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1. 

   December 28, 2011

   Stan

   “Exhibitions” –
   such human zoos full of “wild”
   Over one billion people have visited between 1800 and 1940 of the “human zoos”, populated by “wild” fabricated by the West. How and why these particular men, women and children from or deported from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas have been exploited? This is the question answered masterfully Exhibitions, the invention of the wild. This new exhibition, sponsored by the former footballer Lilian Thuram, opened Nov. 29 at the Quai Branly Museum. It also recalls that each society creates its “wild”.
   The posters which we operate are beautiful and enticing: Wild Women of Dahomey, the Zulus, man dog … This imagery was once plastered all over Europe. Ironically: Exhibitions will deconstruct the concept of “wild”, but why it was necessary to put these pictures in circulation. With the exhibition in Paris, they are needed again in the subways, streets and the media.
   The worst is that many of the images shown in a sort of cabinet of monstrosities in the Quai Branly Museum fascinate us even today: the Indians of Brazil Tupinamba marching in 1550 in Rouen, the Tahitian Omai dressed d a silk waistcoat and trousers in satin, brought back by Cook in 1774 in London, The Three Graces Tiger in 1890 at the Olympia in Paris, a group of Samoans in the Frankfurt Zoological Garden in 1896 or Kanaks cannibals . “It’s hard to believe, says the former football star Lilian Thuram, the Commissioner General of the exhibition that engages with its foundation against racism, but the back of my grandfather Friend footballer Christian Karembeu has been shown in a cage as a cannibal in the Zoological Gardens in 1931 ”
   Kidnapped to be exhibited
   Christopher Columbus and other explorers in the 15th century that open the show exhibitions when they return from their travels with native kings as they offer
   “Gifts”. The fascination with the “wild” exotic quickly turns into a real industry shows. According to researchers working for ten years on this show, between 1800 and 1940 over 35 000 “extras” in these performances turned exhibitions that were watched by 1.4 billion people worldwide. “You can find all the cases, says Nanette Jacomijn Snoep Commissioner scientific exposure. There were extras who were kidnapped to be exhibited. There were others who were invited and were perhaps surprised because after they were asked to play the “savage.” There were others who had real contracts and who knew very well what would happen. There are tragic stories, stories more or less “clean”.
   Nobody has invented the “wild”
   Five centuries of exhibitions of human beings pass before us in this journey that brings together hundreds of photographs, postcards, movies and amateur official, promotional posters, paintings, drawings and newspaper articles. The full extent of this industry shows ethnic becomes visible. But who invented the concept of “wild”? “There is no one who invented the” wild, “says anthropologist Nanette Jacomijn Snoep. We all invent our wildlife. Everyone has a wild. In the exhibition, we begin with the Renaissance, the time of the discovery of the New World. It is from this new exotic world where man, the man from other continents, is “the wild”. The invention of the “wild” in the context of these exhibitions Ethnic very strong link with European expansion and colonization. ”

   A picture of a concentration camp immediately arouses nausea, an image of a slave in chains inevitably provokes disgust. However, posters or postcards showing “human zoos” in the form of entertainment always go well and titillate rather our consciousness. Hence the conviction of the co-curator and historian Pascal Blanchard scientific clearly necessary to decolonize our unconscious: “This exhibition serves to decolonize the gaze, to decolonize what has been produced five centuries of history and five centuries of gaze. ”
   The “Hottentot Venus” changes the
   The exhibition looks like a cabinet of curiosities, relics with pictures. In 1644, the Greenlanders are kidnapped to be exhibited to King Frederik III of Denmark. Siamese ambassadors are exhibited under Louis XIV, king of Iroquois and Algonquin in London in 1710 … The spectacle of the South African Saartjie Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus and exhibited in London and Paris between 1810 and 1815, marks a turning point. “Before 1800 these ‘savages’ are shown as unusual people, of living curiosities, without hierarchy, says Nanette Jacomijn Snoep. When the Hottentot Venus arrives at the Natural History Museum, it will be studied, classified, observed. Gradually, we will compare it to a monkey. This is where the idea of ​​really starting a hierarchy and “wild” is going to be monstrous and we will put it at the lowest scale of humanity. The Venus Hottentot thus opens the era of the 19th century when born every major racial theories. ”
   “The white man has made a Black Man”
   After the crusades and the witch hunt and before the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis, the “scholars” and “science” were called to the service of colonialism, slavery and racism: “The ideology of the time, the so-called races, it is an ideology of science! The moral significance by scientists is weighing very strong, says Lilian Thuram. You can have people like Jules Ferry, who said, ‘The superior race has a duty to civilize the inferior race.’ There are people like Victor Hugo who can say: ‘The white man has made a Black Man and Europe will a world of Africa. ‘This is something that is extremely grounded. This discourse has shaped our culture. ”
   The “cephalometric Dumoutier”, a tool invented in 1842 to measure the skulls, scientific evidence of the madness that wanted to prioritize the different “races”: the man is white and worn by top scientists, the man sentenced black at the bottom of this scale. Science transforms the black man or even a savage animal. “You can not understand why the opinion legitimized the colonial enterprise if you do not understand at the same time when we colonized were manufactured here in the West legitimacy of this colonization, legitimation of the domination of these breeds , explains the historian Pascal Blanchard. This is passed into the enclosure of the Zoological Gardens where people allaientvse distract the weekend with the kids for a picnic. These exhibitions are a key explanation for how racism Scientific racism have become popular in such a short time. ”
   The end of the exhibitions?
   After the Second World War the “human zoos” stop, but it’s not an awareness or a ban after the atrocities of the Nazis against the Jews, homosexuals, disabled people “degenerates” who stopped the concept of “exhibitions”, but an audience that is bored. “The end date is in 1958, says Nanette Jacomijn Snoep. At the Universal Exhibition in Brussels we will create even an African village. But at the same time, they exhibited the Congolese and visitors feel uncomfortable. So we will close the Congolese villages. This is an event that represents the end of one time, even if we can find even after examples, but the industry of entertainment, this monumental reconstruction of “wild” really ends in 1958. ”
   However, stereotypes continue to live. “What is extraordinary is that most people have never heard of these stories, but at the same time, the company has built this story because she lived it. Back to the story is to understand the society in which we live. ”
   For this exhibition is full of small mirrors which give us our own face in the middle of this incredible story. Exhibitions and ends with a video installation by contemporary artist Vincent Elka raises the question: “Today, our wildlife? “. He questions many stigmatized populations. Homosexuals, transsexuals, dwarfs, Down syndrome show the view from outside: a heavy look placed on them.
   Lilian Thuram (former football team France), commissioner general of the exhibition “Exhibitions” at the Musée du Quai Branly