The art of language in Paris

I recently returned from an exploration of Paris. The heavily textual/literary character of the French nation is obvious for all to see. The French are proud of their language heritage and manifestly take pleasure in the French language in all its manifestations - the theatre posters in the metro, people reading, the obsession with Littérature moderne du monde francophone, the immense quantity of independent booksellers. Walking into one to browse one I couldn't help hearing the bookseller talking to a young lady whom I guess had asked him advice on reading matter.

Throughout the exchange, he walked calmly around the shop, woman in tow. A strong bright voice, pausing and pointing at the wares as if they were pictures of old friends. The monologue lasted for my entire stay in the shop - I was in there for about 25 minutes.

It went something like this:

...somebody you might like if you read Pennac, a beautifully written Native American narrative like the big epics of past times this is another French classic, and of course Michel Houellebecq if you like the radical. Let me see... Atiq Rahimi won the Goncourt last year we wait to see what he next produces - that was his first novel in French, the great story of an Afghani woman caring for her wounded husband in a repressive society,and another writer who explores the French language exceptionally well - of course, Yasmina Khadra you may know him - What the Day Owes the Night this powerful love story set in Algeria. Do you know Veronique Ovalde (mumble mumble in response) hers are stories to link things together and inseperable - and what about the bestseller Vincent Delecroix - one of my favourites La Chaussure each chapter focusing on a shoe - set in Gare du Nord...do you know the area? It's about loneliness poignant stories. Eric Reinhardt - great writing his is great writing the Cendrillon (Cinderella) novel a sweeping autobiography of four men - I know, I know. But it is autobiographical, and there are four characters...

No surprises, there, then. If all Parisian bookshops are like this one in Pernety, no wonder Parisians are all littéraire.

Museums Association 2009 conference - What I want you do to first is drink a glass of water

I caught up with a couple of interventions at this year's conference - both chosen because of relevance to the practice of using art interventions in museums - manifestly to "open up" collections, "encourage" visitor participation/exploration and/or radically change curatorial practice.

Two things of note.

Edinburgh's The Collective Gallery in 2007-2008 hosted an evaluative exercise on audience participation in interpretation, using works by Jason Nelson, Artur Zmijewski, and Freee (Dave Beech-Andy Hewitt-Mel Jordan) - picture above (http://freee.org.uk/works/how-to-be-hospitable). The gallery's attempt at harnessing multiple perspectives in the development of meaningful interpretations, while a laudable one, left me wondering whether most models of visitor/user generated meaning making are actually a self reflexive exercise that benefits gallery and museum practitioners in the sense that it involves a vocal, interested audience/curatorial panel, while leaving most visitors indifferent. In a postmodern sense, most of these panel based self-reflexive exercises seem to benefit those who take part in them, rather than the end user.

Does reflecting on the mechanics of meaning-making affect end users? Less than it could.

Is this practice legitimate? Even if you are not an artist?

The other excellent case study came from the session entitled "Artists and Museums: what's the limit?" during which Maria Bradshaw, Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, explored what happens when galleries embrace new steps in interpretative practice by involving artists as curators - in this case, the "grande dame of performance art", Marina Abramovic, during this year's Manchester International Festival. In this clip, Marina Abramovic presents the unnerving and unforgettable (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/2009/jul/06/marina-abramovic-manchester-festival-adrian-searle).

The Whitworth was cleared of all its collections; artists took part in intimate audience encounters for the duration of the international festival, each performing for an exhausting 4 hours each day; the public were taken through a drill - a sort of initiation ceremony - and finally explored the building freely, observing artists exploring their responses to the space, the (secreted) collections etc.

The lesson learnt was potentially a very strong one: live hauntings, the "renegade energy" of live art injects (can inject) traditional museum/gallery practice with new life, the collections seeming "new" even to their curators.

So why am I cynical?

There is a sense that this style of interpretative intervention - which takes inspiration from promenade theatre and site specific installation work, which turns visitors into private viewers who partake of a bespoke ritual rather than visit... are not our day to day audiences.

When Ms Bradshaw stated "we took this experience as a statement of what we intend to do all the time" - I sighed. It is precisely the "event" nature of the experience, the out-of-the-ordinary exclusiveness, the tailor-made character of becoming one with the gallery spaces and the artworks... that makes this type of experience intensely attractive and socially successful.

The issue is to find ways of maintaining the secretive nature of interesting interpretation - to encourage meaning making in visitors even when there is no special event. Is the solution actually to "open up" collections and "make them more accessible" - or is it, rather, to keep them secret and explorable? Should we encourage visitors to see more - or should we offer them the opportunity of discovering for themselves?

Is access a free exercise, or an initiation ritual of which we partake not as consumers but as co-celebrants? Has access rendered void an encounter with the unknown?