s1061836
j.m.poot@umail.leidenuniv.nl December 2017
First reader: Prof.dr.ing. R. Zwijnenberg Second reader: Prof.dr. C.J.M. Zijlmans Research Master Arts & Culture
The “Becoming” Spectator
The act of walking as an interpretative approach
J.M. Poot
s1061836
j.m.poot@umail.leidenuniv.nl
December 2017
First reader: Prof.dr.ing. R. Zwijnenberg
Second reader: Prof.dr. C.J.M. Zijlmans
Research Master Arts & Culture
Academic year 2017-2018
“If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good help to you nevertheless And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop some where waiting for you”.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4
CHAPTER 1
Theoretical Approach to Subjective Embodied Spectatorship 11
1.1 Claire Bishop and the “Model” Spectator 11
1.2 Nuancing Bishop: Anja Novak’s Performativity 14
1.3 Focus on the Physical 16
1.4 Conclusion 18
CHAPTER 2
Experiencing Judy Radul’s installation 20
2.1 The Poetic and Social Agency of Walking 20
2.2 Live Present System 27
2.3 Performing the Landscape 28
2.4 Cultural Techniques 30
2.5 Concluding: Radul’s Model Spectator 33
CHAPTER 3
A History of Walking: A Thoughtful Approach 35
3.1 Thinking about Walking 35
3.2 Walking as Constructed Experience 38
3.3 Nature versus City Stroller 40
3.4 Conclusion 43
CHAPTER 4
The Act of Walking as Subjective Approach 46
4.1 The Relationship between the Body and its Surroundings 47
4.2 Anthropological Approach 50
4.3 Conclusion: “Becoming” Spectatorship 53
CHAPTER 5
Experiencing Damien Hirst’s exhibition 55
5.1 Hirst’s Treasured Model Spectator 56
5.2 Experiencing Hirst as I Walk 59
5.3 Other Experiences of Hirst’s Treasures 61
5.4 Concluding: “Becoming” Spectatorship 63
CONCLUSION 65
LIST OF IMAGES BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
I walk when I want to think. Often alone, I leave my house, close the front door behind me and make my way through the city I live in. One foot in front of the other, I make my way through time and space. There is no specific destination, the act of walking I perform is merely the act of walking itself: to let both my legs and my mind wander. I have noticed that during, or after, these walks I think more clearly, as if I have a better grasp on where my mind wants to go. Journalist and writer Rebecca Solnit stresses in Wanderlust. A History of Walking (2001) that the act of walking embraces more than the movement of feet and legs, as the “rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts.”1 Walking thus
causes an interplay between the internal and external, where creating a thought is compared to exploring a landscape, where the mind is thought of as a landscape “as though thinking were traveling rather than making.”2 The act of walking has the quality to function as a tool to become more familiar with my individual, subjective experience in relation to the
surroundings I am in. The landscape of the mind is connected to the landscape through which the walker makes their way—the landscape through which I make my way, as it guides me in my thoughts.
The benefit of walking on the mind is recognised within philosophical debate, as there are many philosophers who walked as a manner of understanding the subjective self, such as Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Solnit emphasises this connection when she states that
[…] the association between walking and philosophizing became so widespread that central Europe has places named after it: the celebrated Philosophenweg in Heidelberg, where Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is said to have walked; the Philosophendamm in Köningsberg, where Immanuel Kant passed on his daily stroll […] and Philosopher’s Way that Søren Kierkegaard mentions in Copenhagen.3 1 Solnit 2001, p. 6. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 16.
These walks exist in our contemporary society, and are often visited and retraced as the tourist offices of Heidelberg, Köningsberg and Copenhagen all offer philosophical walking tours where you can trod in the footsteps of the great thinkers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1872) also illustrates the link between walking and thinking. Combining the two that caused him to create links between all kinds of different subjects. Walking and positioning oneself in the surroundings of the world came to be considered beneficial for how to regard the relationship between the self and this world, especially from the 19th century onwards. The act of walking became a practice where the experience and exploration of self was highly praised.
Because walking has had such a strong place in the history of philosophy and self-introspection, I was surprised to discover that within art historical debates on audience experience, the act of walking as an approach to looking and creating meaning had not really been taken up. English writer and picture editor David Evans elaborates in his field guide on art and walking, The Art of Walking (2012) that the appreciation of so-called “walking art” (art that has walking as its subject) has fluctuated.4 When looking at walking as subject of art historic conversations, interest focuses on art movements that incorporated walking in their practice. The act of walking as a creative practice was employed by the avant-garde art movements in the early 20th century, such as Dada, Surrealism, the Situationist International, and later Fluxus and Conceptual Art. Within these movements, the act of walking was used to stress the merging of art and everyday life, but according to Evans, walking as practice has not been receiving the level of attention it used to – either in art or in art history.5
Avant-garde movements such as the Surrealists and the Dadaïsts became increasingly interested in the practice of walking rather than the visual representation of walking subjects. The French poet Charles Baudelaire’s use of the notion flâneur was of great importance to these avant-garde art movements. This flâneur was interpreted by German philosopher Walter Benjamin as a person roaming the streets as if to go “botanizing on the asphalt,”6 collecting observations of daily life and everyday people, becoming a connoisseur of human nature. The interest in moving through the city of Paris by the Surrealist movement in the 1930s influenced the Situationist International’s concept of dérive as a strategy to move in and through the same city in the 1960s. Since the 1960s in particular, artist groups have started to shift away from visually representing the city towards the city as a mode of 4 Evans 2012, pp. 13-14. 5 Ibid., p.13. 6 Benjamin 1973, p.36.
representation, where performances and site-specific interventions took place. As art
historian Christel Hollevoet argues, “the phenomenon of urban drifting, successively coined flânerie and dérive, is a form of spatial and conceptual investigation of the metropolis pervasive throughout modernism and extending into postmodernism.”7
The French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou for instance “maintained that art had to come down from the ‘high spheres’ into the streets—literally.”8 Filliou enabled this by creating the Galerie Légitime, whose exhibitions took place on the streets and consisted of himself, or another other artist who was exhibiting, wearing a hat. The hat functioned literally as the gallery and provided the wearer of the hat with a kind of “exhibition status”, making the exhibition a performance and the artwork the conversation with people the artist encountered on the streets. Another way in which the city was represented was through mapping, done for instance by Dutch artist Stanley Brouwn, who asked people to draw him directions in the city of Amsterdam on a piece of paper, which he later stamped with “This Way Brouwn”.9 This artwork consists of a mapping of the city, but is also part social as Brouwn interacts with anonymous people on the streets, creating a physical imprint of their conscious movement through the city.
The act of walking is also present in contemporary art, for instance in the practice of English artist Hamish Fulton, and Brazilian musician and artist Guilherme Vaz. Fulton bases his entire practice on walking as he documents his walks in various ways but also leads walking groups. Rather than turning his walks into an artistic object, medium, or sculptural practice, Fulton states that he aims to emphasise the experience of walking.10 Vaz also
emphasises the experience of walking in similar fashion. In Sem título (2015), a conceptual performance artwork, Vaz presents the spectator with the possibility to “walk anywhere, during anytime, for any distance, anyway” by writing this on one of the museum walls.11
While the act of walking is used in the artworks of Fulton, Vaz, the Surrealist Movement and the Situationiste International, it is only approached as an artistic concept when used by artists to evoke an experience. The debate on audience experience has never turned towards the act of walking as a manner of understanding the subjective self, as it has in philosophy. I become extremely aware of how an artwork makes me move when I am visiting an exhibition, however. A painting makes me stand in front of it, sometimes moving
7 Hollevoet 1992, p. 19. 8 Ibid., p. 35.
9 Ibid., p. 38.
10 Heddon and Klein 2012, p. 98. 11
forward to inspect a brushstroke, whilst a sculpture asks me to move around the work, looking at it from all angles. This heightened perception of my own movement in
combination with the philosophical interpretation of the act of walking, created my interest in the act of walking as a manner through which to research the subjective, individual
experience of art. Deriving from the philosophical notion of walking to create a relationship between the self and the surroundings, I am intrigued to see what happens when this
approach is applied when trying to understand the use of the act of walking in relation to my own subjective audience experience of art.
Diving into approaches regarding spectatorship and their experience within related art historical debate, the art form to which this debate has shown most interest in is installation art.12 In the first chapter, I begin by addressing the notion of the dichotomy between the so-called “model” spectator and the literal viewer in installation art, as described by art historian Claire Bishop in her book Installation Art. A Critical History (2005). In this book, Bishop regards the model spectator as the ideal or philosophical model, who completely understands the entire artwork and the literal viewer as the actual visitor present at the artwork. She argues that the literal viewer moves towards the model spectator during the time spent in the installation, thereby surpassing the individual spectator. Furthering this line of exploration, I then turn to other scholars to analyse how they have approached subjective audience
experience, such as art historian Anja Novak, philosopher and art historian Renée van de Vall, and art historian Nathaniel Stern, who all agree that the physical presence of the embodied spectator is pivotal in the experience of installation art.
I take the physical presence of the embodied spectator with me into chapter two where I research and describe Judy Radul’s exhibition and installation the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera (2017). This installation explores different cultural techniques through which behaviour is constructed, and invites the spectator to walk through it. The spectator is filmed whilst walking through the installation, and when in the installation, is also confronted with their image as walking subject. Radul uses a slightly delayed, live feedback system which she calls the “present system”,13 by which she nudges the spectator to look at themself through the camera’s lens.
Whilst Radul does not explicitly use the act of walking in her installation, the work very much requires walking and movement through space in order to fully view it. In this chapter, I describe Radul’s installation by looking at my own subjective experience and
12
Novak 2010, pp. 26-30.
13
placing this next to what could be considered the model spectator experience of Radul’s work, to use Bishop’s terms. I argue that my personal experience of Radul’s installation caused me to be confronted with myself as a moving object of the installation—the walker, making her way through the work. My personal experience of Radul’s installation, in combination with the theory of embodied spectatorship discussed in the previous chapter, turns me to the concept of post-dramatic theatre, proposed by theatrologist Hans-Thies Lehmann. He argues that the spectator finds themself in a state of “becoming” when
experiencing an installation, theatre play or happening. Lehmann compares this experience of spectatorship to that of the walker who is walking through a landscape, experiencing the viewed space step by step. Lehmann’s emphasis on the spectator’s experience as an
unfinished experience is an interesting starting point when researching what it means to walk. In the third chapter, I provide a historical overview of the act of walking, focusing on the philosophical influence of walking when connecting this action or movement to the mind. The explorative attitude of walking and thinking alike causes the practice to become the subject of the phenomenological approach of Maurice Merlau-Ponty, who emphasises the “lived experience”, where movement, vision and meaning melt into one, enhancing self-reflection.14 Although there is a dissection in conversations on walking between walking in cities and in nature, this thesis focuses on the relationship between mind and body which is explored in rural wanderings and is connected to the constructed experience of the walker and where they walk.
Moving forward from this theorised constructed landscape, I need to leave the general historical approach of the act of walking when I consider in what way the subjective
individual approach of walking can be established. In chapter four, I turn to performance studies and anthropology to analyse the relationship of the human body with its surroundings. Approaching art as an architectural obstruction which tries to motivate the spectator to
move—walk—in a certain manner leaves the spectator eventually in charge of the final experience, as is the case with the liminal, transformative experience. Artist and philosopher Erin Manning argues that within performance studies, the human body is always considered to be in a state of pre-acceleration: either moving or about to move, thus proposing the “notion of a becoming-body […] that resists predefinition in terms of subjectivity or identity, a body that is involved in a reciprocal reaching-toward that in-gathers the world.”15
Manning’s theory of the “becoming-body” is complemented by the “architectural body”,
14
Merleau-Ponty 2004 (1964), p. 278.
15
proposed by Madeline Gins and Shüsaku Arakawa, both artists and architects, in which they address the human body obstructed by literal and figurative architectural constructions that function in a society, causing the body and mind to move in a specific way.
From this theoretical framework arises the idea of the “becoming” spectator, a concept I propose through which to understand what walking adds to the subjective
experience. Approaching the spectator as a body in pre-acceleration that is in a constant mode of reaching out to their surroundings, the subjective experience is created through movement. Adding the architectural body of Gins and Arakawa to the meaningful movement of a
spectator in an installation, the installation itself becomes a cultural obstruction through which the artist coaxes the spectator to move in a specific way, influencing their experience. Returning to Lehmann’s post-dramatic theatre, in which the experience of the spectator is comparable to that of experiencing a landscape, the “becoming” spectator is experiencing a relationship with a work which is grounded in the relationship caused by movement between spectator and artwork, stressing that this relationship is not set in stone, but in flux. The act of walking emphasises the mind-set of the spectator when creating an experience. When looking at physical embodied spectatorship, the “becoming” spectator thus offers an alternative to Bishop’s model spectator, as the ‘becoming” spectator creates a relationship with an artwork that stems from movement, leaving room for both the individual, subjective experience as well as the preferred art historical model.
In the fifth chapter, I approach this proposed concept of the “becoming” spectator as method by applying it to a second exhibition, Damien Hirst’s Treasures of the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017). I conclude this thesis by researching what happens when I approach this exhibition through the physical, embodied experience of walking as a strategy for inscribing experience. Like Radul, Hirst does not explicitly use walking in his exhibition as “content”, though his exhibition requires a walking and moving spectator. In doing this, I look at whether this—extensively written about—exhibition through the methodological concept of walking enables the spectator to address their subjective experience of the
exhibition in a way that is in flux, rather than conforming to that of Bishop’s model spectator concept, that ties itself to art historical understandings of an artwork via insinuating there is a particular way a spectator should experience. Approaching the subjective audience
experience as a conversation rather than an expectation that needs to meet by each individual spectator gives room to understand the individual subjective experience in an open, inclusive way.
In summary, this thesis explores the embodied spectator and the creation of their subjective experience through movement. The act of walking becomes a method to create meaningful relationships between the spectator and their surroundings, focusing on the art environment. The art historical interest in the act of walking has focused on the artistic side of the practice, concentrating on artists who use movement. However, the act of walking is only approached as an artistic concept when used by the artist to evoke an experience, whilst this thesis looks explicitly at how walking as method can serve the spectator in creating a subjective experience. The research upon which this proposed methodology of walking is based is highly interdisciplinary, consisting of theory from philosophy, art history,
anthropology, performance studies, media studies, and phenomenology,16 and specifically relies on the philosophical attitude that is inherent to the act of walking as presented by earlier mentioned Solnit, and philosopher Ton Lemaire. The work laid out ahead seeks to propose the act of walking as the methodological concept from which the “becoming” spectator stems. The concept of the “becoming” spectator broadens and nuances the art historical debate on audience experience through which to discuss the individual, subjective audience experience within art historical practices.
16
For further reading on the act of walking, see Rebecca Solnit’s influential overview on walking,
Wanderlust. A History of Walking (2001), which offers a thorough overview on walking as both an
activity and philosophical practice. Another essential text on walking and wandering in relation to cultural constructions is Filosofie van het landschap (translated: The Philosophy of the Landscape, 1970), written by anthropologist and philosopher Tom Lemaire. Lemaire looks at the interpretation and construction of landscape in relation to the changing Western concept of space and nature and the meaning attached to this surrounding landscape. In Filosofie van het landschap, Lemaire presents a historiographic overview of these changing landscapes.
CHAPTER 1
Theoretical Approach to Subjective Embodied Spectatorship Claire Bishop is the first art historian to write an academic overview on the medium of installation art in her work Installation Art. A Critical History (2005). As such, it is important to investigate the manner in which she writes about audience experience in this seminal text. Here, Bishop focuses mainly on the audience experience when describing the different experiences caused by the various “genres” of installation art. The genres she recognises are installations that evoke an experience of being in a dream (“the dream scene”); installations that evoke a heightened perception of the spectator’s senses (“heightened perception”); installations that evoke the feeling of the spectator to become part of the installation
(“mimetic engulfment”); and installations that evoke an “activated spectatorship” (“activated spectatorship”).17 This first chapter focuses on Bishop and her position regarding the
spectator and their relationship with the experience of installation art.
To begin, this chapter analyses Bishop’s position, then using her stance on installation art explores how other scholars have reacted to her perspective. As mentioned, Anja Novak plays an important role here, because her thesis Ruimte voor beleving. Installatiekunst en toeschouwerschap (2010. Translated: Room for Experience. Installation art and
spectatorship) questions the role of the spectator in installation art through focusing on performative aspects of the installation that create a relationship with the individual spectator. Other scholars drawn from in this chapter include art historian Nathaniel Stern and professor of visual culture Renée van de Vall. Through weaving these theoretical threads together, this chapter researches what position the spectator is given when regarding the experience of installation art.
1.1 Claire Bishop and the “Model” Spectator
In Installation Art, Bishop is not only trying to find a description of what installation art precisely is—the first sentence of the book is literally “What is installation art?”18 —but more importantly, wants to research the role the spectator plays in installation art. The question she poses is “Why is installation at pains to emphasise first-hand ‘experience’, and what kinds of ‘experience’ does it offer?”19 Bishop tackles this by dividing installation art into the
previously mentioned four different subgenres—“the dream scene”, “heightened perception”, 17 Bishop 2005, p. 10. 18 Ibid., p. 6. 19 Ibid.
“mimetic engulfment” and “activated spectatorship”—in which four different “modalities of experience” can be recognised.20 These experiences ask for—or better, affect—the spectator
differently and thus create a distinctively different kind of artwork. In these four different modes, the spectator’s experience of the installation is pivotal. Bishop approaches the subjective experience through critiquing the decentred subject, proposed by the Cartesian model of subjectivity that presumes the mind to function completely detached from the body. She criticises this theory through the use of poststructuralist and feminist theories, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.21 Bishop responds to Erwin Panofsky’s Perspective as Symbolic Form (1924) in which subjectivity and the spectator’s point of view is related to the Renaissance discovery of linear perspective, where the spectator stands “at the centre of the hypothetical ‘world’ depicted in the painting,” thus creating a hierarchical relationship between the mind and the body.22 The spectator becomes a perspective without a body—the “disembodied eye/I”—which is a “rational, centered, coherent humanist subject.”23 Bishop interprets installation art as a move away from this centred spectator, as installation art asks for a view that is “fragmented, multiple and decentered—by unconscious desires and anxieties, by an interdependent and differential relationship to the world, or by pre-existing social structures.”24 The installation expects its visitor to let go of the linear perspective as this art form does not require one, centred viewing position but asks of its viewer to be fully immersed in the work, having a perspective of 360 degrees.
Bishop recognises two different modes of spectatorship, where the spectator can take on that of the “model subject” and that of “viewing subject”. She argues that “The installation as such operates on two levels: addressing the literal viewer as rational individual, whilst simultaneously positioning an ideal or philosophical model of the subject.”25 The viewer is split into two subjects that are addressed by the installation. There is the individual subject, the person who is literally present in the installation, as well as the spectator who is
approached metaphysically by the art work. This metaphysical spectator becomes the “model” spectator. This model spectator for Bishop is interpreted as the spectator who understands and interprets the installation artwork in its entirety and can reflect upon the
20
Ibid., p. 8.
21
The theories of Merleau-Ponty will be made use of in chapter 3.
22 Bishop 2005, p. 11. 23 Ibid., p. 13. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., p. 131.
meaning and use of the installation as it is intended by the artist. According to Bishop, the subjective individual experience of the viewer and the art historically correct model spectator melt into one during the time spent in the installation, creating an experience that leans more towards the model spectator. The individual interpretation is influenced by the installation, which projects the philosophical model onto its visitors, thus creating one, shared subjective experience.26 However, there is no certainty that this individual spectator experiences the installation as the model spectator does. Bishop argues that “installation art calls for a self-present viewing subject precisely in order to subject him/her to the process of fragmentation.” The spectator’s fragmentation should be recognised in the “tension […] between the
dispersed and fragmented model subject of post-structuralist theory and a self-reflective viewing subject.”27 The spectator, in recognising the decentred, fragmented self as the participating element in the installation, also becomes the distanced viewer of the own experience, connecting the personal experience to that of the model spectator. Through this reflection, the spectator removes themself from their position of a decentred experience as an experience that is part of the expected, model spectator’s experience. This causes the
audience’s individual subjective experience to become subservient to the experience of the model spectator, creating a discourse in which institutionalisation of subjectivity is central to audience experience. In other words, Bishop calls for a paradox, in which the more objective spectator’s subjective experience can be described and implemented within the critical discourse on audience experience of installation art. The art historical debate on installation art focuses on the experience of the spectator, but to theorise this experience, the experience itself must be objectified.
Bishop institutionalises the personal subjective experience of the viewer and transforms the subjective participatory experience into something tangible. The spectator’s “objectified” experience becomes part of the art historical discourse on installation art, neatly dissected into subcategories with installations that expect different kinds of experiences from their viewers. Although Bishop gives a thorough and detailed overview of the experience of installation art, she problematises her argument by proposing this model spectator. She examines specific installation artworks in the context of these four modes of experience, but then argues that even though installation art asks for the decentred spectator, she suggests that there is in fact an objective position a spectator should take. She does this by stating that an installation artwork expects one, preferred ideal subjective experience that the individual
26
Ibid., p. 128.
27
spectator is supposed to move towards. Installation art as a medium might ask for a literal, decentred, moving spectator but the art historical debate on installation art still expects one subjective experience that validates the historical meaning of the spectator, according to Bishop. It is this aspect in Bishop’s argument that I find problematic, because it implies one overruling experience of an installation by the expected model spectator, who understands every aspect of the—by the artist intended, or art historically accepted—meaning. This expected move of the spectator towards this model spectator leaves no room for the actual independent, highly personal individual subjective experience of art.
1.2 Nuancing Bishop: Anja Novak’s Performativity
Anja Novak also critiques Bishop on her dissection and division of the experience of installation art into four different modes. According to Novak, by making this division Bishop generalises the individual installation artwork, causing the evoked subjective experience to become mere illustrations of a theoretical discourse on subjectivity.28 By
stating this, Novak seems to imply that she regards Bishop’s research to shift from writing a critical history of installation art to writing a critical history of the subjective audience experience of installation art. Rather, Novak recognises a self-reflective aspect to the installation visitor, because to interpret a meaning of an installation—where the spectator stands in the middle, fully immersed in the work—one has to reflect upon one’s own experience of the installation, hereby making the spectator an intrinsic part of the installation.29 This makes Novak reflect on her own spectatorship when visiting an
exhibition, looking at whether approaching the spectator’s experience through the notion of performativity creates a methodology for looking at the subjective experience whilst still leaving room for the individual spectator.
28
Novak 2010, p. 217.
29
Ibid., pp. 26-30. In her thesis, Novak looks for what defines an installation, where she stresses that within the art historical debate on installation art, the focus has mainly been put on the ability of installations to use multiple categories and thus because of this overlap simultaneously withdraw from these categories. Installation art functions thus as an umbrella concept for artworks that do not fit into existing categories, however, the genre is connected in other ways than just as “left over art”. When looking at the definition of installation art, Novak mentions that installations consist of elements that are often, but not necessarily site-specific and time-based. Installation art consists of various media as it works with different materials and media, therefore having a compiled, but somehow coherent character, with the artist expecting the spectator to participate with/in the installation. However, what slips through the gaps in this definition is that all mentioned aspects are not limited to installation art, nor is all installation art a complete fit within this definition, as Novak points out. She concludes by saying that installation art has been mainly regarded as a “model” to describe audience experience as this is the overlapping element—however undefined—between installation artworks in their numerous shapes and sizes.
In her thesis, Novak brings in the question of the place of performativity through asking whether it should be regarded a performance when she visits an installation artwork and undergoes its effects herself. She uses the word performance to imply playing a role in the installation, like that of a role in a theatre play. She looks at herself as being the viewing subject—without attaching the weight of expecting herself to behave as the model spectator. This attitude becomes pivotal in her research, where she continues to expand her own
personal experience to the individual, personal experience of other visitors: how does this so-called installation performance of hers relate to the installation when other visitors also experience and thus perform the installation, but with each their own personal story, reference points and background—in other words, their own personal subjectivity?
Novak recognises that within art historical discourse, an artwork is recognised as being the manifestation of the “thing” it refers to. This creates an emphasis within art history as scholarly discipline on the material appearance of a work of art. However, looking only at the materiality—the formal aspects—of an installation leaves out a lot. The physical
materiality of an installation is an important aspect of the work, but its experience is equally if not more so important. By moving through the space of an installation the onlooker becomes part of the physical make-up of the installation. The presence of the spectator is a condition for experiencing the installation: the installation needs the spectator to be present. The relationship between installation and spectator is where the subjective experience is of the installation artwork is created. Novak comes to this conclusion through recognising that her own performance is triggered not only by personal memories and sensations but also by physical sensations and bodily movements: the senses of the body and being present—the bodily experience and the physical participation with the artwork—is an important part of the installation. Novak underlines this by saying that experiencing an installation artwork is not merely an intellectual activity, but regards it as a fusion of thinking, feeling and desire.30
The experience of an installation requires the actual physical presence of the spectator in the space. The body—removed from the thinking head, attached to the ever-present mind, thus being different from the Cartesian divide between body and mind—must experience the space, room, or place in which the installation manifests itself; it experiences what it feels like to be present, here and now. Of importance to the work untaken here, Novak remarks that apart from the first, atmospheric glance through the installation space, she discovers the
30
installation step by step, using her feet.31 Novak adds: “In this manner I form gradually an
impression and an image of the whole installation that I could not see upon entering the installation at first.”32 This manner is of course heavily personal, but at the same time it is in its generality how all spectators discover and explore an artwork. It takes time to fully understand in what manner an installation works. Novak argues that by looking at the individual spectator’s performance, “the dictum of the viewer as performer should be understood as referring primarily to the viewer’s experience of her own interaction with the installation, and only secondarily as referring to her visible behaviour.”33 By focusing on the performative aspect of viewing that installation art asks of its viewers, a relationship with one’s surroundings is created through which the viewer gets “in contact with (aspects of) the physical and psychic relationships [they] find themselves with regard to their
surroundings.”34 The experience of an installation lies according to Novak in this personal relationship of the viewer with the surroundings they find themself in: the installation. In addition to Bishop’s interpretation of installation art, Novak argues that, “Being ultimately independent of external interests, the installation offers the visitor an experiential space to fill with interests of her own.”35 Rather than requiring the model spectator, as set forth by
Bishop, Novak proposes through the active regard of the viewer as performer, room for the individual, subjective performance through which meaning surrounding an installation artwork is created.
1.3 Focus on the Physical
Renée van de Vall offers a slightly different approach to the work of Bishop and Novak when she also interrogates the position of spectatorship. In At the Edges of Vision. A
Phenomenological Aesthetics of Contemporary Spectatorship (2008), Van de Vall argues that although the spectator expects a meaningful experience when they enters the installation, “we [the spectator] do not consider our incomprehension as merely incompetence on the part of the maker of on ourselves: searching for meaning is part of the game.”36 In this
ever-changing palette of meaning, Van de Vall deliberately moves the transformative meaning of art away from that of the scholarly debate and gives it back to the individual, physical experience. Regarding Bishop’s model spectator, Van de Vall argues that experiencing the 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., p. 247. 34 Ibid., p. 248. 35 Ibid., p. 249. 36 Van de Vall 2008, p. 101.
expected model experience should not be the goal of regarding and approaching art. Through this, Van de Vall refers to the paradigm currently present within art historical debate, where an understanding of the absolute, “objective” meaning of the artwork is continuously shifting.
Van de Vall compares the sensation of the spectator’s experience with installation art to that of feeling a rhythm. She follows Gilles Deleuze’s argument in Francis Bacon. The Logic of Sensation (2003) stating that the experience of art takes place when the composition between the different elements of the artwork—what she calls its “colour, sound, taste, touch, smell and weight” —behave like the rhythm of a piece of music.37 It is through the rhythm detected by the spectator that participation between the work and spectator is evoked. To Deleuze, the rhythm detectable in art is a “diastole-systole: the world that seizes me by closing in around me, the self that opens to the world and opens the world itself.”38 The personal and individual subjective recognition of this specific rhythm of the artwork is what Van de Vall alerts to as “the possible nature of what [the work of art] is involved with.”39 Emphasising this rhythm is key to the validation of individual subjectivity. Taking this argument even further, Van de Vall states that when onlookers become aware of their response to this rhythm, the awareness of the “artistic groove” becomes a tool that leads to a reflection upon one’s own experience of art. The notion of openness to create an imminent position regarding the subjective experience of art is shared by Novak. The atmosphere of an installation can either be inviting, hostile, crammed, open—all different situations to which the spectator in their turn responds. The atmosphere of the installation causes the spectator to open up to their own associations. Touched by the installation’s atmosphere, a complete spectrum of feelings, memories and imaginations surface. It is almost unnecessary to say that this spectrum is completely subjective and owned by the individual spectator.40
Nathaniel Stern places the physical relationship with installation art as central in his text “Interactive Art. Interventions in/to Process” (2016). The embodied spectator’s
experience—the “moving-thinking-feeling” experience as Stern paraphrases this concept— within interactive art installations “create[s] situations that enhance, disrupt, and alter
experience and actions in ways that call attention to our varied relationships with and as both structure and matter.”41 Like Novak and Van de Vall, Stern recognises specific qualities in the atmosphere created by installation art that emphasise the “moving-thinking-feeling” 37 Ibid., p. 128. 38 Deleuze 2003, pp. 42-3. 39 Van de Vall 2008, p. 131. 40 Novak 2010, pp. 223-5. 41 Stern 2016, p. 310
experience of the spectator. He approaches installation art as inherently interactive because of the physical relation between the spectator and the artwork.42 The emphasised
“moving-thinking-feeling” makes the spectator regard their own behaviour metaphysically, as it makes them stop and realise their own subconscious, culturally-evoked models of behaviour.43 The spectator experiences installations as dramatic processes in which the spectator is the one who produces these situations. The spectator realises that they are not only present for a specific situation, but also notice that they are present at this situation and hereby reflect on the self and the installation simultaneously.
1.4 Conclusion
What Bishop, Novak, Stern and Van de Vall share is that they agree that the physical presence of the embodied spectator is pivotal in the experience of installation art—either to feel the rhythm, to perform the installation or to approach the installation as a metaphysical experience, where the spectator also reflects on the self as an inherent part of the installation. However, Novak’s, Stern’s and Van de Vall’s methodologies of the physical relationship of the spectator with the artwork stress the individual subjective experience, thus avoiding a model in which a specific interpretation of the artwork is already tied down to an art
historical standard. Both Stern and Novak agree on the performativity of installation art. The spectator is the one who makes the installation “complete” (without the spectator, there is no installation), but they are also there to witness the completion.
For Novak, the spectator is the only one who is present to witness this completion. Stern also emphasises this performative aspect of the spectator when regarding installation art, however, the “completion” of the installation is never the same, as every individual visiting the installation has a different experience—even the same person has different experiences. This is reminiscent of Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ statement that one can never step into the same river twice: both the person and the river has changed. Van de Vall’s interpretation of the installation art experience as game experience is also valid when Novak states that the onlooker never solves the entire puzzle. There is never a moment in which the onlooker has the feeling that they understand the artwork completely. In making this
comparison between the experience of installation art and the experience of playing a game, the meaning of an artwork in current art historical debates is reduced to fitting merely to the
42
Ibid., p. 310. Stern sees the experience of both deliberate digital art and what he calls “analogue reactive art”, by which he means installation art without computer based technology or processes, to evoke parallel experiences.
43
rules of the game. Van de Vall’s interpretation of the experience of installation art shifts the transformative emphasis of art away from that of the intellectual and gives it back to the individual, physical experience.
Bishop’s pitfall, which becomes apparent when she discusses the dichotomy of the viewing object versus the model spectator, is that she addresses the art historically preferred subjective experience. Van de Vall argues that because installation art in its entirety — concluding the role of the spectator as performer or participating object – is “dealing with bodily experiences of sensation and feeling, the kind of articulating ‘terms’ we are looking for should be affective rather than conceptual, and perceptual only in so far as the perception involves us in what we see, hear and feel.”44 In stating this, Van de Vall tries to move away from assumptions of the audience experience that are being made within canonised art historical debate. These assumptions of the spectator’s experience become a valid part of the model spectator against which the spectator must measure their experience. The answer to Bishop that Stern, Van de Vall and Novak offer lies in a focus on the embodied spectator and the physical relationship that this embodied spectator builds with the artwork, and in this process constructs meaning of the artwork. This physical relationship is inherently personal, as the spectator brings their own thoughts, past and experiences with them that colour the interpretation of the installation.
Novak concludes her thesis by stating that whoever tries to describe and criticise installations from an external and neutral point of view, without addressing their own personal experience—which also entails the risk of having their own personal experience criticised– is missing the mark completely.45 Novak’s position resonates with me because of
my interest in exploring the personal subjective experience of art and what is added to this analysis through the physical experience of walking. To this extent, Judy Radul’s installation the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera (2017) is the perfect opportunity to research this, because it asks walking of the spectator through which I can seriously examine my own personal experience of engaging with such an installation artwork.
44
Van de Vall 2008, p. 125.
45
Novak 2010, p. 220. “Wie probeert om installaties vanuit een extern en neutraal oogpunt te beschrijven en te beoordelen, zonder de eigen beleving in het spel te brengen – en dat houdt ook in: op het spel te zetten – slaat de plank onvermijdelijk mis.” Translated from Dutch by the author.
CHAPTER 2
Experiencing Judy Radul’s Installation
My first introduction with Canadian-born artist Judy Radul (1962, CA) was through her installation-exhibition-cross-over the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera (2017), exhibited at Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Arts in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The exhibition was one installation artwork in its entirety and took up the entire third floor of the art institute, which was divided into six rooms and a hallway. Each room is designated a different title which is used in the name of the installation (Fig.1). The
installation does not clearly state a preferred, logical manner of walking through the exhibition, although the order of the title does seem to propose an order of importance. However, when looking at the installation map, the different characters are scattered over the entire floor. The work consists, among other things, of CCTV cameras placed on human-sized poles spread throughout the rooms, benches, beach chairs, television monitors,
sculptures, doors, hands, colourful insect screens, silver-coloured chains, mirrors, white bird statues on poles, plastic cases, a page-turning machine, mirrors and a single Wilhelmina peppermint candy, glued to an empty white A4-paper scotch taped to the wall.
In what follows I analyse my experience of Radul’s installation through the concept of cultural techniques proposed by German philosophers Bernhard Siegert and Georg Simmel and video installation artist Dan Graham, three thinkers whom Radul mentions as well in the visitors guide. In addition, I explore Radul’s explicit mention of the theatrical aspect of entering and exiting the installation, two culturally-charged activities that are prompted by walking and moving through the exhibition. In doing so, I emphasise my personal experience and perception of the installation.
2.1 The Poetic and Social Agency of Walking
Upon reading the exhibition catalogue for Radul’s the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera, what appealed to me first was the emphasis placed on the
exploration of the installation by the visitor through “the poetic and social agency of doors, windows, entrances and exits by means of [Radul’s] multi-camera, live-feed ‘present system’—the backbone of the exhibition.”46 The emphasis in the exhibition guide is placed on the literal and social mechanism of the various ways of entrance. Radul invites the visitor to enter and exit the exhibition, but inherent to this entering and exiting is an underlying
46
human state of being present in the exhibition: the manner in which the spectator moves through the exhibition.
Figure 1. Judy Radul, exhibition floor plan
The first thing I encounter when I walk into the installation is a page-turner machine (Fig. 2). The camera hanging above the page-turner machine is the first camera I see, the first of a number that feels much bigger than the seven cameras total it turns out to be. I stand next to the page-turner machine for a while, looking at the pages of the magazine being flipped over. The pages of the magazine consist of photographs, fragments of other pages of books with annotations, photographs of the actual pages of the book being turned over, and hands holding the pages. My attention is caught by the machine rather than by what is displayed on the pages. The little suction cup that sucks the page and creates a vacuum to lift it falters at a page showing a photograph of the contour of a bird on a window. The bird has flown into the window, leaving the contours of its wings. The page slides slowly back to its initial position in the book and the arm of the page-turner moves rhythmically to try again. On the second attempt, the page is lifted and turned over.
I turn left, leaving the machine behind me. I stand in a corridor, where there are three semi-transparent matte glass doors on my left. The exhibition guide informs me that this is the area of the king and, to quote Radul quoting French poet Francis Ponge, “kings don’t touch doors.”47 The corridor ends not with a wall, but rather with an elevator door that is partially a window. This is a freight elevator, used by technicians of the art centre to install shows and transport heavy things up to the third floor. In front of the elevator stands a security camera, turning rapidly inwards and outwards in no apparent rhythm, looking back through the window into the elevator and then into the hallway where I am standing. My attention is grabbed by the camera, as I wonder what it records. I later realise that the camera is in fact filming me as I make my way through the exhibition.
Returning to my royal position in the king’s corridor, I walk through the middle door as that one is ajar. Again, there is a camera in the room, standing on a pole, it’s eye moving around the room. Even though I wonder what is filmed and whether the camera is solely filming me, because of its rapid and sudden movement, the physical presence of the cameras does not make me feel observed. This first room is filled with a white bench, a curved orange glass sculpture, which encapsulates a book fixed to a mirror (Fig. 3), and a glass plate on a stand. Like the bird in the magazine, an imprint of a face is left on the glass stand as if
someone had walked into it. The stand is the same height as I am and I feel intrigued to move behind it, to place my own face behind the glass plate, to look through the clear eyeholes.
47
Figure 2. Judy Radul, installation overview
the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera, 2017
Figure 3. Judy Radul. installation overview
The room also has a white bench, to which a book is chained. I don’t feel obliged to sit down, so I move around to the next room. This room is filled with two insect screens standing in the middle of the space. On one side the blinds are entirely yellow, on the other side are red, white and yellow. On both sides, a plastic mannequin hand peaks through the curtain, as if to push the blinds away to enter the room. The space across the second room is filled with kitsch statues of little white birds, standing on poles of different heights, scattered across the room (Fig. 4). It is now that the moving blinds catch my attention. In front of every window, blinds are placed and they move. Similar to the cameras, the blinds follow an undefined choreography as if they are dancing to a beat I cannot make out. Rather than the birds, the blinds intrigue me and catch my attention, especially because their opening and closing seem to emphasise the darkened windows of the space.
Whilst looking at the moving blinds, my attention is caught by soft, eerie music that seems to originate from the next room in the back of the installation. I walk into this room, leaving the bird statues behind as I enter a room filled with screens on a rectangular pedestal that was hardly fifty centimetres high (Fig. 5). My earlier nonchalant attitude towards the cameras in the previous rooms changes when I walk into this room. Here I am confronted with myself: there are four video screens displayed with small black stools in from of them, on which I sit down and watch the camera footage. The screens show a montage of different camera footage, displaying the rooms that I just walked through in combination with footage from the camera taken above the magazine. Because the cameras film the exhibition, I can see a person walking through the exhibition. I catch a glimpse of her walking through the room with the white birds. That person walking through the exhibition in that colourful jumper is me (Fig. 6).48 I see myself walking through a room filled with white bird statues next to two close-ups of the magazine. The camera does not follow me, I merely walk through the image. I sometimes appear to be just in the camera’s way, as the scheduled (or rather, choreographed) cameras fulfil their programmed pattern. This confrontation with myself as observer causes a distancing between the image of myself wandering through the museum space that I was thus confronted with, and the actual experience of this wandering.
48
The photograph only shows three television screens due to the framing of the photographer, leaving a fourth screen out.
Figure 4. Judy Radul, installation overview
the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera, 2017
Figure 5. Judy Radul, installation overview
Figure 6. Judy Radul, installation overview
the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera, 2017
The montage of the different live feeds forces me to make connections that I leave feeling confused by. I fail to see the connection between the screens, disregarding any other position within the installation for myself apart from intruder. It makes me feel left out, watching myself walk through the exhibition whilst not feeling like that person I was watching is really me. There is another room next to the video room, filled with mirrors standing on the floor with texts in front of them. I do not spend much time in this mirror room as I am still shaken by the video room. I walk back to this room, where I sit down on one of the little black stools and continue to watch the shifting montage on the video screens for a while, before I decide to leave the installation.
2.2 Live Present System
Working with the camera and live-broadcast camera footage is a signature feature in the work of Radul. She displayed the video broadcasting system used in her work at Witte de With, which she calls the “present system”, for the first time in 2008, displaying the custom software system in the installation exhibition World Rehearsal Court, shown at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery in Vancouver, Canada.49 Radul explains that this system functions through the preprogramed “computer control of camera motion, and the cameras are
conferencing, or remote cameras, not with built-in recording capacity.”50 The emphasis is thus placed on the live camera. The image that the visitor sees displayed on the television screens—the image that I saw—was slightly delayed real-time, constructed out of a montage taken from the cameras spread throughout the exhibition space. Although there seemed to me to be no rhythm to the camera movements, there is in fact a pattern.51 The pattern takes 7 hours to completely run through and is hence not detectable by the general exhibition visitor, which explains why the camera movements came across as completely random.52
Radul wants to emphasise this “same moment/same space” comparison in which the visitor starts to compare “the camera’s gaze and the viewers’ gaze, and the viewers’ gaze upon the camera’s gaze.”53 Her work is reminiscent of the experiments done by video artists in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Dan Graham’s Time Delay Room (1974) and Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette’s Wipe Cycle (1969). Both Time Delay Room and Wipe Cycle employ closed-circuit video installations that film the viewers in one part of the installation and display the filmed footage in another part. For Schneider and Gillette, through the
confrontation of the visitor with themself, the artwork “transposes present-time demands as a way to disrupt television’s one-sided flow of information.”54 The artists aimed to challenge the reception of the medium of television with this work. In Graham’s Time Delay Room, he also questions the viewer experience of the video medium, but his observations can be
interpreted broader than that of a critique on the reception of television alone. As art historian Gregor Stemmrich states, because of the confrontation with the self as viewing subject, in Time Delay Room,
49 Szewczyk 2017. 50 Ibid. 51
Radul, personal interview, May 3, 2017.
52
Ibid.
53
Szewczyk 2017.
54
you feel trapped in a state of observation, in which your self-observation is subject to some visible outside control. In this manner, you as the viewer experience yourself as part of a social group of observed observers [instead of, as in the traditional view of art, standing arrested in individual contemplation before an auratic object].55
I certainly felt trapped in a state of observation of my own previous individual contemplation in Radul’s video room. However, I had been walking around in the installation with only a small number of other visitors and had the opportunity to sit in the so-called television room by myself. Likely due to the choreographed camera movements that I happened to walk through at the right time, the screen displayed a moment in which I was walking. Similar to Graham’s Time Delay Room, Radul’s the king, the door, the thief, the window, the stranger, the camera is searching for a way to create a dialogue between the inside and the outside. My personal, individual contemplative status was recorded and displayed because this process of inside appreciation—or rather, contemplation —was an inherent part of the installation, it was to be regarded as an outside process.
2.3 Performing the Landscape
In Radul’s installation, the performance between spectator and installation became an objectified image—an image of myself, to which she had me responding. Radul’s emphasis on this performance can be analysed using the idea of post-dramatic theatre, a concept by German theatrologist Hans-Thies Lehmann. According to Lehmann, post-dramatic theatre is first and foremost interested in the physical presence of the human body, that because of its emotional and physical surplus, always dominates a performance regardless of the text the performer is presented with.56 This is reminiscent of the embodied spectator. It entails a move away from the text of the theatre play, changing the focus to the space itself, the participatory body, the use of multimedia and sound, focusing on the installation of the play rather than its textual aspects. Lehmann makes this connection to explicitly incorporate installations and performance artworks, such as happenings and installations as exhibitions, into theatrical debate, which became the post-dramatic theatre, encompassing a far broader scope than mere plays performed in the theatre.57
55 Stemmrich 2002, p. 68. 56 Lehmann 2011, p. 35. 57
The change that this attitude brought to the theatre was that a play, in both written and spoken form, only acquires meaning through the concrete, physical staging and the
surroundings presented to the onlooker. This emphasises the sensory experience of the
participant rather than creating an atmosphere in which the participant is taught to understand and recognise what they are shown. Lehmann calls this shift the transition from logos to landscape, by which he means the transition from reason, the definition given by the maker as truth and the experience of the overall coherence of the shown piece, to an experience in which the meaning of an experienced piece is rather interpreted as chora.58 The concept chora is proposed by the Greek philosopher Plato, by which he means a space that is not yet
ordered, but is subject to the play of becoming, in which things are not yet separated and distinguished. In comparing this strategy of chora to the landscape, Lehmann addresses the experience of the exploration of a (theatre) performance to that of the experience of a walk through a landscape in which the viewer becomes the walking participant, who creates meaning as more details and aspects are discovered.
I propose to follow Lehmann’s post-dramatic turn when looking at the audience’s perception of installation art. Lehmann, Novak, Bishop, Van de Vall and Stern all agree that an installation becomes meaningful during the physical staging on the work. Approaching performance from a post-dramatic perspective, Lehmann adds to Novak’s concept of the spectator as performer when he argues that an audience is inherently an active performer, but the performer/spectator is in the process “becoming”: in the midst of creating meaning. However, Lehmann, like Merleau-Pont, focuses solely on the sensory experience of the participant. By observing, watching and exploring Radul’s installation, I felt as if she had placed me in the role of the walker. This is not a chosen role; this role is forced upon me. Radul herself calls the part the visitor gets to play “the stranger”, a title taken directly from the name of the work. This approach to the role of audience participation resonates with a sense of acting or theatre, an aspect that was enlarged through Radul’s use of video cameras and the direct real-time streaming of this video footage. I, in my role as the walker, was observed and filmed by the cameras and became, through the streaming of the live footage on several television screens, literally part of the exhibition for others to observe.
Through the observational strategies of the camera, my movements through the exhibition became forced as I walked myself—as if an action that is inherent and personal becomes a conscious operation, as if something you normally perform without thinking or
58
taking notice of, becomes emphasised and enlarged. In the visitors guide, Radul quotes George Simmel when he states that, “if wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of ‘the stranger’ presents the unity […] of these two characteristics.”59 The stranger,
simultaneously being the wanderer, is unattached from any place, becoming the opposite of fixation as the wandering person is creating meaning between points in space, thus being the personification of being “in transit”.
2.4 Cultural Techniques
Rather than the movement through the space, Rudal stresses the act of entering and exiting a space. Radul recognises the door, the window and the camera as portals, which are entities that construct and influence social behaviour.60 This is a quality that these three entities have in contemporary society, not in this installation specifically. Radul approaches the door, the window and the camera as different kinds of cultural techniques. The concept of cultural techniques is linked to German media theory–Kulturtechniken–and is used to describe
interaction between humankind and different media, where the focus lies on the constructions that lie at the basis of the socially constructed behaviour and constitute to contemporary culture in general. Cultural historian Thomas Macho explains that “Cultural techniques–such as writing, reading, painting, counting, making music–are always older than the concepts that are generated from them.”61 Macho illustrates this when he discusses the practice of singing.
Singing and making music is not objected to knowing musical annotations, it is musical annotations that derive from the practice of singing within Western society. This make singing as cultural technique evoke the creation of sheet music, for instance. Philosopher Bernhard Siegert adds to this when he explains that cultural techniques are media “that sustain codes, and disseminate, internalize, and institutionalize sign systems; they also
destabilize cultural codes, erase signs, and deterritorialize sounds and images.”62 Researching and dissecting these media leads to knowledge on how they influence socially constructed behaviour.
The door, the window and the camera can be approached as cultural techniques when looking at how these entities influence behaviour. Siegert as well as Simmel look at doors, windows, and bridges as “material facts [that] structure the real and are such that we form
59
Simmel 1908, as quoted in Visitors Guide Witte de With, 2017.
60 Szewczyk 2017. 61 Macho 2003, p. 179. 62 Siegert 2015, p. 15.
psychic and social constructs that correspond to their material lessons.”63 Society has
developed etiquettes, norms, values and strategies of culture which indicate how to handle these material objects. When looking at cultural techniques and the use of the term, it
becomes apparent that a conversation is taking place between the material manifestations and the carried-out behaviour they influence and vice versa. For instance, taking the material ‘door’ as entity that is subjected to cultural techniques, the act of opening and closing a door is attached to social constructs, thereby influencing behaviour. However, leaving and entering a space is not only carried out through the use of a door. This is a very literal explanation of the functioning of cultural techniques. In this thesis, I am proposing to consider the act of walking as a cultural technique–not unlike the door’s functioning as a cultural technique. I will explain how I am planning to do so in paragraph 2.5.
Radul’s interest in socially constructed behaviour causes her to focus on the frame of the video footage and how the installation visitor is captured in this displayed frame, thus emphasising the entering and exiting of the screen and the video frame.64 By focussing on this entering and leaving, she leaves out the moments in between: the actual walking through the installation, which is also shown on the screen. Because the medium of the camera and the live feedback directly displayed, Radul argues that the visitor sees themself as the stranger. The camera in this case functions as a catalyst as it creates distance, enabling the observer. The exhibition seems to come together on the surface of this live present screen presented and displayed in the video room, making walking through the actual installation seemingly mere preparation in creating images to display on the television screen. The inside contemplation of the viewer becomes the broadcasted image, turning the inside outside through the architectural frame of the camera.
Graham also touches on the duality between inside and outside in his text “Essay on Video, Architecture, and Television” (1979) when he mentions how “an architectural code both reflects and directs the social order”, and how he feels that the camera and thus the connected media of video and television will take over the “public versus private codes” and boundaries that are currently set by architecture.65 Architecture, windows and even glass become a cultural technique for Graham through which contemporary society is framed and thus constructed. According to Graham, “window glass alienates ‘subject’ from ‘object’. From behind the glass, the spectator’s view is ‘objective’, while the observed’s subject(ivity)
63
Szewczyk 2017.
64
Radul, personal interview, May 3, 2017.
65
is concealed.”66 He connects this idea to glass curtain walls, which seem to make the private
sphere accessible because of their visible openness, but in fact make the interior disappear completely as there is no inside or outside anymore.
Radul connects Graham to the writings of earlier mentioned Siegert and Simmel. Like Siegert, Simmel approaches the door as cultural technique, but he also stresses that it is through walking—as one does across a bridge or when moving through a door—that human understanding is constructed. He states that “the people who first built a path between two places performed one of the greatest human achievements.”67 Simmel elevates this path-making as one of humankind’s greatest achievements because walking from one point to another creates a subjective connection between the two, thus establishing meaning. This path would only become objective when leaving an imprint, because then the connection would be visibly imprinted on the surface of the earth: “no matter how often they might have gone back and forth between the two and thus connected them subjectively, so to speak, it was only in visibly impressing the path into the surface of the earth that the places where objectively connected.”68 Thus, in his argument, Simmel choses the image of the bridge because this is the most material path he can think of, connecting one river side to the other, creating an “objective” route in the air. For Simmel, “the forms that dominate the dynamics of our lives are thus transferred by bridge and door into the fixed permanence of visible creation.”69
This raises the question of whether a path must be constructed in a material manner. What happens when you start looking at the untrodden one? A path only comes into existence by the steps of the first person, created by movement. A path is the historic result of the very personal experience of a moving person. What is the effect on individuality, on psychological development, of a person who has created a personal path? Could the absence of imprint, the subjectivity of the un-imprinted path, be the path of the walker, the stroller, where the
individual subjectivity of creating one’s own path is pivotal? This means that we move away from Simmel’s path as road, which is an “objective connection between points. As we move away from the road, we move towards the “subjective” path, which has not yet, or never will, become a road, a path or a bridge. These are the footsteps of the individual walk and thus the personal subjective experience of the walk on this path.
66 Ibid., p. 55. 67 Simmel 1994, p. 6. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., p. 9.
