Guerrilla docents?


The people at Art Mobs have a project to Remix MoMA. If and when we visit MoMa, instead of renting the earphones that permit us to hear explanations of the various works on the walls, they invite us to log into a podcast that they (or anyone else who sends them an audio guide to works in the museum [as a podcast, of course]) have prepared. On the face of it, this would seem to be a desirable experiment in the democratization of art. Who, after all, is to say that a particular interpretation, because we receive it via the earphones that we've rented inside MoMA, is the correct interpretation?

Were we to find graffiti on the wall of a museum telling us to call a certain number for an "underground" discussion of a particular painting, we'd probably view this as some sort of anti-establishment protest. But by making this a very public project, the new docents seem to be shooting themselves in their anti-establishment foot. Today their artistic podcasts are free. Perhaps tomorrow we'll be invited to rent them. And what are we left with? A web site about art objects. There are already hundreds, if not more, of these, and all we really have here is yet another.

And after additional consideration this seems less an underground reaction to the concept of artistic expertise, and more just another ho-hum, not particularly original, idea camouflaged in up-to-the-minute technological garb. Well before the podcast, if we wanted to give an interpretation to a particular work of art, or an exhibit, we could quite readily type out our thoughts and post them to a web page. If and when someone visited MoMA he or she could print out the page, take it with them, and read it while gazing at the art. And of course it wouldn't be very difficult to link to images of the art on the web, and in that way we could "visit" MoMA, and pick and choose among the numerous interpretations of the art available to us, while sitting at home.

But an additional, and perhaps more problematic, issue arises here. If we choose to visit MoMA, do we do so only in order to view the art exhibited there? Part of the MoMA experience is (or should be) also the expertise that comes with MoMA - the selection of the artwork, the way it's displayed, and of course the interpretation. It would be bad PR for MoMA to block the usage of podcasts with different interpretations of the works on display. My guess is that in the dubious event that this actually becomes a popular activity, MoMA should, and would, encourage it. But if I want to visit MoMA, taking their tour seems to be the most logical choice.



Go to: Taking to the streets