How to understand engineering sciences with the techniques of the body: The case of the bridges collection of the Musée des Arts et Métiers explained by circus acrobatics

Abstract

In this article, I will examine an experimental mediation performed by acrobats at the Paris Musée des Arts et Métiers in May 2016. I will ask if body techniques can facilitate the public’s understanding of the abstract engineering sciences exhibited in a science and technology museum. Using the ethnographic study of this performance, I will ask if this new type of museum mediation opens up new research issues about technical gestures and helps us to blur boundaries between tangible and intangible heritage in the museum context. In doing so I try to redeploy the methods of analysis of museum collections and to contribute to the theoretical and methodological renewal of the history of technology. I show that this new way to mediate science and technology museum collections using body techniques and gestures produces a methodological indistinctness between intentionality and contingency that often marks the epistemological break between art, technology and science in western culture. This anthropological way of looking at museums of science and technology opens up new research issues not only for the museum’s scientific and technical heritage but also for the history of science and techniques.