Session 5. Tin cans

Conceived as a counterpoint, the first session of this seminar postulates that to better understand the materiality of the box, we must first look at its less material dimension. How does the box form extend to thought? To what extent, for example, does it shape the dialectic of container and content that lies at the heart of every classification and tree system? That’s what we’re going to ask ourselves by looking back at the long history of logic, rhetoric and the arts of memory,...
A proposal by Samir Boumediene, teacher-researcher (IHRIM, UMR 5317, ENS de Lyon) in charge of the “Mises en boîtes: histoire, anthropologie et muséographie d’une pratique quotidienne” project at the Mucem. With Ivan Bouchardeau (doctor of philosophy), Gilles Trédan (computer researcher), William Fujiwara (mathematician and philosopher), Naïs Virenque (history researcher), Sarah Dietz, Charles Riondet and Mathilde Nabarette (collections and documentary resources department, Mucem)

  The construction of boxes meets a seemingly simple objective: to match a container to its contents. Yet behind this objective lie complex optimization problems. How do you maximize a container’s internal volume while minimizing its external footprint? What value should be placed on the unoccupied space inside the box? Should it be reduced for reasons of profitability or hygiene, as in a can? Or should it be preserved to facilitate, for example, the breathing or circulation of the living...

In order to better grasp what is at stake in the practice of packaging and the growing importance it has assumed, the third session of the seminar starts from the premise that the container is not a neutral parameter in our relationship to objects. Not only does the box mediate the first contact with an artifact, it is also at the heart of the emotional, economic and social relationships we forge through the consumption or conservation of things. Taking a historical and comparative...
With Samir Boumediene, Researcher, IHRIM-MUCEM: “Pandorama. Boîtes, consommations, attachments” Françoise Dallemagne, Collections and Research Officer, Mucem: “Boîtes à bijoux, boîtes à secrets?” Anne-Valérie Dulac, Senior Lecturer in Elizabethan Studies – Sorbonne University: “‘Biscuits for travelling: the decorated boxes of Huntley & Palmers” (to be confirmed) Anne-Céline Callens, Senior Lecturer, University of Saint-Étienne:...

After studying the role of images on boxes, the fourth session will focus on images produced in and by boxes. Once again, we’ll be taking a long-term approach, from the 15th century to the present day. Much of the history of Western painting, from Alberti to abstraction, from the camera obscura to Poussin’s maquettes, is indeed a matter of putting things in boxes, and this is even more obvious with photography and cinema. Echoing the exhibition devoted to Quixote, and comparing...