Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Can we do public engagement that hovers between disciplines, views of science, and aesthetic modes, while still being accessible? I will share two short films made to introduce visitors to interdisciplinary exhibitions, arguing that hovering is a creative constraint that can help distil STS visions

Paper long abstract

In this presentation I share two short films that hover between science communication, STS storytelling, and aesthetic play. Made to introduce visitors to interdisciplinary exhibitions 'Mind the Gut' and 'Liquid Bodies' at Medical Museion in Copenhagen, the films could be seen as primarily sharing scientific facts. But the scripts play with the poetics of the factual, drawing on the acoustic flourishes of scientific language to hint at its strangeness. In the tradition of STS approaches to public engagement, the films also layer science with science-in-the-making, science-as-it-really-is, and science-as-imagination. The visuals echo scientific tropes but in evidently abstract or fantastical ways, and the narratives invoke the visitor’s embodied experience alongside anthropomorphised elements, loosening agency from scientistic bounds. In all these domains, the films hover, not coming down to land on one view of science; one view of biology. This is an attempt to mirror the world as seen through an STS lens, following Born & Barry’s “logic of ontology”. The author and colleagues have written elsewhere about this ‘mirroring move’ as driving not just our curatorial practice, but also the processes of collaboration that support it. I therefore also discuss the collaborations behind the films. I share some key moments of hovering – between disciplines, between purposes, or between personal aesthetic preferences – and identify affective and ethical winds that keep them aloft. In conclusion, I argue that trying to preserve these arial uncertainties while caring for accessibility is a creative constraint that can help to distil STS visions.