(intro music) - The Artists Experiment Initiative is not exactly an artist
residency project. It's an experimental approach to socially-engaged experiences that may help audiences to relate to art
in different and new ways. Artists that have
participated in this project commit to a long-term
relationship with us. It's a process of research, it's a process of reflection. They get to know the institution
in a very intimate way. We are currently in our second year of our Artists Experiment Initiative, and we have invited a number of artists that we admire, that we really
are inspired by their work, to come and look at our exhibitions, and look at our collection,
and work with us to develop a series of new
programs for next year. - [Paul] I would say, it's
taken me maybe 15 years to become an artist that's really engaged with the public. I would say the first 15 years were a very selfish practice, and I don't mean that in a negative way, but artists are still
trained to work alone, to work by themselves. I think the first step of working in an engaged practice was just simply to learn how to work not alone. An exhibition space is
designed to receive objects, and in a way, it separates the transcation of the artists, and I think, "Oh, I'm making things
for the exhibition space." I think, because my work used
to deal a lot with history, I started to get a lot of requests to make work that were specific to a site, specific to a history. A lot of work that was
in the public sphere. Immediately, when you
leave the exhibition space, the situation gets much
more complex and richer, and you inevitably have
to think about the viewer. With Artists Experiment, I'm trying to push it further and be like, "Which public, of the
public that goes to MoMA, "would I like to speak to?" I think that people forget that a museum is not just a
place of consumption, where you come and look
at art, or consume art, but it could also be
a place of production. Once you make art, you look at it, at this object and you
realize that there's another person just like
you on the other side, making that thing. That is an incredible
feeling of connection. - (mumbles), what we do is to make complicated data accessible. It may be hard for you to
encounter these data on your own, but maybe through some of the displays that we've created, we provide a kind of human-scaled encounter with it, so that you can come to
your own conclusions. - The data that tends to
appeal to all three of us most is data that is
inherently human in some way. Whether it is all the words
Shakespeare ever wrote, or data that's about people and the way that they behave, and the ways that they move through the world. - I sort of envisioned
this data space of MoMA as being this place that the public has never been able to see. How do we bring people
into that experience is something that's
been really interesting for us to think and talk about. - There's a beautiful
story to be told about how MoMA thinks about its objects, and that thinking is maybe captured through the data that has
been collected, right, the concerns and the considerations. What I think we're interested in, is looking at how that helps us come to better understand
the original thing-ness of the objects that
are in the collections. - [Allison] I make
interactive installations that often invite the
public to participate. The public is very
important in the activation of the projects that I do. In many ways, I am
collaborating with the public. My work is very research-based. One of the great things about working with museum education departments is that they are also
interested in research, and in learning and in teaching. In Artists Experiment,
the artists involved have access to all kinds of archives, and we can do research and inquire into all the things that we're curious about in terms of the museum's history, the workings of the museum. It's really a behind-the-scenes view of the museum itself. Ultimately, all of the
projects that we're doing will culminate in public programs. So, it's both a challenge and just a very exciting opportunity to try and figure out how each of our practices will translate into this context. - We recognize that living
artists are the ones who infuse life into this institution. We, together, undertake this process of collective learning to
create new experiences. That try to re-imagine
what the relationship to the museum can be. (outro music)