Metadata Fictions

This post is part of the series "Nemboro. The Power of Fictions", where I explore how a set of so-called "nemboro" woven masks I encountered in Panama —marketed as ritual artifacts from the Embera Indigenous people— led me from enchantment to rupture, and from personal encounter to broader questions about metadata, ontology, and the ethics of classification. Each installment stands on its own, but together they trace a progression: from the seduction of objects to the recognition that even fictions —especially fictions— shape knowledge systems. Check all the posts in this section's index.

In the previous post, I described how the Embera "masks" —the nemboro— could be read as documents: vessels of knowledge encoded in fibers, shapes, and colors. Holding one in my hands, I began to see not just a crafted object but a record of memory and meaning. But if it was a document, then what about its metadata? That question pulled me into a space where speculation and ontology meet.

I pondered how that piece, that nemboro, encapsulated within its fibers an entire grammar and symbolic semantics: a vocabulary crafted from hand-dyed plant materials, and a layered historical narrative. A narrative that was decidedly nonlinear — more like three-dimensional literature, a visual language of threads whose origins were shrouded in the mists of time.

I reflected on how many components of that "mask"-document could be understood as metadata: encoded information about specific aspects of Embera culture — whether historical, social, religious, or artistic. Which thesaurus or ontology could encompass them? What relationships could be established between such metadata? What kind of indexing structure could we imagine? Would those elements fit within traditional, "Western" thesauri or ontologies? And if not, how would they converse with them? As Olson and Furner have shown, metadata are ontological claims. They don't just describe the world; they propose what kind of world exists.

(False or fictional metadata still shape reality — sometimes more powerfully than accurate ones.)

What I was tracing was less a catalog and more an ontology: a set of possible worlds hidden in the threads of a single mask.

Some of that metadata, I believed, might have carried a ritual nature — defining and organizing ceremonial spaces and processes. Each color or pattern might have served as a distinct descriptor, guiding the unfolding of particular events or rites. And I wondered: what would a classification system centered on ritual meaning look like? Wouldn't it show that the "mask" was a living document — one that functioned as a reference for a constellation of cultural and socio-economic practices?

I understood that, like any manuscript in my collection —with its temporal layers of revisions and marginal notes—, that document could have revealed level upon level of cultural influences and adaptations over the centuries. After all, the Embera people were shaped by powerful external forces: European conquerors, other Indigenous societies across Latin America, and, notably, enslaved African groups who sought refuge in their ancestral forests. Would I be able to construct a chronology using the nemboro itself, tracing events inscribed or translated into its physical structure, as I might have done with a book?

I supposed I could view that object as a performative document — one whose true essence might only be grasped within a ceremonial context. How would it interact, in that setting, with its surroundings, with people, with its wearer? Would it have its own voice? Would its features shift? Wouldn't a document fluctuate with its environment, depending on its readers or its users? Wouldn't its voice change?

In that sense, I believed that the "mask" was a multisensory document. Unlike traditional ones, which are usually uni- or bidimensional, that one engaged multiple senses. How would I classify its tactile qualities, so inherently subjective? Or its olfactory presence? Could that particular dry aroma be described using standardized international descriptors? Did its colors align with Pantone charts? And more importantly — was such standardization even necessary? Or useful?

What if I built a vocabulary of textures? A tactile thesaurus: rough, braided, fibrous, cool to the touch. What if smells became metadata — vegetal, earthy, pungent, smoky? What if the document's weight, its balance, or even the sound it made when tapped could be indexed — not because it mattered to everyone, but because it might matter to someone, somewhere, within a particular epistemology?

I believed that when cataloging, classifying, or indexing the "mask," the process should be collective, multicultural, and multilingual — involving the community to whom the piece belonged. A communal cataloging process might yield outcomes that were richer, more intricate, more captivating — and fundamentally different. These would be community-driven technical practices that examined a document that was still alive.

I imagined that in such an analytical process, intergenerational annotations could emerge. Perhaps older generations might wish to inscribe, in the "margins" of that document-object, commentaries about its nature, its original use, its transformations, and its journeys... How would we document those cultural annotations? And three-dimensional ones? How would we make visible those marginalia that, under ordinary circumstances, would remain purely oral? How would we gather such "marginal notes" into a singular narrative — one that reflected, among other things, the ruptured or silenced dialogue between different eras and age groups?

And if I accepted that any document could be translated, how might I approach this nemboro as an act of cultural translation into new meanings, or new contexts? How would the ancient and the contemporary circumstances surrounding the "mask" shape its singular narrative?

Could the cultural connections embedded in that mask —ultimately a node within a larger network of meanings— be extracted and rendered through data visualization? Could digital and ethnographic storytelling unfold across different media, narrating the journey of the nemboro from its moment of creation to the instant I hang it on my wall? And could that storytelling include a critical dimension — one that examines why the "mask" traveled from Darién to my home, when it was never meant to take such a path?

Would it be possible to go a step further? To design a dynamic, interactive map of cultural constellations, where the relationships encoded in the "mask" formed clusters of interwoven narratives? A map that integrated real-time data to reflect contemporary interactions, and remained faithful to the cultural commitments of the document-object?

Could I imagine that network of relationships as a system of quantum-linked particles — such that when one shifted, even slightly, all the others changed too? Could we simulate, using the metadata derived from the nemboro, an ecosystem in which cultural and documentary elements behaved as living organisms — interacting, evolving, migrating? Where would they go? How far could they reach?

And how far would I —the librarian— go, if I kept asking these kinds of questions?

These questions were exhilarating. They opened vast possibilities for thinking about metadata differently — as tactile, olfactory, ritual, communal. But they also carried a risk. Because if metadata are ontological claims, what happens when those claims are built on invention? The answer would come when I began searching for evidence of the nemboro in ethnographies and archives — and found only silence.