»American Lessons - MN.A: Marvelous New World« 
Light Box
Light Box
© Simone michelin; photo: Wilton Montenegro
Keywords
Information
Simone Michelin >
»American Lessons - MN.A: Marvelous New World«, 2001 - 2002
Co-Workers & Funding:
Funding: Museum of Contemporary Art, Niterói; Petrobras Incentivos Culturais
Technology
Installation Requirements / Space
one channel, sound, mirrors, Plexiglas, wood, chairs, cardboard, variable dimensions (circa 50m2)
Descriptions & Essays
MN.A is a video installation created for the Artist Researcher Project of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Niterói, RJ, Brazil. It was addressed to the physical and conceptual characteristics of that place. It belongs to the
series American Lessons, focusing now on Art, Science and Technology and how they can shape reality.
A house made of cardboard and wood - resembling a package that could be send to any place at any moment - were built inside the Museum. The structure of the work, its appearance and means used in its construction, work like a metaphor that offers to the visitor clues for its reading. The proposition
operates the 'logic of the project', referring to the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer (who projected the museum). It intends to highlight questions like: what is a place? How space became place? What is the role of the contemporary museum? What does it mean to be an artist researcher?
Furthermore, it stresses different codes used for representation of ideas and of how/what we see/are seeing.
In addition, it overlaps two spoken languages - English and Portuguese - and points to the oral tradition of transmitting knowledge.
Inside the house there are places that allow different perceptions of the narrative: one site privileges the audition of the lessons, and in other ones the video projection could be seen either in the screen and reflected in the Plexiglas, and/or in the mirrors (or both simultaneously).
The visitor also could move the mirrors modifying slightly the ambience.
The video shows a trip from Rio de Janeiro to Niterói, arriving at the Museum/MAC - until reaching its interior - through different modes of representation, from naturalistic appearance to abstraction, passing by technical illustration.
(source: http://smichelin.art.br/english/mna.html)
Literature
Exhibitions & Events