Step by step, the visitors approach a world that is completely foreign to them. They set out on a virtual journey to the other side of the globe, from Munich to the Sa in the Kastom-village Bunlap on the island of Pentecost in Vanuatu. Simultaneously, five men from Bunlap set out on a real journey from Vanuatu to Germany, where they participate as partners in the exhibition. The Sa have 'invented' the precursor to Bungee-jumping many years ago. By means of the construction of a model of a jumping-tower, a traditional Naghol, in front of the museum, the exhibition is expanded into the public sphere and a platform for encounters between visitors and guests is created. The pathway through the rooms of the museum leads the visitor from the periphery alongside Juban-masks and a living house into the centre of the village, the dancing ground. The objects and installations allow a peek into the cosmos of the Kastom Sa. They seem to belong to another, bygone time. They wear penis-wrappers and grassskirts and disapprove of churches and schools. While having first-hand knowledge of the ‘outside world’ they have consciously decided against it and still live mainly according to the rules of their ancestors. During the last 50 years, the Kastom Sa have defended their culture against influences from outside. This might surprise in view of the growing pressure of globalisation and it contradicts our paradigms of progress and growth. However, Kastom does not mean stagnation but rather a permanent creative and cautious development of an independent vision of society.
The exhibition exemplifies that we live in a world of the ‘simultaneity of the non-simultaneous’, where unexpected and astonishing individual cultural developments are possible and a permanent reconsideration of the own position is necessary.
www.ursprung-in-der-suedsee.de
In cooperation with the Forum deutsch-pazifischer Begegnungen e.V. und the Munich State Museum of Ethnology.