Number of times the sentence “add a word” was spoken during the vernissage of the exhibition “add a name”

The proposal is a performative intervention taking place during the vernissage / opening of the specific exhibition. The security guards will use a hand counter to quantify the number of times a specific word was listened by them inside the exhibition space. The word will be chosen together with the curatorial team, thinking on the specific context in which the exhibition is inserted, its place and the raised issues.

In this sense, the performance's goal is to open up its field of discussion based on a mimetic relation with the practice of quantitative audience measurement in cultural apparatuses. Inside these institutions, the audience reached is a factor for measuring its effect on society. The way the audience is counted changes in each institution, with some using a ticketing and turnstile system and others, usually because they allow free entrance every day, counting daily and manually, and it is very common to find a security guard wielding a metal counter performing this function. Always in a discreet manner, each click on the counter measures the institution and a number is provided for cultural accounting, in which quantity almost mixes with quality, in a struggle to prove the relevance of cultural devices.

However, the work aims to introduce a quantification that cannot be used in this context, creating a tension. Quantifying spoken words in a vernissage is not a parameter used by public incentives criteria to measure cultural quality. The proposal then starts from this action, which, at first glance, is the quantification of something useless within this context and, from there, creates a tension on the relations of cultural policies in their various layers.