Audio-guide Polyphony: Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll on Data Hacktivism in the Weltmuseum Wien

Vienna’s Weltmuseum contains ethnographical objects from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The museum’s relatively new euphemistic name obscures what its location cannot: housed in a wing of the Hofburg Imperial Palace, the collections are the spoils of centuries of colonial plunder. One object in particular – a headdress belonging to an Aztec emperor – has been the focus of a rigorous campaign for restitution for more than thirty years initiated and sustained by Mexican activist Xokonoschtletl Gómora. As artist and art historian Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll narrates here, a recent intervention at the museum brought renewed attention to the dispute and revealed the Austrian government’s recalcitrance in the matter.