8 October 2021 at Museo Civico in Bassano del Grappa – Still Morning
Masako and Sara Lando’s suggested we go through Museo Civico, guided by our own personal likes and approaches. We are invited to walk, draw and listen to music on our phones at the same time, in the space. We then trade our soundtrack with someone else, who then listens to our music.
In another room we prepare an audio tour, made to measure for someone we have been paired with. We are in a blue room, dimly lit. The floor is made out of a mirroring material. The paintings are reflected on the floor like they would be on water. I prepare this small audio guide for Susanne Franco. I describe the rainbows that the light is making on the floor to her – the reflections, the calm sensation. I ask her some questions.
Susanne is guiding me through a phone call in the temporary exhibition, indicating cardinal points, orientation, measuring the space and describing the artworks with her own feelings and interpretation.
What Masako and Sara Lando are facilitating here is a space for shared intimacy, conducting a visit from one’s own experience and bringing something of what makes it individual into the experience of being guided through an institutional space. It reminds me of yesterday’s conference, when Anna Chiara Cimoli spoke about how a museum can be a place made of people, of their desires, their knowledge, their stories, how we could build an entire museum upon that. The human dimension of it. We become guides.
