Out of the Box – Moving Worlds

Design of the exhibition at the Weltmuseum Vienna

"Out of the Box" sets moving life worlds of people living in Vienna in dialogue with museum objects. People with different backgrounds and stories comment on objects of the Weltmuseum Wien from their perspective. Objects in ethnographic museums in Europe have one thing in common: their so-called migration background. They have been transported from continent to continent, taken out of their cultural context and put into a new one. Each object has its own story, sometimes reflecting in miniature the different paths of human history.

For "Out of the Box," Weltmuseum Wien invited the group UrbanNomadMixes to reflect on their own (family) history through museum objects. The participants each chose an object that shaped their cultural memory. It served as a starting point to reflect on their personal history and to find connections between past and present. In this way, complex object stories were connected with people's life stories.

The exhibition "Out of the Box" took place within the framework of the EU-funded project SWICH - Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage. In this project, ten partner museums jointly address the question of what role ethnographic museums play in a European society shaped by migration and globalization.

"Out of the Box" was created in the context of the theme Connecting Diasporas of Objects and People. It is about exploring where the connecting lines between diasporas of people and objects lie. The positioning of diaspora communities as a self-evident part of European society and the integration of their narratives into a multi-layered historiography were central concerns of the project. The exhibition was realized as a cooperation of the Weltmuseum Wien with UrbanNomadMixes and curated by Camilo Antonio (initiator UrbanNomadMixes) with Jani Kuhnt-Saptodewo and Doris Prlić (both Weltmuseum Wien).

CURATOR Camilo Antonio (UrbanNomadMixes), Jani Kuhnt-Saptodewo und Doris Prlić (Weltmuseum Wien)
EXHIBTION ARCHITECTURE Margula Architects
SHOWCASES Gerhard Veigel
PHOTOGRAFY Aleksandra Pawloff
VIDEOS Marc Jarabe und Team
LOCATION Weltmuseum Wien
DURATION of the Exhibition 12. April bis 18. September 2018
FOTO Margula Architects