Per_forming the museum is the title of the public programs of the Museo Madre, held in the museum’s ground-floor spaces, renamed “Re_pubblica Madre” from June 2013. These spaces have become a place of transit and connectivity to facilitate physical and virtual access to the museum, equipped with instruments and services that will enable visitors to meet, express themselves, exchange ideas, share, chat, blog, research and discover. Madre is not just a museum but also a theater, a gathering place and an (interactive) screen.

Many services and activities are planned:

You Madre Napoli

Beyond the confines of Re_pubblica Madre, the museum’s (per)formative activities turn to the web 2.0 through the You Madre Napoli project: a new video-sharing platform for artists and the public, creatives and anyone who might just be interested, where the museum of the future can be designed. The Museum invites everyone to take part in this shared thinking and planning, from their homes, from schools, associations or universities, posting texts, images or videos on our social network.

Sipario_Museum as Theatre

The entrance to the Re_pubblica Madre area is characterized by the presence of a curtain, periodically commissioned from an artist, scenographer, architect or designer. The curtain identifies this area of the museum as a performative zone which, creating direct communion between the street and the institution which faces onto it, places the museum’s public at the center of the scene.

Post_it Boards

The public can post their projects, proposals, perspectives and prototypes for the future of the museo Madre on a series of magnetic boards arranged on the walls of the room.

Contemporary_Campania Board

A wall-board reserved for the stratified system of contemporary regional art, a veritable showcase of information, updated in real time about the contemporary art exhibitions and initiatives spread across the Campania Region, for which the museum acts as the vector, with a view to the establishment of a true regional contemporary art system.

Camera_Critica

A small room with a video camera and microphone which receives observations and ideas for the museum “the way I’d like it to be.” All visitors can also express their views about the museum, the collection, exhibitions, works and the role of the museum in their community. The museum thus becomes a sort of “Speaker’s Corner,” combining the museum’s plans with the point of view of the public, who are asked to update the museum’s agenda and mission.

Assembly_Madre

At the center of Re_pubblica Madre is a dais used to present regular live presentations of the materials posted by the public (the calendar is available on the museum website). The public becomes the co-author of the museum in real time, to per-forming their own museum by discussing it with other members of the public.

Pro_actions

A video system remote-controlled by software which allows for the creation of a true program schedule, with screenings of videos and movies from the museum’s permanent collection and exhibitions, as well as materials posted by the public on the channel www.youmadrenapoli.it, videos and artists’ films.

The artists involved in the programming of the museo for 2013 are also present in Re_pubblica Madre with lectures, recorded interviews, workshops and a number of works. The first artists are: Thomas Bayrle, Mario Garcia Torres, Giulia Piscitelli, as well as the two works from the museum’s collection: the unending film Tristanoil by Nanni Balestrini (as part of Pro_actions) and the stage curtain by Lino Fiorito (as part of Sipario_Museum as Theatre).

Per_forming the museum has thus become the museum’s operative zone, where the museum’s “reality” and “possibility” meet, in which to delineate or redefine in real time an alternative museum, and in which to foster and debate experimental hypotheses for the museum’s future, which it is called on to give concrete form, transforming them, whenever possible, into realities.