Keynote by Elizabeth Povinelli

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Elizabeth Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies, Columbia University, New York City, USA

Day 2 motto: Mapping Desires

Keynote by Elizabeth Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies, Columbia University, New York City, USA

"But when they asked for what we had… "

Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology & Gender Studies at Columbia University, Povinelli brings a distinctive perspective to the entanglements between art, ontology, and museum practice.

Her keynote, “But when they asked for what we had…”, reflects on the desires and tensions that emerge when museums engage with worlds, cosmologies, and realities that differ from their own. Drawing on two artistic projects—Karrabing Film Collective’s The Family & the Zombie and her own installation, The Museum of Tardigrade Prehistory—Povinelli examines how institutions imagine and frame the “ontological other” and the forms of magical realism that often accompany such encounters.