I propose an exhibition of my own discarded scenic models—one that does not focus on their job as a tool for production but liberates them of their past and inspires play. Bill, the super, is my inspiration for this exhibit. It is Bill’s experience with the models that I wish to recreate, and not just for Bill, or for the spectator, but for the models themselves so that in their afterlife, they can become revitalized by play and reveal their deeper ontology as an engine for creating new dramaturgies.
In order to detach the scenic models from their duty as a tool for production, I must rule out an in-context exhibition. This type of exhibition provides the spectator with knowledge by way of labels, charts, and diagrams that serve to put the art in some kind of context. My aim is to remove context, so there will be nothing to provide the spectator with a greater story about the historical development of the models in production. Spectators must create contexts of their own for relating to the models. In carrying the models away from their original context, I explore their artifactual autonomy.
I plan to present my scenic models in the ruined condition in which I discover them; no restoration of any kind will be attempted. Is the discarded scenic model a ruin? Yes. After all, Bill discovered my models on the trash heap, and my own models for the exhibition will be coming from the pile of my model graveyard. Although I am arguing against this kind of disuse, being in ruin is the reality of the discarded model’s existence. Let’s not look away from it. In her book Destination Culture: Tourism, Museum, and Heritage theorist of curation and museum display Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett supports my choice when she says, “restoration may be resisted in cases in which the power of the ruin is its capacity to signify the destructive circumstances of its creation . . .” (18-9). In other words, if the circumstance of how an object came to be destroyed is important to the story one is trying to tell, then the restoration of the object should be avoided. Since the ruined model is created by virtue of its being discarded, restoring the ruined model belies its fate. Furthermore, the visual markings of a life well-lived on the surface of an object is beautiful to me. The scenic model’s ruined state is part of its poetry.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett goes on to say that the ruin is “informed by a poetics of detachment” which makes appreciation possible (18). But if one appreciates ruins, one tends to preserve them unaltered. Will this detached appreciation discourage play? Perhaps not if I can appeal to the spectator’s ‘inner child’, for children are quick to play in a way that adults are not. Baudelaire describes this call to play as an “admirable and luminous alacrity which is typical of children, in whose minds desire, deliberation, and action make up, so to speak, but a single faculty” (197). Children do not deliberate, they act, and this willingness to act is the opposite of detached appreciation. I believe there was a child inside of Bill who, when confronted by my models, was sparked to play. I believe there is a child inside of every spectator that can similarly be sparked to play.
This is the major design challenge in my exhibition: to present the models in some way that will invite the spectator to intervene—to make them as quick to play as Bill. Bill felt free to play specifically because the models were discarded in the trash; this signaled to Bill that they belonged to no one and authorized him to do as he pleased with them. Communicating to the spectator that they are at liberty to take ownership of the models is the key to lowering their inhibitions so that they might feel free to play; free to mix up and rearrange the pieces of the models as they please. In this way, each new spectator “creates the exhibit” for the next spectator, and so on. I would not need to intervene beyond recording the state in which the models arrive at the exhibit and observing in what state spectators leave the models after they play. The question is: what will they become?
In its lifetime the scenic model means both as an object in and of itself, and as a signifier for the finished set design. This makes it an allegorical character in its own story, and as such, the model is free to signify differently in its afterlife. Allegorical characters represent multiple meanings. Figures such as John F. Kennedy and Princess Diana are allegorical characters. When alive they meant as real people–physical manifestations representing themselves in their own lives–but they also stood in for broader concepts and ideas including, but not limited to, charisma, beauty, power, and class. In his book Theory/Theatre: An Introduction theatre theorist Mark Fortier says that “like John F. Kennedy or Princess Diana, the allegorical character has a freer and wider significance in death than in life” (25). In death, allegorical characters become free-floating-signifiers, meaning they function as a vehicle for absorbing whatever meaning a spectator might wish to impose on them. Therefore, depending on the disposition of the spectator, John F. Kennedy or Princess Diana might come to mean as savior or saint, philanderer or whore, superstar or martyr. So too, in its afterlife, the scenic model becomes a free-floating-signifier that takes on greater signifying potential than it had when it was a tool for production. In the exhibit, divorced from its mortal life’s purpose, the scenic model is free to signify new things. This points to the autonomy of the scenic model. The autonomy of the model is its ability to stand alone as its own work of art, without needing to connect to the context of some larger production or educational mission. If it can have these qualities, it will have breached its place as a tool for production and come into its own as an autonomous work of art.
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