Not to be outdone by other summer blockbusters, the title of Manifesta 9, “The Deep of the Modern,” just begs to be spoken aloud in that commanding baritone voiceover used for movie trailers. And if the show were looking for a tagline or subtitle, “Down the Rabbit Hole” would add just enough zing to this adventuresome biennial, filled with many musicological twists and turns and more than an occasional conceptual slip-up.

The setting is the Waterschei, a landmark Art Deco centerpiece of a now defunct coal-mining complex on the outskirts of Genk, Belgium. For the show, the building is outfitted with three factory-size exhibition floors, each more or less with its own focus: coal-mining heritage; the history of art during the industrial “age of coal,” from roughly 1800 until World War II; and art and its relation to contemporary issues around late capitalism. A few of the works, however, slip between these sections and act as foreshadowing or reflection devices.

By way of introduction, Manifesta 9 begins with something unexpected, as predominantly “outsider art” and various ethnographic displays try to trace a social and cultural legacy found around coal mines. Coal and its interplay with artistic production specifically, but also its association to the exhibition locale and labor in a very broad sense, is the main plot device in this three-act play. Accordingly, a collection of Muslim prayer rugs that are well worn from use by Turkish migrant miners, and an archive showcasing dozens of linens embroidered by Belgian miners featuring domestic and occasionally Christian iconography, take pride of place in the austere and dramatically lit first gallery. The entourage to this politically correct reminder that mines host a diverse slew of backgrounds is a quaint blend of engineers’ scale models and architectural drawings of pits and shafts, a Lego model of the same infrastructure, and a wonderful memorabilia museum for Rocco Granata, the son of a Belgian coal miner and a miner himself, who became a one-hit wonder in 1959 with his song “Marina.” With this mise-en-scène, it would seem that the curators, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Dawn Ades, and Katerina Gregos, are not only trying to dig a deep context for mining but also attempting to draw an all-inclusive one.

To put a face on this ensemble, coal miner and artist Manuel Durán’s deft busts of other excavators can be found herein. These intricate portraits gloriously blend medium and idea as many are made of potato pulp, which, as it dries, leaves an amazing terrain of fissures that double as rough-hewn wrinkles, scars, and other marks of character on each head. A little farther on, traditional documentary fare is presented with archival black-and-white films and ephemera that evince a 1966 Belgian miners’ strike and the day-to-day activities of such workers. Strangely, though, behind all of these screenings is a very real curtain—a scrim, actually—that stretches across the entire floor as a sectional divide. But what could be behind such a device? Curiously enough, it is another exhibition; in fact, it’s an entire museum, the Mijndepot.

Established by the mine’s former workers in 2004, this space is home to a gigantic and fabulous collection of digging and diggers’ objects: multinational bric-a-brac, decorated helmets, various uniforms, blasting caps, power augers, small but stocky armored trains that hauled workers and material through the mine, doodles, and, well, just about everything, and then some. Joining these items, which are meticulously displayed in curated and themed sections, are simulated mine shafts, dormitories, and even an enormous working model of the former complex that uses coal as a ground and comes complete with a conveyor belt. It’s safe to assume that some of the engineers joyously tinkered about and built these installations with love. To top it off, the front of the museum is a bar/social club that the former miners run and frequent, where you can buy a strong local beer with a lump of local coal as a toy surprise. As an unexpected treat, this museum ranks up there with finding a forgotten twenty in an old coat pocket, but at the same time it poses a conundrum: Why did the curators of Manifesta 9 try to double the efforts of this very alive and unique institution? Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone? Were the actual miners not political enough for the Manifesta gang, or were they somehow misrepresentative of a larger community? Whatever the case may be, the curators’ effort, with its rather typical and staid exhibition design, just comes off as trying too hard.