Gaëlle Leenhardt / Museum of Contemporary Art Intervention
2010 – ?
We would like to inform the visitors that Museum of Contemporary Art is closed due to the reconstruction of the building. We appreciate your understanding.
(Official paper taped at the main door of the Museum)
September 2010
First non-visit to the museum.
It felt like the time stopped, the entrance was still full of boxes, the reconstruction panel was falling apart and the sculptures around the museum were supported by a construction structure to protect them. I left and kept this image in part of my head.
2011
Research work in Brussels about the museum.
I went through different places, university, library and I could not find any documents about it. The only trace of its existence was an open call to all the architectural schools of Europe to propose a project for an opera in Belgrade, in the proximity of the museum.
In this file I found an old application, some photographs of the model, some maps, several pictures… But that was it. It was like a blackout, i couldn’t find more trace of this piece of architecture. While I was researching I focused on the term of reanimation in architecture, which became the underline of the future work I would do inside the museum.
The place was already marked by several stories – it started with being the Museum of Modern Art, then became the Museum of Contemporary Art and today it is the Museum Under Reconstruction.
I had to find a way to enter the closed museum.
2012
- February
I got the authorisation to enter the museum. Inside, the time stopped. A thick layer of dust covered the ground. I walked through the space, surrounded by the remains of the last exhibition and a piece from the permanent collection. Everything was drowning in the dust. Projection room from Breaking the step (the last exhibition before the reconstruction) were still around, painted in red, green or gray. In each of them there was a white cube which used to be a screen – mere traces of the videos.
I had the felling that nothing moved in ages, that after the dismantling of the last exhibition, no one touched the inside of the space. The museum is left in suspension, waiting to be reanimated.
During this first visit I took a lot of videos and photographs, as well as some paper from the floor, boxes – some archeological traces.
- April
One month after the first visit, I diged into all the things from the first visit and decided that beyond the writing, I should be physically engaged toward the space of the museum as part of this idea of reanimation.
The question of time was personally really important, the idea of layers and time crossing the space. So I wanted to include a new time in this space with a series of actions in the very museum.
I asked for a new authorisation to enter the museum and to work in it. I received a positive answer and went back in. Meanwhile, a huge part of the museum had been cleaned for some event scheduled for March, so the space was really different since the first visit. The pieces from the permanent exhibition were hidden behind fake walls, still with traces from the past exhibition. But the place was cleaned.
I walked again all around and reached the last room, the only one which has not been cleaned yet. The walls from the projection room were laying on the floor. On my first visit they were still rooms. I decided to focus on that and worked the all the morning, finished, left the intervention and left.
- September
Came back to Belgrade after finishing my Master. I finally sent a picture of the intervention in the museum to the curator who gave me the authorisation to work inside. He answered and sent me a link about an exhibition in the museum What happened to the museum of contemporary art? This one opened in June, and was finishing in October. He asked me if my name is somewhere on the list of the artists, and told me that he knew that I was the author of this piece. I was confused, and took the opportunity to go to visit the exhibition.
The interventions I had made 5 months ago were still standing there, but this time as part of an exhibition that I was not aware about. An exhibition which fit perfectly to my research from a few months before. I sent back an email to the curator, to ask him what I should do, and this is the answer I received:
Hello Gaelle,
That is an amazing situation, so bizarre. I just showed the photo to my colleague who was working on this “non-exhibition” and we were all so amazed and confused. One security guy was sent to destroy these rooms on the top floor and they all thought that he did it, even though they were surprised and wondered how could he do this in an artistic way. They actually recognized that it was artistic intervention but were not aware that you did it. I was abroad when the exhibition has opened and when I saw the museum there were not captions and labels, not clear to me which artists did what but I somehow suspected this was your work even though I had not been sure. Too bad that you didn’t send me the photos right after your intervention as I was not there to see what you did. They would have included your name for sure in the “non-exhibition” and credit your work on the invitation card etc. which would be of course good for your CV!!! Damn, what a misunderstanding, you couldn’t expect that this exhibition would be done. So, you could say now that you anonymously exhibited in non-exhibition in Museum :))))
2013-2014-2015…
The intervention is still in the museum, I had the opportunity to go back there several times. It has become a part of the building. One of the curators from the museum was making a joke: You actually entered the permanent collection of the museum…
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