this process of de-contextualisation of the object, it is as if the collection was waiting to be put back into reality, into daily-life world, a world of things. The word thing generally refers to something that is not fully defined: something random or vaguely declared. Although the museum presents a collection of random objects, things within the confines of the institution, it nevertheless remains related to our world, a world of things. In that sense, the term thing here should be understood as being not only an object, with a named and functional form, but as something that possesses a transgressive quality. It is not fully defined, but it is qualified by time and location, the hin (here) and the nunc (now) – qualified by the uniqueness of the place in which the object is to be considered. The de-contextualisation of the object in this museum setting offers the opportunity to bestow narratives and relations in an arbitrary, subjective manner by the viewer: the path from object to entity finds its way through the viewer’s contemplation, through the oscillation of considerations within one shape. In the viewer’s appreciation of the objects issued from the thing-world, each object becomes endowed or even blessed by its quality of thing- ness, but gaining currency also from its daily-life recognition. This helps us consider the museum as a sort of collection of lost souls, where function may be gone, but the aura still remains. While the museum appeared at first glance as a storage unit, we might now come to think of it as a cemetery of random objects, a weighty space of diverse narratives exploding out of the window cases, competing in the constant transmission of their stories. The viewer is confronted by a society of entities , a consideration influenced by the etymology of the old Germanic word Ding – also called Ting , or by historical process Thing – a
term naming the tribal council, the village juristic meeting or great councils of northern European folks, in which each tribal member had a voice: a process of early democratic assembly. The democratisation present within the Museum der Dinge arises out of the non-hierarchical methodology of most of the displays. Devoid of declarative contextualisation, and packed together tightly in the museum’s glass cases, each object can be considered with potentially equal interest and value. Each object can, through the processes of highly personalised appreciation, attain its own level of thing-ness. ~
For further information on the museum: www.museumderdinge.de
1 A ‘thing explicator’ is a person, often a member or Friend of the Werkbundarchiv who, at organised events, explains to the public specific objects or documents while wearing a white museological glove. 2 The name Wundertüten plays perhaps with the memory of the cheap ‘surprise’ gift-bags for children, containing a mixture of hidden confectionary and small toys, and the German word Wunderkammer , or cabinet of curiosities, an early collecting concept. 3 By thing-ness, we understand here the shifting of an object towards the state of an entity, qualified generally by subjectivity – a concept that is explained later. 4 Benjamin, Walter. ‘L’oeuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique (dernière version de 1939)’ in: Oeuvres III . Paris: Ed. Gallimard, 2000
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