Listening to the Museum: Affective Encounters with the Tuol Sleng Audio-Tour

Bridie Shepherd

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Chapter 8 Listening to the Museum: Affective Encounters with the Tuol Sleng Audio-Tour

In: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

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Bridie Shepherd

Bridie Shepherd
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 148–162

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004536890_010

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Abstract

Since 2015, audio-tours, developed by the international company, Narrowcastors, have become the most popular way visitors engage with Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Tours are self-guided with a portable MP3 player, a set of headphones, and a paper map, with visitors entering stop numbers into the audio-player as they move through the space. These audio-tours provide contextual detail that had previously been missing from the exhibitions, with stops on the tour explaining who was sent to S-21, differentiating photographs of prison staff from their victims, and describing the daily life of Khmer Rouge-era labour camps generally. While lauded as highly informative, the audio-tour works in excess of cognitive understanding. It creates an assemblage of emotional content, materials, and embodied visitor experiences at the site. This chapter discusses the legacy of in person tour guides, the way the audio tour ‘reimagines’ this tradition, and argues that the audio tour generates an ‘affective atmosphere’. By focusing on the sensory, emotional, and affective ways people come to know the museum, this chapter argues that the Tuol Sleng audio-tour does not operate on a solely cognitive level but provides a deeply embodied engagement with objects and spaces of the past.

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Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

A Multifaceted History of Khmer Rouge Crimes

Series: Brill's Southeast Asian Library, Volume: 13

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004536890

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 09 Apr 2024

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Chapter 8 Listening to the Museum: Affective Encounters with the Tuol Sleng Audio-Tour

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Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

A Multifaceted History of Khmer Rouge Crimes

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