From Digital Archives to Digital Arks?
Proposed by Elisabetta Tosti/independent curator
Exploring the Virtues of Emptiness in Future Museum Spaces
Empty Museums
On a conference held at the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum in 2001 the Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco laid out his own utopian model for a museum of the third millennium as a “single-artwork museum”. This research rather wishes to project itself into a possible futuristic scenario in which the trajectories of digital technologies will have evolved to such an extent to lead museum spaces to be completely devoid of artworks.
Unphysical collections
Why should this occur? The mechanisms of the ever-increasing digitalisation process could one day generate an equally increasing process of dematerialisation of the works of art so that to turn museums physical and permanent collections into digital archives of the ephemeral.
In his work Art power, the media theorist Boris Groys points out that the function of museums is nowadays shifting from that of a sacred temple preserving immortal artifacts to that of a box storing data of a bunch of temporary projects which have taken place within its walls and then vanished: the only trace they left behind is nothing else but the digital documentation of their occurrence. However, as Groys underlines, the difference between a common archive and museum archives is that documentation about past exhibitions and projects can be constantly re-exhumed and re-signified, proving useful for other projects and giving in this way life to an endless circle in which physical artworks die but their documentation keeps staying alive.
Staying in the circle and taking this discourse further, we could assert that in a future where works of art could lose their physical consistency, it would not be difficult to imagine that one day we could face a point where it would be nearly impossible to find an artifact in flesh and blood. This of course doesn’t mean that in the imminent future museums will turn into abandoned castles disseminated with ghosts, but is there anything positive we could gain in this historical moment from the visualization of this possible scenario so that to reshape future trajectories?
All-encompassing vacuity A lucid visualization of the side effects of digitalisation can spark new considerations on the ontological nature of physical space and lead us to reflect on the benefits of an empty space. Many Schools of Buddhism regard at the contemplation of vacuity as the fundamental core of their teachings as well as the most powerful way to reconnect with our true Self; the concept of Ma (間) is of primary importance to a Japanese architect when designing a new place: thinking of ma is like thinking of an entity through which the emptiness makes itself tangible and visible through a process that transforms space in something other and higher than the space itself.
Eastern concepts of vacuity couldn’t be further from western nihilistic visions of the void. Thinking of an empty space according to the eastern vision allows to dive into a metamorphic process in which the museum space transcends itself, turning into a non-place and thus becoming enriched with new meanings.
Decolonising power of emptiness
Within a cultural industry where everything is feticised as a commodity, the value of an immaterial artwork not only would be difficult to determine, but it would also prevent itself from being physically possessed, thus disengaging the museum from that century-long narrative through which it presented itself as a collector of war trophies. Trying to visualize a possible scenario in which museums have turned into empty spaces and artworks have lost their physicality probably means not only to reflect on the demolition of an art market worth billion dollars but also to make our way through the path for the delegitimization of oppressors and the freedom of the oppressed from mechanisms of inferiorization and ghettoization.
From archives to arks ?
A conscious use of technology - which should be conceived as a means not as an end - is undoubtedly the key for a reinvention of museums in the future: holographic projections for example, which in some cases have been implemented but not explored enough, represent a powerful tool of reconnection and recollection of collective memories as well as a chance for museums to reinvent themselves. Moreover, the tridimensionality of holograms could prove an interesting tool for visitors in order to retrieve a consistency, a physicality that would be enriched with new, less-hierarchical meanings.
This research hopes to reshape the trajectories of future museums exploring the urgencies museums could have to face and discussing that rather than establishing themselves as mere digital archives, future museums could evolve into digital Arks: non-hierarchical non-places that preserve collective memories from extinction, a reminder of humanity for the reconnection with our true selves.
References:
Eco, Umberto. (2001) Il museo nel terzo millennio. Conference held at the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum on 25th June 2001, http://www.umbertoeco.it/CV/Il%20museo%20nel%20terzo%20millennio.pdf
Groys, Boris. (2012) Art power. Milano: Postmedia.
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Elisabetta Tosti is an Italian art researcher based in Verona, Italy. She graduated in London with a BA in Media Studies and specialised in Milan with a Master's Degree in Art and Valorization Strategies. She is deeply fascinated by east asian cultures: she dedicated her MA final dissertation to Japan focusing on the symbiotic dialogue Japanese museums establish with their surrounding natural and local context. She likes to implement her non-eurocentric vision to investigate how ancient philosophies apply to contemporary contexts and discourses. Her research particularly focuses on how ancient spiritual visions inform contemporary art practices.