Disruptive Care?

1. In what ways might ‘care’ be disruptive?

I am impressed with how Puig de la Bellacasa unfolds multiple meanings of care layer by layer without setting a predetermined or idealized framework. Despite her speculative approach resisting a final solution, I am still prompted to think in what ways could ‘care’ be disruptive? On one hand, care could stand for the neoliberal economy of individualization, reducing social problems into self-responsibility (p.9). On the other, care could be engaging in the messy world (p.6), a world more than ‘human’ as the author ponders. 

The moral economy promoted by neoliberalism makes me wonder about the ‘intelligent lockdown’ adopted by the Dutch government. Does this mean that to ‘care’ (for oneself?) in a time of COVID-19 requires certain intelligence (and ableness)? In this situation, what kinds of disruptive ‘care’ could be reclaimed?

2. ‘Do not touch’ in a museum and the world at this moment

Recently there has been discussion on how COVID-19 affects the museum world (Rusty 2020). The chapter of ‘Touching Visions’ asks interesting questions that can also be inspiring for museum practice. Conventionally, a museum is considered a guardian of precious artifacts. So to care for museum object might mean not to touch, although pre-early museum history shows contradictory evidence (Classen 2017). Relation-based art opposes to such the dominance of vision and regulation of touch. However, in a situation of a pandemic, a museum certainly needs to redefine the interactive mode of these artworks. The “reversibility” of touch (p. 99) now is that when we touch, the virus might respond to the touch. So how does a museum re-make the relation between visitors and objects? How does relation aesthetics redefine itself with care?

Puig de la Bellacasa’s reflection on virtual technology also prompts me to think about the interactivity embraced by the museum lately. Does the employment of digitalization, virtual tour, and VR technology, for example, reduce the distance between the museum and the public? As the author suggested, these touch technologies might not “reduce distance” but “redistribute it” (p. 109).

References

1. Rachel Trusty, ‘What Will Become of Interactive Art When Museums Reopen?’

https://www.aam-us.org/2020/05/08/what-will-become-of-interactive-art-when-museums-reopen/?fbclid=IwAR29hX4fz2pqaYJdSzKBOxyTqbfGT0wGMATrcxlkLEM84rB9l5CGT9TMOSY

2. Constance Classen, The Museum of the Senses: Experiencing Art and Collections. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.