SPONSORS Major support for SPACES comes from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Berea Moving; CEC ArtsLink; the Cleveland Foundation; Cuyahoga Arts and Culture; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; the George Gund Foundation; Toby Devan Lewis; the National Endowment for the Arts: Art Works; the John P. Murphy Foundation; the Ohio Arts Council and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Additional support comes from James S. Anderson & David W. Wittkowsky, Fred & Laura Ruth Bidwell, Dodd Camera and Video, FORM, Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP, Donna & Stewart Kohl, Montlack Realty, Process Creative Studios, vocon, and hopefully you! Large print available at the front desk. © 2014 May 30 – July 25, 2014 Pavlina Mladenova’s residency is sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion artist residency program, which partners international artists with local arts organizations to maximize cultural exchange between the artists and the community. SPACES offers residencies to international, national and local artists who explore and experiment. Pavlina Mladenova (Sofia, Bulgaria) The artist would like to give special thanks to Bruce Edwards, Martha Loughridge, Christina Vassallo, Marilyn Ladd-Simmons, Michelle Epps, Iris Rozman and Ross Bochnek (SPACES); Kathleen Cerveny, Sally Winter, Kaye Ridolfi and the Cleveland Foundation & Creative Fusion program; Prof. Kimberly Ruggeri, Michael Wachter, Denise Ivan-Antus (Cleveland State University); Jill Snyder, Elena Harvey Collins (MOCA Cleveland); Mystery Art Shoppers; friends from the University of Akron; Creative Fusion artists and their hosts; BUCK BUCK friends; Jeff Chiplis & Cynthia Chiplis; Dan Kwong, Neno Belchev, Carlo Maggiora; Cleveland friends, friends all around the world, and her family in Bulgaria for their support. MYSTERY_ART_SHOPPING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ARTWORK CREDITS MYSTERY_ART_SHOPPING The project mystery_art_shopping is based on the Mystery Shopping concept used by market research companies to measure service quality or gather specific information about products and services. The process measures and records specific elements of the customer experience through the use of recruited and instructed participants who serve as mystery shoppers. Inserting art into the Mystery Shopping concept, literally and metaphorically, allows this typical marketing tool to explore new ways in which art and audience can connect. Constructed this way, the project mystery_art_shopping becomes a dualistic art experiment with two main directions for interpreting the project’s concept and processes: mystery_art and art_shopping. The mystery_art aspect consists of the mysterious role of the participants: unknowing co-creators of the art project who become creative partners with equal agency in its outcome. The mysterious nature of the project was a fundamental driving force in the exchange between the artist and the project participants. The tension created by its secrecy, combined with the shoppers’ innate curiosity, was a major motivation for their involvement. Participants were prepared and financially compensated by the artist for their art shopping experience. In turn, their participation was crucial to supporting the artist’s objectives. Art_shopping, the second aspect, depicts and analyzes the experiences of the project participants while performing as mystery art shoppers. In the context of art, "art shopping" is synonymous with any kind of contact with art: viewing, ticket buying, asking questions of a docent, touching, reflecting on a viewing experience, etc. The “mystery art shopping” process follows the exact structural attributes of standard mystery shopping practices, combined here with artistic improvisation and applied to contemporary art. 1 Author: Pavlina Mladenova Mystery Art Shoppers: Abdulrahman Rashwan, Adam Southivong, Aicha Quamine, Alexa Elliott, Andrew Brennan, Ariana Jones, Bob Ruggeri, Carrie Meszaros, C'erra, Vallentine, Chea Sokhouy, Connor Balderson, Corttrell Kinney, Dan Kwong, Daniel Graves, Daniel Reddaway, Danielle Pappas, Edward Robinson, Ellen Cusma, Erin Black, Erin DePaulo, Felicia Jackson, George Zelenkov, Jacqueline Wasson, James Wilkens, Jared Ingram, Jason Nammavong, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jesseka Starkey, Jessica Hodges, Jibreel Gould, Judith Lovett, Justin Njila, Kimberly Ruggeri, Lin Jia, Matt Ciszek, Maureen Kaye, Michael Cawley, Michael W. Wachter, Mohammed Aldeeri, Naif Klaib, Nick Riddle, Nik Majerle, Paul Duchow, Paul Locotosh, Phelan Spence, Shallanna Davis, Thomas Sheehan, Traci Hawley, Yundi Zhang, Zongtao Hu. Mystery Art Followers: Dan Kwong, Iris Rozman, Ross Bochnek, Pavlina Mladenova Photographers: Bruce Edwards, Dan Kwong, Carlo Maggiora, Iris Rozman, Ross Bochnek, Pavlina Mladenova Video: Bruce Edwards, Iris Rozman, Ross Bochnek, Dan Kwong, Pavlina Mladenova Video editor: Neno Belchev ARTIST BIO PAVLINA MLADENOVA is an artistic researcher, interdisciplinary artist and independent curator. Mladenova utilizes her background in marketing to expose the complex relationship between art and contact with art. Text, poetry, images, graphs, charts, tables, and video, are among the means of expression she employs. She has been awarded residencies for research projects by: UNESCO Aschberg at Sanskriti Foundation (New Delhi, India, 2012), Incheon Community at Space Beam (Incheon, South Korea, 2011), Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation at Gyeonggi Creation Center (Daebu-do, South Korea, 2010-11), UNIDEE and Unicredit at Cittadellearte - Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 2008). Her projects have been shown in solo exhibitions at Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Ansan, South Korea, 2011) and at Sanskriti Foundation (New Delhi, India, 2012), as well as in several group exhibitions in Bulgaria, Italy, India, Korea and the USA. Her work has been published in solo interdisciplinary books including: Found Gifts (2012), Kochu Drawing (2011), Families Archive (2011) and First Contact (2010-2011). Her curatorial projects focus on video art and have been presented internationally. She is a cofounder, co-director and co-curator of the Videoholica Festival since its inception in 2008. 6 Participants in the project were primarily students from Monte Ahuja College of Business at Cleveland State University and the object of mystery_art_shopping study was the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. This project was carried out in secret in order to preserve the quality and accuracy of the research process and data collected. LIST OF WORKS (Clockwise, starting on left wall) MYSTERY ART SHOPPING SURVEY OUTCOMES (2014) !Single channel video installation! 05:26 PROOF OF MYSTERY ART SHOPPING: WRIST BANDS (2014)! MOCA Cleveland wristbands QUESTIONS TO ARTISTS (2014) Black and white single channel video installation with sound !05:00 MYSTERY FOLLOWING (2014) Single channel video installation !05:00 MYSTERY ART SHOPPING: INSTRUCTIONS (2014) Color prints, framed !12” x 10” each MYSTERY ART SHOPPING: AGREEMENTS (2014) Ink on paper, framed !12” x 10” each MYSTERY ART SHOPPING EXPERIENCE IN WORDS (2014) !Black and white single channel video installation with sound 04:00 MYSTERY ART SHOPPER TALKS (2014) 4-channel video installation with sound 08:43, 06:48, 05:22, 06:45 The project began with the recruitment of a large number of people who were not pre-disposed to visiting art museums. They were asked to enact the mystery art shopping experience in a prescribed way that would lead them to notice things about the visit and the venue that otherwise might be overlooked, and to consider multiple aspects of the museum mystery_art_shopping experience and the art on marks the launch of the display. Some mystery art shoppers were followed Mystery Art Shopping by third party participants equipped with a digital Clinic—a new methodology camera, in order to developed for the study visually record the actual mystery shopping and measurement of performances. After the visit, filling out a audience experiences with questionnaire and contemporary art. conducting a short video interview deepened the mystery art shopping experience by insisting that participants recall and share the visit in detail, and comment and reflect on what they saw and felt. All the data, thoughts, photos, and videos that participants generated became part of the manifestation of the mystery_art_shopping outcome on display at SPACES. As mystery shopping practices typically require, all participants in the project received monetary compensation for their time and effort. mystery_art_shopping marks the launch of the Mystery Art Shopping Clinic—a new methodology developed by the artist for the study and measurement of audience experiences with contemporary art. The project mystery_art_shopping was conceived and executed during Pavlina Mladenova’s Creative Fusion Residency, sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation and hosted by SPACES, Cleveland. The project was realized with the support of Cleveland State University and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. —Text by Pavlina Mladenova and Dan Kwong 5 2 3 4
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