Global Positions 11

Curatorial notes for a museum...

.as belak, shield; as lafaek, crocodile

In lieu of rooms, channels for transit and tarrying; also, spaces conveying a sense of burrowing, to come close to seen and unseen matters deposited in the mound

Deposited things, things as deposits: the "geologic" sedimentation of selected records and artifacts could be this museum's own definition of museums as institutions having a collection

For example: a collection of buried machetes, allowed to decompose; or a collection of secret votes, allowed to recede from view; or a collection of old headhunter gear, allowed to remain undeciphered by the uninterested; or a collection of Christian prayers found efficacious in silence; or collection of discarded lies.

Hence a museum to the power of the undisclosed (as fundamental curatorial premise), because the most important matters are neither for display nor spectacle

Approach to weather-, theft-, and invasion-proofing: "disarming" openness

Mound will neither symbolize nor abstract nor represent lafaek, but it could become one, for some

Should be impossible to landscape or otherwise "beautify" (no thirsty lawns, no designer gardens), but some cultigen growing will be fine

Exhibits itself as artifice

A first exhibit that conceals from voyeurs, the cut-up body of Timor (also bodies of Timorese), and the dispersal of Timorese artifacts (and indeed the Timorese)

The museum's only privileged concept: metamorphosis (a phenomenon different from vainglorious notions of change)

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