Thursday, October 05, 2006

Art Mob: curate your own show

Hi Ursula,

I came across the art mob project of a student group of the Marymount Manhattan College. They are creating, unofficially, audio guides for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
"MoMA of course already offers audio guides (for a nominal fee), but we want to make our own, and to invite others to do so as well (...) we are democratizing the experience of touring an art museum; we are offering a way for anyone to "curate" their own little corner of MoMA. I'll give you a taste: One of our audio guides captures the smart, irreverent banter between a student and an art history professor as they view works by Chagall and Picasso. Others offer music composed and performed by student musicians inspired by several art works." (David Gilbert, member of the Art Mob group)
For more details check here: http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs/
I think they are doing an interesting job. I like the idea of "remixing" shows with different opinions, soundtracks or even critical questions. This opens a new perspective on the role of art history and the general theoretical approach towards artworks. What's your idea on that?

Oh, and I still owe you a small report on our Upgrade! initial salon from Sept. 15th. Yes, I think the idea will work. We have planned some field trips in the upcoming months, where we will visit major media art institutions and small galleries alike. We will document the trips of the Berlin question caravan on a videoblog, so you'll be able to watch what's going on ;-)
We will start with a field trip to the c-base festival "the medium is the message" next week, where we will meet the organisers and interview them. http://c-base.org/

That's it for now from Berlin,
see you soon, Ela