Culture

Background: Each object shown in a cultural history museum is part of a whole, the museum display. In a museum, the museum object acts as a culturally agreed symbol for another time or culture, where the prevailing worldview is also greatly affecting the exhibition design through categorization and various power structures. However, the research tradition of museum studies rarely considers the spatial dimensions, when analysing the meanings of objects. All the same, the surrounding elements, which affect the museum objects, such as other objects, vitrines, the surrounding space, lighting and colours are vital to the meanings created around the object. Recent experiments with artists in cultural history museums have questions the prevailing categorization systems in intriguing ways (like for example Hans Haacke in London GIVE&TAKE exhibition in 2001.)

Research objectives: Exhibition design is a cultural, political, social and historical construction built by some ones. In some degrees, the interpretation can be manipulated; however, the museum object is not interpreted always in the same way. In my research I have created and tested different surroundings for the museum object. In my fictive museum installations I wanted to encourage various interpretations of the fictive museum objects, which are made of glass. The objective was to leave certain amount of uncertainty of the origin, function or even materials of the objects. That is to say, the interpretation of the objects in the fictive museum constructions demands the viewer to take an active role in the process of producing meanings from the object.The objective was also to experiment fictive museum installations as test spaces/places as part of a cultural study.

Art as test spaces: During the past eight years I have been dealing with the museum theme in my own work as an artist. My interest lies in exhibiting the presentation. The three fictive museum installations, which are part of my dissertation, act as test spaces for the interpretation of museum objects. In the seminar I wish to present analyses of the following three installations. The first one, “Imprisoned Setting” at the Design Museum, Helsinki in 2000, dealt with the questions of the museum as a sacred place, where the museum objects were ennobled in their vitrines. The second installation, “Memories from a Curiosity Cabinet” at the Vantaa Art Museum, Vantaa in 2001, had a fictive collector, who created the narratives around the objects, which were placed into a site hut inside a white cube, in an art museum. The third test space “A British Noblewoman’s Collection from the 19^th Century India” in Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki in 2003, was an open subjective museum construction with the atmosphere of colonialism.

~In this presentation I will go through some of the research analysis for my PhD research. My background is in art and design, as I graduated from the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, where I also do my current research. Now I also do research in the Finnish Academy Funded SEFUN research group (Semiotic Product Functions) lead by Susann Vihma.

I am interested in the relationship between an object and a museum. My focus is on cultural history museums and objects from other time and other place. An object in a museum it is never in a vacuum, but affected by its surroundings. My interest lies in exhibiting the presentation.

~ I have built my own fictive museum installations as part of the research. I have transformed the existing “white cube” art museum space into another place, a fictive museum environment, with historical feeling. The installations function as test spaces in my research, where I have been able to research questions about visualised semantics in a concrete physical space and place. I have imitated the way authentic cultural history museums function, but naturally also let my own visual way of making art affect. The three fictive museum installations act as test spaces for the interpretation of museum objects.

The first one, “Imprisoned Setting” was at the Design Museum, Helsinki in year 2000, (and it dealt with the questions of the museum as a sacred place, where the museum objects were ennobled in their vitrines.)

The second installation, “Memories from a Curiosity Cabinet” was at the Vantaa Art Museum, Vantaa in year 2001, (and had a fictive collector, who created the narratives around the objects, which were placed into a site hut inside a white cube, in an art museum.)

The third test space “A British Noblewoman’s Collection from the 19^th Century India” was in Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki in year 2003. (It was an open subjective museum construction with the atmosphere of colonialism.)

~ An exhibition is always layered with various meanings depending on the view point of the viewer, but also on the view points which are built into the exhibition design. Three dimensional spaces and processes include time, movement, sounds and other people. Through my analysis I have come upon seven themes, which are found in the structures of these installations, but which also equally exist in a cultural history museum exhibition. They are the actual elements that create the meanings for the museum object in the museum space. In my presentation I will briefly go through these themes, which are part of the meaning creation process. I will focus on the last installation, which was in Kiasma last year.

~Exhibitions function with the help of stories. With narratives the viewer gets his or hers first impression of the exhibition, often even before entering the actual physical exhibition space. “Museum pedagogy is structured firstly through narratives constructed by museum displays and secondly through the methods used to communicate these narratives.”[1] These stories embody elements of power and political and social view points. Therefore when I looked deeper at the actual physical construction of exhibition design, I could find the visual elements that create meanings around the museum object.

In my own installations the interpretation of the past is openly subjective, unlike most cultural history exhibitions, where there is an aim to be as objective as possible. The starting point for the exhibition design starts always from the time period where the designer is at the moment of designing. (This can clearly be seen in some exhibitions, which have survived unchanged or with little changes from the 18^th and 19^th centuries.) The challenge for the exhibition maker is to make an interesting interpretation of the story that is created around the exhibited object. We can reach to the past or other cultures only through our own perspective. It is this interpretation in the exhibition design the viewer sees to make his or hers own interpretations.

In the “A British Noblewoman’s Collection from the 19^th Century India” installation I looked at colonialism as an outsider from Finnish perspective. I was approaching the aesthetics of power as a story from Indian and British colonial past. In the 19^th century the colonial gaze focused on objects, which possessed “Exotic quality”. They were collected into the museum collections.[2] For example, when I researched Natural history drawings from India from 18^th and 19^th century in the British Library, London, I was surprised to see how much they looked like European paintings. In my own paintings I imitated the style of these paintings and the way they were exhibited in the 19^th century. I also changed some paintings a lot and created my own interpretation of the colonial gaze.

~I used an actress as part of the storytelling. In the “Memories from the curiosity cabinet” (2001) installation the actress was present in the installation. In “A British Noblewoman’s Collection from the 19^th Century India” the actress was only present in the portrait of a fictive collector, Lady Helen Mary Frog (1848-1931). I did the set design for the portrait, which acted as part of the story linked to the objects. The portrait was projected onto an old golden frame opposite a mirror. The viewer could position her or himself in the mirror together with the collector to form a double portrait.

~Bringing historical atmosphere to a “white Cube”, in an art museum, means moving back and forth in the history of museum institution. It is like questioning: where are the roots of a museum?

“Atmosphere is prototypical “between” phenomenon. Atmospheres fill spaces; they emanate from things, constellation of things and person. The aesthetics of atmospheres shifts attention away from the “what” something represents, to the “how” something is present.”[3] The feeling of atmosphere moves the attention away from the museum objects or fictive museum objects, and emphasises the overall exhibition design in the meaning creation process.

and drama. Dark overall colour schema and dark lighting enabled the viewer to easily and quickly tune into the exhibition and its story in spite of the different modern feeling of the art museum ( architect Steven Holl), with white and light atmosphere. For this installation I looked for a colour tone that reminded of the historical feelings of 19^th century museum I had visited, like the Sir John Soane Museum in London. The colour functions as an index that connects my memories to the actual construction. (Finding the right colour meant first choosing 3 colours, which were painted on 1 m3 boards. From these boards I selected the final colour.)

Colour is a semiotic sign, which surrounds and affects the interpretation of the museum object. A colour can function as an iconic sign, which refers to something with similar colour.[4] In this installation I have used a tone of red that imitates the atmospheres I have experiences in some museums I have visited. Using only one colour in this installation brought the place a continuous character. It was important for my idea to create a clear division of inside and outside to this installation space. (I will get back to this.)

~Light works together with colour, they can’t be separated in the actual physical space. There was almost none natural light in my installation, and the general artificial lighting was dim. The objects were lit with fibre optics and other light sources. Light makes objects stand out and seem valuable. The museum objects become meaning full, and as such symbols of a museum object. Light gave all small elements in the work “The evolution rate of unknown ritual objects I-Ii (Compared to a natural creature” their own space inside the glass domes. Metaphorically the work can be looked as a sort of laboratory experiment or visual interpretation of Darwinist tradition. I wanted to leave the interpretation open, by bringing only few hints of my thoughts into the installation. I wanted to test visual elements, which creates the meanings in the objects and not only the relationship between explaining text and the object.

~Even thought the atmosphere was carefully constructed, I wanted to give some contradictory messages to the viewer. There were two statements in the installation, which disturbed the atmosphere in the exhibition. They also created a connection between the visual installation and my thesis. They show how many layered the meanings are in an exhibition.

~My installations are temporal installations which change the existing place, art museum space, unlike most cultural history museums, which exist for a longer time period. They are fictional museums inside an existing museum. In my designing process I consider the place and space from the very start of the designing process. In Kiasma the installation was planned into a 10 meters high white cube, where there are two doors into the space and a balcony. From the balcony the installation can be viewed from the above and the construction of the museum is revealed in its simplicity. The outside of the fictive museum is a rough structure built by someone. This refers symbolically to all cultural history museums: a museum is a subjective construction, always built by someone, even thought museums do not reveal themselves to the visitor as constructions built by someone.

When looking from the balcony, the viewer can look at other visitors as part of the installation. Metaphorically it is for example as in a dolls house.[5] There were also some junk left in the back of the walls, like the model of the construction. Usually they are never left to show.

Inside the installation there were a series of spaces; the first entrance with a corridor, the main gallery, the painting gallery and the second entrance with the portrait and the mirror. From both entrances there were a illusion of fake perspective, which made the spaces seem longer than they were. The walls seemed more massive from inside. When looked at from the above, one could notice how thin they actually were.

From cultural perspective, Kiasma is a demanding place as part of the main Finnish Art Museum. I connected the history of museums together for a while, where the cultural history and natural history museums met in the art museum, as the collections were together before the 19^th century collections. My installation was also part of a bigger exhibition called “Process” which emphasized the nature of process in contemporary art.

~Cultural history museums activity is based on the “power of the real thing”[6], the museum object. The object functions as a centre of attention for my own installations as well. The surrounding elements which affect the meanings of the museum object are constructed in the exhibition design. I have made my own museum objects, which are made of glass. They are metaphoric museum objects were all the semantic aspects are present at the same time. The objects are iconic by resembling the museum objects I have seen and drawn in the museums I have visited since year 1990. They are indexes as the marks on the objects refer to the way they were made in unique glass technique, “lost-wax” technique. The objects also symbolically represent museum objects in general, even though they are particularly made for exhibition use, so that their original meanings do not change, unlike is the case with authentic museum objects.

~The role of the vitrine is to protect museum objects, but also to raise the cultural value of the artefact. The vitrine has tight connection to the object, as many objects are never shown in a museum unless inside a vitrine. In museums the internal categorizations are presented through exhibition design. Categories can be conceptualized metaphorically as containers,[7] which hold knowledge, feelings, social structures etc. A show case is a everyday and common part of exhibition design, put there has been little attention paid to it in research context.

In my installations I have wanted to play around with the conventional roles of the vitrine. I must return to my second installation “Memories of the curiosity cabinet”, where the vitrine became more active. The vitrine was part of the object and created new meanings in the relationship of the museum and the object. In the “On the way to the museum” (2001) the vitrine defines the borders of the suitcase and marks it with transparent glass edges. Only the handle which is left represents the original cultural history museum artefact. My fictive museum objects were not willing to stay passive undr the aesthetic gaze, but wanted to create new meanings for the show case.

~In all of the three installations connected to my PhD research, I have also presented the process of meaning construction to the public. In the last installation I hold six workshops for the museum visitors, from children to adults. They made their own fictive museum objects from various materials. The objects were then exhibited in a big vitrine close to my own installation. They were placed in the show case in a similar manner than in a very crowded warehouse vitrine, or a 19^th century vitrine, like the ones in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England.

The aim was to give the public a possibility to make art themselves, but also to enable them to have a glimse of the working methods of the museum as an institution. Showing the process of exhibition making and letting the audience participate in it, opens up the operational models of the museums. It also demonstrates different ways the meanings are built.

Through analysis of my installations I have found various layers of elements that actually physically affect the meaning of the object. The meanings are consciously created, for example atmospheres can be constructed with the help of color, light etc. Tools for these

~Visual process in a place, which changes the nature of the existing place and space.

~Test spaces for my research questions on the relationship between the museum and a museum object.

~Meaning construction, which are layered depending on the viewpoint of the exhibition producer. The other side is the viewers interpretation. Meanings overlap each other, depends on your view point

Böhme, Gernot 1998: Athmosphere as aesthetic concept. Ed by Gerrit Confurius: Landalos Architecture Art Culture. Constructing athmospheres. Berlin.

Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean 2000: Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. Routledge. London.

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark 1999: Philosophy in the Flesh. The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books. New York.

Pearce, Susan M. 1994: Interpreting objects and collections. Leicester Readers in Museumstudies.

Vihma, Susann 1995: Products as representation. A semiotic and aesthetic study of design products. Taideteollinen korkeakoulu. Helsinki.

[1] Hooper-Greenhill 2000: 3.

[2] Cannizzo 1998. 153-166.

[3] Böhme 1998: 112-115.

[4] For more see Viham 1995: 69-70.

[5] Marja-Terttu Kivirinta in the exhibition review referred to the installation as a big dolls house prop. Helsingin Sanomat 27.9.2003

[6] Pearce 1994: 20.

[7] Lakoff&Johnson 1999:20.