M030 : Indisciplined Spaces - When Discipline Is Necessary

Saatchi, Bedlam & Frieze

Towards the end of last summer I took a trip to London with my brother and a couple of friends to visit a photography exhibition called Out Of Focus, an interesting looking show organised by Lazarides in the Olv Vic Tunnels called Bedlam, and finally the Frieze Art Fair.

Ruminating on the events of the day, it has become clear that certain dissatisfactions with the trip had been bothering me for what at first seemed fairly straightforward reasons. By contrast to the positive notion of 'indisciplined' or 'undisciplined' spaces covered in the module, our little art trip demonstrates that in certain instances, strict discipline is entirely necessary for the sake of maintaining the illusion of the 'serious' art institution...

Arriving at the Saatchi gallery, as always, my expectations to be 'wowed' in the usual fashion were high. The gallery is a big favourite of mine I should mention... The photography was a mixture of interesting super size portraits of strange, marginalised individuals, the stark realities of slum life, unusual photographic techniques and photographs that had been altered in some way, added to, intervened with (intermediality!!) and so forth. Ground floor, so far, so good!

My annoyance at what we found upstairs on the first floor I couldn't contain as soon as I realised we had been 'duped' somewhat, that the intended exhibition had been commandeered by a whole floor of fashion photography by Karl 'f&^%ing' Lagerfeld... I understand that as Frieze was on and due to some odd, incestuous relationship Saatchi must have with Lagerfeld (pure conjecture on my part!), this interruption of normal proceeding was in some way linked with the art super-event that is Frieze. My disappointment was entirely justified. We'd come to see cutting edge photography, some of which crossed disciplines into more sculptural forms, the promise of wall reliefs and assmeblages, all of which 'would' have been on this floor had it not been for the images that took their place. I found it immensely distasteful, that something like 'fashion' had come to take the place of art and that the photographers and artists we had come to see would remain to us, unseen.

After a bit of a rant to my companions, but ultimately undeterred at this stage, we next alighted at the Bedlam exhibition in the Old Vic Tunnels - this I would say certainly qualified as a more positive undisciplined space; an art show in dark, dank tunnels where the works were illuminated by often inadequate spotlights and could be largely thought of as 'outsider' or verging on street art. The concept was entirely successful I think - the theme of 'Bedlam', itself linked to the lunatic asylum by the name of Bethlehem of years past, dealt with themes of mental illness and psychosis, exemplified by neurotic, chaotic and oftentimes slightly unnerving works made more so by the strange, dark (and I DO mean DARK) surroundings. Audience involvement and interaction were encouraged and in some ways, like 'Theanyspacewhatever' exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2008, the 'event as medium' played out nicely, with spaces containing works bleeding into one another via the 'theme'. Despite not necessarily being the 'finest' art, it was certainly the most successful exhibiton of the day...

Frieze was something else entirely. Taking a HUGE amount of art work out of the context of the individual gallery space only served to denigrate its perceived value as art to my mind, and in the end made the whole thing somewhat questionable, an alienating experience for the art fan (as with Lagerfeld's untimely intrusion at the Saatchi Gallery), though clearly a fairly serious deal for the art buyer - whilst there were a number of pieces that stood out despite missing their 'normal' confines (and adding to their intrinsic autonomy as art objects perhaps), the remainder, likely by virtue of the sheer volume of stuff on display, were difficult to get an immediate reading from, and so appeared to be quite terrible. As my friend said of one pieces, 'it looks like an A-level student's temper tantrum' - arguably conceptual art is in some way designed to elicit responses such as these, though being fairly au fait with art generally, it really did look like a pile of crap so to speak. This 'lack of discipline' only further served to extend the gap between the layperson and the supposed connossieur, and if I'm honest, I'm still making sense of it now - when you have aspirations of making art, events like this certainly prove problematic when considering notions of the value of your own work, and art work in general!

The overall point I am trying to make here is that from what I have gathered of the installations and events such as Theanyspacewhatever, the negation of the traditional space is intended to form an inclusive nexus for audience and artist alike to explore certain relational ideas. In the instance of the Saatchi gallery, the decision by this well known and well respected gallery to stage, temporarily as it may have been, a completely off-brand, non-art (as far as I am concerned) disruption of a pre-existing event could not be more insulting to the more savvy audience. The gallery has shown indiscipline of a fashion, though one which isn't in any way positive. Frieze, by that same token of indiscipline provided an apt counterpoint to the more positive idea of the indisciplined or undisciplined space/concept.

Ikeda and The Intermedial

I first came across Ryoji Ikeda when in Berlin at the beginning of last year. He had been commissioned to create the 'db' twin installation, situated in the East and West wings of the museum, choosing an aesthetic reminiscent of Minimalist sensibilities in some respects, with an entirely white, acoustically treated room containing a military-grade, omni-directional sound emitter opposing in the other wing, a completely black room whose main feature was an intensely powerful spotlight 'boring' a hole through the back wall into an alcove space beyond. Around the edges of this room and stationed on plinths throughout were screens displaying vast amounts of meaningless data 'noise' on high definition monitors, lending the resultant static a super-sharp, crisp quality.

The video clip below will do far more justice than my feeble attempts to describe the effect, though suffice to say it was pretty profound. Dealing with sound, light and data is Ikeda's main remit - data that produces visual and auditory feedback which is at the very fringes of human perception, calling our attention to the vast soup of invisible data flying around our heads at any given moment in any given location.

I have labelled his work intermedial as it seems to sit fairly comfortably between various media, creating a situation and a collection of messages otherwise impossible to realise with a single execution. The use of dual spaces at the museum and the juxtaposition of light and sound effects places the viewer in an 'ultra-modern' experience, verging on the sci-fi with existing or more secretive technologies providing the more visceral aspects of bearing witness and being immersed in such an experience.

To extend this idea further, below is another video, this time of Ikeda himself in a more performative context at Sonar in 2010 - this time, he himself has extended his work into a situation with other intermedial connotations; that being the club environment, playing minimalist electronic compositions alongside a form of visual display based on the same kind of principles he utilises for his installation work, that being data - vast amounts of it, yet this time music and image are connected via computer technology, one laptop presumably running the visuals, one laptop he presumably controls for the musical composition. You could say that Ikeda himself is intermedial in respect of the way he seems to effortlessly walk the boundaries between these various forms of cultural production, using technology as his main mediator. Fascinating and incredibly compelling stuff...

As a footnote, I have it on good authority from a very good friend of mine that Ikeda uses Max MSP and Jitter to achieve these kinds of effects, something which is also transferrable across contexts. I'm sure I kind find numerous means to assert Ikeda's further intermediality, though I think I will leave it there for now.

Modelling Reality

Modelling Reality

By way of response to this portion of the module, the work of Jürgen Albrecht seemed fitting.  Albrecht has a couple of extremely engaging methods at his disposal, to engage the viewer and address certain themes using ‘models’ as his medium, one being light and shadow.

The sculptural, physical display models are essentially a large, plain, box-like facade with what one might describe as letter box size rectangular peep holes, affording the viewer an arresting view of miniature corridors and rooms constructed in such a way as to fool the mind into thinking that you might be looking into a real space, such is the illusory nature of the effect. These spaces are bereft of any ornament, completely white, and lit from above by a natural, diffused light source which is invisible from the outside of the box. This is a deliberate ploy on the part of the artist, the effect is somewhat soothing and altogether ethereal and of course changes depending on what part of the day you happen to take a viewing. The boxes are situated in darkened rooms to further enhance the effect of the incoming, filtered sunlight. The mind truly does lose itself in these perfect miniature spaces, finding yourself imagining standing in, or passage through the rooms as if they were in fact life-sized, to ascertain their hidden dimensions and strange surreal atmospheres...

To further extend this idea, Albrecht also creates what he calls ‘instruments’, precisely constructed model rooms or corridors with a video camera affixed to one end. He then takes these instruments out with him at various points in the day, through various locations with the camera rolling.

The effect, once again is completely hypnotic – blazing, super-contrasted light levels completely saturate the scene in one moment, to be replaced by foreboding, near-dark shadows the next. The results of these ‘excursions’ are then projected in large format in the gallery or museum space, to give the impression of correct scale, if not slightly larger than life and a static viewpoint for the beholder. In so doing, the projection becomes fixed, the corridor looks almost completely realistic, and comes alive with intense light effects, hardly betraying the manual process behind it all, leading you to believe that perhaps it’s some clever use of high-powered lighting creating the effect. It’s this illusion of reality when clearly both approaches are unreal that is particularly appealing.

http://vimeo.com/14103228

There is an intense, introspective or 'looking inward' approach to Albrecht's work which one can't help but feel calls into question the nature of our relationships with interior spaces generally. Perhaps it is a comment (through the use of the 'instruments') of our scurrying about inside these constructed spaces, closed off from the oustide world? Certainly one to meditate on.

I seem to recall coming across a video where he had included objects bouncing around inside one of these instruments, though for some reason the video has been removed and I could not find it on his Vimeo channel which is a shame, as it catapulted this notion into wonderfully surreal territory. I can only imagine that perhaps it may have ultimately been at odds with his strategy to create certain, very specific visual phenomena – by including what are effectively animated objects, the ‘stillness’ of the pieces is compromised.

More descriptive text about Jürgen Albrect’s work can be found here:

http://www.juergenalbrecht.com/kurztext.php

http://www.juergenalbrecht.com/

The Last Great Autonomous Art Object

Dipping into Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, the idea of the autonomy of the art object had been rattling round inside my head and I remembered this particular piece and the artist Michael Heizer who made it

Getting back to Fried as an example, if I've understood correctly they were interested in the notion of a work of art's reliance on an audience to validate its existence, something Fried called 'theatricality'.  If I've got this right, Fried is saying that a work of art is valid independently of any eventual audience.  For me, this is similar to saying "if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it...", it's a little chaotic.  

That said, in the final episode of The Shock Of The New, The Future That Was, Robert Hughes begins the program in the middle of the Nevada Desert, four hours away from Las Vegas to look at a work by artist, Michael Heizer, called Complex One. Part of a series of five (?) works called City, Complex One is the ultimate Avant Garde statement as you will see in the opening minutes of this video.

His monument would seem to corroborate Fried's idea... IF I've understood it correctly.  Either way, really interesting guy and really interesting viewing...