Nina Parish

Telling migrant stories in museums in Australia: Does the community gallery still have a role to play?

Much attention in recent museum studies theory has focused on questions and practices of inclusion. The community gallery has been traditionally reserved as a space to engage and actively seek contributions from diverse communities and to open the museum up to new voices. This article considers the community gallery’s current function across different scales of museums in Australia – comparing approaches at the local and state level – where it has most often been used to engage with ethnic diversity. It examines some of the trends evident in current practice and questions whether this space can continue to be an effective and important part of contemporary museum practice. Does a dedicated community space establish a clear sense of inclusion? Or does it mean that groups are essentialised within the museum, treated to a one-off showing of their story to be replaced by the next featured group?

War museums as agonistic spaces: possibilities, opportunities and constraints

ABSTRACT Following the theorisation of museums as agonistic spaces and drawing on a comparative analysis of war museums located in various European countries, this paper argues that these institutions play complex and multi-layered roles beyond their obvious educational function. These not easily reconcilable roles act as major constraints upon the form and content of exhibitions and work against the adoption of an agonistic approach. However, the paper also argues that war museums are especially apt to become sites of political contestation able to engage with agonistic memory and unsettling counter-narratives. This is due in large part to the nature of the subject matter they deal with, as war and conflict lend themselves to being represented in ways that emphasise patriotic consensus but can also highlight dissent, contestation, multiple perspectives and alternative visions of society. Agonistic practices emerge when windows of opportunity open through a combination of top-down and bottom-up agency able to take advantage of particular socio-political circumstances or cultural developments. The paper also discusses a new exhibition on war memory planned for late 2018 in Essen, Germany and conceived as a strategic political intervention, which aims to communicate in an agonistic fashion with its audiences.

Suitcases, keys and handkerchiefs:How are objects being used to collect and tell migrant stories in Australian museums?

ABSTRACT This article examines the particular challenges that are associated with collecting and exhibiting objects to represent immigrant narratives. Everyday objects play a crucial role in migration history and curators need to capitalise on the representational possibilities offered by these seemingly banal objects when conceiving exhibitions. This analysis concentrates on strategies used by Australian museums – from large federal institutions to state-based organisations as well as smaller community-based and council-run museums – as migration history is core to the settler history of Australia. In critically examining how objects are collected, this article discusses what it means for museums to engage with and tell stories of migration today and into the future. The study reveals the diversity of approaches at play and what lessons can be learnt from the study of how curators and institutions themselves are striving to engage with a diverse audience in their collections and exhibitions.

Henri Michaux: interventions poétiques d'un homme en '-mane' par Monica Tilea (review)

This systematic study of Henri Michaux’s creative output up to 1945 began life as a PhD thesis, defended at the University of Craiova, Romania, in 2006. It was then published as a book by the press of the same university before taking its present form. Monica Tilea engages in an interdisciplinary examination of the creative act in Michaux’s work through the comparison of what she names ‘le poiein du pictural’ and ‘le poiein du scriptural’ (p. 12 et passim). The book begins with the well-established affirmation about the difficulty of defining Michaux, but does not fall into the trap of trying to do so. It is divided into three parts: ‘Le Travail du nocturnal’ (his journey into the outer world), ‘Le Travail nocturne’ (his exploration of the inner world via dreams and daydreams), and ‘Le Travail diurne’ (his preference for painting as an expressive form); and presents close readings of several well-known texts by Michaux including Ecuador, La Nuit remue, Façons d’endormi, façons d’éveillé, La Ralentie, and Épreuves, exorcismes. Steeped in phenomenological thought, Tilea’s book strives to show how everything is related in Michaux’s work, be it the failure of actual journeys in Ecuador and the subsequent contemplation of the creative process in this ‘journal de voyage’; the meteorological conditions of this journey (sea, fog) and Michaux’s later experimentation with watercolour; or the historical events that gave rise to combative texts, such as ‘Immense voix’, which Tilea successfully interprets as containing the germs of Michaux’s later visual output. Each chapter is couched in Michaux’s own terminology and the argument proceeds using language familiar to any Michaux reader: ‘interventions’, ‘déplacements’, ‘gestes’, ‘fatigue’, and ‘cri’, to name but a few. This is a rigorous and well-structured exploration of Michaux’s work and there is no doubt that it is an important contribution to the field. Its author understands and knows Michaux’s creative output very well. She is also familiar with the secondary material (up to 2005) on the poet-artist, and builds on it to construct an insightful and convincing argument. The inclusion of theoretical works by Romanian authors (for example, Marius Ghica and Irina Mavrodin) provides an innovative critical angle. The lack of engagement with more recent Michaux scholarship is disappointing, however. Statements such as ‘Henri Michaux a été un solitaire qui s’est tenu en marge de tous les événements de son temps’ (p. 156) could have been avoided if the more sociological approach by David Vrydaghs had been considered (Michaux l’insaisissable: socioanalyse d’une entrée en littérature (Geneva: Droz, 2008)). More care with proofreading would have improved the text: for example, footnote 349 also appears in the body of the text on p. 164. Tilea is particularly strong when discussing Paul Klee’s influence on Michaux through the lens of ‘Aventures de lignes’, although here some of the terminology used (in particular, ‘la force créatrice’, p. 129) could have benefited from more careful analysis. The author’s final assertion that this line of enquiry should be extended to Michaux’s later production is very welcome, provided the above caveats are taken into account.

Archives et musées: Le théâtre du patrimoine (France-Canada)

worse. Différance forecloses complete identification, rendering any identity unstable and unpredictable. Who or what the other is remains in question. This openness exposes us to the potentially violating effects of alterity and, in so doing, provides the non-ethical foundation of ethics. If Iwere certain that the other would never harm me, if I were certain that I would not harm the other, the need to decide how to respond, to take responsibility], the need for ethics tout court, would disappear. Derrida’s insistence on undecidability refutes Bellou’s reading of his philosophy as an injunction to submit unconditionally to the other. It enables decision and responsibility; it creates the conditions of (im)possibility for the agency of the subject which his reflection allegedly effaces. So while Bellou’s book is ambitious in scope and participates in a broader debate about the praxis of deconstruction, its central argument, to my mind, ignores howDerrida’s philosophy rigorously resists any hierarchical conception of self and other and thereby fails to offer a sufficiently nuanced interpretation of his work.

From radio to the internet:Italian futurism, new technologies and the persistence of the book

Experimental practitioners have always been excited by the potential of new technologies. This essay examines how Italian Futurist experimentation with the page, the book and the radio informs contemporary experimentation with new media. Marinetti celebrated the machine through the creation of Words-in-Freedom (parole in libertà) which reject conventional grammar, syntax and page layout. Some digital works by contemporary e-poets, such as Julien d’Abrigeon, appear to fulfi l the dynamic, interactive objectives of these Words-in-Freedom. Moving beyond the two-dimensional space of the page, the Italian Futurists sought to destroy the book as cultural object but remained interested in the book as a three-dimensional object. Marinetti was also fascinated by the creative potential of other mass media, and his creative production engaged with new technologies in terms of both form and content. Contemporary artists and writers use new technologies in a variety of ways, some of which are directly infl uenced by the historical avant-gardes. For example, Alessandro de Francesco’s interest in sophisticated sound technologies is reminiscent of Marinetti’s experimentation ninety years earlier, although their aims are resolutely different. It seems that Marinetti and his fellow Futurists would have approved of the detached citational poetics, characteristic of much contemporary poetic practice, where there is no trace of a lyrical subject. This poetics is far more discreet but no less subversive than the fl amboyant experimentation undertaken by the Italian Futurists.