In the last decades moving images have become a common feature not only in art or film museums, but also in a wide range of institutions devoted to the conservation and transmission of memory. This paper focuses on the role of audio-visuals in the exhibition design of contemporary history and memory museums. Starting from a classification of the different kinds of audio-visuals used in these institutions, I will analyze not only “literal” presence of audio-visuals in exhibitions, but also the ways in which the museum dispositive can incorporate elements of the cinematic dispositive. I will show how, on the one hand, exhibitions can be structured according to cinematic principles such as montage and sequentiality and, on the other hand, how the configuration of museums space can be deeply influenced by the “classic” cinematic dispositive and its components (screen, dark room, projection, sitting spectator).
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The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in History Museums
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The Museum as a Cinematic Space:
The Display of Moving Images in History Museums
Elisa Mandelli, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia




Abstract

    In the last decades moving images have become a common feature not only
    in art or film museums, but also in a wide range of institutions devoted to the
    conservation and transmission of memory. This paper focuses on the role of
    audio-visuals in the exhibition design of contemporary history and memory
    museums. Starting from a classification of the different kinds of audio-visuals
    used in these institutions, I will analyze not only “literal” presence of audio-
    visuals in exhibitions, but also the ways in which the museum dispositive can
    incorporate elements of the cinematic dispositive. I will show how, on the one
    hand, exhibitions can be structured according to cinematic principles such as
    montage and sequentiality and, on the other hand, how the configuration of
    museums space can be deeply influenced by the “classic” cinematic dispositive
    and its components (screen, dark room, projection, sitting spectator).


Cinema in the museum

   The pervasiveness of cinema and moving images in exhibition spaces is no
longer a novelty. Museums and art galleries are filled with video loops, film in-
stallations and projections, and an impressive amount of scholarly attention has
been devoted to the investigation of such phenomena.
   Considering this complex scenario in its entirety, we can identify at least two
major modes of disseminating moving images in museums. A first group includes
cinema as an exhibition object, as a form of technology or art. This category com-
prises both cinema equipment shown in science and technology or film museums,1
and film-related materials (photographs, posters, costumes or projections) dis-
played in exhibits of, for example, the relations between art and cinema or the
work of specific film directors. The latter are now common in cinema museums as


1
  Such exhibits can be found at the Museo del cinema in Turin or at the Cinémathéque française
in Paris, for example.

                                                    Cinéma & Cie, vol. XV, no. 24, Spring 2015
                                            Elisa Mandelli


well as in art galleries.2 Cinema has been displayed in these contexts since the first
decades of the 20th century: in 1922, for instance, the inventor Will Day lent five
hundred items from his collection of cinematic apparatus to the London Science
Museum.3 The Museum exhibited Day’s equipment until 1959, when the items
were purchased by Henry Langlois, director of the Cinémathèque Française.4 It
was also in the 1920s that intellectuals such as Ricciotto Canudo, Léon Moussinac
and Robert Mallet-Stevens organized pioneering exhibitions that aimed at legiti-
mizing cinema as an art form, such as those that took place in Paris at the Salon
d’Automne (1921, 1922 and 1923) and at the Musée Galliera (1924), where the
exhibition L’Art dans le cinéma français included enlarged frames, set photographs
and costumes, and was accompanied by film screenings and lectures.5
   The second group of cinema-related exhibitions includes contemporary art in-
stallations involving the use of films and moving images. The foremost examples
of this category are cinematic installations created by artists or filmmakers (the
boundaries between which are sometimes very blurry),6 which have been perme-
ating museums and art galleries for at least twenty years. In this great number of
works, cinema provides an almost unlimited source of iconographic material as
well as of narrative techniques,7 but it is also a means of comparison – or even
a point of reference – of its modes of production and reception.8 We can addi-


2
  One of the most well-know exhibitions is Dominique Paїni, Guy Cogeval (eds.), Hitchcock et
l’Art: coїncidences fatales, Centre Pompidou-Mazzotta, Paris-Milan 2000 (this refers to the cata-
logue of the exhibition, which ran 6 June-24 September 2001 at the Centre Pompidou).
3
  Some institutional collections of cinematic equipment were established before Will Day’s dona-
tion, for example at the Prague National Technology Museum, in 1908-1911. See Alison Trope,
“Le Cinéma Pour Le Cinéma: Making Museums of the Moving Image,” in The Moving Image,
vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 29-67. However, the museum was not the first site where cinematic
machines were exhibited: several items had been displayed at International Exhibitions and com-
mercial fairs since the 1890s. For a brief overview, see François Albera, Exposé, le cinéma s’expose,
in Olivier Lugon (ed.), Exposition et médias: photographie, cinéma, télévision, L’Age de l’Homme,
Lausanne 2012, pp. 182-183.
4
  On Will Day’s collection, see 1895: bulletin de l’Association française de recherche sur l’histoire du
cinéma, The Will Day Historical Collection of Cinematograph & Moving Picture Equipment (edited
by Michelle Aubert, Laurent Mannoni, David Robinson), special issue, October 1997.
5
  On these exhibitions, see Christophe Gauthier, La Passion du cinéma: cinéphiles, ciné-clubs et
salles spécialisées à Paris de 1920 à 1929, AFRHC/École des chartes, Paris 1999, pp. 72-79.
6
  Such as Chantal Akerman, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Harun Faroki, Douglas Gordon, Pierre Hu-
ygue, William Kentridge, Christian Marclay, Steve McQueen, Shirin Neshat, to mention only a few.
7
  Among the vast, related bibliography, see the three issues of Cinema&Cie. International Film
Studies Journal devoted to “Cinema and Contemporary Visual Arts,” edited by Philippe Dubois
(no. 8, Fall 2006; no. 10, Spring 2008; no. 12, Spring 2009), as well as collection of essays such
as Alice Autelitano (ed.), The Cinematic Experience. Film, Contemporary Art, Museum, Udine,
Campanotto, 2010; Philippe Dubois, Frédéric Monvoisin, Elena Biserna (eds.), Extended Cinema.
Le cinéma gagne du terrain, Udine, Campanotto, 2010; Francesco Federici, Cosetta Saba (eds.),
Cinéma: immersivité, surface, exposition, Campanotto Editore, Udine 2013 and Id. (eds.), Cinema
and Art as Archive: Form, Medium, Memory, Mimesis International, Milano 2014. See also Tanya
Leighton (ed.), Art and Moving Image: A Critical Reader, Tate/Afterall, London 2008.
8
  These issues are explored in depth in Maeve Connolly, The Place of Artists’ Cinema: Space, Site
and Screen, Intellect, Chicago 2009. An investigation of the connections between cinema and mu-

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    The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in History Museums


tionally identify within this group a broad series of large-scale collective exhibi-
tions, frequently curated by artists or art critics, that relate more directly to the
relationship between art and cinema. They often bear historical overviews of the
growing presence of moving images in museums and galleries, starting with the
avant-garde film and the use of video to document artistic performances in the
1960s and 1970s.9 These exhibitions differ significantly in their scope and ap-
proach and adopt a specific component of the cinematic apparatus (projection,
for example) as the starting point to explore the migrations of images among
various media and artistic domains.10 Finally, the multifaceted interactions be-
tween cinema and contemporary art also include exhibitions curated by film-
makers, such as Agnes Varda’s L’Ile et elle,11 a site of fertile intersections between
the director’s installations and her cinematic universe, and Jean-Luc Godard’s
Voyage(s) en utopie,12 which explores a complex web of issues including the
question of cinema’s integration in the exhibition space.
   As I have suggested, scholars have investigated these connections extensive-
ly. However, the field still lacks a comprehensive understanding of all aspects
of the dissemination of moving images in museums, and the role of cinema in
museology and exhibition design still remains neglected in academic research.
In the contemporary landscape, moving images are widespread not only in film
museums and art galleries, but are in fact exhibited more and more frequently
in a wide range of institutions such as science, natural history or ethnographic
museums, as well as in history museums, where video installations, projections
and screens occupy the domain traditionally inhabited by artifacts and artworks.
Within these settings, films and audio-visuals are not displayed as works of art,
but rather as tools for contextualization, explanation or visitor engagement.
However, their role is far from being merely instrumental, and they deeply affect
the strategies of museum exhibitions and the meanings they convey.
   In this article I will focus specifically on several contemporary museums of 19th
century history, and I will analyze the use of film and moving images in their galleries.


seum space can also be found in Miriam De Rosa, Cinema e postmedia. I territori del filmico nel
contemporaneo, postmedia books, Milano 2013������������������������������������������������������
                                                 (particularly chapter 5, pp. 127-150). A further, re-
cent important contribution to the field of cinema and contemporary art is found in Erika Balsom’s
Exhibiting Cinema, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2013.
9
   See for example Matthias Michalka (ed.), X-Screen: Film Installation and Actions in the 1960s
and 1970s, Walther König, Köln 2004 (catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum Moderner
Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 13 December 2003 - 29 February 2004).
10
    See for example Christine Van Assche, Catherine David, Raymond Bellour (eds.), Passages de
l’image. Films, vidéos, images de synthèse, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 1990 (catalogue of the
exhibition held at the Centre Georges Pompidou, 19 September - 18 November 1990); Philippe-
Alain Michaud (ed.), Le Mouvement des images, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 2006 (catalogue
of the exhibition held at the Centre Pompidou, 9 April 2006 - 29 January 2007).
11
    VV. AA., Agnès Varda. L’Ile et elle. Regards sur l’exposition, Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2006
(catalogue of the exhibition held at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, 18 June – 1
October 2006).
12
   Voyage(s) en utopie. JLG,1946-1966. A la recherche d’un théorème perdu, exhibition at the Centre
Pompidou, 11 May - 14 August 2006.

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                                         Elisa Mandelli


Moving images and exhibition design

   When considering museums, it is necessary to take into account the complex-
ity of the levels on which they communicate their content. Visitors walk through
galleries following a narrative that is articulated in objects, artworks, labels, au-
dio-visuals, as well as by their arrangement in space. Studying the meaning of
museums from a semiotic perspective, Manar Hammad has proposed the dis-
tinction between architecture, objects and installation.13 According to Hammad,
each aspect is constituted by a composite set of elements (including the arrange-
ment of the rooms in the building, exhibited items, lighting solutions, multime-
dia and interactive devices, etc.), and is strictly related to the other levels: objects
are inscribed in the exhibition, which is in turn included in the architecture,14
and all of them are organized in order to communicate a unitary sense. Further-
more, as Patrizia Violi has stated, material configurations should be related to a
set of practices, uses, and functions. In other words,

     [the] model visitor is generally taken to be an interpretive strategy embedded in the
     museum itself, according to assumption that each space also inscribes in its own form
     of representation a particular pathway guiding its reception by the public, as well as
     both explicit and implicit instructions regarding how it is to be used and interpreted
     by its visitors.15

   In this paper I will consider the museum as a dispositive: an aggregation of
heterogeneous elements, which include material and technological components,
textual modes and forms of spectatorship.16 Drawing on these premises, I will
propose a classification of the different kinds of audio-visuals used in history and
memory museums, considering how their installation influences their meaning.
I will discuss not only the types of contents of the audio-visual texts, but also
their arrangement in space and their relations with other items, with museum


13
   See Manar Hammad, Il museo della Centrale Montemartini a Roma. Un’analisi semiotica, in
Isabella Pezzini, Pierluigi Cervelli (eds.), Scene del consumo: dallo shopping al museo, Meltemi,
Roma 2006. For a semiotic analysis of the museum, see also Santos Zunzunegui, Metamorfosis de
la mirada. Museo y semiótica, Cátedra, Madrid 2003 (It. ed. Metamorfosi dello sguardo. Musei e
semiotica, Nuova Cultura, Roma 2011).
14
   Manar Hammad, Il museo della Centrale Montemartini, cit., pp. 270-275.
15
   Patrizia Violi, “Spectacularizing Trauma: The Experientialist Visitor of Memory Museums,” in
Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici, no. 119, July-December 2014, p. 52. Violi further develops
these issues in Paesaggi della memoria. Il trauma, lo spazio, la storia, Bompiani, Milano 2014.
16
   See François Albera, Maria Tortajada (eds.), Cinema Beyond Film: Media Epistemology in
the Modern Era, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2010, pp. 25-44. In recent years,
the notion of “dispositive” has gained a renewed centrality in film and media studies; though
it is impossible to provide an exhaustive bibliography here, cf. in particular André Gaudreault,
Catherine Russell, Pierre Véronneau (eds.), The Cinema, A New Technology for the 20th Cen-
tury, Payot Lausanne, Lausanne 2004; François Albera, Maria Tortajada (eds.), Ciné-Dispositifs,
L’Age de l’Homme, Lausanne 2011 (Eng. ed. Cine-dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across
Media, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2015).

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     The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in History Museums


architecture and with visitors. The case studies I discuss in this section are se-
lected from European and US museums, in order to illustrate the main categories
of moving images in exhibitions. Moreover, they are representative of a perva-
sive contemporary museological trend, which we can define as the “delivering of
experiences.”17 To quote again Patrizia Violi, it is possible to identify

     an action performed by the museum in order to affect visitors, evoking a strong emo-
     tional involvement on their part, by focusing on their pathemic experience. Memory
     museums thus appear to foresee and construct an experientialist visitor, i.e. a visitor
     that will, first and foremost, “have an experience” during his visit, rather than being in-
     formed, by acquiring more knowledge of past events, which was the principal underlying
     idea behind traditional museums.18

  In the following analysis, I will show how contemporary history and memory
museums19 extensively draw upon films and audio-visuals to fabricate such “ex-
perientially oriented encounters”20 with their visitors.

Archival footage

   Archival footage is one of the most common kinds of filmic material used in history
museums. Insofar as it is strictly related to the role of cinema in the documentation
of historical events,21 this use of film performs a similar function to that of museums
in general – the conservation and transmission of memory22 – and more specifically
to history museums, which “display historical artifacts, or even reproductions or
representations of artifacts, in the formal effort to teach about the past”23.


17
   See Hilde Hein, The Museum in Transition: A Philosophical Perspective, Smithsonian Institu-
tion Press, Washington D.C. 2000; Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of
American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, Columbia University Press, New York 2004.
18
   Patrizia Violi, “Spectacularizing Trauma,” cit., p. 53. See also Paul Williams, Memorial Museums
and the Objectification of Suffering, in Janet C. Marstine (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Mu-
seum Ethics, Routledge, London-New York 2011, pp. 222-223.
19
   In this paper I use the definition “memory museums” to refer to a wide range of museums that
present past events through the paradigm of memory. See Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Mem-
ory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills 2013, p. 16.
20
   Ivi, p. 1.
21
   This function has been attributed to cinema since 1898, since the Polish pioneer cinematogra-
pher Boleslas Matuszewski claimed that “animated photography” was “a new source of history,”
which “will give a direct view of the past”. Boleslas Matuszewski, Une nouvelle source de l’histoire
(Création d’un dépôt de cinématographie historique), Paris 1989 (Eng. trans. “A New Source of
History,” in Film History, vol. 7, no. 3, Autumn 1995, pp. 322, 323).
22
   ICOM’s definition of museum states: “A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the
service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches,
communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment
for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment”. ICOM, “Museum Definition” (2007), http://
icom.museum/the-vision/museum-definition/, last visit 6 April 2015.
23
   Warren Leon, Roy Rosenzweig, Introduction, in Id. (eds.), History Museums in the United States:
A Critical Assessment, University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1989, p. xiv.

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                                         Elisa Mandelli


   The display of archival film footage can introduce a great degree of ambiguity
between the (supposed) transparency of images and a high level of mediation
in the construction of the museum discourse. A particularly representative case
in this regard is the Churchill Museum in London, which uses a large amount
of audio-visual footage and interactive devices.24 In this museum, films, photo-
graphs, text, graphics, and audio recordings have the same value as objects in
the transmission of historical knowledge, and are combined to create a coher-
ent narrative about Churchill’s life. The exhibition is largely based on 4:3-ratio,
black-and-white silent film footage, which has been digitized and is projected on
screens and monitors of different sizes. As noted by John Pickford, one of the
exhibition’s designers, this footage has undergone processes such as re-shaping,
colorization and cropping. What is at stake here is thus not limited to the pos-
sible changes constitutively imposed by digitization; designers moreover delib-
erately edited film footage to give it a new appearance and a new meaning.
Furthermore, throughout the whole exhibition,

     a visual language was developed that is recognisably mid-20th century in character, con-
     sciously evoking the period in which Churchill was alive. […] all screens were coordi-
     nated to have a mid-20th century, paper-heavy feel; a virtual analogue recalling a pre-
     digital age dominated by paperwork, filing cabinets, folders, maps, telephones and busy
     working desks – the stuff of Churchill’s life. Content on the screen was treated as real;
     papers, photos held the attributes of the real thing.25

   The “visual style” applied to the whole display contributes to the distancing of
the archival images from our time to underline the fact that they were filmed in
the past. The exhibition exploits a vast range of digital and up-to-date technolo-
gies, but at the same time its visual style is arranged to seem as dated as possible,
to fulfil visitors’ expectations about the atmosphere of Churchill’s age.
   The recreation of the tone and style of a historical period (revisited to make it
more comprehensible to present visitors) proves to be as important as the informa-
tion provided itself. To make this point is not to question the accuracy, richness
and completeness of the historical sources used by the museum; rather, I am claim-
ing that the emphasis here is more on an overall “experience” of the atmosphere
of Churchill’s era, as well as on the emotions engendered by objects and videos. A
case in point is the evaluative report about Churchill museum’s visitors in which
the MHM agency emphatically states: “Visitors come to the Churchill Museum
hoping to learn. They are not disappointed. But something more extraordinary
happens. Eighty percent report profoundly emotional and spiritual experiences.”26


24
   The museum has nearly eighty AV installations, including slide shows and projections of film
footage, interactive videos, pictograms and animated maps.
25
   John Pickford, “Making the Churchill Museum,” http://www.cassonmann.co.uk/publications/
making-the-churchill-museum, last visit 7 March 2015.
26
   Morris Hargreaves McIntyre Ltd (MHM), Summative Evaluation of the Churchill Museum,
London 2005, p. 3.

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Filmed testimonies

   The second kinds of audio-visual materials that we find in history museums
are filmed testimonies, which include interviews with witnesses of historical
events, wars or atrocities. Witnesses represents not only, as Shoshana Felman has
argued, “a crucial mode of our relation to events of our time,”27 but are also key
figures in museums devoted to history and memory, which tend to privilege the
stories of common people over authoritative and (presumed) objective histori-
cal narratives. Indeed, museums increasingly incorporate testimonial accounts in
their communication strategies and exhibition policies so as to foster the devel-
opment of a deeply emotional relation between the visitors and the institutions.
   One of the most common cinematic figures of the filmed testimony is the so-
called “talking head”: a seated individual that speaks looking at an off-camera
listener, positioned slightly to the left and below the lens. A noteworthy exam-
ple of a video testimonies’ display is the Museum of Resistance in Turin, in It-
aly, where close-ups of eye-witnesses of fascist occupation are shown on glass
screens, where visitors are reflected, in a sort of face-to-face conversation with
them. Yet, as Alice Cati has stated, the “reciprocity of gaze” between the two
subjects remains unattainable: following Derrida’s theory about the cinematic
technique of the eye-line, she compares the gaze of the testimony to the gaze of a
ghost “that not only monitors us, but also watches over us.”28 However, the use
of glass in the display produces an overlap between the faces of the witnesses and
the visitors, reinforcing viewer engagement and emphatic response.

Documentary films

   In history museums we also find actual documentary films, which are more
structured and often combine archival footage with filmed testimonies. They
have different lengths and can be located at the end of museums’ exhibitions
or embedded in displays, alongside objects and artifacts. Sometimes the films
are shown in purpose-built projections rooms, such as the cinema at the Histo-
rial Charles De Gaulle in Paris, where the five-screen documentary Charles De
Gaulle (Olivier L. Brunet, 2005-2008) is projected. The 20-minute film gives a
somewhat bombastic portrait of the statesman, through a montage of archival
film and photographs. The museum’s cinema hall, which has the elliptical shape
of a reversed dome, is placed at the very core of the building, and hosts up to 250
spectators, whom are almost surrounded by the giant screens. The architectural

27
   Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and
History, Routledge, New York 1992, p. 5.
28
   Alice Cati, Displaying Memories. Studio Azzurro and the Turn to Audiovisual Museum, in Philippe
Dubois, Frédéric Monvoisin, Elena Biserna (eds.), Extended Cinema. Le cinéma gagne du terrain,
Campanotto, Udine 2010, p. 79. Cati further explores these issues in Immagini della memoria. Teorie
e pratiche del ricordo tra testimonianza, genealogia, documentari, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2013. Pa-
trizia Violi also discusses similar issues drawing on Derrida: see Paesaggi della memoria, cit., p. 139.

                                                                                                   137
                                           Elisa Mandelli


magniloquence of the projection space thus accentuates the rhetorical tone of
the movie, emphasizing the celebratory character of the discourse.

Video reconstructions

   The final category is that of video reconstructions of historical events, charac-
ters or periods: actors recount or act out scenes relating to museum themes and
collections. These means of narrating history can be associated, on the one hand,
to the conventions of documentary films, and on the other, to practices such as
museum theatre, as well as to forms of display such as mannequins, life groups
and dioramas.
   The In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres (Belgium) makes extensive use of
fictional testimonial videos. Actors play the parts of witnesses who lived through
World War I and were involved in the armed conflict in different capacities: sol-
diers, a priest, a doctor and a nurse. Their testimonies, although written by cura-
tors, are based on verified historical sources: visitors are not asked to believe that
they are watching authentic footage, but rather to trust in the exactness of the nar-
rated facts, granted by the museum’s authority. The images of the characters are
projected on glass screens, which make them similar to ghosts that return from the
past. Moreover, reflections of the Gothic windows of the building on the vitrines
emphasize the transparency and immateriality of the figures. This solution accen-
tuates the “tension between the authenticity signalled by the ‘genre’ of the video
testimony and the fact that these are only simulations of testimony.”29 Further, it
engenders in visitors an involvement that is first of all emotional and empathetic.


The exhibition as a cinematic space

   In the previous sections, I have outlined the “literal” presence of audio-visuals
in museums. Here, I will focus on a different (albeit related) aspect, discussing
how the museum dispositive can incorporate elements of the cinematic disposi-
tive. In other words, I will show how, on the one hand, exhibitions can be struc-
tured according to cinematic principles such as montage and sequentiality and,
on the other hand, the configuration of museum architecture and/or exhibition
design can be deeply influenced by the “classic” cinematic dispositive and its
components (the screen, the dark room, projection, seated spectators).

A walk through (moving) images: the Trento tunnels

  To investigate the link between the museum and the cinematic dispositive,
we should consider the broader question of the relationship between cinema


29
     Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, cit., p. 101.

138
     The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in History Museums


and architecture. It was during the 1920s and 1930s that a strong connection
between film and architectonic space came into place, both in theory and prac-
tice. Sergei Eisenstein’s well-known essay Montage and Architecture constitutes
a pivotal attempt to ground theoretically the intersections between cinema and
architecture. Starting from Auguste Choisy’s description of the positioning of
buildings on the Acropolis of Athens, as related to the variable point of view of
a walking observer, Eisenstein postulates a link between montage and the com-
position of an architectural ensemble, from the perspective of a moving spec-
tator.30 Eisenstein considered sequentiality and montage as the two essential
conditions of film as a medium and used them as a grid for the appreciation of
other arts.31 His notion of “cinematism,” a series of structural proprieties that
are independent from any medium,32 allowed him to underline the temporal
dimension inscribed in architecture as well as in painting.
   Moreover, during the 1920s, as Olivier Lugon has explained, exponents of
the avant-garde also established a strong link between cinematic dispositive and
the exhibition.33 Experimenting with innovative ways of arranging objects, they
conceived a series of displays that were deeply influenced by the dynamism and
mobility of cinema. As Lugon writes,

     What designers envied most about film was the possibility of controlling a sequence of
     images, of imposing on the visitor a planned progression of pictures, impressions and
     information. Hence the following challenge: how to extend this principle of unfolding
     to a three-dimensional space […]?34

   Drawing on these approaches,35 we can understand how contemporary muse-
ums play with the temporal and dynamic dimension of perception in a way that
closely recalls filmic language.
   One of the most remarkable examples of this process are the so called “Trento
tunnels”, in the city of Trento, in north-east Italy. These are two former highway
tunnels that have been reconverted into a history museum. They are painted in
different colours and have different functions: one with walls that are entirely
black, which hosts large and evocative installations; the other white, which pro-
vides facilities for meetings, temporary exhibitions, and educational activities.36


30
   Sergei M. Eisenstein, El Greco y el cine, quoted in Yve-Alain Bois, “Introduction to Montage and
Architecture,” in Assemblage, no. 10, December 1989, p. 111.
31
   Ivi, p. 112.
32
   François Albera, Introduction, in Sergei M. Eisenstein, Cinématisme: peinture et cinéma (1980),
Editions Complexe, Bruxelles 2009, p. 12.
33
   Olivier Lugon, Dynamic Paths of Thought: Exhibition Design, Photography and Circulation in
the Work of Herbert Bayer, in François Albera, Maria Tortajada (eds.), Cinema Beyond Film, cit.,
pp. 117-144.
34
   Ivi, p. 131.
35
   On the relationships between cinema, architecture and exhibition, see also Giuliana Bruno, Atlas
of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film, Verso, New York 2002.
36
   See Studio Terragni et al., Tunnel REvision: Le Gallerie di Piedicastello = The Trento Tunnels,

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Here I will focus on the black tunnel and on a temporary exhibition on the First
World War held in 2008, Trentins and the Great War, 1914-1918 (19 August – 21
December 2008). Fifty video projections were displayed on the whole exhibition
surface: on the curved walls of the tunnel, as well as on the floor (fig. 1). The
images included documents from a local archive, slide-shows of period photo-
graphs, and clips from Luca Comerio’s documentary films shot during the war.
The images were distorted to adapt to the curved walls of the tunnel, creating
an immersive and emotional atmosphere which was enhanced by a soundtrack
composed of recorded voices that read period letters and diaries. Loudspeakers
were installed on the ceiling, each of which diffused different voices: in this way,
the soundtrack changed as visitors advanced.




         Fig. 1 – Trento Tunnels: the “black tunnel” (2008) (Photo by Pier Luigi Faggion).



   By walking through this dark space, visitors encountered war scenes, land-
scapes, letters, figures of soldiers and family groups. Projected images remained
fixed in a specific portion of space, and it was the visitor who recomposed them
in a unique narrative by walking past them. In a kind of “film in reverse,”37 the
visitors’ displacement created a montage between the images: as they progressed
through the tunnel, the projections on the walls produced effects that could be
considered equivalent to figures of cinematic language. The spectators’ move-
ments had the same effects as camera movements: they produced changes in per-
spective or even zoom-ins – from long shots to close-ups.38 The cinematic nature

Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino, Trento 2010.
37
   In 1942, the architect and exhibition designer Herbert Bayer conceived his Road to Victory exhibi-
tion as a “film in reverse”: “To tell the story dramatically, I wanted to reverse the procedure of looking
at the film where the public is static and the film moves. Therefore, in this case, I had the public move
through the exhibition”. Quoted in Olivier Lugon, Dynamic Paths of Thought, cit., pp. 134-135.
38
   Irina O. Rajewsky’s includes this phenomenon in her definition of “systemic intermedial refer-
ences”, where “the media product uses its own media-specific means […] to refer to […] another
medium qua system”. Irina O. Rajewsky, “Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Lit-
erary Perspective on Intermediality,” in Intermédialités, no. 6, Autumn 2005, pp. 52-53. For a

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of the space was evident in the dynamism of the transitions from one image to
another, which stressed the key role of the montage. The cinematic dimension
also emphasized the temporal and spatial progression of the visit: the spectators’
movement through the tunnel was characterized by changing rhythms and paces.
It was therefore the displacement of the visitors’ bodies that “set in motion” the
museum narrative. Moreover, spectators were literally and metaphorically im-
mersed in a darkness where only the lights of the projections were visible. Thus,
in the black tunnel, perception did not (or not primarily) have an intellectual
nature, but was predominantly embodied and affective.

“A bit like a large cinema”: The Big Picture Show at the IWM North

   Let us now consider the Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester, de-
signed by the architect Daniel Libeskind, who gave it the shape of a globe broken
in pieces by the destructive action of war.39 Since its opening, in 2002, the IWM
North has been featuring the so called “Big Picture Show,” an audio-visual show
that takes place in the main exhibition space of the museum at regular times dur-
ing the day. There are currently seven shows, and one of them is projected hourly.
Each draws from the Imperial War Museum’s film and audio collections, and
lasts for a few minutes. When the Big Picture Show starts, the lights go out and
still and moving images are projected onto the whole exhibition space, including
the walls, the floor, the ceiling and the bodies of the spectators. The projections,
which can be as tall as twelve meters, produce a sort of kaleidoscopic space,
with ever-changing and impressive visual effects (fig. 2). Additionally, every pro-
gramme has a powerful soundtrack, which mixes war sounds and voices.




              Fig. 2 – The Big Picture Show at the IWM North (Courtesy of IWM).


similar attempt to describe the exhibition narrative strategies through a comparison with cinematic
language, see Mieke Bal, Exhibition as Film, in Sharon Macdonald, Paul Basu (eds.), Exhibition
Experiments, Blackwell Publishing, London 2007, pp. 71-93.
39
   See http://daniel-libeskind.com/projects/imperial-war-museum-north, last visit 6 April 2015.

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                                         Elisa Mandelli


   The museum’s leaflet claims that “When the Big Picture Show is on, the
Main Exhibition Space is a bit like a large cinema.” The “classic” cinematic
dispositive with its components (the screen, the dark room, projection, seated
spectators) actually constitutes a model for the display. The whole exhibition
space becomes a screen (or better, a system of screens in different shapes and
dimensions) on which multi-projection documentary films are displayed. Each
programme starts at a precise time and is identified by a title (such as Remem-
brance or Weapons of War), following a temporal organization that is closer to
that of cinematographic screenings – or even of a tv schedule – than to an ordi-
nary museum visit, during which the visitor is free to choose how much time to
spend in front of each exhibit. Conversely, at the IWM it is the duration of the
show that dictates the time of viewing. Incidentally, this spectatorial situation is
also different from those of film installations: in that case, spectators are asked
to negotiate between the temporal duration of the projection and the freedom
to leave before it ends.
   During the Big Picture Show, cinema is relocated to the exhibition space,
which changes according to the protocols of film spectatorship. The term “re-
location” was proposed by Francesco Casetti to refer to “the process in which
a media experience is reactivated and re-purposed elsewhere in respect to the
place it was formed, with alternate devices and in new environments.”40 Accord-
ing to Casetti, in this process, cinema “colonizes” a new portion of the world,
rewrites its boundaries and its configuration, and, at the same time, the “classic”
cinematic dispositive is reshaped by the new context.
   One of the most noteworthy implications of the notion of relocation is the
pragmatic one. The presence of a screen entails a series of behavioural guid-
ance: visitors adopt a certain physical posture, a certain mindset and ideological
position, and perform a certain set of actions.41 During the Big Picture Show
the spectatorial response is very different from the interactive participation re-
quired in the “ordinary” exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North. When
the projections are over, the visitor is free to move around, interact with exhibits
and explore the different chronological or thematic sections independently. But
while the show is on, the typical motion of the museum visitor is transformed in
to the immobility of the cinematic spectator. This is a crucial effect, since visitors
are theoretically free to wonder around the space when the show is on, but they
actually choose to stand in one point, or sit on the benches situated along some
of the walls, as in a cinematographic séance.
   Furthermore, the spectators in fact become surfaces of projection, and are im-
mersed, emotively and bodily in an audio-visual narrative that has seeks to touch
their feelings profoundly. This is more evident when considering the content of


40
   Francesco Casetti, “The Relocation of Cinema,” in NECSUS, no. 2, Autumn 2012, http://www.
necsus-ejms.org/the-relocation-of-cinema/, last visit 6 April 2015.
41
   See Francesco Casetti, “L’esperienza filmica e la rilocazione del cinema,” in Fata Morgana, no.
4, 2008, p. 31.

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      The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in History Museums


the projections, which focus on personal stories and the intimate feelings of those
who experienced war: they do not aim to investigate the causes of conflicts or their
developments in full detail, but rather to depict the impact of war on people’s lives.


Conclusions

   As I have illustrated through this selection of examples, films and audio-visu-
als can play a pivotal role in museums, and should not be understood as isolated
elements: their meaning is influenced by all the other elements of museum dis-
course, which they in turn contribute to determine.
   The analysis of some contemporary high-tech, audio-visual museum instal-
lations has showed through which strategies museums deliver emotional and
engaging experiences, rather than concentrating on facts, information and ar-
gumentation. Digital technologies and moving images are used in exhibitions to
create spectacular presentations and to astonish visitors with uncanny effects, in
a sort of contemporary version of eighteenth century phantasmagoria.42
   Moreover, considering museum and cinema as dispositives has allowed me
to illustrate how their relations can be articulated at different levels. All the ele-
ments of museum discourses, including objects, architecture, exhibition design
and the visitors’ role, can be fashioned in a way that resembles and evokes the
language and representational strategies of film. More broadly, an investigation
of the relationships between cinema and the museum in pragmatic terms has re-
vealed how museum signification can be shaped by ways of reception and social
practices typical of cinema in its “classic” form.




42
     See Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, cit., pp. 187-200.

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