A core concept of metamodernism is respect for our past, our present, and our future.  We value our history even when we realize it may be biased.  We respect our mistakes and learn from them with a new sincerity.

Enter the Old Point Schoolhouse, a great example of our respect for the past, seen in a new light!

Artist Darlene Charneco (avatar Ava Dougall) has brought her real world art into Second Life at an art show which takes an old historic physical world schoolhouse and replicates the space in a virtual world to share her amazing art.

This schoolhouse in Second Life was originally built in Library Land on Cookie Island with thanks to Selby Evans (the Thinkerer) who generously provided virtual land and countless hours of support to early adopters of the metaverse for serious work, art and education.

How does this illustrate metamodernism? This project weaves the past, present and future in a unique vision.

The historic Old Point Schoolhouse is an active part of a Long Island, New York community where the Oysterponds Historical Society shares various exhibitions and events each year. An virtual immersive replica in SecondLife was a wonderful and novel way to share Darlene Charneco’s museum exhibition ‘ Symbiosome Schoolhouse’ during the pandemic, exposing her art to a much broader nonlocal audience as well as offering an ongoing accessible archive of the more temporary site-specific installation and content.  

Creating 3D museum exhibitions to be navigated in this way while their physical world spaces continue to evolve and change for current and new exhibitions and purposes aligns with Charneco’s concept of a Self-Assembling Memory Palace.

Known as Ava Dougall in Second Life, the artist contemplates how the schoolhouse structure itself (as well as most any architecture in theory) would one day contain a virtually navigable history of itself. Through re-assembling and layering collections of memories, photographs, text and 3D imagery  -we may explore our local and global community structures and spaces backwards and forward in time.  

In these ways and more, a Metamodern literacy may become enterable and searchable on an ever-evolving spacetime dial.

Darlene Charneco is a mixed media artist who follows a dream vision of co-evolution through symbiosis, wonder, memory, support networks & microphilanthropy.