Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Exploring new forms of engagement and participation for museum visitors, this research reflects upon the project, Punt.Point, a self-guided museum tour that invites personal exploration and new ways of inhabiting the museum. This project was created by a dance artist and landscape architecture through a commission by the Van Abbemuseum. It is now part of the permanent collections of the museum and on offer to install in other sites. The purpose of this project stemmed from the research we did to seek modes of togetherness in the museum and devise new forms of engagement for visitors. Point.Punt is a project that reflects our awareness of the way individual and collective bodies inhabit, move through, organize and choreograph public space. Our methodology is based on the site research techniques of American urbanist William Whyte and draws from the disciplines of dance and architecture to challenge concepts of social practice. Our work plays along the borders of those codes by prompting ways of positioning or re-positioning the body that might liberate it and open up possibilities for a diverse range of bodily movement. How might one’s position in the space, and in relation to the artwork and each other, shift and generate a dialogue about being together with and in the museum? These dialogues may lead to shifts in the way museums consider the visitor experience, moving away from narrowly-focused didactic tendencies towards strategies that allow for more open-ended spatial and social experiences.