Facilitating Artistic Reappropriation of Ethnographic Collections as a Form of Cultural Self-Determination
🎥 Session recording: [https://youtu.be/EC3_97TGsM4?list=PLfq0CVoHfK80&t=22236](https://youtu.be/EC3_97TGsM4?list=PLfq0CVoHfK80&t=22236)
In this workshop we explore how artistic approaches can be used to contribute to pluralist sensemaking around ethnographic collections drawing on the perspectives of the cultures of origin, thus contributing to cultural self-determination.
We open the dialogue by relating our experience implementing “CultureFLOW”, a novel methodology facilitating artistic creative processes that engage with collective memories around artifacts from ethnographic collections, thereby reenacting and reinterpreting them in a co-creative approach. The “CultureFLOW” methodology extends the traditional GLAM hackathon format, combining the hackathon methodology used to foster engagement around open cultural data with artistic creation. During its first pilot implementation in 2024, arts students from Mexico were invited to engage with artifacts from ethnographic collections in Switzerland and to present their artistic projects at the 10th edition of the Swiss GLAM hackathon. In 2025, the method was implemented at the occasion of the first Hackatón BAM in Puebla and will again be used for its second edition in 2026, opening the scope to ethnographic (and historical) collections in a variety of countries, including Mexico itself.
In view of the resulting artistic projects we analyze how this methodology fosters equity by giving voice to often invisible regional narratives and explore how it can be replicated in other institutions, adapting it to diverse contexts. This second part of the workshop is interactive and practice-oriented: participants map their potential partners and design a CultureFLOW micro-strategy for their own communities, obtaining concrete tools to implement the model in their specific contexts.
