Rehearsing the Museum: A Film by Marysia Lewandowska

Description

Scripted by Lewandowska in collaboration with Beijing-based writer Zian Chen, Rehearsing the Museum revolves around a dialogue between a female property developer and a young woman who aspires to build a collaborative museum model in which artists and users are at the centre of its operations. Filmed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Bergen, and featuring archival footage of cooperative housing projects and artists’ villages, the film questions how the scale and ambition of recent museum projects are connected to the movement of financial capital, as well as gift economies and issues of artefact repatriation. As the camera shifts between bird’s-eye views of landscapes, close-ups of plants in urban gardens, and museum spaces outside of galleries, the film suggests how remoteness and participation are performed by people who imagine, build, and use museums.

The screen is companioned by a conversation between Lewandowska and three Hong Kong-based practitioners, including writer and editor Daniel Ho, artist and academic Sampson Wong, and curator and writer Yang Yeung. Moderated by Özge Ersoy, the conversation asks: How might speculation as an artistic strategy contribute to the public perception of museums? How might museums value artworks as much as the social and economic contexts in which artists, arts professionals, stakeholders, and users live?

Please note that registration for this free event is required.