The Gestalt of Street Team: Guerilla Tactics, GIFs, and the Museum

Abstract

STREET TEAM addresses architecture as a webpage and GIFs as graffiti. In STREET TEAM, I deployed animated GIFs or short video loops in museums in Mexico City, Glasgow, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Berlin, using the physical spaces outside of the digital world in order to create a discourse between public and private space. I brought together GIFs made by several different artists for the project. At once relational and gestural, animated GIFs are small digital movements and moments existing on the Internet. The Animated GIF format of moving images can be used in conversation to communicate simple ideas in response to other people, other GIFs/images or even websites. They can be short samples, fractions of events, or hypnotizing, timeless loops. This project was made possible by a travel grant from the John W. Kurtich Foundation.