Conference
会议 25-27/03 2022

SOS - Stolen Object Stories aims to bring together academic and artistic perspectives on crossovers between imperialism, colonialism, decoloniality, heritage and creative practices of knowledge production. It aims at expanding the debate beyond traditional frontiers, be it the collection, the institution, or the nation, into the domain of ethics of care and repair. My presentation will introduce the conception of SOS - Stolen Objects Stories as a collective archive and discursive platform.
How could we expand from caring for museum objects and heritage to respecting people? From the care for collections to the care for communities, nature and the planet? From preserving the objects' materiality to the care for conditions of making those objects? How could we move from a notion of objects possession to shared ownership, from a focus on provenance and locations to one on transits and fluxes? And finally, from a history of power and violence to one justice and peace? The project (initiated by this conference) publicly stages a research process organized around stories, practices, and discourses and a search for new relations among knowledge emerging from different fields.

“SOS-被盗艺术品记事”旨在汇集与帝国主义、殖民主义、去殖民化、遗产和知识生产的创造性实践有关的学术与艺术交叉观点,旨在将讨论范围扩大到传统边界之外，无论是藏品、机构还是国家，都将成为伦理学上关注和修复的内容。我的演讲将重点介绍“SOS-被盗艺术品记事”这一聚合档案和对话平台。

我们如何能从对博物馆藏品和遗产的关注扩展到对人的尊重？从对藏品的关怀到对社群、自然和地球的关切？从关注藏品物质属性到制造条件？我们如何能从独有藏品的概念转向共同所有权，从对来源和单一地区的关注转向跨区域交流和沟通？最后，从强权和暴力的历史转向正义与和平的历史？该项目（由本次会议发起）将公开展现一个围绕故事、实践和话语的研究过程，旨在寻找跨领域知识之间的新联系。

The presentation explores the case of a stolen 1,000-year-old Buddhist mummy, known as the statue of Zhanggong-zushi, which caught the international community's attention. The figure of Zhanggong-zushi is the embodiment of God in the eyes of the locals. The treatment of human remains is controversial and sensitive. This case opens a discussion as to how Western courts should consider religious interests in the disputes over stolen cultural property. The art world must understand how locals feel about losing their culture or religion.

该主题将探讨一尊具有千年历史的肉身坐佛像（被称为章公祖师像）被盗一案，该案引发了国际社会的关注。章公祖师像在当地人眼中是神明的化身，而对人体遗骸的处理则是争议且敏感的。该案引发了关于西方法院应如何在被盗文化财产纠纷案件中考虑宗教利益的讨论。对于艺术界而言，了解当地人对文化或宗教遗失的感受是十分重要的。

This paper will explore the lives of objects stolen from China’s Yuanmingyuan, or old ‘Summer Palace’, to the northwest of Beijing. Initiated by the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722) in the early 18th century, the site was developed by his grandson, the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1795). At around 350 hectares, it included thousands of buildings across a vast landscape: it also housed China’s imperial art collections – paintings, calligraphy, porcelain, bronzes, textiles and cloisonné.

In October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, British and French regiments looted the buildings in the Yuanmingyuan. British troops then proceeded to burn the entire site. This widespread destruction of China’s most important complex of palaces, and the dispersal of the imperial art collection, is considered one of the worst acts of cultural vandalism of the 19th century. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of objects are estimated to have been stolen from the Yuanmingyuan, many of these are now scattered around the world, in private collections and public museums.

This paper will analyse the biographies of objects from the Yuanmingyuan in UK and French museums. It will focus on military officers involved in the looting – men such as Elgin, Grant, Gordon, Wolseley, Crealock, Montauban and Negroni - and will document the trajectories of the material they brought back with them to both Britain and France. Some of the pieces were displayed at major public exhibitions (the 1862 International Exhibition and the Crystal Palace in London), while other artefacts were donated or bequeathed to museums in the late 19th-early 20th century. The talk will also explore the role of the art market - especially Christie’s, Sotheby’s, but also smaller provincial auction houses - in promoting the collecting of ‘Summer Palace’ loot, and the shifting interpretations given to this material from the late 19th century onwards. Once relocated to the UK and France, ‘Summer Palace’ material was transformed and reformed to fit the aesthetics and tastes of the time, and the talk thus explores the distinctive meanings and values attributed to Yuanmingyuan artefacts by a range of British and French collectors.

本文将探讨位于北京西北部的圆明园（旧称“夏宫”）被盗文物的命运。该遗址系由康熙皇帝（1662-1722 年在位）于18世纪初提出，由其孙子乾隆皇帝（1736-1795 年在位）建造。其占地约350公顷，广袤的景观中包含了数千座建筑：它还收藏了中国皇室的艺术藏品——绘画、书法、瓷器、青铜器、纺织品和景泰蓝。
1860年10月，在第二次鸦片战争进入高潮时，英法联军洗劫了圆明园。英国军队随后开始火烧整个遗址。这种对中国最重要宫殿群的广泛破坏以及造成的皇家艺术收藏品的流散，被认为是 19 世纪最严重的文化破坏行为之一。据估计，圆明园有数十万甚至数百万件文物被盗，其中许多现散落在世界各地，位于私人收藏和公共博物馆中。
本文将研究英国和法国博物馆收藏的圆明园文物传记。将重点关注参与劫掠的军官——埃尔金、格兰特、戈登、沃尔斯利、克雷洛克、蒙托邦和内格罗尼等人——并将记录他们将文物带回英国和法国的轨迹。其中一些文物在主要的公共展览（1862 年伦敦水晶宫国际展览）中展出，而其他文物则在19世纪末至20世纪初被捐赠或遗赠给博物馆。发言还将探讨艺术市场——尤其是佳士得、苏富比以及较小的地方拍卖行——在促进收集圆明园战利品方面的作用，以及自19世纪后期起对此类文物解释的转变。在运到英国和法国后，圆明园文物被改造以适应当时的审美和品味，因而本研究还将探讨一些英国和法国收藏家赋予圆明园文物独特的意义和价值。

Since the 2000s, more and more artists in Southeast Asia are engaged in research processes inspired by the social sciences, working as historians, archivists, archaeologists or sociologists, yet applying freely the methodologies of work of these disciplines. The outcome of the artists' research is exhibited as an artwork and not presented in a written and academic format. Still, these artistic “incursions” into academic fields are challenging the established system of knowledge production and in particular its domination by local authoritative discourses. Research appears thus as a new strategy to convey legitimacy and value to counter-narratives on social, cultural, historical and political issues, while bringing forth new creative possibilities and innovative epistemological languages.

Drawing from extensive fieldwork, I seek to analyze this creative entanglement of academic and artistic research in Southeast Asia, in particular in Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore and Vietnam, and to examine its epistemological significance as a potential new mode of knowledge production.

进入21世纪以来，越来越多的东南亚艺术家在社会科学的启发下开展研究，他们以历史学家、档案员、考古学家或社会学家的身份工作，但仍自由地应用这些学科的工作方法。这些艺术家的研究成果被以艺术品的形式展出，而不是以书面和学术的形式呈现。尽管如此，这些对学术领域的艺术“入侵”正在挑战既定的知识生产体系，尤其是为当地权威话语所统治的体系。因此，研究似乎成为一种新的策略，可以将合法性和价值传达给关于社会、文化、历史和政治问题的反叙事，同时带来新的具有创造性的可能和创新性的认识论话语。

通过广泛的实地考察，我试图分析东南亚，特别是柬埔寨、缅甸、新加坡和越南学术和艺术研究的这种创造性纠葛，并检验其作为一种潜在的新知识生产模式的认识论意义。

In 2013, the most extensive of the 18,000 Indonesian objects in the Netherlands, Museum Nusantara (Delft) was looking for a new caretaker. Due to the cutbacks of the cultural budget under the Rutte government, the museum finally found a reason to return the collection to the country of origin.

The most common argument in the nationalist light regarding repatriation is related to the cultural property narrative. This view tends to define ‘national heritage’ to cater to the ‘unification’ of the nation-state’s Bhineka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity). Alas, in the grassroot, some people are struggling for their own sovereignty and self-liberation. The talk will unpack around the notion of ‘ownership’, the hassle of the two-nation diplomacy, state interest, royal hereditary entitlement, and community embodiment over a restitution object.
We will also look at the exhibition entitled Kembali ke Tanah Merdeka (Return to the Independence Land) at the Indonesian National Museum that displayed the 150 returned objects out of 1500. We then identified these so-called ‘souvenirs and gifts’ and the significance of several archives as a way to introduce the concept of the colony.

2013 年，作为收藏有最大规模的18000件印度尼西亚文物的荷兰努山塔拉博物馆（代尔夫特）正在招募一名新的管理员。但由于吕特政府削减文化预算，博物馆终于找到了将藏品归还原属国的理由。
在民族主义的光芒下，有关返还的最常见的论点与文化财产的叙述有关。这种观点倾向于定义“民族遗产”来迎合民族国家万象和谐（求同存异）的“统一”。呜呼，在底层，有些人正在为自己的主权和自我解放而奋斗。演讲将围绕“所有权”的概念、双边外交的艰巨、国家利益、王室世袭权利以及归还对象的群体性呈现展开。
我们还将关注印度尼西亚国家博物馆举办的名为“重返独立之邦”的展览，展示了1500件回归文物中的150件。我们进而可以确定这些所谓的“纪念品和礼物”以及档案作为介绍殖民概念的一种方式的重要性。

The dimension of storage of information in the archival representation has been at the core of my artwork since the development of The Mozambique Institute Project (Reina Sofia Museum, 2014), about the first anti-colonial school built in the 60’s by the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). Since then, I started to deepen the experience of looking into centralized archives - ranging from the Frelimo's political archive, in Maputo, Mozambique, to the Quai-Branly Museum Archive, in Paris, France. As for this latter case, it’s where a collection of objects, documents and photographs come together from successive French museums founded in the colonial era (Trocadero Museum, Musée de L’Homme and Museum of Arts of Africa and Oceania). A specific refinement of the gaze, in this archive, is simply due to the accumulation of visual reports on a same object along the time, allowing a comparative view - for instance, series of records capturing different settings of one same African objet, in order to capitalize its value, according to favorable interpretation of its “presence” in Europe. If the archive offers elements that one cannot see by looking at that object live, it’s because the evaluation usually has to be done in the light of the present time. The paradox comes from realizing that while the exhibition space is organized geographically and strives on telling the story of the African object in its "original place”, the archive is organically telling the European story of that same African object. Infinity of nuances and realities are obscured by the very “coherence” that emanates from materiality. The very persistence of the sources blinds us to the need to imagine beyond the construction of reality by history. Using examples of my recent work in Mozambique and Europe, my presentation will favor the idea of a visual record without center, yet in which connections take place critically, categories are seen as forces that act in the object - regardless of its absence. This practice meant to displace the indexical nature out of its pretended neutrality, as so to allow thinking records retroactively anew as fostering technology for concepts as “authenticity”, “coloniality”, “nationalism” or “socialism”.

自从莫桑比克研究所项目（雷纳索非亚博物馆，2014 年）开展以来，档案展示中的信息存储维度一直是我作品的核心，该项目是关于莫桑比克解放阵线（FRELIMO）在60年代建造的第一所反殖民学校。从那时起，我开始深入研究集中档案——从莫桑比克马普托的FRELIMO政治档案到法国巴黎凯布朗利博物馆档案。后者汇集了殖民时代相继成立的法国博物馆（特罗卡德罗博物馆、人类博物馆和非洲及大洋洲艺术博物馆）一系列藏品、文件和照片。在这个档案中，目光的具体细化，仅仅是由于随着时间的推移，对同一藏品的视觉报告的积累，允许一个比较的观点，例如，一系列的记录捕捉同一非洲文物的不同环境，以便根据其在欧洲“存在”的有利解释而利用其价值。如果档案提供了通过现场观看展品无法获取的要素，这是因为这通常必须根据当今情况进行评估。悖论来自于意识到尽管展览空间是按照地理空间组织的，并致力于在“原属地”讲述非洲文物的故事，但档案却有机地讲述了同一非洲文物在欧洲的故事。无限的细微差别和现实被物质性所散发的“连贯性”掩盖。来源的持久性使我们忽视了超越历史对现实的建构进行想象的必要性。以我最近在莫桑比克和欧洲的工作为例，我的演讲将赞成一个去中心化的视觉记录的想法，但其中的联系是关键性的，类别被视为作用于对象的力量——无论它是否缺席。这种想法意味着将索引性从其假装的中立性中置换出来，以便让思考记录追溯性地重新成为“真实性”“殖民性”“民族主义”或“社会主义”等概念的促进技术。

The paper is in two parts. The first goes into considerable grain about the Philippines and the dispersal of much of its traditional material culture. The second part considers this topic abstractly.

The Spanish colonial imperative from its outset in the Philippines, from 1571, was religious conversation as much as imperialist resource extraction. Administrative statistics for a few centuries included the harvest of almas, souls, in tallying success. The same system prevailed in the entire Hispanic world. However, the Philippines today remains in the thrall of the particular Spanish Medieval Catholicism that the conquered population (at least nominally) accepted. This virulent strain of Christianity drives unapologetic Islamophobia that has led to a 50 year secessionist war; an insidious racism pervading social organization and politics; and cultural infrastructure that in large measure, to this day, is unknowing of elevated measures of quality in the cultural production of previous centuries. The dispersal of Philippine cultural material to museum and private collections in different parts of the world is simultaneously a massive history and metaphysical conundrum, which the paper will synthesize in a political critique. Specifically, that these materials remain obscure or are totally unknown to the majority of Filipinos is a major omission of the country's cultural institutions. This lack of work, except for a few projects through a century, in itself exposes cultural institutions as neocolonial to a remarkable degree in the Philippines. The vacant space in the nation's cultural memory is the "soul" of the title. The steal did not transpire in a legal domain, but at the level of a collective imagination.

The turn to abstract registers in the second part of the paper pivots on considerations of materiality and the imagination. This half does not draw insights from the Philippine information presented, instead taking the discussion into the emergence of civil society as a global cultural force that preserves a missionary spirit; and the non-government organizations that inadvertently appropriate the role of representation of indigenous peoples. Self-empowerment projects initiated among marginalized peoples, with an evangelical spirit (in both religious and secular senses), normatively organizes communities to pale and degraded versions of the kind of cultural material inaccessible or unknown to most parties involved. Governments, operating similar enterprises for similar beneficiaries, "upscale" and homogenize these efforts. In development circles, the operative word is "livelihood" projects, often involving "crafts" that are eroded versions of exquisite materials hidden from view. In art historical and museological circles -- which have very little contact with development workers -- the momentum is towards further exclusivity. Instead of reaching for a resolution or a set of recommendations, the paper articulates a position on the evangelical spirit; its corrupting force on culture and politics; and disappearance of traditional material culture in the impact zone of this quasi-religious force.


论文分为两部分。第一部分是关于菲律宾的大量细节及其大部分传统物质文化的传播。第二部分关注这个话题的抽象层面。

从1571年开始，西班牙在菲律宾的殖民统治，既是宗教对话，也是帝国主义的资源开采。几个世纪以来的统治数据都包含了对灵魂的收获，用以计算成功。同样的制度在整个西班牙世界都很流行。然而，今天的菲律宾仍处于被征服人口（至少在名义上）所接受的特殊的西班牙中世纪天主教的控制之下。这种恶毒的基督教驱动着毫不掩饰的伊斯兰恐惧症，导致了长达50年的分离主义战争；一种阴险的种族主义充斥着社会组织和政坛；以及文化基础设施，在很大程度上，直到今天都不知道提升过去几个世纪文化产出质量的措施。菲律宾文化财产流散到世界各地的博物馆和私人收藏中，同时也是一个巨大的历史和形而上学难题，本文将在政治批判中综合阐述。具体来说，这些文化财产对大多数菲律宾人来说仍然晦涩难懂或者完全无从了解，这是该国文化机构的一个重大疏忽。除了一个世纪以来的几个项目之外，这种工作的缺失本身就在很大程度上暴露了菲律宾文化机构的新殖民主义。国家文化记忆中缺失的部分正是这一主题中的“灵魂”。盗窃并不是在法律领域，而是在集体想象层面上发生的。

论文的第二部分转向了抽象记录，其关键在于对物质性和想象力的考量。这一部分并没有从菲律宾的信息中得到启示，而是将讨论带入作为保留了一种传教士精神的全球文化力量的公民社会的形成中；以及在无意中承担了代表原住民角色的非政府组织。在边缘化人群中发起的自强项目，以一种福音精神（在宗教和世俗的意义上），规范地将社群组织到大多数参与方无法接触或不了解的苍白和退化的文化材料中。政府为相似的受益者经营相似的企业，将这些努力“升级”并同质化。在发展的循环中，执行的是“生计”项目，往往涉及到“手工艺”，这些是手工艺不为人所知的精致材料的侵蚀版本。在艺术史和博物馆学界——他们与建设者很少接触——势头是朝着进一步排他性方向发展的。本文没有达成一个方案或一系列建议，而是阐明了对福音派精神的立场；它对文化和政治的腐蚀力；以及传统物质文化在这种准宗教力量影响范围内的灭失。

While the decolonisation of museums has become a fashionable phrase, Prof. Ahuja argues that its defining parameters may be offering too little too late for the ‘developing’ world. Inequities of gender, caste, environmental degradation, ruthless urbanisation and other burning issues need urgent attention in those countries which cannot be addressed by ‘decolonisation’ or ‘repatriation’ alone. Through his curatorial work and publications, he has tried to move the conversation beyond the ownership of objects to focus instead on the sharing of knowledge and the capacity building of the countries that lack a vibrant museum sector. His critiques of the limitations and even counterproductive nature of the 1972 UNESCO regulation prohibiting the illegal trafficking of antiquities, have brought attention to the systemic and real problems faced by poor, “asset rich” source countries like India. The third issue he addresses is with regard to the larger question of the rights over artefacts: can a nation state which refugees or diasporic communities have fled still make a rightful claim to their artefacts? In his most recent publication on museum futures, he makes a case that it is not just objects that are stolen but even the stories that objects enable. Many stories in fact, are simply lost for lack of care. He urges the museum to grow into an institution that preserves not just objects but the many narratives they enable. In his talk, Prof. Ahuja will provide a few case studies to illuminate how he has addressed these issues in his curatorial practice.

虽然博物馆的去殖民化已经成为一个时髦的短语，但Ahuja教授认为，它的定义参数对“发展中”世界来说可能提供得太晚了。在这些国家，性别不平等、种姓制度、环境退化、无情的城市化和其他紧迫的问题需要得到紧急关注，这些问题不能仅仅通过“去殖民化”或“回归”来解决。通过策展工作和出版物，他试图让对话超越文物的所有权，转而关注知识的共享以及缺乏具有活力的博物馆部门的国家的能力建设。他对1972年联合国教科文组织禁止非法贩运文物的规定的局限性甚至是反作用的批评，使人们注意到像印度这样的贫穷但“资产丰富”的来源国所面临的系统性的实际问题。他讨论的第三个问题是关于文物权利的更大难题：难民或散居社群逃离后的民族国家是否仍能对其文物提出合法要求？在他最近出版的关于博物馆未来的著述中，他提出了一个观点：被盗的不仅仅是文物，甚至还有文物所承载的故事。事实上，许多故事只是因为缺乏关照而丢失。他敦促博物馆成长为一个机构，不仅保存文物，而且保存它们所承载的诸多叙述。在他的演讲中，Ahuja教授将提供一些案例研究，以阐明他在策展实践中如何解决这些问题。

At a time when the history of public spaces has become a challenge to official historiographies, this presentation, centered on the city of Maputo, Mozambique, examines the political projects that have spurred the decolonization of the urban landscape. Based on the analysis of changes in toponymy and public monuments in the last four decades, this article seeks to reflect on the politics of memory and representation: the ways in which a particular version of a historical event and its agents is celebrated and maintained for posterity. In this context, several questions arise: since the streets are a public space, who owns the 'heritage' that is being commemorated? Who evokes this 'heritage' as synonymous with a national community? What historical silencing are taking place? How can changes in historical or political processes transform the ways in which we experience history in public spaces?

在公共空间的历史已经成为对官方历史学的挑战时，这个演讲以莫桑比克的马普托市为中心，研究了激发对城市景观去殖民化的政治项目。基于对过去四十年来地名和公共纪念碑变化的分析，本文试图反思记忆和代表的政治：一个历史事件的特定版本及其代表被赞誉并为后人所保留的方式。在此背景下，出现了几个问题：由于街道是一个公共空间，谁拥有正在被纪念的“遗产”？谁将这种“遗产”作为民族社群的同义词来唤起？正在发生的历史沉默是什么？历史或政治进程的变化如何能改变我们在公共空间体验历史的方式？