details

Hi all,

Here is some text from an email I sent to Joe regarding some of the more pragmatic details of running a museum. If you have any comments or suggestions please post them.

"This is a museum, and as such it will house a collection of various exhibits. What I can offer is:

1. a scheme for organizing this art (although this would require some input, as I am not an artist)
2. a system for maintaining the collection (like a database of all of the exhibits, and this system would include methods for adding new exhibits and applying the organization scheme)
3. a virtual representation of the museum (so a website. But not just a website, but a website that is built to manage collections of data, or in our case, art).

Now let me make my case for these services. The museum needs supporters that are not just contributors. I think a solid virtual representation of the museum would be a great thing to show prospective supporters (i.e. people with money), and the kind of representation I have in mind is more than just a web page with pictures of paintings. But more on that in a few paragraphs.

Also, as we discussed, I think a organization method would be extremely necessary if this is to be used as any kind of tool in the academic study of art. Artists may not appreciate having their works categorized, but people who actually use museums do, and if you have any more than a small amount of works collected, the benefits will be obvious (improved searching, citing, and comparing being the most obvious). This scheme really has nothing to do with the creation of art, and more with the administration of a museum.

I've been working on a demo of a website/organization system. In a large museum these would be two separate yet interconnected systems, but for starting out I think a tool that does both would better suit the needs of the museum. I'm working on something now that performs these two functions, but right now it's just local on my computer so I don't have a web-address to point you to. On one hand, it acts as just a tool to keep track of what we have in the museum. It creates a record for each exhibit, which includes data about the art itself, pictures, and any information relating to its physical presence in the museum. It also will contain a simple interface for adding new records to the collection.

It will also serve as a website for the museum (or rather a virtual representation of the museum). It can provide users a number of searching and browsing methods for using the collection, while maintaining all of the data associated with each record. Plus with the help of some artsy folks, it could look however you wanted it to, and it leaves open the possibility of new features to be implemented (I'm just thinking out loud here, but stuff like "automatically link this piece to your facebook account" or "export the data for this piece so it can be cited in a scholarly paper" or "comment on this art"). And anything else you would want on this website could certainly be incorporated. I'll let you know when I have something better to show you."

DISNEYLAND

Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the hyper-real extends to the notion of places like theme parks and casinos existing solely for the purpose of intentionally conveying the sense that the surrounding context is legitimately “more real.” In other words, if places like Disneyland exist as fictional environments, then the broader context in which it’s constructed must be legitimate enough for there to exist such a thing as a distinction between fiction and reality. The surrounding ‘legitimacy,’ then, must surely be in the category of reality.

An interesting study might examine the points of conflict between reality and such ‘hyper-real’ scenarios as theme parks, casinos, nightclubs, and golf courses. The hyper-real is entirely obvious in places like these. But where does it exist where it’s more sinister?

INTOX - Another Issue-Theme

Intoxication is mostly just a funny concept. In specialized society it is everywhere in one form or another, or multiple forms at once, of course. Whether we’re drinking alcohol or coffee, smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine, eating mushrooms, shooting heroin or just taking a prescribed drug, we’re constantly seeking distance from our natural states. The simple act of intoxication—used here to denote all forms of legal and illegal drug use—is so ubiquitous that one has to wonder why there are such arbitrary structures of taboo and acceptance surrounding them. Why, for example, are there wine connoisseurs but not cocaine connoisseurs? Obviously the prevalence of such people has to do with the legality of substances, but apart from that, what is in the heart of the aesthetic of wine that is not in the aesthetic of cocaine? It could be interesting to deconstruct the ethos surrounding our many quick-fix substances and reassign the romances (or lack of) attributed to each.

If I may go into a tangent, one installation that could be included in this issue-exhibition could be a totally self-serve liquor bar, reminiscent of the cold uncomfortable surroundings of a hospital, thus replacing the ethos of that particular intoxicant with the stark, straight-forwardness of medical intoxicants. Such an installation could be called, simply, INTOX.

The First Social Museum Convention

Should take place in some way in Chicago on September 5th, when we'll all be there. Let's all work on making that occasion as much a convention as a party.

SCREENS - Another Potential Issue-Theme

More and more of our everyday lives are held to a web of communications whose only articulation with the physical world is a two-dimensional field—a screen. Think of how often you encounter screens in your day-to-day life and how many messages are held to this web of articulations. And with the advent of the internet we now have screens within screens—literally, not in the “frame within frames” sense (although that principle is applicable here). But what is it about the screen and the square that lends them to universal application when it comes to displaying information?

Such fields are indeed universal. That might not seem very interesting until you think about what kind of impact such prevalence has on one’s mode of thinking. When you’re constantly faced with that interface you’re bound to think on that coordinate plane, in terms of two dimensions.

Futurist Buckminster Fuller often said that the keys to identifying, understanding and solving local problems requires the application of universal knowledge. However to really insert yourself into that appreciation you need only to begin thinking not in terms of up and down (as in the temporal, flat world, what-you-perceive reality), but in terms of in and out (as in being in the acknowledgement of macro systems and micro systems and the structures that bind the two together). A need to break this mode of thinking has been illustrated in cubism and its attempts to show all sides of an object at once. And Mr. Fuller himself created a “geo scope” of the earth—a map layout that showed all landmasses of the earth without distortion.

So if we do begin to think in terms of in and out, will we be opened to any better means of promoting holistic modes of thinking? Hypothetically, what are the differences between a world experienced in two dimensions as opposed to one experienced in three dimensions?

Examples of Issue-Themes, to be used in the Prescription of Issue-Exhibitions

The following are two examples of issue-themes, which serve as prompts for the museum's contributors. Issue-themes can either be abstract (consisting of more questions than assertions), or they can be so constructed that they serve as challenges to the contributors, inviting them to support or contest the notions laid out therein. The prescription of an issue-theme is the first step toward the show of an issue-exhibition.

1.) CAREER. AND IDENTITY

This issue-exhibition will focus on the notion of career. What is it? Is it the union of repute and raw income? Is it the whole of a man’s experiences or just the sum of his achievements? When people talk about their careers they’re noting something that really has no other descriptor as a noun. Career is a vector. Your career is everything you’ve worked to achieve, which you’ve achieved through education, professional work, networking, or even by way of charity and social capital. And let’s not leave out that career can be the product chicanery, deception, or simply luck or family legacy. Career seems to be not what you are but what you’ve accomplished. But what you’ve accomplished is the whole of what you’ve done combined with the particularity of how you did those things and your predisposition to do them, therefore your very legitimacy as a person, the whole of your identity. But when you risk your career you don’t risk your identity. What exactly does it mean to risk your career? And why can’t you risk your identity?

Career is everything on your resume, but it’s also a stock of experiences that add up to a communicable repute, like a fluid credential. So it’s not only what you are but how you came to be what you are, but that’s where it gets complicated. Imagine you came to be a U.S. Senator by rigging an election, then a few years later you’re found out, removed from office, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. Through all of this you maintain your identity. Though in that short amount of time being arraigned and convicted as a fraud causes your identity to constantly evolve—from a senator to an exposed senator, to an exposed former senator, to a tried exposed former senator, and finally to a tried and convicted exposed former senator—your identity does not ever cease. However, your career (very abruptly) does. This is because you can’t further advance yourself, not even by fraudulent means. At the time you rigged the election you perpetuated your career both by seizing the opportunity to cheat an election and by being stealthy enough to somehow get away with it. Though your identity was always (in objective terms) an election-rigging stealthy politician, it was not until you were exposed that you lost your career of being simply a politician, with none of those descriptors attached. So at any point your career is simply the result of your own self-positioning and ability to do so while taking into account the laws and weaknesses of a system. In this case the system is an easily corrupted electoral process. But had you gotten away with the whole scam, say by serving one term as a senator and then winning the Presidency by honest means, your path to becoming President would’ve been built by one rigged election, one honest election and no doubt your legitimate experience as a senator in office. Then after you’ve served two terms as president, you’re commissioned to write a memoir. What you bring to that book deal is your career as a politician, largely enabled by that first fraudulent vote.

Less cynically, one can also get ahead by simpler, more legal means like making it a point to network among professional circles. The point is that a career is not simply the whole of your abilities but the wider whole of your abilities in relation to a set of standards in which you have to live and work. Your career is what positions you to get ahead or simply to move laterally but favorably. Career exists in a different dimension than identity; it can be started, stopped, restarted , impeded, or interrupted. This is why a prisoner can have an identity but no career. He’s bound; he has no choice but to live in a static routine with no opportunity to do advance his prospects, except to behave in such a prescribed manner as to be paroled.

Through the course of a human life, career is a vector of self promotion. The notion of career legitimizes the assets (but not the discrepancies) of identity.

2.) THE INNOVATOR AND THE CRIMINAL

There is a section in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in which the main character, Roskolnikov describes a criminal as one who breaks the law, where the law is simply a set of standards—more often than not standards that impede progress. In this context, Roskolnikov’s notions of “standards” and “progress” are not tied to morality, so “standards” is simply a mold to be broken in favor of a new form. And “progress” is the act of such redefinition. Innovators are criminals in this paradigm, because they challenge the premise of “why this can’t be done.” In business, innovation usually means a more efficient way of meeting the bottom line; it’s often hailed as progressive and rewarded accordingly. But of course, literal criminals don’t even need to answer the question of why this can’t be done. The reason “it can’t be done” is simply because “it” is against the law.

Here is the prompt: if the law stands in the way of doing something or doing something in a certain way, it is a cheaper impediment than everything standing in the way of an innovation. In both cases, though, either the innovator or the criminal will not accept the standard. The difference is one is invited to challenge the standard and the other is not. Or, one is rewarded for going against the standard and the other is punished.

Introductory Primer

Note: the following is a working primer of The Social Museum. This document is subject to indefinite addition and/or alteration by the public, though the museum’s administrators have the right to filter ideas as they see fit.

The Social Museum, in its most simple definition, is an as-of-yet unrealized museum of social behaviors as exhibited by art and artifact.

This concept came out of a discussion between Joe Gullo and Joel Kuennen addressing the need for a contemporary art museum that could get beyond the paradoxical limitations of postmodernism. Since the concept of art itself is related to the expressive disciplines, it seemed to Joe and Joel that a new and exciting way to collect and exhibit works of art could involve the control of whatever is being expressed in such works, so that the museum could commission works for the sake of fitting into the context of a prescribed theme. This would allow the museum to bring forth pieces of art and artifact and synthesize them into especially nuanced exhibits. A system like this also lends itself to an organizational structure somewhat akin to a magazine or journal, where a relatively small group of senior-level employees draws content from a vast and possibly far-flung network of contributors.

Of course the element of control would stop at edict of the exhibition themes. The museum should do nothing to direct the individual creation of whatever works it commissions; it should only give the prompt, thereby turning what would otherwise be just an exhibition space into a kind of forum for the ideas it wants to reveal. Ultimately, the Social Museum will act as a catalyst and a forum for expression.

A mission such as this naturally lends itself to anthropological and/or sociological subject matter, so institutionally, the Social Museum should focus on pieces that explore trends in social living and the idiosyncrasies of the social being. The variety of media that contributors could use to achieve this end is virtually limitless.

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The central unique feature of The Social Museum is the prescription of exhibition themes by the contributors featured therein. In this way the museum’s operation will be somewhat like an arts collective, except the contributors will not be permanent authoritative members (though of course any merited contributor can be involved as much as he/she wants). Ultimate authority for the museum’s operation will be vested in a board of directors, who should be required to incorporate into its decision making process the influence of everyone else involved. The collaboration between the contributors and the directors, though, will only extend to the prescription of exhibition themes, and nothing to do with the administration or the external operations (promotions, public relations) of the museum.

Working together (in a process detailed further along in this document), the directors and contributors will flush out the content plan for every exhibition on its agenda.

Ultimately, The Social Museum has a mission befitting of a journal; its content should reveal or comment on truths and Truths in society. Though instead of being published and disseminated, this content will be hosted in a physical space. The comparative description of this goal is that the content and messages within the museum will be like those featured in Adbusters, National Geographic and Vice magazine—all rolled into one.

OPERATION AND ORGANIZATION

Issue – Exhibitions

Because the museum will cover such vast subject matter, it will operate in exhibition cycles, where the theme will change several times per year. And so, initially having no permanent collection, the museum will be in a constant state of renewal, perpetually refreshing its inventory according to whatever the “theme of the season” is.

A better way of thinking about a “theme of the season” is to think about the way magazines devote entire issues to one topic. Vice magazine intentionally titles every issue as “The Iraq Issue” or “The Turning Homo Issue,” and so forth because it wants to simultaneously tie the issue (the current printed edition) to the issue (the current social-political topic). The museum will promote the theme of the season in the same way.

For illustrative purposes let’s assume the museum will roll its exhibitions four times a year, aligned for promotion’s sake with the natural seasons. So then, the winter season will be something like “WAR at the Social Museum,” and the collection it will house for that three-month period will comment on WAR. (I’m using a generic theme like war for the sake of brevity). And then in the spring it would house “PANIC at The Social Museum.” This will give the museum the opportunity to prescribe themes and then commission and collect works to fit into that subject. So “WAR at the Social Museum” will house photography, artwork, and artifacts pertaining to WAR. And in addition to the static pieces within, the museum will also host performance art and lecture series pertaining to this same subject. This will allow the season themes to be marketed through numerous varied channels, almost as if " ... at the Social Museum” were a promotional entity, and itself a sub brand of The Social Museum as an institution.

So for example, the varied contents of “WAR at the Social Museum” will allow that particular season theme to be advertised through several channels. If the museum commissioned three performance art acts pertaining to WAR, those acts could be marketed as individual events and also “as part of WAR at the Social Musuem.” The possibilities for singular events are endless, especially when considering that the museum’s season theme will change every three months. Even if the museum addresses something as broad as WAR, farther down the line it could draft a theme as particular as “Results of Social Tension in Charged Situations” or, “Archetypes” or “Imagery Evoking Bi-Polar Connotations.” These, of course, are very unromantic titles, but they contain the kernel of this notion of season themes, which is that all the works exhibited are tied together with a pre-conceived notion.

This is not to say the museum’s curatorial staff should be fascist when discriminating works for exhibition, only that it will work to judge from the same prompt as the contributors work to create, like the relationship between an editorial board and its writers. The structure of this relationship allows The Social Museum to constantly reinvent itself, in—uniquely—more frequent, more episodic steps. In a way, The Social Museum will act as a publisher, in that it will make ideas available to the public. And instead of promoting one period or genre of work, (as in “Modern,” or “Classical,” or between lenses like “realist” or “expressionist”) it will promote topics, and then exhibit ideas pertaining to that topic. The construct of ideas pertaining to topics is what makes up an issue. And an issue being conveyed by displaying a collection of works is an issue-exhibition.

Here are some examples of issue-exhibitions. The titles are meant to be understood on varying levels and degrees. Some of the following may seem very simple. However if one takes a minute to think of the notion of these, of the denotative and connotative properties of these words, they then have the potential to become issues.

CAREER
NEGLIGENCE
META EXHIBITION
ASEXUAL DESIGN
CRIME AS INNOVATION
POST/PRE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
DELTA MALES
SUPEREVERYMAN
INDUSTRIAL CUISINE
PROFIT
VICE

Think of the endless opportunities to play on these themes in any number of media! To be prompted with these or any other equally evocative issue would allow for an exciting schedule of events!

The process of bringing a seasonal issue-exhibition to show involves several steps, and they are embarrassingly like the steps involved in writing a five-paragraph essay. They are: the brainstorming of ideas for issues and the nuances therein, the researching of existing work that’s emblematic of the issue, the networking of outside contributors (not necessarily artists, but all people with relevant connections to the subject matter—e.g., journalists, historians, outside curators, people of notable repute), the formation of a central thesis for the issue-exhibition (a document subjected to circulation among the Museum’s staff and the network of outsiders it has assembled), the planning of live events to be held either at the museum or sponsored elsewhere, (readings, lectures, Q&As, acts of performance art, workshops and photo shoots), the acquisition of existing works and collections, the networking of contributing artists along with the commissioning of new works, and finally, the planning and design of static installations. Concurrently to all these steps, separate but intrinsic departments must work to promote the upcoming issue-exhibition.

And now, each of these steps must be flushed out in greater detail.