Art can change your life, but what if you cannot acces it?
This was the starting point of the project, we were going to research if individuals felt this way too. We conducted participatory research with our demographic, Gen-z'ers in the Netherlands. The conclusion from this research was that Gen-z'ers felt intimidated by the stigma of most museums.
Thats one side of the story, we also researched the artists' side. Here the matter seems as, if not more of a pressing problem. Artists that are woman, from the global south, queer and or any other marginalised group experience discrimination when it comes to exhibiting their art.
These are two major problems we addressed. By identifying two demographics for our manifesto, we made one manifesto for Gen-z, in the form of an easy to digest and easy to spread digital manifesto in the form of a video.
Then we made a written manifesto, that was addressed to artists and institutions.
We made both these manifestos to empower individuals and propose a new perspective. We did this by proposing 'Museuming' as a verb, museuming as an action that one can do anywhere, always or sometimes, by themselves or with others and feel in charge. In contrast to a space where one needs to go and be accepted by others, or a space that is sterile, a space that will refuse someone because they do not meet the 'requirements'. Not that kind of space.
Art can change your life, but what if you cannot acces it?
This was the starting point of the project, we were going to research if individuals felt this way too. We conducted participatory research with our demographic, Gen-z'ers in the Netherlands. The conclusion from this research was that Gen-z'ers felt intimidated by the stigma of most museums.
Thats one side of the story, we also researched the artists' side. Here the matter seems as, if not more of a pressing problem. Artists that are woman, from the global south, queer and or any other marginalised group experience discrimination when it comes to exhibiting their art.
These are two major problems we addressed. By identifying two demographics for our manifesto, we made one manifesto for Gen-z, in the form of an easy to digest and easy to spread digital manifesto in the form of a video.
Then we made a written manifesto, that was addressed to artists and institutions.
We made both these manifestos to empower individuals and propose a new perspective. We did this by proposing 'Museuming' as a verb, museuming as an action that one can do anywhere, always or sometimes, by themselves or with others and feel in charge. In contrast to a space where one needs to go and be accepted by others, or a space that is sterile, a space that will refuse someone because they do not meet the 'requirements'. Not that kind of space.
The video follows an object that embodies our message, a mirror with the text 'Make your own museum' on it as well as a qr-code that takes you to a pdf where we illustrated exercises that one can do to do the act of museuming and document these.
A mirror because this shows the reflection of ones self and everything around them, to facilitate the search for something beautiful and because in an age of social media this is an object that attracts Gen-Z'ers to take selfies in front of.
In the video the viewer first follows individuals whom are museuming, through the lens of the mirror.
In the second part, you follow how this mirror is being transported as if it is a very important art piece
and make fun of the over seriousness of the art world
then the mirror gets hung up with kit, so it could stay there. There is a concluding scene of the mirror the next day.
For the assesment we presented the works in a white space that simmulated the ‘white cube’ enviroment of many museums. We did this in a sitirelacly way. Noud and me put on our most pretentious museum cloths and acted offended at every asked question about the work, we were part of the work. In this white cube we presented four works; the mirror, the printed magazine with the exercises in it, a monitor with the video manifesto playing and a printed version of our manifesto on the wall.
We took the instalation to an exhibition at ‘Huidenclub’ in Rotterdam west. This was the perfect place for us to exhibit our work because, the building where huidenclub is based in is an old factory so has an industrail feeling and the inside has a white space used for exhibiting. A white cube. Here is a video to get an impression of the instalation.