The legacies of the Universal Exhibition or the World’s Fairs are visible in any museum display in which materials are organized and grouped along national lines. The Musée du Quai Branly, recently renamed Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, in Paris, is a good example, I think, of the survival or the legacy of the Universal Exhibition in an ethnographic museum today. What you’ll find—alongside the display of objects in glass cabinets or on platforms that represent a particular people or society and the objects that they make for ritual purposes or for pragmatic purposes—alongside those objects are videos of individuals talking about their customs. We might think of those videos as self-representation, but only if we remove from consideration the structures that enabled the various French ethnographers to travel to those distant lands on what they called “scientific missions” over the decades. It was a vast structure that allowed people to go across the oceans and the seas, travel with technical equipment, find local people who were willing to discuss their social practices, and then film them as they spoke into the camera.

By speaking in this way, the locals or the Indigenous performed for an audience via the medium of film and video, rather than standing in a pavilion or on a stage in the Universal Exhibition in the 19th century. But the logic, I would say, is the same. And the function is very similar. They’re in some ways performing, discussing, telling, narrating their social practices in the same way earlier in the 19th century so-called Javanese dancers were on stage doing their wonderful dances to a live audience. They might look like they’re representing themselves through gesture or demonstration, but, behind it, if you peel back the layers, there’s still a puppet master. And that puppet master is always the Westerner who puts them on the stage or puts them in front of the camera in whatever way, whatever the framework is

Los legados de la Exposición Universal o de las Ferias Mundiales se pueden apreciar en cualquier exposición de museo en la que los elementos estén organizados y agrupados por países. El Musée du Quai Branly, recientemente renombrado Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, de París es un buen ejemplo, en mi opinión, de la permanencia o el legado de la Exposición Universal en un museo etnográfico en la actualidad. Junto a la exposición de objetos en vitrinas o plataformas que representan a un determinado pueblo o sociedad y las cosas que elaboraban con fines rituales o prácticos, también hay grabaciones de personas que hablan de sus costumbres. Podemos considerar esos vídeos como una autorrepresentación, pero únicamente si desestimamos las estructuras que permitieron a los diversos etnógrafos franceses viajar durante décadas a esas tierras lejanas en lo que llamaban "misiones científicas". Era una estructura vasta que permitía cruzar los océanos y los mares, viajar con equipo técnico, encontrar a habitantes locales dispuestos a hablar de sus prácticas sociales y luego grabarlos mientras hablaban a la cámara.

Al hablar de esta manera, los locales o los indígenas actuaban para un público a través del medio del cine y el video, en lugar de hacerlo de pie en un pabellón o en un escenario en la Exposición Universal del siglo XIX. Sin embargo, yo diría que el razonamiento es el mismo. Y la función es muy similar. En cierto modo, están actuando, hablando, contando, narrando sus prácticas sociales de la misma manera que, a principios del siglo XIX, las llamadas bailarinas javanesas bailaban maravillosamente en el escenario ante un público en vivo. Podría parecer que se están representando a sí mismas a través de gestos o expresiones, pero, detrás de todo ello, sigue habiendo un titiritero. Y ese titiritero es siempre el occidental que los pone en el escenario o ante la cámara de cualquier modo, sea cual sea el contexto.

Regarding the various games, optical devices, small objects that one could use at home, look into, interact with, I think that viewers were trained or acculturated to become citizens or subjects of a powerful and expanding empire through representations of the non-West in various media.

Spectatorship was a key method of acculturation or training. Zoetropes, phenakistoscopes, stereoscopes, and, of course, ultimately cinema gave people new things to see exotic, wonderful delights, and visual pleasure made this training work even more efficiently. Perhaps indelibly people see this, they never forget it, whether it was cowboys who inevitably defeated the Indians or Western soldiers conquered and expanded the empire in the non-West for their monarchs. The message I think was consistent: West was best. And you saw it in these little objects that you could handle and hold in your own home. For me, the small, toy-like objects had a particular efficacy because they were consumed in the private sphere. In a sense, they brought the message home. Literally, one could peer into a small device in the comfort of one’s home and see unfamiliar, exotic, distant peoples and places that were domesticated by the device that one held in one’s hand or rested on a table at home. And I really think that it’s through these operations of seeing, adjusting, handling, interacting with, playing with these things that one really incorporated the message. It’s more than just sight. It’s also about handling and playing.

You see this repeatedly in different media with maybe different costumes, different variations, but ultimately the message is the same. Those consumers, those viewers of these objects were citizens or subjects of an expanding empire that was pushing its borders ever further out into the world.

En cuanto a los diversos juegos, dispositivos ópticos y pequeños objetos que se podían usar en casa, en los que se podía mirar y con los que se podía interactuar, creo que los espectadores fueron adiestrados o condicionados para convertirse en ciudadanos o súbditos de un poderoso imperio en expansión por medio de representaciones en diversos medios de aquello que no era occidental.

Ser espectador era un método clave de asimilación o condicionamiento. Los zoótropos, los fenaquistoscopios, los estereoscopios y, por supuesto, el cine ofrecieron a la gente nuevos medios para ver maravillas exóticas, y el placer visual hizo que este condicionamiento fuera aún más eficaz. Es posible que la gente vea esto y nunca lo olvide, ya sea a los vaqueros que inevitablemente derrotaban a los indígenas o a los soldados occidentales que conquistaron y expandieron el imperio en las regiones no occidentales para sus monarcas. Creo que el mensaje era consistente: el Occidente era lo mejor. Y eso se veía en esos pequeños objetos que podías manipular y tener en tu propia casa. En mi opinión, los pequeños objetos lúdicos tenían una eficacia especial porque se consumían en la esfera privada. En cierto sentido, traían el mensaje a casa. Literalmente, uno podía contemplar, desde un pequeño aparato en la comodidad de su hogar, a personas y lugares desconocidos, exóticos y lejanos que fueron domesticados por el aparato que uno tenía en la mano o que descansaba sobre una mesa en casa. Y en verdad creo que fue a través de estos procesos de ver, ajustar, manipular, interactuar y jugar con estas cosas que uno incorporaba el mensaje de verdad. Consiste en más que solo ver. También se trata de manipular y jugar.

Esto se repite en diferentes medios, tal vez con otra vestimenta, con diferentes variaciones, pero al final, el mensaje es el mismo. Esos consumidores, esos espectadores de estos objetos eran ciudadanos o súbditos de un imperio en expansión que ampliaba cada vez más sus fronteras en el mundo.

For me, what really jumps out in this whole exhibition is the power of spectatorship, in a number of ways. There is the foundational power that is the all the structures, the mechanisms, the financing of the host country that brings together peoples, products, monuments, skills, performers to Paris for this Universal Exhibition. And then the various kinds of powers that are conferred to the visitors or the spectators who, through their visual delight, their experience of the performance or objects or monuments, or even the moving sidewalk, they gain a kind of power through that experience of seeing themselves as subjects, participants, residents in this powerful nation that has done this.

If we look at this poster by Cheret in the gallery, the Cheret poster for the Musée Grevin of wax figures in Paris, I see this poster as all about spectatorship. The main objects of interest are obviously the three Javanese dancers, the women in the foreground. However, Cheret further tells us that everyone is engaged in spectatorship. So for example, if we look at the middle ground, Buffalo Bill himself is represented. He’s there in the act of looking alongside other figures seated next to him. Buffalo Bill was in Paris in 1889 with 250 performers in another venue. But here he is also enjoying his role as a spectator. What ties it all together is the power of being able to see, the power of spectatorship. And I would think, I think that’s expanded through the Universal Exhibition, which brings things that are far away and normally inaccessible, brings them to Paris or London or wherever, and makes them visible to anybody who can pay their admission to go and see it.