The Youth Brand. An ethnography of youth looked upon by the ethnographic object

Two years ago, in december 2006, we have visited the exhibition Figures de l’artifice, at the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchâtel (MEN), together with prof. Sabelli (teacher of the TEC-CH course Exhibits and museum scenography), who collaborated with the Museum for many years in the design of its thematic exhibitions. Last Saturday we made our long 4-hour way to Neuchâtel again, to see the exhibition La Marque Jeune (The Youth Brand). What is it that makes this small museum so attractive and worthwhile having a trip longer than the actual stay inside the museum? (indeed, we have only spent inside slightly more than 3 hours, lunch and post-visit discussion included)

The exhibiting policy of the MEN bears the mark of Jacques Hainard, who became museum curator in 1980. Departing from the classical position of the ethnographic museum, where objects from other cultures are displayed in juxtaposition, Jacques Hainard reverted the look from the Other to the self, and changed the exhibiting practice into a critical deconstruction of our own society, taken for granted knowledge and assumptions (what he called “anthropology of the self”). This approach, named by Hainard “museographie de la rupture” (free translation into “break-off museography”), invites the visitor to critical reflection on himself and his or her society. Perhaps the exhibition that marked the break-off with past exhibiting techniques after timid attempts over 10 years of experiments was Le trou (The Hole, 1990), a free incursion in the realm between real and imaginary based on mythical, sociological, artistic and literary considerations on the role and interpretation of the hole. Other exhibitions have been staged as open critiques on museological practices and the cannibalizing role that museums play in exhibiting the cultures of other people; for instance in Le musée cannibale (The cannibal museum, 2002), the promotional poster depicted an ethnographic object sliced by a butcher knife; in the exhibition Figures de l’artifice, which we visited back in 2006, in the opening room an ethnographic object was placed on a surgery table. Marc-Olivier Gonseth commented in an interview taken in 2006, “The ethnographic objects that come here are subjected to a surgical operation, parts are suppressed”.

Exhibitions at the MEN are built on a discourse, which plays at the same time the role of driving force of the whole exhibition, and of thread that connects the exhibition sub-themes and gives coherence to the exhibition narrative path. This discourse can be specifically built for an exhibition, but also a historical piece of literature, such as a myth (Figures de l’artifice was staged following the Myth of Daedal), or a poem (the exhibition La grande illusion was done based on the poem Après le Déluge, by Arthur Rimbaud).

The museographic experiments done at the MEN consist not only into the choice of peculiar objects for display – faithful to the museum philosophy of using objects as “slaves” to the discourse, ranging from ethnographic to everyday life objects, Coke cans, cheap souvenirs, plastic dolls, .. – but also through the exploration of unthought-of associations between text, images and objects. What MEN excels in is the recreation of environments, with a particular attention to detail. In the exhibition Remises en boîtes, 2005-06, themed on death and the persistence of memory, the first room was the recreation of a frozen moment: an ordinary living-room, with the traces of someone who has just been there living an ordinary moment, slippers under the armchair, a cake half-eaten, a coffee half-sipped, and the persistent small of old, deadly. One line of text introduced the main exhibition theme: “We all think that the unexpected (death, trauma, accident) happens only to others..”.
From the exhibition Figures de l’artifice, which we saw back in 2006, I have the flash back of a plastic doll placed near a pair of Ibeji statuettes (Note: Ibeji statuettes are commissioned in the Yoruba culture by a family upon death of one or both of their twins), and of a life-sized wooden female statue in a physician’s dress, near a surgery table where an ethnographic object is to be dissected. When thinking about the exhibitions at the MEN, these are the kind of images that appear in one’s mind, rather than the classical display of wooden sculptures and ritual masks, in a row, with labels underneath. Unusual association of objects, commonly used in MEN exhibitions, are meant to produce, in Marc-Olivier Gonseth’s words, an iconoclastic choc.

La marque jeune, which we have visited last Saturday, is an exhibition staged upon a notable coherence of discourse. The iconoclastic choc does not abound, and is not specific of a single scenographic arrangement, but is used consistently throughout the entire exhibition. In a nutshell, La marquee jeune is an ethnography of youth, looked upon by indigenous icons of youth and initiation in youth. Indigenous statuettes have been placed in key places, from the 1970’s bookshelf, to a garbage bin near a young girl’s disorderly boudoir, over a graffiti-walled gang’s nest, or in the remains of a burnt up car wreck..
The MEN team propose this exhibition as a reflection on the youth phenomenon and its social evolution. Central is the relationship between youth, rebellion/anti-social attitude, and their social re-integration, especially through branding/commercialization/consumerism. What starts as an ethnography, done literally through recreated environments (from the 21st century neat and minimalist Ikea home, to the depiction of the evolution 1950’s-1970’s reflected in books read, TV screen, music listened and the couch design, to the 1990s and nowadays’ gangsters neighbourhoods, ..) reaches the boiling point in the staging of the purification and re-integration of youth rebellion and violent behavior through branding and commercialization. The passage from the zone Le salaire de la peur (The paycheck of fear) to La révolte purifiée (The purified rebellion) is done through a circular curtain, which opens at given moments, shedding tons of light into a semi-obscure zone. The gangsters nest is darkened, the atmosphere is heavy, metal fences, graffiti walls, a car wreck. When the curtains open, light spurts in from inside the redeeming area. I can see now a pair of sneakers hanging on a chord, a basketball net, and a wooden head under the front seat of the car wreck. Inside the purification zone, everything is neatly arranged, tidy and clean. Two baseball bats appear peaceful and seemingly innocent in the hands of two teenagers looking straight ahead from a clean picture, in a neat and orderly neighbourhood. Car wrecks are miniaturized and neatly packaged for sale. Marilyn Manson leans head from a poster with silver paint spurting all over. And in the middle of it all, driving away all reminiscence of a disorderly and too sweetly perfumed rebel girl’s boudoir, a glamorous display of women cosmetics and perfumes.
The last exhibition room closes in circular fashion the message put forward at the beginning of the exhibition path: “youth” as a life stage is an invention of the modern society, having been in fact considered for ages just a transitory phase towards adulthood. Inside a circular space, a Fang reliquary, guardian of ancestral skulls in initiation rites towards adulthood of the Fang ethny in Gabon, is surrounded by paper skeletons caught in peculiar acts around an earthquaque disaster - part of the collection ordered to the Linares family by the Mexican Museum of Popular Arts and Crafts to commemorate the earthquake in 1985.

Photos from visit to La marque jeune (2008)

Photos from visit to Figures de l'artifice (2006)