Ecologies of Creation: 'Digital repatriation' and their afterlives
Abstract
Ecologies of Creation: 'Digital repatriation' and their afterlives
This presentation is a preliminary examination of some of the ways in which 'digital repatriation' has been used in community curated workshops as part the AHRC project, Decolonising the Museum. The project focuses on the Northeast of India and the repatriation of objects, working with indigenous communities in Assam and Nagaland. The objects belong to the prophet Gaidinliu and have been in the Pitt Rivers Museum since being taken by the British before and after she was arrested (1931-1932). Many of these objects have never been seen by Gaidinliu's followers and members of her community. The project examines specifically the ways digital media and the physical, materiality of the digital copies interact and what it tells us about the varying ways in which we can reflect on the connection between technology, data and culture when we think about where these object belong and to whom.
About the Team
Arkotong Longkumer is Senior Lecturer in Modern Asia at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.
Clare Harris is Professor of Visual Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, and Curator for Asian Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Gaurav Rajkhowa is a cultural historian and currently a Post Doctoral Research Associate on the AHRC project, Decolonising the Museum: Digital Repatriation of the Gaidinliu Collection from the UK to India.
Event Information
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Digital Scholarship Centre
Digital Scholarship Centre, 6th floor
Main Library
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh EH8 9LJ