Project»Dia:Beacon:Yelp

 

Participated in a Dead Hare Radio show celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the Dia:Beacon museum in Beacon New York.  From the Dead Hare Radio blog:

A documentation, through interpretive readings, of reviews of Dia:Beacon which have been posted on Yelp.com over the past eight years. Yelp, in its current form has been around since early 2005 and the first posted review of Dia:Beacon dates to April of that year, and to date, 80 reviews have since been posted. This project documents these reviews as a collective barometer of this museum 10 years after opening its doors.

Each participant was asked to choose one of the 80 Dia:Beacon reviews on Yelp and record an interpretive reading of it. I chose one of the longest reviews, charged with rambling, emotive distaste. In my reading of the "Kate B" Yelp review I tried to imagine that I was inhuman, like voice synthesis software, unbiased, unsympathetic, unrelenting. (but ended up sounding like a North European with a forced American accent) I chose this reading style to try and minimize judgment in the interpretation, too cheap to just make a joke out of someone's experience which they've generously shared online. But I participated in this thing because there *is* something preposterous about writing a Yelp review of a museum that specializes in conceptual/contemplative/minimal contemporary art. With almost 2 hours of Yelp readings in the Dead Hare Radio podcast the project itself becomes contemplative and sublime. I ended up having most of my laughs at the expense of Institutional Art - this toss up landed on the amateur/low side of the coin.

Here is the audio of my reading of Kate B's Dia:Beacon 2-star Yelp review written in 2009, and below is the text...