MWX2018 Open Platform

This session will provide an overview of MWX2018 VANCOUVER and include a panel discussion with contributing artists and invited commentators from local institutions that will respond to important issues relating to digital cultural heritage, cultural citizenship and Indigenous knowledge.

Human culture manifests itself in systems of artifacts, social institutions and their symbolic forms of expression. Over the past five years, MWX has complemented the main program of the Museum and the Web conference by exhibiting “state of the art” practices of artists pushing the boundaries of new technology. Departing from conventional protocols of exhibition, this year’s instalment extends an invitation to artists and audiences alike to consider how cultural history and heritage can be (re)generated to shape the future. The curatorial programme of MWX2018 VANCOUVER –developed by Vince Dziekan and Kate Hennessy– has been designed to accommodate a series of open-ended engagements for exploring the museum as a space that foregrounds the complexity of cross-cultural communication. The exhibited artworks and specially commissioned projects will demonstrate de-institutionalizing practices (artistic, interpretive, collaborative) centered around themes of cultural content and digital equity. Through composing an engaging and interactive “open platform”, we hope to carve out a space within the conference where the contested issue of cultural authority and “decolonization” can be openly explored and discussed.

Acknowledgments – We wish to acknowledge the generous contribution made by the contributing artists, designers, educators and students towards this year’s MWX exhibition. We recognize and acknowledge, in turn, that this exhibition and conference is being convened on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Bibliography:
Bidney, D. (1947). Human Nature and the Cultural Process. American Anthropologist. Vol. 49 No. 3, July-September 1947, pp. 375-399.

Lind, M. (2012). Performing the Curatorial: Within and Beyond Art. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Nakata, M. (2007). The Cultural Interface. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education. Vol. 36, Supplement 2007, pp. 7-14.

Peers, L. and Brown, A.K. (2007). Museums and Source Communities. In S. Watson (ed.), Museums and their Communities. London: Routledge, pp. 519-537.

Simpson, A. Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘Voice’ and Colonial Citizenship, Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, no. 9 (2007): 67-80.