dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark
dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark
dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark
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”The control and disciplination of the working process is a<br />
central characteristic in the industrialism”<br />
Standardization<br />
To be able to obtain efficient production, standardization<br />
of products – or at least standardization of<br />
components - was necessary. But standardization<br />
cannot be seen merely as standardization of product<br />
and production, it was in fact an all-intrusive<br />
change of mentality and of the concepts used for<br />
communication among people. Time and space<br />
needed definition and standardization.<br />
The concept was used as a disciplinary tool by<br />
employers and as a collective protective mechanism<br />
that by agreement ensured the workers a standard for<br />
work which they could struggle to improve – like for<br />
instance over-time pay, and these facts changed the<br />
common understanding of their position from class<br />
awareness to active class consciousness. Concepts<br />
were invented and the meaning of existing concepts<br />
changed in accordance with the new society.<br />
Concepts connected to the cultural phenomenon of<br />
consumption, working, living and of time and space<br />
all got new meanings.<br />
Representation and preservation<br />
seen from a curator’s point of view<br />
The characteristics mentioned above are not just a<br />
matter of categorization of an object, but of concepts<br />
that actually in themselves should lead to active<br />
collecting and the preservation of objects.<br />
Now, working on a daily basis with objects, I often<br />
find myself - though I am very much aware of the<br />
fundamental characteristics of the industrialized<br />
10<br />
materialism – retreating to the standard of museum<br />
collecting: I look for the unique. I feel safe in my<br />
decision to include an object in the collection, if<br />
I find that characteristic and odd story that makes<br />
this object special in comparison with all the other<br />
anonymous objects being offered us. It is my<br />
impression that this way of dealing with the objects<br />
lies very deep inside all of us who work with objects:<br />
We want the unique object. The question is whether<br />
we should abandon this well-known practice<br />
and chose a more sustainable and representative<br />
approach?<br />
My suggestion is that – at least for a period to<br />
balance our collections – we should try to focus and<br />
unfold the unique story of the non-unique object!<br />
The Concept of Mass Production<br />
Just to clarify, before moving any further. I fully<br />
recognize that every object does have its own story.<br />
A bottle of milk opened in the kitchen of a Laestadian<br />
religious family in Kiruna could potentially tell us<br />
another story than the milk served at an “all-included<br />
breakfast” in a fancy bar in Reykjavik.<br />
The main point is that in essence the object is the<br />
same. And that the strength of this standardized and<br />
mass-produced object lies in the multiple story:<br />
A mass-produced object with a mass-produced<br />
representativeness carrying not only the story of one<br />
family, but of hundreds of thousands of families.<br />
Let us turn to another – in a Danish museological<br />
context - well known object type: Coming into a<br />
museum storage room, you can be quite sure to find<br />
several if not hundreds of engagement gifts from the<br />
period 1700-1850. One could argue that every object<br />
in the form of a personal gift is unique: Every gift<br />
has been manufactured on request, step by step, by a<br />
skilled woodworker or by the fiancé, the inscription<br />
is unique, the receiver and his or her use of the gift<br />
is unique. The answer to the question: “do we really<br />
need more than one” has traditionally been: “yes,<br />
we do want more to show that they differ, that they<br />
represent an individual story, which is normally<br />
hard to separate from the folk culture.”<br />
Now the obvious answer to the question “how<br />
many tetra-pack milk-containers do we need” could<br />
seem simple: “we need only one as they all look