1 Introduction

For some time, scholars engaged in memory studies have explored the relationship between collective memory and individual memory (Halbwachs 1939; J. Assmann 2012; Erll and Nünning 2008). Halbwachs (2020[1941]) developed his concept of “collective memory” by drawing on Emile Durkheim’s (2013[1893]) notion of the “collective consciousness”. Key to Halbwachs’ argument is that people’s individual memories are socially shaped by socialisation and communication, i.e. communication with things and with other people. Halbwachs’ notion of “collective memory” has variously been criticised. Susan Sonntag (2004), for example, rejects the notion of “collective memory” altogether, suggesting that “[W]hat is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating”. Memory studies, however, have shown that group and community life is based on memory, and that memory arises from group and community life (J. Assmann 2011). Aleida Assmann (2009) also disputes Sontag’s dismissal of the concept of “collective memory” arguing instead that Halbwachs’ concepts need to be unpacked further. She (2009, p. 211), therefore, differentiates “four levels or ‘formats of memory’: (1) individual memory; (2) social memory; (3) political memory; and (4) cultural memory”. While individual and social memory are embodied, based on lived experience, and tied to people and embodied interactions, political and cultural memory are mediated and grounded on external symbols and material representations (ibid., p. 215).

Within modern societies, there are institutions that create political and cultural memory through the collection, conservation, and presentation of objects. Apart from libraries and archives, museums are a key context in this regard. This institution collects, conserves, and exhibits objects for people to engage and communicate with. In the view of museologists like Friedrich Waidacher, museum objects “have been lifted out the river of time. A new capacity has been conferred on them which they did not have before. They have been endowed with values” (Waidacher 1997, p. 104). These values are upheld by the work of academic specialists, such as curators and conservators. Thus, museologists conceptualise the purpose of museums as to express how in a given time, people relate to reality (Biedermann 2016). Museums’ expression of people’s relationship to reality is communicated through their exhibitions (Waidacher 1996) thus functioning as a type of “mnemonic institution” through which “cultural memory” is “made” (J. Assmann 2011, p. 111). The objects exhibited in museums serve as reminders for people who, when encountering them, might recall and discuss past events and experiences. In the present article, we are interested in this form of memory, which Jan and Aleida Assmann (J. Assmann 2011; cf. Welzer 2008) have called “communicative memory”.

Communicative memory is not institutionally objectified but “lives in everyday interaction and communication” (J. Assmann 2011, p. 111). Yet, relatively few studies explore how memory is evoked through the interaction between people in museums, where they encounter objects often unfamiliar to them, which have been selected for public display. Thus, in our analysis, we examine fragments of naturally-occurring interactions at, and around, exhibits displayed in art museums, science centres, and popular exhibitions of the human body. We expose the museum as a perspicuous setting through which to study memory as an interactional phenomenon, rather than a cognitive process, which is displayed, claimed and contested by people. Examining the interactions at these exhibits provides an opportunity to reveal the interplay of people’s talk and bodily conduct, and to address how the visual and material features of these exhibits are embedded within these interactions. We investigate (1), how people’s noticing of exhibit features occasions talk about the past, (2), how people turn their own body into an exhibit for others to examine and make sense of, (3), how these locally situated memories shape people’s examination and interpretation of exhibits, and (4) allow reflexive connections to be established between these material objects and the occasioned memories they evoke.

2 Memory & interactions with new museology

Alongside libraries and archives, the modern museum was created to organise or even “discipline” people’s thinking and doing (Bennett 1995; Foucault 1994; Hooper-Greenhill 1989). Within museums, academic specialists collect, conserve, and exhibit objects they endow with “cultural value” (Waidacher 1996). Museum collections and exhibitions are assembled by curators to express humanity’s relationship to the world (Waidacher 2000; Biedermann 2016). They are places where the organisation of exhibits reflects what society conceives as worthwhile to learn and remember. As such, museums are educational institutions which support the inclusion of different parts of the population into society (Chobot and Chobot 1990; Hooper-Greenhill 1994), thus contributing to the project of modernity, in seeking to allow ever wider parts of the population to participate in society as educated citizens (Münch 1991). However, despite museums managing to increase participation in their exhibitions, there is little evidence that traditional class divisions inherent within visiting demographics have been overcome. Neither the enhancement of exhibitions’ educational offerings nor attempts to make exhibitions more entertaining have successfully enticed those not traditionally attracted by museums (Bennett 1990).

Traditional museology’s principal aim was to explain and legitimise the sustained existence of these institutions as protectors of societies’ cultural memory. In this view, museums displayed objects for visitors to experience as representations of humanity’s cultural achievements. Since the 1980s, discussions in museology fundamentally changed direction, as scholars developed a “new museology” (Vergo 1989) and “new museum theory” (Marstine 2005) that aimed to transform this institution “from a site of worship and awe to one of discourse and critical reflection that is committed to examining unsettling histories with sensitivity to all parties, [looking towards] a museum that is transparent in its decision-making and willing to share power” (Andermann and Arnold-de Simine 2012, p. 5).

Museums that are designed with regard for these developments in museological theory have replaced the “stuffy” atmosphere of the old museum with one that is not unlike that of shopping malls and other consumer and servicescapes (Böhme 2017). Within new and refurbished museum buildings, people encounter, and experience exhibits within “atmospheric architectures” (Böhme 2017), which can be planned and controlled through a range of “objective factors” (Böhme 2021), including light and colour, spatial structure, sounds and synaesthetic features. However, Biehl and vom Lehn (2015, 2021) have shown that apart from the “objective factors” identified by Böhme, people’s actions and interactions contribute to the emergence of atmospheric spaces. Therefore, whilst museum designers, architects, curators, and managers ‘set the scene’ for the evocation of certain atmospheres, they are produced in and through the methodical organisation of people’s action and interaction.

Over the past two decades, a small body of research has explored how people experience exhibits in interaction with each other. These studies reveal that peoples’ sense-making; how they look at and interpret exhibits, arises through the social organisation of their actions (Heath and vom Lehn 2004; vom Lehn 2018). It shows how people systematically embed exhibit features, including the content of labels and interactive features, within the production and design of their actions (Heath and vom Lehn 2008). Therefore, their aesthetic experiences emerge as not only responsive to the exhibit, but also as contingently produced with regard for the actions of others. For example, people kindle a companion to respond to discovery of an exhibit feature through a display of surprise, rather than displaying a response to the action which evoked this response (Heath et al. 2012; Katz 1996). Despite demonstrating how the experience of exhibits arises through interactions with others, these aforementioned studies do not address whether people orient to the cultural memories embodied through these objects, and whether they evoke personal memories of past experiences and events.

This lack of concern with memory by scholars who have studied talk and interaction in museums is surprising, given the substantial body of symbolic interactionist research which has explored remembering in interaction. For example, in their theoretical discussion of George Herbert Mead’s concept of time, Flaherty and Fine (2001) argue that a memory of the past is one amongst numerous stimuli that actors can select to act in the presence. In this view, memories are not a mental simulation of the past, but are produced in, and through, interpretation processes. Such interpretation processes have been revealed within research concerned with people’s professional or personal dealings with the process of dying. In their analysis of hospital staff’s management of dying patients, Strauss and Glaser (1965) highlight the need to recall past events in order to anticipate future courses of action. In a related way, Lopata (1986) discusses how impending widowhood involves a reflection upon the memories of a couple’s life together, in order to anticipate a future life without the dying partner.

Interactionists not only investigate individual memory, as it is revealed in interviews or autoethnographic studies (Poulos 2016) but also collective memory. For example, Schwartz (1991) and Schwartz, Zerubavel and Barnett (1986) explore how societies continually reinterpret and reconstruct their memories of the past, as they themselves are subject to social change. Like individual memories of the past, collective memory is shaped by the social processes of interpretation and negotiation. Although members of a group or society may agree on a particular reconstruction of the past, their consensus does not persist for long and are likely to be revised in the future (Zerubavel 2003). By examining personal narratives, interactionists have also demonstrated that remembering can form the basis for retracted accounts of memorised childhood sexual abuse (DeGloma 2007), in which “scripted symbolic awakenings” (ibid., p. 243) are deployed to account for mnemonic inaccuracies and substantiate discoveries of reconfigured truths. These symbolic interactionist studies of remembering are based on narratives and interviews which encourage the vocalisation of reflections about the past.

In another interactionist tradition, namely ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, studies have explored how social memory is produced. Some studies, undertaken in the field of discursive psychology, adopt this analytic attitude to explore how in conversation participants collectively produce memory (Edwards and Middleton 1987). They reveal that people not only have their individual memory, but that talk with others about these memories and those of previous generations “are a constitutive part of shared existence” (Welzer 2008, p. 288; cf. Billig 1997; Middleton and Edwards 1990). Moreover, they explore how commemorative rituals and occasions are created and performed to remember particular people and events (Baer and Sznaider 2015). Notably, some of this research uses audio-visual recordings as data through which to explore the production of commemorative ritual performances (Schnettler et al. 2015; Horsti 2022). A slightly different approach is taken by scholars who adopt an ethnomethodological attitude to study the production of communicative memory. For example, drawing on Halbwachs’ concept of family memory, Keppler (1994) analyses conversations to reveal how at evening meetings, family members assemble memories of past events.

Apart from these studies of everyday situations, there is a large body of research addressing how memory features in interactions within institutional settings. For example, in court proceedings, witnesses’ biographical stories are contrasted and assimilated with impersonal, archival accounts of events (Bogen and Lynch 1989; Lynch and Bogen 1996). This ethnomethodological research uses the video-recordings of events as its principal data source, courtrooms comprising one amongst a range of institutional domains through which ethnomethodologists have explored the interactional assembly of social memory (see studies of institutional talk, Drew and Heritage 1992). Other studies investigate how accounts of individual memory emerge in medical interactions (Heath 1986). These studies contend that accounts of individual memory, biographical stories and the medical history of a patient are co-produced in interaction between medical professionals and patients (Boyd and Heritage 2006; Tapsell 2000; Heath 1982). Furthermore, they reveal that the fine details of talk and bodily action can influence how and when individual memories are evoked during these medical encounters.

This existing body of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic research highlights the interactional production of memory, revealing that when and how people recount their individual memories arises in and is co-produced through their interaction with others. Previous studies deploying this ethnomethodological attitude have primarily explored how accounts of memory are occasioned through talk, for example, through posing questions that form part of history taking during medical encounters. We aim to broaden the analytic scope of memory as a social and interactional phenomenon, by examining fragments of interaction in which people vocally, and through their bodily action, co-produce their memories of past experiences and events.

3 Methods and data

Given our interest in the organisation of naturally-occurring action and interaction, we use as our principal data audio-/video-recordings produced in various museums. Over the past 20 years, we have gathered more than 500 h of recordings in art galleries, traditional museums, as well as in exhibitions displayed in science centres, and commercial exhibitions.

Video-recordings are a complex form of data, composed of visual and audible actions and events. The analysis of these complex data sources requires an analytic and methodological approach that allows the identification of patterns in the production of action and interaction. As suggested by Heath, Hindmarsh and Luff (2010) we adopt ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) as our analytic attitude and use the methodological techniques developed within conversation analysis (Sacks 1992; Goodwin and Heritage 1990; Have 2007) to systematically examine our data. This “multimodal” (Mondada 2011) approach to analysing interaction allows us to systematically inspect vocal, bodily, material, and visual actions as they naturally occur in museums.

Adopting ethnomethodology as an analytic attitude addresses the relationship between “action” and “context” in a way that differs from those commonly used within the social sciences. Firstly, ethnomethodologists consider actions to be situated within a context that is ongoingly renewed through each action. Therefore, they consider actions and context to be reflexively interrelated, actions at the same time being shaped by a context that is renewed through their production (Heritage 1984). Second, the meaning of an action, be it an utterance or a bodily movement, is constituted only through the next action. And third, actions are produced in methodical ways, which are recognizable and intelligible to others, enabling the production of concerted and orderly activities (vom Lehn 2014).

Ethnomethodologists use video-recordings to explore how participants analyse and act upon their interpretation of others action. Their analyses proceed case-by-case, allowing them to compare and contrast sequences of action in order to reveal patterns in their production. Thus, when examining interaction at museum exhibits, ethnomethodologists uncover how people orient to each other’s actions and show how they practically, i.e., through the production of their actions, display their interpretation of each other’s actions. This “ethnomethodological analysis of interaction”, therefore, prioritises the participants’ perspective by investigating how they produce actions in orientation to the actions of others, produced a moment earlier and anticipated to be produced a moment later (vom Lehn 2019). This analytic approach inspects short fragments of interaction to reveal why an action has been produced at a particular moment and in a particular way (Heath et al. 2010).

The data subjected to analysis in this article has been collected in a range of museums and other exhibitions over a period of two decades. In all exhibitions, data has been gathered in a similar way. Data collection begins with field observations and discussions with museum managers and curators. The observations and discussions provide us with analytic and pragmatic reasons for selecting exhibits, where we later would record people’s action and interaction. For example, some exhibits were selected because we observed distinctive forms of interaction emerging in front of them, whilst the location of other exhibits, where we would have liked to collect data, did not allow for the positioning of a camera.

In most cases, we used one camera to produce the recordings, but in some exhibitions two cameras allowed us to capture visitors’ interaction from different angles or at different exhibits. These video-recordings provide us with the opportunity to assemble collections of instances showing particular phenomena. For this article, we draw upon a collection of cases in which participants display an orientation to the “remembering” of past events or experiences. By comparing and contrasting instances within this collection, we have identified patterns in the production of memory-oriented sequences of action, which form the basis of our analysis. When examining video-recorded fragments of interaction, it is important to identify the actions that arise, how participants orient to the prior action of co-participants, and how these actions provide opportunities for subsequent action. Because the analysis is concerned with unpacking the social organisation of action, it proves necessary to transcribe how vocal and bodily actions arise in light of immediately prior actions and foreshadow each next action. For the transcription of talk we use a simplified version of the system developed by Gail Jefferson (1984), and have adapted the annotations developed by Heath, Hindmarsh and Luff (2010) to transcribe participants’ bodily actions. Transcribing video-recorded fragments of interaction allows us to unpack the complexity of activities and reveal how they are accomplished through the social organisation of actions.

It is worthwhile briefly addressing the ethical concerns of video-based research and questions regarding visitors’ reactions to the cameras. During all our recordings, we informed visitors about data collection through signage positioned at entrances to the galleries. This told visitors about the purpose of the video-based research, that footage and frames from recordings may be used in publications and presentations, and informed visitors of their right to have these recordings stopped, or wiped should they have already been recorded.

Finally, some colleagues question whether the use of video-cameras for data collection influences how people act and interact at exhibits. When collecting video-data we take precautions so as not to draw undue attention to our equipment. For example, cameras are positioned in places where they do not obstruct participants’ exploration of the museums, and camera recording lights are switched off. In this regard, it is noteworthy that research in medical settings has shown that people rarely, if at all, orient to the camera in a noticeable way (Heath 1986). If they react to the camera, this is visibly responsive to the ongoing recordings; for example, people waving to or smiling into the camera. Additionally, visitors did not display that they were orienting to or reflecting upon the presence of cameras in the museum. In our view, the assumption that people react to the camera in ways unrecognisable to the researcher overestimates the acting abilities of the public (Laurier and Philo 2006; Speer and Hutchby 2003).

4 Occasioning communicative memory

Museums are institutions that collect, archive and exhibit objects embodying an aspect of society’s collective memory. In displaying these objects, curators encourage visitors to explore these shared histories with their companions and fellow citizens, and assume that people’s encounters with exhibits will evoke memories that are collectively held. Through our data, we have observed how memories are evoked through visitors’ interactions with exhibits, which in turn, serve as vehicles through which their collaborative exploration of them are practically accomplished. This reveals how visitors’ embodied interactions within the museum can foster the grounds for recollection, their ‘sense-making’ negotiated by momentarily configuring a relationship between the physical object and elicited memory. Yet, in order to present the museum as a perspicuous setting for the study of memory, it is critical to explore the methods through which these discussions of past events and experiences are occasioned.

Consider the following fragment, in which Jennie and Holly read the label associated with ‘Boat Passing a Lock’ by John ConstableFootnote 1 (Fig. 1a).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Extract 1: Jennie & Holly

Full size image

Through her opening comment, Jennie alerts her co-participant to an ‘interesting’ item gleaned through her reading of this text. When Holly does not immediately respond, Jennie selectively reads aloud from the label at line 3, referencing the ‘stormy conditions at Hampstead Heath and Brighton’, before posing a question ‘was it you I went to the Constable with?’ which co-occurs with her orientation towards Holly (Fig. 1b).

This reveals how Jennie exploits specific elements of the label, an ubiquitous feature of the museum, to direct her friend’s attention towards a potentially shared experience, which is topically relevant, but only loosely affiliated with their current state of engagement at the artwork. This text is not designed to encourage personal memories, yet exercises a mnemonic-activating function, with Jennie’s individual remembering gaining momentary significance at the exhibit-face and becoming a form of “communicative memory” (J. Assmann 2011; Welzer 2008). Holly enthusiastically displays her access to this projected memory between lines 5 and 7, characterising it as ‘brilliant’ (Fig. 1c). Interrupting this emergent characterization, Jennie reframes her evoked memory as a shared account, remarking ‘we’d just seen the Constable exhibition at Brighton’ (lines 8–9), and turns back towards the Constable painting, re-establishing it as the focus of their attention (Fig. 1d). Whilst developing her account of this recollected event at line 11, Jennie references the ‘stormy skies and seas’, this evoked feature of the memory displaying a topical affiliation to the issue of the painting’s weather conditions, as cited from the label (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Label

Full size image

Notice that just following her reference to ‘skies’, Holly lifts her gaze and attends to the top of the composition (Fig. 1e), where the stormy skies are identifiable, whilst stepping back and providing a display of vocal affiliation ‘that’s right’ at line 14 (Fig. 1f). This is a subtle adjustment to her embodied action, yet it elucidates how this recollectable event is co-experienced and now, if only momentarily, constituted as a shared memory through the visitors’ talk and interaction. This configuration of shared remembering is materially affective, shaping Holly’s ongoing examination of this artwork. By attending to this exhibit feature, she displays a sensitivity to elements of the memory referenced by Jennie, her actions emerging in light of this verbal account.

Therefore, whilst the museum has been characterised as a form of “mnemonic institution” (Harold and Fong 2018), assembled through exhibits which embody aspects of societies’ collective memories, this extract reveals how specific objects and their features, discoverable by visitors within these institutional environments, can serve as mnemonic-activating devices.

Strikingly, it is not the exhibited artwork, but its associated text, which occasions the discussion of a past, embodied experience. This is a locally situated form of remembering, which does not reconfigure the topical agenda of the visitors’ ongoing interaction, but momentarily fosters a reflexive connection with the exhibited object. It illustrates how these evoked memories, reinterpreted, and co-produced through visitors’ interactions can affectively shape their moment-by-moment exploration of exhibits. Here, Holly’s embodied conduct displays a sensitivity to particular features of this memory as they are voiced, and by attending to related features of the painting, configures a reflexive relationship between the physical artwork, the mnemonic object, and the memory itself.

To explore further how particular objects within these environments serve as mechanisms for the provocation of memory, consider the following extract. As we join the scene, Sophie examines a painting by Isobel Burton, whilst Zoe reads the associated label (Figs. 3 and 4b). Zoe’s opening comment harnesses information gleaned through this individual reading to produce a display of assumed knowledge, ‘oh it’s embroidering painting’, whilst turning towards Sophie (Fig. 4c), which retrospectively orients to an activity she has previously engaged in.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Label

Full size image
Fig. 4
figure 4

Extract 2: Sophie and Zoe at Faculty Innocence by Isobel Burton

Full size image

Sophie quickly responds to this implicated account of her personal experience, producing a sharp turn towards Zoe, so that the visitors face each other (Fig. 4d). Having initially adopted an authoritative tone, assuming Sophie’s relevance with respect to this prior event, Zoe then initiates a form of recognition check at line 2, ‘do you remember when you got grandma to do the emb(h)roider(h)y’, which seeks to determine her access to this recollectable event.

This reference to ‘embroidery’ is inflected with and succeeded by laughter. Despite its subtlety, this prosodic delivery imbues this individual memory with a particular character, indicating that it is reinterpreted humorously via the process of Zoe’s remembering. Her communication of this memory involves the interrelation of vocal and embodied action. Facing Sophie, she takes her hands from her pockets (Fig. 4e) and positions them in front of her torso. Her description of ‘grandma doing the emb(h)roider(h)y’ co-occurs with a thrusting action, her clenched fists appearing to move forwards and back towards her torso (Fig. 4f, g). This transforms her body into a physical exhibit for Sophie to examine, providing an embodied demonstration of the embroidery process as it is verbally described. Through this ‘embodied enactment’, an ostensible connection between the exhibited artwork and her subjective remembering is reflexively configured, thus rendering this feature of a past event an observable phenomenon.

Just following Zoe’s reference to ‘embroidery’, Sophie’s facial expression is transformed into a wide smile, and she nods enthusiastically, whilst opening her mouth to mimic the action of laughter (Fig. 4h). By virtue of this embodied action, she aligns to Zoe’s remembering of this past event and re-constitutes its projected character, before agreeing with Sophie’s vocal account at line 5, ‘°yeah°’. This analysis reveals that, rather than functioning as pre-existing entities with stable characteristics, remembering is accomplished within interaction and involves an element of reconstruction. In seeking to clarify her co-participant’s access to a particular memory, Zoe displays how it is subjectively remembered through her vocal and embodied conduct, with Sophie reconstituting its implied character through the design of her response. Thus, we can observe the emergence of the interactional production of memory.

These extracts unveil how specific objects within these institutional environments can function as ‘mnemonic-activating’ devices, bringing individual memories into communication with others. Whilst museum exhibits have often been conceived as embodying a form of “cultural memory” (J. Assmann, 2012), in these instances, it is specific elements of their associated texts which occasion talk about the past. They engender a form of “communicative memory” (J. Assmann 2011; Welzer 2008), which is co-produced through visitors’ interactions, and momentarily configures a reflexive relationship between the label, the physical artwork and evoked memory. This form of remembering is locally situated and bound by the objects within the local ecology of the exhibit-face. Whilst it does not reshape the topical progression of visitors’ ongoing interaction, the vocalisation of these past events allows them to engage with the objects they encounter, and furthermore, shapes the ‘sense-making’ processes through which they are practically explored.

5 Bodily animating exhibits

Thus far, we have shown how, in the course of communicating memories, the body can be transformed into an interactional resource, through which visitors’ produce ‘embodied enactments’, bringing references from the past into being. We now turn to a different way in which visitors orient to their own bodies as resources for remembering. Consider the following extract, that begins following Jamie and Lucie’s reading of the label associated with a large painting by Lucas Console-Verma (Fig. 5a). They stand back and examine the piece (Fig. 5b), and after twenty seconds at line 1 (Fig. 6), Lucie initiates a discussion of what the painting ‘makes her think of’.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Lucie and Jamie at Serenity by Lucas Console-Verma

Full size image

Rather than requesting clarification regarding Jamie’s experience of this artwork, Lucie implicates her co-participant within the projected account of a previous experience ‘when we were at school’ (Fig. 6, line 2). Whilst the specifics of this memory are not accessible via Lucie’s opening description, her communication of this individual remembering involves both vocal description and embodied action.

With the initiation of her talk, she raises both hands into clenched fists (Fig. 6a), before positioning her index fingers together, so that they touch (Fig. 6b). As her verbal account implicates the experience of Jamie at line 2 ‘you know’, these fingers are parted, moving to create the outline of a rectangular shape (Fig. 6c, d). Following this, she turns to face her co-participant, repositioning both fists into their initial, clenched pose (Fig. 6e). Lucie’s utterance, ‘you know >when you were like<’ (lines 2–3) is prospectively geared towards the exposition of this recollectable event and assumes Jamie’s ability to also remember it. Yet, rather than produce this disclosure through verbal means, a pause in her talk ensues, with her body functioning as the principal mechanism through which she seeks to give form to this projected memory. Her clenched fists suggest grasping the frame of a raised object (Fig. 6f), and as Jamie attends to her, she preserves the position of her hands, but slowly tilts her head forward (Fig. 6g). It moves into the imaginary space created by these raised fists, following which she stretches her head back (Fig. 6h) and reproduces this tilting action (Fig. 6i). We can see then, how Lucie’s body is transformed into a moving exhibit, with specific features of this subjective remembering, which are irrecoverable through her talk alone, communicated and rendered intelligible through this process of ‘embodied enactment’.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Extract 3: Lucie & Jamie

Full size image

Lucie’s exaggerated demonstration of this embodied event elicits laughter from Jamie. Turning towards him, she initiates a minor elaboration at line 5 (Fig. 7), which orients to his assumed access to this recollected event. Produced with a sharp rising intonation, Jamie’s suggestion of ‘pins’ at line 6 (Fig. 7) seeks to clarify his understanding of this projected remembering, with Lucie’s subsequent exclamation ‘pins?’ (Fig. 7, line 7) signalling an asymmetry in their understanding. Notice how Lucie responds to this suggested asymmetry by seeking to provide further detail regarding this recollectable event. Whilst initiating a vocal expansion, she elaborates upon her animation of the imaginary frame—the structure into which her head subsequently tilts. Now using open palms (Fig. 7j), rather than her index fingers, she constructs a clearer outline of this structure (Fig. 7k), whilst commenting that ‘it was like a pattern’. With her articulation of ‘pattern’ her hand moves across this implicated frame, thus offering a provisional sense of the matter contained within it (Fig. 7m), before remarking that ‘you couldn’t see anything’. At this point, she repeats the slow, tilting action with her head, but now provides a verbal description ‘then if you moved it in and out’ (Fig. 7, line 8) to co-occur with its production (Fig. 7n–p). This intensified enactment prompts Jamie to produce a change of state token at line 9 (Fig. 7), thus marking a momentary intersubjectivity in their understanding of the recollectable event.

Fig. 7
figure 7

Extract 3: Lucie & Jamie

Full size image

We can see, then, how visitor’s examination of artworks can occasion memories of past experiences. To share features of these subjective rememberings, visitors transform their bodies into resources for remembrance. In this case, Lucie produces an initial embodied enactment of the projected memory, before seeking to ascribe greater form and detail to elements of this past encounter through elaborations to her bodily conduct. By turning her body into a mobile exhibit which Jamie can examine, their asymmetric understanding of the recollectable event is resolved, and its visual connection to the exhibited artwork established.

Let us consider another extract in which a visitor vocalises a remembering while inspecting an exhibit. Extract 4Footnote 2 has been recorded at an exhibit titled “Situs Inversus” within an exhibition called Body Worlds. The exhibit shows the opened-up torso of a human being that exposes its inner organs. While inspecting the exhibit, Liz notices that in comparison to most people’s bodies, it displays a body where the organs are located in reversed positions. Rather than referring to the exhibit and describing how she sees the body, Liz recalls that a friend’s father had this condition, ‘I think that’s what Bea’s father had (.)’ (Fig. 8, line 1).

Our interest is in the actions that Liz produces when talking about the manifestation of Situs Inversus in her friend’s father. She recalls that when Bea’s father had surgery, the doctors discovered the condition having mistakenly ‘ripped open his spleen’ (Fig. 8, line 3) because ‘it wasn’t where it’s meant to be’ (Fig. 8, line 3). As she discusses her remembering of this incident Liz mobilises her right hand, overlaying the front of the torso to animate her memory of this medical condition. She cups the liver located on the exhibit’s left side with her right hand whilst remarking, ‘so your liver’ (Fig. 8a) before flipping this hand towards her right whilst completing this description ‘is now on the left’ (Fig. 8b). At this point, she turns to the spleen that was injured in her friend’s father’s body, remarking ‘your spleen is on the right, everything is literally (kind of)’ (Fig. 8, line 9) and flips her hand across the torso to her left side (Fig. 8c–e). Thus, Liz animates specific features of the exhibit by turning her hand into a mobile exhibit. It augments the object displayed within Body Worlds and brings to life her personal memory of the related bodily condition.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Extract 4: Liz and John at Situs Inversus

Full size image

Our analysis of these two extracts suggests that visitors deploy their bodies to animate their memories as they are recalled. In doing so, their co-participants become an audience to the enactments they perform and respond to them by producing acknowledgment tokens and other non-lexical vocalisations (cf. Keevallik and Ogden 2020). Whilst this practice, which we have termed as ‘embodied enactments’ is applicable to other institutional domains, the museum is unveiled as one context wherein it routinely occurs. Here, people are often confronted with unfamiliar objects which disrupt their present course of action, occasioning rememberings of past encounters and events. In an attempt to communicate aspects of these subjective memories, they overlay aspects of exhibits with gestures and bodily actions, in order to configure visual connections between these material objects and elements of the memories they invoke.

6 Material influences on memory

We have seen that through the vocalisation of their memories, visitors can forge reflexive connections with objects which are unfamiliar to them. These rememberings serve as a materially affective force, momentarily establishing links between the past and present. People discuss these rememberings in light of the exhibits they encounter, and animate elements of them by overlaying the object with gestures. This demonstrates how memories are accomplished in interaction and involve an element of reconstruction. Yet, given their contingent nature, these occasioned memories can influence visitors’ aesthetic encounters in different ways. In some instances within our collection, these artworks occasion memories which, if only briefly, create disagreements between visitors. Despite reinforcing the mnemonic- activating status of the artwork, they expose a distinct way in which these vocalised rememberings shape the interactions which unfold at the exhibit-face. Consider extract 5Footnote 3, recorded at a painting by Rembrandt titled “Portrait of Hendrikje StoffelsFootnote 4”. The painting shows a young woman with a white fur coat draped around her shoulders, sitting on a chair and looking toward the viewer. To the right of the painting a label (Fig. 9) has been mounted to the wall, which offers information about the work of art.

We join the action when Paula, in the background, and Jo, stand at about 2 m distance from the wall between the label and the painting. Both visitors are reading the label attached to the wall to the right of the painting. After a moment, Paula identifies the lady depicted by Rembrandt, ‘this is the girl who came into the house (.3)’ (Fig. 10a, b, line 3). As she begins to talk, Paula produces a pointing gesture to the painting that crosses the body and part of her companions’ eye line, who at this moment looks towards the label. Her gesture and talk occasion Jo to shift her visual orientation, raise her upper body and turn to the painting, with Paula reading the label until the completion of this first part of her utterance. After a pause of .3 of a second, Paula turns her head left and looks at the painting before continuing to identify the figure within it. Paula’s identification of the figure is based on her reading of the label, she progressively reformulates and vocally interprets the label text, ‘had entered Rembrandt’s household as a nurse’ (Fig. 9) by saying, ‘and lived with (.) Rembrandt’ (Fig. 10, line 3).

Fig. 9
figure 9

Label

Full size image
Fig. 10
figure 10

Extract 5: Jo and Paula: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Full size image

Jo in turn prepares to suggest a more precise identification of the figure by drawing on her memory of having watched a film. She remarks, ‘oh is it is’ (Fig. 10c, line 4), occasioning Paula to visually turn and gesture towards the label, her remark ‘here this hee:’ (Fig. 10, line 6) suggesting that additional information to determine the identity of the figure is accessible. Jo briefly, and from a distance, looks to the label but then returns to face Paula, elaborating upon her memory of a film character as potentially that depicted by Rembrandt, ‘it ehm that wasn’t that film ehm eh (I) was thinking girl with the pearl earring wasn’t’ it?’ (Fig. 11d). Paula immediately rejects her friend’s proposal by saying, ‘no that’s Vermeer’ (Fig. 11, line 9), an answer that Jo aligns with by virtue of an utterance directly latching onto her friend’s, ‘=that’s Vermeer’. Both visitors then orient to the label, looking toward it and bowing their upper bodies forward. Once again, Paula gestures towards the label with her left forefinger (Fig. 11e), and begins to specify from memory who she thinks the figure depicted by Rembrandt is. Her comment at line 11 ‘yah (.) but this girl (.) is that the woman he gets really’ (Fig. 11e) occasions Jo to turn towards the label and interpret line 3 of its content, as reformulated by Paula a few moments before, ‘went to his house as a nurse’ (Fig. 11, line 12).

Fig. 11
figure 11

Extract 5: Jo and Paula: Girl with a Pearl Earring

Full size image

This extract suggests that when communicated in interaction with others, memories can be questioned and debated. Here, the recalled memory is immediately contested by a co-participant who ascribes the figure Jo calls, “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, to another Dutch artist—Vermeer. Note that Paula does not simply question her friends’ remembering, but rejects its legitimacy, which Jo unproblematically aligns to. The rejection of Jo’s memory is possible because it has an external referent within the label, whilst her friend only has uncertain knowledge of it, as displayed through the hesitation in the production of her proposal (Fig. 10, line 5; Fig. 11, line 9). Thus, rather than the vocalised memory momentarily establishing a reflexive connection with the exhibited artwork, it exposes an asymmetry in understanding, redirecting the visitors’ attention towards the label to resolve its contested status. It reveals how references to the past can influence visitors’ present encounters at the exhibit-face in distinct ways.

7 Discussion

In museum studies and museology, discussions about “memory” often refer to the collection and conservation of objects that are ascribed mnemonic qualities. Sociological research challenges the scientific approach underlying museologists’ assumptions regarding the qualities of museum objects. It investigates “the politics of display” (Macdonald 1999) and explores the relationship between “official and vernacular cultural narratives” (Rowe, Wertsch and Kosyaeva 2002). We contribute to this latter research by revealing how people’s encounters with objects within institutional environments can evoke rememberings. Within the museum, we find that material objects, such as exhibits and text within labels, can be mnemonic-activating, prompting visitors to vocalise their subjective rememberings of past experiences and events. As such, the museum is exposed as one context in which a locally situated form of remembering emerges, which is contingent upon the objects within the local ecology of the exhibit-face. This form of remembering does not reconfigure the topical agenda of visitors’ ongoing interaction but allows them to reflexively configure points of connection with material objects. Thus, it unveils how memories of past experiences and events can supply a means through which to engage with unfamiliar objects encountered in the present.

Furthermore, this article contributes to conversation analytic research undertaken by discursive psychologists who have primarily studied rememberings in talk and conversations (Billig 1997; Edwards and Middleton 1987; Middleton and Edwards 1990). Our research has shown that during the interactional production of memory, the body is a critical resource through which elements of these vocalised rememberings are rendered observable phenomena. This practice, which we have termed as ‘embodied enactments’, is applicable to other institutional settings, but emerges routinely within the museum, where people are confronted with visual objects that momentarily disrupt their present course of action. By overlaying aspects of these exhibits with gestures, the body serves as a mutually accessible object, through which visitors can establish continuities between the material objects they encounter, and the memories they provoke.

These observations highlight the theoretical contributions that our article makes to discussions within the sociology of memory, and to debates regarding social memory more specifically. In the beginning of the article, we pointed to the concept of “collective memory” developed about a century ago by Durkheim (2013[1893]) and Halbwachs (2020[1941]). These classic concepts have given rise to a sociology of memory in which scholars have developed, for example, a distinction between “cultural memory” and “communicative memory” (J. Assmann 2011, 2012). Our analysis develops the concept of “communicative memory” (Welzer 2008) further, by showing how the communication of memories of past experiences and events can be evoked by encounters with material objects. These occasioned memories are not part of the institutional agenda of the museum, but arise through visitors’ interactions with others. Thus, we have observed the emergence of memory-interaction at the exhibit-face, a form of interaction involving the systematic deployment of vocal and bodily actions that contingently embeds visual and material aspects of the environment through its production.

Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that the meaning of museum objects is not inherent to their material structure and conferred to people during their aesthetic encounters with them. Instead, it reveals how people interpret and make sense of museum objects through their interaction with others (cf. Blumer 1969). Thus, studying interaction in museums begins to reveal how people deploy their personal memories when engaging with museum objects and their related resources. A detailed examination of visitors’ naturally-occurring interactions in museums provides us with opportunities to explore the social organisation of memory-interaction, and to consider how the visual and material aspects of exhibits and labels are embedded within them. Museologists like Waidacher (1996) argue that the display and interpretation of exhibits requires systematic knowledge about how people respond to and learn within museums. Our analysis suggests that adopting an ethnomethodological lens to analyse these interactions can produce such knowledge, elucidating in detail how people interweave material and visual aspects of exhibits and their associated texts through their interaction with others. As such, our article makes a methodological contribution to research in the sociology of memory and memory studies, and to museologists’ interest in the relationship between the memories inherent to museum objects and memory-interaction.