Experiments with bodies in social space: towards a contemporary understanding of place-based identities at the social history museum

Abstract

This paper considers how knowledge of socio-spatial reality beyond regional boundaries can help social history museums engage with and construct regional identities. Inspired by ways in which human geographers conceptualise place and space, my research explores contemporary mobilities and posthumanist concerns to destabilise subject/object, people/place and local/global dualisms. At the heart of this work is a participatory, performative methodology, called ‘MAP:me’. During two ‘body mapping’ workshops, eight research participants enact identity and place into being on life-size paper ‘body maps’; an exhibition to showcase their work is produced. The results of ‘body mapping’ reveal globalised identities expressive of non-representational concerns and attentive to the senses and contemporary mobilities. Shaped by research participants as collaborators and co-constructors of embodied knowledge, this way of interpreting social lives enlivens both museum and visitor. A ‘viscero-spatial curatorship’ emerges from this work to capture local identities as human/non-human entanglements in fluid, affective transnational spaces.

Keywords:

• social space
• mobility
• non-representational theory
• performativity
• embodiment
• viscero-spatial curatorship

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Madeleine Scully at the Museum of the Riverina, the research participants and the three anonymous referees who reviewed this paper. I would also like to thank my PhD supervisors, Andrew Simpson, Donna Houston and Katharine McKinnon.

Funding

The MAP:me exhibition was supported by Wagga Wagga City Council and Arts NSW triennial funding. The PhD from which this article derives, Local Histories, Global Cultures: Contemporary Collecting in Transnational Space, was supported by a Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship.

Notes on contributor

Rachael Vincent has worked as a social history curator in England, Scotland and Australia. Her doctoral research at Macquarie University, Sydney, considered embodied, performative methods to document, co-curate and exhibit contemporary social lives. At the Museum of the Riverina, Rachael works collaboratively with an extensive network of stakeholders to promote regional identity through objects, stories and experimental ideas.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: The MAP:me exhibition was supported by Wagga Wagga City Council and Arts NSW triennial funding. The PhD from which this article derives, Local Histories, Global Cultures: Contemporary Collecting in Transnational Space, was supported by a Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship.