Pavlina Mladenova: Special Presentation

Pavlina Mladenova will present her findings from mystery_art_shopping, an interdisciplinary artistic research project that was conceived and executed during her Creative Fusion residency, through the Cleveland Foundation. The project is based on the mystery shopping concept, usually used by market research companies to measure quality of service or gather specific information about products and services. This research project was carried out in secret to preserve the quality and accuracy of the research process and data collected. During this presentation at SPACES, Mladenova will reveal the secret project displaying its context, process, and the outcomes

Inserting Art into the Mystery Shopping concept, literally and metaphorically, Mladenova uses this typical marketing tool to explore alternative and new ways in which art and audience connect. Working with students from Monte Ahuja College of Business at Cleveland State University, Mladenova builds up and performs the exact structural attributes of mystery shopping applied to contemporary art, using the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland as an example. Mystery art shoppers are carefully instructed so that they perform specific tasks during their mystery art visits. After their visits they are asked a series of probing questions, ranging from responses to the art works on display, interactions with museum personnel, and the reflection on their personal experience as mystery art shoppers. The whole process is documented in various media.

Pavlina Mladenova and SPACES would like to thank to Kathleen Cerveny and Sally Winter (Cleveland Foundation), Prof. Kimberly Ruggeri, Michael Wachter and all the participating students and their friends (Cleveland State University), Jill Snyder (MOCA Cleveland) for their support of mystery_art_shopping project.

This presentation is free and open to the public.

(Image: performing mystery_art_shopping, at MOCA Cleveland, (2014), image courtesy of the artist)