On Embodiment, Performance Art and Contemporary Museum Design

Abstract

This paper considers the relationship between performance art, recent museological models focused on the centrality of the public, and the visitors’ ontological status as embodied, cognitive and sentient beings. It discusses the shift from traditional curatorship towards a participatory model, curated for the visitor rather than about objects. It frames the thinking about the public as embodied/sentient entity, whose perceptual mechanisms need to be fully understood in order to design fully participatory, engaging and stimulating exhibitions. It surveys and addresses performance art as exemplary to understand the relationship between the space of the museum and the bodies of the artists and their public, and how these elements can generate new research questions. Through its analysis, it proposes curating the public’s experience by adopting an interdisciplinary framework centered around the notion of embodiment, shared space and multisensory interaction.