14.06.2014 | 2.30 Uhr, Haus am Waldsee

Crawling Doubles. Colonial Collecting and Affect (series of 4 panels): On Entomophilia: Bugs, bees, and registers

Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc in collaboration with Lotte Arndt and Catalina Lozano

Panel discussion in English

Crawling Doubles. Colonial Collecting and Affect is a series of discursive events organized in the framework of Abonnenc’s project. The highly contested ground of colonial collections calls for a continued examination beyond disciplinary borders. The four sessions will address a series of questions in order to sharpen analytical tools by fostering critical conversations between artists, researchers, activists, and cultural theorists.

In the context of the frequent colonial collecting missions that went on until the early 1960s, natural specimens were just as much a target for collectors as artefacts of human societies. Collected insects, birds, and animals had to be named and classified. Predictably, many explorers and colonial travellers chose to give them their own names. Today, in the long rows of vitrines found in natural history institutions, we encounter bugs called “Stanleyi,” “Griaulei,” or “Abonnenci.” The binary division of nature and culture is considerably shaken up when the natural “Other” proves to be a bug that bears one’s own name. The participants in the panel—an artist, a researcher, and a curator—discuss their approaches to the unsettling character of collections of natural specimens.

With Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Julien Bondaz, and Anna-Sophie Springer, moderated by Lotte Arndt.

Haus am Waldsee, Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin

Free entrance

Produced by Galeries Lafayette Group