#Metamuseum #Project starts with a few questions. What kind of public space has Nam June Paik Art Center been? What kind of place could it be in the future? Who is the art museum for? Whom is it open to and whom is it unkind to? What stories have we unfolded here? What do we need to share and protect? These questions to look back on the past 10 years and look into the future cannot be answered right away. Therefore, #Metamuseum #Project was conducted as a journey to find answers to these questions and as an experiment to examine the possibilities of the museum as the art commons.
The experiment on Nam June Paik Art Center as the commons beyond a public institution consists of three parts. Firstly, #CommonsExperiment assumes ‘physical space’ and ‘people’ as ‘resources’ and ‘community,’ the basic elements of sharing, and explores a possibility of sharing the resources by creating and using space together. Second, #CommunityExperiment is a process of investigating the categories of community surrounding Nam June Paik Art Center, with colleagues, friends, and a number of unspecified people. The last is #ViewpointExperiment intended to bring a variety of perspectives into the museum, to convert, collect, and exchange different perspectives to see if they can resonate. Furthermore, by sharing the processes and outcomes of this experiment online, we would like to explore whether the knowledge and information accumulated through the project can function as another common ground.
‘Meta-,’ derived from the Greek ‘μετά,’ is a prefix meaning ‘beyond,’ ‘transcend,’ or ‘change,’ and expands the perspective on the following word. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its opening, Nam June Paik Art Center seeks to go beyond the current meaning of a museum and to experiment with a possibility of change through #Metamuseum #Project. The entire process of #Metamuseum #Project will be an opportunity not only to pay the way for Nam June Paik Art Center to move forward, but also to think about the roles and directions that all museums should consider in the future.
