Armley Mill is getting quite a reputation for being a place where spooky ‘things’ happen and the place is taken over about twice a month for night time stays in the mill from companies such as Haunted Happenings and Dusk till Dawn Events. Now I am a bit of a sceptic but when I was offered the opportunity to go on one of these Ghost nights I jumped at the chance. The ghost night ran from 8pm till 2am and I actually thought it was a bit of a swizz and I got bored by about 11pm. It was interesting though to see how the museum has changed from being a place where people come to look and engage with history to one where people want to be experience and ‘feel’ something, the audience are not mere spectators anymore, they want to be participants. Even if it is some shallow, expensive, experience. I did hear one woman complaining that she was disappointed that she’d not ‘felt’ or ‘seen’ anything tonight and the organisers were placating her with the ‘unfortunately we cannot guarantee that you will experience anything’, how convenient! And how they would rub their hands (and fill their pockets) with glee if they could. I just think it’s such a shame when the museum has still got so much to offer, it seems that people can’t or don’t want the passive museum experience. The problem also is that a member of the staff at the museum said that these events keep the mill running.
This strangely ties in with the very recent unveiling of the work by Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. As they have found that the ceramic seeds were causing dust they have had to stop the audience from walking through the installation, leaving many people ‘disappointed’ as to not be able to ‘experience’ the artwork. The newspapers were claiming that some people had travelled many miles only to find that they couldn’t walk on the seeds as they expected. I feel at a bit of a loss at what/who to blame for this. The Tate for continually wanting to draw the public in with these installations, or the public who seem to expect art to be an interactive experience. I pity the artist actually because it seems such a poor idea; couldn’t he have come up with something a bit better? Or did the guys at Tate give him a specific brief (to create a work which is’ interactive’…) and really only be concerned about the number of visitors? Either way they both fell short this time, did they not actually make large scale model of the work, and test out people walking on them? Shame on them. It throws light on how ridiculous the whole situation is.
There’s a wonderful opportunity here to make some work about this issue in the residency. But I’m actually not sure if I’m or the residency is ready for that!..We’ll have to wait and see.
