Sat, 07/14/2018 to Sun, 09/30/2018

East wing facade

Agnieszka Kurant’s The End of Signature explores the rising power of social capital, the aggregated value of which can be algorithmically calculated. This work is rooted in her longtime investigation of collective intelligence in nature and culture. She analyzes communities, social movements, and societies as super-organisms or collective persons with personality traits and develops collective signatures for them. The work addresses the replacement of individual authorship by hybrid, collective forms, and the decline of handwriting and turn to digital modes of communication.

To make this work, Kurant collected signatures from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s employees and trustees that she later aggregated into a single inscription using software that she developed with a computer programmer. The piece is presented as a neon sign on the east wing facade of the CMA. The latest iteration of her ongoing series, it represents the collective identity of the many individuals and stakeholders who make up the CMA’s complex structure.