Forum

Lagos, Nigeria; a site of the circulation of people, commodities, and culture during the long nineteenth century. How did this locality change in the context of the trade in enslaved people, abolition, and the imposition of colonial rule? How did the development of a lucrative trade in vegetable oils, a crucial material for industrialization, impact encounters between Africans, Americans, and Europeans? Prof. Kristin Mann’s lecture will root Lagos’ origins and growth in ecology, geography as well as in relation to interactions between people living on the coast and further inland. It will interrogate the changing meanings and materialities of race, gender, and class from the perspectives of enslaved and freed Africans who lived through them, and themselves circulated across and in some cases around the Atlantic. Prof. Mann’s keynote will be on 8 July at 5pm (BST) – register here! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/myriad-materialities-tickets-156075039645

Steven, in response to your chat about the disembodiment of objects in museums from the ritual practices of which they sometimes formed a part and the simultaneous discussion of narratives and their limits, I found myself thinking about the way that anthropologists, art historians, musicologists, and museum studies people investigate objects in the contexts of living performance traditions. By studying performance traditions across time and talking to living practitioners it may be possible more fully to situate the objects in museums in ritual contexts and to interrogate the boundaries of the narratives associated with them. It has been a pleasure to meet you today. Kritin

This tange,or boat beak, once adorned a large canoe, manoeuvred by up to 60 paddlers, in Duala, part of today’s Cameroon. It was part of an intricate display of power and prestige mediating commercial and political relationships in the port city. In late nineteenth-century Berlin, the tange became an important material with which early African art history was written from European and, therefore, often exoticising and racializing perspectives. How, and in which context did the tange change hands and come to Berlin? How can thinking about materiality help us trace shifts in power, hierarchies and meaning, and what role can provenance research play in this process? Join us tomorrow (2 July) in the World Café to discuss!