+++ to be postponed +++ Synthetic materials as heritage? A book launch conversation

Synthetic materials such as plastics, but also concrete and even aluminum, are often not considered to be valuable and as such usually excluded from thinking about heritage. Ethnological museum collections feature little if any synthetic materials, due to the origin of the collections in colonial times, but also due to Western perceptions of these materials as unauthentic and not local to Non-Western social contexts. Little has been written about plastics and the likes in these collections, while there is some work on conserving plastic materials in collections, showing that these are quite hard to preserve, different to what may be expected of these undying materials.

On the occasion of launching the book ‘Rest in Plastic: Death, time and synthetic materials in a Ghanaian Ewe community’ (Berghahn 2024) by social and cultural anthropologist Isabel Bredenbröker, this panel discussion brings the author in conversation with anthropologist Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, curator Elisabeth Heyne, material scientist Bright Asante and industrial designer Heidi Jalkh. Conversation participants will be introducing to their work in relations to synthetic materials and discussing how their insights speak to the idea of synthetics as heritage, both difficult and welcome. The conversation invites the audience to participate by offering an empty chair for questions and comments. 

Confirmed participants:

Saskia Abrahms Kavunenko (Humboldt-Universität, in.herit fellow working on plastic on Christmas Island, anthropologist).

Heidi Jalkh (associated member Matters of Activity, co-curator of Matters of South / Kunstgewerbemuseum, experimental industrial designer).

Elisabeth Heyne (Museum für Naturkunde, Natur der Dinge collection).

Bright Asante (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung BAM).

Isabel Bredenbröker (Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik)

Moderation: Magdalena Buchczyk (Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)

About the book:

In Peki, an Ewe town in the Ghanaian Volta Region, death is a matter of public concern. By means of funeral banners printed with synthetic ink on PVC, public lyings in state, cemented graves and wreaths made from plastic, death occupies a prominent place in the world of the living. Rest in Plastic gives an insight into local entanglements of death, synthetic materials and power in Ewe community. It shows how different materials and things that come to shape power relations, exist in a delicate balance between state and local governance, kin and outsiders, death and life, the invisible and the visible, movement and containment.

More about the book here.