Mumbai MNSTR

Museum of Natural, Scientific and Technological Representation

The Museum of Natural, Scientific and Technological Representation, or MNSTR, a museum of objectivity, responds to the theme of "financial imaginaries" proposed by adviser Reinhold Martin by attempting to render visible the relationship between the statistical methods that similarly aided in the colonization of India and underpin global finance. Situated in a former textile mill in Mumbai, MNSTR is a collection of differentially scaled, skinned and positioned objects – spheres, craters, amoeba carvings, pyramidal gabions – which in turn house collections of objects used for the acquisition, display and inference of statistical data. Positing continuity at a time of crisis, the picturesque landscape of MNSTR reveals the persistent character of statistics in the public imagination as aesthetic, most recently sublime.

The concept of statistical law developed in the C. 19th in England and France as applied to society projected the reality represented by data collected in censes and other tabulation -- notably statistics on suicide -- into another world. This abstract world of calculation and classification mirrors that of the world of global finance which finds itself in crisis.

The Spheres

Spheres are used both for display cases, organizing material within them, and as a means of managing the circulation, climate and optical properties of the space. Stark differences in materiality and optical effects - from black mirrors to mud - produce a sublime atmosphere of spatial distortion as a critique of the implied objectivity of Victorian progress and the nineteenth and twentieth century technologies of domination in the guise of emancipation.

The Claude Glass: A convex black mirrored sphere that alienates the visitor from the environment by mapping it into another visual field. All spheres are also vitrines – there are artifacts inside.

Mudcake sphere: the use of earthen material in a perfect solid form, a sphere, to offset the smoothness of the mirrored spheres. This is also a vitrine, with artifacts inside.

Down the rabbit hole: looking through an aperture into one of the spherical vitrines.

A multi-axis spherical fan for both circulating air and the mist released by the cooling pyramids.

Floor plans showing public access on the 1st, 2nd and 4th floor, and the amphitheatre, spherical ramp, escalator and ameoba cut-outs on the 3rd floor. The poche on the 3rd indicates private access.