Ascending/Descending
Ascending/Descending is a video from the series Stills Made in Museums which stages the behavioral rules that derive from the strange constructs which "protect" and "exhibit" art. Museum Stills explores both extremes of this behaviour, from the over-identification and even psychological breakdown that can occur in front of works of art to the practiced performance of indifference in the interstitial stairways and corners of these colossal institutions.
Serie
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Documentation
"Ascending/Descending foregrounds the museum's stairs, a dramatic architectural feature prominent in most universal survey museums. Traditionally, this part of the museum functions as a transitional, ritualistic threshold in which visitors ascend from the mundane world of commerce and expediency to the "higher," contemplative realm of art. What is fascinating about this still is its disjunctive temporality. While museumgoers stand immobilized on the stairs, in the background we glimpse real-time reflections of passing traffic and pedestrians, each oblivious to the other's circumstance."
DROBNICK, Jim and Jennifer FISHER. "Museum vivants", Adad Hannah: Video Projects. Seoul, 2006, p. 14 [http://adadhannah.com/images/uploads/press_assets/2006_10_07_Ssamzie_Catalog.pdf] (Consulted on June 10th 2011)
Art, Museum , Immobility, Social class, Social identity, Psychology, Institutions,
Laws, Observation,
