Co‐Curation as Hacking: Biohackers in Copenhagen's Medical Museion

In 2012, the University of Copenhagen's Medical Museion collaborated with members of the local DIY biology community to create a DIY biology lab and event series. This article discusses the project and the hacker movement more generally with reference to two current museum trends: first, the opening up of museums through external collaborations, for instance in co-curation; and second, renewed interest among science and technology museums in revealing the “behind the scenes” of research, including bringing laboratories into museums. With regard to the first trend, we suggest that hacking may be a useful framework for thinking about co-curation, and argue that co-curation needs to be understood as a process that doesn't just involve the representation of diverse narratives, but instead incorporates a range of diverse actors into the design and production of an exhibition. With regard to the second, we argue that biohacking may be a better fit to a museum's desire to exhibit research processes than traditional scientific laboratories, given biohacking's emphasis on enabling citizens to understand and carry out scientific research. We develop these suggestions by charting the course of the collaboration.