[spectre] Thomson & Craighead at the MINI Museum for XXI Century Arts

[Domenico Quaranta]

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 (http://thomson-craighead.net/).

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.»

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.

The MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts (also known as MMAXXI) is a 7''  
digital photo frame bought on eBay equipped with a 4GB pen drive.  
Founded and directed by Domenico Quaranta, the MINI Museum will travel  
from node to node around a network of artists, and will host temporary  
solo shows by the artist owning it at the time.

More infos: http://blog.theminimuseum.org/
Press images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/minimuseum/sets/72157626364697686/

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Domenico Quaranta

web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/
email. info at domenicoquaranta.com
mob. +39 340 2392478
skype. dom_40