“Cooking” a university extension project in an audiovisual and museographic key

Dialogues between “local” and “academic” knowledge about the ceramics of the Salado Microrregion

Abstract

In this work we reflect on an experience of exchange between ceramists from the Salado microregion (province of Buenos Aires), archaeologists, social anthropologists and audiovisual filmmakers gathered with the purpose of producing an itinerant exhibition in the interior of the province and recording this process. The general framework of this exchange refers to a recent –and short-lived– extension project that brought together two workspaces within the University of Buenos Aires supported by the Salado archaeology team and the Entramando Saberes university extension program. We focus on the experience of the Salado archaeology team –which has been working in the territory for more than three decades– promoting research and extension work committed to the ways in which the materialities that sustain archaeological knowledge are part of the present and constitute significant elements of the local/regional identity/e. Particularly, the abundant fragments of pre-Hispanic pottery that circulate in the territory –along with their images and information about their forms of production– are used as a model and inspiration for pottery practices today. The recognition of the different ways of thinking and doing with archaeological ceramics was the starting point for the itinerant exhibition project that we present here –still in progress–. Its development involved the realization of a documentary record –film and photographic–; an intense exchange of experiences and pottery knowledge with those of scientific research, university extension and audiovisual production and a series of redirects that allowed us to sustain their continuity in pandemic times. In this space we narrate different experiences that occurred throughout the project and reflect on the potential of audiovisual record as it allows us to deepen, interrogate and question our knowledges and practices, while reproducing and sharing them whit different audiences.