WHAT WOULD SUCH A SPACE BE LIKE?
"Installation art directly engages the patchwork, composite character of contemporary experience and it does so with a stunning diversity of materials and practices..." (Empire of the Senses: Installation Art in the New Millenium) 
Q. WHAT ARE THE MEANS TO INTERVENE IN PHYSICAL SPACE ...which engage with its dimensions and character to communicate both what might constitute a 'room of one's own' and the relationship between that person/space and the group/wider world.....? |
| ...which communicate an attitude to the 'place' of individuals, groups and societies in the early 21st century.....? |
| ...which explore relationships between individual, shared, social, artistic, imaginative, functional, perceptual, experiental, material and virtual spaces.....? |
THIS BOOK SAYS
"We must begin to understand the strange kinds of dislocations and associations that now constitute subjective reality. Unavoidably, our lives are divided between two essentially incompatible mileus; on one hand, the spaceless electronic worlds of contemporary technological culture and, on the other, the physical extensive terrain on which our bodies are situated."
I SAY
Who says that we are experiencing 'strange kinds of dislocations' in the contemporary world - or that installation art should reflect this? HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HEAR THAT 'ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR' AND THAT THE ONLY CONSTANT IS CHANGE?
Who says that it is in the 'essentially incompatible' gap between virtual and physical space, that these dislocations are experienced and therefore should be represented artistically? PERHAPS THESE ARE THE ANXIETIES MORE OF THE ARTISTS THAN THE AUDIENCES...
THE BOOK SAYS
"Perhaps, most importantly, the (contemporary installation) work is often frankly utopian in its ambitions: it provides a rough outline of alternative forms of living, creating and thinking which might become hopeful anticipations of a higly variegated but more egalitarian global future."
"(installation art is working) ...towards a new subjectivity which emphasises uncertainity and brings both artist and viewer together in a discursive environment."
I SAY
Yes - but whose ambitions, and how can these be mobilised, negotiated and realised? I ask again, what are the audiences concerns, worries, desires and what kinds of discursive environments open up, rather than assume, the issues that frame each of our subjective realities?
A.
- THE SAME AS EVERY ONE ELSE - TO MAKE SENSE OF, AND SURVIIVE IN, THE WORLD. UNLIKE MANY OTHERS, THEY WANT TO DO THIS BY MAKING WORK ABOUT IT (WHICH THEY HOPE WILL BE LIKED/FOUND INTERESTING).
- THIS INSTALLATION PROJECT, THEN, WAS VERY SIMPLE (ON THE SURFACE). IT ASKED ITS FLEDGLING ARCHITECTS/DESIGNERS/ARTISTS TO MAKE A SPACE OF THEIR OWN - TO REALISE IN (LIMITED)BUILT FORM SOME AMBITIONS OF THEIR OWN...
B.
- TO ME THE WORK STUDENTS MADE SHOWED A DIRECT ENGAGEMENT WITH THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN BODIES AND THEIR IMMEDIATE SPACE. IT MIGHT NOT YET BE INFORMED EITHER BY CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC AND CRITICAL DEBATES OR BY ANY OF THE OBSESSIVE INVOLVEMENT MORE EXPERIENCED ARTISTS HAVE WITH THE INHERENT AND TRANSFORMATIVE CAPABILITIES OF MATTER - BUT IT SHOWED REAL CONCERN WITH SOME ESSENTIAL INTER-RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE:
- MEDIATIVE AND CELEBRATORY
- ENCLOSED AND EXPOSED
- RECOGNISABLE AND STRANGE
- ABSENT AND PRESENT
- DISTRACTED AND ENGAGED
- INTENSE AND RELAXED
- SEPARATE AND CONNECTED
...2 points..
1. IT IS EASY TO 'FORGET' SUCH CENTRAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BODIES AND SPACE AND TO TURN INSTALLATION INTO SOMETHING WITH AN ALL TOGETHER MORE ABSTRACT LEVEL OF COMMENTARY WHICH MAY HAVE A NON-RESONANT (LACK OF) CONNECTION WITH WIDER (NON-ARTISTIC TRAINED) AUDIENCES.
2. AT ITS MOST BASIC LEVEL GOOD CREATIVE WORK NEEDS TO TOUCH ITS AUDIENCES (WITHOUT SIMPLY RESORTING TO CLICHE). .. TO MAKE SOMETHING "INDEFINABLY BUT DEFINITELY PLEASURABLE ABOUT BEING IN THAT (SPACE): IT DEFIED LOGIC, BUT WE FELT IT" (Geraldine Bedell The Handmade House: a love story set in concrete Viking 2005)
And in this project these students have already begun to reach into that 'difficult-to-describe' resonating pleasure zone....