In the six weeks since Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson launched Moon, their collaborative web project, 35,000 people have made their marks on the site.
Welcome to the collective work of art in the age of virtual connectivity.
The impulse to create Moon was practical, but it was also utopian. The Danish-Icelandic artist and China’s artist activist had wanted to collaborate on a project, and Ai Weiwei can’t leave China, so they set up a virtual meeting place. And they opened it to the world.
Moon is a place where people from anywhere on Earth can connect through drawing. It exists beyond the art world, beyond borders, beyond traditional ideas of authorship and value.
Dianne Bos, Vimy Trench and Stones, Vimy Memorial Park, France, 2014.
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Eric Fischl, Late America, 2016, oil on linen.
©ERIC FISCHL/COURTESEY THE ARTIST AND SKARSTEDT, NEW YORK
The announcement image for "Nairy Baghramian: Dwindle Down," 2017.
COURTESY MARIAN GOODMAN GALLERY
Installation view of "Artist Run New York: The Seventies," 2017, at Jean-Paul Najar Foundation, showing, in the foreground, Robert Grosvenor's Steel Pipe (1975).
MUSTHAFA ABOOBACKER/©2017 JEAN-PAUL NAJAR FOUNDATION
Dianne Bos, Hill 60 Dark, Caterpillar Hill, Belgium, 2014.
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Eliasson and Ai Weiwei are among the figures who are harnessing the web (and their own name recognition) to unite global audiences in participatory artworks, on a scale that was never before possible. Yoko Ono’s smilesfilm app, for example, taps into the ubiquity of the cell phone and the human predisposition for selfies.
Moon, open to anyone with a computer that runs Firefox or Chrome, channels the human impulse for collective mark-making that has persisted from Paleolithic cave painting through Pompeii through the rise of spray paint, with a stop in CBGB’s bathroom.
Not that there isn’t bathroom humor on the Moon—“the men’s toilet at least,” Eliasson told me on the phone from Denmark. “It’s odd mixture between the really creative, and side by side by something totally non-creative.”
It could be a cat picture. Or “it can also be your last wish or proposal to marry someone or something that matters,” he says.
“That’s how we came up with the Moon. It used to be part of Earth. It’s our friend, the marginalized part of the earth. It’s the idea that the Moon represents something unconscious from society.”
Screenshot from Big Glitter, by Olia Lialina and Mike Tyka.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS
Installation view of "Natalie White: A Muse Me," 2017, at Bill Brady, Miami.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BILL BRADY, MIAMI
The future headquarters of there-there, on Fountain Avenue in East Hollywood.
PHOTO BY SHARON SUH
Babette Mangolte, in collaboration with Trisha Brown, Water Motor, 1978, 16mm black-and-white film, 2 minutes, 30 seconds.
©2007 BABETTE MANGOLTE, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED/COURTESY BROADWAY 1602 HARLEM, NEW YORK
Anthony James.
COURTESY THERE-THERE
The organizers have seen a transformation in the content since the site was launched. In the beginning, there were scribbles, doodles, and drawings. Then came flipbooks and word poems.
Now, more and more, there are collaborations, and clusters, and virtual versions of the Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse. Sometimes people work together on large drawings. Other times, interlopers take over.
“Clearly we have no control over what is actually going on,” Eliasson says.
So far the artists haven’t found it necessary to moderate the site, which has a disclaimer warning against intolerant posts.
Joshia McElheny, proposal for Prismatic Park, 2016.
©JOSIAH MCELHENY/COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST
Tala Madani, Spill, 2006.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MANA CONTEMPORARY
Ellsworth Kelly, Black Over Yellow, 2015, oil on canvas, two joined panels.
©ELLSWORTH KELLY/COURTESY MATTHEW MARKS GALLERY
Florine Stettheimer, ca. 1917–20.
PETER A. JULEY & SON COLLECTION/SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Damien Hirst, Bust of the Collector, 2016.
JANELLE ZARA
Mika Tajima, Meridian Gold, pressurized water vapor system, networked LED bulbs, real-time gold commodity indexes, custom analysis program, wood, pigment, sculpted resin, 2016.
COURTESY SCULPTURECENTER, NEW YORK
Installation view of "Natalie White: A Muse Me," 2017, at Bill Brady, Miami.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BILL BRADY, MIAMI
Alserkal Avenue Arrows, Dubai.
COURTESY ALSERKAL AVENUE
The biggest surprise for Eliasson was not how many visitors have made a mark–but how many haven’t. “People are spending a lot of time strolling around on the moon, looking, archeologically digging around,” he says.
You can explore content by surfing the photos, browsing the hashtags, and following the #MoonMessage hashtag on Twitter.
Hector Hyppolite, Birds and Flowers (1946-47), which was in the collection of Jonathan Demme before selling at auction in 2014.
COURTESY MATERIAL CULTURE
The scene at the Drawing Center's gala at Capitale.
HUNTER ABRAMS/BFA.COM
The gala's honorees. From left to right: Rashid Johnson, Teresita Fernández, Marcel Dzama, and R.H. Quaytman.
HUNTER ABRAMS/BFA.COM
Next up, the artists are thinking about a Moon app for Tablets and phones. Also, Eliasson says, they’re considering an exhibition that would bring some Moon drawings to Earth.