20211021

The Threshold (2021) Vasif Kortun. Got passed this by Elina as a good companion to our text in No-Niin. Kortun also addresses the moment when covid turned museums into content-broadcast-stations which were so desperate for audience engagement that they forgot decency. For me, this broke the threshold: Their art became a one-way affair (which made the other side was irrelevant).

Threshold […] is about the conditions of how the two parties—the institution and its audience—begin to trust each other. Not to consent, but to agree to a process of accepting each other as workable partners; not only in the institution’s programs but also in the veracity of the relationship. It is a fluid contract, not a once-and-done deal. It is also not merely about the “offer,” but how the institution acts upon the world, its demeanor, its decency, how it levels with a situation, and how it treats the user as wiser than itself. Absolute parrhesia cannot really be expected, but adopting, growing, and developing this relation into an institution’s output is a must. Otherwise, institutions are just shopping, doing good, and being timely: commoning in the Summer, queering in the Fall, and decolonizing in the Winter.

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