Museum of (un)sent emails

2014 – 2015

http://www.museumofunsentemails.org/

online museum

Museum of (un)sent emails was my first try-out for for a cross-media connection between film and online platforms. The museum was supposed to provide a publicly accessible email archive that film makers or other creative people could visit, analyze and draw inspiration from. Soon the project became much more than just an email archive as its contents started questioning the notions of institution, museum and online curation possibilities.

These questions inspired me to develop not just an email archive, but a complete online museum which follows curatorial practices and museum protocols. Setting up an online museum required addressing some challenging and exciting questions. Firstly, together with my designer and programmer we had to think how to make an online museum appear real, efficient and interesting to visit. Moreover, in the context of a virtual museum, we had to consider how to visualize text and elevate an item as worthless as an email to the status of a museum item.

The result of our work is an online museum platform, featuring an online archive of sent, drafted and never written emails, accompanied by current and past online email exhibitions, museum audio tours (radio shows) and a donation section where the public can donate their own emails to the museum.

Format used: online museum, radio show

Element of disturbance/subversion: exhibiting emails as works of art 

Method: pre-prepared curating, radio production (museum audio tours)

Key topics discussed: value of art, authorship