“Animated Words, Will Accompany My Gestures” Seismographic Choreographies of Difficult Heritage in Museums

Abstract

This chapter offers an ethnographic analysis of two choreographic projects – The Sysmograph (2019) by Pélagie Gbaguidi, which addressed the Venetian “Museo del Manicomio. La follia reclusa” in the context of the Ultrasanity symposium in Venice and the planned contribution of Dorothée Munyaneza on the Marseille ethnographic collections in the framework of a symposium during Manifesta 13 (2021). Both choreographies are analysed as performances that sense and mediate traumatic pasts, object agency, and the continuation of modern legacies in museums. The objective of this contribution is to open a discussion on the possibilities of choreographies and dance not as illustrative practices, but as mediating, embodied, translated investigations of active matter, difficult heritage, and the traumatic pasts inscribed in museological narratives, objects, and spaces.