Curating Difficult Knowledge
Erica Lehrer
By
Christenson, Hannah
Diamantopoulou, Angie
Molitor, Olivia
Nicolescu, Andrei
Whiting, Johnny
Overview
 What happens when the invisible is made visible?
 Knowledge that was regarded as taboo is brought to the fore.
 A sense that the reluctant public should be forced to confront and be aware of
horrible realities.
• Example: German civilians forced to view the liberated camps, standing at the edges of
trenches full of bodies.
 Age saturated with images of human suffering, circulated by “everdemocratizing” mass media, which only make people face the horror that humans
can cause, without having a strong impact on them.
 Memory-workers begin to explore other modes by using difficult knowledge,
such as attempting to kindle social aspirations between others like empathy,
identification, cross-cultural dialogues, to recognize multiple perspectives or to
catalyse action.
Examples Of Difficult Knowledge
 Tower of public deployment of historical images was used to reshape
public consciousness. They were brought to others through the use of
initiatives.
 May 1990, Prague: Introduction of a row of kiosks with images and
documents of events of horror and sadness such as WW II, the 1952
Slánský show trial, and the 1968 Prague Spring. This “difficult knowledge”
had been concealed for years, and bringing it to the public realm allowed
the citizens to engage in conversations about their feelings and the
implications of these events, upon seeing the images.
Examples Of Difficult Knowledge
 Polish exhibition, 1996, And I Still See Their Faces: Images of Polish Jews:
Images of the Polish Jews were presented, which included 9000 preHolocaust images and evoked very emotional responses from the
spectators. Those photographs reinforce the textures of remembering.
 Latin America, Southern Cone countries: Experimented with revealing their
authoritarian past by showing photos –professional and personal -of the
‘faces of suffering’ to a Peruvian audience, and showing the visible proof of
the injustice and the decades of internal conflict that area had experienced.
Curating Difficult Knowledge
 Unique challenges appear when attempting to frame memories and documents of
violence for public display.
 Perspectives of memory work allow the audience to ‘bear witness’ to past
conflicts.
 Sites of memory spur dialogues in familiar forms, like contemplation and
discussion; however memory and meanings are also made and contested through
commodification, graffiti and vandalism.
 Provision of the definition of “curating”: “to care for”. Museum and exhibition
images regarding “difficult knowledge” are caring, and keep the past contained
within those artefacts. However, the notion of curation as ‘care’ is “meant neither
prescriptively nor timidly”. The term is used to emphasize the sense of obligation
related to a past that has painful results to the present.
Disambiguating “Difficulty”
What knowledge is regarded as “difficult”?
 Edward Linenthal: Refers to the use notion of “comfortable horrible
memories”, according to which official narratives of tragedy may not do
much beyond confirming what “we” as a pre-determined collective already
know, think or feel.
 Roger Simon: Suggests a productive relationship with “difficulty” based on
a “process of confronting and dismantling expectations upon encountering
such unfamiliar knowledge”.
Disambiguating “Difficulty”
Deborah Britzman makes a strong distinction between difficult knowledge
and ‘lovely knowledge’:
 Lovely knowledge:
knowledge that reinforces the
knowledge we already know, and
also allows us to think for ourselves,
due to our identification with a
particular group.
 Difficult knowledge:
knowledge that “does not fit”, it
breaks down our pre-determined
experiences, and forces us to
confront the possibilities that the
conditions of our lives and
boundaries of our collective may be
different from our normal images of
it.
Conclusion and Point of Audience
 Lehrer examines the notion that primarily the audience of a difficult
knowledge-based presentation is what defines the success or failure of a
curatorial project.
 What are the goals of such curatorial projects? Photographs can freeze time
to provide critical reflection (Newbury), but there is a bias in the practice of
curation “privileging a Western museological framework”. In it, preserving
the past is regarded as unquestioned good.
Museum of World Culture
Världskultur Museerna
 “The Museum of World Culture is a meeting place with thoughtful exhibitions
and programs about exciting and current questions in the world around us”.
 Exhibitions:
With Concern – Sebastião Salgado
Maadtoe – Anders Sunna & Michiel Brouwer
Photograph of
mine workers.
With Concern
– Sebastião
Salgado
Maadtoe – Anders Sunna &
Michiel Brouwer