At Medical Museion we are developing a new exhibition on the topic of collecting, preserving and dissecting human body material in medical science. The exhibition is entitled The Body Collected and will display various human specimens – from skeletons and fetuses to organs and biopsies. Thus, in this particular case the encounter between visitor and exhibition object is an encounter between two bodies: the visitor body and the exhibited, medical body. The exhibition, then, presents objects that are both ‘epistemological’ (made for creating medical knowledge) and, at the same time, relates very directly to the visitors own body (being the ‘same kind’ of body material).
Thereby establishing a tension between the objectifying medical gaze and the subjective phenomenological experience of (body)material resonance. This tension we wish to investigate by working with spatial-material strategies in exhibition design. That is, exhibition design that draws on the unique spatial and material aspects of the encounter between object and visitor body in museum exhibitions.
By diminishing the space between the object and the visitor, for example, by cutting through the distancing surfaces of glass cases, we want to enable the visitor to get close to the objects in the same way as the scrutinising medical researcher. We investigate the possibility of creating a sense of material proximity, conceived both as an actual spatial closeness to the material objects on display, but also considered in terms of communicating their specific material properties (form, texture, weight, etc.) by proxy – for instance, by using tactile surfaces in the exhibition design that echo the (body) material qualities of the objects on display, and thereby letting the objects reverberate materially into the surrounding space. By experimenting with these kinds of spatial – material display techniques we wish to contribute to both practice and research in exhibition making and develop new perspectives on spatial and material interpretation and engagement in exhibitions.
Research question
The project’s focus on spatial and material aspects in museum exhibition relates to museological interests in ‘museum space’ as well as the museum visitor’s sensory experience of material objects on display. Within museum literature, however, questions on how spatial and material aspect of communication and interpretation in exhibitions might complement and enhance each other – and the potential of designing in the cross section of the two – have been largely overlooked. The project will direct its attention to this knowledge gap by investigating the potentials, not of spatial and material strategies in exhibition design, but of spatial-material strategies, stressing the interconnectedness of the two.
With this approach we wish to propose an alternative to existing understandings of spatiality in exhibitions, where the concept of space are most often connected to ideas of creating narrative environments and scenographic staging.1 Rather than focusing on how objects can be interpreted and supported by a staged environment around them, we will let the objects themselves be the central point of departure for the design process and approach ‘space’ as something that is reverberating from their material presence. Thereby we aim to unfold the objects’ actual materiality, rather than the immaterial stories the objects represent, as advocated for by museum scholar and create a spatial-material interplay that also includes the visitor’s body.2
Besides building on material and multisensory approaches within current museum literature3 we will draw on spatial theory in architecture, where material and sensory turns can be detected as well.4 In order to shed light on the museum visitor’s experience of spatial-material design we will apply theories on haptic perception, and its relation to vision, within sensory aesthetics. 5 Thus, multidisciplinary approaches to spatiality and materiality – and the sensory, haptic-visual perception of the two – will be intersected for the purpose of investigating the project’s main research question:
How might spatial-material strategies in exhibition design be employed in order to fully exploit the unique ability of exhibitions to create spatial encounters with material objects, and how might this strengthen the visitor’s bodily engagement with the material objects on display?
Method
The project primarily focuses on how spatial-material design strategies can be utilized and employed in the phase of designing the exhibition. During the development of the exhibition project we have undertaken a line of design experiments functioning as empirical data in the research project. The idea has been to investigate the potential of spatial-material design strategies by experimental ‘probing’ that can also function as test displays informing the overall design of the exhibition. The idea of experimenting, and letting the experiments take directions and go places where the actual exhibition design might not go, is crucial in order to push the potential of spatial-material design strategies to its limits. Knowing that working solely within the practical and economic scope of the actual exhibition production might be limiting in this respect. The final exhibition, though not as radical in its application of spatial-material design strategies as the initial experiments, will in turn give us the opportunity to study and evaluate the visitor’s material object engagement based on the analytical categories developed in the experimental phase.