Paper short abstract:

European museums have increasingly become stages for subversive performances that articulate diverse aesthetic and political claims. This paper explores how these performances, situated at the intersection of radical political and artistic expression, challenge norms within museum spaces.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past decade, large European museums have increasingly become stages for subversive performances that articulate diverse aesthetic and political claims. These performances, often situated at the intersection of radical political and artistic expression, challenge established norms of conduct within museum spaces, initially designated for passive cultural collecting, aesthetic consumption and contemplation.

Several common elements bring together these "creative intrusions," which can be thought of as a form of artistic intervention. Firstly, there is a subversive interaction with the museum space itself, disrupting its initial purpose and generating social controversy. This controversy extends into broader debates within and outside the art world, addressing issues such as the colonial provenance of African artifacts in European museums and their restitution, the regimes of women’s representation, based on patriarchal objectification, as well as the relationship between museums and fossil fuel industries. Secondly, these performances share similarities in semiotic operations and employed performative strategies based on open-ended and future-oriented scripts.

For analytical purposes, these cases can be categorized into three groups based on the political claims articulated by the protagonists and the objects of their critique: feminist performances, postcolonial performances, and ecological performances. Building on anthropological theories of museums and exhibitions, this paper seeks to provide a socio-anthropological interpretation of the social meaning of these uninvited intrusions to reflect on how these performances contribute to the redefinition of the conception of the Western museum.