On September 23, the Musée de la photographie de l’Élysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, inaugurated a new space devoted to digital culture. For the moment occupying the loft area of the institution, the LabElysée is first of all an experimental venue. A surface of 200 square meters is slated for a similar space in the future building of the Musée de l’Élysée near the Lausanne train station (opening 2021).
Museums around the world increasingly create half-real, half-virtual spaces intended to test, question, and understand digital images such as those that proliferate on the internet and social networks. The Fotomuseum in Winterthur, another major photography museum in Switzerland, opened its digital lab, Situations, in 2015.
The LabElysée will feature interactive installations, conferences, carte blanche events, and artists’ actions, either in connection with the temporary exhibitions or independently. The Museum hopes to help the general public to better understand issues in digital images, as well as to invite them to reflect about the way in which intangible, agile, and quick image may enter a museum. The LabElysée is going to be multipurpose, adaptable, and responsive, ready to welcome spontaneous actions. The lab will also be a window onto the digitization of the collections and library holdings of the Musée de l’Élysée, a project ongoing for several years.
The LabElysée has launched its first interactive installation, asking regular social networks users to pick the picture on their smartphone that is the most important to them. All you need to do is to post the photo on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #ceciestimportant. Once printed, these images will gradually cover up the walls of the LabElysée starting on September 23.
Such an innovation does not fail to raise questions about its place in a photography museum. How to integrate it into exhibition spaces, how to set it up, make it attractive? It is not enough to multiply touch-screen devices and other interactive installations. What this calls for is a new conception of museology, yet to be developed.
Luc Debraine
Luc Debraine is a culture and society journalist. He lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland.
