Knowing

Abstract

‘Knowing’ (2015) is a 48 minute video art work made as part of ‘Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art in European Museums’, a European Research Council funded 5 year research project led by Professor of Anthropology, Nicholas Thomas. Jelinek’s area of investigation included West Papua and its colonial history. Part of Indonesia since 1963, West Papua is the western half of New Guinea. Prior to that, it was a Dutch colony. For ‘Knowing’, groups of people from Papuan, Javanese and Dutch backgrounds were invited to the historical collections of the Volkenkunde Museum, Leiden (National Museum of World Cultures). Each person was asked to talk about things from their own culture in the collection and to talk about the objects others had chosen. In this way, participants spoke about their own culture and the cultures of others. The project asks, what is knowledge and who can claim to know? Papua was my area of specialism within the larger project and my main contribution to the wider research project.