This is Not a Museum Tour | Emerie Snyder
Emerie Snyder (Brooklyn, NY)
April 2019. Audio tour recorded on cassette tape; museum collection cassette player, fabric, modified wood frame. 13 min 45 secs. Dimensions variable.
An object-led, participatory tour, This is Not a Museum Tour focuses on works of “Not Art” in the museum collection. Visitors are invited to experience a 14-minute tour, personally led by a friendly vintage Fisher Price tape cassette player named Maggie. The tour can be experienced by groups of one to 15 visitors at a time.
By asking visitors to playfully accept the guidance of an inanimate object, Snyder’s work opens the door to new ways of engaging with Elsewhere’s space and collections. Lines are intentionally blurred between audience and performer, object and person, art and not art. Themes explored through this piece include layering of collections, memories, and time; shared storytelling; and personification of objects.
In designing this site-specific audio theatrical museum experience, the artist combined her expertise as a theatre director/creator, her ongoing fascination with art history, and her early background as a teenage museum docent. This project is an iteration of EXHIBIT, Snyder’s ongoing series of performances in the form of gallery tours. Previous iterations of EXHIBIT include an audio tour for solo visitors at the Brooklyn Museum, and a tour with live guides/performers at the “Works on Water” exhibition presented by New Georges and 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center in Manhattan.
Below: Visitors take the This is Not a Museum Tour with Tape Player, Maggie; Snyder writes script for This is Not a Museum Tour and records on cassette tape in a DIY sound booth.
