Museum presence. An attempt to map what cannot be mapped
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.6336Keywords:
presence, atmosphere, mapping, milieu, museum map, counterintuitive method, materiality, phenomenology, meshworkAbstract
Presence has become a new object of study within architecture, literature,art, anthropology, and museology. Theorists have described presence as a state of
being lost in focused intensity, an attitude towards history as an ongoing process,
and as a newfound interest in the materiality of collections and the museum
space. In this article, the work on mapping a small historical museum in Denmark
makes use of presence theory in a(n) (futile) attempt to represent the embodied
experience of museum space including time, movements, atmosphere, and presence
effects. This article introduces a provisional counterintuitive method – in this case
mapping presence – in order to point to those qualities of the museum which are
often overlooked. The cumbersome presence is here considered to be a logical,
predictable and static object of study. In this specific case, the counterintuitive
method will attempt to get a hold of presence using one of the most uncreative
and conventional parts of the museum institution: the museum map. The article’s
map draws on Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari’s mapping, Gumbrecht’s
descriptions of presence, Böhme’s distinction between Realität and Wirklichkeit,
and Ingold’s meshwork, lines, and knots in order to point to potential zones of
presence in the museum.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
Contents published in editions of The Journal Nordic Museology in volumes predating 2017 are protected by the Norwegian Law of Copyright. This means that text and images published in these volumes can only be shared and republished with written permission from the author and/or photographer. Starting from 2017, the content published in The Journal Nordic Museology is - unless otherwise stated - licensed through Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC-ND.4.0. This means that content can be copied, distributed and disseminated in any medium or format under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- Non-Commercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- No Derivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
- You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
- No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material. Authors who publish in Nordic museology accept the following conditions:
Authors(s) retains copyright to the article and give Nordic Museology right to first publication while the article is licensed under the Creative Commons Lens CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 This license allows sharing the article for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author and first publishing place (The Journal Nordic Museology) is credited. The license does not allow others to publish processed versions of the article without the author's permission.
The author is free to publish and distribute the work/article after publication in Nordisk Museologi, while referring to the journal as the first place of publication. Submissions that are under consideration for publication or accepted for publication in Nordisk Museology cannot simultaneously be under consideration for publication in other journals, anthologies, monographs or the like. By submitting contributions, the author accepts that the contribution is published in both digital and printed editions of Nordisk Museology. For more about publication, see the Author Guidelines.