Sarah Schultz

In July 2011, a confederacy of artists called Machine Project flooded Open Field with 17 different happenings, including an operetta for dogs and polygraph tests for museum visitors. Mark Allen discusses the role of artists in the social experiments of museums, and the reasons for making work that is exploratory, contingent, and open to failure.

The Futurefarmers collective talks about the temporary classroom, ways that voice is used as a tool for exchange and liberation, and the series of objects and public events they designed to raise the expression of the people.

The origins of Open Field are explained, from the germ of an idea and the research into the “commons” to its collaborators and participants to its rules of etiquette, tools, and expectations to its planning and execution.