The mobile museum | 娜娜·奥福里亚塔·阿伊姆：“流动博物馆让我们从办展中学到了很多，与我们带给观众的同样多”

娜娜·奥福里亚塔·阿伊姆（Nana Oforiatta Ayim）的流动博物馆将艺术带入了加纳的日常生活场景，让艺术走进渔港，走入市场。参观者的感言和他们分享的各种物品，不仅为全面记述非洲大陆文化景观的更大项目提供了素材，也在西式博物馆之外，提供了另一种替代模式。我们就此采访了加纳作家、文化史学家、策展人和电影人娜娜·奥福里亚塔·阿伊姆。

阿努利那·萨沃莱宁（Anuliina Savolainen）担任采访

联合国教科文组织

2016年，随着一座凉亭大小的建筑开始在加纳各地举办巡展，你主持的流动博物馆项目备受国际社会关注，怎么会想到采用这种非常规的展览模式呢？

我经常参加加纳各地的地方节庆活动，这些活动开放、包容又惊艳，涵盖了设计、艺术、诗歌和各种艺术形式。我由此认识到，艺术和文化可以在加纳民众和加纳文化中唤起强烈的共鸣，但这种文艺血脉并没有进入当代艺术领域。加纳国家博物馆已经关闭了一段时间，况且这家博物馆基本上沿袭了西式民族志博物馆模式。

于是，我环顾四周，开始审视身边那些开放和包容的建筑。加纳每座小镇、村庄、城市的每一处街角都会有一座凉亭，这些凉亭用处多多，修车铺、便利店和理发店都开在凉亭里。加纳人成功地利用了这种建筑结构，并赋予它五花八门的用途。那么，为什么不在凉亭里开一家博物馆呢？

我与青年建筑师奥西奥-阿萨雷（DK Osseo-Asare） 携手创办的凉亭博物馆在2016年的查尔沃特街头艺术节上首次亮相，凉亭里展出了加纳摄影师奥福·阿梅加维（Ofoe Amegavie）拍摄的照片和其他手工艺品。这项活动在阿克拉的詹姆斯敦街区举办，有大批艺术家和艺术机构参与其中。

展出期间，一位传统知识守护者（类似于巫师）经过我们的凉亭。他身穿一袭白衣，一群人跟在他后面边走边唱。当时正值阿克拉举行传统洒扫节，这位“水祭司”是来参加节庆活动的。他对我说：“你的博物馆是一处圣地，我们要在这儿为水、当地的潟湖和清洁湖水举办一些祭祀仪式。”随后就有人走进来举行了这些仪式。博物馆的意义就这样变得异常生动鲜活。这已成为流动博物馆的标志性特征：我们固然有自己的构想，但来到具体地点之后，民众便成了博物馆的主人，我们的构想要因他们而变。

2016年的初试身手大获成功，我认为有必要把流动博物馆推广到其他地方，这显然是人们喜闻乐见的，人们也对此翘首以盼。流动博物馆就发轫于此。我们把博物馆带到了加纳的全部十个地区和遥远的塞内加尔，2022年更是远赴威尼斯双年展参展。流动博物馆的旅行还在继续。

流动博物馆的建筑从最初的凉亭逐渐发展为多种模块化结构。每次旅行，博物馆会呈现出不同的生命形态，以体现不同的目的。流动博物馆包含了从各个地区收集和在这些地区展出的各种物品、照片、绘画、电影和口述历史。在我看来，这是一项持续推进的构建关系的实践。

“在我看来，流动博物馆是一项持续推进的构建关系的实践”

“流动博物馆不仅包容那些艺术爱好者，更向所有人敞开怀抱”

“文化百科全书”项目已经进行了多年，目的是记录和收集非洲大陆的文化表现形式，并打算以非裔侨民作为日后进一步工作的基础。我将“文化百科全书”视为另一种形式的博物馆——以动态和开放的方式保存档案、分享知识和共享文化。

这两个项目密切相关，互为补充。事实上，我们将在2024年9月重启“文化百科全书”项目，其中包含流动博物馆多年来收集的大量资料。其他非洲国家多次向我询问关于流动博物馆模式的事宜；与此同时，我们正在努力寻找方法，指导各国编撰其本国的文化百科全书。

“博物馆”这个词显然来自西方。不过，说到闭合环境中的文化呈现，这就不是源自西方的产物了。我们自有传承文化的方式和形式。

我参与的这些项目以及遍布世界各地的许多其他项目，对于历史悠久的“百科全书式博物馆模式”形成了某种解构。五六十年后，人们在回望历史时或许会说：“哎，你还记得以前有这样的建筑吗，当时叫做‘博物馆’！”我认为事情的确有了变化，人们梦寐以求的综合性博物馆未来必将呈现出不同于以往的形态。

相关链接：

“文化百科全书”项目：https://culturalencyclopaedia.org/

Nana Oforiatta Ayim: "The mobile museum is a project where we learn as much as we bring in"

In Ghana, Nana Oforiatta Ayim's mobile museum brings art to places where everyday life happens, from fishing harbours to market squares. The testimonials and objects shared by the visitors feed into a wider project of mapping the African continent’s cultural landscape, while offering an alternative to the Western museum model. Interview with Nana Oforietta Ayim, Ghanaian writer, cultural historian, curator and filmmaker.

UNESCO

Your mobile museum project made international headlines in 2016 as the kiosk-sized structure began traveling across Ghana. What inspired the atypical exhibition model?

I've frequented the local Ghanaian festivals all my life; these open, inclusive, incredible initiatives encompass design, art, poetry, and every other art form. From this I knew that art and culture have huge resonance within my communities and culture, but it wasn't being translated into the contemporary art sphere. The National Museum of Ghana had been closed for a while and besides, it was very much a mimicry of the Western ethnographic museum model.

I started to look around at structures that were open and inclusive. In Ghana there is a kiosk on every single corner of every town, village or city, and these kiosks are used for everything: they can host a mechanic’s shop, a convenience store or a hairdresser's salon. Somehow people have managed to use the structure of this architectural typology and open it up for every type of use. So why not have a museum in a kiosk?

I collaborated with the young architect DK Osseo-Asare to create the kiosk museum. It was first tried out in 2016 at the Chale Wote festival - an art event happening in the streets of Jamestown, in Accra, with the participation of lots of artists and art institutions. Inside the kiosk, photographs by Ghanaian photographer Ofoe Amegavie were presented alongside other artefacts.

At some point, a traditional knowledge keeper - a kind of medium - walked past, dressed in white, followed by people singing songs. This so-called ‘priest of the water’ was taking part in the traditional cleaning festival happening in Accra at the same time. He said, ‘Oh, your museum is a shrine. We're going to do some ceremonies for the water, for the local lagoon and for its cleansing’. And then people came in to do these ceremonies. The purpose of the museum became very dynamic and very much alive. This has become a kind of marker of the mobile museum: we might have our plans, but when we get to an area the plans change because people take ownership of it.

The launch in 2016 was a huge success, so I thought I’ve got to travel with this because obviously it's something that people want and that they're excited by. That's how the mobile museums started. We have taken the museum to all ten regions of Ghana, and beyond – from Senegal to the Venice biennale in 2022. And it continues to travel.

The structure has evolved from a kiosk into different modular structures – every time it travels it has a different life form that reflects the purpose. The mobile museum is made up of objects, photographs, paintings, films, and oral histories collected from each region and exhibited in those regions. I see it as an ongoing exercise of relationship building.

The idea of the Cultural Encyclopaedia project, launched years ago, was to document and collect cultural expression from across the continent, with the idea of diaspora as a foundation for further creation. I see it as another form of the museum – another form of archiving, of sharing knowledge and of sharing culture as well, in a way that is dynamic and open-ended.

The two projects are closely connected and feed into each other: we're actually relaunching the Cultural Encyclopaedia in September 2024, with a lot of the information collected in the mobile museums over the years. I've had many inquiries from other countries on the continent related to the mobile museum model, while in parallel we are creating a methodology for how countries are going to create the Encyclopaedia in their countries.

The word museum obviously comes from the West. But in terms of having culture within a contained kind of context is not something that originates from the West. We also have our own ways and forms of passing down culture to other people.

Projects like mine and many, many others across the world are creating a kind of deconstruction of the long-established “encyclopedic museum model”. Maybe in 50 or 60 years people will look back and say, ‘Oh, do you remember when they used to have structures like that, they were called the museums!’ I do think that there is definitely a change, and I don't think that synthetic museums as they have been dreamed into being are going to exist in the future in the form that they exist now.

Related links：

The Cultural Encyclopaedia: https://culturalencyclopaedia.org/