In promoting Alfredo Jaar’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ exhibition, Mona Museum’s IGTV shared a promotional video of the same title capturing the spirit of the piece. Mona’s in-house media team are clearly professionals. Their work across the museum’s social media platforms showcase the talent at their disposal. The investment into high-quality social media content creation aligns itself with the reputation of the gallery itself – forward-thinking, contemporary and innovative.
Eerie slow-motion clips of patrons interacting with the red and black exhibition coupled with Jaar’s narration evokes a sense of discomfort for the viewer. The heavy ambience, distant claps and synth disturbing the sound sets up the viewer for the tension experienced within the piece itself. As the visuals shift to a cooler, brighter tone, the backing music fades into silence. The relief of his movement away from the darkness both audibly and visually allows for Jaar’s narration of his intent to resonate in the viewer’s ears. His message that the piece promotes a return to the “essence of life” is given a space to be heard clearly without interruption from the external noise. Being an immersive exhibition, the efforts to give audiences a sense of the discomfort the work seeks to address is an effective means of using experimental sound and visuals as a piece of marketing.
While the sound and visual design solidifies this as an experimental piece of content, the use of Jaar’s narration and the visuals following a patron’s experience from start to finish keeps a linearity to the video, making it accessible to wider audiences. The technical experimental risks this video takes while maintaining a linear narrative allows audiences to treat this as an entry point to the exhibition and its abstract methodology. This is a different form of video that most would usually see on their new feeds, lending users to ease themselves into the world of this piece and the themes it explores.