Course number 620503

Modul 11461 (HCSM)

Lecturer Dr. Roland Meyer

SWS 4

Credit points 6

Online Seminar. Tuesdays, 10am-1pm. Start: April 21st, 2020

In 1969, conceptual artist Robert Barry sent out postcard invitations for a gallery show, paradoxically informing the recipients that »[d]uring the exhibition, the gallery will be closed«. What was then an ironic gesture towards the artworld has now suddenly become the operational mode of museums and galleries worldwide. In response to the coronavirus crisis, exhibition spaces all over the globe have been closed to the public until further notice. Meanwhile, museums as well as other cultural institutions are doing their best to move online and offer virtual tours and other digital media content to an audience bound to their homes. In Germany, a hashtag has been established to collect these offers: #closedbutopen.

Taking this hashtag as a title, the planned seminar has two main goals: First, to start mapping the online museumscape – we will collect and explore different examples of virtual museums and observe how museums use platforms like Instagram, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. And second, we will try to reflect on how these digital spaces are transforming the museum experience – now and in times to come. As a theoretical guidance, we will read canonical texts dealing with the relationship between artworks, spaces of display and technical media, from classics like Walter Benjamin and André Malraux to New Media Theory.

Depending on the development of the situation, the seminar will mainly take place as an asynchronous online course via moodle, with assigned readings and written responses, regular small research tasks, and occasional group discussions. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please send a mail to roland.meyer(at)b-tu.de