IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section B

Abstract

There is a box in the museum store that is listed as containing the following: “WAX MODELS OF BRAINS: Sea lamprey, Dogfish, Salmon, Frog, Alligator? Pigeon”. Elsewhere, the Chinese garden, described by Michel Foucault, is designed to expand beyond the boundaries of the physical space. The garden contains representations of the four parts of the world with meaningful intersections. To traverse from one boundary to another is to travel further than across the garden, it is to spiritually engage with different places from across the world. Foucault writes that “the garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world”. This paper is a practice-based investigation into the physical and theoretical organisation of artefacts in museum collections, considering how a collection might include sites of disruption that draw attention to, create, and make legible the sites outside of their boundaries. What does it mean to traverse the museum collection as a garden? And where are the points at which ideas touch? Considering the spatiality of knowledge through the work of Foucault and Deleuze offers new potential for consideration of the museum. It is possible to create spaces through the organisation of ideas and of artefacts, not only through the physical proximity of the objects in a collection, but also the proximity of the idea of the objects. There is a chance to examine the spaces created (and disrupted) through organisation and production of knowledge, including encyclopaedic collections, functional organisations, and boxes of wax brains.