School of Museum Studies
20-22 April 2010
An international conference
exploring the interpretive potential
of museum architecture and design
Department of Museum Studies
University of Leicester
Museum Studies Building
19 University Road
Leicester
LE1 7RF
Narrative Space draws together museum and heritage professionals, exhibition
designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines
including museum studies, film studies, theatre studies, architecture, design,
animation and history, to explore theory and practice at the cutting-edge of
exhibition and experience making.
Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around
the world have enjoyed large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure;
in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. The period has also seen
the creation of a series of new purpose-built museums and galleries. This
massive investment has received significant media coverage, including the
often sensational reporting of occasional high-profile failures. It has however,
overwhelmingly, been a period of much-needed and often very successfully
utilised investment which has changed the face of culture, drastically
improving the standards of museum and gallery facilities, the quality and
variety of displays and media in museums and, in very successful cases,
driving positive organisational change. Most would agree that above all
the investment has had a significant impact on the ability of many museums
and galleries to offer up engaging, meaningful and memorable experiences
to a broader range of visitors.
This period of investment has also been a period of fundamental reinvention
in the design and shaping of museums. Fascinating examples of ‘the new
museum making’ include high profile and highly interpretive buildings,
evocative landscapes convincingly interpreted with energy and imagination,
highly sophisticated and emotive exhibitions and, sometimes, small and
quirkily interpretive interventions in existing spaces and places. What unites
many of these interpretive approaches is the attempt to create what might
be called ‘narrative environments’; experiences which integrate objects and
spaces – and stories of people and places – as part of a process of storytelling
that speaks of the experience of the everyday, as well as the special and the
unique. Driven by the availability of significant funding but also by astonishing
advances in digital technologies and a shared awareness of the role of the
museum maker as telling the world, the field of museum design has become
a varied, media rich and highly interpretive landscape. In the current economic
climate - as the availability of funding diminishes in many parts of the world
and as cultural institutions think more cautiously about smaller-scale, less
capital intensive and increasingly sustainable solutions to the maintenance,
production and regeneration of museum space – it seems relevant to ask
what we have learned from this period of re-making and re-telling.
Narrative Space takes an approach to the experience and interpretation
of sites, buildings, places, objects and people which recognises the inherently
spatial character of narrative and storytelling and their potential to connect
with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme the
conference will explore the power of stories as structured experiences
unfolding in space and time, and critically assess the potential of museums,
galleries and exhibition spaces to act as integrated narrative environments.
It will also encourage a critical engagement with the potential limitations
or multiple manifestations of narrative. It will chart the emergence of a new
range of interpretive approaches to experience making which cut across
architecture, film, theatre, design, digital media, interior and graphic design,
literature and art and will address notions of visitor experience, questions
of authorship and the role of theatre and performance in the making and
experiencing of museum space. At the heart of Narrative Space is a vision
of the museum as theatre, as dramatic ritual, as a telling of the world
in miniature and as a site where space and place making connect with
human perception, imagination and memory.
KEYNOTE: Peter Greenaway
Adam Caruso at Nottingham Contemporary
The Language of Presentation
Writer/Director/Painter/Curator
Interpretation and Experience
Acknowledgements
“I suppose my fascinations are
relative to an idea of “presentation”
- and how to do it with the
greatest excitement, legitimacy,
invention and profundity and - and this I suppose
is my self-indulgence to take especial fascination
in the language of the
presentation - how the
language works.”
Suzanne, Laura and Jonathan would like to thank the staff of the School of
Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, sponsors Haley Sharpe Design
and Click-Netherfield, and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Leicester
for his support of Narrative Space. We are also grateful to Nottingham
Contemporary, Leach Colour Ltd, DJW Ltd and Patton Heritage. Particular
thanks go to Barbara Lloyd and Jim Roberts for all their hard work.
Support
Should you have any questions throughout the conference please do
approach the conference organisers; Suzanne MacLeod, Jonathan Hale,
Laura Hanks, Barbara Lloyd and Jim Roberts. Also available are
Richard Sandell, Simon Knell, Lisanne Gibson and Bob Ahluwalia.
Peter Greenaway was born in Wales and educated in London. He trained
as a painter for four years, and started making his own films in 1966.
He has continued to make cinema in a great variety of ways, which has
also informed his making of installations for the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice
to the Joan Miro Gallery in Barcelona. He has curated exhibitions from
the Boymans Van Beuningen Gallery in Rotterdam to the Louvre in Paris,
and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to the Hoffburg in Vienna. He has
regularly been nominated for the Film Festival Competitions of Cannes,
Venice and Berlin, published books and written for the theatre and opera.
His first feature film, THE DRAUGHTSMAN¹S CONTRACT, completed in 1982,
received enormous critical acclaim and established him internationally as
one of the most original and important film makers of our times, a reputation
consolidated by the films, THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER
and THE PILLOW-BOOK and most recently by NIGHTWATCHING.
The relationship between the art object and its context is a dynamic
one. Historically this has been informed by the wider cultural role of art.
Since the early 20th century the increasingly precise way in which art
interacts with its spatial setting has become more and more a part of the
artist’s territory. Since 1971, when Richard Serra made his work Strike,
it is accepted that a work of art can be the constellation of art object,
gallery and viewer, and that the presence of all three players is required
for the work to be complete. Has this expanded field for the production
and experience of art put new demands on the design of art spaces?
Is it the neutrality of the white cube, or the specificity of the loft and
the palace, that best facilitates current and future contemporary
art practice?
Adam Caruso studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal.
He worked for Florian Beigel and Arup Associates before establishing
his own practice with Peter St John in 1990. Adam taught at the
University of North London from 1990-2000. He was a Visiting Professor
at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland from 1999-2001
and Professor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture and
Civil Engineering at the University of Bath from 2002-2005. In 2005
he was a visiting critic at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard
University. He is currently Visiting Professor on the Cities Programme
at the London School of Economics and was a Visiting Professor
at ETH in Zurich, 2007-2009.
Peter Greenaway on his keynote
presentation at Narrative Space.
1
NARRATIVESPACE
Exhibition
As part of Narrative Space we are delighted to present an exhibition in the new
Museum Studies Building. The exhibition includes the work of Haley Sharpe Design,
Metaphor and Land Design Studio and also features Duncan McCauley’s
Cinemachine and an example of a Virtual Viewer developed by David Willrich
and Haley Sharpe Design.
We would like to invite you to join us at a drinks reception
to celebrate the opening of the new Museum Studies Building.
The reception will also mark the opening of our international
conference on museum architecture and design, Narrative Space.
Poster presentations
19th April 2010 6-8pm
Museum Studies Hall, 19 University Road, Leicester LE1 7RF
School of Museum Studies
The Narrative Space exhibition also includes a number of presentations
including a short film and a series of posters. These are displayed on the
first floor of the Museum Studies Building and include contributions from
Monika Diamanti and George Riginos, Napapong Matt Naparat, Sara Wear
and Peter Spring, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Christy Schneider, Mattias Ekman
and Mariana Pestana.
Thank you to David Ward and Anjuu Trevedi in Enterprise and
Business Development, University of Leicester for their support
of the Narrative Space exhibition.
2
3
Tuesday 20th April
9.00
Registration
Ken Edwards Building, Reception
14.30 – 15.15 ‘Beyond Narrative: Designing Epiphanies’
10.00 – 11.00 ‘Welcome’
Professor Richard Sandell, School of Museum Studies,
University of Leicester
‘Introduction to Narrative Space’
Suzanne MacLeod, School of Museum Studies,
University of Leicester
‘Why Narrative Space?’
Heather Mayfield, Deputy Director, Science Museum London
Ken Edwards Building LT1
Ken Edwards Seminar Room
Sense of Place: interpretation,
cityscape, landscape
Exhibition as Stage: performance,
theatre, body
Chair: Dr. James Furse–Roberts
Chair: Stephen Greenberg
Chair: Professor Simon Knell
Ken Edwards LT1
Ken Edwards LT2
Ken Edwards LT3
‘Scales of Narrativity’
Tricia Austin, Central Saint Martins College
of Art & Design
‘A Beautiful Ruin: stains in the city’
Kris Kelly, Calgary Science Centre
‘Co-producing Heritage: the museum
as narrative witness’
Jenny Kidd, City University London
‘Story Design and the Museum:
enriching exhibition narrative’
Julia Pitts, Science Museum London
‘Museum Space as a Framework for Ritual’
Dr Jem Fraser, JWF Consultants
‘Athens, London or Bilbao? Contested Narratives of Display
in the Parthenon Galleries of the British Museum’
Dr Christopher Marshall, University of Melbourne
Ken Edwards LT1
Ken Edwards LT2
15.30 – 17.00 Narrativity: concepts, strategies,
approaches
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee
11.30 – 13.00 Narrativity: concepts,
strategies, approaches
Lee Skolnick, Lee H. Skolnick Architecture
and Design Partnership, New York
‘City as Museum, Museum as City: mediating
the Everyday and special narratives of life’
Dorian Wiszniewski, University of Edinburgh
‘Spaces for Consumption: pleasure and
placelessness in the post-industrial gallery
and museum’
Professor Steven Miles, University of Brighton
‘Forgiving to Not Forget: the potential
of suspending disbelief in museum spaces
for immersive narrative journeys’
Jennie Gadsby, Birmingham Institute
of Art and Design
Sense of Place: interpretation,
cityscape, landscape
Exhibition as Stage:
performance, theatre, body
Chair: Dr Jonathan Hale
Chair: Dr Sheila Watson
Chair: Dr Robert Kirkbride
Ken Edwards LT1
Ken Edwards LT2
Ken Edwards LT3
‘Why thatnow?; linguistic approaches
to socially situated narritive’
Sarah Grandage, University of Nottingham
‘Narrative Space, Narrative Spaces,
Narratives in Spaces’
Oriel Wilson, Haley Sharpe Design
‘Narrative Encounters: negotiating
contemporary exhibition spaces’
Klare Scarborough, Independent Scholar
‘Mediating Culture: Story, not Storey’
Mark Irving, Central Saint Martins College
of Art & Design / Visible Impression Ltd
‘Narrative landscapes: places, spaces
and masterplanning’
Dr James Furse-Roberts, Wildfowl
and Wetlands Trust
‘Lost Gallery Spaces and the Performing Body’
Douglas Gittens and Ang Bartram,
University of Lincoln
‘Inferential Walks through Scarpa’s Woods’
Dr Marc J Neveu, California Polytechnic
State University
‘Eco-museology in Guyana’
Gerard Corsane, University of Newcastle
‘Re-imagining the Galley:
New cartographies of space and time
at the Whitworth Art Gallery, 2009’
Dr Helen Rees Leahy, University of Manchester
17.00 – 17.30 Tea
Ken Edwards Seminar Room
18.00 – 20.30 The Language of Presentation
Keynote Peter Greenaway
Ken Edwards LT1
‘Staging Moments of Presence/Transformation’
Greer Crawley, Buckinghamshire New University
13.00 – 14.30 LUNCH
4
5
Wednesday 21st April
9.30 – 11.00
Narrative and Perception
Old Buildings, New Narratives
Chair: Dr Jonathan Hale
Chair: Dr Christopher Marshall
Ken Edwards LT1
Ken Edwards LT2
‘Artefacts: Narrative Transformations’
Stephen Wischer,
North Dakota State University
‘On the museum’s ruins:
staging the passage of time’
Michaela Giebelhausen,
University of Essex
‘Incomplete Stories’
Annabel Fraser and Hannah Coulson
‘Museum visiting as a patchwork
of spatial experiences’
Haralampos Chaitas and Anastasia
Kalou, Getinspired Design Studio
‘Early Museums, the exhibition
of architecture and the experimental
production of knowledge’
Dr Florian Kossak,
University of Sheffield
‘From Here to There’
Robert Kirkbride,
Parsons The New School for Design
Artist’s Voices, Disruptive
Narratives, New Sensibilities
Chair: Dr Helen Rees-Leahy
Ken Edwards LT3
‘Reviewing the Narrative’
Suzanne Bravery, Museums
and Galleries NSW, Australia
‘Cinemachine’
11.30 – 13.00
An opportunity to talk with
Tom Duncan and Noel McCauley
about their making and their use
of the Cinemachine.
Old Buildings, New Narratives
Chair: Professor Simon Knell
‘Museographic economies’
Allan Parsons
Central Saint Martins College of Art
and Design/University
of the Arts London/University of East London
School of Museum Studies Building
‘Media space – the affect of new media
artwork in the museum’
Peter Ride, University of Westminster
‘Estranged Space:
a study at the Roman baths, Bath’
David Littlefield
“Meaningful encounters
with disrupted narratives:
artists’ interventions as
interpretive strategies”
Miranda Baxter, National Gallery,
London and Claire Robins, Institute
of Education, London University
‘Arsenic, wells and herring curing:
making new meanings in an old fish factory’
Dr Sheila Watson, University of Leicester
and Rachel Kirk and James Steward,
Norfolk Museums Service
Artist’s Voices, Disruptive Narratives,
New Sensibilities
Chair: Dr Christopher Marshall
Landscape viewer demonstration
School of Museum Studies
‘Exhibition making in film:
Peter Greenaway’s ‘The Belly of an Architect’
Alona Martinez-Perez, University of Ulster
‘Imaginary Museums: What Mainstream
Museums Can Learn From Them’
Rachel Morris, Metaphor
‘Narrative spaces: the Book of Lies’
Paola Zellner, Virginia Tech School
of Architecture and Design
13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH
14.00 – 17.00 Visit to Nottingham Contemporary.
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee
14.00 Coach departs
15.00 Adam Caruso, ‘Theories of Gallery Space’
16.00 Refreshments
17.00
Coach returns to Leicester
19.30 – 20.00 Conference Dinner Drinks Reception
School of Museum Studies, Museum Studies Building, Foyer
20.00
Coach departs
20.15 – 23.00 Conference Dinner
The Ballroom, The City Rooms, Leicester
6
7
Thursday 22nd April
9.30 – 10.30 ‘Bits, Bodies and Buildings: New Media and the Museum Experience’
Dr Jonathan Hale, University of Nottingham
‘Live narratives: sharing authorship on-line and on-site’
Dr Ross Parry, University of Leicester
13.30 – 15.00 New Narratives, New Processes
Ken Edwards, LT1
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee
Chair: Dr Lisanne Gibson
Chair: Professor Peter Higgins
Ken Edwards LT1
Ken Edwards LT2
‘Spatial and Narrative Intersections
at the Museum of Modern Art, New York’
Dr Sophia Psarra,
University of Michigan
‘The Theatrical Deconstruction of a Photograph’
Eric Langham, Barker Langham
Old Buildings, New Narratives
‘Museum Making as a social practice’
‘Deposing the Narrator, Fracturing the Narrative’
Jeffrey Abt, Wayne State University
Chair: Jeff Abt
Chair: Stephen Greenberg
Ken Edwards LT1
Ken Edwards LT2
Panel discussion on the economic,
environmental and social sustainability
of museum making.
‘Shrine or laboratory? Building a temporary
home for Lindow Man’
Jeff Horsley
Manchester Museum
‘Conservation Architecture and the Narrative
Imperative: Birmingham Back to Backs’
Dr Geoff Matthews, Lincoln School of
Architecture
‘The Memories of Space’
Mattias Ekman, Oslo School
of Architecture and Design
‘Humanising global public spheres: A narrative
exploration of the museum forum’
Philipp Schorch
Victoria University of Wellington/ Museum of
New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
‘A Narrative Journey Through an Industrial Site’
Tom Duncan and Noel McCauley, Duncan
McCauley, Berlin
11.00 – 12.30 New Narratives, New Processes
‘Developing the Ashmolean: new narratives,
new processes’
Victoria McGuiness
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
‘Three post-apartheid museums reconsidered’
Dr Nicholas Coetzer
University of Cape Town
‘The Past Recaptured’
Sally Stone, Manchester School of Architecture
Media: shaping space and experience
‘Narrative Cases’
Mike Chaplin, Click-Netherfield
‘Accessing Estonian Memories:
building narratives through game form’
Candice Lau, University of Technology, Sydney
Media: shaping space and experience
(film, light and graphics)
Chair: Dominic Sore
Ken Edwards LT3
‘The Thick Present: architecture,
narration and film’
Samantha Martin-Mcauliffe, University
College Dublin and Nathalie Weadick,
Irish Architecture Foundation
‘“Enlightening” Narrative Spaces’
Dr. Raul F. Ajmat and Professor Barrionuevo,
National University of Tucuman, Argentina
‘Where do you want the label? The roles
of graphics in museums and exhibitions’
Jona Piehl,
Chair: Suzanne MacLeod
Participants include:
Dominic Sore, Patton Heritage
Land Design Studio
Peter Higgins, Land Design Studio
Maurice Davis, Museums Association
Rachel Madan, Greener Museums
Clive McCready, Click-Netherfield
Museum Studies Hall,
School of Museum Studies Building
15.00 – 15.30 Tea
15.30 – 16.30 ‘Place, Time and Memory’
Chair: Suzanne MacLeod
Stephen Greenberg
Conference conclusions and thanks.
Ken Edwards LT1
12.30 – 13.30 LUNCH
8
9
Tuesday 21st April
Narrativity: Concepts, Strategies, Approaches, Session 1
10
Narrativity: Concepts, Strategies, Approaches, Session 1
Tricia Austin
Julia Pitts
Dr Jem Fraser
Scales of Narrativity
Story Design and the Museum: Enriching Exhibition Narrative
Museum Space As a Framework For Ritual
Narrativity, a term that describes the degree of “storyness” of a text,
can also be applied to exhibition design, architectural practice, urban
and landscape design to provide a useful analytical framework and
creative methodologies for collaboration among theorists, content
developers, architects and designers. Narrativity can be used to set
out an incremental scale of “storyness” inviting discussion of the
definition of narrative environments. All spaces can be made to tell
a story. For example, sand dunes can tell a story of natural forces,
in the forms shaped by wind and sea power, high-rise tower blocks
can tell a story of socio-political forces, in the forms shaped by urban
concentration, favelas tell a different story of urban development,
shaped by dispossession, exhibitions tell stories of peoples’ material
cultures, natural and social histories, scientific discoveries, and so on.
From these examples, it can be seen that some environments are more
deliberately narrative than others. When does an environment become
a narrative environment? A narrativity scale progresses by identifying
the narrative features from which powerful story experiences
in space can be developed. Thinking of spaces as stories highlights
the quality of audience or user experience, the message or content,
and the degree of authorship and intentionality in the
environment. The telling of the story develops
from dramatic tension and its unfolding over
space and time is interpreted through visual,
audio, olfactory, haptic and tactile senses.
Perfomativity, sequencing of events,
framing, revealing and concealing,
suspense, mimesis, diegesis, closure,
focalisation, human and non-human
agency all become explicit strategies
or devices available to the creative
practitioner. The narrativity scale
is shown as a diagram and examples,
shown through images and video,
are mapped onto the diagram.
Whilst many narrative forms – for example graphic novels, theatre,
television, film and the web – invite audiences to negotiate text,
graphics, still and moving image, objects, audio, new media and
even other people, exhibitions demand that audiences also drive
themselves physically through space. Current exhibition practice
appears to conclude that, because of this three-dimensional setting,
only simple narratives can be effective – for example using chapters,
timelines or debates as content structures. Given that narrative is
considered to be fundamental to the way in which humans make
sense of the world, is it possible that narrative has more to offer
than we currently imagine? Drawing on the early stages of a research
degree, this paper will attempt to map out the extent to which narrative
is currently used in exhibitions. Taking a permanent gallery from the
Science Museum as a case study, this paper will
present a ‘narrative audit’ – both from the
perspective of its development and the
resulting gallery. In so doing it will aim
to highlight how a development team
really uses narrative structures and
devices and how effective they are
for meaningful audience engagement.
It is hoped that as a result we might
have a shared understanding of
‘narrative’, and create a brief key
or taxonomy of current usage.
“A ritual provides a frame. The marked off time or place alerts
a special kind of expectancy, just as the oft repeated ‘Once upon a time’
creates a mood receptive to fantastic tales”
This paper explores the meaning that visitors
to museums make in response to the stories
which are told in the museum displays
in the physical space of the museum.
My hypothesis, based on research
into a number of museums, analyses
these meanings by using drama as
a metaphor for the visitor experience.
I contend that museum architecture
and the displays are designed to nurture
social and aesthetic ritual performances
in which visitors draw on their repertoire
of cultural frames to transact, negotiate
and make meaning which may create a
memorable experience. My paper will focus
on the development of the visitors’ self-narrative
as they engage in social and aesthetic rituals within
the dramatic space. At its best, the museum drama can engage visitors’
emotions and imagination and enable them to experience intellectual,
psychological, emotional and perhaps spiritual growth. At its worst, visitors’
negative experiences alienate them not just from the museum but from
trying such experiences again in the future. In my model, authority, power
and the task of creating the experience are shared between visitors and
museum professionals. I contend that the task of museums is to open
up a range of discourses and give visitors an opportunity to use their
boundaries as bridges across which they may explore new understanding
and tolerances. If the museum embraces this epistemological shift, and
recognises the complex transactions of ritual, drama and power, it could
enable visitors to experience not just learning but growth, and greatly
increase the educational and cultural value of museums. I will show
how this can be done by citing examples of museums which use rituals
and performance successfully and in my own work in the Royal Museum
Edinburgh which will be opened in 2011.
11
Narrativity: Concepts, Strategies, Approaches, Session 2
12
Narrativity: Concepts, Strategies, Approaches, Session 2
Sarah Grandage
Mark Irving
Dr Marc J Neveu
‘Why that now?’: linguistic approaches to socially situated narrative
Mediating Culture: Story, Not Storey
Inferential Walks through Scarpa’s Woods
Literary and linguistic approaches to narrative derive from, and build on,
the widely accepted notion that ‘nearly everyone has a strong sense
of what is a narrative and what is not a narrative’ (Toolan 1996: 136).
Yet, it is notoriously difficult to arrive at a widely accepted, failsafe definition.
This point is further emphasised by the burgeoning debates concerning
non-text-based ‘narratives’ in disciplines such as art history, museum
studies, the built environment and geography. This paper seeks to draw
literary/linguistic notions of narrative into wider debates on this essentially
human approach to recording, recounting and decoding the world around us.
Taking as its starting point one kind of canonical narrative structure,
as proposed by the highly influential sociolinguist William Labov,
this paper considers the function(s) and relationship between constituent
parts of a given narrative, in order to examine the correlation between the
‘story’, that is what is told, and the ‘discourse’, in other words the stylistic
choices that manipulate how the narrative appears to the audience. In doing
so, the paper brings into focus the linguistic mechanisms that help situate
the narrative socially, relating the three nodes of any narrative – the tale,
the teller and the addressee (and the degrees of spatiotemporal proximity
or distance between them). The paper moves on to consider ‘well-formed’
and ‘nonstandard’ narratives, exploring the dynamic process of meaning
creation and how our understanding of what a narrative is/is not allows us to
‘fill in gaps’ and indeterminacies to make sense of the story. The paper ends
by asking how literary/linguistic considerations of what a narrative is can be
placed in dialogue with approaches from other disciplines in a way that could
prove mutually beneficial to wider understandings of what a narrative is.
This paper discusses the nature, traditions and possibilities of story and
storytelling, and the role story (can) play(s) in mediating culture within both
interpretive and corporate contexts. ‘Story’ here is problematised - viewed as
a means of negotiating or owning experience as well as clarifying purpose or
framing systems of power. Story’s relationship to (but difference from) history
is questioned. However, the notion of ‘mediating culture’ itself acknowledges
that culture is produced, a form of refracted life. What place does story have
in negotiating culture and shaping experience? What distinguishes story from
narrative, history and other ‘relating’ vehicles? I question the use of storey
(new architecture or increased bureaucratic hierarchy as ‘default solutions’)
and assess instead what an organisation’s attitude to story reveals about
its internal culture. Story is far more powerful than ‘mere’ interpretation.
Drawing on ancient traditions of sacred invocation, oral history, communal
celebration, it is both a process of collective mapping and a form of magic.
Story space – the imaginative ‘capture’ of the listener and the space where
this is enacted or performed - is primarily an emotional condition with
shamanic antecedents. What relevance might this have to learning and
memory and the spatialisation of knowledge? Drawing on Tony Bennett’s
proposition about the exhibitionary complex, my paper explores the problems
of the authorial (sometimes authoritative) voice within (key word: notion
of containment) interpretive spaces such as museums and galleries,
assessing the controlling mechanisms in place that shape the reception
of stories. I test the political, ethical and social privilege accorded the
documentary mode, and investigate the usefulness of emotions (including
sentimentality and empathy) in mediating culture and communicating
experience. What role do narrative ethics play in the telling of stories?
What room is there for informality and what happens when you dispense
with story entirely?
In the mid 1980s Italo Calvino gave the Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard
University. In his third talk on “Quickness” he explained, “I do not wish to
say that quickness is a value in itself. Narrative time can also be delaying,
cyclic, or motionless. In any case, a story is an operation carried out on the
length of time involved, an enchantment that acts on the passing of time,
either contracting or dilating it.” Umberto Eco, a decade later, referenced
Calvino in the third of his own lectures at Harvard entitled “Lingering in
the Woods.” In the essay, Eco described a number of temporal strategies
employed by various authors that explore the pleasures of lingering. In this
paper, I will show that such temporal tactics described by Eco and Calvino
share uncanny similarities to the museum spaces of the Venetian architect
Carlo Scarpa. It is my wager that a careful traveller (like Eco’s model
reader) to Scarpa’s work will inevitably linger. I will show through
two projects in particular – the Querini Stampalia, in Venice and the
Museo Castellvecchio, in Verona – that Scarpa intentionally offers
disruptions in the uniform nature of processional time through
his work. Indeed, Scarpa’s work is full of delays, distractions,
and redirections that, if followed, present enchanting
experiences, not unlike those described by Calvino and Eco
in their own narratives. Thus, I will demonstrate that the
similarities between architecture and narrative are not
only spatial but temporal as well.
13
Sense of Place: Interpretation, Cityscape, Landscape, Session 1
Sense of Place: Interpretation, Cityscape, Landscape, Session 1
Kris Kelly
Dorian Wiszniewski
Professor Steven Miles
A Beautiful Ruin: Stains in the City
City as Museum, Museum as City: Mediating the Everyday
and Special Narratives of Life
Spaces for Consumption: Pleasure and Placelessness
in the Post-Industrial Gallery and Museum
Apparatuses of narrative (Brecht) are employed to configure and frequently
prescribe the role and relations between curator, architect, artist, scientist,
critic and public. However, are the practices of Architecture and the Museum
guilty of privileging themselves, especially over the ordinary so as to protect
culture and humanity from the un-theorised, un-valued, non-aesthetic,
non-scientific, vulgar, prosaic and spiritually contaminated everyday?
This paper promotes a critical exchange between the narrative apparatuses
of Architecture and the Museum. It initiates this exchange through an
elaboration of two assertions: 1) There is a curatorial basis to the procedures
of both Architecture and the Museum; and 2) The curatorial projects of both
Architecture and Museum mediate everyday and special narratives of life.
The first assertion is not controversial. Architects and Museums both care
for collections: collectives of people, their cultures and artefacts. The second
assertion is conditioned by an attitude towards the three terms it frames:
the everyday, the special and narrative. This attitude qualifies the first
assertion. This paper will sketch a theory of passivity and distraction
(Benjamin) that arises from a close scrutiny of everyday
experience. Such a theory sees radical potential
in the passivity of everyday experience.
Therefore, the paper will show that a
productive theory of passivity harnesses
a movement between what it means
to experience the special everyday
and thinking the everyday special
(Blanchot, Wall). Furthermore,
this paper suggests that a critical
understanding of the play between
focussed and passive experience
opens potential for constructing
new methodologies of narrative.
This paper is concerned with museums and galleries as spaces that
both reflect and reinforce the key role of the ‘experience economy’ in the
reinvention of the post-industrial city. In recent years iconic architecture
has played an important role in promoting a service-driven vision of the city
in which the experience of the consumer is apparently key. This presentation
seeks to understand the way in which culture is appropriated as part of the
stories that are attached to the rebranding of the contemporary city.
The particular concern here is to address whether or not museums
and galleries serve to reinforce and reproduce a homogenised consumer
landscape. In considering the contention that museums in particular are
engaged in a constant crisis of identity as to whether their primary function
is to educate or to entertain the paper considers the ways in which the
consumer society has changed the expectations visitors
have of the museum. In short, at least superficially,
museums appear no longer to be defined by
their relationship to objects but rather
by their relationship to their visitors.
The concern here is whether this
process enables the consumer
of the interpretive museum
experience or inevitably results
in the emptying out of place
through the superficial
consumption of the city.
Spaces for touristic consumption
are often subject to a highly
staged experience or escape
that privatises the nature of
social experience and in doing
so rejects the very social nature
of that experience. The aim is
therefore to consider the implications
of such a process for professionals
involved in imaginatively
reshaping the visitor experience.
Designers can participate in the conversation
between a city and its inhabitants. The
performing arts can be used to give a voice
to social issues in the city. An empty lot
has been stained by the environment,
buildings, events and people that have
used it before. Placing an audience in
a specific place draws attention to that
site and provides an opportunity to
rethink how that site will be developed.
Considered in abstract the site is a
history in progress, the stain is the
past seeping through to the present.
A performance on that site is a way of
drawing out and analyzing the parts of that
stain that are relevant to its rehabilitation.
The architect can contribute by adding direction to
that process and bringing together the city, the site and the performance.
This paper studies the use of interdisciplinary collaboration between
architecture and performance theatre to provoke social and physical
change in that downtown Calgary neighbourhood of Victoria Park east.
It will catalogue the design of a collaborative process with a performance
ensemble, and then the collaboration itself. The common language for
this collaboration is drawing, and from that visual dialogue the design of
a temporary site specific performance space is developed. The temporary
space will be three things: 1) A beacon marking the site of conflict.
2) A performance exposing the history of the site and sharing that with
the public. 3) A ruin of raw materials intended to be reused in the
construction of subsequent occupations of the site.
14
15
16
Sense of Place: Interpretation, Cityscape, Landscape, Session 2
Sense of Place: Interpretation, Cityscape, Landscape, Session 2
Oriel Wilson
Dr James Furse-Roberts
Gerard Corsane
Narrative Space, Narrative Spaces, Narratives in Spaces
Narrative Landscapes: Places, Spaces and Masterplanning
Eco-Museology in Guyana
The differences between creating an environment where the space
is of itself the narrative, an experience where the spaces are designed
and used to unequivocally convey a particular narrative and finally existing
spaces in which narratives related or unrelated to those spaces have to
be told, these are the opportunities offered to those of us who wish to use
physical spaces as a form of communication. Whichever of the above is the
reality of a particular place the audience will experience space as an element
in their enjoyment, comprehension and engagement with the narrative
whether emotive or emotional, whether overt or subliminal. However
supposedly neutral a space appears or is imagined, it is a statement
of intent from the creators or users of the space. As such it is there
to be read by the audience. There is no museum without walls until
the museum moves into cyberspace where narrative space
takes on a whole other set of meanings and requires
other parameters through which to be explored.
Through looking at a number of case
studies we will explore these differing
opportunities and consider how physical
space in real time can be manipulated
creatively to become an integral and
coherent element in the narrative
or a narrative in itself.
200,000 years ago, Mitochondrial Eve, the ancestral mother of every human
alive today, lived in East Africa. She inhabited a world full of a myriad of signs
that, together, could have been read to reveal stories of the creation of the
different landscapes and the lives led by the plants and animals within them.
However, the physical changes that were made to these landscapes were
the by-product of life and not a conscious effort to express an idea. Over the
following 140,000 years, humans evolved language, music, culture. For them,
the landscape may now have been a living picture-book, draped with stories
explaining their lives and the lives of the animals and plants they relied on.
About this time, Y-chromosomal Adam lived in Africa; his descendants would
leave Africa and populate the rest of the World. It would be another 50,000
years before humans first make the change from nomadic hunter-gathers
to farmers. This fundamental change not only marked the birth of modern
Man as we know it but also the point at which humans began to drastically
influence the landscapes they lived in. Initially, these activities were limited
to subsistence but as agricultural techniques improved our ancestors
had time on their hands; time they used to manipulate the landscape for
purposes not relating to subsistence. Evidence of this can be seen today
at the 5,000 year old earthworks and standing stones at Avebury, England,
or the more recent, 2,500 year old, Nazca lines in Peru. These sites were
obviously of great importance to their creators and continue to elicit deep
emotional responses in us today. However, despite the relatively short
time-span between the creation of these landscapes and our viewing
of them today, we are now unable to fully understand their meaning.
Even with much more recent examples of landscapes designed to convey
stories, such as the eighteenth century gardens of the Landscape Garden
movement, an emotional response remains but the detail of the narrative
is not communicated because the meaning of the symbols has been lost.
Can our emotional responses to a landscape be explained in the context
of our evolution? Can we go beyond the basic emotional response and
design landscapes that convey a narrative? If so, how reliant must this
be on the use of symbols that would not be understood by someone
from outside our culture?
The sharing and interpretation of natural and cultural heritage narratives
can happen within large areas of landscape. This paper will look at how
natural and cultural narratives and the relationships between them
can be presented within a large area of Guyana using the principles of
the ecomuseum ideal. Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest
Conservation and Development works very closely with international,
national and local shareholders and stakeholders to manage and
responsibly utilise the resources of one million acres of protected
rainforest in the centre of the country. Of particular importance in this
project, is the ways in which Iwokrama has engaged with the local
shareholders through the North Rupununi District Development Board,
which has representation from 15 local Amerindian communities in
the savannah wetlands south of the protected rainforest area and the
one community located at the northern entry point to the conservation
area by road. This engagement has empowered members of these local
communities to fully participate in the processes aimed at managing this
vital rainforest resource, which the Guyanese government gifted to the
international community. However, the work undertaken by these partners
and stakeholders, over a couple of hundred square miles of rainforest
and savannah landscapes, does not only focus on the conservation of
natural heritage resources and making people aware of the impact on
climate change as a result of de-forestation. It does more, as it aims to
communicate overlaying narratives that highlight an articulation between
nature and culture that break the artificial boundaries that have been
created between these two forms of heritage resources. In this, local
Amerindian communities, with an understanding of their traditional
values and cultural practices, are seen as being a key to the sharing and
interpretation of narratives based on belief systems that once helped to
safeguard sustainability of these resources. These communities, which are
engaging with globalisation and change, are looking into how their narratives
can be used to promote alternative livelihoods through, for example, the
development of responsible and sustainable heritage tourism. This paper
will consider the work of these partners and stakeholders and will suggest
that by adopting the principles and practices of the ecomuseum ideal,
these vast landscapes can be used to communicate important narratives
to a range of different tourist and user groups.
17
Exhibition as Stage: Performance, Theatre, Body, Session 1
Exhibition as Stage: Performance, Theatre, Body, Session 1
Jenny Kidd
Jennie Gadsby
Greer Crawley
Co-Producing Heritage: The Museum As Narrative Witness
Forgiving Not to Forget: The Potential of Suspending Disbelief
in Museum Spaces for Immersive Narrative Journeys
Staging Moments of Presence/Transformation
Across the cultural sector, there is a move toward increased participation
on the part of those previously defined (rather uninspiringly) as ‘users’
and ‘consumers’. This is the case for museums also, where the rhetoric
of co-production and consultation is increasingly common. I wish to
examine the ways in which this is being realised in the practice of heritage
performance – increasingly participatory, and requiring of ‘audiences’
a willingness to give of themselves to the narrative in ways previously
unimagined. Research at the University of Manchester (www.manchester.
ac.uk/plh) has examined the number of ways in which people respond
to the call to participate in the performance of heritage (often termed
live interpretation or museum theatre). With a focus on ‘learning’
we have spoken with more than 450 individuals about their experiences,
exploring the ways in which participatory instances make the heritages
in question more vivid, relevant and memorable. The delineation of the
space of performance (i.e. split between audience and performer),
and its presentation within the wider frame of the institution are
crucial to respondents’ understanding of the participatory moment,
and their willingness to (often) make themselves vulnerable through
involvement. There are no doubt issues about power, authority,
veridicality and authenticity involved in these moments which
we have sought to understand more thoroughly in the research.
Using a number of examples from the research, I argue that in these
moments ‘the museum’ as site and as institution becomes a narrative
witness, even a narrative legitimiser, and the graveness of this
responsibility should not be under-estimated. I also argue that
these forms of participation often represent a challenge to authority
for which museums are currently unprepared.
18
Although museum theatre has developed rapidly over the last decade
and demonstrated itself to be beneficial to the role of museums, the true
potential of theatrical principles are often misunderstood by museum
professionals. A popular storytelling technique for centuries, theatre has
developed many well practiced methods for communicating narratives to
audiences. Many of these can be well demonstrated using design, one key
method being the suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief refers
to a visitor’s ability or readiness to ‘overlook’ limitations for a greater
purpose- most often for entertainment value. This paper considers the
ability of museums to utilise suspension of disbelief and the willingness
of visitors to do so in museum settings. Does the commonly accepted
educational value of museums and visitors expectancy for historical
accuracy and truth negate the use of this method within museums
spaces? Existing examples will be discussed of museums
spaces which rely on visitors to excuse or accept limitations in
exchange of immersive narrative journeys through the space.
The successful use and outcomes of these will be considered.
“Obviously they’ve come in a car, they’ve walked in through
the door, they’ve paid their money - they don’t really
believe they’re in Victorian Leeds but it’s getting them
that step nearer to it”. (McNulty, 2009- discussing
‘The Street’ exhibition at the Thackray Medical
Museum). When able to immerse in these narratives
what return do the visitors gain: more learning,
greater long term recall of information or just
more enjoyable days out? Meanwhile the limitations
of the method are examined. Can visitors ignore
the busy traffic of a nearby A-road to become
immersed in a replica World War I trench?
‘Theatre arts are all arts of the possible: physical, tangible,
transient phenomena. Even at its most exquisitely achieved,
the magic is still rough. It needs to be seen, smelt and touched.’
Simon Callow
Theatre is a visual art form and an ephemeral
one - a great deal of its appeal is in
the process work that goes to make
up ‘the moment’ of performance.
The question is how to represent
process/performance/making.
This paper will discuss the
exhibition of performance
and performance design with
particular reference to the
UK exhibition at the Prague
Quadrennial of Performance Design
and Space in 2011. The proposed
theme is Narrative: Transformation and
Revelation and the intention is to show how
designers use the transformation of space,
structures and performers to reveal narrative.
While addressing the difficulties faced with exhibiting performance,
this paper will also consider the adoption of a theatrical and scenographic
language to inform the aesthetics of contemporary exhibition design.
A comparison will be made of the visual and spatial constructs of theatre
and exhibition design. The aim is to identify and illustrate how a narrative
is told. By examining the poetic possibilities of theatre design, this paper
will demonstrate how exhibition is scripted and re-imagined as stage.
19
20
Exhibition as Stage: Performance, Theatre, Body, Session 2
Exhibition as Stage: Performance, Theatre, Body, Session 2
Klare Scarborough
Douglas Gittens and Ang Bartram
Dr Helen Rees Leahy
Narrative Encounters: Negotiating Contemporary Exhibition Spaces
Lost Gallery Spaces and the Performing Body
The past three decades have witnessed significant scholarly interest
in theories about both narrative and performance. Marie Maclean’s
Narrative as Performance (1988) reflected a convergence of those interests,
through an examination of the contractual nature of interactions between
texts and readers, and the spatial relationships operative within texts
themselves. Drawing upon the work of Maclean, as well as that of other
literary and cultural theorists, I would like to explore the structure of
narrative encounters within the space of several contemporary exhibitions.
My paper will be particularly concerned with the performativity of spatial
relationships, the contractual nature
of social communication, and the
negotiation of multiple voices
and narratives within public
exhibition settings.
The interior of the contemporary art gallery provides its users with a
sterilised laboratory for the placement and experience of art. Increasingly,
its bleached interior presents an a priori condition for the legitimate
assignment of artworks within the complex milieu of the contemporary city.
Such interiors have become an architectural typology, a predetermined
homogenous non-place within which artworks can reside. In this sense we
can look to Lefebvre in order to understand the condition of the gallery space
for ‘inasmuch as abstract space tends towards homogeneity, towards the
elimination of existing differences or peculiarities, a new space cannot
be born (produced) unless it accentuates differences.’ (Lefebvre: 1991, 52)
The work of the artist, by contrast, liberates difference. More specifically,
the art of performance simultaneously generates and exposes marginal
space within the gallery interior; it is a corporeal action t hat deposits
residual stains and blemishes across the galleries internal skin,
leaving marks and traces that resist homogeneity to create a
temporary site of differential experience. The lost, forgotten
or overlooked marginal zones and irregularities of the
gallery space become a point of ephemeral spectacle
and this paper addresses the impact of this spatial
and corporeal collision. The research that informs
and situates these phenomena traces the lost and
unrecorded spaces, irregularities, marks, blemishes
and scars that exist within the gallery space before,
during and after the performance act. Recorded
through orthographic drawing conventions, the
research generates a narrative cartography of
corporeal intervention within the gallery interior.
The co-authors of this research form a practical
and tangible collaboration that fuses the dynamics
and complexities of the performer’s body with
the fixed conventions of architectural drawings.
This paper will explore how the body can become
an instrument to record and describe the gallery
interior beyond, yet from within, traditional
architectural systems of representation.
Re-Imagining the Gallery: New Cartographies
of Space and Time at the Whitworth Art Gallery, 2009
In the early summer of 2009, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester,
underwent an intensive sequence of spatio-temporal transformations
prompted by a two-week exhibition of performance art called “Marina
Abramovic Presents” (3rd – 18th July 2009). The first transformation (at the
end of June) was effected by the decision to empty the entire gallery of its
collections and displays in order to accommodate Abramovic’s exhibition in
which the entire building would be occupied by fourteen performance artists,
each installed in her/his own room or passage. For a short period after the
collections had been put into store, the building was opened to the public
devoid of any objects: only empty showcases and a few marks on the walls
and floors indicated where the absent artworks were previously displayed.
In a reordering of the space syntax of the building, visitors were invited to
take part in hourly tours of the stores and other ‘private’ spaces usually
accessible only to the gallery staff. The next transformation was effected
by the exhibition of durational performance (curated by Abramovic with
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Maria Balshaw) which substituted the bodies
of artists for the gallery’s usual object displays, and which required
all members of the (pre-booked) audience to spend four hours in the
Whitworth, arriving and leaving simultaneously. The first hour was devoted
to an induction process which Abramovic calls the ‘public drill’, devised to
inculcate a heightened awareness of how we see and move in gallery space,
prior to encountering the actual performance works. The third and final
transformation took place once the Abramovic show had closed and the
artworks were returned to the galleries, entailing a re-hang throughout the
building. This paper explores the different ways in which visitors encountered
and experienced the Whitworth during these successive transformations in
which the narrative space of the gallery was first inverted (the ‘back of house’
is revealed), then reconstituted by Abramovic according a new regime of
temporality, and finally rewritten as the collections were reinstalled. During
each of these stages, how is the cartography of the gallery remapped by the
body practices of visitors as well as by the absence/presence of objects/
artists? How do visitors first navigate the physical and symbolic spaces of
the empty gallery, and then the gallery transformed as performance site(s)?
When the collections return, what traces of previous curatorial and spatial
paradigms will resist and rebuke the overlay of new narratives, thereby
imbricating the impulse for renewal with the intractability of past practices?
21
Exhibition as Stage: Performance, Theatre, Body, Session 2
Dr Christopher Marshall
Lee Skolnick
Athens, London, or Bilbao? Contested Narratives of Display
in the Parthenon Galleries of the British Museum
Beyond Narrative: Designing Epiphanies
The imminent opening of Bernard Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum in
Athens is set to reignite, once again, the ongoing debate over the ownership
and most appropriate location for displaying the Parthenon sculptures in
the contemporary global museum network. With this in mind, the British
Museum has already pre-emptively announced that the new museum
“does not alter the Trustees’ view that the sculptures are part of everyone’s
shared heritage and transcend cultural boundaries”. Yet for all this
dissension, it is surprising how little relative attention has been paid to the
specific narratives created for the sculptures as a result of their display
setting within the British Museum itself. The vast gallery sequence created
for the sculptures by John Russell Pope (1930-38), in close collaboration
with his patron Joseph Duveen, has come to stand as a paradigmatic early
twentieth century expression of the museum as temple. Yet, as this paper
will show, behind the apparent serenity and timeless authority of this display
environment lies a much more fraught and contentious design process that
is fascinating to study for what it has to tell us about the many alternative
visions for the Parthenon Galleries that might have been constructed other
than the one we experience today.
22
For eight long years Duveen and Pope wrangled endlessly with the Trustees
of the British Museum over countless details of design: should the sculptures
be supplemented in any way with casts? Should the pediments be placed in
the middle of the gallery or at the end? How high should the pedestals be
and how should they be decorated? How should the Metopes be displayed
and in what position relative to the friezes? Should the frieze run together as
a continuous sequence, or be left open in places to indicate missing sections?
These discussions are highly revealing of the alternative possibilities for the
display of the Parthenon sculptures then being considered, but they also
point to a deeper debate that had far reaching consequences for the British
Museum and that also bears fascinating parallels with the current discourse
of museum design today. Previous analyses have characterised the disputes
over the planning for the Parthenon Galleries as that between archaeologists
and aesthetes – with aestheticism winning out triumphantly in the end.
While this is certainly true, it nonetheless needs also to be recognised that
a yet deeper debate was taking place concerning the kinds of narratives that
the galleries would convey to the visitor about the British Museum itself and
the position of the Parthenon Sculptures within it. The Trustees were deeply
suspicious of the emphasis in Pope’s designs on what they perceived to be
an architecturally grand-standing and theatricalised approach. As one
trustee tellingly expressed it, the shift indicated in Pope’s and Duveen’s
plans was “to treat the Marbles as something exceptional, and to build a
sort of shrine for them, taking them completely out of the ordinary series
of galleries, as they now are”. The result was the creation of a spectacular,
integrated architectural/sculptural environment, as opposed to a more
‘neutral’ museum gallery, that had few contemporary precedents at that
stage. In many respects, though, these emphases have since become
much more common in museum architecture. The paper will accordingly
conclude by considering some of the implications of this early twentieth
century example of a globalised ‘destination’ museum architecture for
the contemporary field, including Tschumi’s New Acropolis Museum itself.
This paper will follow up where my paper “Towards a New Museum
Architecture: Narrative and Representation” left off (in MacLeod, ed.,
Reshaping Museum Space, 2005).The goal will be to move through a
treatment of the role of narrative in the creation of architectural and
cultural experiences, while at the same time exploring the limitations
of narrative as it has been understood and used in recent practices.
I will draw upon a variety of sources and examples to outline the
definitions of narrative in relation to architecture, philosophy,
psychology, science, music, and other fields, and then go on
to introduce the notion of epiphany as a goal that can take us
beyond narrative to meaning-making in the design of both
exhibitions and buildings.
In the examples, I will attempt to demonstrate how specific built
experiences utilise narrative to embody meaning. In particular, I will
cite churches, concert halls, and other purpose/concept/
polemic-driven structures that have been exemplars
of embodiment. However, I will try to stretch the
goal of meaning-making by expanding on the
idea of epiphany as a particular, revelatory
moment that is the cumulative result of
already received information. In so doing,
I will explore the possibility that a spatial
experience can grow organically from
content and intent, and propose that the
achievement of epiphany is only possible
if the creator has an understanding of
how the participant will respond.
23
Wednesday 21st April
Narrative and Perception, Session 1
24
Narrative and Perception, Session 1
Stephen Wischer
Annabel Fraser and Hannah Coulson
Haralampos Chaitas and Anastasia Kalou
Artefacts: Narrative Transformations
Incomplete Stories
Museum Visiting As a Patchwork of Spatial Experiences
This paper seeks to reveal the value of narrative creations in instigating
meaningful architectural creation via artefacts and exhibition. In narratives
we find the capacity to awaken an embodied creativity, made tangible
in artefacts which present and help us enact life’s stories. From initial
design questioning, to space making and artefacts, the interpretive
activity sponsored by the narrative helps designers and attendees alike to
become involved with a vital participation with perception which brushes
design against the things that make experience meaningful. Born from
an involvement with experience the narrative and subsequent creations
are able to provide significance and contextualisation beyond objective
determination, which seems especially important amidst a wealth of
reductive activities and productions central to our post-modern constructed
consciousness. The narrative creation born through tangible interaction
with memory and imagination helps rekindle an inquiry that touches the
innate intertwining of the body and world crucial for architectural inquiry.
In so doing, the narrative serves as a vital orientation for design revealing
subtleties and meaning beyond abstract analysis. Like poetry itself narratives
and the transformations born from them inspire the imagination to “leap”
provoking “newness” in our understanding of the world, forever changing
and adding to our understanding of it. Framed by the theoretical discussions
of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Umberto Eco, among
others, this paper seeks to disclose the value of
narrative creations via artistic artefacts and
presentation. Discussions of particular
creations, which use narrative as their
impetus, will serve as the focus of
the essay, sighting examples of both
student work and architectural
masterworks. This paper will
seek to contribute to the direction
of hermeneutical investigation
by exploring how this transformative
activity either profits from
or becomes threatened
by the framework of our
globalising culture?
Museums deal in both the tangible and the invisible. They house artefacts
and ideas that have been brought from, or have survived beyond, a time or a
place where we are not; somewhere that may only now exist in our individual
or collective imagination. Yet in order for the public to make sense of them,
museums seek out a comprehensible story. Striving to make historical
situations accessible and clear to visitors is, undoubtedly, important.
However, the internet’s web of hyperlinked and multi-authored information,
and the ubiquitous use of blogs, Twitter and RSS feeds appear to be changing
the way we absorb knowledge away from the traditional hierarchical model.
We propose to debate whether design that reflects traits of these new
forms of communication and draws upon each visitor’s imagination might
better reflect complex, multi-faceted histories. As B.S. Johnson said,
‘Life does not tell stories. Life is chaotic, fluid, random; it leaves ends
untidied, untidily.’ The ability to form or follow any narrative in a museum
relies on the imagination. Yet when an experience rests on something so
personal the resulting interpretations of that experience may be unexpected
or incomplete. Our paper would explore how design can embrace these
points of view. Is there potential in design that challenges the instinct to
fill in gaps or find meaning in stories? Can exhibitions respond to disjointed
or open-ended narratives without confusing visitors? Raphael Samuel,
in Theatres of Memory, described history as ‘a social form of knowledge;
the work, in any given instance, of a thousand different hands’. So the
grand narratives of history may owe much to individual interpretation
and memory; though memory splinters a chronology, history is constructed
from those splinters. While this may result in inconsistent material,
can uncertain or mysterious experiences be meaningful? What happens
when we are reminded that we cannot always immediately understand
everything we encounter?
This proposal explores the interconnection of spatial experiences and
narrative through the study of senses. It has been put forward that people
are not recognised as passive recipients of stimuli but that they act as
awakened spectators ready for action, to seek stimuli, thus making the
transition to an active perception of things. This renders the individual
as a depot of experiences that help in the interpretation of new messages.
A museum visit is examined as a random combination (patchwork) of spatial
experiences. The definition of the term ‘experience’ and any characteristics
identified, constitute the questions in search of an answer through the
specific study. At the same time, it will examine the senses as tools
for the reading of space using a wide range of interdisciplinary
sciences like environmental psychology, sociology and philosophy.
The approach will aid in the determination first, of the notion
of experience, the types of transmittable messages
as well as their evolutionary connection
which leads to narrative comprehension.
Finally, the proposal includes
provisions for the use of specific
case studies that depict individual
or comprehensive elements of
the given theoretical framework
which are vital for its further
comprehension.
25
Old Buildings, New Narratives, Session 1
Dr Florian Kossak
Robert Kirkbride
On The Museum’s Ruins: Staging the Passage of Time
Early Museums: The Exhibition of Architecture
and the Experimental Production of Knowledge
From Here to There
This paper examines whether a conceptual return to some of the earliest
meanings, forms and operations of the ‘museum’ could give us an indication
as to how we can reintroduce experimental and productive narratives into
otherwise institutionally stifled exhibition set-ups. The paper will here
particularly look at exhibitions of architecture and examine how the relation
between the ‘architecture of the container’ and the ‘architecture as the
exhibit’ can create a spatial dialectic through which exhibitions produce and
communicate new knowledge. Between the 15th and 18th century, the use
of the term ‘museum’ or ‘museion’ was still ambiguous and multi-layered.
It was still used in a way that signified, at the same time, the collections of
artefacts as well as the buildings in which these artefacts and collections
are kept. Furthermore, these museums could be active places of research,
experimentation as well as production of knowledge. They could even be
only an immaterial concept rather than any specific typology of building.
It is herein that these early museums, as well as their ‘relatives’ such as
the princely and scholarly studioli, the Wunder - and Kunstkammers, the
cabinets des curiosités, had the potential for the creation of experimental
narratives, through exhibitions that could be described as laboratories of
knowledge. In regard to these early museums and exhibitions, the paper will
scrutinise the potential of the contrasting notions of scientific classification;
the absence historical time and linear narratives; the lack of professionally
defined disciplines and their delineation; the valuation of amateurism; the
emerging forms of display techniques and scenarios as well as the very
establishment of a public audience. The paper will argue for a closer look
into our own history in order to develop again exhibitions as places of public
experimentation and production of knowledge.
Photographer:
Tiro Sw
aby (
Neo
pen
t.co
m)
Michaela Giebelhausen
The paper investigates the museum’s peculiar relationship with time.
In the museum time stands still, or if Hollywood blockbusters are to be
believed, it is where history comes alive at night. The museum preserves
our cultural heritage and protects objects from human touch and the
ravages of time; a fine fantasy that rubs up against uncomfortable realities.
Who can forget the pictures disseminated globally of the vandalised Baghdad
Archaeological Museum (now the National Museum of Iraq), its treasures
smashed or looted. The temple of art has rarely been so brutally desecrated.
But from its very inception the museum has inspired fears of decay and
destruction. In the 1790s, while working on proposals to improve the
Louvre’s Grande Galerie Hubert Robert painted two pictures. One shows
the stunningly sky-lit Grande Galerie, a confident vision of progress,
the other presents the same space in ruins. The image of ruin threatens
the notion of the museum as a safe haven where objects seemingly
live forever. But at the centre of Robert’s painting squats the artist;
he sketches the touchstone of western cultural aspiration, the Apollo
Belvedere. Even amidst the museum’s ruins culture is instantly reborn.
This is an elegiac yet confident reminder of history’s inevitable cycle
of rise and fall. Whether classical or modern, museums have stood tall
in the face of history’s changes. Since the late eighteenth century temples
of art have proliferated across the globe and the timelessness of the temple
has lingered on in the rhetoric of the white cube. Far rarer are the moments
in which museums admit their fragility. My paper analyses the staging of the
museum itself as a fragile object when it is made to comment on, or bear
witness to, the passage of time. It asks whether prominent cases such as
Stirling’s extension to the Stuttgart Staatsgalerie or Chipperfield’s recent
resurrection of the Neue Museum in Berlin are valid comments on the
fragility of culture or simply playful pastiche. While the envelope speaks so
eloquently of time passing, the entrails are high-tech and designed to protect
the objects against decay and destruction. Business as usual in the museum
then, until bullets shatter the glass cases and the looting begins again.
26
Old Buildings, New Narratives, Session 1
In my investigation of the Urbino studiolo, one of a pair of contemplation
chambers built in the late fifteenth century for Federico da Montefeltro,
I note that the inlaid trompe l’oeil benches are fitted with wheels and,
furthermore, that these wheels are fitted with axles. Why? Comparing
the room with the biga (wagon) in a contemporary painting by Piero della
Francesca, I describe how the studiolo imagery was composed to literally
and figuratively move observers, as a stimulus to memory and narrative
invention. While decoding the humanistic and neoplatonic modes of reading
embedded in its ornamental program, I also detected a throughline in my
own experience – an abiding fascination with narrative vehicles that transport
occupants from here to there. Whether a studiolo, memory theatre, time
machine or transporter room, such vehicles are conceived to carry
us back, across, forward and beyond. To what end? This paper will
offer a few speculations, including thoughts about navigating online
multimedia within and beyond the museum.
27
Old Buildings, New Narratives, Session 2
28
Allan Parsons
David Littlefield
Museographic Economies
Estranged Space; a study at the Roman baths, Bath
A narrative environment approach is proposed for the design of museum
buildings, interiors and exhibitions. Museums and galleries are often
described as destinations. This destination can be understood as a place
(topos) in two senses: the museum building in an urban, socio-cultural
topography; and the museum collection, as a cultural topos (line of argument
or story). If both parts of this place are understood through narrative, the
metaphor might be interpreted as: museum building = frame or setting;
museum collection = argument or story. However, a thoroughgoing
narrative environment approach to such a double place, first, applies the
narrative model to what was previously considered environmental frame,
surroundings or circumstances. This implies that environmental features
embody and convey elements of the narrative. The narrative is not restricted
to the artefacts in the collection but extends out into the environment,
especially architectural forms and spatial relationships. Second, a narrative
environment approach recognises that there is no simple, unmediated
access to the story, understood in narratological terms as a bare
chronological succession of events. The story is accessed through plot,
i.e. the events in the order presented and the way they are connected.
The visitor, then, is not presented with story elements but plot elements
from which the visitor interprets the story. Furthermore, the plot elements
begin with the design of the museum façade and entrance, extend through
the museum interiors and the museum layout and continue into the
museum artefacts and ways in which they are presented. This approach
implies extensive collaboration among architects, interior designers,
exhibition designers, collection curators and others, for example,
to establish both plot sequences and story structures, to design engaging
plot devices, to re-interpret legacy architectures through emerging
plot-lines and to understand the articulation of intellectual, sensory
and embodied sense-making from a narrative perspective.
In this presentation I will explore notions of spatial strangeness and
estrangedness. Drawing on a study of the Roman baths, Bath, the
presentation will examine the relationship between the curated public
baths and a set of little-known underground vaults which lie adjacent to
them. These pairs of spaces represent a public zone of conventional beauty/
heritage, and their “other”. The contrast could not be greater – although
just the thickness of a wall separates them. The project to be presented
- undertaken by staff from the University of the West of England, Chelsea
College of Art & Design and the University of Plymouth - is an exploration
of the aesthetic value of forgotten, dormant and neglected spaces.
Critically, the project examines the relationships between these spaces
and the public realm, and provides clues, through art and design practice,
of how they can be reimagined. Building on the work contained within the
book Architectural Voices; listening to old buildings, by David Littlefield and
Saskia Lewis, the project at the Roman baths deploys a particular mode
of viewing space – that of considering it as a void onto which meaning and
narrative can be overlaid. “Estranged” spaces are typically back-of-house
zones which have slipped from memory and use, and are merely there.
The project at the Roman baths seeks aesthetic value within these spaces,
and an understanding of the poetic, metaphoric and physical relationships
these zones have with their more public siblings – as well as insight into
the meaning of narrative, art, beauty and value. Through this pilot project
the participants hope to develop a methodology through which other
spaces can be understood, especially ones located within the
heritage sector. In a sense, the project is also a site study, but
the analytical tools concern atmosphere, light, texture and the
profundities of absence, as well as spatial measurement. What
lends this project an extra dimension of interest is the fact
that managers at the Roman baths are currently looking into
ways of regenerating the vaults, bringing them into the public
realm as an extension to the baths themselves. This will involve
a complete rehabilitation, and the study has been designed to help
site managers more fully understand the space they propose
to develop.
Old Buildings, New Narratives, Session 2
Sheila Watson, Rachel Kirk,
James Steward
What lends this project a particular element of visual and narrative
excitement is the fact that the vaults function, incidentally, as a camera
obscura, capturing images of the principal baths and their inhabitants.
Images are not the only “artefacts” within the vaults; they function as an
unarchived, uncatalogued store for the baths and contain vast quantities of
Roman artefacts. The vaults – a Victorian structure set atop a Roman base,
but cut off from the rest of the museum – becomes a place loaded with the
potential for meaning. Underpinning the presentation is the contention that
space, and buildings, live most powerfully in the mind, and that all meaning
and significance is projected on to them. It is the relationship between the
mind and the space which lies at the centre of the presentation.
Arsenic, Wells and Herring Curing:
Making New Meanings in an Old Fish Factory
This paper explores the relationship between the historic spaces of an
old fish curing factory in Great Yarmouth and the museum it became.
It looks at the creation of the award winning Time and Tide: Museum
of Great Yarmouth Life from the derelict Tower Curing Works during 2002
– 2004 and starts from the premise that, ‘An architectural work is not
experienced as a series of isolated retinal pictures, but in its fully
integrated material, embodied and spiritual essence. It offers pleasurable
shapes and surfaces moulded for the touch of the eye and other senses,
but it also incorporates and integrates physical and mental structures,
giving our existential experience a strengthened coherence and significance.’
(Pallasmaa 2008:12) The practice of creating a museum to embody a range
of experiences representing the history of the town through architecture
and museum collections is examined from three different perspectives.
These are integrated to provide a coherent overview of the ways in which
architecture contributes to the narratives of meaning making in museum
spaces. The project officer: who dealt with unsafe and burnt out rooms,
discovered arsenic in the walls, and wells in the courtyard and worked
with the architect and builders in configuring new spaces from old ones
in order to provide safe environments for the existing museum collections,
the project curator who relocated the former Maritime museum collection
into a new space, selecting objects for display in a way that allowed the
building to support and enhance the narrative of the objects and the
project display team leader who worked with community groups and
museum staff to develop an interpretation of the space that was not
only functional but embodied a sense of place and time that represented
the community’s sense of itself and its pride in the past.
29
Old Buildings, New Narratives, Session 3
Dr Geoff Matthews
Tom Duncan and Noel McCauley
Sally Stone
Conservation Architecture and the Narrative Imperative:
Birmingham Back to Backs
A Narrative Journey Through An Industrial Site
The Past Recaptured
The paper illustrates the creation of storytelling environments for museums
and cultural institutions using the example of our completed work in
an industrial heritage site, a brickworks in the former GDR just outside
Berlin. As architects and storytellers, our understanding of the individual’s
perception of space and its associative qualities is the basis for our
exploration of the narrative potential that space embodies. Furthermore,
our interest in film and digital media with their narrative and spatial
possibilities has led us to enquire how they can be combined with
architecture to create spatial storytelling environments. The narrative
elements of the Brick Park are the brick-making process and the social
structure of former East Germany. As an introduction to the journey,
a short feature film about a family who works in the brick factory
illustrates how work and social life were intertwined
through the works brigade. The experience is conceived
as a parcours. The factory spaces have remained
essentially unchanged since the plant closed
in 1991; the only significant alteration has
been the addition of new interpretive media
installations which will be explored in this
paper. The installations presented here
are a synthesis of architecture and
digital media to create experience-driven
storytelling environments. The site
itself becomes a narrative medium;
it is a memorial, a museum and
a place of discovery all in one.
Our perception of the past is determined by our present. That is,
the manner in which the past is perceived is not solely dependent upon
the available information about the past, but it is also influenced by the
interpretation of that information by the contemporary individual or society.
This interpretation of the past cultures and societies is often conducted
through a system of what historians call ‘empathy’. This method encourages
the past to be understood through the experiences of those present.
However, this empathetic system needs a base, a context to frame it,
a moral, value or cultural judgement with which it can be compared and
rationalised. Contemporary society imposes modern values, morals or
culture upon this interpretation. Culture can be been seen to nurture values,
and likewise values can best be described within the context of culture.
So, if we examine remodelled buildings, we can see evidence of the values
of the society that carried out the remodelling. The narrative of the
remodelling can tell us as much about the culture and interpretations
of the society re-using the building, as the original structure would about
the original builders/occupants. This paper will examine the process of
translation that occurs when contemporary cultural values are imposed
upon remodelled buildings. It will, through the analysis of a number of case
studies, discuss how value judgements inform the interpretation of the past.
The paper uses a case study to explore how the opposing logics of
conservation architecture and interpretive exhibition design were played
out in the shaping of a narrative museum space. The former concerns itself
with an archaeological conception of physical space, which is defined through
the decipherability of traces and their layering over time. The latter concerns
itself with a theatrical notion of event space defined through the mapping and
programming of performances and information flows. The contingencies of
the Birmingham Back to Backs project – its inception, the involvement of the
National Trust, the foregrounding of community interests and the interpretive
design process – gave rise to a novel resolution of contrasting interests.
A particular idea of narrative was able to frame the use of, on the one hand,
physical evidence to interpret what may have existed and, on the other,
a combination of lived and documentary evidence to reconstruct the patterns
of daily life. This can be understood as a process of recovering ordinary lives.
Analysis of interpretive design and heritage management documentation is
informed by Samuel’s theorisation of the shaping power of memory (1994).
However, overall, the approach is pragmatic, in that it engages in critical
conversations, resists reductionism, and tries to point up what may be
useful in helping us cope together in the world. The principal conclusions
concern the role that a focus on narrative (re)construction can play in
framing cross-disciplinary collaboration and the potential of embracing
radically different conceptions of space in museum design.
30
Old Buildings, New Narratives, Session 3
31
32
Artist’s Voices, Disruptive Narratives, New Sensibilities, Session 1
Artist’s Voices, Disruptive Narratives, New Sensibilities, Session 1
Suzanne Bravery
Peter Ride
Miranda Baxter and Claire Robins
Reviewing the Narrative
Media Space – The Affect of New Media Artwork in the Museum
In house museums, curators play a crucial role in making information
accessible to audiences. Acting as an interface between collections and
audiences, curators present objects together to construct themes, moods
and stories. What happens when artists take over the role of interpreting
collections and spaces? What possibilities exist when new eyes are cast over
a museum’s narratives? At the intersection of visual arts and social history
is a 2006 installation at Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney entitled ‘ten[d]ancy.’
This series of interpretive pieces by contemporary Australian artists employs
a range of devices including fluorescent lights, timber veneer panels and
maroon merino wool crocheted as web like tablemats to weave themes in
the colonial landscape in the furnished 1839 house interior. A year earlier the
two main rooms of this house museum were packed up and placed in storage
so that the empty spaces acted as a blank but charged canvas for ‘Changing
Spaces’. Cutting-edge designers and architects placed a minimalist
contemporary structure reflective of a single or dual occupancy apartment
interior in the local area over the restored Georgian wall and floor finishes.
Upstairs the exhibition space held a room like structure within the room
that it represented with its mid twentieth century appearance and layout
determined by the house curator. The visitor stood in the space within
which the narratives of the exhibition had played out. In the adjacent room,
final year students displayed plans for a contemporary family dwelling at
Elizabeth Bay House. These ‘artistic interventions’ using primary research,
technology, and sited within original spaces, are facilitated and realised
by curators and enable access to a multilayered narrative through an
engaging, thought provoking and memorable spatial experience individual
to each visitor.
This paper looks at the issues that arise from new media art works within
the museum space, either as creative works integral within a collection
or as temporary interventions. The paper argues that when museums
commission or present creative works by artists within the gallery space
they create sub-narratives that may both work with, and in opposition to,
the prevailing narratives of the gallery. When these works use new media,
additional complexities may arise in terms of the audiences’ understanding
of the space, of their expectations of their role within museum and their
expected physical behaviour. Although museums have a long history of
using interactive displays new media artworks offer new ways of thinking
about the relationship of the audience to the site, the collection and to other
(distant) audiences. It may also offer artwork that appears to be proactive,
not responsive, in its engagement with the audience. In such cases, is
participation itself seen as a creative language offering an aesthetic of
interactivity? Can multi-layered artworks be both an intervention and part
of a discursive display, where artists can provide both their own voice and
that of the institution? Examples of new media art projects in museums are
examined as case studies, in particular addressing
how museum professionals and artists alike
can demonstrate critical awareness of
both the limitations and the practical
issues of working in this area.
In addition the paper looks at
the way that museums are
conducting appraisals of how
visitors operate in a creative
media space, or in relation to
new media artworks. Examples
include the Powerhouse Sydney
(‘BetaSpace’), The Science
Museum London (‘Listening Post’)
and Dr Johnson’s House, London
(‘The Interactive Dictionary’).
Meaningful Encounters With Disrupted Narratives:
Artists’ Interventions as Interpretive Strategies
Nearly 20 years ago Fred Wilsons’ intervention Mining the Museum,
at Maryland Historic Society, made an impression, not just on one museum
but on many delegates attending the American Association of Museums’
Conference in Baltimore. In common with many other influential museum
interventions, made by artists, Wilson’s work reconfigured a museum
narrative and helped to steadily move Artists’ Interventions from marginal
to mainstream in museum programming. Acknowledging that Artists’
Interventions take many forms, Miranda Baxter and Claire Robins propose
to focus on disruptions to the expectations of the normative contours of
musuem and gallery dicourse where interventions destabilise fixity of
meaning and subvert hegemonic narrative. Interventionist processes
have emerged from a historical trajectory of institutional critique and
bring with them parodic, ironic and disruptive methods. We ask in what
ways do these components contribute to the production of new meanings
in museums and galleries? In what ways do audiences learn through
disruption? Are these methods ethical and
what are the risks? In tandem discussion
we propose to critique these central
components of Artists’ Interventions in
relation to the responsibilities incurred
by ‘host’ institutions when deploying
and orchestrating interpretation
strategies in which antagonism may
be encouraged. While antagonizing
audiences seems anathema to
visitor policy, it can be a tool to
stimulating learning through change and
reconfiguration of narrative structures, and
therefore value systems, which promote shifts
in viewer perspectives. Museums and galleries are inherent spaces
for learning. The Artist Intervention is an interpretation technology
that seeks to reconfigure learning by disrupting taxonomies and
contiguous narrative threads in exchange for those that meander
and challenge. Its success (or failure) is largely reliant on dialogism,
where the pedagogic potential is located.
33
Artist’s Voices, Disruptive Narratives, New Sensibilities, Session 2
Artist’s Voices, Disruptive Narratives, New Sensibilities, Session 2
Alona Martinez-Perez
Rachel Morris
Paola Zellner
Exhibition Making in Film: Peter Greenaway’s
‘The Belly of An Architect’
What Can We Learn From the Museums of Artists and Poets?
Narrative Spaces: The Book of Lies
Poets, novelists and artists have a history of creating imaginary museums.
Two recent examples are ‘The Museum of Innocence’, the latest novel by
the Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk, and Charles Wilson’s ‘Museum of Jurassic
Technology’ in Los Angeles. Pamuk’s novel is the fictional account of a man
who creates a museum to tell the story of an unrequited love affair, and
focuses on the way we all use objects as ways of building bridges back in
time. For Pamuk a museum is a metaphor for the mind as a treasure store
of memories and as somewhere where time becomes a place. Wilson’s
‘Museum of Jurassic Technology’, does something different but equally
memorable. He takes the traditional vocabulary of museums - showcases
and labels - and turns them into an exquisitely beautiful and satisfying
language. His museum has an entirely real and three-dimensional existence,
and yet nothing in it is accurate nor objectively true. Each museum tells us
something interesting - the first that museums are still rich and powerful
metaphors, especially when we give objects the role of places where
memories are stored; the second is that the traditional language of museums
is very far from dead and can still give us satisfying experiences. But taken
together they tell us something else as well. Neither museum is factual in
any usual meaning of the word - although Pamuk, by a further twist, is about
to give his imaginary museum a real, three-dimensional existence in a house
in Istanbul. Nonetheless, although fictional, both cast an interesting light
on what we want from museums. Both are deeply satisfying, and both thus
reinforce the findings of Morris Hargreave McIntyre, specialists in audience
development, whose research shows that visitors come to museums for
four main reasons - intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual - and that,
depending on the exhibition, the intellectual reason may not even be the
dominant one. Most museums these days see their role as overwhelmingly
about the delivery of knowledge; but visitors, I believe, are after a more
nuanced and varied experience. This is not a plea for museums to tell
untruths; but it is a plea for understanding the full range of what visitors
are in search of and what museums can give them.
Narratives cover the range between a clear diagram, or unambiguous linear
story, and an intuitive sense of order. Regardless of its placement in this
spectrum, the narrative is an aid to the designer in the creative process.
But the nature of the experience of the visitor differs depending on what
location within the spectrum the designer privileges. The goal of the use
of narratives is communication. Narratives organise information to be
more easily accessed, or accessed in a pre-determined way. In design,
emphasis is placed relative to the intended way in which the information
is to be accessed, extending from an intellectual understanding of the
space, to a sensorial experiencing of the space, from a literal experience
to an intuitive one. Designs that capture the intellect but more firmly
seize the intuition of the visitor tend to succeed in promoting recurring
engagement of the space by the visitor. Such spaces, instead of presenting
distinct clear answers, provide a sense of the existence of underlying
intentions or orders, generally in the form of diverse, ambiguous,
and sometimes even conflicting perceptions. The qualities
of these perceptions stimulate the mind, lengthening
the participation of the body in experiencing the
space driven by curiosity and the mind’s desire
for resolution. As an example of a narrative
space with emphasis on intuitive sensorial
experience I would like to present
“The Book of Lies”, an exhibit designed
and installed for conceptual artist
Eugenia Butler, in Los Angeles.
With extremely restricted budget,
the exhibit was to show the three books,
each composed of unique and original
pieces from a broad group of artists
responding to specific questions raised
by Eugenia Butler, as well as provide
a space to explore the ideas and feelings
the books provoked.
This paper will be based on exploring the idea of narrative space
by looking at the creation of narrative environments through film
in this case with particular reference to the film ‘The Belly of an Architect’
by Peter Greenaway. This film looks at the particular narrative of space
of an American architect who is invited to Rome to hold an exhibition of
the French visionary architect Étienne-Louis Boullée. In order to explore
the idea of narrative space the author will explore the practice in the film
of cutting edge exhibition and experience making in this case in the narrative
of space in the film as a metaphor of the Boullee exhibition. In this paper the
film will provide the reference point to look at narrative of space, both looking
at exhibition space but also at imaginative approaches to the metaphors
and ideas behind some of the exhibition. The sites and buildings of the
city provide the spaces for both the narrative and the storytelling but also
for the exhibition of the spaces which are used by Greenaway in terms of the
architecture of the city and the film to hold the exhibition of the work of the
Boullee. The film provides the city as the background to tell us a narrative
about the space we inhabit, but also as a place where to exhibit the work of
a French Architect. The Pantheon is the architecture that Boullee imagined
but never built. The Vittorio Emmanuel building is the place where the
final exhibition is held. But the narrative of space take us to the Capitoline
Museum and to the Palace of Civilisation in EUR built by Mussolini and that
in itself makes sites and buildings to hold and to be overlaid with narratives
and uses museums and exhibitions in film as a spatial media; harnessing
the spatial character, history and potential of buildings and sites in the
city of Rome.
34
35
Thursday 22nd April
36
Jonathan Hale
Dr Ross Parry
Bits, Bodies and Buildings: New Media and the Museum Experience
Live Narratives: Sharing Authorship On-Line and On-Site
Exhibition spaces might usefully be classified according to three basic
metaphors: spaces of production (‘studios’, in which the viewer comes
to the work); spaces of consumption (‘living rooms’, where the work comes
to the viewer); or spaces of interpretation, in which viewer and work can
meet on ‘neutral’ ground. This final category includes what we commonly
think of as the typical museum today – a shared space in which the encounter
between the viewer and the work is mediated by the voice of the curator.
What the curator/interpreter provides in this situation is, at the most basic
level, a ‘story’ – a conceptual structure that organises and configures a series
of objects and spaces into a more or less systematic ‘narrative environment’.
As an architectural teacher and researcher I am particularly interested
in the contribution that architectural spaces can make to this process of
constructing and experiencing narrative environments as memorable and
meaningful. The question arises as to what extent people actually ‘notice’
their physical surroundings, in either conscious or unconscious ways,
and what contribution does the context or ‘situation’ make to the
process of ‘meaning-making’? Drawing on a number of sources
in philosophy and cognitive science (including phenomenology,
cybernetics and the theory of the ‘extended mind’ (Clark and
Chalmers, 1998)) this paper will attempt to develop a framework
for thinking about the ways in which new media technologies
within the museum environment can augment the spatial
experience of the embodied human subject. By providing
new forms of access to otherwise hidden narratives embedded
in the physical environment, increasingly pervasive and
interactive media technologies allow the visitor to enter into
a more constructive dialogue with the various institutional
‘voices’ of the museum. The paper will claim that in a world
of increasingly hybrid entities where it is becoming more
difficult to draw distinctions between ‘human and non-human’
(Latour, 1993) it is instructive to consider our physical surroundings
as a repository of historical information and even a ‘primitive’
form of intelligence. The paper will thereby also attempt to unpack
the museographical commonplace that – in a memorable museum
experience – ‘the past came alive’.
Today we ‘use’ the Web – rather than ‘browse’ it. The Internet is a place
of communication and production – rather than simply of dissemination
and broadcast. For museums and galleries to be on-line today is, therefore,
to be part of a highly collaborative space, a space of rich media,
live interaction and dynamic user-generated content and interpretation.
Likewise, on-site, in the physical venue, digital media becomes ever
more personalised, participatory and pervasive. And, as it becomes used
more widely and more effectively, so it has also become more discreet,
more ambient, more mobile, less intrusive. And yet, as both of
these environments (on-line and on-site) evolve, so also do the
acts of authorship and narration within each. What sort of
narratives, for instance, are curators now building on-line in
the new social Web? What are the new rules of authorship
and ownership in this co-operative space? How are users
helping to shape these stories? And how (crucially) do
these new acts of authorship manifest themselves back in
the physical space of the on-site gallery as new interpretive
approaches? A partnership between BT and the University
of Leicester, ‘LIVE!Museum’ is a generative project bringing
together designers, media producers, technologists, curators and
scholars to explore these questions and these relationships between
the on-line and on-site spaces of the museum – and the narratives that
curators and visitors build within each. Through a series of residential
‘sandpits’ and a ‘ResearchMart’ brokering event, the project (sponsored
by the AHRC, and supported by The Collections Trust and the Museums
Computer Group) considers how updatable media within gallery space
might allow museums to support ‘live’ narratives.
37
New Narratives, New Processes, Session 1
Jeff Horsley
Victoria McGuiness
Dr Nicholas Coetzer
Philipp Schorch
Shrine or Laboratory?
Building a Temporary Home for Lindow Man
Developing the Ashmolean:
New Narratives, New Processes
Three Post-Apartheid Museums Reconsidered
Humanising Global Public Spheres:
A Narrative Exploration of the Museum Forum
In August 1984, human remains were unearthed whilst digging for peat
on Lindow Moss in Cheshire. The excavated remains, embedded in a block
of peat, were sent for forensic investigation. Initial radio-carbon dating
was inconclusive but indicated that the remains were from between the
1st to 6th century AD. The Coroner ruled that the remains, which became
known as Lindow Man, were of national importance and should be held
at the British Museum in London. In 2006, the British Museum agreed
to a request for the temporary loan of Lindow Man to The Manchester
Museum, and an exhibition was programmed to open in the spring
of 2007. This would be the third time Lindow Man would be exhibited
at The Manchester Museum - most recently in 1991. It was a conscious
decision on the part of the Museum’s exhibition team that this exhibition
would be significantly different in comparison to the two preceding displays;
that it would consciously reflect changes in museum practice, including
issues around the treatment of human remains, consultation processes
and authorship.This paper will examine the development of the exhibition
concept and design through an exploration of the following areas;
how feedback from consultation sessions influenced the development
of the design and the challenge of accommodating the wishes of diverse
stakeholder groups; the process of developing the exhibition concept
and design; how comparative approaches to concept and design of the
three exhibitions held at The Manchester Museum indicate a significant
shift in exhibition-making practice; an examination of public response
to the exhibition and the problematic situation of balancing visitor
expectation and design innovation. Lindow Man; A Bog Body Mystery
won the 2009 Design Week award for Best Temporary Exhibition Design.
Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Ashmolean Museum has
recently undergone a £61 million redevelopment. Award winning architect
Rick Mather has designed a new building to replace all but the Grade I listed
Cockerell building. The design doubles the existing gallery space, allows
environmental control and will include a dedicated Education Centre and
conservation facilities. Working in partnership with designers Metaphor,
the Ashmolean’s curatorial staff have created a number of innovative
new approaches to the display of the Museum’s objects. The overarching
interpretive theme, Crossing Cultures Crossing Time (CCCT) is an approach
based on the idea that civilisations that have shaped our modern societies
developed as part of an interrelated world culture, rather than in isolation.
It assumes, too, that every object has a story to tell, but these stories can
best be uncovered by making appropriate comparisons and connections,
tracing the journey of ideas and influences through the centuries and across
continents. The architecture of the new building and CCCT will transform
the experience of visiting the Museum, maximising both the aesthetic and
educational potential of our collections. The main aim of the presentation
would be to highlight the use of architecture,
interpretive theme and exhibition design
Ph
ot
to display our collections in a new
og
light. Using case studies for
specific galleries, I will show the
process of developing a gallery
within the architectural and in
context with the neighbouring
galleries. It will also be
an opportunity to give an
insight to future and ongoing
projects including the Cast
Gallery and redisplay of the
Egyptian collections.
)
pent.com
(Neo
aby
Sw
iro
:T
er
ph
ra
38
New Narratives, New Processes, Session 1
The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg and the Red Location Museum
in Port Elizabeth are exemplary of an emerging investment in narratives
that tell the story of those marginalised and abused by apartheid. These
award-winning buildings have been praised for their powerful architecture
that gives dignity to the people whose stories they aim to tell. There are
however, obvious differences between the two. Firstly, the Apartheid Museum
is located on private land at the periphery of the city largely developed as
a theme park. On the other hand, the Red Location Museum is a municipal
project set directly within the poor community that the museum promoters
hope will ultimately be ‘uplifted’ by the project. More tellingly, the Apartheid
Museum applies a literal ‘narrative space’ in the museum, enacting the
arbitrariness of apartheid’s racial assignation in its pre-defined sequential
routes. The Red Location Museum on the other hand deliberately deploys
a grid of ‘memory boxes’ – rooms within a room – accessible in any order;
the grid operates as a ‘democratic’ spatial narrative device. The District
Six Museum, developed over the years as a community-sponsored initiative,
operates in a largely different way to the two museums above. Its gallery
space and contents are continually remade and rewritten by the community
which was forcibly removed from Cape Town’s inner-city space in the 1970s.
It exemplifies a counter-point to the architect’s design of museum spaces.
The argument that I will make is that the nature of architectural de sign
is to predetermine and predefine all variable aspects of ‘narrative space’
into a singularity or a ‘concept’ that is needed to drive the project
to completion. This structural condition of design – of concretising
time into a singularity of space – needs to be engaged with if architects
are to help establish ‘narrative spaces’ rather than ‘narrative space.’
The reinvention of the museum as forum in the course of the new
museology and the notion of the ‘public sphere’ are inextricably linked.
Both concepts have been widely theorised and intellectually scrutinised
mostly favouring a democratic domain governed by reason and rational
debate. But what does it mean to experience a museological space
and how is a public sphere negotiated and lived within time and space?
Drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum
of New Zealand Te Tongarewa, this paper explores this question empirically.
It argues that the individual is the point of departure from which the site
‘museum’ as a particular public sphere is humanised by giving it ‘faces’
and stories. The hermeneutic interpretation of the research material
reveals a narrative trajectory linking the individual’s experience of the
museum space, its shifting sense of self-other relationships and the
resulting articulations of moral and political demands. The empirical
evidence highlights the presence of the emotive dimension within the
entire lived experience and thus in any human affair: from sensual
perception to political opinion formation. Based on the research findings,
the ‘museum forum’ can be theorised as a narrative space of a political
nature. It is characterised by circular and interdependent relationships
and a focal point for the reciprocal negotiation and interpretation
of identities via narratives. Instead of continuing to reify culture and
difference, Self and Other, the ‘museum forum’ is required to humanise
and personalise such abstract totalities as the culture, the history or
the people. Shifting the frame of reference to the individual would enable
audiences to morally and politically engage with multiple perspectives.
This facilitates the move from prescribed ethical conventions to free
moral responsibility and from democratic representation to free political
participation. The ‘museum forum’ can thus help achieving ‘performative
democracy, for the first time in history’ (Weibel &Latour, 2007).
39
New Narratives, New Processes, Session 2
New Narratives, New Processes, Session 2
Dr Sophia Psarra
Jeffrey Abt
Mattias Ekman
Spatial and Narrative Intersections
at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
Desposing the Narrator, Fracturing the Narrative
The Memories of Space
It is nearly thirty years since Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, the first
scholars to critically explore art museums as orchestrated narrative
spaces, published their seminal essay, “The Universal Survey Museum.”
In it they aimed to “understand the way the museum’s ensemble of art,
architecture and installation shapes the average viewer’s experience.”
The type of institution they had in mind is the large, comprehensive art
museum, like the Louvre or Metropolitan Museum of Art, that possesses
sufficient collections and space to immerse the visitor in an “authoritative
doctrine” of art history as told, for example, in “encyclopaedic” textbook
surveys. Ever since, museum scholars have pursued increasingly
sophisticated critiques of museums’ narrative techniques and aims,
while museum curators and educators have explored ever more
open-ended interpretive methods. None, however, had the opportunity
to test their ideas on the scale of a comprehensive art museum, that is,
until the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) undertook a renovation of its entire
building. The DIA is one of America’s largest art museums with over
60,000 works and about 660,000 square feet of space. Its eight-year
renovation necessitated reworking all its galleries and thus offered
the possibility of rethinking the museum’s entire permanent collection
scheme. The director and his staff seized the opportunity and democratised
the reinstallation project by creating crossdisciplinary planning teams
of curators, educators, and others who, in turn, tested their ideas with
community-based focus groups that included citizens who had never been
in the museum before. The project’s result, opened in 2007, is a series
of over ninety specialised exhibitions organised around disparate themes
and employing alternative media technologies alongside actual works,
all under one roof. My paper will briefly summarise the criticism and
theory that informed the DIA’s planning and then examine how its artworks,
architecture, and interpretation were used in the reinstallation to reify
alternative narratives and narrative voices within a single conceptual space.
Against the background of contemporary preoccupation with the
preservation of architectural heritage this paper advocates awareness in
the field of architecture to the mnemonic qualities of space. It elaborates
on the relationships between the National Gallery in Oslo, its art collection,
and the Norwegian art canon. Using Aleida Assmann’s model of working
memory and reference memory, the paper investigates how the museum is
employed for the organisation of collective and cultural memory. Sentiments
concerned with the memories of the gallery building have surfaced in recent
debates in Norway. The rearrangement of the permanent art exhibition
and a proposed move of the collection to new premises have caused strong
reactions; a suggested connection between the canonised artworks and the
halls they are displayed in has become the main argument for keeping the
exhibition as it is. How can we understand this attachment of space to
art and history? As a starting point the paper takes the concept antaeic
magic, introduced by Aby Warburg and developed by Aleida Assmann,
to examine the capacity of the gallery spaces
to make the past present. This mnemonic
capacity of architecture is compared
to the aura of artworks, as described
by Walter Benjamin. Further the
paper will look at the differences
between the exhibition spaces for
the canon and the storage spaces
for the archive, and asks to what
degree the debate on keeping
the National Gallery is about
preservation of architecture or
of the preservation of the memory
functions of the gallery.
No other museum has played such a pioneering role in the construction of a
canonical narrative of modern art as the MoMA in New York, nor has created
such a synoptic collection. Based on Barr’s classification of modern art into
two distinctive but interrelated currents, the MoMA presented in the past
through a sequence of rooms a comprehensive and linear development of art
movements. But in the latest expansion it sought a continuous chronological
overview, as well as alternative strategies for narration. This paper explores
the encounter of space, narrative, and the exploration movement of visitors
in the new building. The aim is to understand how the exhibition design and
the way in which people explore the collection depart from the conceptual
strategies of past exhibitions projecting the museum’s identity to the
21st century as a progressive institution. Inherent in this study is a larger
question: how the spatial arrangement in museums and galleries relates
to the curatorial intent and the exploration potential of space to construct
an educational message or a rich aesthetic experience based on the
combined effect of art and architecture. Through an analysis of visual fields,
the display, and the movement paths of visitors this paper suggests that the
new MoMA is ambiguously positioned between a didactic interpretation of
art and an aesthetic mode of exhibition. The former is closely related to the
museum precedents and past installations based on Barr’s interpretation
of modern art as an intersection between an emotional and a rational
current. The latter is constructed by virtue of visual interconnections among
paintings that construct multiple possibilities for experiencing art based
on aesthetic juxtapositions. The ambiguity between two different modes of
exhibition reveal larger theoretical questions and unresolved contradictions:
how to reconcile the didactic role the museum played in the past in the
construction of a comprehensive narrative of modern art and its intention to
be a laboratory of experimental knowledge for the future. The ways in which
museums address these questions define two different modes of exhibitions:
those that use space to strengthen and reproduce an existing interpretation
of a collection, and those that allow space to generate new relations among
works of art and a rich field of possible interpretations.
40
41
Media: Shaping Space and Experience, Session 1
Media: Shaping Space and Experience, Session 1
Eric Langham
Maria Prieto
Mike Chaplin
Candice Lau
The theatrical deconstruction of a photograph
Spatial Meditations: Situating Memories, Expanding Citizens
Narrative Cases
The project described below was commissioned by the Abu Dhabi Authority
for Culture and Heritage (ADACH)
With the advent of GPS-inspired art and Web 2.0, the relationship
of citizens with their memories and physical spaces is put at stake.
GPS mobile devices allow to transpose audiovisual recordings from
different spaces while the social Net provide a participative medium
to reconfigure local spaces and emotions. The overlay of both media
can result as an evolutionary audiovisual archive by the interaction
of the visitors with site and website, the local and the global, which
let it be up-dated and interesting for public collaboration in enhancing
the spatial narratives of the world at large. How could our spatial
sensibility be realized and expanded by ubiquitous computing?
How to enhance urban space through the use of pervasive technologies?
How could audiovisual transposition empower people’s sense of place
and identity? What role would that transposability imply for the user
bodily immersed in multifarious layers of his/her surroundings,
in Foucault’s words, in a “heterotopic” reality? How could augmented,
immersive art spaces be instrumental in forwarding urban regeneration
and social transformation? What kind of citizen can emerge from the
interplay of mobile technologies with physical space? And, to what
extent could we consider a just re-constitution of today’s urbanized
world by regarding cities as reflective, sensory extensions of their
inhabitants? These are the questions this paper will work
through afresh in introducing the artwork In Hear, Out There
(http://195.53.62.237/inhearoutthere/), which is a locative, net.art
installation to explore contemporary urban policies, as well as
to think about their audiovisual representation through pervasive
technologies within the city. Following Bruno Latour’s words,
“Literally all architecture is about th[e] question of the common world”,
this paper explores the potential of the spatial applications deployed
by mobile, embedded and distributed “sensitive architectures,”
as well as the role of networked communities in interweaving
social space and social change.
Exhibits are the fundamental element of the narrative story of an exhibition,
yet cases can create an artificial barrier between visitors and these exhibits
on display. Design and Curatorial teams face a constant challenge to involve
exhibits in the narrative story balancing interpretation, differing levels of
visitor interest and knowledge, accessibility guidelines, design aesthetics
and conservation requirements. Often this is achieved by adding complex
AV systems in addition to lighting, labelling and graphics - these systems
often involve the integration of different disciplines and contractors, which
can be expensive, inflexible and have significant ongoing maintenance
costs. In this session Click Netherfield explore a simple and practical
new concept to bring interpretation of showcased exhibits to life with
multi-level, multilingual text, lighting, audio and video with a highly
flexible and low energy approach - all based around the concept that
conservation issues may be paramount.
Accessing Estonian Memories:
Building Narratives Through Game Form
How can we transform a photograph, a frozen moment in time, into the
centrepiece of a narrative?
On the 4th February 1904 German traveller Hermann Burchardt visited
Abu Dhabi and took a photograph of its ruler Sheikh Zayed at his daily open
air majlis outside the fort of Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Zayed, known as Zayed the
Great, ruled Abu Dhabi from 1855 – 1909. He was one of the region’s most
important and renowned rulers. This photograph is the first ever image
of a ruler of Abu Dhabi and the second ever photo of Abu Dhabi city. It is
a priceless record of the past; a rare object in a society known for its oral
tradition and few tangible remains. Our aim was to tell the story of Sheikh
Zayed through the theatrical deconstruction of this seminal photograph;
to bring the past into the present without losing the sense of the time period
in which the original photo was taken. Barker Langham’s curatorial strategy
focused on researching the key attributes of a successful Gulf Sheikh.
Many of these characteristics such as hospitality, generosity, open and
accessible rule are evident within the photograph. To support these features
and create a script, extracts of local poetry were fused with quotes from
travellers who had met Sheikh Zayed. The exhibition designers, OPERA
Amsterdam, created a pavilion to house the installation. This bespoke,
immersive gallery environment sits within a wider exhibition on the story
of Abu Dhabi. We then worked with production company Submarine who
developed the installation by transforming the photo into a 3-dimensional
digital set using light to accentuate aspects of the image, creating qualities
of depth, perspective and relief. By treating the image with light you can
create a sense of time and movement, and a sense of the Sheikh’s presence
within the room. In the same way, aspects of the photo and characteristics
of the Sheikh’s rule can be accentuated and brought into the light.
This approach allowed us to add atmosphere and emotion without
adding figurative elements.
Personal memories of World War II Estonia in the now independent state
of the Baltics have always been suppressed by the ‘official’ history formed
by the Soviet Union. Physical traces may be found in objects, however,
these are inanimate and cannot speak for themselves. Those who have
lived through these times and have the knowledge to tell these stories
will pass on, thus ending the life and energy of these artefacts.
Now free from the Soviet Occupation, Estonian archivists are fervently
attempting to record these memories, and some have been used in the
museum context in order represent a slice of history for a wider audience.
The objective of this paper is to present the process of developing a
follow-up exhibition to the original Estonian Exhibition, ‘Our New Home’
at the Powerhouse Museum of Design and Technology in Sydney.
The aim of the original exhibition was to present the Australian/Estonian
stories of World War II and their flight from the Soviet Occupation through
a collection of objects and disparate segments of video and audio.
The follow-up exhibition presents an alternative method through the
use of archival material, RFID technology and large format audio/visual
projection to create a computer augmented environment through which
these stories will be imparted. The focus of this design research
is to use a set of Estonian playing cards found in the original
exhibition, as a physical interface to engage visitors in a card
game where each game will tell a unique sequence of the
story. This method promotes an experiential and a more
user-centred design, and it explores possible ways
of harnessing memories in a museum context.
It provided us with a rich and sincere language to explore the photo and bring
it to life without destroying its original integrity. Within the space, additional
projections and a soundscape were developed to bring other elements to the
fore – extracting and enlarging features from the photograph and animating
the poetry and quotes. The finished installation, which is due to open later
this year in Abu Dhabi, will be both a memorial to the nation’s past and an
icon for its future.
42
43
Media: Shaping Space and Experience, Session 2
Samantha Martin-Mcauliffe
and Nathalie Weadick
The Thick Present: Architecture, Narration and Film
How can exhibitions convey the essence of buildings that are distant,
both in space and time? Is it possible, moreover, for film to grant access
to architecture, to help us experience its spaces? This paper uses these
questions as points of departure for reconsidering the ways architecture
is exhibited. Central to our discussion is the role of the moving image and
its ability to cultivate not only a visual understanding of architecture, but
also the exchange of ideas. The Lives of Spaces, Ireland’s exhibition at
the 11th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, set out to harness
the immersive and narratable capabilities of film. Rather than seeing this
medium as a purely documentary tool, the curators proposed that film be
used to unveil the intrinsic qualities of several buildings. Space was thus
broadly conceived – part history, part narrative, part experience. Just as
any film is composed of not one but a multitude of frames, the spaces in
the exhibition embodied exceptionally varied and overlapping conditions,
such as collective life, identity and renewal. Hence the idea of the ‘thick
present’: while the films comprising the exhibition addressed the here and
now of buildings, they were informed by the past and anticipated the future.
Ultimately, The Lives of Spaces provided an opportunity to rethink the
purpose of an exhibition. It was innovative because visitors were understood
not as passive onlookers, but as active participants in a generative process
of asking questions about architecture. This paper builds upon such an
experience by further exploring how architectural exhibitions can foster
a dynamic reciprocity between the audience, authors and curators.
Furthermore, we hope that our research will illuminate – as well as enrich
– the intersections of visual art and architecture exhibitions, thereby
broadening current discourses concerning narrative space.
44
Media: Shaping Space and Experience, Session 2
Dr Raul Ajmat and Professor Barrionuevo
Jona Piehl
“Enlightening” Narrative Spaces
Where Do You Want the Label?
The Roles of Graphics in Museums and Exhibitions
Beyond size, value of the displayed pieces, its geographical location or the
number of people that visit them, Museums have in common the intention
of “telling a story”. Specialists assign a certain value to displayed pieces;
in addition, they assign a value to socialising this valuation. This socialisation
transforms it in a “brief story” where dates and a classificatory model of
the exhibition try to persuade the observer that is entering in a different
world. In this context, lighting fulfils a double role: to reveal the object
itself - physiological function - and “to generate ambience” - significance
function- where the statement is produced and, therefore, it takes part of
the statement in an implicit form. This experience can be performed in a
simple room or in a complex space provided with the highest technology
allowing variety of languages, particular environmental conditions and
special settings. Furthermore, the commercialisation of replicas of the
exposed objects or contemporary goods (ties, shawls, calendars, etc.)
evoking the “design” of other times become a real prolonging of the
displayed testimonies to the homes of visitors. If the aim of the Museum
is the exhibition of aspects of the culture, the science, the art, etc, to the
visitor, the procedure to reach this aim lies in the possibility of studying
the way this exhibition will be more attractive and effective. Visitors men of these times- are contacted with the rest of the world interacting
with audio-visual means. The narrative of the museum is accomplished
in an environment where this perception is intimately influenced by lighting,
allowing seeing and feeling from the exhibited objects and its environment
connecting the visitor with other realities and other times. This paper
explores the deep relationship between the exhibition of the pieces
of museums and the role of the lighting as a form giver for spaces
and as generator of an ambience where a story is told.
Besides the objects and the stories themselves, interpretive exhibition
graphics are the most important aspect of any museum or exhibition design:
they are the carrier and transmitter of all content. Get them wrong and you
sabotage all interpretive efforts, reducing an exhibition from a complex
storyline to a series of objects in cases. So why are exhibition graphics so
often reduced to ‘panels and labels’, merely serving as vehicle for the literal
narrative, when they can assume a considerably more powerful role?
Juxtaposing four different projects, this paper illustrates how exhibition
graphics – all with the same objectives of intellectual accessibility
and visitor engagement – can conceptually and functionally
cover the spectrum from decoration to atmospheric treatment,
branding, and information design. In each case very different
purposes are fulfilled within the narrative environment. The
question is whether the conscious exploration of this scope
of possible ‘graphic roles’ will necessarily lead to a more
successful visual language. Unarguably, its voice will be
stronger and, consequently it will tell a story, not just display
it – but to what extent is this ‘voice of its own’ desirable?
Will the graphic designer remain a stylist or assume a more
decisive position, as Michael Rock debated in The Designer
as Author (1996). Design proposals need to be driven by
the content and the prospective audience, particularly in
the context of exhibition design, and the content must not
be upstaged by the design (Franck, Klaus: Exhibitions, 1961).
But I would argue, that if the development process is conceived
as an iterative collaboration – including content development as
much as architecture, interior design and communication media –
the result, rather than being simply a designed space, will be a
compelling co-authored spatial narrative. This paper is based on two
of my recent lectures: SpaceCraft (with Peter Higgins) at the Typo Berlin,
May 2009, looking into the collaborative processes of designing for
exhibitions and museums, specifically the crossover of graphics and
interior architecture; and Graphics in Narrative Environments at the
Forum Interaction Design at Hildesheim University of the Applied Arts,
which focused more closely on exhibition graphics as an integral part
of spatial storytelling.
45
Media: Shaping Space and Experience, Session 3
Locations and additional information
Stephen Greenberg
Place, time and memory
In his Voisin Plan for Paris of 1925 Le Corbusier intended to demolish
the entire Marais quarter, resulting in the obliteration of complex layers
of history and memory. The Voisin Plan, along with his later publication
Ville Radieuse, were to have a profound impact on cities around the world.
Le Corbusier, never one to employ ambiguity, put it succinctly: ‘Architectural
relics should be enshrined like carefully tended relics, for in this way the
past becomes no longer dangerous to life’. Throughout the 20th Century
the world remained dominated by Le Corbusier’s vision. Cities have
embraced it with verve - it is, after all, a green light for property developers
and politicians to devalue the intangible and create untold wealth in the
process. All kinds of buildings have been erased and with them large
tracts of history and memory. Modern urbanism has been a powerful
tool for fundamentalist regimes for this very reason. The united forces
of politics and development have made a huge impact; correcting,
erasing, censoring and rewriting history as they go. When a building
is demolished, the memories it contained are irredeemably lost.
This paper is diametrically opposed to Le Corbusier’s view of place-making
and examines the importance of what he terms ‘relics’ in creating an identity
of place. Relics embody stories, and it is a universal truth that everyone
has a story or is seeking one. How then do you make memory and stories
part of the making of the urban landscape? This paper describes the
journey the Metaphor studio took as it began to move from the conventions
of ‘straight’ architecture and design toward theatre, story-telling, and
mediated environments. This has ranged from storytelling in exhibitions,
whole museums and palaces, and increasingly, on a larger canvass. What
began twelve years ago with a Holocaust exhibition in Lambeth and a new
Masterplan for the V&A now encompasses narratives of place on an urban
scale. The premise is that stories are not only central to interpretive spaces,
such as galleries and museums, but also city-scale civic spaces and places.
One could say that the objects, or relics, have simply got larger and some
of the stories more epic in scale, grounded as they are in collective and
personal memory. We have discovered that memory and public space are
deeply intertwined, and yet in terms of urban design discourse they might
as well not exist. This is unsurprising considering that such an approach
overturns large tracts of architectural and urban design pedagogy where
the vision is usually controlled by the architecture. The current urban
strategy can be conveniently recycled from Shanghai to Dubai,
and the past is either disposed of completely or occasionally
resurrected in a scenographic pastiche. A series of
‘relic’-based case studies are the core of this study.
They will be used to show how relics and their stories
can work to formulate an urban scale experience.
Each case shows a distinct technique for place making
using memory and historic landscapes.
NUFFIELD
FITNESS
CENTRE
To A6
To Counselling Service:
Freemen’s Common Health Centre;
Freemen’s Common and
Nixon Court Houses (500m)
Museum Studies Building, 19 University Road
Charles Wilson Building
A number of events will take place in the new Museum Studies Building
at 19 University Road. These include: the conference opening/formal
opening of the Museum Studies Building on the evening of 19th April 2010
and a drinks reception prior to the Conference Dinner.
Lunch will be served in the Belvoir Park Lounge on the 2nd floor
of the Charles Wilson Building.
To Prospect House
and Readson House
Ken Edwards Building
Lecture Theatres 1, 2 and 3 provide the locations for the spoken papers
at Narrative Space. There are a very large number of papers and
so please do feel free to move between sessions or visit the displays
and demonstrations in the Museum Studies Building.
Other spaces in use in the Ken Edwards Building are the seminar rooms
on the 3rd and the 5th floors. These will be used to serve coffee during the
breaks between sessions.
46
Visit to Nottingham Contemporary and presentation from Adam Caruso
The coach will depart from outside the Charles Wilson Building
at 2.00pm on Wednesday 21st April.
Conference Dinner
The conference dinner will take place at the City Rooms in Leicester.
A coach will be provided and will leave the Museum Studies Building
at 8.00pm on Wednesday 21st April. A return coach from the City Rooms
to the University will leave the City Rooms at 11pm.
47
48
49