Museums, Participation and Intercultural Dialogue David Owen Henry ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3653-6643
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Creating Space to Listen: Museums, Participation and Intercultural Dialogue David Owen Henry ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3653-6643 Doctor of Philosophy September 2018 School of Historical and Philosophical Studies University of Melbourne This thesis is submitted in total fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy - Arts Thesis Abstract This thesis examines the emergence, practice, and social meaning of intercultural dialogue as participatory programming in museums. While intercultural dialogue takes many forms in museums, the thesis focuses on projects that invite participants to create digital content in response to one another on topics related to identity, cultural diversity, and racism. The thesis presents a central case study of a contemporary anti-racist museum project – ‘Talking Difference’ – produced by the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, which facilitated, documented, and presented dialogue between participants. It draws on the personal experience of the author as a previous staff member on Talking Difference, as well as written and visual documentation, interviews with project staff, and analysis of content produced. Engaging with the field of museum studies, the thesis argues that dialogue projects like Talking Difference have come to prominence as museums adapt their traditional governmental role to contemporary societies where engagement with institutions is characterised by reflexivity and participation. Given this, the thesis argues that participatory programs should challenge the idea that museums can provide neutral forums for dialogue. Instead, dialogic museum practice may be more transformative if museums embrace their role of promoting social justice as third parties in the dialogue they facilitate. This entails not only encouraging participants to produce affecting personal accounts but also facilitating engagement with the complex social and historical contexts within which these accounts emerge. To this end, museums should prioritise listening, and facilitate the negotiation of conflicting perspectives in addition to providing platforms for their co- presentation. In acknowledgement of the field of practices within which such work takes place, the thesis argues that these interventions should be part of a broader suite of efforts to decolonise museum practice. Declaration This thesis: • comprises my original work towards the Doctor of Philosophy; • makes acknowledgement to all other materials used; • is below than the maximum word limit at 88,000 words long, exclusive of tables, bibliographies and appendices. ……………………………………………………………… David Henry 29 August 2018 Acknowledgments I would firstly like to acknowledge the staff at the Immigration Museum, who are committed to fighting for social justice and the work of bringing people together to learn from one another. I particularly thank Tatiana Mauri, who offered me the opportunity to work on Talking Difference and was the project’s guiding force, embracing its opportunities and challenges with flare and confidence. I would also like to thank my supervisors. Professor Tony Birch offered supervision in the early stages of the thesis with humour, intellect and the sage advice that I should pick my battles. Associate Professor Chris Healy was instrumental in giving shape to this thesis. His supervision pushed me to see the whole thing at once, and to ensure that its various parts work together. Associate Professor Sara Wills has been an incredibly warm and rigorous presence in my thinking and writing since she supervised my Honours Thesis in 2008. Without her commitment to enquiring at the spaces between cultures, between past and present, and between people, I never would have worked at the Immigration Museum, or come back to pursue a PhD under her supervision years later. I am deeply thankful for her guidance, intellect and generosity. I thank my family and friends who have been supportive and encouraging as I have walked the long path towards submitting this thesis. Most importantly, I thank Ket, who taught me that making things fair needs your head and your heart, and whose laughter, love, and dancing made this thesis feel possible. Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Understanding Dialogue.............................................................................................. 36 Chapter 2: Governments, Museums, and Intercultural Dialogue ................................................. 56 Chapter 3: The Talking Difference Portable Studio ..................................................................... 77 Chapter 4: Identity in Talking Difference ..................................................................................... 98 Chapter 5: Dialogue in Talking Difference ................................................................................ 131 Chapter 6: Question Bridge, Intra-cultural Dialogue, Coherency and Synthesis ....................... 171 Conclusion: The Moment of Dialogue ....................................................................................... 208 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 224 Appendix A: Talking Difference Portable Studio Touring and Workshop Schedule ................ 244 Appendix B: Talking Difference Portable Studio Questions ...................................................... 246 Acknowledgement of third party copyright material reproduced in this thesis Talking Difference Portable Studio, Photographer: Rodney Start, Copyright Museum Victoria, 2012. Title Page. Talking Difference Portable Studio. Photographer: Rodney Start Copyright Museum Victoria 2012. Page 80. Talking Difference Portable Studio User Interface. Copyright Museum Victoria 2012. Page 82. Talking Difference Portable Studio Phase II. Copyright Museum Victoria 2016. Page 92. Museum Victoria has granted permission for the use of these images. Introduction To what extent might the inclusion (and perhaps, perceived validation) of diverse, potentially oppositional opinions serve to undermine the agency of museums in privileging and engendering support for non-prejudiced interpretations of difference?1 This thesis explores the emergence, practice, and social meaning of intercultural dialogue as participatory practice in museums. While museum scholars have used intercultural dialogue to describe a range of two-way relationships in museums – for example, between displays and visitors,2 institutions and communities,3 and between visitors themselves4 – in this thesis I focus specifically on projects that use digital media to facilitate and document dialogue between participants and then present these exchanges to a broader audience. In doing so I interrogate the celebration of dialogic and intercultural practice in critical museum studies and highlight the need for a more precise and complex understanding of the role of museums in public discourse about divisive social issues related to identity, cultural diversity, and racism.5 In the thesis, I examine the content produced by participants in a central case study, the ‘Talking Difference’ project developed by the Immigration Museum in Melbourne. The project consisted of a ‘Portable Studio’, which toured to libraries and community centres across Victoria inviting participants to create video questions and answers in response to one another on issues of identity, cultural diversity, and racism. I was a staff member on the project between 2009 and 2013. The experience of working on the project prompted me to explore the meaning of intercultural dialogue in the museum and drove the development of the central research questions of this thesis. The thesis 1 Richard Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (London & New York: Routledge, 2007), 181. 2 Andrea Witcomb identifies the Museum of Sydney’s Calling to Come installation as a key site of ‘dialogic interactivity’. Andrea Witcomb, Re-Imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum, Museum Meanings (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 160. 3 James Clifford, “Museums as Contact Zones”, in Representing the Nation – a Reader: Histories, Heritage and Museums, ed. David Boswell and Jessica Evans (New York: Routledge, 1999), 440. 4 Elaine Heumann Gurian, Civilizing the Museum: The Collected Writings of Elaine Heumann Gurian (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), 100. See also Angelina Russo, “Transformations in Cultural Communication: Social Media, Cultural Exchange, and Creative Connections”, Curator 54, no. 3 (July 2011): 327–46, doi.org/10.1111/j.2151-6952.2011.00095.x. 5 In 2005, leading museum scholar Elaine Heumann Gurian questioned the use of ‘buzzwords’ such as ‘community’, ‘forum’ and ‘social responsibility’ arguing that they are too often used ‘imprecisely but fervently’ by museum scholars and professionals alike. Gurian, Civilizing the Museum, 74. 1 seeks to establish how moves towards participatory intercultural dialogue alter the governmental role of museums in contemporary pluralistic societies, and how museums might better facilitate and present informed and engaging dialogue about identity, cultural diversity, and racism. I argue that participatory intercultural dialogue represents an attempt to redress the excesses of governmental practice in museums by decentering the curatorial voice of the institution, and challenging the exclusionary practices associated with traditional