Mediating

I made sure that MoMA would hire people with experience living and working in the solidarity economy

May 20, 2013 MoMA Studio: Exchange Café

Your Role as a Facilitator

FACILITATOR RESPONSIBILITIES Three facilitators will be at the Studio each day during open hours. Together they will be responsible for overseeing and maintaining the mezzanine space of MoMA’s Education Building and facilitating visitor experiences with various components of the Studio including:

Oversee and organizing the Studio space including setup, tea service, and clean up each day;
Welcome visitors to the Studio space;
Facilitate public interactions with daily ongoing and weekly Studio activities and programs;
Deliver feedback to Education staff;
Tracking attendance;
Collect evaluation data from visitors;
Keep track of Studio inventory, digital equipment, materials and activity supplies;
One mid-Studio meeting.

HOW THE CAFÉ WORKS The Café layout and facilitation roles will need to shift, depending on how many people are in the Café. There are 3 “modes” we imagine:

When special events involving groups in the studio occur during open hours, facilitators can join these events, but should keep an eye on the space, explaining the project overall and the special event in particular, so that visitors don’t think that the project is only about group conversation. Facilitators should provide tea in exchange for currency if the visitors don’t want to participate in the event and the exchange of tea for resources does not distract from the event.

My ambition is for this Exchange Café to change the way museums think about education, art, and activism.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CAFÉ INFORMATION

Each Resource must be validated with a request (something you desire, need, or demand) and a creation (something you make, organize, and support).

INTERACTIVE FACILITATION

FAQs

“The commons” refers to an understanding of space that is neither private nor public, but is managed collectively by the people who use it.

The Museum of Modern Art Department of Education, Adult and Academic Programs

Responsibilities include:

Gaining a deep understanding of the studio—including hours, schedule, content, programs,and activities.
Assisting in the daily management of an interactive space for the general public, including but not limited to: set up and closing up of space daily including preparation of project spaces.
Maintenance of the studio space, including light cleaning, shutting down tech equipment, and organizing and stocking materials as needed.
Welcoming visitors to the studio space with a general introduction to the Studio and activities.
Facilitating and encouraging public interactions with ongoing studio spaces including the Exchange Wall, Exchange Library, and Exchange Café spaces.
Maintaining and overseeing the Exchange Café space in the Studio including set up, tea service, and clean up each day.
Facilitating daily ongoing and weekly Studio programs.
Acting as primary contact with Studio visitors, answering questions about the Museum and other educational programs.
Delivering feedback to Education staff and tracking attendance of visitors to the space.
Collecting evaluation data from visitors. May assist in helping to develop questions and interviewing visitors.
Performing other duties related to the function of the studio as described above.

The ideal candidate is skilled in engaging multi-generational audiences, is personable and professional in their conduct, has experience working in interactive educational spaces, and is well versed in the topic areas explored in the Studio, such as exchange- based practices, modern and contemporary art history, and alternative economies. Flexibility with regard to the flow of activities in the Studio is required as the space is constantly evolving and changing and all activities will be cumulative and reasonably open-ended in response to visitors’ engagements. All facilitators are required to attend a mandatory training session prior to the Studio start date.

REQUIREMENTS: Knowledge and Skills: Proficient with computers and digital interfaces. Ability to interact with a variety of museum visitors of diverse ages—children to adults—and engage them in a variety of activities offered at the Studio. Second language helpful.

REPORTS TO: ASSOCIATE EDUCATOR, LAB PROGRAMS Interested applicants can submit a resume and cover letter to [email protected] by Mar 27, 2013. The Museum of Modern Art is an equal opportunity employer and con- siders all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, sex, age, national origin, creed, disability, marital status, sexual orientation or political affiliation.

Subject: MoMA Education P2P Proposal September 3, 2012

Here's a sketch of my idea for classes. Let me know if you need more info or background to go forward ... I have many references and readings and reasons for wanting to do this, which I can explain at length. I'm in Amsterdam and doing workshops all day tomorrow, then getting on a plane Wednesday, so I won't be very much in reach except for a small window 12 hours from now.

UNTITLED EDUCATION PROGRAM (Communities of Practice/P2P/Learning Group)

This program will connect people from various disciplines who have shared interests in a topic or in each other (or both). MoMA will serve as the official container: keeping track of participant commitment (a low, but present sliding scale fee will be required upon acceptance, with institutional pressure to follow through), and providing space, facilitators, specialists (when requested), and the notoriety necessary to draw a wide variety of participants.

Here's how it works:

1.
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An open call is created for participants interested in joining a Learning Group (formed around specific topics*). If necessary for MoMA, this can be for MoMA members only, but then I want anyone to be able to apply and include a MoMA membership in the fee they must pay if they are accepted into the program. Applicants submit answers to a few short questions,** plus 5–10 images of their work/music/ video/writing/online links, a list of accomplishments (whatever this means to the applicant), information about their heritage/family/ background, how long they've been out of school, and which Learning Group* they want to be part of. They must also agree to commit to 1 night a month to the group.
2.
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The application process will be anonymous peer review: every applicant is required to select 10 other people that s/he would want to work with in a Learning Group. Based on the mutual selection of interested participants, drawn from survey data (from something basic like survey monkey or more advanced cluster analysis—we can get help with this from computer engineers or anyone doing network analysis)— we will find constellations of mutual inter- est. When we have a strong cluster of interest between people, we will form a Learning Group. We could potentially have 10 different learning groups (each with 7 people max), depending on MoMA's resources—facilitators and space.
3.
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The Learning Group will meet at least one night (Thursday?) a month (to be determined by MoMA based on past experience) for a year or more. The method will be group-directed learning with a MoMA facilitator, and will have no mandatory specialist/instructor leading the class, unless the group requests it for a special reason. Facilitators can provide formats, but mostly the group will meet to read together, learn together, and experiment together.

*Possible Learning Groups (up for conversation):

Design/Art
Economies/Art
Internet/Art
Food/Art
Agriculture/Art
Illegal/Art
Sound/Art
Sociology of Art: language, context, relationships
Art/Activism Spirituality/Mysticism in Art Science/Art
Performance/Art

** For example (up for conversation): How does your class background affect your relationship to learning? What are you reading right now? Have you participated in a collective/group before? Tell us about it. What kind of schooling have you participated in?

Let me know how it goes!

Caroline

PS: In anticipation of defenses I expect you'll have to make for this proposal...

Q: Why not just use http://thepublicschool.org/ or http://tradeschool.coop or any of these DIY learning platforms?

A: These collect transient groups for single meetings. This format of commitment, combined with MoMA's prestige and resources, will allow real relationships or mutual learning to occur. The fact that there's a growing landscape of “alternative” education options shows that there's a high demand for something besides expensive MFAs and college degrees.

What is missing in most “alternatives” is the fact that most organizers want to participate, not organize—they eventually lose themselves in the publicity, facility/resource/tech management, and facilitation of the events, which makes for a scattered feel. Here, MoMA can take care of most of this: publicity, facility/resource/tech management, and facilitation.

Q: Why should this be at MoMA?

A: MoMA education should be as experimental as its programming, and has been. To that end, this program will allow participants to fully determine the course of their education. It also sounds quite similar to Barr’s classes, where the only reading material was Vanity Fair, and students were required to teach major aspects of the course: “Barr referred to all nine students in the class as ‘faculty,’ making them each responsible for mastering and teaching some of the course content. Although, per its title, the course ostensibly focused on painting, Barr thought a broad understanding of culture was necessary to understand any individual artistic discipline, and accordingly, the class also studied design, architecture, film, sculpture, and photography. There was no required reading aside from Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The New Masses,and the numerous class trips were not to typical locations of art-historical interest. For example, on a trip to Cambridge, the class passed over the wealth of Harvard's museums to experience the ‘exquisite structural virtuosity,’ in Barr's words, of the Necco candy factory.”

if I am a research-based artist, where is the footnote system for my research? I decided to test out a footnote system that all research-based artists could try using, to shift narratives around authorship and citation in the visual arts.

Art making is not separate from the political economy.

Objects are not singular: the labor, materials, production, and distribution are part of the work. Exchange and barter were practiced in the making of the café.

Moving between Art spaces and non-art spaces allows for multiple meanings, timeframes, and publics.

Meaning is embodied: objects should be touched, used, and/or activated to be understood.

Connecting two people (or more) in a reciprocal encounter or agreement is powerful.

The work is ongoing and should be replicated or modified!

I am not a singular artist. I am a member of society, trying to find hope in a world of fierce inequities. Reciprocity and experiences of mutual support have given me the emotional, financial, and intellectual power to heal and to dream. As a member of many groups (OurGoods.org, TradeSchool.coop, see chapter 3, SolidarityNYC.org, the Pedagogy Group, Splinters and Logs), I am learning to be accountable to my peers, to work cooperatively, and to practice the possibilities of shared livelihood.

My interest in exchange practices comes from living and working for the past decade in New York City. While rent continues to rise and wages stagnate, I am supported by barter, cooperation, and the wisdom of the solidarity economy movement. Rather than going into debt to be further professionalized as an artist, I attend self-organized schools and support movements for educational justice. Rather than looking to sell art to people who may resell it in secondary markets, or throwing away an entire installation at the end of a show, I barter my work, share it as a gift, or live with it for life. Rather than relying on outsourced labor or exploited interns, I refine and enjoy my crafts, exchanging labor for labor when necessary.

While rent continues to rise and wages stagnate, I am supported by barter, cooperation, and the wisdom of the solidarity economy movement.

I selected your work to be featured in a social space ... so that I might make legible a history of exchange in MoMA’s collection and beyond.

FIRST POST CAFÉ AS LEARNING FORMAT

When asked to propose a format to the Education at MoMA, I suggested a café, a place where meaning is made in dialog, where objects can be touched, and where visceral knowledge is honored. Exchange Café is a social space dedicated to exchange, from unconventional encounters to barter and reciprocal economies. What follows is an explanation of some principles of the café, as well as the ways in which these principles could be extended towards a more engaging visitor experience at MoMA.

SECOND POST CAFÉ AS LEARNING FORMAT

When asked to propose a new learning format to the Education Department at MoMA, I suggested a café, a place where meaning is made in dialog, where objects can be touched, and where visceral knowledge is honored. Exchange Café is a social space dedicated to exchange, from unconventional encounters to barter and reciprocal economies. What follows is an explanation of some principles of the café, as well as the ways in which these principles could be extended towards a more engaging visitor experience at MoMA.

Imagine if museum cafés and food-art projects served products with principles as radical as the propositions in artworks.

There should be hiding spaces, in the museum, because the museum is so open that it almost feels like you’re being watched all the time, so I wanted some hiding spots where people could find solitude and read quietly.

—Caroline Woolard, video about Exchange Cafe by Alex Mallis, 2013