The  Museum of Bird Shit is probably the most absurd museum in the world. It’s dedicated to one of the most despised phenomena around the globe: bird shit.

Our museum challenges your perception of the world and thereby your reality. It takes something everybody hates and changes it into a thing of beauty, maybe even into art.

We chose birdshit because everybody hates it. Especially when there is lots of it in inconvenient places, like your car, your coat or your hair.

Yet, if you can overcome your initial disgust, and manage to discover beauty in such an unexpected thing, you’ve mastered the art of reframing.

We don't have to fly to Moma in New York, The Tate Modern in London, or The Louvre in Paris to experience art and beauty. Art and beauty are anywhere around us. Even in bird shit. We just have to pay attention. Change our perception, and reframe what we see.

Our brains are meaning-machines. They attach a meaning to everything we perceive. In een flash of a second. But that meaning is nothing more then a story we tell ourselves. A story that is molded by our experience and the culture we are born in.

Reality doesn’t exist. Or, to put it more accurate: we’re not able to experience reality directly. We can only experience it through our five (or six) senses. This means our perception is subjective. It is not ‘real’. So birdshit isn't neccesarily gross. That's just your perception.

As soon as our brain attaches a story to our perception, it will do everything it can to stick to that story. Our brains will always present bird shit as something gross. It keeps us trapped in a frame. Our dominant story is our prison. That is: until we break out and reframe.

First of all: you probably won’t be able to NOT experience it as gross. Not as an initial reaction. You are wired to see it as gross, so you will. Don’t fight it. Just accept what comes up and observe it without attachment

Let your initial reaction pass away. When you accept it as it is, observe it without emotional attachment, the reaction will fade a little. Just like a cloud passing by in the sky.

Now try to get curious. Pretend you are a three year old again, who sees the world for the first time, and who hasn’t learned that birdshit is gross.

Discover something new. Something you didn’t notice when you were overwhelmed by you initial disgust. Maybe it’s a beautiful color or an interesting texture. There is allways something to discover!

Now try to reframe what you saw. Ask: what else can this mean? Can I experience it as beauty, or at least as interesting?

Can’t move past the disgust?

Some people can’t make the leap from birdshit to art. Their automatic reaction is so strong that they can’t look beyond the programming from their past.

If that’s the case, you can try a little less challenging alternative: just hit the streets and make pictures of everything that’s “ugly” or “wrong”.

Now study the pictures you took, find a picture that doesn’t evoke strong feelings and take the the 5 steps of reframing, we described here.

If you want, you can gradually work your way up to some stronger stuff.