Exhibiting Conflict as a Transformative Strategy: Writing Contemporary History with the Local Community

In 2018, in the popular neighbourhood of Noailles in Marseille, buildings collapsed in the rue d’Aubagne. Tragically, eight people died. In the month that followed, around 4500 people were evacuated from buildings deemed by the municipality as too dangerous to live in. Chains and locks were installed overnight, locking the inhabitants, often from low-income communities out of their homes. These locks, which were meant to keep inhabitants safe, became the symbol of the municipality’s lack of care for infrastructure, the trauma of inhabitants and the social divide of Marseille. Civil society asked the Musée d’histoire de la ville de Marseille to integrate this history into the institution, to memorialise these events. Since then, the association “Noailles Debout” has been working with the Musée d’histoire de la ville de Marseille and with the wider public to create a polyvocal exhibition where objects such as the chain and lock are presented as a chose commune (a shared object) and are surrounded by multiple voices to capture various facets of this crisis. The museum thereby becomes a space where conflict is exhibited, where points of view clash and are put into dialogue. It becomes a space where transformative learning can take place. In this chapter, I propose to explore the working process, the collection process, and the tools used to display multiple narratives in the museum space. I will pay particular attention to the transformative impact of such a practice on the institution itself, on the participants and on audiences.