UX, User Experience, U and X
November 20, 2020 – January 24, 2021

Een tentoonstellingsecosysteem door De praktijk van Brenda Tempelaar

We would like to invite you to become part of The Practice of Brenda Tempelaar.

You could define an exhibition as a cultural field of inter-human energy exchange, mediated on the basis of public interaction with artistic objects (works of art) and processes. In recent years, this field has increasingly adopted the market’s way of thinking: the show must go on—even when art spaces are less accessible at the time of a pandemic. While in art people used to express themselves more often critically or condescendingly about market mechanisms, economic success under the influence of years of political flattening has become the only language in which the importance of works in an art space can be expressed.

In UX, User Experience, U and X, interests that play a role in the existence of art in addition to generating income are reconsidered. Before the start of the exhibition, a field is set out in which the relationships between individuals (users), digital, cultural and public operating systems can manifest themselves on the basis of different interests. The field has the character of a coworking space with a number of variable ornaments that transform the space into a place that invites team performance, exchange of information and community spirit. It invites to observe and assume the role of User Experience designer. UX designers doubt whether their practice still serves optimal user experiences, or whether it is increasingly guided by capitalist intentions and the coherent limitation of the scope of the concept of user experience applied exclusively for marketing purposes. By comparing the conflicting interests of a UX designer with artistic practice, the exhibition aims to reveal a field of tension that has become increasingly pertinent in the artistic field: does an exhibition serve the interests of the artist, the institution or the public? And where do these interests meet?

This basis serves to collectively question the optimal use of art spaces, the exhibition medium and the art experience at a time characterised by persistent market thinking within art, aimed at individual success and competition within a culture that functions on the basis of time pressure and high performance. By asking other artists to collectively join The Practice of Brenda Tempelaar, the roots of individual marketing and authorship in art are traced and eroded, in harmonious and conflicting moments. In addition, this distancing of the personal name creates a different form of address, and possibly a different liability. The host institution A Tale of A Tub and the public are also invited to affiliate and become stakeholders in this practice.