ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the efforts by the members of L'Internationale to engage members of the public as constituents. At the 2016 "The Constituent Museum" conference, the organizers defined the identity of constituents as if it were fluid, mutable, protean. The chapter outlines three phases in the development of the constituent museum. The phases are seen as operating on different temporalities and according to specific historical contexts. The idea of working with constituents has been a method of relocalizing art institutions, but it is also framed in a wider effort to counter the dominant Euro-American narratives. The chapter seeks to differentiate the idea of constituents by first decoupling it from its conventional setting in representative political discourses, and then locating it on the other side of cultural and social production. It outlines how the concept of constituents has opened up new kinds of social relations that have the potential to redefine the function of the museum.
