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The performative space for city identity narrative

A case study of Suzhou Museum

Bibliographic Data

ID13019554
AuthorsLin Chen (0000-0001-5135-3998, Soochow University, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume2
Issue1
Pages52-66
Publication date2017-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCommunication and the Public (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2057-0473 • E-ISSN: 2057-0481
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/2057047317695813
OpenAlexW2595984235
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited10

This article takes Suzhou Museum as a case to analyze various aspects of its narrative constitution, narrative time, and narrative voice. The analysis reveals that the new museum building tells a story of tradition and modernity, the local and the world, personalization, and customization. The museum’s exhibition with “Wu” leading the story of local tradition and historical culture provides resources for the city identity of Suzhou. Visitor’s narratives, aided by new media technologies, infiltrate, fuse, and reconstruct the museum narrative. This case study makes clear the following theoretical points. First, by dealing with the relation between narrative time and space, the museum as a medium displays its uniqueness in the city communication system. Second, through visitors’ appropriation, production, and reproduction, the museum as a built environment presents its openness, fluidity, and inconsistencies. Third, the constitutive power of new media technologies facilitates the intervention of visitors’ subjectivity in the museum narrative and makes the meaning construction of the narrative more interactive. And finally, the communicative practices activated by the narrative construction in the museum as a mediaspace in the city contribute to the liminal experiences that bear traces of both ideological regulation and the city’s identity, turning the proposition that “citizens create the city” into a real possibility

Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Exhibition · Identity (music · Liminality · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Narrative criticism · Narrative history · Narrative inquiry · Performative utterance · Sociology · Visual arts · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Museums and Cultural Heritage

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Unique citing works3
Citations per year0,75
Citation span2022 - 2026 (5)
Citation velocitycurrent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 3
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