Danger Museum

Project Partner:
Cork Midsummer Festival

Date: 15 – 24 June 2005
Venue: Cork Public Museum

Project Description:
The ‘Danger Museum' is a mobile artist collective that develops projects in different sites around the world by entering into a dialogue with local cultural producers including artists, writers and arts administrators.

A new work from Miho Shimizu & Øyvind Renberg of Danger Museum was commissioned by Cork Midsummer Festival. The result was ‘Blow-In’ curated by Grant Watson.

‘Blow-In’ was the culmination of Danger Museum's experiences as outsiders or "blow-ins" to Cork city. Thirteen interviews were compiled in a publication, while collage pieces and a performance were shown in Cork Public Museum. The project used the history of Cork as a backdrop for an exploration of the development of Cork's cultural scene and the role that Cork 2005 was playing in its development.

Danger Musuem approached artists, institutions and administrations for interviews. Together they formed a spectrum of the Cork art scene, starting with curator Grant Watson's introduction to the project's commissioner, Cork Midsummer Festival.

The interviews speak about the framework for art in Cork, how to improve conditions and the significance of the Capital of Culture to the city. The moods shift between patriotism, scepticism, hope and cynicism about practising in Cork city.

A set of collages introduced other aspects of Cork, and formed a commentary on its cultural condition. But rather than directly challenging the Capital of Culture, the collages had a more off-beat approach. They depicted the city as sitting beneath a fog whose whiteness covers the buildings and seems to cast a blanket of silence over all the discursiveness thrown up by the year's events.

Cork was portrayed as a small town, where being a big fish can be both good and bad. It is a retreat for many big city getaways, and a restraint for those with ambitions.