From Egypt with Love: A Mudbrick, the Ecology of Storage, and the Museum Otherwise

The logics of colonial extraction and epistemic control continue to persist in contemporary museum practices, especially in the spaces of its storage. Focusing on objects withdrawn from public view, stored in museum storages and closed collections, in this paper, I argue that storing is not a neutral act of protection, but a continuation of extractive technologies and an active form of governance that shape relations of value, knowledge, and power. Through the case of a mudbrick from Egypt, part of the storage collection of the Archaeology & Coin Cabinet, Scholss Eggenberg, Universalmuseum Joanneum, in Graz, Austria, this paper examines how the act of storing produces specific temporalities, epistemological absences, and ontological suspension.