Matilda: Hello and welcome to #FinallyFriday.
This chat session is run by EXARC, the society
for archaeological open-air museums, experimental
archaeology, ancient technology and interpretation.
My name is Matilda Siebrecht and today I’m
joined by two specialists from our EXARC community
focussing on heritage and interpretation.
Dr Peter Inker started his archaeological
career with a focus on reconstruction, from
medieval house building to metal working techniques.
This then led to an increasing interest in
digital reconstruction and questions of how
we interpret the past.
For the last 13 years he has been at the Colonial
Williamsburg open-air museum, where a large
part of his work involves the creation of
a virtual and digital heritage space.
Angela Pfenninger is a live interpreter specialized
in theatre and event formats.
As well as a background in theatre, she also
specialized in museum education and now her
main focus is on theatrical interpretation
in museums and heritage contexts.
She has also been the chairperson of the International
Museum Theatre Alliance for the last three
years.
So, welcome to Peter and Angela.
I have a quick question to start you off.
For those who are listening who might not
be very familiar with the concept: How do
you define interpretation in your work?
Angela: Well Matilda, I’ll just pounce on
that one.
Thank you for introducing us so eloquently,
it’s a pleasure to be here.
Whilst we were talking in preparation for
this chat and you sent me the little schedule
thing, what is interpretation?
I thought, oh blimey, I have to really put
my thinking cap on, because normally, in the
day-to-day running of things you don’t always
reflect on “how would I define something
that I do?” on a fairly daily basis.
And I went back ad fontes actually to a book
that I really admire to this day, which is
a classic.
It was written by Freeman Tilden in 1957 – most
of the listeners here will of course be familiar
with his name or the title ‘Interpreting
our heritage’ - and I thought oh, interpretation,
I’m sure I’ll find a good definition there
I can perhaps pounce on and steal something
from.
And actually I wanted to steal the entire
thing!
Because it said there interpretation means
“An educational activity which aims to reveal
meanings and relationships through the use
of original objects, by first-hand experience,
and by illustrative media, rather than simply
to communicate factual information”.
For me as a theatre practitioner, someone
who is very much on the experience side of
things, it makes perfect sense to have an
emphasis on sense-making, actually, rather
than conveying facts or factual information
only.
So basically interpretation, from the point
of view of someone who does the, perhaps more
artistic or theatrical or emotional approach,
is really to provoke thoughts, not just to
instruct, but also to provoke and to unpack
relevance of the past for people living today,
to see “what’s it got to do with me?”.
Because if interpreters don’t succeed in
making sense for people that live nowadays,
with their own problems in the 21st century
set-up, values and thoughts and meanings,
it´s not going to really hit home - I don’t
think it’s going to settle much.
So interpretation to me is really an act of
sense-making in a heritage context, that goes
beyond the conveyance of facts and figures.
Peter: So, I had a very similar experience
when I encountered this question too, as Angela
that…this is not a question we’re often
asked…and the answer I came up with, or
at least looking, as Angela did with Tilden
and other sources: it’s the action of explaining
the meaning of something.
So very much what Angela has just said, akin
to what she just said.
To me it is also much broader than a one-to-one
personal relationship, which is often… interpretation
is presented in the case of an individual,
often costumed, at a historic site, interpreting
some part of history.
Whereas I would actually look very much broader
at that concept as well, that interpretation
could be applied to, for instance, the panels
in a museum, in a traditional glass case museum,
that has text with it.
Those panels are interpretations of those
objects and things.
It could also be museum theatre, so even though
a direct transmission of facts as it were,
as Angela was saying, is not being transmitted,
it is being interpreted, it is an act of doing
that is taking place there.
So I think we can look very broadly at this.
In my digital experience this comes across
when we create models, for instance, when
we create spaces that people can inhabit.
That is an act of interpretation, we’re
taking the archaeological data and reconstructing
it, recreating it, as a method for people
to understand the past.
So yeah, I look at it very broadly.
Angela: Yes Peter, I totally agree on that
one, that interpretation actually does encompass
many channels.
You’re right, it’s not just a performative
approach or is not just a written panel, it
could be an audio that you encounter on the
site, or you could have a 3D model of something.
There’s many, many avenues, and I suppose
it’s quite beneficial to any site really
to offer various channels, because the audiences
that we do get, they consist of very different
learning types, you know some people need
haptic information, others want to hear something,
others want to read something or have to experience
stuff first-hand.
It’s quite important, even though everyone
is enamoured with their own method of course,
but it’s important to have this whole wealth
of offerings so you can catch people at every
level where you might find them really.
Peter: Yeah definitely, definitely.
I think that providing that opportunity for
the guests to find the methodology, the medium,
which speaks to them most, is really beneficial
to a museum, if it obviously has the resources
to do that.
But I would also kind of push that a little
bit further and say that sometimes there’s
not just one interpretation of the past, there’s
not one meaning as it were, and by providing
a diversity of methodologies, interpretations
of the past, we’re actually providing that
diversity that there isn’t one way that
we understand the world today, so there should
never be one way to understand the world in
the past.
Angela: Yes, I think that’s quite important
too, because at the moment the museological
world, I think, is opening up to that.
That multitude of perspectives, more than
it used to be, to be honest.
I remember when I was young and went to a
museum there was like one official opinion
and that was it, and it was very much a top-down
affair.
At the moment meaning-making is a far more
democratic thing and you get this multitude
of voices, of marginalised voices, and all
manner of perspectives, that don’t just
serve one grand narrative but also other narratives,
other approaches.
And that is actually one thing that museum
theatre can be quite good for, to be honest,
to have that multiplicity of voices or to
have someone contend the grand narrative version.
You know, come with another view and they
can have an argument together, which is actually
quite elucidating to those listening in, because
it’s an invitation to make up their own
minds about which information to emphasise,
or which type of interpretation to favour.
It’s not pick and choose, we have the facts
and so non-negotiable, but, the way historiography
works, is never entirely neutral, I suppose
you might agree.
You know the way history is being recorded
already has a certain agenda to it, and anything
we do add another layer of possible agendas,
so we try and get that out of the equation
by offering more than one approach and that’s
quite beneficial I suppose.
Peter: Yeah, I think museum theatre is really
interesting because it really cuts to the
heart of the human experience.
I think when you look at theatre, think of
Shakespeare, the reason Shakespeare is still
so popular is because he cuts to the universal
human experience.
And so it doesn’t matter that it’s contextualized
within the sixteenth, seventeenth century.
It is about universal human acts, right, that
can be understood by people today as it was
in the past.
And to that point of multiple ways of interpreting
and the way museum theatre can kind of bypass
the empirical, well, keep the empirical but
bypass the kind of passive nature of the empirical
to something much more constructive that gets
people engaged.
We recently did a program called “Journey
to Redemption”.
At its essence was the story of the enslaved
experience in the 18th century in Virginia.
But what the program did is, gradually throughout
the interpretation, the voices of the actors
on the stage were also heard amongst the voices
of the people from the 18th century.
And you gradually got a concept of, not only
what is was like to be enslaved at the time,
but also what it is like today to portray
those people in the past.
This provided a much richer sense of the human
relations, and what it takes, as a museum,
to really understand the past.
And obviously with the kind of nature of enslavement,
this is a very traumatizing event and it still
is, even for people today, who were simply
trying to pass on that information, it becomes
a traumatizing event, so the emotions really
locked in to that interpretation.
Angela: Yes, there is a certain quality to
play-acting, in whichever form it is, it might
be very mimetic, it might be more experimental,
but I suppose it serves a purpose that resonates
with something deep within us as humans.
You have these archetypes, you have the motive
of a quest, of a journey, of someone overcoming
obstacles, of eternal challenges or eternal
values, that every person will resonate with,
whether it be love or hate, or war, or peace.
You have all these grand themes that are never
really out of fashion, and it always serves
a good purpose to get people emotionally engaged
as you say.
And it’s not meant to be a cheap trick just
to get them very emotional and perhaps laughing
or crying or something, but it’s something
you take away with you, as a souvenir.
It’s the authenticity of the emotion you
felt at that moment.
Cause there has been a great deal of discussion
about authenticity in performance formats,
that are done in heritage sites.
And it’s a tricky discussion because of
course none of us have been there.
We can only ever pretend…, only ever try
to offer something that comes close to the
actual experience and we do our best to corroborate
that with fact and scientific research.
But the authenticity, it doesn’t start and
end with a button, or the fabric dye that
is made of plants rather than chemicals, but
it’s the authenticity of the emotion that
the guests can take away with them.
And that really hammers it home sort of thing.
A message is much deeper entrenched, I think,
in a visitor’s mind when there’s an emotional
component going with it.
And actually academic study has also shown
that the combination of knowledge-based information,
plus the format of theatrical explanation,
theatrical presentation, is quite an effective
way to get people involved and to have them
memorize stuff longer.
There’s a study by Tony Jackson from the
University of Manchester (http://www.plh.manchester.ac.uk/)
which is a few years old, but he basically
examined some programs and compared them and
also talking to the people who saw them, after
some time had lapsed.
A similar approach was taken by a young researcher
called Rèka Vasszi, who did a study last
year, I think it was, examining how school
children memorize educational offerings after
some time has passed, after their visit.
And actually the engagement, the level of
engagement was quite a strong indicator for
the degree of memorizing a fact that was packaged
within it.
So that’s quite an interesting find.
Peter: Yeah, it really is, and I think going
back to the kind of empirical nature of archaeology,
that it is very scientific, it is fact-based,
and there’s a very important place for that.
But what that tends to rule out is the multi-sensory
nature of human experience.
And so we can talk as much as we like about
spaces and objects and material culture, but
often - and this is one of my criticisms of
glass case museums - is that, when you put
an object in a case, you de-contextualize
it, you remove it from its actual intrinsic
place with the human being that created it.
The human being used this for a purpose.
We discovered this very early-on, at Colonial
Williamsburg, in the 1930s.
The plan was merely to reconstruct the city
of Williamsburg – I say merely, haha! – it’s
a huge place, over 500 buildings.
But the plan was to reconstruct this and tour
people through the buildings.
But it was very clearly understood at the
outset that we needed to inhabit these buildings,
like Le Corbusier says: buildings are machines
for living in.
It’s the human beings that inhabit the buildings,
that are actually the important thing, not
necessarily the structures themselves, although
there is a place for that.
So getting to that multi-sensory human component
I think, is the challenge and I think that’s
where costumed interpretation museum theatre
etc begins to approach that.
Angela: That element of human agency is often
the common denominator that makes things click
in the visitor’s mind.
They see something, an object or replica,
or an object that is normally an archaeological
find, in a glass case, with an aura, as you
say, removed from the ordinary world, and
that re-contextualizes things.
It really furthers understanding and appreciation
of our ancestors’ accomplishments for instance.
I think it is perhaps relatively easy for
any performer to get into a first person interpretation,
say, I mean by that, that you pretend to be
a person from the past.
You’re dressed up and you pretend to be
someone from the past.
So first person formats like this is of course
easier done in a site that is fairly modern
or where there is a lot of written sources,
material that you can use for your research
and really reconstruct roughly how that person
would have lived or felt.
But if we have an archaeological site that
illustrates an era, an epoch that is far,
far away in the past, that makes it a lot
more difficult for performers.
If you have a Neolithic, Stone Age site or
Bronze Age site, or something where the source
situation is a lot thinner, and you may not
have any written record of the people themselves,
there might be no diary, no letter no nothing,
or not even Romans talking about them, so
a lot of performers still want to use that
emotional immediacy of dressing up in costume,
being there as a physical presence.
But they tend to use third person formats
in contexts such as these.
Which means they look the part, but they don’t
pretend, and they stay themselves as a 21st
century educator, talking about what we know
of these past centuries.
Peter: The difference between first person/third
person I think is interesting and particularly
the nature of trying to interpret the past
that is very distant, that has less information
I guess than more recent times, although even
in the 18th century, which is what we interpret,
we do have a prehistory, prehistoric in terms
of the fact that there is nothing written,
very little was written down, by them or about
themselves - so and the archaeology is much
more akin to the archaeology of earlier times.
Because the material culture just wasn’t
there, just wasn’t as impressive as it was
in the 18th century where objects still survive
in people’s houses, even today.
I think we’ve discussed so far very much
an in-person interpretation.
I’d also like to kind of move us a little
bit into the digital realm too, where what
we can do in the digital realm, when we don’t
have that information, where we are working
on theory, where we are working on analogy
to do reconstructions, I think that’s where
the beauty of the digital realm comes in,
because when we create something physically
we are forced to make a final decision on
something, in order to construct it or build
it.
Now you can do multiple reconstructions but
that becomes very expensive.
It also uses a lot of space and ultimately
it is not particularly sustainable.
Whereas in digital environments we can create
multiple - and I mean tens or even more - of
reconstructions of the same thing and provide
a whole range of information that supports
one reconstruction versus another.
And I think in that regard, when we’re talking
about interpretation, we can interpret the
world that we don’t know, where we have
very little information for it, we can provide
interpretations that then people can have
some agency in understanding how they read
the archaeology as presented, as it were,
so giving people some agency in that process
of reconstructions, rather than presenting
them with one final version of the past.
Angela: Absolutely.
So do people coming to Williamsburg – because
I’ve not been yet, shame on me!
– do they use your reconstruction, do they
have like a mobile phone device, they can
see what the building could have looked like
previously, or where there’s a gap site,
do they see what used to be there?
Peter: So, we haven’t actually managed to
overcome that technological hurdle at the
present.
We have lots of connectivity issues and there’s
obviously the technological hurdle of ensuring
that the person onsite brings a phone is able
to download the app, and all of those allied
tech problems.
But we have done that online and it’s also
a very useful research tool as well for us
to go through iterative processes with our
archaeologists, when we plan to do reconstructions
as well, so it helps us on the front end with
our guests and also on the kind of back end
with our professional staff.
Right now it is very much theory.
Some sites are working with augmented reality
to do multiple overlays, and I think this
is the future.
I think the other element of this, we also
need to take into account that museums have
an audience beyond the visitors to that museum
too, and so I think museums are finally beginning
to understand, the more it gets online, the
more of its collections go online, the more
options there are for individuals to engage
with that museum, that it’s possible to
have a relationship with the museum without
even visiting the museum.
So one can imagine that in the future that
museums could be providing access, virtually
access to the collections through their galleries
as walk-throughs, could even have curators
discussing the galleries, for people across
the world, so reaching a much broader audience,
a worldwide audience, as opposed to solely
those people who have the resources or ability
to visit their site.
Angela: I think we actually got a little preview
for that development now with the pandemic
being on, and so many sites having had to
close for months on end.
And somehow that whole issue of digitalization,
which has been talked about for years on end,
with various results, has just sprung into
life, because there was such a need for sites
to remain present in the actual eye of the
visitor, to demonstrate “still there”,
and to show all their treasures and to make
sure they have an audience after their reopening.
We’re still navigating very tricky waters.
Many sites are heavily affected by this whole
thing, but I suppose if you open up towards
that digital realm, it certainly does help
to not only interpret the meaning and the
facts that are hidden in your treasures, in
your site or in your depots, but also to bind
visitors to you and to be more robust when
there’s a situation going on like we have
at the moment.
The interpretive community that I know, a
lot of the people who are actors, storytellers,
there’s varying degrees of savviness when
it comes to digital formats.
So it’s interesting to hear all the different
layers you know, like you do, you reconstruct
buildings, you open up new avenues of meaning
for them, and performers are struggling to
cope with these challenges, because most of
their work is based on this physical presence
and it’s very hard to switch media altogether
from one day to the next.
Peter: Yeah I think we have been very lucky
in that we have a pretty robust tech support,
so we’ve been able to pivot to online digital
media pretty rapidly, and I think we were
all taken aback by how much support there
were in the outside community as it were.
We had massive take-up of our digital output
and it was really another opportunity for
actor-interpreters and our interpreters to
use that as a different medium to engage with
guests.
I’m pretty certain that we’ve reached
a whole lot of people who’d never visited
Colonial Williamsburg, who planned to in fact,
you can see it in the comments and the feedback
on Facebook etc, that I think we did develop
a new audience, so to your point, I think
definitely, if we can pivot to these new ways
of interpreting the past, it makes us stronger,
we provide a broader platform for our guests
to engage with us, and maybe museums should
be thinking a little bit more broadly than:
a museum visit can only be counted if they
buy a ticket to the museum.
That there are other ways of engaging with
us.
Matilda: When we first spoke, Angela, you
mentioned that there were some differences
in the way that different nationalities or
different countries approach this idea.
Do you see many differences in the way that
different regions or countries or nationalities
or even groups within that, so genders, ages
etc react to your work, so to the sort of
more visual side of things to the theatre
productions, are there different approaches
that are being put in, are there better ones,
worse ones?
What is your opinion on that?
Angela: I suppose to me there’s a broad
difference when it comes to perhaps academic
traditions between cultures and countries.
I live in Germany, I’m German, and we have
a very highbrow approach to education and
academia.
And anything that is bordering on the entertaining
is considered evil, by many decision-makers.
It’s getting better, but you know for a
long, long time there was a very strict distinction
between that which is serious and good, and
that which is trivial.
And other countries don’t have that distinction
so strongly, and I think that’s a good thing,
not to be so hung-up on this.
So I suppose the English-speaking world, with
its wealth of, say, performance formats in
heritage contexts as well as Scandinavia,
they seem to be more laid-back, talk about
decision makers and museums, less hesitant
to actually get people in to do something
that might be unusual or fun!
Beware of fun!
So I suppose there is a difference there,
but since we just talked about digitalization
and new avenues to reach our audiences, perhaps
these distinctions will crumble in a short
while.
I was always quite enamoured of the idea of
why Germans are a bit like this and if you
go to England or America it’s easier to
get through or easier to sell a program or
get it done, but perhaps now that these distinctions
are no longer that, but it’s more an online/offline
thing, and that we as performers are also
called upon to open up to that new reality,
and to reach people beyond the actual borders,
or like Peter said, outside the actual houses,
where they find us on the internet.
And that will remove some barriers that I
used to think we always have, so perhaps there’s
hoping that some good might come of this new
situation for performers as well.
Peter: Yeah, it’s an interesting question
about our audiences.
We have done the analytics, on the digital
media we’ve been putting out, and the audience
online is pretty similar to our audience who
visit, so we’ve not actually seen any specific
skew to one age group or one ethnicity or
one gender at all, actually it seems to be
the same type of people, museum people I guess,
who are visiting us online, as much as they
are visiting onsite.
Angela’s comment about academia is a really
interesting one too, because I have in the
past used the f-word, fun, and it can sometimes
be distracting to people who, from an academic
background, feel that that is a restriction
to understanding the past.
That we do have to look at it calmly, scientifically
and coldly, and I’ve always been of the
opinion that unless we capture the entirety
of human experience in the way we interpret
the past, and that includes having fun, and
doing stupid stuff, and also the serious stuff
as well.
Lest we capture that diversity, we’re not
doing justice to our interpretation of the
past, we’re not doing justice to the people
of the past.
They had fun as much as we had fun today,
and so why not actually incorporate that in
the museum as part of the learning process?
And for me I think, the recent ICOM museum
definition seems to highlight this significantly.
When I read that museum definition – and
I’ll give you the first line of it: “Museums
are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic
spaces for critical dialogue about the past
and the futures.”
I really engaged with this but I know a lot
of museums did not engage with this.
They did not like the idea of moving museums
on to a much more diverse approach to the
past.
So I think it’s within the museum community
– as opposed to the guests – who actually,
I think the guests are looking for this engagement,
that they don’t want a passive experience
at a museum.
I guess there’s some people who do, but
the majority I think are not looking for that
passive experience, they’re looking to have
an interesting time where they can be engaged,
they can have fun, even with traumatic history,
with history that is really challenging.
I think if it’s presented in the right way
– if it’s interpreted in the right way
– it becomes very engaging and very authentic
and real to the visitor.
Matilda: Well, thank you very much for that
interesting discussion.
One final question before we open this up
to our listeners for the live session.
What are your plans for the future?
It might change quite a lot in terms of this
corona virus.
Are there any plans you have in regards to
that or will things go ahead as planned?
And also, how can the EXARC community help
to make a difference do you think, in regards
to the points that you’ve discussed today.
Angela: I can speak for IMTAL-Europe, which
you kindly mentioned as we started this conversation.
I’m currently chairperson of the International
Museum Theatre Alliance, which is short IMTAL,
and the European chapter, as it were.
We’re currently organizing a conference
for next year which hopefully – fingers
crossed, touch wood! – will actually happen
physically, in a nice place where people meet,
outrageous!
So we’re planning to have this lovely conference
in Athens, and that will be also hopefully
a co-operative project with EXARC and colleagues
from IMTAL-America will also be invited to
join us.
And I think one of the topics we’ll have
to discuss is: how can interpreters stay afloat,
how do we survive another such catastrophe,
where people are out of work?
Most of the educators were the first to be
furloughed or let off.
It’s hard to get jobs in, you know, there’s
just the physical reality of how do you survive?
So we’ll certainly sit down and discuss
formats that are robust, that are suitable
for an uncertain future.
And how to stay relevant, in the face of a
changing demographic of a more diverse society,
where any top-down approaches or any very
conventional narratives may not be valid indefinitely,
where we have to open up to new avenues and
new artistic formats.
So I hope to welcome not just IMTAL but also
EXARC members to that meeting next year in
October, to get some new impulses for the
trade.
Fingers crossed.
Peter: So for me, as Angela points out with
the conference, a conference, even if it’s
online, is not the same as a conference in
person.
And I think it’s that connection with other
human beings and that multi-sensory aspect
of a conference that makes it all the more
engaging, and so that’s actually the area
I am looking into in the future, is really
the multi-sensory aspects of the past.
How can we look at our sources of evidence
and engage with each of our senses, not just
our visual senses, in the visual reconstructions,
but it’s about the sense of the past, the
tastes of the past, what was it like to be
a human being in the past in all of its aspects,
the phenomenological experience of people
in the past?
I realise that’s a very big area to look
at, but I think we need to move into that
arena as it were.
And to answer your question about how EXARC
makes the difference, I think for me it’s
just like today there’s not one way to understand
our present.
We all have different experiences in the present
and understandings of the present, so likewise
in the past, there’s never one way to understand
it and so, if I was going to speak to people
about this, it’s really about thinking about
the fact that a single thing, a single place,
a single object can have many meanings.
It doesn’t necessarily just have one way
of being explained.
And it can be explained in the context of
very different arenas.
So moving people into that diversity of experience,
diversity of understanding, that we all look
at the world in different ways.
There is an empirical world out there, but
that is interpreted by individuals in the
context of their own understanding.
