Price, Jenny. “Adventures in Mockstitutions.” Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review, no. 4 (October 2023).
“If You Need to Use the Art” is an alt-institution public art project—or a mockstitution, to use artist Gregory Sholette’s moniker. These projects mimic the language, iconography, and norms of established entities—a public agency, a museum, a digital platform, a global corporation. They challenge accepted ideas and policies, while deputizing the entity’s acknowledged powers to document, mandate, and communicate. Mockstitutions evoke the familiar, and then turn it on its head. Are you trying to explode deeply rooted assumptions about environment or history or both? An alt-institution might prove useful. Are you asking people to think differently about definitions of the environment, public conservation policies, or even (gasp) the institutional norms in the environmental humanities? Your inner artist might be calling. (From the article)
This article was originally published in Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review. Springs is an online publication featuring peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that showcase the work of the Rachel Carson Center and its community across the world.
2023 Jenny Price
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