Fugitive Direction: Reflections on the Troppen Museum

This text discusses the efficacy of performance as a research tool within the context of museological practice. Situated within Amsterdam’s Troppen Museum, the performance formed part of a moving-image piece, La Javanaise (2012. Dir. Wendelien van Oldenborgh. The Netherlands). The analysis of the performance and its context within the Fugitive Directions text contrasted the use of modalities of visibility within curatorial practice with their deployment in moving-image production. The positioning of museum practice alongside moving-image as contemporary technologies of visibility, particularly as regards racialized objects, becomes a key point. It refuses the positioning of the museum as only occupying an historicizing function, presenting it as subject to analytical devices as applied to other visual media.