Reveal and Conceal: Poetic and Sensory Dimensions in Collaborative Knowledge Production in the Project ‘Talking Mats: Interwoven Histories – Connecting Peoples’ (2023–2025)

Abstract

A collection of late 19^th-century mats originating from the Lamu Archipelago in northern Kenya – globally unique, as they bear interwoven poems – is today kept in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. The project ‘Talking Mats: Interwoven Histories – Connecting Peoples’ is a joint research project and cooperation between the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, and the National Museums of Kenya, in particular the Lamu Museums and World Heritage Site. This article reflects on the ongoing process of knowledge and exhibition co-production. As a specific kind of collaboration, co-production is often considered an innovative approach in that it integrates multiple perspectives in museum practices. Seven members of the ‘Talking Mats’ team reflect from the artistic, practical and scientific perspectives on their activities, roles and the outcomes of their joint endeavour in co-producing a multi-media and multi-sited exhibition project across boundaries of language, nation states and resources. The aim is to highlight the experiences, challenges and opportunities of a joint project in relation to postcolonial working methods in ethnological collections and museums, as well as in international museum cooperation.