| Chapter One; Installation defined. Historical perspective. Kabakov, Kienholz and Nelson and narrative installations. Critique of 'Between Cinema and a Hard Place'. The theatrical, critique of Fried and the concept of autonomy. Chapter Two; Museum defined. The cabinet of curiosities, the memory theatre. Museums as rational enterprises, institutions. Museums split into epistemes. Spectacles and blockbusters. Museums as mausoleums - tank museum. Chapter Three; The museum as subject, from Broodthaers and labelling, to Paolozzi. The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Museums and installations with reference to permanence. Kienholz, Kabakov, Dion and museums. Haacke, Ozawa and museum critique. The IWM North as installation. Chapter Four; The museum entrance signifies authority, certainty. Controlling interpretation. Museums as official institutions. The ruin. Chapter Five; Museums as ruins. The Arcades Project and ruins. Museums contain ruins. Melancholy of ruins. Soane Museum, Museum of Mankind as ruins. Chapter Six; The installation Steenbecket and neglecting memory. Krapps Last Tape and memory - in relation to the museum. Memory in architecture, museum storage. Chapter Seven; The Time Machine and the ruined museum. Knowledge as useless endeavour. The installation HG. Objects in museums as parcels of time. Chapter Eight; Loss and the cabinet. Melancholia in the Soane Museum, in the work of Schwitters and Benjamin. Melancholy defined. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Melancholy as loss of faith in progress, connected to The Time Machine. Melancholia as subjective. Chapter Nine; The empirical research, from Museum One to The Archive of Lost Knowledge. Initiation of research, analysed with reference to theory. Final installation and conclusions drawn - museums, installations and framing. Chapter Ten; Conclusion -museums are installations. Control, Memory and Loss. Contingency affecting proposed installation. The museum as uncertain space, installations suited to uncertainty. The difficulties with closure, viewing the museum or installation as bounded by one reading. Not 'this is this' but 'what is this?'... |
