Walking on a Storyboard, Performing Shared Incompetence: Exhibiting “Science” in the Public Realm

Kraeftner, Bernd; Kroell, Judith; Warner, Isabel

doi:10.1002/9780470696118.ch5

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…A second, more successful example, also from the city of Vienna, is the "wahr/falsch inc." exhibition (true/wrong inc.), developed by a group called Xperiment!. One of the group's previous exhibitions was "Good bye tomato -good morning rice" an exhibition about "golden rice" which was displayed in Zürich and in Vienna (see Xperiment! 2007).…”

Section: Die Wahr/falsch Incmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Science Exhibit About Mental Health: Expectations and Engagement Perspectives

Navas Iannini

2023

Aera 2023

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In the last century and a half, scientific development has been breathtaking, but the understanding of this progress has dramatically changed. It is characterized by the transition from the culture of 'science' to the culture of 'research.' Science is certainty; research is uncertainty. Science is supposed to be cold, straight, and detached; research is warm, involving, and risky. Science puts an end to the vagaries of human disputes; research creates controversies. Science produces objectivity by escaping as much as possible from the shackles of ideology, passions, and emotions; research feeds on all of those to render objects of inquiry familiar (Latour 1998, 208-209).How did the transition from "science" to "research" described by sociologist and philosopher of science Bruno Latour materialise in the world of science museums and science exhibitions? This question lies at the heart of this paper. My aim is to examine the changing roles of science exhibitions from places of "cold" science, where secure, closed and fixed knowledge is communicated, to places that increasingly engage with "hot", controversial research and open debates. The examples discussed are European ones (from the United Kingdom, France and, above all, Austria) and I will be focussing on the display of controversies, rather than on displays that cause controversy. In the first part of the paper, I discuss how controversies have been studied in the field of science studies. In the second I examine the recent evolution of (some) museums from "cold" to "hot". Then, in the third part, I look at two recent exhibitions that dealt with the controversial nature of science.I will argue that while the "cold" way to exhibit science is through stabilised objects, the "hot" way works through relationality, that is, through highlighting the multiple relationships between visitors and objects, and between the positions of the various contenders in the controversy. The paper develops the concept of a "texture of controversy" in trying to make sense of exhibition arrangements focused on positions, relationships and processes, rather than stabilised products and objects. In displays about controversies we encounter an object that is open in many ways: to be flexibly interpreted, to be engaged with, to be questioned, to be challenged. Such an object materialises a number of symmetries: between various actors, between art and science, and between right and wrong. Two examples from the city of Vienna -the Gallery of Research and the true/wrong inc. exhibition -will shed some light on how controversial science can be exhibited. The study of controversies in science studiesOne way to make sense of the shift from cold science to hot research comes from the field of science studies (often interchangeably referred to as 'science, technology and society' or 'science and technology studies' or

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Section: Die Wahr/falsch Incmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Science Exhibit About Mental Health: Expectations and Engagement Perspectives

Navas Iannini

2023

Aera 2023

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“…Certainly in the case of Pasteur, as described by Latour, the laboratory was central to the curatorial problem of exhibiting the microbe: assembling the exhibition at Pouilly-le-Fort was in Latour's account a problem of mobilizing the laboratory apparatus from Paris to this rural setting. In the context of museum studies, Bennett is not alone in proposing an analogy between the museum and the laboratory (Bennett 2005;Kraeftner et al 2007;Macdonald & Basu 2007). One of the key insights of laboratory studies was indeed to highlight the ways in which laboratory settings provide for the practical establishment of multiple viewpoints on experimental objects (Knorr-Cetina 1999;Latour & Woolgar 1986, Lynch 1985.…”

Section: Museums and Laboratoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curating actor-network theory: testing object-oriented sociology in the Science Museum

Waller¹

2017

Mus. Soc.

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Across different traditions of social research, the study of science exhibitions has often taken the form of an 'object-oriented' inquiry. In this tradition, actor-network theory (ANT) has focused on how the processes of exhibiting objects mediate relations between science and society. Although ANT has not developed as a theory of curating, it nonetheless contributes to revaluing the work performed by curators in relation to the practice of science. This article describes an ethnographic engagement with a curatorial experiment in a science museum which staged a 'multi-viewpoint' exhibition of an object. A display of an object 'in process', I take the opportunity of this curatorial experiment to explore analogies drawn in ANT studies between museums and laboratories in attending to the ways that curatorial practices mediate science. I ask whether, and to what extent, ANT can account for curating as a material practice that not only participates in domesticating objects for science but also in problematizing, multiplying and redistributing relations between objects and the social.

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Walking on a Storyboard, Performing Shared Incompetence: Exhibiting “Science” in the Public Realm

Cited by 2 publications

References 7 publications

A Science Exhibit About Mental Health: Expectations and Engagement Perspectives

A Science Exhibit About Mental Health: Expectations and Engagement Perspectives

Curating actor-network theory: testing object-oriented sociology in the Science Museum

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