Changing spaces: Machine project, critical pedagogy and reinventing the museum

Unrestricted This thesis will focus on a discussion of Mark Allen’s Machine Project and other select Los Angeles-based artist collectives in order to examine the efficacy of critical pedagogy as a progressive and nuanced form of institutional critique. First, I will analyze how Machine Project’s practice is informed by art production found in institutional critique as well as methods of critical pedagogy used by artists from the 1960s onward. Then, I will unpack the complexity of these two themes as they are used in Machine Project’s practice in order to examine the efficacy and level of agency in challenging institutional processes within the museum. My analysis of these topics will be supported by an in-depth investigation of two different interventions by Machine Project at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum.