dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark

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