Not to forget: There is beauty and seduction to be found in this exhibit : « Beauty is a tool for seduction and a means of contestation » Nancy Spector on Felix Gonzales-Torres
A gift offered, in how we install the art
And of course: “meaning is contingent on context, how it is encountered”: NS
So, we could say, that by offering an open-ended sequence to some degree, not linear, we do this in a spirit of “generosity” by not being overly directive. The Louvre Palais is just this – directive and hierarchical; we must offer otherwise.
Perhaps, then the Jalons, could be time-based experience, connecting to our time, today with the interest in simultaneity (as in contemporary art practice). The viewer must become static to view the art differently – we are in fact fighting the “flaneur” experience, which the 19th Century museum and the Grand Gallerie is all about – in order to hold the viewers attention.
The art become active. The art work is not isolated; it is the viewer that is momentarily frozen, at this point – at the Jalons – where a work and a gaze converge. How?: time-based color change, time-based lighting change makes the viewer aware of act of seeing – the foregrounded space of a painting, for example, will change in consequence. This is to be studied further, non unlike an Olafur Elliasson intervention where the viewer is made conscious of the act of seeing.
The Louvre Palais, with its long rectangular rooms, offer the flaneur the option to navigate many spaces on axis, scanning the art, almost never seemed in completion, or for long, as other visitors pass in front. The organization of the galleries and art in the Palais sets up a classic frontality with the works, as one would expect for a 19Th classic institution. Many works, however, were not necessarily created to be viewed like this at all (sacred works were difficult to view high up in their cathedral settings; early pre-christian were not to be seen by anyone except for the deceased in an afterlife, etc)
For the Louvre Lens, what is important perhaps is not the spectator’s ability to repeat this “optimal viewing condition”, to allow for the visitor to circulate axially, as in the Palais, nor to circulate around the works individually (also a frequent condition there as well), but on the contrary to “challenge the spectatorship by focusing on the viewer’s frozen immobility”. The Jalon’s should serve, then, to freeze the viewer momentarily, making the object active in challenging in the same moment the aesthetics of frontality and the fixed condition of viewing. The slow-change of periphereal color rendering of the wall background (backlit from the painting itself, or from the surface it is mounted on – the newmat scheme), will infact require the visitor to stop, to experience it.
Pushing this idea further – may we investigate that some of the bases, rotate, or that large column/walls of artifacts, also rotate, undoing the concept of central perspective, of works to be viewed only from one single angle within the space. In such a cases, the viewer becomes active in the perspective, suggesting that the “world circulates around the eye of the observer”. Deleuze argues this point, in looking at Cinema – the opportunity to disrupt our self-centered perception, by providing competing viewpoints.
Can some part of the exhibit, as laid out in the rough sketch, reinforce this filmic aspect; will the rotation of works on an vertical axis illustrate this, without being tacky?(see p 167 by NO on Installation Art).
And on the gallery ending:
Will the Louvre team be open to a lack of closure of the exhibit? Will this be seen as a provocation, “this seeming open-endedness, and its refusal to assert closure of meaning”? NS
Despite the works of resistance or infiltration or undoing some expectations, in the early part of this text, the exhibit needs to be “optimistic” to entice, to challenge, to invest in beauty as well.
Quotes by NS, from Gonzales-Torres review 2007:
The works of various periods, artistic practice in the exhibition may “coexist, as in memory, in no particular order or sequence beyond that of our own active interpretative making”: (NS)
..”In their simultaneity, they distort linear syntax, undermining the very convention of communication and thus, lay the groundwork for a heterotopic environment”.
..”Repudiate any unitary notion of truth…expose stereotypes….undermine some of the conventional, complacent assumptions…
On the Gallery itself and its specificity:
Let us conceive of the gallery, in all of its hugeness, zenithally lit, as a “performative rather than a representational space” (HUO). This alone, would justify a different approach to the installation.
Do we require, really, to provide an axis of circulation, a direct route, as mentioned frequently, the “pendant” to the Grande Gallerie of the Palais? I think not.
This does not mean we cannot provide for a specific “trajectory” through the space(s) – however, experience is derived in some “meandering”, in the surprise encounters that are not scripted.
On the concept of platforms in a sequence that is not linear. They offer:
“(These)… narrative instances (that) depend upon each other. In the course of the chaining of these sequences, a narrative unfolds”. (P.Parreno)
On the concept of the walls, splayed, spread in thickness to allow for an in-between space. They offer:
Placed on these walls, slightly concealed, or compressed, we do not offer a “wholesome” view, but perhaps the view assumed (though not shown) of a Thomas Struth photo. The placement of the works is not gratuitous.
The background color and wall material is not to be an effortless white background, un-communicating, minimalist necessarily – it is to participate in the encounter and the reading of the work. “What I think is interesting about exhibitions is that they give a momentary take on something…there isn’t a singular vision about how these things could be shown.” (ZH)
“The re-descriptions of painting that seize on the pictorial event instead of the figurative anecdote end-up creating a new mode of visibility, which alone makes possible Impressionist painting and everything that follows.. (what is in fact excluded from this exhibit). So (we) are to be sensitive to the way the mediums act on each other, and in particular the way words act on images and images on words” (JR)
But a caution: “I don’t think that a device that changes images or the changes words necessarily has a critical effect. We tend to think a little too quickly that this restaging device will make you see things differently, understand things differently”. Italics mine (JR) Jacques Ranciere
“I believe the viewers have much more power than they are actually offered, so to speak. Museums too often pacify the audience, rather than activating them, often through what I mentioned earlier: not disclosing their own construction.” O. Eliasson
And finally a critique of the linear:
“It’s also interesting to bring in the viewer. What is visible in your drawings (ZH) for exhibition spaces is this real freedom of the viewer. And that relates back to the laboratory years (the early MoMA 1950) also, because at the beginning of the modern museums, the idea was that the viewer could move freely, in a non-linear way across the space. So it was exactly the opposite from the way it is today, where it reaches its highest point in linearity with the “audio-guide model”. (HO Oblrist)
And the position on contemporary installation art practice – not the object - by the artist themselves, for which we can, should, may take cue from:
“Let’s say it goes through the different forms of experience. That affects the work and its condition of realization. It helps me to understand what’s happening around an object, which means thinking in terms of chains, of scenarios. The movement of an object through the chain is a question of trajectories…” P Huyghe
....trajectory, “promendalogoly” as defined by Lucius Burckhardt in Kassel….
Exhibition ..”as something you cross, where you suspend your conclusions and resolutions, without loosing the dynamic (PH).
On time, the linear chronology, that seems imposed on us:
“It seems that the conception of time that you’re interested in is not that of measured time, which Francois Jullier, says is characteristic of Western civilization, but rather a Eastern conception, where time is determined by occasions, events, what occurs.” (PH)
“We are utterly aware that the perception of time isn’t identical in every culture….Some peoples also use space rather than time to identify actions. It is obvious as well that in every attempt to present things, and in particular when one makes a film or creates an image, a creation of time is involved” (LS).
Thus the notion of time is embedded in the object itself. How much sign-posting is thus required?
“Exactly. There is temporality or a duration (which does not necessarily mean a measured time) that is inseparable from the coming into being of form.” PH
Duration, the sequence in space of the platforms as configured or distributed in the gallery – the “espacement” is the device to establish this time factor. Not, solely, if at all, by sign-posted classic, historical eras. Is this possible? As Palermo’s quote offers above – our layouts may be subjective – they are not based on rigorous geometry, or rules – but they establish a rhythm, a duration, a “narrative instance” that depends on each other. Our work is to design the “chaining of these sequences”…to allow for multiple narratives to unfold, to unravel.
The plan does not show the espaces d’isolement. I have other drawings for these – circular, double-circular space, and square. Isolement, should be for 3 to 5 persons, not individual per se. The isolement is from sound (or new sound-scape/narrative offered) and a mediated presentation not in competition with any art works. I believe it is not an isolement in order to view an object alone – completely deconxeturalized.
Quotes of interest to me:
"It should be said right away that the issue of formal versus contextual presentation in museum display - the dilemma of how to include substantive explanations without overwhelming the visual and emotional presence of objects, admits of no obvious solution. It is compounded, in a time of reflexive museology and diversifying audiences, by the problem of which contexts to feature. There are always too many relevant possibilities. Every exhibition finds its own modus vivendi." James Clifford, October 127 June 07
"I try to build installations that let you see yourself rather than the installation" Olafur Elisasson
"I see and perceive, I comment and I evolve in a unique space and
time. Art is the place that produces a specific sociability."
"Like one of Gonzales-Torres' piles of candies, there can be an ideal
balance between form and its programmed disappearance, between visual
beauty and modest gestures, between childlike wonder in front of the
image and the complexity of the levels at which it is read."
"Art is a state of encounter."
"The aura of artworks has shifted towards their public"
All 4 quotesl by N. Bourriaud
In "Relational Aesthetics"
On Time, or “Temps”
The exhibit of l’homme dans son temps should not be about, defining how much "space" and number of objects can fit into the spaces allocated - much as they – the Louvre - clamor for this evaluation It should be about the time given to works, just as much as the space ("two minutes of time, rather than two square meters of space" – I think this comes from Matta Clark).
Another issue, is the translation of this exhibit title – “temps”. Time can be understood as either linear or cyclical, so the idea of chronology is not a given, in taking on the term time or “temps”.
There is also the simultaneity of time, in the sense of time as movement and place occurring at the same time in different spaces, that also is part of western thought (in Eastern thought, the concept of time is cyclical, temporal; in pre-Mesopotamia, where the core of the Louvre collection starts, time was seen quite differently, even if“experienced” the same as we experience it today: the past was before the present, as it was known, and not seen as after the present, a reverseal of Aristotle diagram of the arrows of the Chrono, past, present, future).
And so, this opens another large area, of how time is conceived, thought of, in philosophy, science, in modern thought, and now in post-modern thought – does this free us from being entrenched in a passé concept of time as linear movement, and thus a design as an established chronology?
Let us go on to design it.
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