Nina Simon’s book ‘The Participatory Museum’ (2010) focused on asking visitors questions to get the public to participate in performance and interact with the performance and other members of the public.
This made us think how vital questions are in our performance as in a museum and gallery questions are constantly being proposed; whether they are out loud or leave the public questioning a preconceived idea. The gallery experience is a constant exchange of questions and answers.
‘Personal questions help visitors connect their own experience to the object displayed, speculative questions ask visitors to imagine scenarios involving objects or ideas that are foreign to their experience.’ (Simon, 2010)
In our performance we want to ask both types of questions, however, we want to ask the questions through our performance and not so directly, leaving the audience to walk away asking themselves new questions and creating discussions about the content and relationship the public have with a museum and gallery.
Simon states, ‘When visitors encounter surprising design choices… it raises questions in their minds.’ As a group this is a crucial aspect of our performance, we want an audience to question and think about what is being presented to them is the definite truth as museums are very informative but that could also be interpreted as dictating environments. A gallery or museum has so many rules and regulations that artist have to obey when presenting work but the audience also have to follow these rules before they even enter the gallery. There are set walk ways the public must follow, one has to keep their distance to the art work, and the description of the artwork is forced upon the public.
We hope to create a performance the raises personal and speculative questions in the public and audiences minds.
Works Cited
Simon, N. (2010) Participatory Museum: Chapter 4, Social Objects. [online] Available from: http://www.participatorymuseum.org/chapter4/ [Accessed 8 March 2014].