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Unfortunately, we could not do the presentations in a classroom nor through the conference space on Canvas so all students had to record themselves on video. It actually works pretty well, except for that there has not been a feedback moment in person for the students. All students will get personal feedback by Ivo, but honestly, after seeing and listening to all presentations it seems to me that everyone already has clear ideas about what they are going to write about. As there were many presentations, I briefly summarized the main points of each presentation.

            The first presentation I watched was by Lotte who is going to write about ‘A history lesson in the museum’; focusing on the educational strategies in exhibitions based on Witcomb’s models for education in the museum. Lotte’s two case-studies are the Amsterdam DNA in the Amsterdam Musem and the second one is the History of the City in the Museum Rotterdam. Both museums have similar goals; they both want to educate their visitors aware of the history of the respective cities.

Sophie’s essay will focus on In what ways do the works of the EYE art and film prize winners intersect in relation to their mediality of film. The exhibition featured the works of the first three winners Hitu Steyrl (winner 2015) about the relationship between truth and fiction, Ben Rivers (2016) who focuses on the intersection of documentary and fiction, and Wang Bang’s work (2017) which depicts a typical working day for a Chinese factory. She is interested in the ways in which these works speak to each other. She did have issues translating some articles accurately from Dutch because it was rather time consuming.

Yannick’s presentation was about whether the classic museum cease to exist or not and his research question is ‘How can a museum survive nowadays without being up-to-date with modern technologies’? This question came up when he was reading Bast’s ‘Changing Societies, Changing Museums?’. case is Musée Draï Eechelen (fortress) because of it opened quite recently but it is presented as a classic museum as there are not many technologies present in the museum.

Hidde’s topic will be ‘Considering the role of cinema in an exhibition context’. He choose for it because after visiting the Tarkovsky’s exhibition he felt overwhelmed because he never saw any movies of the director before but this made him curious. It made him curious to know how an exhibition space could be use the vision of a director. He will look at how meanings are created and narratives are designed. The two exhibitions he will compare are Tarkovsky and Scorsese at the EYE.

Agnieszka’s presentation was about the ‘Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art’ (MOTHA) and she will look at this museum through the lens of the post-museum. MOTHA is an ongoing project that started in 2013, but it does not have a permanent location, which is an important aspect of it. The founder wants to avoid becoming an institution. Another aspect is its open ended approach to history and objectivity. The museum is interested in trans history and the reimagination of queers past and narratives. Agnieszka’s topic seems very interesting and it is a very well founded case that seems very relevant in today’s museum landscape.

Lina is going to write about exhibition design and visual art, an analysis of the connection between exhibition design and experience exemplified by Francis Alÿs Children’s Games. The paper is going to be based on the connection between the images of the exhibition which are accessible by anyone on the internet and the physical exhibition. The research question is ‘how is the exhibition design connected to the museum experience’? Also she is going to delve into how visitors experience the exhibition.

Luis will research the acoustics of the exhibition space. The working title is ‘Sounds of Silence: the acoustic space of the exhibition’. The case study has a framework that stems from both museum and sound studies. The object of research is called Adrian Villár Rojas’ Poems for Earthlings that played in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam.

Pieter is going to write about the significance of the documentary film to performance art, a very distinct topic compared to the rest of the students, but it sounds like a very interesting focal point. He is going to research performance art in relation to documentation, defining the performance art document and the case study is The Artist is Present by Marina Abramovic.

Victor’s essay is going to be about ‘The Post-Museum and Crossmediality’ and more specifically about how crossmediality functions within Het HEM. The case study is going to be the current exhibition ‘Chapter Two: Incomprehensible Sun’.

Floor will write about ‘Media and the Museum’ and her research question is ‘What influence have (new) media had on the museum and its practices?’ She choose for this topic because she is interest in the crossovers between media and the museum.

Mark’s essay is going to be about social media culture and art museums, more specifically ‘Social Mediatizations of Museum Experience’, because he is interesting in the relation between museums, the community and visitors. He thinks that because of the participatory culture, there is a change in the relationship between the museum and its visitors.

Nina’s essay will be about Francis Alÿs’ exhibition ‘Children’s Games’ and her research question is ‘how does the event of the exhibition “Children’s Games” by Francis Alÿs reflect upon the documentation of the event? She will research press releases, lectures/events, brochures/books/merch, critical research and online activity.

Written by Britt

On week seven, we had our first round of class presentations. These presentations covered a variety of topics, but all were well related to the theoretical framework that was established in class.

Britt’s presentation was first, and she discussed the experience of the old Dutch master’s paintings in the post museum setting. This was interesting because it questioned how the classic museum and classic paintings can be presented in the “post museum.” Britt’s two case studies were examples of a Dutch master’s paintings being interacted with in a less traditional way. Her theoretical framework focused on participatory pedagogy and the pathways of engagement within the museum setting. Next, Alex discussed narrativity in exhibition design. She wants to focus on Francis Alÿs’, Children’s Games exhibition and the Béla Tarr, Till the End of the World exhibition, both exhibitions were at the EYE Museum. When looking at the exhibition design, Alex will focus on layout, structure, visuals, objects and how these are used in the exhibition space. The next presentation was myself. I focused on the Instagram museum and what these mean for the museum of the future. My theoretical framework focused on Michelle Henning and the switch between object led to experience led museum environments. I introduced three cases, one an Instagram museum, one experience-based exhibition within the white cube and the last was a curated art collection that is within a mall. All these examples question the museum as an institution and how the problematic elements of the traditional, 19^th century museum will change in the future.

After a break, Sjoerd discussed contemporary cinema in the exhibition space. His case study was a documentary film that also acted as an exhibition. I think that this was a very interesting concept and I was interested in knowing and perhaps seeing one of these movies myself in the future to see how an exhibition would be presented in a film. In the past, theater has been recorded and put into a film, so why not museum exhibitions? Next, Hannah presented a very interesting topic of the fashion museum and how exhibitions about fashion are attracting young audiences. This presentation brought up the question of if museums are using these fashion exhibitions as a way to gain sponsorship from fashion brands. I thought that Hanna’s question about if the cross modality of fashion can elevate it to the status of fine art was also very interesting. Next, was Tim’s presentation about museums and relevance. His theoretical framework focused on Bast’s text which discusses that museums must remain relevant for societies in the future. In his paper, he wants to focus on if audience participation could advance the relevance of the exhibition in Francis Alÿs’, Children’s Games exhibition.

Noordje’s presentation focused on sound within the exhibition space and what sound adds to the exhibition space as well as how sound is engaging to the audience and turns the exhibition visitor into a more active viewer. Next, Janilda discussed the spatial dimensions of Andrei Tarkovsky’s cinema and how that was transferred into an exhibition setting. Lastly, Gökçe discussed similar ideas to my presentation but in a more digital setting. She discusses Henning’s ideas about the museum becoming less object based and more experience based. She gave a few examples that were digitally immersive and presented the museum as a medium. 

Written by Sofia

Meeting with Professionals, Part Two

Part two of our meetings with the professionals at the EYE entailed numerous topics, from the general policy or goal of the museum to the visual and technical practicalities involved when creating the exhibitions. Jaap Guldemond and Claartje Opdam along with guidance from Ivo, were involved in the discussion, which focused on questions that we as a class created.

The discussion started with Jaap providing an overview of as an institution, what the EYE strives to envision in their exhibitions. He discussed his personal experience and connection with the visual arts and the change that the ability to rent a film locally had on the film industry. He discussed how he was brought on to the project and how he decided on the program and policy that the EYE still uses today. The goal was to bring the moving image into the museum setting in an experimental, ever evolving and artistic way. The EYE has four different exhibitions every year, focusing on a different element in each and this format was not so common for a film museum. We also discussed that when choosing exhibition subjects, Jaap decides on an artist/director and he then pursues them.

The discussion then focused more on the Tarkovsky and Alys exhibitions. We discussed the involvement of the artist, director or the holder of the works, which Jaap feels if this person is alive and willing to cooperate, it is very important to include and collaborate with them. He spoke briefly about the involvement or Tarkovsky’s son, Andrei, and his role in the exhibition. While his son gave Jaap creative liberty in creating the exhibition, Jaap still wanted the son to approve of and understand the curatorial and design choices he made. As an archivist and protector of his father’s legacy, Andrei was very cooperative and provided many archival documents to the exhibition. We also discussed this cooperation in terms of the Alÿs exhibition. Alÿs had seen his works in other museums and did not like the presentation, so that was something that he trusted the EYE to do properly. Jaap brought up that although Alÿs is a multimedia artist and that he wanted to include these other works in the exhibition as they usually are, Alÿs did not want these works included. Alÿs felt it was important to show Children’s Games alone as it had never been presented like this before.

This leads to the next topic, which is the idea of preparation objects versus the finished product. When are we allowed to see the artistic process and when is that a secret? Claartje brought up an interesting point that in a Hollywood film, we as viewers do not demand a story board on screen as it does not suit the medium, whereas in an exhibition, viewers are often asking for preparatory works. In the eyes of the artists, these preparations are for their eyes only and perhaps one day when they have passed, these preparatory drawings will be released.   

Next, I will focus on some visual elements. Something that I really treasured was when Jaap explained why he had diptych and triptych screens in the Tarkovsky exhibition. In his opinion Tarkovsky differs from a Hollywood director in narrative. He feels that Tarkovsky trusts the visual image more than the narrative and that when watching his films, the narrative that each person takes away from it is subjective. Because of this, Jaap used diptych and triptych screens to present different narratives within each film at one time, spurring the museum visitor to always take away something different.  The Alÿs exhibition also had a deliberate design choice and that was the closing of one of the exits. For the Alÿs exhibition, the curators and Alÿs wanted the feeling of wondering around and exploration. There was the question of how to force the viewer to stay longer, view works more than once and perhaps even view from more than one angle. They felt that the open format, placement of the screens and deliberate exit/entrance was the way to achieve this.

Lastly, we discussed the audience of the EYE, studies that they do and their publications. For the type of audience that the museum gears itself towards, it seems that they do not have one. Jaap mentioned that it is not to draw visitors that know everything about that particular artist or director, but rather to trigger conversation and inspiration. When discussing the visitors that go to the EYE, I found it very interesting that it is (1) not the “big names” that necessarily draw the most crowds; for example Scorsese and (2) their percentage of tourists is way less than the Van Gogh Museum; 30% versus 90%. Also, I found it shocking that a publication or museum catalogue is not something that they always can accomplish because of budget issues, as I always thought that this is something that is always included.    

Written by Sofia 

Michelle Henning noted in her article ‘New Media’ that from the 1970s onwards, the relation between the museum and its visitors changed due to a large result of political and economic changes that began around that time and that it was not merely changing because of introducing new technologies into the museum. Until then, museums executed everything regarding their exhibitions in-house, but from that moment museums began to employ external parties to mediate their message to the public.

What appealed to me is that it seemed like the EYE Film Museum carries out every aspect of marketing, communication and design by themselves (in-house), so, without the help of external parties. I posted the question – regarding the campaign image – why they’d choose for the image of the little kid in Afghanistan because it felt to me that the core of the exhibition was ‘universality’, ‘playing together’, ‘joyfulness’ etc., whereas the image felt more like the kid was alone, lonely and playing in solitude. The people of the communication department did understand why this question was posted and as a reply, they said it was difficult to choose a picture for the Francis Alÿs exhibition because the works were created over a scope of 20 years. It is generally known that people empathize more with a photo of one person instead of a group picture. Also, certain pictures work well with colour grading, so this photo looks aesthetically good in combination with the colour pink.

Furthermore, the idea of the exhibition is ‘universality’. When a visitor observes the exhibition it feels rather global and specific. The people from EYE called this the first layer. Underneath this layer, the artist tried to communicate that children are often not recognized in anthropological discussions because they are seen as dependent on adults. These were the two aspects the EYE communication team wanted to communicate in their campaign image.

In conclusion, it is interesting to see how a renowned museum like the EYE manages to do everything inhouse, whereas a whole industry has developed, specializing in museum exhibit design and production. Now I quote Henning again, “In this context, questions of access, participation and interaction, democratization, and so on are also marketing terminology, overlaid on another discourse of profitability, cost, customer satisfaction.” In the same fashion, another comment stroked me a lot, which is that if they want national newspapers to write articles about their ongoing exhibitions, they are almost required to pay for an advertisement in their newspapers. It feels like these are the aspects that touch upon the capitalist system in which museums are inevitably part of too.

Written by Britt.

Post week 3

For the blogpost of week 3, I would like to reflect on the article ‘Entering the Flow: Museum Between Archive and Gesamtkunstwerk’ by Boris Groys in relation to the Tarkovsky exhibition in the EYE Filmmuseum.

An exhibition goes on view for two or three months – Groys said of the typical institutional calendar – and then gets dismantled. The art museum has consequently responded by becoming “a stage for the flow of art events … which include not only curatorial projects, but also lectures, conferences, readings, screenings, concerts, guided tours, and so forth.”

I think it is important nowadays to let the audience experience the full spectrum of the matter that is on display in a museum by offering multiple experiences that immerses you completely. Because of the rise of the internet, basically everyone has excess to information about an artist and artworks. So art institutions should better think of additional ways of exposing works. A museum/gallery can collect and preserve works and put it all together in one space, which makes it unique and interesting, but not everyone enjoys an experience like this. Some people rather consume information by screenings, or lectures, conferences or other ways of consumption.

Also, because of the constant flow of information we are exposed to in the digital era, it is important to offer more possibilities for consuming information about an artist than just one exhibition in a museum. People crave for a stimulation of all their senses and the best way of doing this is by offering every possible medium for transposing of the information a museum wants to convey regarding the art/artist. So, besides the people who do not enjoy certain ways of consuming art-experiences (like a museum visit), some people want to enjoy every single aspect of it in order to completely understand a topic/artwork/artist by visiting all other elements that are being organized.

All concluded, it is important that museums, galleries, or other art related institutions find various ways to immerse the visitors in multiple ways.

Written by Britt

Jaap Guldemond and Marente Blomheuvel’s explanation of Francis Alÿs’ Children’s Games, echoes the information on the exhibition walls. The EYE museum was successful in painting a picture of Alÿs and his practice within the exhibition space, exhibition catalogue and on their website. Although the exhibition space was a simple, monomedia space which allowed the visitor to explore the space freely, the message about who Alÿs is as an artist and filmmaker and why he makes his films is clearly laid out by the museum. When entering the exhibit, the opening wall explains Alÿs’ artistic practice and why he started filming Children’s Games. When visitors go to the EYE museum’s web page for Children’s Games, they can read similar information about the artist’s practice, see video stills and watch the exhibition’s trailer. At the top of the webpage, visitors can also see the Children’s Games campaign image, which is a still Alÿs’ film with a lone boy who plays with a kite. What I find particularly interesting about the choice of this image, and we touched on this in class, is that this image was one of the few videos that depicted a lone player. Most of the games that Alÿs captured were group games, which I found important to capture the joyful exchanges and the love between the children and their united love of the game. It would be more interesting to use a group game image as the campaign image because these videos were most capturing of Alÿs’ humanistic yet playful engagement with the children that he filmed. 
This is when I would like to discuss the online representation of the Francis Alÿs’ Children’s Games exhibit which was on display at MAC Montréal (Musée d’Art Contemporain). An interesting difference here is the campaign image that was chosen. On the MAC Montréal webpage, the still that was chosen was from Sillas (Musical Chairs). I am not sure how the actual exhibition was arranged (although from a few images that I found online it seems that the placement of the screens was similar to that of the EYE), but I believe that this campaign image was a much better fit to the exhibition. The EYE museum chose Sillas as their first video, hitting the viewer with a bright and cheerful first impression; the music and children’s giggles filling the air. In addition to the differing campaign image, the MAC Montréal webpage also provides very little information on the artist and the exhibition leaving more mystery for the potential visitor. I think that between the exploratory exhibition space and the artist/filmmaker’s simple history, this is very successful as it leaves more interpretation and discovery for the viewer and I think that this is something that museums strive for.  

Written by Sofia

In regard to the locations of the respective exhibitions about Tarkovsky it is immediately striking that a main difference between the two exhibitions can be found in the reception side of it. Tarkovsky was a Russian filmmaker and left a great legacy in his country. Given this fact, I assume that in Russia there are much more people who gained profound knowledge and appreciation of his work, nevertheless, in the Netherlands many cinephiles know about his work too but because his work is quite artistic, I think the general audience in the Netherlands is not much acquainted with it. Therefore I think that the target-audience of Tarkovsky’s exhibition was different in each country. 

Furthermore, something that immediately grasps my attention on the website of the Russian museum, is that Tarkovsky is being presented as an artist rather than a filmmaker. In the first place, the exhibition is called “Artist of Space” and I quote from the text, “Over the last 25 years, a lot of exhibitions and events dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky and representation and musealization of his art have been carried out.” On the website of the EYE museum, he is presented as a filmmaker rather than an artist, though, his film oeuvre is presented as a rather artistic one. In the text, the EYE museum notes “his name as a leading innovator of the language of cinema.” Even though the EYE museum presents a large scope of media, such as films, polaroids and writings, the exhibition in St. Petersburg seems to be more about Tarkovsky as an artistic person in general which presents an overview of everything he has done in his career as an artist. Furthermore, the EYE museum gives away already some background information on its website, whereas the Russian museum stays rather superficial about who he was as an artist and what makes him significant as an artist.

Written by Britt.

For Monday, February 10th, we prepared various texts concerning different ideas about the role of new media in the museum. Since the three of us read different texts, we found a prominent theme in all the texts that we read. We decided to take the theme “education” and apply it to Francis Alÿs’ exhibition, Children’s Games at the Eye Museum. 

Chala

In the first chapter, Culture and Meaning in the Museum, of the book, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, Eilean Hooper Greenhill shares her ideas about the ‘post-museum’. Greenhill feels that the idea of the ‘classical’ museum is based on ideas from the 1900s and needs to be reworked. In other words, it is in need of analysis and development in order to shape the new character and organization of the new museum. 

Greenhill briefly mentions the concept of ‘life-long learning’ and that seems to be the departure of her arguments. Within the concept of life-long learning, it is assumed that the individual perceives new information by taking their cultural background into account. Every interpretation of information is based on the knowledge and experience of the individual receiving that information. I would like to apply Greenhill’s vision to the Children’s Games exhibition at the Eye Museum and discuss how it tackled these ideas about education

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The set up of the video screens in the Alÿs exhibition gave a playful atmosphere- showing videos of children from different cultures playing outdoor games. It felt as if you were walking through a children’s playground. Children’s Games is an accessible and approachable subject to which every individual can relate to by reflecting their own childhood experience. So, it seems that the Alÿs exhibition took the experience of the individual more into account.

Britt

Penz investigates in his article ‘Museum as Laboratories of Change: the Case for the Moving Image’ what ways a museum relates to moving images. He questions whether the moving image captures both the experience of moving in space as well as the emotion of being confronted with the work of art. He mentions three modes of museum experience – educating, exploring and entertaining. The educating mode resembles continuity editing because the visitor follows the path as proposed by the museum. Within the exploring mode, the visitor follows his own path as if he is researching the museum space. For the case of the entertaining mode, a visitor resembles the flâneur who is strolling around the museum depending on his/her own preference. 

Visitors from the Alÿs exhibition are educated in the sense that they will understand and recognize the differences and similarities between the presented countries. Adults will most likely look at the various games by analyzing the differences between each country, but also the differences in time and will compare it to their own experiences of when they were still a child. Every visitor of the museum could follow the path as proposed by the museum, or they can also decide to set out their own route as there is not really a narrative based on a chronology of time, nor country. Children, on the other hand, will look at it differently and will probably not follow the route as proposed by the museum. Rather, they will stroll around in a playful way and will see it more like a reflection of themselves and will not dissect it in terms of time and space. It is more likely for children to be invited to play along in the exhibition space, which in this case, is the entertainment mode. 

Sofia

Tony Bennet brings up in his article, Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organization of Vision, that since the establishment, museums and art-historical education was created for the elite and highly educated. For example, between the 1920s and 1950s, Harvard ran a course on museum studies which taught that the museum was a place focused on the ‘standards of elite’ and promoted the interests of a “narrow cult of collectors, critics and fellow museum collectors.” In return, this promoted a lack of civic engagement in museums from the lower classes. How will the modern museum make the museum a place of broader education? By pluralizing the optical and vantage points that visitors can create and bring with them to the museum? Or perhaps interactive displays to create more interactive viewers?
In relation to Francis Alÿs,’ Children’s Games, Bennet’s views on education and the visual arrangement of a museum are quite relevant. Alÿs’ Children’s Games exhibition was a quite accessible topic that visitors were able to easily relate to. The organization of the museum and the background information for each work was short and to the point, which made it easy to go through. The arrangement of the media throughout the exhibition hall freed the visitor from a defined path, creating a more open mind. This exhibition would be an easy addition to any day of travel to an Amsterdam museum.

Francis Alÿs’, Children’s Games exhibition consists of a group of short films that are united in that they all show children from different parts of the world all playing different games. The exhibition captures that although these children come from vastly different lands, from Iraq to Belgium, to Nepal, they all share the inherent trait of play. All of the games that are presented are played by children around the world: hooping, playing at the beach and flying a kite. These games are universal and are variations of games that have been played around the world for many, many years.

Differing from The Eye Museum’s previous exhibition on Andrei Tarkovsky, this exhibition was not set up chronologically but the visitors were rather invited to explore the space and videos as they wish. Visitors are welcome to start from the beginning and walk all the way through to the end of the hall or, if a visitor wants, it is also possible to explore it rather randomly, perhaps in a more curvy way. Lastly, the children’s school chairs that were included in the space invite you to not only sit and watch a video from the perspective that you choose, but they also add to the playfulness and interactivity of the exhibit.

The children in Alÿs’ short films play their games in the surroundings of war-destroyed houses, refugee camps, and dusty cities or some at the beach in Belgium. The tension between childlike innocence and the apparent seriousness of their day to day life is intense and could leave some with a somber feeling; however, the way that Alÿs captures these joyful, childish moments also encourage us to reminisce and look back on our own moments where we played our own childhood games.

The Francis Alÿs exhibition and previous exhibition on Andrei Tarkovsky differed greatly in exhibition design, organization and topic. Although both of these exhibitions were in the same museum hall, the way that the space was used and manipulated was very different in each exhibition. In the Andrei Tarkovsky exhibition, the space was more divided with areas to look at photos, ephemera from his life and films and also his more artistic polaroids. The exhibition also had text on the walls describing the background of the films. Although it was interesting as a visitor to see all this information, it could be overwhelming to some as well turn out to be a very time-consuming exhibit to visit. The Francis Alÿs exhibition, on the other hand, was much easier to digest. The exhibition design only included the screens, which were projected from both sides and the school chairs. With very little information provided or a set chronological path, this exhibition left a lot more exploration and flexibility for the visitor. 

Collaboratively written by Britt, Sofia and Chala