Hito Steryerl “Is a Museum a Factory?”

Steryerl, Hito. “Is a Museum a Factory?” E-Flux Journal Reader 2009. Berlin: Sternberg Press (2009): 28-42. Print. 

Levin, Miriam R. ‘Museums and the Democratic Order,’  The Wilson Quarterly 26.1 (2002): 52-66. Print.

 

Hito Steryerl’s text “Is a Museum a Factory?” primarily explores the shifting relationship between the museum and the factory through the medium of cinema. Steryel talks about the placement and screening of political films, the active additive and/or multiplicity required of viewers to finish the creation of the work, as well as the public arena that the museum itself is placed in. It is this latter concern about the divide between public and private, in the supposed public space of the museum which intrigues me. “Just as the work performed in the factory cannot be shown outside of it, most of the works on display in a museum cannot be shown outside its walls. A paradoxical situation arises: a museum predicated on producing and marketing visibility can itself not be shown – the labour performed there is just as publicly invisible as that of any sausage factory. This extreme control over visibility sits rather uncomfortably alongside the perception of the museum as a public space” (Steyerl, 35). Here Steyerl describes the issue of filming in either place, but only addresses the motive for it in a glancing manner, quoting Goddard “”the exploiter doesn’t show the exploitation of the exploited”” (Steyerl, 35). While I believe this to have been true in the past (building collections of context-less objects from other cultures) as most western museums have traditionally been the sanctioned embodiments, under the guise of historical progress, of the West’s efforts to bring the lands and peoples of the world under its control (Levin, 57); the museum though is shifting to encompass non-western points of view. Marian R. Levin explores the history of the museum and its origins, not as a cultural symbol, but as one of dominance; and how this has changed through the development of new nations such as America, which attempts to encompass many different cultures in their national identity. As Levin points out “Museums, in effect, convey two antithetical messages: one of human liberty, of men and women freely communicating; the other, a controlled vision of ordered progress that has fueled the extension of Western influence for more than two centuries”(Levin, 65) while many museums try to enhance the former, they are still working off the bones of the old, and at times struggle to keep from backsliding “In recent decades, a new generation of curators has sought to take account of new scholarship on class, race, ethnicity, and gender in the exhibitions they mounted…. The system of identification that had been used to categorize artifacts and organize history exhibitions on a continuum of progress was broken. Now it was possible to construct new narratives, to look again at familiar artifacts, and to consider whole ranges of contextual materials previously ignored in order to interpret cultures from more egalitarian and arguably more authentic perspectives” (Levin, 63). Tying in with this new shift to a more open forum; a more public museum; many countries such as Spain have lifted the filming restrictions, making the hidden knowledge public. As well as giving behind the scenes tours of the museum archives; open windows into work preservation areas such as at the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles; and returning treasures to their countries of origin; in an attempt to leave nothing hidden or floundering without some culture/social context.  The limitations on filming and representation in both the factory and museum, I believe arises from a fear of, as well as a need for a monopoly over, knowledge; and the power that stems from it (including monetary power). With the coming of the digital era and other modernizations, the world of the factory is under greater scrutiny, as skirted by Steryerl, the world is now our factory; and the parts we can’t see, or document make us naturally suspicious, for in our society knowledge of the right sort is power.