ABSTRACT

// WE OWN THE NIGHT

Jurassic Lounge was a weekly event exhibition held at the Australian Museum over two months in 2011: February 1st until April 19th. The series of after-hour sessions featuring art, live music, drinks + new ideas (Jurassic Lounge 2010) included live drawings, robotic dinosaurs, body painting, tarot card readers and many more spectacular attractions (Side Street, Sydney 2011). It is my belief that Jurassic Lounge reflects the paradigm of postmodernism in its marketing, reliance on interactivity and engagement, use of art and music to promote subjective interpretations and self-conscious meaning making. It is my belief that Jurassic Lounge is pioneering the techniques needed to keep museums socially and intellectually relevant in the digital era.

Felicity Pickering

// WE OWN THE NIGHT: Postmodernism and Possession

Modernism and the Australian Museum
Their eyes stare vacantly at the glass before them. They are confined; every part of them has been dissected and defined. Fingerprints ruin the sterility: the rigid efficiency that has organised this nation of birds into an understandable army. Gymnorhina tibicen, Dicaeum hirundinaceum. A name you cant quite put to a face. Cold glass pressed on human noses. DO NOT TOUCH.

The Museum Services Act of 1977 defined museums as:

A public or private non-profit agency or institution organised on a permanent basis for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes which, utilizing a professional staff, owns or utilizes tangible objects, cares for them, and exhibits them to the public on a regular basis (Hein 2000, p.3).

While such a definition is effective in conveying the concept of a museum it can never explain the underlying complexities manifested in the formation of the institution. The history of museums is inextricably linked to the growing prominence of Modernism. But firstly what is meant by the term Modernism? The term has been used in different eras and in many contexts. Within this essay I will refer to Modernism as the ideology that grew out of the enlightenment, that was characterised by free markets, a largely secular culture, liberal democracy, individualism, rationalism, humanism and empiricism: a growing belief that truth was only attainable by observation through the senses (Cahoone 2003, p.8).

The creation of Modernism was propelled by many factors. The industrial revolution usurped feudalism and pushed men in society to question the hierarchy of power. Democracy, Meritocracy and Utilitarianism were philosophies that rose in prominence and capitalist ideologies such as Laissez-faire came under public debate. As many dominant paradigms were being challenged people began to question the status quo (Asma 2001, p.120).

A change has taken place in the human mind; a change which, being effected by insensible gradations, and without noise, had already proceeded far before it was generally perceived. When the fact disclosed itself, thousands awoke as from a dream. They knew not what processes had been going on in the minds of others, or even in their own, until the change began to invade outward objects; and it became clear that those were indeed new men, who insisted upon being governed in a new way (Mill 1831, p.20).

New theories such as Darwins Theory of Evolution and new scientific discoveries led some in society to question religion and look to Humanism for answers. A

prominent theory of the time, in rejection of Rationalism, became Empiricism: the idea that all knowledge comes from human senses and through meticulous examination, truth is attainable (Asma, 2001, p.122). At the same time better modes of transport and greater technology allowed greater exploration that lead to the acquisition of new discoveries. The growing popularity of museums:
Was an attempt to manage the empirical explosion of materials that wider dissemination of ancient texts, increased travel, voyages of discovery, and more systematic forms of communication and exchange had produced (Findlen 1994, p. 3).

Many early museums had been private collections of the elite not usually open to public showing. During the early eighteenth century, however, collectors began to move away from the showing of objects purely because they were exotic or freakish but began to initiate the subtleties of the new mechanical philosophy, the organisation of specimens became preparatory work for further scientific inquiry (Asma 2001, p.113). It was with these conceptions of museums that the Australian Museum was first promoted in the late 1820s. The institution of learning was envisioned to be:
A scientific depot, a storehouse of the rare and exotic, an outstation for European museums and collectors, a grand encyclopaedia of knowledge on Australia and the southwest Pacific and a sedate entertainment parlour wherein might [sic] be seen the many rare and curious specimens of natural history (Branagan 1979, p.I).

At first, with only two main staff members: an Irishman who had bayoneted a man and a Londoner who had been convicted of stealing clothes, the museums progress was slow. But after a few years the museum grew into a prominent institution in Australia, where those with interest in collecting and science could connect (Branagan 1979, p. I). It was only in November 1954, when John Williams Evans was appointed as the director of the Australian Museum that the museums strictly empirical methodology began to change (Branagan 1979, p.75). John William Evans critiqued habitat exhibits (displays that posed a range of taxidermed animals against paintings of their natural habitat, and display cases: where the quantity of specimens was of foremost importance) stating that a zoo or library has as much, or more, to commend it than a visit to a Museum equipped only with [such] exhibits (Branagan 1979, p. 76). He argued that only experts could take information from the exhibits and it was of no use to the nearly a quarter of a million people who visited annually (Branagan 1979, p. 78). In response to this sentiment, Evans created the exhibition The Birds Year in 1956, an exhibition that narrated the birds life in a light hearted manner that allowed audiences to see through the birds eyes and relied more on the individuals subjective imaginings (Branagan 1979, p. 78). This change in exhibition style was the beginning of the Australian Museums attempts to become a New Museum.

 Fig. 1.3 POST-MODERNISM AND THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM I enter cautiously, alone. These are not the museum goers that I remember from my last visit. Gone are the dowdy clothes of a mother and the screams of her irritated child, they have been replaced by lounge music and young adults in calculated ensembles. Each golden headpiece, ironically thick-framed lenses and leopard print scarf placed together like a pastiche of their identity. I am both ostracised and absorbed into this carnival of spectacular. The indies swish past me, posing beside exhibitions. They lounge over sofas deconstructing avant-garde short films and applaud the artwork a man is painting on a womens naked breast. A drag queen seduces me with her siren song. Imploring me to journey further, to run through the old halls and crowds, to hide in the crevasses of this living institution. The museum jives with the silent disco, as the tourists

and businessmen become slaves to a voiceless beat. It sings in the Aboriginal Exhibition as the wistful tunes of a singer lulls the crowd. It gasps at the fortune tellers tales. And all is wondrous and fanciful because We own the night. Jurassic Lounge was a weekly event exhibition held at the Australian Museum over two months in 2011: February 1st until April 19th. The series of after-hour sessions featuring art, live music, drinks + new ideas was a collaborative project between the Australian Museum and non-profit event company The Festivalists (Jurassic Lounge 2010). Performances included live drawings, robotic dinosaurs, body painting, tarot card readers and a series of talks about such things as the history of vampires and 50 Years of Gay Life in Australia (Side Street, Sydney 2011). Since John Williams Evans The Birds Year, the Australian Museum has adapted many of its exhibits to the new models of museology (Branagan 1979, p.75). However, it is of my opinion that Jurassic Lounge at the Australian Museum represents the most forward conception of a Post-modern Museum. By Postmodern in this context I refer to the rejection of completeness or consistency of any system of phenomena (Cahoone 2003, p.11). According to Derrida (Cahoone 2003, p.327), the scepticism of any claim of objectivity and the concept that there is nothing outside the text as the world as we know it, is made of representations. It is my belief that Jurassic Lounge reflects its postmodern context in its marketing, reliance on interactivity and engagement, use of art and music to promote subjective interpretations and ability to reflect the fragility of knowledge. It is my belief that Jurassic Lounge is pioneering the techniques needed to keep museums socially and intellectually relevant in the digital era. New Museums, as they have been coined, began to pop up in the 1970s as understanding increased of the role that media played on the production of experience (Message 2006, p.37). At the time many countries were disputing the way that cultural identity and issues of nationhood and citizenship were represented, leading to the recurrent culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s (Message 2006, p. 38). The New Museum was explained by Neil in 2004 as an institution that:
Rejects the triumphant narrative of national destiny. It criticises the way in which museums have traditionally upheld the aura of the object and granted the viewer unmediated access to a frozen past. It advocates exposing the artifice of display in which objects are apparently re-embedded in their authentic environments. New museology advocates strategies of exhibition that involve the viewer interactively, suggesting that history and meaning are constructed and sometimes even contradictory (Message 2006, p. 37).

A move towards subjectivity is a factor that Hein too agrees is a principle characteristic of New Museums: evidently subjectivity, as the grounds of all experience, must occupy a preeminent place within the museum experience (Hein 2000, p. X). The New Museum relies more upon interactive simulations and experiences than on patrons finding meaning from objects.

 It is this point; that New Museums rely upon experiences rather than objects, that makes Jurassic Lounge so characteristic of New Museology and in turn the Post- modern era. Jurassic Lounge presents experiences rather than relying on a series of objects to engage the responder. While some of these experiences can be critiqued as overly popularised and more attuned to festivals than a museum (for example: the silent disco), that statement in itself is a judgement that in a postmodern era cannot be qualified, as there is no way we can prove what is or is not culturally significant: no set of clear criteria has been defined to judge the quality of experiences (Hein 2000, pp. 66-67). Jurassic Lounge invites responders to retreat into subjective judgements and imaginings, rather than look at an exhibition that informs in the context of a grand narrative. By focussing on art and music, Jurassic Lounge rejects any claims of objectivity; and illustrates the fragility and complexity of knowledge. Many attendees remarked how it made them remember their childhood or made them feel as though they were far away from the museum. Jurassic Lounge reflects postmodern ideologies in its marketing. The event exhibition does this by marketing heavily on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. At the present moment it has 2,497 likes on Facebook (Facebook 2011) and 739 followers on Twitter (Twitter 2011). This is significant exposure as museums increasingly see their distributed online audiences as important as those physically on site (Parry 2010, p. 1). Jurassic Lounge fuelled the growing enthusiasm for the site by encouraging visitors to tweet about the event. Effectively finding a way to capture and work with the growing momentum and energy of on-line users, a feat that Rentschler & Hede (2007 p.27) state is the challenge for museums. The tweets that included the Jurassic Lounge hash tag were shown on a Twitter feed projected on a wall of the museum every night. Its a technique that such cultural institutions as the Sydney Writers Festival have also adopted to further their online presence. It is in these ways that Jurassic Lounge is proving itself intellectually and culturally relevant in the digital era and defying any conceptions of the death of the Museum. In the same vein Jurassic Lounge encouraged prosumers to contribute and in effect market the museum event. Prosumers being the word coined by Alvin Toffler (1980) in his book The Third Wave, meaning a person who both consumes products and likes to generate new media about them. Jurassic Lounge throughout its duration asked for people to upload their own pictures from the event and asked for citizen journalists to write for their blog each week, so that the entries seemed to be coming from their key demographic. And in a large way these techniques worked. On the first night Jurassic Lounge received seven hundred people and the next two weeks brought in more than one thousand people (Side Street, Sydney 2011). The crowds who attended the event were not the usual demographic, many were young adults or business people

(Jurassic Lounge 2011). This is significant as new theories in museology emphasise that museums work more as a community centre. They should be accessible to the whole community rather than just being tailored for the typical museum patrons as most museums and art galleries are publicly owned and funded (Bennett 1994). The changing terminology of many museums; the term Museum is being replaced by the more inclusive sounding Cultural Centre or Heritage Centre in many new establishments, reflects the changing perception that people should feel that museums should attract all audiences (Message 2006, p.39). A significant problem with attracting these postmodern audiences has been barriers of access. While physical distance is also an issue, Trevelyan (Bennett 1994, p.5) argues that it is another kind of barrier that is really inhibiting museums from connecting with the community:

Barriers of an emotional kind, where museums are experienced as threatening or unwelcoming environments, or political where museums fail to take adequate account of gender, ethnic or class considerations in either the content of their collections or the ways in which they are displayed.

Jurassic Lounge has been able to cross this emotional and political barrier by engaging the community in conversation. It is of my opinion that Jurassic Lounge has also been able to engage new audiences by challenging the space of the museum by subverting its conventions. Many at the exhibition remarked to me that they felt that they were breaking rules. Jurassic Lounge did this by allowing alcohol and food in areas where people might have been before afraid to touch anything. They now had the freedom to dance, sit on the ground and drink in spaces that are ordinarily prohibited. This is a powerful change as modernist museums had often been thought of as potential sites for reforming the habits of the subordinate classes- replacing visits to alehouses with cultured experiences. To now include alcohol seems a great irony (Hein 2006, p.233). Building on the work of Michel Foucaults arguments about the development of the prison, Bennett argues that the museum was another disciplinary technology created to encourage self-surveillance and generate a well- behaved public (Hein 2006, p. 233). This breaking of the divine or godly in museums, by allowing alcohol, has great implications. The patrons begin now to look at the space of the Museum not as a cold sterile place for tourists and children but a place that is theirs. The announcers voice booms across the museum. We are herded back to the outside world. Pies are taken off us, drinks are to be placed in the bins. Some drag their feet. Some drag their drunken friends. The magicians pack up their cards. The circus performers turn off their lights. The cleaners begin to sweep up the trails of crumbs. The model washes the art from her body.

The Australian Museum belongs to the Australian Museum once again. But we know, next week We own the night.

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 // Reference List
Fig. 1.3- The Birds Year, one of the many thematic exhibits installed in the Bird Gallery in 1956 and 1957 under John William Evans influence.

Branagan 1979, Rare and Curious Specimens: An Illustrated History of The Australian Museum, The Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia.

Fig 1.4- The Surviving Australia Exhibit, Australian Museum. Jones, J. 2011, Felicitys Opening Night, Jurassic Lounge, viewed 15 April 2011, < http://www.jurassiclounge.com/news/2011/2/3/felicitys-opening-night.html>. Fig 1.5- Live Snake at Jurassic Lounge. Jones, J. 2011, Felicitys Opening Night, Jurassic Lounge, viewed 15 April 2011, < http://www.jurassiclounge.com/news/2011/2/3/felicitys-opening-night.html>. Fig 1.6- At the Silent Disco in the Skeleton Room at Jurassic Lounge. The Silent Disco was an area where everyone was given headphones with the same house and hip- hop music playing. No music was actually played aloud in the room. Jones, J. 2011, Felicitys Opening Night, Jurassic Lounge, viewed 15 April 2011, < http://www.jurassiclounge.com/news/2011/2/3/felicitys-opening-night.html>.