A decade and some years ago, I was preoccupied with the question of laying out the fundamentals for a new institution, an institution for the present. Not one that obsequiously follows fossils of conditions long gone. As presumptuous as it sounds, one of my questions was to what extent an institution can manage without press releases “targeting” a general audience, without public relations, and in short, mass communication. Could, instead, the institution’s users and constituents (a term we began to use a decade ago and never liked its plural) welcome the institution to occupy some real estate in their heads and counterclaim an agency? I did not desire a cult of institutionalized followers but what one may call “loyal opposition” in the way Adrian Piper once alluded to in her relationship to MoMA in the context of Information exhibition. She’d remarked that “[…] You show your commitment to and concern for the well-being of an institution by critiquing it and doing what you can to improve it.” The relationship with the users and constituents would not be predicated on soliciting approval but a dialogical relation. Trust takes time to build and a minute to destroy, especially as users are, rightly so, principled and less lenient.
One of the critical concepts that appeared, one that I may have read somewhere and appropriated to my deck of cards, was the “threshold.” People of institutions have different ideas about what that may mean. They confuse it, for example, with notions of opacity and transparency. One assumes that the threshold is lower if you are transparent as a glass wall or fascinating as a shop facade. As if depressurizing spaces between the street and the “lobby,” when clear as cellophane, make the transition far more amicable. Such is the long story of museum entrances. MoMA’s glass entrance from 1939 democratized access, bringing the once noble ideals to the pedestrian’s eye level, making the experience of modernity feel physical. You may say Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion anticipates the discussion, but that was a time-event building of performativity with a threshold that could not be more daunting. It was really Willem Sandberg who upped the ante in 1954 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Sandberg not only opted for a glass door for his “Sandberg Wing,” now demolished but also had a scaffold built right on the facade of the historic building. He diverted the foot traffic so that passers-by could peek into the first floor of the fortress. But, an entrance is not a threshold as much as your apartment door cannot guard you against the outside. Wired and wireless signals, airborne chemicals, and virus penetrate it. These are things architecture cannot do or undo.
Threshold, I have learned the hard way, is not about accessibility, fluent information, charming socialization spaces, attentive staff, and guards who do not hound you. It is about the conditions of how the two parties begin to trust each other, not to consent but agree to a process of accepting each other as workable partners, not only in the institution’s programs but also in the veracity of the relationship. It is a fluid contract, not a once-and-done deal. It is not merely about the “offer,” but how the institution acts upon the world, its demeanor, decency, levels with a situation, and treats the user as wiser than itself. Absolute parrhesia could not be expected but adopting and growing into its output is a must. Otherwise, you are just shopping, doing good and being timely by commoning the institution in the Summer, queering in the Fall and decolonizing in the Winter.
The pandemic blew the threshold open, at least to those who have access to stable and decent internet—like a pesky intruder in the house, never listening to anything you need, just throwing content at you. Is this what I want to see and why are you in my home? That, in effect, is a very wrong idea about the threshold, invasion by mediocrity, a one-way affair. But that is not what I am talking about, nor am I talking about sleazy tactics to make the institution look as if it is listening and cares, with cute inclusionism and workshops in lollipop making. It is not supposed to be a piece of cozy, pleasure-inducing machinery. The institution is neither your buddy nor are you supposed to marvel at how it does a pirouette. Can you trust that it can make a coherent argument that may touch your life and see things otherwise? That it will engage you in a difficult conversation but does not claim to have all the answers? That it is not afraid of conflicting statements? That its practice reflects what it communicates?
Hence is the threshold. Of course, it is easier to be in wedlock with the legacy of the industrial fair, in infinitely worthless spaces of acclimatization and depressurizing, and engage in professional fictions. The Turbine Hall’s success was, in effect, our failure. The museion storyline may be preferable, but either way, the threshold is not the Tardis. You can always go through the motions, see something out of habit. But, judge for yourself when the museum is worthy of a threshold, if it honors or betrays that trust if, it’s willing to be rectified or cataloged away as a place to visit now and then. Brecht could not have been more succinct. “All mankind should love each other / But bring an axe when you talk to your brother.”
vasıf kortun 