ABSTRACT

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to information-led exhibitions focused on performance can be considered practice-as-research historiography if curation is engaged with as praxis. Approaching exhibition curation as research praxis is a knowledge-making process, reconfiguring exhibitions as far more than a ‘pathway to impact’ designed at securing a grant. In the curation of two linked exhibitions on nineteenth-century popular entertainments at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and University of Bristol Theatre Collection, which were stunted due to COVID-19, I developed an argument for the shared ground of exhibitions and performance. If archival objects can perform, the exhibition space itself is a stage through which they communicate embodied meanings to audiences. I explore how exhibition curation generates different epistemologies to written research by putting museum studies, performance history, audience studies and performance practice-as-research in conversation. I demonstrate how museum studies could benefit from performance in developing epistemological arguments, and how performance studies can more significantly privilege the audience in the knowledge production process. I conclude my findings by discussing how planned activities and lessons learnt from these exhibitions could provide a blueprint for practitioners interested in using the exhibition form and format to conduct historically relational practice-research inquiries in conversation with audiences.

摘要

如果策展是作为实践参与的，那么对以表演为重点的以信息为主导的展览采取跨学科方法可以被视为实践即研究的历史学。将展览策展作为研究实践是一个知识创造过程，将展览重新配置为不仅仅是为了获得资助而设计的“影响途径”。在比尔·道格拉斯电影博物馆和布里斯托大学剧院收藏馆举办的两个有关 19 世纪流行娱乐的相关展览的策划中，这些展览因 COVID-19 而受阻，我提出了一个关于展览和表演的共同基础的论点。如果档案物品可以表演，那么展览空间本身就是一个舞台，通过它向观众传达所体现的意义。我通过将博物馆研究、表演历史、观众研究和表演实践作为研究进行对话，探索展览策展如何为书面研究产生不同的认识论。我展示了博物馆研究如何从发展认识论论证中的表现中受益，以及表演研究如何在知识生产过程中更显着地赋予观众特权。我通过讨论计划中的活动和从这些展览中吸取的教训如何为有兴趣使用展览形式和形式在与观众对话中进行历史相关实践研究调查的从业者提供蓝图来总结我的发现。我展示了博物馆研究如何从发展认识论论证中的表现中受益，以及表演研究如何在知识生产过程中更显着地赋予观众特权。我通过讨论计划中的活动和从这些展览中吸取的教训如何为有兴趣使用展览形式和形式在与观众对话中进行历史相关实践研究调查的从业者提供蓝图来总结我的发现。我展示了博物馆研究如何从发展认识论论证中的表现中受益，以及表演研究如何在知识生产过程中更显着地赋予观众特权。我通过讨论计划中的活动和从这些展览中吸取的教训如何为有兴趣使用展览形式和形式在与观众对话中进行历史相关实践研究调查的从业者提供蓝图来总结我的发现。