Serpentine visitors surrender mobile phones to ‘reconnect’ with their surroundings
London’s Serpentine’s new exhibit rule ensures people are not distracted by devices and also urged to think about impact of lithium mining
Visitors to a London art gallery have been asked to surrender their phones in exchange for tarot cards in order to “reconnect” with their environment.
The Serpentine in Hyde Park has introduced peculiar rules to ensure art lovers coming to its summer show are not distracted by their devices.
Visitors attempting to enter the gallery must first hand over their phones at the door to ensure they “break from our reliance on technology and reconnect”.
Phones are also temporarily confiscated for environmental reasons, with gallery-goers urged to think of the ecological impact of mining the lithium used in their batteries.
Custom-made cabinets have been erected inside the Serpentine to store deposited phones, and visitors are allowed to take a custom-made tarot card in exchange for leaving behind their device, which they can reclaim after their visit.
The concept has been devised by artist Tomás Saraceno, and the installation for which visitors will have to surrender their phones is a film about Cameroonian spider-based fortune telling.
A spokesman for the Serpentine said: “Upon entry at Serpentine South, visitors are invited to relinquish their mobile phones before encountering a projected film by the spider diviners of Somié, Cameroon.
“This is also to raise awareness on lithium extraction in South America, so central to Saraceno’s practice and exhibition at Serpentine.
“Relieved of our phones and the ability to map and document our place in the world through real-time data, visitors are invited to slow down and fully explore the exhibition.”
Promotional material for the show states that the installation titled Web(s) of Life that the gallery “invites us to break from our reliance on technology and reconnect with a more responsive approach to our environment”.
Saraceno’s work is displayed both in the Serpentine building and the parkland outside, and has a strong ecological focus, as the Argentinian artist is also the president of the Indigenous Community of Santuario Tres Pozos in his home country.
The policy of creating a phone-free exhibition space has recently been trialled in Scotland, where street artist Banksy insisted that visitors viewing his works locked their phones away in sealed fabric pouches for the duration of their visits.
This stipulation was introduced by the world-famous artist to ensure that everyone at his show at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art would “stay in the moment”.
Galleries beyond the Serpentine and Glasgow are not understood to be seeking to replicate the no-phone rule any time soon, with attractions like the National Portrait Gallery in London instead encouraging visitors to use their devices to scan QR codes for more information on its collection.
In 2014, the National Gallery gave up on its initial attempts to police visitors taking photos with their mobiles.
Saraceno’s Web(s) of Life displays run until September 10.