Abstract
This chapter aims to assemble a general introduction to the posthuman and museum practices. It will take an overview approach, thinking through the lens of posthumanism about the history of the museum, the role of the contemporary museum, the collection and its digital assets, the individual object, its materiality, and its interconnected stories alongside the museum and its publics. I will also discuss ways in which posthumanism can influence the work of industry practitioners. To frame my overview of posthumanist museum practices, I will investigate 4 case studies that are located at the Powerhouse museum, Sydney, a major international institution with over 830,000 physical visitors per year prior to the pandemic, and over 1.3 million online visitors. These case studies include two recent creative practice research technology-based projects that have emerged from the Powerhouse Visiting Research Fellowship Program, a current exhibition I am co-curating entitled Invisible Revealed, and a specific object within the Powerhouse collection – object 2016/32/1, a 1 kg silicon sphere made at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for the Avogadro Project. By bringing together theoretical perspectives and concrete case studies, this chapter will examine the role of transdisciplinary practices where the museum is enmeshed in projects that weave collections, community, practice, intergenerational publics, and museum professionals together to initiate fresh perspectives on the practice of posthumanism in engagement with the museum.
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Lawler-Dormer, D. (2022). Critical Posthumanist Practices from Within the Museum. In: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M., John Müller, C. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04958-3_7
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