Assembling the display collage
Manchester: The Multi-Story City
“It is impossible to think of cities without thinking of buildings…Buildings are powerful and complex symbols, important landmarks on those mental maps through which we make sense of the urban world. But such symbols are not permanent, they change over time.”
The cultural biography of an object is the process of consumption that the object undergoes once it has been made. These processes of consumption result in the creation of social lives of objects that are both processual and relational; as they are continuously ongoing and dependent on the context in which the object is being consumed. Kopytoff has argued that the approach of examining biographies of people, which is often used in anthropology as a way of understanding cultures, can be applied to ‘things’ – “biographies of things can make salient what otherwise might remain obscure.” The relationships that make up an object’s social life both have and make meanings and therefore examining cultural biographies can reveal the hidden meanings of objects.
The Multi-Story City
Our exhibition explores the theme of ‘Manchester’ by examining certain aspects of the cultural biographies of its buildings so as to “make salient what otherwise might remain obscure.” Our display views buildings as artefacts of Manchester and through examining the cultural biographies of these artefacts their often hidden meanings and therefore Manchester, as a living and changing metropolis from whence these buildings sprang, is revealed.
The buildings that this exhibition investigates have been carefully chosen as their biographies each reveal a characteristic Manchester theme that we feel is an important aspect of its identity, such as Roman beginnings, the Industrial Revolution, politics, academic achievement, popular music, the IRA bomb and football.
Installing the display case
The display reveals that exhibitions can enhance certain meanings of objects and obscure others, for example the Radisson Hotel in our display is presented solely as a hub of radical politics when this building is also known to many as a hotel and also has numerous famous historical associations with music and drama that this display has ignored. This aspect of our display demonstrates how museums can enhance meanings of objects; this display has re-contextualised buildings into artefacts of Manchester and has transformed them into metonyms which represent wide cultural aspects of the city, for instance the Abbey National bank in Piccadilly Gardens now stands for the culture of football in Manchester.
The display allows the viewer to glimpse hidden underground Manchester by revealing aspects of some of the networks of secret tunnels that lie below our feet. The purpose of this glimpse of the underground is to show the audience that there are many more hidden biographies in Manchester that are just waiting to be revealed. The display itself invokes a typical Manchester scene – rain falling down upon the buildings of the city.
