Tuesday 13 December 2011

Hedgehog

13 Th of December
Reading through my papers again, in order to prepare finishing of the dissertation, I came across this interesting article written by Fiona Candlin, in The Senses and Society, vol.3, issue 3, (November 2008 ). She argues that 'Placing handling objects in the middle of a visual spectacle could be understood as highly anachronistic .' Now that was exactly my intention. I believe there is nothing wrong with controversial ideas in establishments. On the contrary, I believe that a museum is an organic object in itself, which should grow new limbs on a regular basis . The Touch Cabinet is such an incentive. In my conversation with one of the curators, we discussed interaction and tactile involvement. He told me that a small group of people at the museum had been discussing the same subject. I was still pleasantly surprised that , on the second day of my visit, a table had appeared with numerous jars, two boxes, covered in cellophane, filled with colourful birds, (deceased, of course, ) and a box with what looked like prehistoric remains of a stegosaurus.
I was excited and repulsed at the same time; The creatures in the glass jars, varying from a hedgehog to a chameleon, looked highly embryonic, colourless phantoms of what they once were. Victims of cruel experiments, but more , much more visceral than the paper frog behind glass, which was also displayed in the museum. There was a visitors book placed beside the display, and a warden to give explanation . The visitors shared more or less my reaction  ; A fascination the same way one has a fascination with a haunted house , or a ghost ride on a fun- fair, a bearded women . The birds were stuffed in a card board box, colours had faded over time in a dusty night sky blue. the opaque, milky eyes half closed. Underneath the cellophane they looked as if they were ready to be prepared for some medieval feast, where they used to dress up swans, and peacocks. The fossils , which the warden explained to me as a rich source of information about the vegetation millions of years ago, were there to be touched. Suddenly my Touch-Cabinet seemed very dull and uneventful. And yet, both place in the museum reflected the same mood, an excitement, a new narrative was added to the stuffy image of this Museum. People will probably get nightmares about the staring eyes of dead hedgehogs and tortoises on paramalithe (?) who died long ago, but it invited discussion, like the Touch-Cabinet invited discussion. The big difference was, that the Touch- Cabinet also produced smiles, and happy faces.
















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