Contemporary Archaeology is a multimodal curatorial project by artist Yann Le Crouhennec and socio-anthropologist Selen Göbelez that interrogates the physical interface of the museum by confronting ethnographic modes of reflection with contemporary reflexive approaches to art as a form of critique of power structures, such as the commodification of the living within modern consumer society. Interweaving archaeology, ethnography, and contemporary art, the project questions the ways in which material traces are mediated, distorted, and mythologized through historical narratives and institutional exhibition practices.

In this project, the museum becomes a site of tension between permanence and obsolescence, exposing the fragility and erosion of both objects and beings, drawing attention to the ways in which neoliberal economies and digital cultures accelerate the consumption and disappearance of material culture, examining how the rapid obsolescence of objects mirrors broader crises of sustainability and collective memory.

Contemporary Archaeology engages with processes of commoning by fostering reflection on the social lives of objects and their evolving roles in public consciousness. At the same time, it critiques the exclusionary mechanisms through which certain narratives and aesthetics are canonized or erased. By juxtaposing ancient artifacts with contemporary interventions, the project opens space for decentralized knowledge production, questioning who owns the past and how its remnants are mediated through museum and media spaces.

Rooted in ethnographic research and curatorial reflexivity, Contemporary Archaeology contributes to the critical rethinking of exhibition spaces as potential commons—sites for resistance, reassembly, and counter-narratives of history and value.

Selen Göbelez is a social scientist and ethnographer whose work explores the intimate politics of birth, care, and the body in contemporary Turkey. With a PhD in sociology from EHESS, she blends anthropological inquiry with artistic collaboration, as in “Art of Being Born”, co-created with Yann Le Crouhennec. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Nîmes University and is working with the “Purple Hands” collective on a documentary film that weaves women's childbirth narratives into visual storytelling.

Yann Le Crouhennec’s practice unfolds at the intersection of time, materiality, and organic process. Educated at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, he has exhibited globally - from the Istanbul Biennial to Beijing Art Center. His installations, often composed of living plants and mineral elements, position time not as backdrop but as agent. In “Contemporary Archeology” (Musée du Die/France), he reanimated the collection’s latent narratives through site-responsive gestures.