Museum's endangering publicness

Removal of a museum's glass window,Santiago Sierra
Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium. September 2004
More photos HERE

All the Museum's glass windows were removed and the security equipment disconnected, including cameras and alarms. This forced the transfer of the museum's modern art collection and the protection of the office area.

Description of the installation / performance, as given on Santiago Sierra's website

300 ton, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria. April 2004
More photos HERE

292 tons of concrete bricks were carried to the top floor of the Kunsthause Bregenz and the weight distributed on temporary supports through the whole building. Since 300 tons is the maximum wight the structure of the building can sustain, the number of visitors permitted at any time was never allowed to exceed 100, which represents an additional 8 tons.

Description of the installation / performance, as given on Santiago Sierra's website

Witnessing the differend : a grammar

As a site of acknowledgement to Non-Western societies, often unknown by the public, the Musée du Quai Branly is the expression of France's will to give the right place to Primitive Art in its institutions. Further, it testifies there is no more hierarchy between arts than between peoples.

Text as appears at the exit of the Pavillon des Sessions exhibition

The concept of Art, as experienced in western culture, is far from being universal. In doesn't balance Western and "primitives", or "first" cultures. Rather, it assimilates the non-western World. While aiming at weakening the colonial dominant/dominated dialectic, our beatific admiration for primitive Arts actually gives it a new form.

A few typologies, reinforcing and making dialectics such as subject/object, self/other, dominant/dominated, art/ethnology, explicit, are tested on the site.

A collage of typologies.

From left to right and top to bottom

1. Panopticon
2. Irreductible dialectic
3. Curratorial project
4. Collage
5. Overwhelming totality
6. Collection of individualities

The statue says :

Left : Place de la Concorde Paris Auteur : GIRAUD Patrick
Right : ©musée du quai Branly (Paris, Place de la Concorde, Easter Island statue)

Comparable pictures. Comparable situations ?

On the left : one of the obelisks set on Place de la Concorde, Paris. They were offered to France by egyptian Vice-King Mehemet Ali in 1830. In exchange of the obelisks, France offered a clock, which orns, since then, Cairo's Citadel, but never actually worked. The other Obelisk (which was never brought in France) was officially given back to Egypt by President Mitterrand.

On the right, an advertisement for Quai Branly Museum's opening. To our knowledge, the statue on the collage never left Easter Island. But it is virtually taken away from its space and time (its authenticity, according to Benjamin), cleaned from its original meaning, and put in the middle of the piazza as a monument. The asterisk, recurring in the museum's communication, is giving it a voice. And oh, surprise ! the statue speaks french.