Carrier Bag Project
Taking as a starting point The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by U. K. Le Guin, this project focuses on the idea of the carrier bag as an entry point for an interdisciplinary discussion around definitions of ‘to carry’, including to support, to transport, to contain, to accept (responsibility), or to transmit. These examples are approached conceptually and cross-culturally through an exploration of both physical and invisible carrier bags in a conversation between artists and researchers Dr Marina Velez Vago and Julieta Aranda.
Responding to questions such as What baggage do we carry? What do we need to transport in our processes of becoming? and What do we bring across and what (or whom) do we leave behind when we migrate?, Julieta and Marina employ selected carrier bags from South and Central America in the MAA collection to investigate more ephemeral and invisible ‘carrier bags’, such as stories as carrier bags of memories, or embodied experiences of carrier bags such as parcels and containers present in food (empanadas, dumplings).
The Carrier Bag Project addresses the problematics of cultural heritage and displacement because it interrogates those elements that have become repositories of one’s identities and values through the idea of constructed baggage. Considering language as a carrier bag of meaning, Julieta and Marina explore their individual experiences of migration, interrogating the material and immaterial things one carries when migrating to a different culture.
Theoretical framework
This interdisciplinary project brings together various disciplines, such as the arts, philosophy, archeology, sociology, and anthropology in a conversation around decolonial and feminist thinking.
The project also invites researchers to respond to the theme of the carrier bag in innovative ways, expanding any discipline-specific understanding of the topic, allowing for new and imaginative ways to (i) engage with museums’ collections (ii) foster discipline cross pollination (iii) employ the arts to inspire new readings and new understandings around this theme.
To carry is to bear, to be involved, to pull one’s weight. Making a carrier bag, either in a physical or metaphysical manifestation, speaks of intention, commitment and future-thinking. A carrier bag has a function, to carry things, ideas, hopes, experiences, memories, or meanings. It can be argued that translation is an act of carrying meaning across from one ‘carrier bag’ language to another. Equally, it can be said that intangible heritage is the cultural knowledge one carries in one’s internalised ‘carrier bag’, even when one emigrates, or is displaced, to another country. Expanding the idea of the carrier bag to include other possibilities such as travelling suitcases, small boats to cross the channel, Red Cross aid parcels, dwellings/houses, theories, embodied experiences such as pregnancy, and museums as carrier bags of collections, can open up spaces for further considerations, such as Who or what is included/excluded from the contents of the carrier bag?, How can we create carrier bags of knowledges that are inclusive and diverse? and How can we better value those who carry the heavier carrier bags in our social systems?
This project would not have been possible without the support of the Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, the Centre for Material Culture, Rachel Hand and Rosie Croysdale.
