Transforming practices of co-creating values in a contemporary art exhibition

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.

Findings

The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.

Research limitations/implications

The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.

Social implications

The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.

Originality/value

The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.

Citation

Kłeczek, R. and Hajdas, M. (2024), "Transforming practices of co-creating values in a contemporary art exhibition", Qualitative Market Research, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QMR-05-2022-0084

1. Introduction

There is an ongoing discussion, on both the academic and practitioner side, concerning how values in the domain of art are formed and how or whether they enrich audiences. Scholars focus on how viewers make sense of encountered artefacts (Christidou and Diamantopoulou, 2016, 2019; Pierroux, 2018; Plakoyiannaki et al., 2022), how and what they learn about them (Aitamurto et al., 2018; Christidou and Pierroux, 2018; Hornecker, 2008; Scott et al., 2013; Steier et al., 2015) or what their individual experiences are (Antón et al., 2018a, 2018b; Ciasullo et al., 2018).

Sense-making is also studied from the art-makers’ point of view. Drabble (2010) suggested that exhibition production is redefined as making art objects for display or forming art experiences and the reception of these. These studies suggest that exhibitions can be understood as sites of collective negotiation of knowledge, and the exhibition makers act to co-create the knowledge about the exhibition problem in question and not to prepare the artefacts only. Drabble (2010) considered to what extent and at what stages curatorial decisions influence the forming of temporary communities of practice, concluding by identifying what can be learned from exhibitions when observed as experiments in the collective negotiation of knowledge.

Although researchers define value creation by interactivity between the art-makers and different audience segments, dynamism and context-dependency, the definitions of co-creation of values in art and audience enrichment remain elusive (Walmsley, 2013). Through the lenses of practice theory (Holtz, 2014; Mak et al., 2022; Reckwitz, 2002a, 2002b; Røpke, 2009; Warde, 2005, 2014) and the metaphor “art is a tool, the museum is a lab” (Ernst et al., 2016), we notice that values’ contextualization to practices as a research unit, and both reproductions (lock-ins) and transformations of practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions remain understudied in previous research.

Our study addresses this gap to investigate how contemporary art exhibitions can inspire a transformation of practices and lead to audience enrichment. Based on practice theory and the “art is a tool […]” metaphor (Ernst et al., 2016) approaches, we formulate the following research question: How do art events enrich visitors by transforming their practices? We also offer the social practice transformation-based conceptualization of audience enrichment.

Our exploratory research is based on a single case study of the contemporary art exhibition. By collecting and analysing qualitative data from art-makers and visitors, we identified how the stakeholders’ interactions formed and transformed two practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions. We have documented the case of the transformation of practice that enriched the audience.

Our main theoretical contribution is three-fold. Firstly, we show both the formation and transformation practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions while encountering artifacts of contemporary visual art exhibitions. Secondly, we refine the understanding of audience enrichment, which we conceptualize as transformation-based, differentiating the repertoire of practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions. Thirdly, we challenge the traditional measurement of art-related aesthetic values from a practices-contextual perspective.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In our literature review, we begin with a critical reflection on previous studies on art-related values; then, in Section 2, we discuss practice theory as a background for studying practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions, particularly their formation and transformation. In Section 3, we present the method used, and in Section 4, we present the findings. The last section concludes with a summary of the main contributions and suggestions for further research.

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Studying art-related values: meanings, experiences, co-creation and enrichment

Previous studies show diverse perspectives on how viewers evaluate encountered artworks. Scholars have found that visitors make their own individual meanings irrespective of the art event design, and how curators attempt to “speak to” visitors via exhibits fail to work in practice (Christidou and Diamantopoulou, 2016, 2019). New modalities of art encounters (e.g. real and vicarious touching of exhibited sculptures) function as an additional source of information that advances individual interpretations of artefacts’ meanings for the viewers (Christidou and Pierroux, 2018). Similarly, engagement in art events via Web 2.0 (Social Web) technologies enables people to interact in new ways (e.g. many-to-many), create their own content and share their resources (Bakhshi and Throsby, 2012; Brown et al., 2011; Vermeeren et al., 2018) and enables visitors not only to participate, but also become active co-creators of their own experience (Antón et al., 2018a, 2018b; Ciasullo et al., 2018; Pulh and Mencarelli, 2015). However, all these studies interpret art values as personal, individual experiences and put them outside the unit of analysis. In other words, the authors do not investigate the benchmarks for evaluating works of art or whether these benchmarks are shared or based on shared principles.

Other scholars (Pelowski et al., 2018) studied the viewers’ emotional and cognitive experiences as responses to encounters with the artefacts. The viewers reported their experiences on the emotional (pleasant-unpleasant and beautiful-ugly) and cognitive (meaningful-meaningless) scales as their reactions to the artworks in the museum as stimuli. The authors assume a priori the division of experiences into emotional and cognitive ones and make the established benchmarks universal for evaluating any art, including contemporary art.

Still, other scholars have studied art values using learning-related categories. They examined how explaining interventions affects learning outputs from the art encounter. Aitamurto et al. (2018) found that the book guide taught users more information about the paintings they interacted with (for example, a user said in the post-survey, “The crab is a symbol of vanity in life,” but had not noted that in the pre-survey). Here, the researchers investigate what visible symbols of the artwork the visitors understand and do not investigate how contemporary art changes the benchmarks of values (Ernst et al., 2016).

Another category discussed in previous studies on contemporary art values is audience enrichment. Scholars relate audience enrichment with audience engagement in the co-creation of art values. The enrichment is associated with visitors’ competence to talk (analyse) and argue (debate) about art in the way they do about sports events when visitors do not do this because they rarely, if ever, feel sufficiently knowledgeable to debate the meaning of art events (Conner, 2004) or actively discovering new meanings and offering their critique (Walmsley, 2016, 2019). The enrichment might imply emotional, interpersonal, social or even spiritual development (Varbanova, 2013). Walmsley (2019) declared that studies on art values’ co-creation entered the “enrichment period” led by Conner’s (2004, 2013) seminal work on audience engagement and enrichment. On the other hand, it is a complex and contestable concept because it can imply some personal transformation, some underlying aspiration to make audiences “better people”, as access to art is complex, and its understanding is difficult for outsiders (Meisiek and Barry, 2014).

Scholars declare that audience enrichment is the actual output of an art event (Conner, 2004, 2013; Walmsley, 2016), that it is not reducible to telling an audience what an artefact means (Conner, 2004, 2013) and that art-makers should commit resources to enable audience enrichment (Conner, 2004, 2013) even if some art-makers resist this (Conner, 2004).

Summarizing the previous research, scholars relate audience enrichment with co-creating art values (Conner’s, 2004, 2013; Walmsley, 2016, 2019). However, scholars interpret art values as personal, individual experiences and put them outside the unit of analysis. In other words, the visitors co-create their own individual experiences (Antón et al., 2018a, 2018b; Ciasullo et al., 2018; Pulh and Mencarelli, 2015) with either unknown benchmarks (Christidou and Diamantopoulou, 2016, 2019; Christidou and Pierroux, 2018) or measured on the predefined universal scales (Pelowski et al., 2018). We believe that advancing research on art values requires another perspective that conceptualizes art values, co-creation and enrichment in a new way.

2.2 Co-creating values and users’ enrichment in practice theory

Ernst et al. (2016) formulated the metaphor “art is a tool, the museum is a lab,” which suggests that art can be used to change art-related values and that a museum can be a lab where new collective behaviours are identified and incubated. The metaphor suggests studying values in the art according to the following interpretation:

• art-makers create the configurations of artefacts to reinterpret the values that matter for different audiences;

• visitors participate actively in the exploration of values the exhibitions reflect, wishing to discover new or alternative interpretations of the values;

• exhibitions should make the visitors conscious of their own interpretations of the values in question, which is a starting point for a dialogue between them;

• the art-makers’ and visitors’ interpretations of particular values are not assumed to be congruent and not even treated as sound output; and

• the art-makers can inspire a collective change of perspective (interpretation) develop new cultural insights and new social practices.

The “art is a tool […]” metaphor interprets the formation of values as an interactive process where the art providers inspire, by exposing artefacts, a visitor’s reinterpretation of the values in question. The metaphor reflects the cultural mediation practices of museums (Backer et al., 2014), which allow to enrich the visitor experience or transform it (Addis et al., 2023) through various tools and resources provided. The metaphor suggests that curatorship provides art events as the tools to transform shared art-related values. It is opposed to framing curatorship as providing art interventions to engage the audience in generating their individual expressions or individual sense-making when using the artefacts (Stuedahl and Lowe, 2014).

The postulates embedded in a metaphor, “art is a tool […]”, are convergent to practice theory (Holtz, 2014; Mak et al., 2022; Reckwitz, 2002a, 2002b; Røpke, 2009; Warde, 2005, 2014). According to this theory, the social practice is a routine, collective configuration of three elements:

1. values (or rules of what is “right/valuable” or “wrong/not valuable”) in the practice;

2. stakeholders’ actions embodying the values embedded in practices but also requiring the acquisition of the skills relevant to a particular practice; and

3. resources, e.g. tools, materials, infrastructure and knowledge that are used in a specific way (i.e. in accordance with the values) and enable or limit the implementation of the practice in stakeholders’ actions (Schatzki, 2002; Echeverri and Skålén, 2011; Smagacz-Poziemska et al., 2020; Spotswood et al., 2015).

Therefore, the practices are the nexuses of sayings, doings and understanding of values (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011; Schatzki, 1996, 2002). Consequently, scholars should study the sayings, doings and understandings of values in contexts of practices.

Practice theory (Warde, 2005, 2014) sheds new light on studying values by contextualizing them to practices. Particular acts of consumption, including consumer evaluations, are studied as moments of routine, collective practices. This view minimizes the analytic importance of individual acts of consumption and evaluations (Warde, 2005) – which in the contemporary art domain relate to visitors’ individual experiences, sense-making or interpretations. In practice theory, values are collective norms (Akaka et al., 2013, p. 278; Holbrook, 1999), institutions or rules (Schatzki, 1996; Schatzki, 2002; Smagacz-Poziemska et al., 2020) that drive doing and saying or principles (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011) that drive interactants doing and saying, not personal values that influence evaluations of individual experiences. Performing practices is based on understanding their rules (Schatzki, 2002; Smagacz-Poziemska et al., 2020) or on a congruent understanding of rules by interactants (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). The assumption that the evaluations are contextual to practices is the opposite of assuming that they are subjective criteria of individual decisions (Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017; Vlahos et al., 2022). Such a view contradicts previous studies in the contemporary art domain, which focused on the subjectivity of aesthetic evaluations (Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017).

Practices exist when they are conducted collectively and change by reconfiguring the above-mentioned three elements (together with values, which is why practice theory scholars use the term “values” in plural). According to practice theory, values are contextual, and they should be studied in the contexts of networks and practices in which they are embedded. It contradicts previous context-free studies in the domain of contemporary art (Christidou and Diamantopoulou, 2016, 2019; Christidou and Pierroux, 2018). In the view of practice theory, researchers should study the joint activities of stakeholders through which values emerge instead of determining values ex ante in the studies (Smagacz-Poziemska et al., 2020; Vargo et al., 2017) or measuring art values on the predefined universal scales (Pelowski et al., 2018).

The formation of values in a particular practice is a matter of inter-subjective congruence of both the interactants’ understanding of the practice’s principle(s) (rules of the game) and their actions according to the principles, and not just the users’ perceptions or providers’ intentions taken separately (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). When interacting in particular practices, stakeholders co-create shared values when their actions are congruent and co-destroy the values when they are divergent (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). Instructions (Schatzki, 2002; Smagacz-Poziemska et al., 2020) or explanations (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011) can improve performing practices, which means that providers can explain the principles to users and thus help them perform their actions congruently with the actions of the former. Such a view contradicts previous studies in the contemporary art domain, which focused on the co-creation of meaning as a subjective and personalized process dependent on the individual’s cultural capital (Plakoyiannaki et al., 2022).

Summarizing the above-mentioned assumptions of practice theory and the limitations of previous studies on values in the domain of contemporary art, we argue that practice theory provides the perspective that enables new insight into relations between art values, co-creation and enrichment that the previous research on values in art cannot provide. Therefore, we base our theoretical framework (Figure 1) on practice theory and the configuration of three elements constituting a social practice: principles, actions and resources (Schatzki, 2002; Echeverri and Skålén, 2011; Smagacz-Poziemska et al., 2020; Spotswood et al., 2015). The arrows between these elements represent their configuration, and the arrow between practice A (status quo) and practice B (newly emerging) represents the transformation of practices (Spurling et al., 2013; Christensen and Friis, 2019). Such transformation results from the interactions of multiple stakeholders, including supplying new assets users can apply in the emerging practices (Spotswood et al., 2015). Scholars (Spurling et al., 2013; Christensen and Friis, 2019) suggested that practices can be transformed through various interventions. Still, to our knowledge, studies on practice transformations are scarce and done outside the art exhibitions domain (Hajdas and Kłeczek, 2021).

The framework (Figure 1) includes two practices (A – status quo and B – newly emerging). It suggests that the transformation of practices is the research problem, and practice is the unit of analysis. Therefore, scholars should generate data about stakeholders’ interactions, interpret the data as “moments” of routine and social practices and investigate how value benchmarks change with practices rather than just look at increasing or decreasing outcomes (Vlahos et al., 2022).

Following the conceptualization of social practices, by practice in the domain of contemporary art exhibition, we understand a routine, collective configuration of art values embedded in the context of a particular practice, stakeholders’ (in)congruent actions co-creating the contextual values, and resources, e.g. artefacts, explanations and knowledge, that are used in a specific way (e.g. in accordance with the values) in a particular practice.

We argue that using the framework (Figure 1) brings new insights into studying and curating transformations of practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions.

Firstly, it suggests that contemporary art exhibitions should be studied as the asset offered by the art-makers that transform practices. Secondly, the art-makers (artists, curators, critics, art sponsors and managers) and visitors use the exhibition to transform or conserve the status quo practices. The principles of practice provide shared criteria for evaluating exhibitions. The art-makers’ and visitors’ activities (doings and sayings) should be studied in contexts of practices – as the activities that support the status quo or inspire new practices. The explanations should concern how the exhibition transforms art-related practices rather than what the artefacts mean only. Thirdly, the artists’, mediators’ and visitors’ activities should be studied as congruent or incongruent with particular practices rather than original values created by artists, then presented by mediators and consumed by visitors, which aligns with previous scholars’ suggestions (Drabble, 2010). The framework also suggests that enrichment is obtained through transforming social practices.

3. Method

3.1 Research design

Qualitative inquiry is best suited for addressing research questions of “how” (Crick, 2021), mainly when existing theory does not provide sufficient detail to explain the phenomenon in focus (Graebner et al., 2012). As our research question was to explore how an art event can enrich visitors in the sense of their practice transformation, we opted for a qualitative study to gather in-depth insights (Charmaz, 2014). The qualitative inquiry also fits the practice theory suggestion that transformations of practices should be identified in the findings, not predefined before the studies. We argue that a critical challenge in practice-based research is to overcome the intuitive predefinitions of what practices, their transformations and values are and identify them in the study’s findings. The practices’ transformations should be a research task. The framework (Figure 1) is a heuristic solution suggesting qualitative studies on what has been observed (stakeholders’ actions and used assets) and interpreting or capturing values – the implicit and non-observable elements of practices.

To answer the research question and accomplish the research goal, we have applied single-case research, using empirical data to identify a practice transformation. Drawing on practice theory, we have followed two assumptions in our research design. Firstly, values are co-created or co-destroyed depending on the stakeholders’ congruent understanding of the contextual principles that drive the particular practices (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). To follow this assumption, we have designed a study in which we wanted to investigate how stakeholders (in our study, two of them: art-makers and visitors) co-create or co-destroy values based on their congruent or incongruent understanding of the artefacts. Therefore, we have decided to gather data from both stakeholders to allow for comparisons. Secondly, evaluations are contextual to practices, which is opposite to the assumption that aesthetic evaluations are subjective (Maciel and Wallendorf, 2017) or more subjective than the more fact-based works (Vlahos et al., 2022). To follow this assumption, we have designed our study to identify stakeholders’ evaluations contextual to different principles in different practices, as the framework (Figure 1) suggests.

In our research design, we have also followed the idea of practice-oriented participatory backcasting, where backcasting refers to a process of imagining desirable possible futures and then working back to the present to consider interventions that might build towards its achievement (Davies, 2014; Davies and Doyle, 2015; Devaney and Davies, 2017) and participatory action research (González and Gale, 2020), in which the researcher becomes a change agent (Massingham, 2014) who collaboratively develops structures intended to critique and support the transformation of the local practices being studied (Barab et al., 2004; González and Gale, 2020). This inspires the research participants to critically reflect on their current practices and engage them in action to change them. It also suggests the inseparability of theory and practice and the commitment to contribute to both. In art, previous participatory research designs focused on how to engage youth in active sense-making when using artefacts, assuming the capabilities young people use in their cultural expressions and experiences (Stuedahl and Lowe, 2014). Our research design focuses on transforming our informants’ art-related practice and showing that cultural expressions and experiences are contextual to the shared practices, so when the practice transforms, the expressions and experiences also transform.

3.2 Case selection

We applied theoretical sampling during the case selection process to identify a case that could provide insights regarding the researched concepts (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). We have searched among local exhibitions for one that would meet the theoretical requirements of the study (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). We also considered the convenience criteria of location, logistic accessibility for informants and affordable ticket price. Our case was selected purposefully (Suri, 2011) owing to its specific usefulness in revealing insights regarding the investigated categories of practice theory.

We have selected a light installation exhibition entitled “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw, Poland, held from 20 October 2018 to 31 January 2019 by Mirosław Bałka (artist) and Anda Rottenberg (curator). The exhibition was selected for our study due to its characteristics. Firstly, the meanings of the observable artefacts were not understandable at first sight. Secondly, the exhibition creators (author and curator) published exact and detailed explanations about what the particular observable artefacts meant but not the exhibition’s title. This allowed us to analyse understandable and incomprehensible encountered artefacts in one exhibition. Thirdly, the creators of the “1/1/1/1/1” exhibition suggested interpreting the exhibition as a whole, which was in line with the suggestion that “art is a tool […]” (Ernst et al., 2016). It means that the art-makers’ and visitors’ interpretations of the exhibition are not assumed to be congruent or even treated as a sound output.

3.3 Data collection

Case research can be based on various data sources, focusing on qualitative data in exploratory research (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). In our study, we have used two data sources: explanations from the exhibition makers regarding the artefacts’ meanings and interpretation of the exhibition as a whole and data from visitors. The visitors were 19 bachelor business management students (4 male and 15 female, aged 20, Polish nationality) from one group attending the marketing course at the Wroclaw University of Economics and Business. They did not study art or humanities, were not art connoisseurs, and as novices in the art field, they created an interesting sample to study the phenomenon of visitors’ enrichment in the sense of their practice transformation. As there are several possible sampling strategies in qualitative studies (Suri, 2011), we have opted for a homogenous sample, which is particularly suitable for participatory syntheses in which the researcher collaborates with informants on a phenomenon with direct implications for their practice (Suri, 2007). As our research design was based on practice-oriented participatory backcasting, we have decided that the homogenous sample will be more beneficial in insights discovery than other sampling strategies.

As for the theoretical saturation, we have considered collecting the data from different groups of visitors; however, after scanning the data obtained from the initial sample of 19 students, we achieved a theoretical saturation in the sense that “[…] the complete range of constructs that make up the theory is fully represented by the data” (Starks and Brown Trinidad, 2007: p. 1375). In other words, our data set is rich or insightful enough to illustrate the framework of transformation and identify the particular transformation from the available sample (the students and the exhibition makers).

We collected the visitors’ data in December 2018 using four questions (Table 1) that encouraged informants to share their journeys across the exhibition artefacts. We designed the questions with a reflexive focus (Arsel, 2017) and shared the topics to be reflected on during the visit before students visited the museum. This enabled them to learn from their own actions and made them conscious participants in studying the transformation of their practices. We draw this idea from practice-oriented participatory backcasting (Davies, 2014; Davies and Doyle, 2015; Devaney and Davies, 2017). We also wanted to check the congruence of viewers’ understandings with the art-makers’ explanations in our analyses, which is suggested as the condition of the co-creation of values in the practices (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). Our second motivation for revealing the questions before the visit was to follow two suggestions for the action research: to change the role of informants from observed objects being studied to partners getting practical knowledge and to change the researchers’ role from those who observe and understand acting entities to those who help change the thinking and acting patterns of the latter (Vignali and Zundel, 2003) and to fulfil the teachers’ role as mediators (Costantino, 2008).

Table 1 presents the theoretical foundations for the interview questions design and the four questions we asked our informants to reflect on during a museum visit.

The informants documented their visits to the exhibition by taking photos of the artefacts they encountered (Figure 2) and writing down their answers to the four questions (Table 1).

3.4 Data analysis

In our data generation and analysis, we have followed Ernst et al. (2016) suggestion that art providers can inspire new social practice. As we have collected data from two sources (art-makers and visitors), we have applied two corresponding data analysis procedures.

For the data obtained from art-makers, we performed qualitative content analysis (Kibiswa, 2019) following a deductive logic, meaning that we were guided by categories and themes we had defined before the data collection (Mayring, 2000; Patton, 2002). When analysing the art-makers’ sources, we were looking for content related to (in)congruent actions that co-create or co-destroy values (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011) and if and how art-makers create the configurations of artefacts that can inspire a collective change of perspective (interpretation) or develop new social practices (Ernst et al., 2016).

For the data obtained from visitors, we have applied a coding procedure. Our coding process involved several steps as we followed the open, axial and selective coding scheme commonly applied in marketing studies (e.g. Challagalla et al., 2014; Homburg et al., 2017; Malshe and Sohi, 2009; Ulaga and Reinartz, 2011). Firstly, based on analysing the informants’ answers line-by-line, we separated the quotations representing the following categories: actions of exhibition makers, visitors’ activities and their outputs. During the second axial coding stage, we selected the quotations that fulfil the categories of our given framework reconstructed from literature: the elements of the practice before transformation, the practice after transformation and the transformation itself. This way, we created the categories suggested by the framework (Figure 1). Finally, during the third selective coding stage, we separated the data that did not fit the theoretical category under study (the practice transformation) (Figure 2), and we kept it as a suggestion for future research. Our selective coding eliminated categories of non-interaction between students and other types of visitors identified in the data. During the coding procedure, we constantly compared the emerging categories (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) with the given practice theory-based reconstructed framework (Figure 1). In the Appendix, we show zero-order, first-order and second-order categories that emerged from our coding scheme procedure. At the end of this procedure, we identified the non-predefined transformation of practices, as suggested by the framework (Figure 1), and we distilled a transformation of practices (Figure 2) that represents the overall output of our research.

To improve the coherence of the findings and thus their trustworthiness, we have applied three approaches: triangulation of coders (Archibald, 2016), in a sense that the data were reviewed by two researchers separately, negotiated agreement (Campbell et al., 2013), that we achieved by discussing disagreements over some codes and an iterative coding procedure (Nowell et al., 2017). Our coding process was manual.

4. Findings

In this section, we identify how the art event transforms practices and enriches the visitors.

4.1 Actions of exhibition makers

The art-makers explained that the visible artefacts (see Appendix 1) of the exhibition consisted of four words, each meaning “homeland,” presented in German, Hebrew, Latin and Polish using fragile yellow neon tube lights placed on the empty white walls of a baroque tenement house (Table 2), which Oppenheim family had owned before second word war. Some words were written backward (e.g. “TAMIEH”), but the viewers saw the letters in the correct order (i.e. “HEIMAT”) reflected in the window panes, making them visible from the outside of the building, from the town square. The artist and the curator published explicit explanations of the particular artefacts in one 10-min 41-s video available on YouTube (Baka and Rottenberg, 2018). We present the complete transcripts from the video in Appendix 1 and provide extracts in this section (Figure 3).

The artist explained the particular artefacts as follows:

“Homeland” is the keyword. Breaking the word up and reading it backward was the primary assumption of the artefacts.

The visibility of the exhibition from the outside of the tenement is equally essential as that from the inside.

Neon lights have also been used in advertising.

The curator explained the particular artefacts as follows:

These are references to languages the residents of this house could use at various stages.

The vibrating gas in neon lights is incidental. […] Yellow is the colour that Jews were forced to wear since the Middle Ages.

Visually, these four different words refer to the same idea but have slightly different meanings. Some words are written in reverse […], trying to understand the no longer comprehensible meanings that successive generations assigned to the different sounds of their word for “homeland.”

These narratives show that the artist and the curator collected artefacts and explained their meaning. Their explanations of the artefacts are congruent. They do not suggest individual interpretations of what the particular artefacts mean. Their skilful action embodies the principle that understanding the artefacts should be congruent (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011).

As well as explaining the artefact, the artist declared that there was no “proper” interpretation of his exhibition:

My question is, how to advertise the word “homeland?”

The artist does not have to comment on it directly or remind the audience about the proper interpretation of the work. The work has no such strategic goal to attain.

The above explanations promote a consensus in understanding both the meaning of the artefacts. However, the congruent (“proper”) art-maker–visitor interpretation of “homeland” is not a goal the exhibition should attain. The author suggests rethinking “homeland,” in line with the metaphor “art is a tool, the museum is a lab” (Ernst et al., 2016).

Both explaining artefacts and suggesting the rethinking of “homeland” are the art-makers’ skilful actions that interact with visitors’ actions (to be presented in the following section) in the emerging practice. Neither the artist nor the curator explained the title – “1/1/1/1/1” – of the exhibition. The title remains the only non-explained artefact.

4.2 Visitors' activities and their outputs

Following the analysis of the visitor-generated data, two themes emerged from the study. Firstly, searching for and finding artefacts’ explanations created a new principle for the evaluation of the exhibition and developed the viewers’ ability to critique the visit from a new perspective. Secondly, liking artefacts versus understanding the meaning of artefacts were two principles of two practices of contemporary art value formation. We present the detailed analysis in Appendix 2, and in this section, we interpret the findings.

We found that visitors’ practices varied depending on whether they found the art-makers’ explanations about the artifacts’ meanings and the problem to rethink. The art-makers’ explanations inspired visitors to perform the understanding-based practice (and go beyond the liking-based practice) and thus enriched them.

4.2.1 Searching for explanations.

Searching for explanations was a skilful action that let the visitors understand the artefacts. The visitors’ narratives (see Appendix 2: searching for explanations about visible artefacts and finding them) illustrate how finding the explanations brought a congruent understanding of particular artefacts and the inspiration to rethink “homeland”:

I read the curator’s article on the website, where she explained the usage of the words and the colour yellow. […] The author set up the word ‘homeland’ backward and used the windows in the room to make them visible over the main square.

I asked the guide why the windows had no curtains. The guide answered that the neon words were visible from the square outside.

The exhibition guide told me it comprises four words meaning ‘homeland’ in German, Hebrew, Latin, and Polish.

The visitors’ narratives show that their understanding of artefacts, which was congruent with the artist’s, curator’s and guides’ explicit explanations, and awareness of what to rethink emerged when the former found (via skilful action) the relevant explanations and suggestions. The guides’ explanations were congruent with the author’s and curator’s. The art-maker–visitor interactions were not limited to the time the visitors spent at the exhibition. Consequently, measuring the time of the exhibition visit was irrelevant to explaining how the interaction formed and transformed values.

Other narratives illustrate that the search was not always successful (Appendix 2: searching for explanations about visible artefacts and not finding them):

My friends had different opinions, and they understood it in different ways than I did, which was confusing. Conversation with my friends […] had no point.

The narratives show viewers interacted with the art event via non-art makers’ touch points or channels. Confusion was the result of these actions. It was not the number of interactions or channels but the art-makers’ explanations that created the congruent understanding of the artefacts.

4.2.2 Visitors’ critique from the perspective of the new practice.

Viewers negatively evaluated some of the art-makers’ actions they encountered during their journeys through the exhibition:

The brochures of the exhibition were not explanatory enough and did not provide me with explanations of what the particular artefacts meant.

The administrators of the exhibition website did not give enough information for me to understand it.

I still did not understand why the exhibition was named 1/1/1/1/1.

Viewers evaluated the art-makers’ actions when using the principle (i.e. the benchmark of what is valuable) of the emerging practice that both the artefacts and the problem to rethink should be understood. Our data document that the visitors’ criticism was based on the transformation of the practices occurring during the visitors’ interactions with both the exhibition makers’ explanations of the artefacts and suggestions of what to rethink as sources of that transformation. The students used the knowledge to form the explanations as a new asset in their new practice to critique the elements of the previous practice. The art-makers’ explanations acted as a source of knowledge for participants that changed their practices even when this required additional actions.

4.2.3 Liking artefacts versus understanding artefacts.

Another theme in the data was the change from liking to a congruent understanding of artefacts:

I liked the effect made by those neons. […] I walked through the exhibition, admiring the neons.

We enjoyed the atmosphere in the gallery and the effect made by the neons.

At first, it was difficult to understand that it was all the same word.

The YouTube video guided me from complete ignorance to understanding the idea of neons.

The narratives (Appendix 2) show that as long as the meaning of the artefacts was not congruently understood (i.e. explanations were not found), admiring or liking the artifacts were based on not known principle and the rethinking of “homeland” did not occur. The principle of the evaluation was reduced to liking, or not, the appearance of the artefacts. However, when the visitor found the providers’ explanation, the congruent understanding of the artefacts was co-created, the “homeland” could be rethought and visitors also understood that the liking principle was limited (not universal) to coordinate (and evaluate) the art-makers–visitors interaction. The narratives illustrate that enjoying and congruent understanding of artefacts are two different principles (i.e. benchmarks for evaluation) of the whole interaction. When the explanations are not found, the principle of liking or disliking the artefacts is applied.

Based on the data obtained, we reconstructed the elements of two practices performed by visitors with and without using the new resources (explanations of artefacts). Our informants performed the liking-based practice when they did not find the art-makers’ explanations of the artefacts or problems to rethink. Our informants performed the congruent understanding practice when they found the art-makers’ explanations about both the artefacts and the issue to rethink. The explanations and the artefacts were the new resources that visitors used in the new, emerging practice.

Figure 2 presents the transformation we have identified: from liking to a congruent understanding practices in art. In the liking-based practice, the exhibition maker–visitor interaction is based on the principle that innovative artefacts do not need to be explained and have to be interpreted individually. In this interaction, the provider-side actors compose artefacts without explanations (skilful action). They use material resources (i.e. offline and online media) and knowledge that artefacts belong to the area of individual artists’ creation and visitors’ meaning-making. Visitors do not find explanations, so they create their own meanings of particular artefacts (skilful action). They evaluate artefacts via individual criteria based on “liking” principle. The congruent understanding of artefacts’ meaning is neither evaluated positively nor considered. Consequently, visitors do not interpret the exhibition as a whole; in this case, they did not rethink “homeland.”

The art-makers’ explanations inspired transformation to the practice based on a congruent understanding of both artefacts and what to rethink. The principle of the practice is that innovative artefacts need to be congruently understood to make visitors rethink the problem in question. In this practice, exhibition makers (artist, curator) prepare artefacts with multichannel explanations (skilful action) of their meaning. They used material resources (offline and online media) and knowledge about social and artistic problems. Various stakeholders (authors of the brochures and administrators of the gallery Web page) explained the artefacts convergently. Visitors found the explanations (skilful action), co-created a congruent understanding of artefacts and were able to rethink “homeland.”

Explaining artefacts by exhibition makers was a critical action that transformed the social practices we identified in the data. The exhibition makers were the transformation leaders in the case study. They challenged the individual meaning-making-based principle of encountering the artefacts, and they established the benchmark of evaluation that “artefacts should be explained.” The emerging practice highlighted (i.e. critiqued, transcended) the limitations of a liking-based practice. Visitors who performed the understanding-based practice evaluated the whole liking practice as limited even if they were forced to participate due to the lack of explanations of artefacts or required explanations when they encountered the “artefacts need to be explained” rule. In the first practice, the artefacts are evaluated based on individual and unknown principles; in the second practice, the artefacts are evaluated as more or less congruently understandable. In the second practice, the visitors understood what to rethink, whereas in the first, they did not. In this way, visitors could perform two practices instead of only the liking-based one, differentiating their repertoire of practices and developing their enrichment. The understanding-based practice did not replace the liking-based one but has diversified practices the stakeholders could perform. Therefore, we argue that audience enrichment should be conceptualized in terms of performing the differentiated repertoire of practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions instead of personal meaning-making or perceived change. Our findings suggest that the transformation of practice also transforms criteria for evaluations of the art event in question.

5. Discussion

As mentioned in the literature review, despite the valuable insights about co-creation (Boorsma, 2006; Conner, 2004, 2013) and audience enrichment (Conner, 2004, 2013; Walmsley, 2016), their conceptualizations are elusive in previous studies on art values. Our study is the first to fill this gap using the lenses of practice theory (Holtz, 2014; Mak et al., 2022; Reckwitz, 2002a, 2002b; Røpke, 2009; Warde, 2005, 2014) and the metaphor “art is a tool […]” (Ernst et al., 2016). This section shows how our study contributes to the literature on practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions, their formation and their transformation, as well as to the literature on practices and values outside the art domain. We also highlight some methodological implications that result from our study.

5.1 Theory contribution

Contextualization in qualitative studies requires scholars to retain the specifics of an empirical context but – at the same time – to expand a theoretical contribution beyond that context (Reuber et al., 2022). Therefore, we believe our contribution to value co-creation literature is twofold, within the studied contemporary art exhibition context and beyond it. Based on our study, we offer several theoretical implications.

Firstly, we have identified one transformation of practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions. We have identified the visitors’ search for explanations of particular artefacts as the specific skilful action that creates a congruent understanding of artefacts and, consequently, acts as a basis for visitors’ interpretation of the exhibition as a whole (rethinking the values in question as suggested by the exhibition makers). There are three co-created effects of interaction with art provider–visitor practices: (1) the congruent understanding of the artefacts, (2) the rethinking of the issue in question, which is equivalent to the interpretation of the exhibition as a whole and (3) the viewers’ ability to critique the elements of their previous practice with a newly emerging practice based on the principle that both artefacts and problem to rethink should be understood. The three findings go beyond previous research focused on individual sense-making of a particular art event encounter (Christidou and Diamantopoulou, 2016, 2019; Christidou and Pierroux, 2018) and a suggestion that visitors’ understanding of art is limited to what particular elements of the artwork mean (Aitamurto et al., 2018). Our findings also challenge assumptions that the co-creation of meaning is a subjective and personalized process dependent on the individual’s cultural capital (Plakoyiannaki et al., 2022), dividing a priori art experiences into emotional and cognitive (Pelowski et al., 2018), studying personal sense-making activities in co-creating personally meaningful experiences (e.g. Ducros and Euzéby, 2020; Plakoyiannaki et al., 2022) and using enjoyment or satisfaction as measures of art values (Antón et al., 2018a, 2018b). Our findings (Figure 2) interpret particular encounters of viewers with artefacts as moments of transformable practices. Consequently, the art evaluation benchmarks are contextual to the practices, two of which we identified in this study. The artists’ explanations concern not only the meaning of particular artefacts but also the regimes of understanding artefacts, i.e. understanding the principles of understanding. The principles of understanding also drive what is liked and not liked in the practices.

Secondly, we offer a conceptualization of transformation-based audience enrichment. We understand audience enrichment in terms of differentiating a repertoire of practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions. In our study, viewers critique the elements of previous practice when using the principle of the emerging practice. Our data documents that the visitors’ reflection and critique were based on the transformation of the practices that occurred during the visitors’ interactions with the exhibition, and also the exhibition makers’ explanations about the artefacts and suggestions of the issue to rethink as sources of that transformation. The art-makers acted as a source of knowledge for participants who changed their practices even when this required additional action. Visitors who performed the two practices were enriched compared to visitors who performed the initial practice (liking). Our conceptualization goes beyond enrichment understood as individual, objectively measurable knowledge (Aitamurto et al., 2018), the feeling of being sufficiently knowledgeable to debate the meaning or value of art events (Conner, 2004, 2013) or linked to personal transformation (Varbanova, 2013; Walmsley, 2019).

Thirdly, we have shown that the art evaluation benchmarks are contextual to the practices, two of which we identified in our study. Previous research measured the art experiences in a non-contextual way when assuming their division into emotional and cognitive ones (Choi et al., 2016; Pelowski et al., 2018) or suggested that evaluations are based on individual criteria relevant to individual meanings created by the artefacts (Stuedahl and Lowe, 2014). We suggest measuring them as evaluations contextual to transformable practices.

Fourthly, this paper also offers some methodological insights that can be applied outside the contemporary art exhibition context. Our study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies in which the context, i.e. contextual values and actions, were obtained in the study results – after identifying the transformations – and were not assumed at the beginning of the study. Researchers call for contextual theorizing from case studies, but such research is rarely undertaken and not guided by practice theory. To our knowledge, there is no such research in the field of contemporary art or in other fields using art, e.g. in the artification strategy of luxury brands (Kapferer, 2014). Theorizing from case studies based on practice theory could provide new contextual insights that current research cannot provide. In our findings (Figure 2), experiences are contextualized to the identified practices and are transformed. We believe that studying experiences using our framework (Figure 1) shows how to overcome creating universal, non-contextual conceptualizations of customer experience in consumer research (Lemke et al., 2011; Schmitt and Zarantonello, 2013).

Finally, as practical guidance in undertaking action research is scarce (Massingham, 2014), our study can serve as an example of practice-oriented participatory backcasting (Davies, 2014; Davies and Doyle, 2015; Devaney and Davies, 2017) and participatory action research (González and Gale, 2020), where the researcher’s role changes from an observer to a change agent (Massingham, 2014) who inspires the transformation of the local practices being studied (Barab et al., 2004; González and Gale, 2020). Such research design makes the study an intervention that inspires the participants to reflect on their current practices and engages them in action to change those practices. In view of our literature review on practices and their transformations, we may state that our research design is a new research practice we have applied compared to more established and conventional research practices. We believe the “research as intervention” practice can facilitate the debate over applied research and the research impact (Massingham, 2014).

5.2 Practical implications

We believe our findings suggest several courses of action for art-makers and curators of contemporary art exhibitions. Firstly, we highlight how cultural mediation practices of museums enrich the visitors in terms of increasing their repertoire of practices (beyond the liking-based practice in our case) through various tools and resources provided. We suggest that exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. When the explanations are not found, the visitors perform the individual experience practice or require explanations (i.e. act in a way that is incongruent with providers) when they perform the “artefacts need to be explained” practice. The art-makers that assist viewers to co-produce their individual experiences can inspire a divergent understanding of visual artefacts and, consequently, the liking practice without understanding what to rethink. We believe that cultural mediation beyond the liking-based practice can help art-makers and curators of contemporary art exhibitions target novice visitors and thereby expand the museums’ existing customer base. We also believe that enriching the novice visitors in such a way may turn them into more literate ones in terms of “understanding how to understand” contemporary art, which may in turn, increase the frequency of their museums’ visits.

Secondly, the explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest rethinking. The art-makers should make clear what they challenge with the exhibition as a whole. The explanations related to the meaning of artefacts and problems of the exhibitions give viewers a tool to critique the visit from a new perspective. Based on our findings, we can say that the viewers deprived of these explanations are victims (Hajdas and Kłeczek, 2023) of the lack of appropriate actions on the part of art-makers.

5.3 Limitations and future studies

Our study has several limitations that need to be addressed in future research. Firstly, we acknowledge that the transformation we have identified is only one of the possible transformations in contemporary art. Other transformations, even those that are the opposite of the ones identified by us, and other stakeholders’ enrichments await identification in future research on contemporary practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions. As many different stakeholders may perform other art-related practices, other contextual values may be included in these practices.

Secondly, we studied an exhibition with content related to a social issue. Future research can study transformations in “l’art pour art” exhibitions in which the understanding of what to rethink will concern the art itself. Research on exhibitions that suggest rethinking artistic issues, including colour, surface, shape or performative actions, is needed.

Thirdly, the visitors who reported their journey through the exhibition were students. The characteristics of this research group (young, digitally fluent people in higher education) might impact the findings in a way as it may have been easier for such museum visitors to search for artefacts’ explanations in various online and offline sources, and indeed the variety of sources and skilful actions were reported in this vein. Therefore, more studies are needed to explore the practices of less digitally fluent groups of visitors. Future studies could also focus on other segments of visitors and other art exhibitions, the art connoisseurs and “Instalovers,” to identify their practices and the contextual values embedded in these practices. Future studies could also explore other practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions and their contextual values (i.e. practices of adults versus practices of families).

Fourthly, the questions we asked informants (Table 1) were justified by the practice theory categories, but they also interfered with the informants’ tour of the exhibition and, consequently, our data. This meant the students were more like co-researchers conducting research tasks rather than informants. Our students discovered they were performing two different practices related to understanding art. Future research should use other data generation techniques and ones that engage others as co-researchers, as found in practice-oriented participatory studies (Davies, 2014; Davies and Doyle, 2015; Devaney and Davies, 2017).

Fifthly, our study challenges the individual experience and suggests that the experience is contextual to practices. Future research could contextualize experiences to other practices found as research outcomes.

Sixthly, our study omits critics as stakeholders in value-creation practices. Future research may investigate to what extent these stakeholders agree on explaining the meaning of particular artifacts of the exhibitions.

From the point of view of our findings, explanations of both the content (the artefacts) and the values to rethink are needed to inspire viewers to criticize the current practice of liking in many domains rather than only in art events. Many practices in which the liking principle currently dominates and distracts viewers’ attention from the content can be interpreted as providing an unintentional lock-in and can be transformed by the actions of networked stakeholders (Ribeiro, 2019).

6. Conclusion

Despite the valuable insights about co-creation (Boorsma, 2006; Conner, 2004, 2013) and audience enrichment (Conner, 2004, 2013; Walmsley, 2016), the definitions of both concepts remain elusive in previous research on art values. Our study is the first to fill this gap using the lenses of practice theory and the metaphor “art is a tool, the museum is the lab” (Ernst et al., 2016). Based on the practice-theory framework (Figure 1), we have identified the transformation from liking- to understanding-based practice (Figure 2) that differentiates the repertoire of the practices the stakeholders perform and enriches the audience.

We argue that other transformations of practices and relevant enrichments (or impoverishments with the current practices) can be identified in the domain of art events. The framework (Figure 1) and our findings (Figure 2) suggest some elements of the research process. Firstly, researchers should gather data about how stakeholders (artists, curators, authorities of the galleries and particular groups of viewers) interact rather than how the particular stakeholders act or perceive values. Secondly, researchers should identify the practices (including their contextual values) and their transformations rather than assume them ex ante.

Figures

Figure 1.

The framework of social practice transformation: a reconstruction based on practice theory literature (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011; Ernst et al., 2016; Holtz, 2014; Reckwitz, 2002a, 2002b; Røpke, 2009; Spotswood et al., 2015; Spurling et al., 2013; Christensen and Friis, 2019)

Figure 2.

Summary of findings: the identified transformation of contemporary art exhibition visitors’ practices

Figure 3.

The observable artefacts of the “1/1/1/1/1” exhibition by Bałka and Rottenberg (2018); the photos supplied by the informants

Table 1.

The questions asked to informants and their practice theory foundations

Practice theory-based justification of the questions	The interview questions
Service providers can explain and help beneficiaries perform a particular practice (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). However, the question of what visitors’ actions bring about the congruence of meanings of artefacts remains unanswered	What did you do (before, during or after your visit) to understand what the particular observable artefact means? (We also encouraged informants to photograph the observable artefact in question.)
The service providers can explain and help beneficiaries perform a particular practice (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011). However, what they really do in an art event context and who they are is unknown	What did the interactant do to make you understand it? Who was it?
The art-makers-viewers’ congruence of understanding is the condition of co-creation of values in the practices (Echeverri and Skålén, 2011)	What was your understanding of the particular artefact?
Transformation of practice results from the actions of different stakeholders of the practice (Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Shove and Walker, 2010; Spotswood et al., 2015)	What was the primary interaction that helped (or hindered) your understanding of the particular artefact?

Source: Authors’ own work

Table A1.

The transcripts from the video: the art-makers data

Author’s explanations

Curator’s explanations

1.‘Homeland’ is the keyword. Breaking the word up and reading it backward was the primary assumption of the artefacts. The concept seems to have been carved by the subsequent generations 2.The concept of a lightning bolt was a starting point in thinking about this building, about this space 3.The visibility of the exhibition from the outside of the tenement is equally essential as that from the inside 4.Neon lights have also been used in advertising. Although we seem to be dealing with a word that needs no advertising, this word in recent years has been reduced to an empty advertising slogan 5.How can I advertise the word ‘homeland’? 6.The artist does not have to comment on it directly or remind the audience about the proper interpretation of the work. The work has no such strategic goal to attain

The curator explained the particular artefacts as follows: 1.These are references to languages the residents of this house could use at various stages 2.The vibrating gas in neon lights is incidental. […] This breath of life – of the present day, of novelty – is our hope for the future. […] Yellow is the colour that Jews were forced to wear since the Middle Ages 3.The same word resonates differently in these languages […] visually; these four words refer to the same idea but have slightly different meanings. Some words are written in reverse: they look back at history in hindsight, just as we do from today’s perspective, trying to understand the no longer comprehensible meanings that successive generations assigned to the different sounds of their word for ‘homeland.’

Source: YouTube (Bałka and Rottenberg, 2018)

Table A2.

The structure of data and coding: informants’ data

Data	Codes	Categories related to the transformation of practices
After the visit, I read the curator’s article on the website, where she explained the usage of the words and the colour yellow. […] The author set up the word ‘homeland’ backward and used the windows in the room to make them visible over the main square I asked the guide why the windows had no curtains. The guide answered that the neon words were visible from the square outside The exhibition guide told me it comprises four words meaning ‘homeland’ in German, Hebrew, Latin, and Polish The curator explained in the video that the townhouse shows the history of different nationalities living there	Searching for explanations about the visible artefacts and finding them	Skilful actions and their results
My friends had different opinions, and they understood them in different ways than I did, which was confusing. Conversation with my friends […] had no point	Searching for explanations and not finding them
These are references to languages the residents of this house could use at various stages The vibrating gas in neon lights is incidental I understood why they used those particular languages, the colour yellow and neons	Congruent understanding of the artefacts based on the art-makers’ explanations	New resources (new knowledge) and their usage
The output of the interaction was my thinking about the meaning of the word ‘homeland’ from each language's perspective and its people's history After all, the building’s successive residents may have had different understandings of ‘homeland’	Congruent understanding of what to rethink (how to interpret the exhibition as the whole) based on the art-makers’ explanations
The YouTube video guided me from ignorance to understanding […] lightning bolt inside the neons	The visitors’ critique is based on the new principle that (1) artefacts should be explained and congruently understood and (2) the exhibition’s interpretation as a whole should be open
The video from the exhibition’s opening weekend […] had no explanations
The brochures of the exhibition were not explanatory enough and did not provide me with explanations of what the particular artefacts meant The administrators of the exhibition website did not give enough information for me to understand it The administrators should provide links that would be useful to read before the visit I still did not understand why the exhibition was named ‘1/1/1/1/1’
I liked the effect made by those neons. […] I walked through the exhibition, admiring the neons We enjoyed the atmosphere in the gallery and the effect that was made by the neons, At first, it was difficult to understand that it was all the same word The YouTube video guided me from complete ignorance to understanding the idea of neons	Understanding pre-transformation practice: liking + ignorance

Source: Authors’ own work