Jason Augustijn Falkenburg

• Falkenburg, Jason Augustijn (2019). Looking Through Portals: An investigation of stave Church portals as display Objects in Norwegian museums. Vis sammendrag

  This project investigates portals, remnants of medieval stave churches that were demolished in the 19th century, as objects of display in Norwegian museums. It is a study that moves away from the conventional approach of studying the meanings of the intricately carved zoomorphic and plant patterns that cover the entire front surface of these portals. Instead, it presents the thesis that stave church portals only come into being as objects of study and emblems of Norway's cultural heritage through the very way they are being, and have been, displayed. In order to explore this thesis, the study is split into two parts. The first part focuses on the history of these portals from the moment they were saved from demolition and brought to museums in the 19‘h century, to the way they have been displayed up to the present day. It shows that in the course of about 150 years, portals have increasingly been exhibited as art objects in a modern sense, severed from their original history, function, or meaning. This form of presentation, while aiming at bringing out the craftsmanship of the carvings, is reductive in the sense that it generally discards the entrance function of, and identity as, portals — not only in their original architectural setting but also in museum settings. The question then arises, against the backdrop of ‘agency’ theories recently developed in material culture debates, more in particular in (museum-)archaeology and museum-anthropology, how portals can be displayed in ways that turn them from passive *wall-flowers, into objects of active visitor engagement — as entrances to multi-sensorial experiences that forge cultural heritage into something that is *alive” for the visitor in the here and now. The second part of the study is devoted to discussing these theories and their application in concrete museological practice. This culminates in a detailed analysis of a small exhibition I was given the opportunity to make in the Kulturhistorisk Museum in Oslo, in which I tried to create an experimental scenographic setting for such active and integral participation of the museum visitor.

• Falkenburg, Jason Augustijn (2018). Using digital technology as a mode of experimental display. Thoughts on an exhibition on stave church portals.. Nordisk Museologi.  ISSN 1103-8152.  2(3), s 115- 120 Fulltekst i vitenarkiv.

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