The MINI Museum
of XXI Century Arts
The MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts is proud to announce the launch of the second site-specific project designed for its low cost, itinerant architecture: Here (2011), by the London-based artists duo Thomson & Craighead.
Here has been developed by the artists with the specific conditions of the MINI Museum in mind. It takes the shape of a digital photograph of a street sign displaying the text “Here 24, 859 >”. According to the Certificate of Authenticity provided by the artists together with the work, «When displaying this work, the MINI Museum should be physically installed along a North/South axis, so that the surface of the screen is running from North to South or South to North. This ensures that the information contained in this digital artwork is accurate and that the distance between the museum and here is almost exactly 24,859 miles at all times.»
Here (2011) by Thomson & Craighead
27/03/11
Thus, Here can be described as a piece of institutional critique that turns the Museum into a statement about its own relativity in space. Being the MINI Museum a traveling institution, Here provides it with a fixed reference point, according to which it could be localized on the world map: the Museum can be everywhere, but it would always be 24,859 miles from “here”.
Furthermore, the piece describes the Museum as a “there”, and the “here” it points to as a mysterious, distant, fading “elsewhere”, moving as the Museum moves, but always 24,859 miles from it.
Thomson & Craighead got the MINI Museum from Paul B. Davis, its previous – and first – temporary owner. They added the work and put it on show on March 26, 2011 in a small private view at 37a Sekforde St, London. According to the artists, «the work was well received». In the next days, before disappearing to the Scottish highlands for over 5 weeks, they will hand the Museum over Martin John Callanan (http://www.greyisgood.eu/), who will take care of it along the next weeks.
Jon Thomson (born 1969) and Alison Craighead (born 1971) are London-based visual artists, who work with video, sound and the internet. They have been working together since 1993. Much of their work to date explores how technology changes the way we perceive the world around us. They use live data to make artworks, including “template cinema online artworks” and gallery installations, where networked movies are created in real time from online material such as remote-user security web cams, audio feeds and chat room text transcripts.
Thomson lectures at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Craighead is currently Reader at the University of Westminster, and also lectures in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.
