CRAWLING DOUBLES
COLONIAL COLLECTING AND AFFECT

B42-68
publication March 2016
language English, French
designer deValence
size 150 x 220mm
pages 328 p.
ISBN 9782917855683
themes art

This book is published with the support of Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap), of the Bielefelder Kunstverein (with the support of the Bureau des arts plastiques / Institut français avec la collaboration du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / DGCA), the Galeries Lafayette group and the 8th Berlin Biennale. This book is published in partnership with the Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson.

Collecting objects was a frequent practice among European colonial states in their occupied territories. From the second half of the nineteenth century, colonial powers encouraged their citizens in the colonies to collect objects that would enrich the ethnographical collections of the mother country and document the material culture of societies that – under the influence of colonization – were undergoing rapid change. The objects collected ended up in countless European museums or in the hands of private collectors. Their presence in these collections raises epistemological, museographical and ethical questions in urgent need of consideration.
This publication, the fruit of a series of round tables held in 2014 during the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, raises these problematic issues with contributions from scholars, artists and international exhibition curators.