Restoring location, exhibiting space and mapping absence
Item Set
Title
Restoring location, exhibiting space and mapping absence
Creator
Description
Over the course of my time working as a small part of the Making African Connections project, I have attempted to determine locations of collection and creation for a number of objects housed at the Powell-Cotton Museum. This has presented two main challenges which I will outline here.
Firstly, the way I thought about place and space before undertaking this project was overly simplistic. This was because I, and others, have become accustomed to pinpoint accuracy and highly specific locations provided by GPS and Google Maps. This has been confounded by much of the work I have been doing where space must be understood contextually in order to make sense. Rather than being tied to a specific building, village or province, I have been prompted to focus on areas of possibility in which I might be able to locate objects. Representing this uncertainty is difficult because the mapping module used depends upon dropping pins on the map which, by their nature, indicate a specific point. When I know that an object was collected 12km away from Mupa but cannot be more specific than that, the use of technology to achieve the goal of mapping such objects becomes limited.
Another challenge that I have encountered has been the difficulties associated with place names recorded in the documents relied upon to do this research (these documents are listed below in the sources section). Not only is the spelling variable, but often names have changed over time. For example, Kubelai, as written in Diana Powell-Cotton’s 1936 diary is now known as Cuvelai. This makes it difficult to trace locations, especially in areas for which precise low-level mapping is not necessarily highly available. Furthermore, there are many instances in which the names of places are used interchangeably with those of people. An example of this would be Kanguli which is used in Diana Powell-Cotton’s diary and might appear at first to be a place. In fact, Kanguli was a man encountered by Diana and her sister Antoinette and the place was his compound or village.
These theoretical and practical challenges have made it difficult to determine with certainty the locations of many of the objects investigated. That being said, it is an important step forward in highlighting the potential issues for anyone undertaking similar work.
Firstly, the way I thought about place and space before undertaking this project was overly simplistic. This was because I, and others, have become accustomed to pinpoint accuracy and highly specific locations provided by GPS and Google Maps. This has been confounded by much of the work I have been doing where space must be understood contextually in order to make sense. Rather than being tied to a specific building, village or province, I have been prompted to focus on areas of possibility in which I might be able to locate objects. Representing this uncertainty is difficult because the mapping module used depends upon dropping pins on the map which, by their nature, indicate a specific point. When I know that an object was collected 12km away from Mupa but cannot be more specific than that, the use of technology to achieve the goal of mapping such objects becomes limited.
Another challenge that I have encountered has been the difficulties associated with place names recorded in the documents relied upon to do this research (these documents are listed below in the sources section). Not only is the spelling variable, but often names have changed over time. For example, Kubelai, as written in Diana Powell-Cotton’s 1936 diary is now known as Cuvelai. This makes it difficult to trace locations, especially in areas for which precise low-level mapping is not necessarily highly available. Furthermore, there are many instances in which the names of places are used interchangeably with those of people. An example of this would be Kanguli which is used in Diana Powell-Cotton’s diary and might appear at first to be a place. In fact, Kanguli was a man encountered by Diana and her sister Antoinette and the place was his compound or village.
These theoretical and practical challenges have made it difficult to determine with certainty the locations of many of the objects investigated. That being said, it is an important step forward in highlighting the potential issues for anyone undertaking similar work.
Publisher
Making African Connections
Date
July-August 2021
Source
Antoinette Powell-Cotton 1937 Diary
Diana Powell-Cotton 1936 Diary
