ImagiNative is a joint web/CD project with Lisl Ponger commissioned by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt for The Black Atlantic exhibition in 2004. We were interested in exploring how images are crucial in forming attitudes and identities in our society and in constructing the identities—imagined, imposed, resisted—of Others. ImagiNative was made in order to contextualize our work, to allow direct insight into the work process itself. As such, it is a sort of ‘reverse engineering’ project which collects together materials from various areas which touch on many of the issues with which we are concerned. These include the production of stereotypes, orientalism, ethnology (and notions such as authentic and inauthentic artefacts and customs), migration, travel and tourism (who travels, and why), racism (and associated pseudo-sciences) and the role of image-making in all of this.

The project is available online in English and German at http://imaginative.lislponger.com/