I am not really one to blow my own trumpet, but it is sometimes helpful to let people know I play. (Note how there is no similar turn of phrase for the ukulele… more’s the pity).
Anyhow, this weekend I am speaking at a conference on “Sacred Spaces” in London; it follows on from my lecture at the British Museum a couple of months ago and will expand on some of the subjects I touched on there.
According to the blurb: This conference will bring together some of the foremost active researchers on Tibetan religion, geography, art and culture to discuss the notions of what makes places and objects sacred. Practical demonstrations of yogic exercises and meditational dance under the guidance of leading practitioners will take place on the second day.
The talks and ensuing discussions will focus on a variety of topics; how a place may be intrinsically sacred through its geomantic or geographical attributes and how sacredness may also be created or embraced by consecration and propitiatory rites. Sacred landscapes and mandala art will also be examined in depth.
I will again be looking at looting and at how the British officers and men of the 1904 Mission to Tibet were attempting to construct scared spaces back at home through their collections. I call these Imperial Archives or Temples of Empire, filled with classically Orientalist bits and bobs. In terms of this ‘Oriental Other,’ Edward Said has noted that, “from the end of the eighteenth century there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe.”
I think that by collecting objects from Tibet the Edwardian officers and men consciously and subconsciously sought to emphasize the differences between both their own, and the state they represented’s, ordered, civilized, rational self, and Tibet’s backward, religious, oppressed and flawed, ‘Other.’ This could be achieved best by collecting and presenting items to museums that stereotypically encompassed Tibet; items made from human bones, monastic paraphernalia, medieval military equipment, and ‘primitive’ possessions.
The British officers and collectors likewise assured their place in our common historical conscience; collections seek to anchor us in space and time. Crane explains, “being collected means being valued and remembered institutionally; being displayed means being incorporated into the extra-institutional memory of the museum visitors.”
Find more details of tickets and the whole programme at:
http://bit.ly/2cpO6L5
Tim Myatt 
Hi Tim,
Have just read this your blog post with interest. My eye was first attracted to the sentence that describes officers constructing scared (sic) spaces ;0). But to start off an email with that is bad of me, but it did make me chortle, and make me read it properly, and your end quote making me curious: collections seek to anchor us in space and time. Crane explains, “being collected means being valued and remembered institutionally; being displayed means being incorporated into the extra-institutional memory of the museum visitors.” I’m properly curious as just yesterday I gave a talk at my old MA department in Manchester and one lecturer there has been teaching my MA and PhD work every year since I finished (she was my examiner). I’ve been archived and am being collected, and being a declutterer now it’s a fascinating process to think about and sensation to feel. To be valued and remembered seems to be something many/the majority of humans want. Would love to know where the quote’s from, when you have a moment, and any thoughts on the topic too.
Hope you’re well
Love
Zem
Dr Zemirah Moffat Flat 0/2 11 Carfin Street Govanhill G42 7QA 07803332344
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CRANE, SUSAN. 2000. Museums and Memory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 2.
I think there is something reassuring about anchoring oneself in collective memory for sure… ideas are of course more ephemeral than ‘things,’ and so museums are a great way of securing immortality!