Cultures are not Stagnant

Museums and Carnivals – two very different forms of cultural consumption and experience, but Day 7 of our SELFestival spent time reviewing the complexity of ownership and representation.

Dr Sylvia Lahav spoke about who chooses what is shown in a museum/gallery, owned, sometimes never shown but owned, and how it is written about to engage/educate or tell “this is what I see, now let me tell you what you should see”. She reminded us that museums/galleries did not always have a mandate to educate. The honesty about privilege, class and finance was shared, “as long as the permanent collections exist we are reminded of power, status, mobility and class.” She encouraged us to question the notion of legacy and encouraged our curiosity and to not know.

Carnival and the origins and current expression were explored by Dr Sharon LeGall, together with the complexity of an almost social franchise model. The divide between celebration of culture and cultural appropriation was very carefully explored, together with the impacts of colonisation. “Cultures are not stagnant” and as they evolve so does the work, so tradition and current expression and technical movements are adapted together. The scale of Carnival is huge – the ecosystem of employment and engagement comes to tens of thousands, and the research Dr LeGall has undertaken into indigenous knowledge was generously shared – “Collaborations should be open, persons should know what they are getting into… Persons should know how their creative work will be used. It may be difficult to walk in somebody else’s shoes, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”