Nina Liebenberg will present the Department of Archaeology seminar with a talk entitled, "A box with the sound if its own making: the interdisciplinary object". 

Abstract: Through a loosely associative format, the seminar will explore recent thinking and writing about objects from an artistic and curatorial point of view. It will draw on my own practice and research which involves subjecting a single object (a 19th century Wellcome Burroughs & Co. Tabloid medicine box, currently situated in the Manuscripts and Archives Department of the UCT library) to a variety of disciplinary gazes to illustrate how these both illuminate and expand the object, whilst excluding a variety of its characteristics due to disciplinary parameters of perception. Situating this methodology within a broader art-historical context, I will highlight a few key artworks and projects which demonstrate the various outcomes of similar processes, and end with a discussion of a few relevant Centre for Curating the Archive curatorial projects. 

Bio: Nina Liebenberg is currently a PhD candidate at the Centre for Curating the Archive at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, and completed her MFA at the University of Cape Town (2011), and her BAFA from the University of Stellenbosch (2003). She has been teaching on the Honours in Curatorship programme since 2013, and has facilitated various interdisciplinary workshops for the programme using curation as a methodology to explore overlaps and connections between diverse university departments.