Captivating objects and the taste of performance: Probing the affects of scientific objects

Abstract

This paper describes a series of experimental set-ups in Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, the Dutch National Science Museum in Leiden, dedicated to probing the affects of scientific objects. These set-ups are part of an interdisciplinary research project centring around the issue of how to present and engage with immaterial or complex science technologies. This research combines two fields of expertise: curatorial practice in a science museum and scholarship in dramaturgy and scenography. It probes the potential of affect, understood as the capacity to affect and to be affected, while finding inspiration in new materialist theory. By using dialogue next to discursive argumentation, the paper discusses some questions and issues that were raised by these experimental set-ups and proposes that a focus on affect and materiality – thinginess, in brief – can inspire the collection and presentation of scientific objects. Attending to thinginess can expand the curatorial agenda and asks for scenographic strategies to support this.