Credit: (En)Counter Culture
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  • (En)Counter Culture

Sometime between now and Monday, (En)Counter Culture— a “social experiment in visual arts” organized by Kristin Bayans and Joey Brown of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)— will announce the location of a “guerrilla art exhibition” via Twitter.

The “flashmob art exhibit” will last for “approximately 30 minutes” at “a public outdoor location in downtown Portland”— pieced together on the fly by Bayans and Brown “to convey a unified message.” Here, the organization’s mission is to foster “community reflection upon the conventional definitions of ‘museum,’ ‘curation,’ and ‘exhibit’ through unexpected, brief, and temporary collaborative artistic endeavors.”

Okay, right on— follow @EnctrCultrPDX’s tweets if you’re interested in seeing how things play out— but I’m still wondering why (En)Counter wants to take art out of the traditional museum model. After all, both Bayans and Brown work for OMSI, and it’s not necessarily in their best interest to encourage the non-museum art experience— in fact, the opposite, especially in a time when national museum attendance is going down, down, down.

I suspect the central reason for this personal-professional contradiction comes from a dedication to social practice rhetoric, of which (En)Counter’s mission fits snugly within. (See this Wikipedia entry for examples of where (En)Counter aligns with the lexicon and ideology of social practice.) Aside from theoretical relevance, why do the definitions of “museum, curation, and exhibit” need exploring?— I mean, we all know what these things are. We understand how, with the addition of art, public space can serve the basic functions of traditional venues.

What do you guys think?— do we need to reflect on “the conventional definitions of ‘museum,’ ‘curation,’ and ‘exhibit'”? Are flash mob-related events played out to the point of rendering (En)Counter Culture culturally irrelevant? Am I just being a big meanie, or thick-headed, or something else entirely? Let’s talk in the comments.

5 replies on “(En)Counter Culture, Flashing Up This Weekend”

  1. It’s Saturday and I have nothing to do tonight. If this were an actual art event with a real set time and place that was promoted, I would go to it. However, since I’m not on Twitter, I won’t.

  2. OMSI is not an art museum. Museums have little interest in emergent forms of art and education. From going to the Art Museum during the 3 hours it is free once a month and seeing the mobs of people, I think museum attendance might be down due to price increases.

    Personally I think flashmobs are mostly silly compared to the happenings of the 60’s but there are some great exceptions.

  4. sueno: Re: “OMSI is not an art museum.” True. I guess I just feel like museum staff should be encouraging the museum experience– for the health of museums in general.

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