Having surveyed the Museum visitors’ Instagram accounts, Polina Kolozaridi, Darya Demyokhina and Victoria Bordukova learnt how the role and the practice of photography had changed overtime in relation to the museum and its exhibitions. On the lecture they will present the results of their research conducted in the tradition of Performance Studies.
Visitors capture almost everything: the exhibitions and the exhibits, the building and the architecture, the restroom, the books, the food in the cafe as well as themselves. It would be erroneous to think that the visitors’ Instagram accounts are sheer entertainment. Having been posted online, the photos and the comments take part in the co-production of contemporary art. But what kind of participation is it? Is the visitor in this case an archivist, a registrar or an active participant?
Researchers are certain that visitors in possession of a camera and a fast access to posting pictures try on various roles raging from integrating art in their own lives to curatorship, when they simultaneously compose their own visiting itinerary and participate in the construction of public memory. From selfie-participation which puts the visitor in the artist’s shoes and equates him or her to an exhibit to critical perception.
The analysis of the visitors’ pictures along with digital ethnography enable us to recognize different stages of Instagram-performance and various visitors’ behavioral patterns in the Museum representations.