Beyond the screen - from virtual reality to moving museums: Turkey's potential in a postmigrant era

Abstract

Postcolonial debates that discuss the genesis, character and development of the museum institution in Canada, the USA, Oceania and Western Europe have revealed the necessity to newly conceptualize museum studies (museology) in a dialogical and transcultural manner. While there is the need to decolonize imperial museums and to restitute stolen artefacts, objects, works of art and monuments, a notable trend is replacing museum objects by replicas. The development of digital, 3-D and other binary technologies makes it more and more difficult for the wider public to distinguish replicas from originals. In the context of continuing restitution debates, the question about which museum hosts the original object and which hosts the replica might become of importance. Furthermore, it is obvious that historicity of material cultures and objects bear an aura that communicates with the "viewer," which is an emotional relationship that cannot be replaced by digitization and virtual reality. The pervasive two-dimensionality in daily life, often from early childhood, longs for alternatives. Museums have the potential to recover creative spaces for emotional and dialogical ways of perception and learning beyond the screen. Turkey shows a specific history of its museums which were influenced by 19th centuries European developments but were differing from British, German or French colonial ethnographic epistemologies. The latter were driven by strategies of collecting material cultures and arts in Asia, Africa, America and Oceania. Turkey is currently hosting around four million refugees in a relatively young post-migrant society, a new museology on the move might pave the way for a more harmonious understanding of history.