If there were no place, there could be no thing (will weed), 2020

Some brief “Museum 3.0” exhibition ideas

These ideas start with the primary exhibition space of the host museum/gallery being reconsidered as a completely mutable (and empty?) space.

  1. The visitors enter an essentially empty space. Arranged at the entryway, are various objects from the collection, along with various podiums, plinths, lights, and a drum with mixed up index cards inside. The visitors are invited to choose and arrange the artifacts in the space as they like. Attendants are there to support the visitors decisions. A randomly drawn index card, with already printed poetic descriptors of origin and purpose can be drawn, or written on provided blank cards.
  2. Don’t touch the museum walls! Instead, mark and affect a pre-assembled new skin. These new exhibition surfaces stand in defiance of the institution. The visitors are welcome to mark up the walls and floor of this new skin – get dirty with your hands and feet. Means to make graffiti, stencils, splashes, pen, scratches, holes etc. are provided. Mark the walls, mark the floor.
  3. A reverse artifact library. The visitor enters into a space where various artifacts have been brought out and arranged in shelves, behind desks with attendants. The visitor can register their personal details with the attendant, select and sign out an artifact. They are encouraged to take it home, “show it around” and document the artifacts holiday from the institution.
  4. Create a directional exhibition, looking through a perspectival proscenium. Looking one way, the exhibit aligns into something pleasing and stable. After walking through and turning around, you see the underlying discomforting truth and instability.
  5. Create an exhibition that is designed as a labyrinth or puzzle. By successfully navigating through one level/area, the next level/area is revealed.
  6. Have an exhibition that is a combination of old stuff from the collection and contemporary possibly found things, brought by visitors
  7. “Once of interest” – is an exhibition of all the unclaimed, un-patriated contents piled into the centre of the main space… It becomes all about, in-the-moment mise en scene & mise en place.
  8. Decolonizing the photos – plain and simple, photos are lies. this exhibition aims to un-lie them. Take classic colonialist archival photos and remove the colonialists and evidence of their existence. Exhibit the cleaned photos side by side with their original, but without any English explicatory text. Instead, only text and audio that is presented is from the local indigenous peoples.
  9. Decolonizing the architecture. Empty the rooms and dismantle the walls. Replace them with screens, glass, or nothing, leaving rooms open to the outside. Invite local indigenous peoples to enter and orchestrate events as they like.
  10. Have an audio only exhibition a la dada exhibition at the Pompidou – but using local dialect.
  11. Create a new delicate filigree shell in an otherwise empty central space. This becomes the place to invoke the muses.
  12. invite guest curators to comb through the permanent collection. allow them to do mise en place, as well as the events around.
  13. Visitors are invited to select individual artifacts and have a moment with them in the space. A place of individual reflection.