“Over the last twenty years, audiences for museums, galleries, and performing arts institutions have decreased, and the audiences that remain are older and whiter than the overall population. Cultural institutions argue that their programs provide unique cultural and civic value, but increasingly people have turned to other sources for entertainment, learning, and dialogue. They share their artwork, music, and stories with each other on the Web. They participate in politics and volunteer in record numbers. They even read more. But they don’t attend museum exhibits and performances like they used to.”

The text above is a statement from the preface of The Participatory Museum: a book/guide to working with community members and visitors for cultural institutions. All the more alarming is that the statement is actually based on research done by the National Endowment for the Arts on arts attendance in the United States. Nina Simon (also the principal of Museum 2.0) decided to write The Participatory Museum as a practical guide for museums and other cultural organizations to help them become more connected to and entwined with their community. As she continues in her preface:

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MOMO's work in Lisbon

Today is Incu Thursday again, which means we added the latest confirmations to the Incubate festival line-up. Besides new music artists, films and projects we also added a Q&A between New York post-graffiti artist MOMO and Tilburg based artist Koen Delaere to the program of the Incubate DIY Conference.

MOMO is known for thoughtful urban-intervention using post-graffiti: experiments include tagging his name a tag the width of Manhattan, over-sized outdoor collage, tide powered sculpture, a computer script which makes his art for him, and prints, paintings, and videos that rely on chance and context for fun and substance.

Born in San Francisco, he has traveled most of his life, discounting six years New York. He joined a graffiti crew in 1999 while living in Spain, found his use of color while employed in the Caribbean, and fell for outside art while living outside: in a cave for a year, in a truck for a year, and in a tent for a year.

In New York, Barcelona, Toronto and Sao Paolo, buildings are decorated by graffiti artist Momo, with or without prior consent. Incubate adds Tilburg to this list of cities. In September, the artist along with some local help will decorate buildings in Tilburg with colors, lines and figures. Momo’s work is abstract, futuristic and minimalistic, making it very different from other graffiti.

Adding to the context of the works he will make in Tilburg, MOMO will do a Q&A at the DIY Conference with Koen Delaere, an artist living and working in Tilburg. Delaere will talk to him about the origins and ethics of his work.

With the addition of MOMO and Koen Delaere at the DIY Conference, we now have our program for the conference completed! Take a look at the whole program here and get your tickets (Pay What You Want) here. See you there!

Last week, renowned music and culture website Pitchfork published their 60 favorite music books. As they state in their post, it’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to come with a ‘definitive’ list with so much being published on music: “There’s so much ground to cover in terms of time (a century-plus of popular experimental music), space (there’s writing on music from all over the world), sound (any genre is conceivably fair game), and format (biography, record guide, critical study, anthology, memoir).” Their guide shouldn’t be seen as a ‘best-of music writing’, but a cross section with the books that stood out the most for the writers of the site.

Amongst them are both Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad as well as The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty.

Both Michael Azerrad and Bill Drummond will speak at the Incubate DIY Conference. Azerrad will talk about his experiences while interviewing the bands (like Black Flag, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth and Minutemen) described in the book. Bill Drummond will give a lecture as well as perform his latest work The17 at the Incubate DIY Conference.

Read the full list over here. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to be found amongst the titles. Here’s what they wrote about Our Band Could Be Your Life:

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On Friday September 16, Incubate will organize the DIY Conference. The conference displays the development and ethics of DIY culture with lectures, interviews, film, panels and stands. Renowned speakers and artists within DIY culture, such as Michael Azerrad, Bill Drummond and Steve Ignorant will participate in the program. Through the Pay What You Want-principle, visitors can determine the value of the conference for themselves.

The Incubate DIY Conference will take place on September 16 at the Midi Theatre in Tilburg. It is part of the main theme of the festival this year: We Are Incubate, about the artistic practice, DIY ethics and audience participation in independent culture. The conference offers reflection on the extensive program of the festival.

The keynote speech will be given by Michael Azerrad, author of Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana (for which he is seen as the definitive Nirvana biographer) and Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground. He was a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and he has written features for amongst others New York Times and Mojo. Our Band Could Be Your Life describes American underground bands such as Black Flag, Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü who, while finding relatively little mainstream success, did have an establishing role in American alternative and indie rock. The book was named one of the 50 best music books even written by The Guardian. At the Incubate DIY Conference, Michael will share the insights he gained while interviewing the bands and writing the book. (Photo: Getty)

Bill Drummond is best known as co-founder of late 1980s hit group The KLF and its 1990s “avant-art” media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation. With The KLF, Drummond scored multiple Number 1 hits and wrote “The Manual”, a book on how to write a Number 1 hit. The K Foundation is notorious for burning a million pounds in 1994. At the conference, Bill Drummond will give a lecture as well as perform his latest work The17. It is a reaction to pre-recorded music, where an ad hoc choir, consisting of the visitors of the conference, will sing one of Drummond’s works. The performance will take place just once at the conference. (Photo: Lucy Johnston)

English punk legend Steve Ignorant will be interviewed by writer and BBC commentator John Robb. With his band Crass, Ignorant was one of the driving forces of the DIY movement. Crass was one of the first bands to arrange their record sales and concerts without interference from the music industry and asked fans to make their own merchandise. John Robb writes for The Observer, The Guardian and The Independent and will interview Ignorant about DIY, Crass’ and Ignorant’s ethics and his autobiography The Rest is Propaganda.

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