Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Talk: Contextualizing Heritage – Past, Present, Future

Museums have undergone significant changes in the last decades as many have shifted their focus from institutions representing the past to functioning as platforms for transformation and as sites for civic engagement. In her research, Yael Eylat Van Essen explores how museums can better connect past heritage to the present reality, speculate, and even impact the future.

As the current reality relies on intensive processes of datafication and technological sensing, she explores the possibilities of contextualizing heritage by designing heritage sites as smart and dynamic platforms. These platforms operate in real-time while being integrated within a broader interconnected technological ecosystem. Using this approach as a curatorial strategy aims to identify concealed patterns within real and virtual spaces. Based on the ability of new technologies to connect data from different ontological fields, this methodology enables exploring culture by connecting human and non-human agents in new ways and thus offering new perspectives.