No, No, I Hardly Ever Miss a Show
Zacheta National Gallery of Art
Pl. Małachowskiego 3
00-916 Warsaw
T (48 22) 556 96 01
www.zacheta.art.pl
Contact details: opencall@zacheta.art.pl
Terms & Conditions: here
Application deadline: 16 October2011
No, No, I Hardly Ever Miss a Show is a project about the public, that is also co-created by the public by giving people the possibility to comment on the exhibition scenario proposed.
A survey, created in cooperation with the sociologist Joanna Erbel, carried out amongst Zacheta’s spectators will investigate, amongst others, how the gallery, and its exhibitions and staff are perceived by visitors. Zacheta’s exhibition halls will become a space for an exchange of ideas and thoughts, both in a “traditional” way (lectures, discussions), as well as in an interactive manner (workshops, art interventions). The audience, who is the main protagonist of the exhibition, will be able to actively participate in the creation of the show by sharing its comments, manifesting its expectations and, finally, voting on issues regarding the construction of the exhibition and the popularity of an artwork. The exhibition will reveal the mechanisms through which the gallery operates. By becoming, to a certain degree self-referential, the exposition will demonstrate the processes involved in the preparation and running of an exhibition. Additionally, the project will also function as a study of the audience, conducted not only by means of surveys, interviews or publications, but also through the exhibition and its accompanying events. We hope to get a lively response and lots of feedback.
No, No, I Hardly Ever Miss a Show is a quote taken from a report concerning Zacheta and its public, produced this year by students of sociology, under the supervision of Mikołaj Lewicki, on the basis of a larger study regarding art galleries and their audience. This phrase, taken out of context, can be used to describe what seems to be an ideal viewer: one who is dedicated to the gallery to such an extent that he/she attends almost every exhibition. However, under the surface this viewer is nothing but a mere spectator, who makes no selection of what they see and does not engage in a more in-depth way in any of the art shows (this would be difficult given the number of exhibitions attended). This viewer comes to exhibitions purely for the sake of coming, always being a passive visitor and never an active participant. This phrase also describes the situation of the curators who work on a full-time basis at the gallery and who therefore by definition are present at almost every exhibition in Zacheta. Thus they look at the expositions that take place here from a totally different, in-depth perspective.
We would also like to know how artists, who form a peculiar group of spectators, perceive us—the gallery. The peculiarity of artists is based on their duality, on the one hand they are creators and active participants, on the other, they can be also considered passive viewers. This is why we are announcing an Open Call—in which we invite artists to submit their artworks and projects together with a completed questionnaire. The elements comprising the exhibition No, No, I Hardly Ever Miss a Show will contribute to the image of the gallery and its public. The title phrase is the starting point for research into who really visits exhibitions at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art and how they do so.
Curators: Anna Tomczak and Stanisław Welbel
