museum community was shaken by successive waves of layoffs in the governing structures of ICOM. Amid greetings, regrets and applause, we learned that on June 21, President Suay Aksoy, elected last year in Kyoto, had resigned, giving personal reasons.

We now know that before this resignation, Léontine -van Mensch had already resigned, which was followed by the resignations of Jette Sandahl, chairman of the ICOM Standing Committee for the definition of museum, prospects and potential, together with other members of that committee.
So that you have not followed the debate in 2016, at the Milan International Conferences, a Commission was created to discuss the concept of Museum, chaired by Jette Sendall, who last year presented this debate at the national ICOM Spring Conferences.

Following these debates, the topic was presented at the International Conference that was held in Kyoto (September 2019), where many voices of protest arose in relation to the proposal. A second, broader commission was then created, with the mission of finding a consensus between the “conservatives” (supporters of a reducing vision of the museum institution), and the “liberals” (supporters of a new definition).
Among us the debate continued last fall .
I had the opportunity to write elsewhere that this was a useless discussion. Not because arguing is useless, but because of the simple evidence that if we don’t see anyone discussing what a Social Institution (a Library, Hospital or Health Center, or School) is, why should we waste time discussing what should be the museum, or a cultural center, a collection gallery, a living science center, a digital museum.
Is it not relevant to discuss the processes?

In this case of ICOM International, without anyone explaining the reasons, it will not be difficult to intuit that the fierce struggle for power over memory is at the center of this controversy. Elites do not easily give in to their privileged places of regulating collective memory! The power attributed to angels to mediate the relationship between the people and the divine.
Another fallen angel! We now await the chorus of wailing mourners and earthly prophets.