The Facebook Museum: collective memory in the shop window

SETUP

SETUP is a foundation and media lab where artists and experts investigate technology’s impact on society. Not by writing academic papers, but through creative projects that stimulate conversation. “We call it design research,” says researcher and campaign leader Marissa Memelink. “We want a wider audience to engage with the question of what constitutes a healthy relationship with technology. Technology affects everyone, so everyone is entitled to an opinion.”

The Facebook Museum

The Facebook Museum was conceived as a way of inviting people to ask how dependent we are on big US platforms for our social interaction, and whether we could now manage without them. “We felt that our dependency had become an issue for society,” Marissa explains. “The prevailing view is often that it’s an unhealthy dependency, and therefore a habit we should kick as soon as possible. But little attention is given to the emotional aspects. Can we do without a platform emotionally, when it’s the repository of so many shared memories and photos?” Marissa also believes that the things we have shared online are part of our cultural heritage. “Isn’t that something that we should reclaim for society? Because, at the moment, everything’s on Mark Zuckerberg’s servers.”

Firing the imagination

The Facebook Museum had a pop-up site at Utrecht Central Station for a week – a carefully chosen option. “A museum is a place to reflect together on the past, the present and the future,” Marissa continues. “A place that typically houses things that are no longer part of our everyday lives. Visitors find it hard to imagine a world without Facebook. So, by portraying Facebook as something from the past, the museum fires the imagination, prompting people to ask, ‘What would my life be like without this platform?’”

Support from SIDN Fund

SETUP applied to SIDN Fund for support with what for them was a major project. “The grant we received enabled us to do things on a bigger scale,” says Marissa. “It helped to make the museum possible, and the Fund was visibly involved. They had several representatives at the opening. We were very pleased about that, because it meant we could immediately show them what we had developed.”

SIDN Fund's Mieke van Heesewijk explains why the Fund chose to back the project. “SETUP’s Facebook Museum is a very accessible way of highlighting how digitally dependent we’ve become – not only in technical terms, but also in emotional and cultural terms. The museum shows us something that often goes unnoticed: how platforms shape our collective memory. It therefore dovetails perfectly with the objectives of SIDN Fund. We sincerely hope that this pop-up museum acquires a permanent place, both in the physical world and in the public consciousness.”

From conservation wall to model

Everyone who visited the Facebook Museum was invited to make their own contribution to the story. There was a conservation wall, where people could vote on what they saw as typifying Facebook best. Options included things like the relationship status ‘it’s complicated’, sparkling motivational quotes and like-and-win promotions. There was also a wall of memories, where people could put up cards recording their most memorable or painful Facebook moments. “We ended up with a collection of cards telling all sorts of crazy stories,” adds Marissa. “From someone who had reconnected with an old friend to someone who was shamed because of a relationship status.” Other exhibits included plinths telling the stories of interviewees, from a doxing victim to a catfluencer, and a model of a hopefully permanent museum accompanied by a map of the Netherlands, on which people could indicate where they wanted the museum to be.

Data donation? Controversial!

Visitors also had the opportunity to symbolically donate their Facebook data to the museum. That feature prompted some heated debate. “People were super-critical about the donation option,” says Marissa. “Apparently, we would rather give away our data to a powerful foreign commercial enterprise with a record of serious privacy infringements than to a museum that wants to initiate a debate on the topic. Discussions of that kind and the cognitive dissonances reflected in them are also integral to our research.” Reactions to the museum ranged from enthusiastic and confusing, to emotional disclosures about the depth of Facebook’s penetration of daily life. “It really is woven into every fibre of our being,” asserts Marissa. “Elderly people who would otherwise be isolated from their communities; people who use it as a diary… The experiences you have or have had on the platform are almost impossible to reconstruct elsewhere.”

Future plans

The Facebook Museum may have left Utrecht Central, but it hasn’t closed for good. “We’re continuing this research project, with the aim of turning it into a travelling exhibit,” says Marissa. “There are now spin-offs at festivals, including Betweter on 26 September, and at Dutch Design Week starting 22 October. But our dream is to find a permanent site for the museum in the Netherlands. We’d love to talk to any local authorities that recognise the potential of the project.”

Want to know more? Visit facebook.museum or setup.nl.

Photo's: Bas de Meijer