I previously went to M0MA to view Shigeko Kubota’s Liquid Reality. While I was roaming around searching for the exhibit I came across Marta Minujín’s MINUCODE. I was interested instantly but was too invested in the search for what I came to view that I made note of the interesting piece and went on my way. I have since came back to MoMA with the purpose of returning to the interesting room I had walked through with out fully taking the art in.

The room was fairly empty and most of those who walked in stayed for a few moments and then went about their lives. I stood in the center of the room and was surrounded by moving images from a series of recordings of a cocktail party of some sort. Vintage dinner jackets and small moments of human gestures filled the walls around me. It felt almost as if I had crashed the party and just came to eavesdrop. I then began to slowly walk around the room closer to the images projected onto the four walls. I wondered why these people where there. What they were talking about? Were these co-workers? Was it a high school reunion? I then tried to focus on just one wall, timing out when the camera would cut and repeat again. I couldn’t maintain my focus and found myself having to scan each wall to find some kind of moment that stood out. Because of the low volume and overlapping pieces of sound I became more and more interested on the little gestures that these people were making. I wondered how aware they where of the presence of the camera. They didn’t seem to be acting unnaturally or putting on some kind of performance. I then read about the piece and the artist.

The name of the piece was a combination of the artists name, Minujín, and the word code. The relevance being the intent to view specific human social codes. Minujín conducted a series of four cocktails parties in 1968 where she invited people who specialized in fields of art, fashion, business and politics. She invited them through newspaper advertisements and received over a thousand replies. She then made a questionnaire to categorize those who replied by their interests and profession. Once she created the guest list she hosted four parties over the course of four consecutive nights. Once the footage was complete she then invited those who attended the parties to come and view the footage. She screened the footage for them in hopes that they would observe themselves “backwards”, to watch their own behaviors and social interactions. Part of the inspiration came from Minujín’s interest in Marshall McLuhan’s theories of mass media. His thought was that society is far more effected by the quality’s of the mediums used in media, then the actual content being consumed. I’m not entirely sure how this theory translates to the piece MINUCODE, but I enjoyed it all the same.