Infinite obsession.jpg: how to make the most of your museum experience

Abstract

The idea of the project occurred by noticing that most visitors were not interested in enjoying the artworks during their visit to an exhibition. They were, nonetheless, in search of the perfect click. Intrigued, I decided to further explore this phenomenon, using photography as the main approach, in addition to relying on Walter Benjamin’s text, “The work of art in the age of its technical reproducibility”, 1936. I also analyze the context of cultural industry in which museums are inserted today; because even institutions often encourage visitors to post photos of their visits on social networks. I use the same language and platform as visitors to post my records, an account on Instagram (@obsessaoinfinita.jpg). The name of the research was inspired by Yayoi Kusama exhibition that took place in São Paulo in 2014, which was posted thousands of times on Instagram, and ended up attracting many more viewers than the production had expected. So, I added the name of this sample to the most common type of image format, JPG , the exact same file extension that photos are uploaded to social networks. Infinite obsession.jpg is then born.