Slow Art Day: @SFMOMA Twitter Hijack
Social media has as ubiquitous a presence in the galleries of museums as it does anywhere — come to SFMOMA on any given day and you’ll see people smiling for Facebook pics next to iconic artworks, while others stand still, compulsively tweeting their every thought. In a world of quick status updates and Instagram posts, is it possible to put the brakes on the accelerating, careening car that is social media and get people to really think?
In collaboration with the people over at Slow Art Day, we’re running a set of slow-looking experiments in mindfulness, and one of them has me (the person who has written 99.9% of @SFMOMA’s tweets over the past two years) feeling a little nervous: we have invited four artists to hijack SFMOMA’s Twitter account over the next few days. Social media is a medium after all, so we’ll be giving complete control over to the artists for 30 minutes so that they can transform our feed from museum mouthpiece into whatever they please.
Here’s a loose outline of who you can expect to see commandeering our stream, and when to look for their tweets:
- On Tuesday, 4/23, the artists behind the collaborative project Will Brown will begin their takeover in the early afternoon. ****UPDATE : Will Brown will be tweeting on FRIDAY, at NOON.****
- On Wednesday, 4/24, multimedia artist Gay Outlaw will join us in the (closed to the public) museum. Check our stream in the late afternoon!
- On Thursday, 4/25, performance artist, writer, activist, and educator Guillermo Gomez-Pena will take the Twitter reigns in the late afternoon.
- On Friday, 4/26, our #SFMOMAslow finale will commence with performance artist Tina Takemoto hijacking the account in the late afternoon.
To see how it all unfolds, follow @SFMOMA and #SFMOMAslow on Twitter. If you miss the tweets as they’re happening live, fret not! We’ll be embedding the transcripts here on Open Space.
Also, more slow art possibilities: Join us in the galleries this Saturday for some guided slow looking and conversation. Not able to make it to the museum? Check out our crowd-sourced #SFMOMAslow project on the SFMOMAcrowd Tumblr — we’re asking folks to spend 10 minutes looking at anything, reflect on the experience, and tell us about it. Need some inspiration? Here are a few works from SFMOMA’s online collection. Cheers, and happy Slow Art-ing!
John Bloom, Painted Photographs: The Technology of Modern Wonder, 1985; gelatin silver print with acrylic, graphite, and phonograph record; 31 3/4 in. x 40 1/2 in. (80.65 cm x 102.87 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Anne MacDonald Walker; © John Bloom
Robert Rauschenberg, Technology (Tribute 21), 1994; vegetable dye water transfer print on paper; 41 in. x 27 in. (104.14 cm x 68.58 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Felissimo; © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York
Dan Graham, Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay, 1974/1993; two mirrors, two cameras, two monitors, time delay; 360 in. x 360 in. (914.4 cm x 914.4 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Dare and Themis Michos and Accessions Committee Fund purchase: gift of Collectors Forum, Doris and Donald Fisher, Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr., Pamela and Richard Kramlich, Leanne B. Roberts, Madeleine H. Russell, and Helen and Charles Schwab; © Dan Graham
Judith Joy Ross, James Gosling, Inventor of Java, Silicon Valley 2000, 2000; gold-toned printing-out paper print; 10 in. x 8 in. (25.4 cm x 20.32 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Judith Joy Ross