Rainbow over the minicipality

Rainbow over the minicipality

Friday 8 June 2018

Wonderland at ACMI is a disapointment.

Wonderland at ACMI is a disapointment. It is good but fails to be excellent. It misses a lot of opportunities.
As soon as you walk in, it is all fake. Suspending disbelief and feeling like one is actually in Wonerland is impossible.
So many missed opportunities. The bizarre architecture of the location means walking down a huge twisted flight of stairs to reach the entrance. It could be so like falling down the rabbit hole, but no!
The pile of books on the table near the entrance look like they could be Dodgson's and are of that vintage, but cannot be picked up as they are glued together. What? Are they so worried that one or two might be slightly damaged that they destroy every single one of them? 'Oh!' they must say, 'Lewis Carrol is Somebody, his books are worth millions, but all those other old books are by worthless people.'

It is fine making it fit for children, but does it need to be run by kindeergarten teachers? All the uniformed envigilators spoke like trained robots, explaining things in slow, excrutiating detail, just in case we were about to immerse ourselves in something. At Disnyland, we interact with the Daisy and Minnie and everyone, not people dressed like security guards, and the same could happen here, but it is another opportunity missed.
Little kids like to climb, as do some very big kids, but when you climb up the huge chair towards something glowing at the top, and start to climb the ladder, there is a blastic barrier like the ones that stop possums on trees that reminds you it is all fake, and you aren't tiny or large at all, just going the wrong way. Considering the exhibition is for people of all sizes, as is the book itself, they don't make anything much at all.
It was hot as a sauna in there, and needing to crawl around on one's knees made it very difficult. Why not have steps and boxes at the little windows, so people of all heights can easily look though, instead of having them at a hight that suits only some children, and is very challenging for adults?
Something else is that it is blandly international. There is nothing at all about the exhibition that locates it in the heart of Melbourne. Considering the prominance of Aboriginal Australia in all public events, they could have structured the journey through the exhibition like a Song-Line, the traditional Australian way of recording and telling stories from history.

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