We've had such a wonderful three days - it really has been incredible to see the dedication of the delegates, the high quality of the presentations. Museobunny has had such a great team of helper bunnies, and such lovely guest-bunnies, that he doesn't really want them to break up and disperse. We've talked about the unconventional, the strange, the different. We've talked today about the nature of objects, the problematics of their interpretation, the relationships and power structures which develop between objects, creators and audiences. It's been a day of the other - from within and without - of other eyes and other worlds.
Wonderland is a strange and shifting place. It's a place of oddity, of difference, differance, of illogical logic and curious expressions. The museum is such a wonderland. It can be a place of make-beleive, of magic - it can be curious and cohesive, silly and scholarly, and in accepting its strangeness, whole new worlds of meaning can be figured and reformed. We've enjoyed travelling through this world with you, and we hope you've enjoyed travelling with us too. But, for the moment, we're signing off.
With bounces, jumps and tea, Museobunny sends you all his best regards. He hopes that the ephemeral Wonderland we've made will continue, even if in an altered form. So please, keep talking - and keep on hopping!
30 March 2011
The Final Spring! - Keynotes of Magic and Reinterpretation
Matt Smith and Andy Horn Queering the Museum: Representing LGBT Lives Using Museum Collections
Birmingham is one of the largest council run museum services in the UK, in the hugely diverse Second City. An exhibition, two years ago, in the Central Libaray pointed to a lack of LGBT representation in the city. From this developed Gay Birmingham Remembered and the Shout! Festival, now strong elements in the city's life.
The collection of BMAG is broad, and has a stong collection of applied arts - unsurprising in a city once called the 'Toyshop of Europe.' It emphasizes diversity in its programmes and operations, but you might argue that there is a significant lack of representation of LGBT culture. So Matt approached the museum through Shout's co-ordinator, and they began to plan how the museum could work to produce 'Queering the Museum.'
They had to have a rationale, a justification for doing this, to make sure that it integrated with their existing work, helped the museum moved forward, and didn't appear tokenistic. What, too, is the value between blurring the boundaries between the museum itself, and the way it is interpreted?
There is certainly a value in looking at collections with new eyes, particularly when they haven't, like the BMAG ceramics collection, been redisplayed for a number of years. Matt proposed a number of possibilities for this interaction of art and museum space, and certain of these had to be treated with a distinct amount of sensitivity. As a Council Museum, they have to balance a number of competing desires and agendas. A display relating to the sexuality of Cardinal Newman, particularly around the time of the Papel visit, was particularly sensitive and had to be dropped.
However, trying to push the creative agenda in museums is often more difficult than you might think. For museums, traditionally, are not spaces which are often all that creative, though creative activities might occur within their walls. But by engaging with Shout, and other arts organizations, and acting as a mediator between these groups and the museum, Matt managed to create nineteen interventions within the museum space. As a museological person himself, it was really important that he engaged fully with the collection. He was able, as a new gaze, to act as a 'Queer eye' on the museum's collections, and rather than develop a queer exhibition, they decided to queer the whole museum.
Queer can be used as an inclusive term, a term currently reappropriated by the LGBT community. It also overlaps with the uncanny, associated with anything outside the norm, slightly sidelined or odd. It has in the past been used pejoratively, but the idea of queering the museum was to engage with both negative and positive elements of representing lgbt culture, and to extend the existing representation that was (or was not) already there.
When we 'queer' something, we make it strange, odd, peculiar. By queering the Round Room, a space hung in a classic academy style, the space becomes uncanny and strange. But in a way it already was, for in the transgressive figure of Lucifer, modelled with the face of a woman and a body of a man is situated directly at the centre. Perhaps the least subtle part of this whole intervention was the draping of the figure in green carnations, which appeared throughout the museum signifying the 'queer trail.'
The stories which the intervention was able to tell were both comical, lighthearted and tragic. The figure of Simeon Solomon, the museum's only expression of homosexual culture prior to the project, is a very sad tale indeed. By juxtaposing him with the figure of Lord Leighton, who perhaps had very similar lives, the different appropriations of stories related to gender and sexuality become apparent.
Coupling and balance also played a role, for the placing of objects in direct relation to each other reflects a particular kind of narrative within museum space. What happens when the physical relationships between objects are changed, and removed, and what are the meanings (re)created in the space inbetween. Comment upon art history also makes itself apparent in Jakes Progress, which relates to Birmingham's huge collection of tiles, but which also comments upon Hogarth's Rake's Progress.
Galley 33, a gallery of diversity of which the museum was incredibly proud, actually engaged very little with LGBT representation. By placing a civil partnership card within the space, it manifests an acknowledgement of this culture from another element of the institution. Thus the display activity of the museum itself becomes legitimated by its relationship to changing legality and authority.
Polari, a secret language of the LGBT community, is an interesting expression of subversion which the project uses in the museum space through figures representing various expressions within it. In placing these figures here, the polyvocality of the museum space and its ability to subvert standard conventions from within authoritarian structures themselves.
What was the purpose of this intervention? You wouldn't 'Straighten' the museum or mention if an artist is straight. But there's a certain politics which need to be recognised, for there are implict dialogues in museum texts which express heterosexual relationships - children and marriages - whilst homosexual relationships are whitewashed. Homophobic bullying is on the rise, negative portrayal in the media still continues, and LGBT individuals are taxpayers too, and have a right to be represented in the institutions to which they contribute.
In cutting across subjects, object groupings and collections, it became apparent that there was a freedom possible for interacting with museum institutions and interpretation. During collection, the polyvocality of objects should be retained as much as possible, in order that in the future, their meanings are able to mutate and change.
38% of the visitors to the installations identified themselves as gay, and 74% overall considered it an appropriate, and positive use of BMAG, its collections and its space. A large proportion of the through the door visitors engaged with the intervention, largely because the significant figure of Lucifer. Out of a hundred and fourty thousand visitors, there were only four negative comments. There is, it seems, a contract of authority and trust which museums sign with the visitor, and when these are perceived to be violated, that is where the problem arises. Homosexuality is a subject which still presents difficulties of social acceptance in a way that racial and feminist issues are not.
This intervention has changed the museum, providing a model for the museum's activities in the future and opening up the staff to discussions around difficult or underrepresented subjects. It became clear that the staff of BMAG are very open, very liberal, very inclusive people. It created a space in which same sex couples could hold hands - a charming, but little seen expression of love embedded in the heart of Birmingham's cultural life.
Such interventions are risky ventures, particularly in a climate which is economically unstable. There is a tendancy to conform in such environments - but this conformity is, itself, a risk. One of the things which this conference aimed to do was to create a space in which those risks can be taken, to make it plain that taking the risk, whether it results in success or spectacular failure, is always worth it. For everyone feels non-normative at times, and if you don't accept that, don't jump, you don't progress. If you don't fall down the Rabbit Hole once in a while, if you don't allow yourselves to see the world through other, queerer, more curious eyes, you don't allow yourselves to grow.
Birmingham is one of the largest council run museum services in the UK, in the hugely diverse Second City. An exhibition, two years ago, in the Central Libaray pointed to a lack of LGBT representation in the city. From this developed Gay Birmingham Remembered and the Shout! Festival, now strong elements in the city's life.
The collection of BMAG is broad, and has a stong collection of applied arts - unsurprising in a city once called the 'Toyshop of Europe.' It emphasizes diversity in its programmes and operations, but you might argue that there is a significant lack of representation of LGBT culture. So Matt approached the museum through Shout's co-ordinator, and they began to plan how the museum could work to produce 'Queering the Museum.'
They had to have a rationale, a justification for doing this, to make sure that it integrated with their existing work, helped the museum moved forward, and didn't appear tokenistic. What, too, is the value between blurring the boundaries between the museum itself, and the way it is interpreted?
There is certainly a value in looking at collections with new eyes, particularly when they haven't, like the BMAG ceramics collection, been redisplayed for a number of years. Matt proposed a number of possibilities for this interaction of art and museum space, and certain of these had to be treated with a distinct amount of sensitivity. As a Council Museum, they have to balance a number of competing desires and agendas. A display relating to the sexuality of Cardinal Newman, particularly around the time of the Papel visit, was particularly sensitive and had to be dropped.
However, trying to push the creative agenda in museums is often more difficult than you might think. For museums, traditionally, are not spaces which are often all that creative, though creative activities might occur within their walls. But by engaging with Shout, and other arts organizations, and acting as a mediator between these groups and the museum, Matt managed to create nineteen interventions within the museum space. As a museological person himself, it was really important that he engaged fully with the collection. He was able, as a new gaze, to act as a 'Queer eye' on the museum's collections, and rather than develop a queer exhibition, they decided to queer the whole museum.
Queer can be used as an inclusive term, a term currently reappropriated by the LGBT community. It also overlaps with the uncanny, associated with anything outside the norm, slightly sidelined or odd. It has in the past been used pejoratively, but the idea of queering the museum was to engage with both negative and positive elements of representing lgbt culture, and to extend the existing representation that was (or was not) already there.
When we 'queer' something, we make it strange, odd, peculiar. By queering the Round Room, a space hung in a classic academy style, the space becomes uncanny and strange. But in a way it already was, for in the transgressive figure of Lucifer, modelled with the face of a woman and a body of a man is situated directly at the centre. Perhaps the least subtle part of this whole intervention was the draping of the figure in green carnations, which appeared throughout the museum signifying the 'queer trail.'
The stories which the intervention was able to tell were both comical, lighthearted and tragic. The figure of Simeon Solomon, the museum's only expression of homosexual culture prior to the project, is a very sad tale indeed. By juxtaposing him with the figure of Lord Leighton, who perhaps had very similar lives, the different appropriations of stories related to gender and sexuality become apparent.
Coupling and balance also played a role, for the placing of objects in direct relation to each other reflects a particular kind of narrative within museum space. What happens when the physical relationships between objects are changed, and removed, and what are the meanings (re)created in the space inbetween. Comment upon art history also makes itself apparent in Jakes Progress, which relates to Birmingham's huge collection of tiles, but which also comments upon Hogarth's Rake's Progress.
Galley 33, a gallery of diversity of which the museum was incredibly proud, actually engaged very little with LGBT representation. By placing a civil partnership card within the space, it manifests an acknowledgement of this culture from another element of the institution. Thus the display activity of the museum itself becomes legitimated by its relationship to changing legality and authority.
Polari, a secret language of the LGBT community, is an interesting expression of subversion which the project uses in the museum space through figures representing various expressions within it. In placing these figures here, the polyvocality of the museum space and its ability to subvert standard conventions from within authoritarian structures themselves.
What was the purpose of this intervention? You wouldn't 'Straighten' the museum or mention if an artist is straight. But there's a certain politics which need to be recognised, for there are implict dialogues in museum texts which express heterosexual relationships - children and marriages - whilst homosexual relationships are whitewashed. Homophobic bullying is on the rise, negative portrayal in the media still continues, and LGBT individuals are taxpayers too, and have a right to be represented in the institutions to which they contribute.
In cutting across subjects, object groupings and collections, it became apparent that there was a freedom possible for interacting with museum institutions and interpretation. During collection, the polyvocality of objects should be retained as much as possible, in order that in the future, their meanings are able to mutate and change.
38% of the visitors to the installations identified themselves as gay, and 74% overall considered it an appropriate, and positive use of BMAG, its collections and its space. A large proportion of the through the door visitors engaged with the intervention, largely because the significant figure of Lucifer. Out of a hundred and fourty thousand visitors, there were only four negative comments. There is, it seems, a contract of authority and trust which museums sign with the visitor, and when these are perceived to be violated, that is where the problem arises. Homosexuality is a subject which still presents difficulties of social acceptance in a way that racial and feminist issues are not.
This intervention has changed the museum, providing a model for the museum's activities in the future and opening up the staff to discussions around difficult or underrepresented subjects. It became clear that the staff of BMAG are very open, very liberal, very inclusive people. It created a space in which same sex couples could hold hands - a charming, but little seen expression of love embedded in the heart of Birmingham's cultural life.
Such interventions are risky ventures, particularly in a climate which is economically unstable. There is a tendancy to conform in such environments - but this conformity is, itself, a risk. One of the things which this conference aimed to do was to create a space in which those risks can be taken, to make it plain that taking the risk, whether it results in success or spectacular failure, is always worth it. For everyone feels non-normative at times, and if you don't accept that, don't jump, you don't progress. If you don't fall down the Rabbit Hole once in a while, if you don't allow yourselves to see the world through other, queerer, more curious eyes, you don't allow yourselves to grow.
Yet Another Intermission Hop
We had many presenters who have travelled from all over the world - sadley, not all of our invited speakers were able to get visas to come here. So, we suggested that they might wish to provide us with some information about that which they wished to present. Reza Dabirinezhad and Mohammad Hekmat responded to this, and so Museobunny would like to offer you a little link to their ideas.
Following is a sendspace link to their complete article:
The Intangible Heritage of Iran
Here is the abstract:
As museums tend to pass from an object oriented era to a subject oriented one, intangible heritage comes to be a theme for many programmers to explore; museum managers began collecting theories about subjective programs and introduced them. Iran is a country of prolonged history and an integrated diverse culture. It is this diversity which brings up new concerns and questions for cultural programmers. Some of these concerns are:
- People’s lack of familiarity with various tribes’ cultural treasure or existing rituals at different regions of Iran,
- Young generation’s reluctance to acknowledge intangible heritage due to unfamiliarity,
- Creating diversity and more social interaction at museums while using intangible heritage to entertain visitors.
These concerns partly attracted managers’ attention within last recent years. Therefore museums took advantage of such change of trend to incorporate cultural objectives. Our efforts in this article are to introduce a set of executed programs in fields of marketing and interpretation of intangible heritage at museum-palace of Niavaran, Tehran. Design, executive methods and influence of each of these programs can encourage dynamism and create job opportunities at museums.
1- Arash-Khaani: Arash is the name of a mythical Iranian character, an archer who saves the country using his art of archery. This symbolic character has been subject of many poems and artworks in Iran. In this program we created a remarkable entertaining atmosphere to narrate and display myth using several local artists, ritual combat performers and celebrities as well as collecting combat ritual records. Objective(s): identifying local performing groups, nurturing national union, creating a fusion of arts to vitalize and entertain the audience
2- Mahdismaa, is a symbolic fairy creature among people of south and west of Iran. This myth was an inspiration to plan a performance using two groups from two different tribes who reconstructed marriage and funeral rituals and celebration traditions to offer a festive combination of legends, rituals and music, performed by historical buildings of the museum.
3- Siavushaan, Shahnameh is the most significant mythical book to Iranians, of which many tales are of vital influence in Iranian national culture and among Iranian tribes. During years, there have appeared many narrative forms among each tribe to tell these tales. One of them is a story of a hero in Shahnameh called “Siavush”, known as Siavushaan. The tradition was to narrate the story in terms of a combination of Iranian ancient athletic performance and music. a traditional setting along with an Iranian feast was provided as well.
4- Soorgaani festival is a collection of rituals themed about joy and merry- making. This festival was held at international tourist day with 30 groups performing music and dance at Niavaran museum-palace.
As a result, Niavaran museum-palace now is a place to hold ritual/musical shows from all around the country, especially Tehran. It is a permanent cultural center at which major concerts are taking place.
Following is a sendspace link to their complete article:
The Intangible Heritage of Iran
Here is the abstract:
As museums tend to pass from an object oriented era to a subject oriented one, intangible heritage comes to be a theme for many programmers to explore; museum managers began collecting theories about subjective programs and introduced them. Iran is a country of prolonged history and an integrated diverse culture. It is this diversity which brings up new concerns and questions for cultural programmers. Some of these concerns are:
- People’s lack of familiarity with various tribes’ cultural treasure or existing rituals at different regions of Iran,
- Young generation’s reluctance to acknowledge intangible heritage due to unfamiliarity,
- Creating diversity and more social interaction at museums while using intangible heritage to entertain visitors.
These concerns partly attracted managers’ attention within last recent years. Therefore museums took advantage of such change of trend to incorporate cultural objectives. Our efforts in this article are to introduce a set of executed programs in fields of marketing and interpretation of intangible heritage at museum-palace of Niavaran, Tehran. Design, executive methods and influence of each of these programs can encourage dynamism and create job opportunities at museums.
1- Arash-Khaani: Arash is the name of a mythical Iranian character, an archer who saves the country using his art of archery. This symbolic character has been subject of many poems and artworks in Iran. In this program we created a remarkable entertaining atmosphere to narrate and display myth using several local artists, ritual combat performers and celebrities as well as collecting combat ritual records. Objective(s): identifying local performing groups, nurturing national union, creating a fusion of arts to vitalize and entertain the audience
2- Mahdismaa, is a symbolic fairy creature among people of south and west of Iran. This myth was an inspiration to plan a performance using two groups from two different tribes who reconstructed marriage and funeral rituals and celebration traditions to offer a festive combination of legends, rituals and music, performed by historical buildings of the museum.
3- Siavushaan, Shahnameh is the most significant mythical book to Iranians, of which many tales are of vital influence in Iranian national culture and among Iranian tribes. During years, there have appeared many narrative forms among each tribe to tell these tales. One of them is a story of a hero in Shahnameh called “Siavush”, known as Siavushaan. The tradition was to narrate the story in terms of a combination of Iranian ancient athletic performance and music. a traditional setting along with an Iranian feast was provided as well.
4- Soorgaani festival is a collection of rituals themed about joy and merry- making. This festival was held at international tourist day with 30 groups performing music and dance at Niavaran museum-palace.
As a result, Niavaran museum-palace now is a place to hold ritual/musical shows from all around the country, especially Tehran. It is a permanent cultural center at which major concerts are taking place.
Hop the Twenty Seventh - All Hallows and Engagement
Kathrinne Duffy, Old Haunts - Halloween Festivities at Historic Sites and Museums
[As this research is rather new, nascent, in development, as it were, we're going to blog the abstract, rather than the response to it, at the request of Katherinne. It's interesting and fun research - and I hope we'll make sure that she continues with it!]
This presentation explores the growing trend of haunted houses coordinated by American museums and historic sites, particularly around Halloween. While these events may attract new and diverse audiences to historic sites, they also represent a departure from strictly educational programming. They tend instead toward sensationalism and legend. Sometimes they involve violent or taboo subject matter and are explicitly recommended for adults or older youth only.
How did haunted houses, along with ghost tours and paranormal investigations, become so popular? What value do they have for visitors and for historic sites? What lessons can museum professionals draw from them?
The author is now researching the origins and appeal of haunted houses at historic sites. Her hypothesis is that these macabre events fill a void in the cultural landscape. Because they take place at historic sites, they offer “authentic” experiences, in contrast to mediated or virtual entertainments. They give visitors a sense of active exploration and discovery, in contrast to the usual guided tours. And in a society that increasingly turns away from death, they encourage visitors to confront their own mortality, if only for an evening.
Yet haunted houses are not put on without peril. For example, fictionalized haunt narratives may leave visitors with the wrong impression of a site's true history and conflict with the education-based mission of most historical institutions. How have certain organizations succeeded in the balancing act? And what are the potential pitfalls?
[As this research is rather new, nascent, in development, as it were, we're going to blog the abstract, rather than the response to it, at the request of Katherinne. It's interesting and fun research - and I hope we'll make sure that she continues with it!]
This presentation explores the growing trend of haunted houses coordinated by American museums and historic sites, particularly around Halloween. While these events may attract new and diverse audiences to historic sites, they also represent a departure from strictly educational programming. They tend instead toward sensationalism and legend. Sometimes they involve violent or taboo subject matter and are explicitly recommended for adults or older youth only.
How did haunted houses, along with ghost tours and paranormal investigations, become so popular? What value do they have for visitors and for historic sites? What lessons can museum professionals draw from them?
The author is now researching the origins and appeal of haunted houses at historic sites. Her hypothesis is that these macabre events fill a void in the cultural landscape. Because they take place at historic sites, they offer “authentic” experiences, in contrast to mediated or virtual entertainments. They give visitors a sense of active exploration and discovery, in contrast to the usual guided tours. And in a society that increasingly turns away from death, they encourage visitors to confront their own mortality, if only for an evening.
Yet haunted houses are not put on without peril. For example, fictionalized haunt narratives may leave visitors with the wrong impression of a site's true history and conflict with the education-based mission of most historical institutions. How have certain organizations succeeded in the balancing act? And what are the potential pitfalls?
Hop the Twenty-Sixth - Graves and Traces
Bel Deering, Rubbish Exhibits - Understanding Graveyard Visitors from the Traces They Leave Behind
People leave traces - we dispose of things, loose things - but they have to go somewhere. Cemetaries, like museums, are such places. We leave items there, and time figures itself in many different ways. In the traditional model of the cemetary, you might consider the exhibition to be the headstones and memorials. But perhaps the other traces which people leave behind, the detritus of engagement with the place, are equally powerful, or evidence of their nature as places of living history. Of course, people have long used the graveyard as spaces for ritual, and the recent rise of Dark Tourism has certainly served to foreground the contemporary influence of graveyards. They are contested spaces, very often, spaces of transgression not just between the living and the dead, but between the seen and unseen, the permitted and 'unpermitted' elements of the lives of the living.
But there are other, less glamourous elements of the graveyard. Rathje and Murphy, in 2001, noted that our garbage, in the future, holds a key to our pasts - and thus, to our presents. In garbology, a form of the study of the physical trace, we can present a picture which, whilst not full, can add to the presentation and understanding of a space or place. Erosion, of course, is a trace of its own - wether deliberately or just in their natural activity within the space, leaving footprints in the mud. They sit on trees and tombs, and thus through the erosion of environmental features you can read what occurs there.
Accretion also occurs, and addresses many of the same issues. So what do you find in the bin? Flowers deposited for mourning, drinks bottles. But people do not always deposit their detritus in the bin - and hide their rubbish in other discreet areas, perhaps in cracks in walls and tombs. Another layer of accretion is graffitti, on the cemetary furniture - but rarely on the graves. In graffitti, many people claim places and items for their own, perhaps expressing a fondness for a space. Such accretion tells us a lot about how people understand, appreciate and interact with spaces, and create, even, a sense of place in these places so often thought dead.
So much we interact in these places of the dead as we would in the places of the living - we eat, we drink, we walk, sit and make love. Perhaps this figures the graveyard as a space of transition, a different kind of liminal intermediary space. They are social spaces, inherently bound up with their particular surrounding environment, and the rubbish and material traces can tell us as much about this as the monuments and memorials can.
In behanving thus in cemetaries, we revivify the dead, we make the people once lost a part of our own present. In these acts, perhaps, we perform an acceptance of death, an absorbtion of it. We interact with loss, and perhaps, make it manageable for us. For in this, we understand that one day too, we shall be so much soil, so much detritus - so much stardust.
People leave traces - we dispose of things, loose things - but they have to go somewhere. Cemetaries, like museums, are such places. We leave items there, and time figures itself in many different ways. In the traditional model of the cemetary, you might consider the exhibition to be the headstones and memorials. But perhaps the other traces which people leave behind, the detritus of engagement with the place, are equally powerful, or evidence of their nature as places of living history. Of course, people have long used the graveyard as spaces for ritual, and the recent rise of Dark Tourism has certainly served to foreground the contemporary influence of graveyards. They are contested spaces, very often, spaces of transgression not just between the living and the dead, but between the seen and unseen, the permitted and 'unpermitted' elements of the lives of the living.
But there are other, less glamourous elements of the graveyard. Rathje and Murphy, in 2001, noted that our garbage, in the future, holds a key to our pasts - and thus, to our presents. In garbology, a form of the study of the physical trace, we can present a picture which, whilst not full, can add to the presentation and understanding of a space or place. Erosion, of course, is a trace of its own - wether deliberately or just in their natural activity within the space, leaving footprints in the mud. They sit on trees and tombs, and thus through the erosion of environmental features you can read what occurs there.
Accretion also occurs, and addresses many of the same issues. So what do you find in the bin? Flowers deposited for mourning, drinks bottles. But people do not always deposit their detritus in the bin - and hide their rubbish in other discreet areas, perhaps in cracks in walls and tombs. Another layer of accretion is graffitti, on the cemetary furniture - but rarely on the graves. In graffitti, many people claim places and items for their own, perhaps expressing a fondness for a space. Such accretion tells us a lot about how people understand, appreciate and interact with spaces, and create, even, a sense of place in these places so often thought dead.
So much we interact in these places of the dead as we would in the places of the living - we eat, we drink, we walk, sit and make love. Perhaps this figures the graveyard as a space of transition, a different kind of liminal intermediary space. They are social spaces, inherently bound up with their particular surrounding environment, and the rubbish and material traces can tell us as much about this as the monuments and memorials can.
In behanving thus in cemetaries, we revivify the dead, we make the people once lost a part of our own present. In these acts, perhaps, we perform an acceptance of death, an absorbtion of it. We interact with loss, and perhaps, make it manageable for us. For in this, we understand that one day too, we shall be so much soil, so much detritus - so much stardust.
Hop the Twenty-Fifth - Ghosting, the Spectral, and the Other Side
Mariana Lamas Bezerra and Eduardo Gimenez-Cassina, Super-Ghost Me - Stories from the Other Side in the Museum
Via the magic of Skype, we are able to hear from people across the world!
More people in the West beleive in aliens and the dead, than in God. The supernatural has long been a subject of fascination, used to explain things which we do not understand. Even in the modern world of scientific knowledge, we are highly engaged with them, as part of our intangible heritage. But museum professionals, though they might know of the connections between their institutions and the supernatural, do not often talk about it, for it would risk undermining the position of the museum as a place of scientific objectivity.
Ghosts can be found almost anywhere - in museum buildings and objects. Museum buildings can be of many forms, and it is particularly, perhaps, those which have reappropriated other spaces - hospitals or houses - in which ghostly specters remain. In objects, owned once upon a time, the focus of individuals can be concentrated to figure a kind of performative spectrality.
Sometimes, there are museums about ghosts - at the Draugastrid Ghost Centre, for example, or the Prague Ghost Museum. Sometimes, the museums have attempted to engage with the supernatural and openly talk about them, such as the Bible Lands Museum, or the online platform 'The Haunted Museum.'
Sometimes, the museums are dedicated to the ghosts: the Peterborough Museum is one of the most haunted sites in the UK, housing over 80 ghosts in the former hospital space. This is a space entirely dedicated to its spectral occupants. In doing so, it engages with the history of its area and environment. Likewise, the Iron Island Museum was set up as an attempt to engage with the history of the area, and the Tower of London is also a space for supernatural happenings which are explicitly figured on their website.
Many museums, though, have hidden stories of the supernatural with which they do not want to engage. The National Museum of Anthropology, in Madrid, was built as a space in which the dead daughter of Dr Velasco was enshrined - this is no longer the case. The Tropen Museum, too, houses objects which are considered haunted, and many visitors to the isaac fernandez museum have seen figures, but these are narratives with which the museum does not engage or foreground. The Egyptian Museum, of course, is full of ghosts, dead bodies, and curses. The De La Plata Museum in Argentina, is also full of bodies, lost people, and curses. And our own Belgrave Hall Grove ghost was photographed in 1998 - and investigations discovered that there were many ghosts in the space, one of whom was rather dangerous and should be left alone...turns out its one of the most haunted sites in the UK. The Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art, too, is one of the most haunted museums in the world, with nuns haunting its corridors, possessions, and self-propelling lifts. Sometimes, these ghosts have critiqued the museums and their exhibitions as they did at the National Historical Museum in Brazil, via the agency of a medium. This is already a space of ghosts - when we imagine ghosts as figurations of memory, personal and national.
Seems there are many museums all over the world which are stuffed to the gunnels with spirits. How much we should foreground this? Can we use them for audience development - ignoring the stories can close of joys and intangible modes of engagement beyond the empirical realm. Can we use these stories to bring in new visitors?
How much we might beleive or disbeleive in ghosts as a physical reality, it is important that we recognise museums as a space of resonances, and that we respect these echoes of the past.
Via the magic of Skype, we are able to hear from people across the world!
More people in the West beleive in aliens and the dead, than in God. The supernatural has long been a subject of fascination, used to explain things which we do not understand. Even in the modern world of scientific knowledge, we are highly engaged with them, as part of our intangible heritage. But museum professionals, though they might know of the connections between their institutions and the supernatural, do not often talk about it, for it would risk undermining the position of the museum as a place of scientific objectivity.
Ghosts can be found almost anywhere - in museum buildings and objects. Museum buildings can be of many forms, and it is particularly, perhaps, those which have reappropriated other spaces - hospitals or houses - in which ghostly specters remain. In objects, owned once upon a time, the focus of individuals can be concentrated to figure a kind of performative spectrality.
Sometimes, there are museums about ghosts - at the Draugastrid Ghost Centre, for example, or the Prague Ghost Museum. Sometimes, the museums have attempted to engage with the supernatural and openly talk about them, such as the Bible Lands Museum, or the online platform 'The Haunted Museum.'
Sometimes, the museums are dedicated to the ghosts: the Peterborough Museum is one of the most haunted sites in the UK, housing over 80 ghosts in the former hospital space. This is a space entirely dedicated to its spectral occupants. In doing so, it engages with the history of its area and environment. Likewise, the Iron Island Museum was set up as an attempt to engage with the history of the area, and the Tower of London is also a space for supernatural happenings which are explicitly figured on their website.
Many museums, though, have hidden stories of the supernatural with which they do not want to engage. The National Museum of Anthropology, in Madrid, was built as a space in which the dead daughter of Dr Velasco was enshrined - this is no longer the case. The Tropen Museum, too, houses objects which are considered haunted, and many visitors to the isaac fernandez museum have seen figures, but these are narratives with which the museum does not engage or foreground. The Egyptian Museum, of course, is full of ghosts, dead bodies, and curses. The De La Plata Museum in Argentina, is also full of bodies, lost people, and curses. And our own Belgrave Hall Grove ghost was photographed in 1998 - and investigations discovered that there were many ghosts in the space, one of whom was rather dangerous and should be left alone...turns out its one of the most haunted sites in the UK. The Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art, too, is one of the most haunted museums in the world, with nuns haunting its corridors, possessions, and self-propelling lifts. Sometimes, these ghosts have critiqued the museums and their exhibitions as they did at the National Historical Museum in Brazil, via the agency of a medium. This is already a space of ghosts - when we imagine ghosts as figurations of memory, personal and national.
Seems there are many museums all over the world which are stuffed to the gunnels with spirits. How much we should foreground this? Can we use them for audience development - ignoring the stories can close of joys and intangible modes of engagement beyond the empirical realm. Can we use these stories to bring in new visitors?
How much we might beleive or disbeleive in ghosts as a physical reality, it is important that we recognise museums as a space of resonances, and that we respect these echoes of the past.
Hop the Twenty-Fourth - The Institution and the Unheimlich
David Francis, A Place Both Wonderful and Strange - Interpreting the Uncanny at the British Museum
The uncanny is a curious combination of attraction and repulsion. Uncanny objects have long been part of the museum experience, and museums can, should they desire, engage with this uncanniness, and generate those experiences of the unheimlich in their display.
Jentsch and Freud provide the cannonical texts which discuss the concept of the 'uncanny,' which relates to 'ken,' a word meaning known. The uncanny is the unknown, the uncertain, the shifting and obscure. When we do not know the difference between life and death, when we do not understand how our world is working, and our relationship with it, this is how the unheimlich makes itself manifest. This is also made manifest in the cybernetic work of Mori, in which the relationship between the living and the non-living-but-not-dead is problematised in the 'Uncanny Valley.' The uncanny is also that which was hidden and now revealed, something which is doubled or repeated, that self-other which is not self-self, a loss of control
33% of visitors come to the British Museum to see the mummies of the Egyptian gallery, and they elict this exact reaction of attraction and repulsion. Of course, it is not only the mummy which creates this experience, but other kinds of strange, juxtaposed and weird objects - tears and curses in a bottle.. How, then, can museums produce more of this sense of the uncanny?
David Lynch's work Twin Peaks provides a perfect example of the way aesthetic productions can create a sense of the unhomely. The possibility of objects coming to life is something which have long been associated with museums - and earlier collections. Church reliquaries were long thought animated in some form, to have an agency and creative power. The Emblemata, at the Bodlian Library in 1627, hung a crocodile in a church as an emblem of evil - the physical world, in the reliquary or cabinet, becomes a space in which the world can be figured. Creating these systems of spatial arrangement fed into the form of systematisation in which objects such as the Fijian Mermaid become not the focus of uncanniness, but a part of the uncanny system as a whole.
We have desire to recreate the cabinet, thus figured, as evidenced in The Last Tuesday Society or the Pitt Rivers Museum, but what are the resulting ethical implications? We don't often engage with the uncanny in the traditional museum display - but it can be done, not just through labelling, but through design and other forms of interpretation. At the Caribbean Before Coloumbous exhibition at the British Museum, they used sounds and smells to evoke the sense of the environment - but this didn't really work. In the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, then, they created a kind of labyrinth which mirrored that of the journey of the Egyptian spirit through the afterlife. Soon, they will be using the atmophere of a Torres Strait Funary event to display a feature object - a Crocodile Headdress.
I've often wondered as to the value of discomfort in the museum space. So much we focus on creating pleasurable experiences, but there is, as evidenced in the popularity of horror literature and cinema, a distinct joy to be had in being disturbed. And of course, being unnerved or scared can create a new interpretation of life, a transformative experience. We engage with traumatic subjects, of course, and sometimes attempt to resolve them, and perhaps this can provide a basis for that disturbing, strange, odd, uncanny interaction. I wonder too, if we are wrong to manipulate the viewer thus - I'm not sure we are, for by entering the museum space, the visitor, on some level, expects a certain amount of framing and manipulation. Can't we embrace that element of theatre, and make beleive, and give our audience credit for understanding that?
The uncanny is a curious combination of attraction and repulsion. Uncanny objects have long been part of the museum experience, and museums can, should they desire, engage with this uncanniness, and generate those experiences of the unheimlich in their display.
Jentsch and Freud provide the cannonical texts which discuss the concept of the 'uncanny,' which relates to 'ken,' a word meaning known. The uncanny is the unknown, the uncertain, the shifting and obscure. When we do not know the difference between life and death, when we do not understand how our world is working, and our relationship with it, this is how the unheimlich makes itself manifest. This is also made manifest in the cybernetic work of Mori, in which the relationship between the living and the non-living-but-not-dead is problematised in the 'Uncanny Valley.' The uncanny is also that which was hidden and now revealed, something which is doubled or repeated, that self-other which is not self-self, a loss of control
33% of visitors come to the British Museum to see the mummies of the Egyptian gallery, and they elict this exact reaction of attraction and repulsion. Of course, it is not only the mummy which creates this experience, but other kinds of strange, juxtaposed and weird objects - tears and curses in a bottle.. How, then, can museums produce more of this sense of the uncanny?
David Lynch's work Twin Peaks provides a perfect example of the way aesthetic productions can create a sense of the unhomely. The possibility of objects coming to life is something which have long been associated with museums - and earlier collections. Church reliquaries were long thought animated in some form, to have an agency and creative power. The Emblemata, at the Bodlian Library in 1627, hung a crocodile in a church as an emblem of evil - the physical world, in the reliquary or cabinet, becomes a space in which the world can be figured. Creating these systems of spatial arrangement fed into the form of systematisation in which objects such as the Fijian Mermaid become not the focus of uncanniness, but a part of the uncanny system as a whole.
We have desire to recreate the cabinet, thus figured, as evidenced in The Last Tuesday Society or the Pitt Rivers Museum, but what are the resulting ethical implications? We don't often engage with the uncanny in the traditional museum display - but it can be done, not just through labelling, but through design and other forms of interpretation. At the Caribbean Before Coloumbous exhibition at the British Museum, they used sounds and smells to evoke the sense of the environment - but this didn't really work. In the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, then, they created a kind of labyrinth which mirrored that of the journey of the Egyptian spirit through the afterlife. Soon, they will be using the atmophere of a Torres Strait Funary event to display a feature object - a Crocodile Headdress.
I've often wondered as to the value of discomfort in the museum space. So much we focus on creating pleasurable experiences, but there is, as evidenced in the popularity of horror literature and cinema, a distinct joy to be had in being disturbed. And of course, being unnerved or scared can create a new interpretation of life, a transformative experience. We engage with traumatic subjects, of course, and sometimes attempt to resolve them, and perhaps this can provide a basis for that disturbing, strange, odd, uncanny interaction. I wonder too, if we are wrong to manipulate the viewer thus - I'm not sure we are, for by entering the museum space, the visitor, on some level, expects a certain amount of framing and manipulation. Can't we embrace that element of theatre, and make beleive, and give our audience credit for understanding that?
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