Bonjour, 

Dans le cadre du séminaire des études sibériennes/ Siberian Studies Seminar, organisé par par Dmitriy Oparin (UMR Passages) et Virginie Vaté (GSRL), avec le soutien du programme UXIL (Universités en exil) en partenariat avec l’Institut Convergences Migrations, aura lieu, le mercredi 9 avril 2025 de 14h à 17h au Bâtiment Nord du Campus Condorcet (salle 5.067), une demi-journée d’études sur le thème :

"Heritage in Dialogue: The Social Contexts of Tuvan Museum Exhibits ".

 Nous aurons le plaisir de recevoir Victoria Soyan Peemot (Kone research fellow in Indigenous Studies, University of Helsinki / affiliated researcher, Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Japan) et Ksenia Pimenova (Maitre de conférences à l’Université Paris Nanterre; membre du Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative/LESC UMR 7186). Les deux présentations seront en anglais.

Nous invitons les personnes intéressées par les questions de patrimoine autochtone, de décolonisation muséale, d’anthropologie de la Sibérie et de l’Asie centrale à nous rejoindre en ligne ou sur place (voir information ci-dessous).

Victoria Soyan Peemot,

The Objects as Knowledgeable Elders:  The Tozhu-Tyva Skin-Sewn Garments as Guides into Multispecies Lifeworlds

 This study investigates how ethnographic objects, often seen as symbols of the past, are recontextualized within their source communities. It examines the objects’ contribution to the communities’ well-being by supporting the mother tongue, strengthening intergenerational relationships, and fostering multispecies belonging. I focus on the ethnographic collection that was brought by the Norwegian explorer Ørjan Olsen from the Tozhu province of Tyva to Norway in 1914. The relatively short time horizon — just over a century between the collection's acquisition and current day ethnographic fieldwork — allowed for engaging the method of shared remembering (Porsanger et al. 2021) in the process of knowledge co-producing with the source communities’ descendants. Collaboration between the museum, source communities, and the Indigenous scholar demonstrated the ability of objects to reestablish connections within relational networks in their homelands, where the social also encompasses nonhuman entities: landscapes, animals, and plants.

  Ksenia Pimenova, 

Making relics work. The discovery and the contextualization of the 36 sacred Buddhist relics at the Aldan-Maadyr National Museum of Tuva

 Museums around the world have “dormant” collections that remain invisible and unknown to the public for a long time. What are museum teams doing to bring heritage out of dormancy? How do they recontextualise it to (re)establish relationships between collections and museum communities? In 2009, 36 sacred Buddhist relics were discovered inside a statue of Buddha Shakyamuni that had been preserved for decades in the Aldan-Maadyr National Museum of the Republic of Tuva (Siberia, Russia). I will draw on this example to analyse different “museum rituals” (Duncan 1995) put in place to give relics a spiritual life in a state-run secular museum.   

Nous espérons vous retrouver nombreux !

Dmitriy Oparin (dimaoparin@hotmail.com), Virginie Vaté (virginie.vate-klein@cnrs.fr)