Our body allows us to explore the world and builds our relationship with the self, to others, and to our environment. It affirms our physical presence in the world. Yet the majority of exhibitions forget the body as a whole, and often separate body from mind, mobilizing mostly the brain, the eyes, the ears and sometimes the hands or fingers to press a button, turn a handle or move a computer mouse.

The visitor’s body is rarely used as a tool for interpretation at exhibitions. Imagine an exhibition that uses the intelligence of the body as a learning tool? How would this learning differ from other ways of learning? Is such an approach possible? In order to realize this idea, museums need not only to rethink visitors’ experiences but also get inspiration from other fields where body is always at work: dance, theater, circus, interactive arts, martial arts, and more. The workshop will be based on case studies related to exhibition insects, disabilities, the human body and evolution. Some messages can be conveyed by mobilizing a visitor’s body. A dancer, for instance, will have her own unique interpretation of exhibition messages. From this basis, all participants will work on the transposition/adaptation of the dancer’s interpretation in an exhibition context.

During the workshop, speakers will present case studies related to their experiences of the body of the visitor involvement in exhibitions (or exhibition projects) on topics as diverse as insects, handicaps, or the human body. They will introduce the creative process that allowed them to develop experiments involving the visitor’s body, difficulties (heterogeneity visitors, ergonomics, safety, design for all, taboo … ) and propose to the group one unsolved problem: messages that they would like to convey by using visitor’s body without finding any solution for it. On those basis all participants will work on the transposition/adaptation of the dancer’s interpretation in an exhibition context.