Designing ‘Critical’ Heritage Experiences: Immersion, Enchantment and Autonomy

Abstract

This article investigates the critical potential of newly emerging approaches to heritage experience design. Moving away from a familiar critique of heritage experiences as inauthentic or overly commercial, I consider three aspects of the experiential that might (re)shape critical engagements with the past in the present. Building on the work of Kidd ( 2018 ), the first engages with the growing trend for ‘immersive’ experiences in museums and heritage sites. The second draws on Perry’s notion of archaeological ‘enchantment’ (2019) as a new ‘moral model’ for the field. The third applies Bishop’s ( 2012 ) reading of artistic ‘autonomy’ to specially designed heritage experiences. These concepts are then explored in relation to Critical Heritage Studies and tested against four micro case studies that engage in different ways with the experience of heritage. The theorisation put forward here serves as a point of departure for the two-year research project New Trajectories in Curatorial Experience Design (Feb 19–Jan 21), which aims to document and analyse emerging trends in experiential design within the heritage sector. In particular, this position paper highlights specific points of intervention where new forms of critical-creative practice might open up heritage interpretation to alternative experiential strategies and outcomes.

Chilean street artists and instagrammable heritage activism: Movement intellectuals of O-18

“…This is especially true because of the increasing popularity of the photographic based medium of Instagram throughout Chile and indeed worldwide. While the correlation between Instagram and street art has recently begun to be studied on the academic front (MacDowall & de Souza, 2017), the qualities of "instagrammable" heritage (Sterling, 2020), its effects on digital heritage (Grimaldi, Rosa, Loureiro, & Oliveira, 2019), and the interplay Instagram has on protests are nascent fields. It is here, at the intersection of digital participatory heritage and protest in a post-dictatorial nation, that this research will be able to offer a rich theoretical analysis.…”