Rebecka Serna
A new video game allows players to ‘repatriate’ African artefacts on display in Western museums.
Players of Relooted will plan and execute heists to bring ‘home’ 70 real-world objects, giving them a ‘hopeful, utopian feeling’, according to its makers.
The game’s protagonist, Nomali, is a South African sports scientist and parkour expert who navigates museums to reclaim artefacts such as an Asante gold mask and the Kabwe 1 skull before bringing them back to Africa.
The game has been made by South African firm Nyamakop and sees players loot real artefacts that are currently held in Western museums such as the British Museum and Wallace Collection.
The museums themselves do not appear in the game. Instead, fictional museums that parody Europe and American settings host the treasures.
Relooted has been developed over several years at a cost of several million pounds – and comes at a time of intense debate over whether museums can retain objects that were obtained via routes such as colonialism.
Ben Myres, chief executive of Nyamakop, told The Guardian: ‘Real-life repatriation is enormously complicated and it’s been ongoing for decades, in some cases even a century or more…
‘We’re giving people this hopeful, utopian feeling… of what it’s going to feel like when all these artefacts finally come home.’
Once collected, players can view the objects and learn about their history – including who they allegedly should belong to.
Mr Myres explained how the inspiration Relooted came from a trip his mother had taken to the British Museum, which left her outraged.
The designer said his mother was left outraged after a trip in 2018 when she saw the Nereid Monument, a tomb which came from Turkey.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Mr Myers said: ‘She was just shocked by the audacity of stealing a building and flippantly said: “You should make a game about this.”‘
However, he stresses that the game is not seeking to push a message of repatriating objects. Instead, he wants players to make up their own minds.
‘The game has got less of a message and more of an invitation,’ he said.
“We are not interested in convincing them of the answer to this question, but the question is “Should those artefacts be where they are?”‘
The game’s release last week comes amid pressure on Western museums to return artefacts to their countries of origin.
In 2018, a report commissioned by French president Emmanuel Macron found that ‘over 90 per cent of the material cultural legacy of sub-Saharan Africa remains preserved and housed outside of the African continent’.
In December last year, the British Museum sent treasures from its collection back to India in a bid to ‘undo colonial misinterpretation’.
In total, 80 objects from ancient Greece and Egypt were transferred to Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum (CSMVS).
They have been displayed in a new gallery which aims to highlight India’s contributions to civilisation.
Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum, hailed the move at the time as ‘very beneficial’, adding that museums should be engaging in cultural diplomacy.
The move came amid ongoing disputes over the return of other artefacts, such as sacred tablets from Ethiopia, the Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes.
Museums such as the Horniman in London made a move to return the Benin Bronzes, which were primarily looted by British forces in 1897 from what is now Nigeria, after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Source: Dailymail.co.uk | Read the Full Story…
