EXPLORATION STAGES

This project enabled the participants to see everything with a new pair of eyes, questioning assumptions and understanding power dynamics and use a lens of equity and dignity to understand a place, through an emergent six-part framework: the city BEFORE being a museum, the city AS a museum, the city OF museums, the city DESPITE being a museum, the city BEYOND museums and the city: FROM a museum TO muse.

Each exploration stage is juxtaposed with another one. They have a flow but they are not linear. It is interesting to note that it is the relationship of the ‘city’ with the idea or construct of a ‘museum’ and the act of museumisation or museumificaion is what was emphasised. Hence the framework for exploration highlights the connecting words, the prepositions: BEFORE, AS, OF, DESPITE, BEYOND, FROM-TO.

There are guiding questions for each stage and within that there are individual lines of inquiries by the co-travellers that elaborate and extend those inquiries. Further each stage has a visual framework of the key ideas in an inter-connected and inter-related way, manifested through a Lotus Diagram. We encourage the readers to not only read the narratives but also engage with the Lotus Diagram.

When did the city start becoming a museum? Was there a time before this gaze became so all-pervasive?

How does the city become a ‘museum’ to people? Is it a museum to the people who inhabit or to those who visit? Can culture, community, people, practices become objects in a museum?

What do the museums in the city reveal about the city? What is the connection between artefacts and narratives? How does the place manifest itself through the spaces, which those artefacts are a part of?

How do we bring in the shifts of our own gaze and interpretation about the city as a museum to one where the city acts as a catalyst of inspiration and newer imagination?

What all are there in the city beyond what has been museum-ised / objectified / stereotyped? How does one locate those and go past the obvious?

What elements/characteristics exist in the city, which are unique despite the city mostly being treated as a museum of tangible and intangible heritage?