The project partners of LAB 6 “Trails from the Storage. A Searching of Histories’ Future” dealt together with the Betram collection of the Linden-Museum.
Prof. Germain Loumpet is a leading academic research reference when Cameroon’s archeological and anthropological heritages are concerned, including those of the regions where the objects at hand were created. He is based in Foumban, West Cameroon and has been the expert scientific reference for the project.
Tah Kennette Konsum is a teacher and activist based in Bamenda, Northwest Cameroon. He directs the Soul of Africa museum in Oku. His main line of work is directed at disseminating and ‘translating’ knowledge and heritages to younger generations.
Stone Karim Mohamad is a poet and filmmaker currently based in Stuttgart. He is a member of the ABRAC1 and has greatly contributed to the making of the permanent exhibition Wo ist Afrika? (Where is Africa?). His take on the collection is one of culturally informed artistic research and dissemination.
The first step of LindenLAB 6 entailed making all the existing information on this collection available, which was never researched nor published before, to the LAB’s partners. This meant photographing it, as well as transcribing and translating into French and English the archival documents connected to it, namely letter exchanges between Bertram and von Linden, original annotated lists and inventory entries. Based on this material, the partners interrogated the collection and the current cultural memory concerning it in the South-East of Cameroon. During the first workshop in Stuttgart in October 2021, they shared and discussed their knowledge of the collection with each other, the museum staff, and members of the ABRAC1. On that occasion, they decided to travel together to the region of Cameroon where the objects used to belong. This presentation concerns both the outcomes of their experiment in joint research and the different views and emotions that they shared with each other and with the museum staff.
Feeling the interdisciplinarity – The different perspectives and approaches of the project partners are reflected in the exhibition and allow the visitors to approximate the exhibited objects variadly. Also the formation process became part of the exhibition, for instance visitors are taken on the project partners’ research trip.
1Advisory Board for the Representation of African Collections im Linden-Museum
