We Who Feel Differently: Carlos Motta
The project We Who Feel Differently, by Carlos Motta, will remain open to the public at New York City's New Museum through September 9th. It is part of the space Museum as Hub, a laboratory for experimental proposals exploring artistic, curatorial, and institutional practices intended as learning experiences for the public regarding global contemporary art. Museum as Hub functions as both a virtual and physical space. It is considered a flexible space, as it reaches the public by means of multi-media stations, exhibition areas, and seminars, among other events. Its installations remain on the fifth floor of the New Museum's Education Center.
This project evolved from the virtual database wewhofeeldifferently.info, developed by the artist. It included a web page, a publication, an on-line diary, and discursive events. The exhibition was conceived as a platform focused on the discussion of issues in contemporary queer culture. Museum as Hub: Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently is a multifaceted project.
A seminar was held preceding the exhibition to interrogate what is at stake and what becomes possible when difference is accepted as a queer strategy in contemporary art, politics, and society.
The exhibition, open through September 9th, includes a video-installation based on fifty interviews with an international, inter-generation selection of academics, activists, artists, politicians, researchers and radical LGTBTIQQ ("Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersexual Queer and Questioning") individuals. It also includes a series of sculptures an silkscreens that use symbolism and images from early queer culture. The design of Museum as Hub, by Motta and architect Daniel Greenfield, features multi-colored carpeting and transforms the space into a site for collective activity and prolonged observation.
Simultaneously to the exhibition, Motta invites queer artists, activists, and academics to present public events. These events include, among others, discussions of transsexual issues in contemporary art, a workshop on HIV/AIDS activism, and the presentation of a book on queer responses to the inclusion of homosexuals in the military. All engage critical issues in contemporary queer culture in the US.
