Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Sunday, 21 June 2015
"Radial" to "Gyroscopic" Museum Model?
Museums have evolved employing new methods to what Wayne LaBar identifies as “four pillars”[1] of engagement which continue to dominate the sector. Objects, their display, relative interpretive information and visitor hosts/guides, he suggests, “are being used in the same way as the original forms”[2] in what he terms a “Radial Museum”[3] or museums that may utilise contemporary technology but continue to control the unidirectional creation, presentation and ownership of information which is generated in and often limited to a particular physical location – the museum. The “Gyroscopic Model”[4], according to LaBar, uses two technological innovations – the internet and mobile telephones to facilitate “communication and personal creation”[5] providing opportunities for museum visitors to easily and quickly respond and contribute to what becomes an exchange of information and content with the museum, and even more importantly LaBar contends, with each other. Mobile devices allow this exchange to happen at any time and in any place providing innumerable new ways for a museum’s mission “to impact people while on their way to work, in school, at the park or in countless other places.”[6] The ability to engage at any time, in any place, with potentially anyone connected is what characterises LaBar’s “Gyroscopic Model”. Opposed to technology’s influence on the “four pillars” of traditional museum practice applied to the methods associated with the display and interpretation of objects, the “Gyroscopic Museum”[7] provides a framework in which the mobility of internet capable devices can impact relationships between people and museums before, during or/and after a museum visit or regardless of whether they ever visit the museum’s physical location.
[1] LaBar,
Wayne. “The Gyroscopic Museum: Liberty Science Center” In Creativity and Technology: Social Media, Mobiles and Museums.
Edited by James E Katz, Wayne LaBar and Ellen Lynch. Museums Etc Ltd,
Edinburgh, 2011:P383.
Thursday, 11 June 2015
Monday, 1 June 2015
The Value of Not Knowing (presented at Museums Aotearoa Conference 2015)
Why are the aspirations of institutions (such
as public museums) and artists often disparate?
The process of making art is fraught with
doubt and uncertainty which is at the very heart of what drives practice-based
research. Intentionally steering oneself from “knowing” to “Not knowing”, Anne
Hamilton states “is a permissive and rigorous willingness to trust, leaving
knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result, regarding as
possible all manner of response”[1]
The practice of not knowing, waiting and finding can be perceived Hamilton
purports with suspicion as an “in-between” experience that is not easily
measured or categorised as useful or productive. The truth however, conveyed
she says, in Plato’s Dialogues is possessed neither on one side or another but
is present “in-between”. It is “in-between”, in dialogue or reciprocal exchange
that Hamilton sees part of the answer to the question what is art for. Change
according to Hamilton is achieved through the culmination of an infinite number
of small acts, it is the role of artists, therefore, she says to be at the
threshold, to unsettle, to experiment, to give material form presence in a
social context. Honouring a life of making she says “isn’t a series of shows,
or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice”[2]
The decision to suspend knowing is freedom to explore, to test, to analyse and
to discover. Actively performing questioning through practice embraces failure
as a vehicle to progress the potential for innovation through working in
uncharted territory. Putting things together that you never imagined could go
together – testing ideas that compel a particular way of working with materials,
processes, communities, spaces and places is the basis of works of art that can
truly challenge, interrogate, expose or delight.
“Doing things differently” said writer, art
critic, museum director and curator, Marcia Tucker, “involves a high degree of
discomfort, which is why most of us prefer not to.”[3]
Tucker agrees that change is a surety but argues that it is a natural reaction
to behave defensively and to even actively resist change which can, she says,
consume considerable energy. Becoming an
expert she explains could be regarded as a way to resist change as one is prone
to develop as a result of ones successes rather than from ones failures. An
expert, she asserts “is someone involved with what they already know”[4]
whereas art practitioners, she says have taught her that concentrating on
process without a defined outcome and “confusion, disorder, mistakes and
failures – all the things that we encounter when we try something new – are
essential to the creative process”[5]
Embracing the notion of the amateur, having multiple personalities Tucker seems
to suggest recognises that we are constantly adapting to our circumstances,
that despite the shock that can be the impetus for change, overcoming fear of
the unknown is preferable to the repetitive assertion of what we already know.
Barbara Bolt
references Heidegger and the notion of “handlability” to describe and reinforce
an orientation towards a “way of being” and working in the world that generates
the potential for seizing possibilities. It is only through the process of
contemplation that follows according to Heideggar that we can begin to
theoretically “know” the world. Don Ihde further supports Bolt’s contention
that an artwork is not “the representation of an already formed idea”[6]
but evidence of an emerging process involving “…materials, methods, tools and
ideas of practice”.[7]
Letting go is positioned as central to Heidegger’s notion of “handlability” for example Francis Bacon’s desire to
intentionally break-away from premeditation by random acts such as “throwing
paint” illustrates Bolt’s assertion of the centrality of the “emerging”,
accidental or unplanned in art practice. In opposition to a premeditated
hypothesis, ‘letting go’, is employed to avoid the kind of planning that leads
to an expected outcome. Such acts are employed to push one out of the comfort
of routine into unfamiliar territory and it is in this ‘new territory’ that the
potential of ‘new knowledge’ emerges. Bolt takes this a step further in referring
to Deleuze’s claim that it is in a “state of catastrophe” that we have the
potential to discover another world in which it is possible to abandon sight or
the intellectual responses that fail to “attend to the rhythms that constitute
the creative process”. It is in the resultant “shocks” or “catastrophes”
according to Bolt that a rhythm emerges that constitutes ‘the new’.
Carter asserts that the value of invention in
creative research “…is located neither after nor before the process of making
but in the performance itself”.[8]
This may be due he says to the catalytic nature of the social relations or
“back-and-forth discourse” that stimulates the testing of ideas and materials
both of which remain in a “state of becoming”. A key concern for Carter is to
reverse what he describes as the “drift” separating knowledge generation from
the “processes that produce it”. This reintegration he suggests requires a
reconsideration of what matters. In the discourses often associated with
institutional activity, inventiveness he says is intentionally removed from
language as if “…truth were the elimination of interest”. A commitment to not
knowing but embracing the discovery inherent in the act or performance of
making should not be viewed as an activity which is disorganised or devoid of
discipline. Artists are questioners of the status quo, every stage of a
practitioners research often frustratingly involves critical reflection &
reflexivity or continually asking why – developing strategies to question
assumptions or habitual actions and working to try and understand the factors which
shape them. Imagine what could be possible for example if the potentiality of
the public museum model could be explored from a perspective of not knowing. We
are all amateurs in imagining where and what our museums might be and do in the
next fifty years particularly considering many museums did not exist or were in
the early stages of development fifty years ago. What if all the options were
on the table? Are decisions on your local museum’s future made via a process
that involves inclusive conversation - exploring all the possible forms and
practices that your museum could take and establish to best serve you and your
community now and in the future? If not, why not? Are all museum staff valued
equally and provided with the tools they need to progress professionally and
personally – is professional development and research time available to staff
members , can all team members contribute ideas and participate in
conversations? Is there any space and time made for risk taking and innovation
e.g. how is change managed in your organisation, who participates in decision
making about the future of your museum? How are hierarchies performed in your
organisation and what purpose do they serve – are they useful?
Most importantly what makes your museum a
public institution – how well does your museum serve its unique community, how
do you know?
[1] Hamilton, Anne. “Making Not Knowing” In In Learning Mind: Experience into Art. Edited by Mary Jane Jacob &
Jacqueline Baas. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of
California Press, Berkeley, LA & London,2009: P68.
[3] Tucker, Marcia. “Multiple Personalities” In Learning Mind: Experience into Art. Edited by Mary Jane Jacob &
Jacqueline Baas. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of
California Press, Berkeley, LA & London,2009: P35.
[6]
Ihde, Don. As cited by Bolt, Barabara. “The Exegesis and the Shock of the New”
TEXT Special Issue, No 3 April,2004. Julie Fletcher & Allan Mann (Eds).
http://www.griffith.edu/school/art/text/
[7]
Ibid.
[8] Carter,
Paul. “Interest: The Ethics of Invention” In Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. Estelle
Barrett and Barbara Bolt (Eds). I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London & New
York, 2007.
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