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Poetry as metadata

Poetry as metadata – from prototype to exhibition installation

Poets Emelihter Kihleng and Hinemoana Baker created poems from the visual collections at the Übersee-Museum Bremen. In the public presentation of this work, they discussed how poetry can become a source of storytelling that creates emotional resonance around museum objects.

Using nature footage and performances from the poets, Radek Rudnicki created an interactive piece of the artwork.

See the prototype here

Kihleng and Baker were digital residents in the NEO Collections project, funded by the Digital Culture Programme of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).

More about the NEO-Collections project

A person is sitting at a table with a laptop on it. She is concentrating and is resting her head on her left hand. — The ‘Digital Residencies’ of poets Hinemoana Baker and Emelihter Kihleng began with question that is important to the museum’s team: How would you reconcile historical objects with contemporary stories in a multisensory way?
CC BY-SA 4.0 photo: Niklas Marc Heinecke

A photograph of a stone pendant representing a human figure with wide-open, red eyes, next to a photograph of a red fabric belt — The artists worked together with the museum team, a conversation started. They selected two objects and had photos and extracts from the database – the so-called metadata – sent to them to use as inspiration for their poems: A Hei-Tiki from New Zealand, a pendant made of Pounamu and a Dohr, a cloth belt from Pohnpei.
CC BY-SA 4.0 Übersee-Museum Bremen, photo: Volker Beinhorn

Photo of a group of people sitting on cushions in a room with framed photos on the wall, discussing something — This led to a series of poems that were presented to the museum team to think along how poetry can become metadata. The poems approach the objects in different ways: Sometimes they speak to them, sometimes about them, and sometimes the objects even talk to each other. Es entstand eine Reihe von Gedichten, die dem Museumsteam präsentiert wurden, um die Frage zu besprechen: Können Gedichte auch Metadaten sein? Die Gedichte nähern sich den Objekten auf unterschiedliche Weise: Mal sprechen sie zu ihnen, mal über sie, und manchmal führen die Dinge sogar untereinander Gespräche.
CC BY-SA 4.0 photo: Niklas Marc Heinecke

Photo of a stone face with wide-open, red eyes — For the poets, the objects in the museum are treasures – ‘taonga’ in Māori or ‘dipwisou kesempwal’ in Pohnpeian. For them, these objects are anything but static or lifeless, but full of life. They imagined how the objects observe their surroundings in the museum, remember their past and enter into dialogue with each other.
CC BY-SA 4.0 Übersee-Museum Bremen, photo: Volker Beinhorn

Photo of a woman sitting at a table; in front of her is a laptop showing a video of a coastal landscape; she is holding a headphone to her ear — Together with media artist Radek Rudnicki, they developed a prototype to test the effect of the poems on visitors. Audio recordings of the poems were combined with nature videos. Follow the link above to experience the multimedia prototype: https://ynoetsu.uebersee-museum.de/
CC BY-SA 4.0 photo: Niklas Marc Heinecke

Planning sketch of an exhibition area, with a display case in the centre and benches around it. Sound symbols show where there will be audio — The question of poetry as metadata or exhibition labels was inspiring for the museum team. The poems became part of the planning of the upcoming permanent exhibition ‘The Blue Continent’. The London design studio ‘Casson Mann’ used the poets’ ideas to develop the concept for a circular sound installation that fills the exhibition space with sounds. In a way, the objects conquer the space for themselves.
© photo: Casson Mann, London

A planning sketch of an exhibition area, with a display case in the centre and benches around it. Various notes explain the different parts of the drawing — The selected objects are displayed in a showcase at the centre of the circle. There is seating all around to invite you to linger. As soon as visitors enter the circle, one of the poems starts. It was important to the poets that the installation appeals to a lot of senses: there is smelling and touching, too.
© photo: Casson Mann, London

Technical drawing of an exhibition area, with a display case in the centre and benches around it — The finished installation is not far off – it will be accessible to everyone in the new permanent exhibition at the end of March 2025.
© photo: Casson Mann, London

Find more stories …

As part of preparing our permanent exhibition “The Blue Continent—Islands in the Pacific,” we’ve built networks and collected stories. There are more stories to discover here!