Invited to an unexpected event

Anybody knew about it before going there? Then it could be different.

Floor of the Forest

Do they look comfortable in those clothes even though it must be physically very hard work?
YES, I THINK THEY DO.


Does anyone wanna take a part in?

Consider about what you can not see...

This idea came from the questions of unexpected chances, accidental events, interactivity and relationship.

I am currently working on designing a platform where (which) the viewers can work into but still can communicate (in any way) with viewers or passers-by outside the platform. In this work, smoothing the boundary between the art work and the surroundings is one of the important things as I do not want to make a stage to be special but do want to design it as a part of the environment.

Anthony Mccall

You and I, horizontal

Fantastic space plays... I dreamt in the lighting and it was a fantasy.

Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography and Reference

Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (The MIT Press, October 110, 2004)
: Understanding of Relational Aesthetics and Claire Bishop mentions two artists –Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija- as representatives of Relational Artists.

Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Presses du réel, 2002)
: Extending the idea of Relational art forms and definitions.

Claire Bishop, Installation Art (London: Tate, 2005)
: ‘Installation art’ is described as ‘theatrical’, ‘immersive’ or ‘experiential’

Hans Peter Kuhn, Interview with Wolfgang Storch (Seoul: Rodin Gallery_ The Scenic Eye, 2004)
: Giving the idea of how engage people as audiences, as a way of communication, especially sounds.

Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art (London: Routledge, 2000)
: Broaden perspective to sites.

Hans Peter Kuhn, The Middle Place (Seoul: Rodin Gallery_ The Scenic Eye, 2004)

Collaboration work between Visual Artists and one point six, Volume (London: V&A Museum, 2006)

Antony Cormley, Blind Light (London: The Hayward Gallery, 2007)


Intended Bibliography and Reference

David Batchelor, Movements in Modern Art_ Minimalism (London: Tate Gallery, 1997)

Christopher Innes, Edward Gordon Craig: A Vision of Theatre (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1998)

Philip Auslander, Liveness (London: Routledge, 1999)

Mel Gooding, Public: art: space (London: Merrell Holberton, 1998)

Archer Michael, Installation Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994)

Nicolas De Oliveira, Installation Art in the New Millennium (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004)

RMJM : inside out : outside in (London : Black Dog, 2006)
: "Architecture that has less to do with experience of forms but rather forms of experience"

Research Proposal

Meeting a performance in a public place
:Audience engagement Installation Development

Nicolas Bourriaud, who is a theorist and curator, coined the phrase ‘Relational Aesthetics’ to distinguish the art of the 1990s and mentioned that a relational art takes as its theoretical horizon “The realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space”.1 In addition, he describes Relational Aesthetics as a process of situating contemporary art in a cultural context. There are several examples of relational arts. Rirkrit Tiravanija, who is a contemporary artist and well-known for hybrid installation performances, cooks Thai food for gallery or museum visitors and the work is often completed by the audiences. Liam Gillick designs colourful frames based on Minimalism to build structure as spatial resemblance to public places such as office spaces and bus shelters. Before that, he is also aware of the fact that different materials, structures and colour surrounding spaces influence the way that people behave. In this kind of his work, he does not want the viewer to complete the work, rather he attempts to offer continuous open-endedness in which the work is a backdrop to provoke the audiences. Relational arts often accompany installations at any level and engage people to walk into and play with them physically or mentally, and which is often described as ‘theatrical’ or ‘experiential’. However, can the words ‘theatrical’ and ‘experiential’ be distinguished or are they similar things and only different from different contexts? Since the 1990s when Relational Aesthetics emerged, the boundary between theatre, installation art and everyday experiment seems to have been blurred. However I am more concerned about how the art forms which we call theatre keep performative aspects.

I am currently looking at the possibility of being part of a performance by placing installations within everyday lives and which is more concerned with theatrical context. As I mentioned above, there are a lot of examples of relational arts including installation arts but in terms of the level of interaction or the performative level, I guess they have not reached the best yet. There was a luminous installation called ‘Volume’ over winter 2006 at the V&A Museum and it gave me an opportunity to experience high-level interaction between the installation and myself as an audience. It consisted of numerous columns of light and sounds in the dark and it was designed to respond dramatically to human movement. It was installed in a public place where people walk through or stay and as a host, it invited people successfully. I felt as if I was an actor or an audience. However if it was described as a stage, what was the difference between an audience, a participant and passer-by? Obviously, as soon as people start to respond to the installations, they are not passers-by anymore. In a public place, it is more difficult to classify people into those groups and those can possibly be divided by the level of participation.

Nowadays, artists, whose art pieces are often displayed in a space, consider more providing environments for their works rather than exhibiting complete art forms. This is sometimes meant that those works are hardly complete without direct participation. “For me it’s not about showing, but rather about generating something specific. I don’t want to present a position, a story or transmit something. Instead, I want to provoke a feeling or an impression in the audience.” 2 Hans Peter Kuhn, who is a sound artist based in Berlin, created an installation called ‘Middle Place’ which interacts with participants by generating the sounds coming from the installation. He invites everyone as producers or actors and to decide what the sounds are. This is really ambiguous, and gives them opportunities to travel through his work. For that reason, installations might be able to provoke a change of consciousness and give chances to doubt the stability of everyday perception. However, in what way? To encourage physical reactions or mental engagement? On one hand, there are many paintings, sculptures, monuments in public spaces such as in museums, company buildings and on streets. Those have visual impacts but do not influence people in performative ways. Conversely, installation arts could engage people in many ways. At this point I am questioning in which way installations can be performative. What kinds of forms installation arts could be and how the installations engage people as an audience, especially in walking through public places. Interaction between the installations and the audience is a kind of communication but not using languages. Installations can provoke people to do performative movement in some ways such as by making sounds, smells or even changing shapes.

In terms of giving opportunities to reinterpret the environment given, I am looking at company buildings, where everyday lives occur and social engagement is all around, whether the buildings can encourage the workers to see other worlds but not offering a completely unaccustomed surrounding. Can it be possible to apply art pieces without changing existing places into different places, which people might have strange feelings about an aversion or the new things? At this point I am looking at the continuity of spaces and how it can be expressed in three-dimensional forms which later should be a resemblance to the places. Actually, there can be another doubt raised about the way of engaging people in company buildings, which is a psychological matter. The perspective to the existing world in every place could be various, depending on the group of people. For instance, in a company building it could be very different depending on groups of people, like owners of companies and businessmen. In addition, architects and artists’ desire of building the environment might be different from them. If so, how can it be possible to find the one point?

Basically, situating myself in the place where a performative experiment can occur and seek what is the significance of installations being in the public is necessarily considered. As I am going to do a survey and examine those ideas, I am also going to keep pace with practical work related to the same issue to prove and analyse those ideas and questions so that it can be seen whether those ideas really work in reality.

1. Claire Bishop, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (The MIT Press, October 110, 2004, p.53,54)
2. Hans Peter Kuhn, Interview with Wolfgang Storch (Seoul: Rodin Gallery_ The Scenic Eye, 2004, p.43)

Reflection as a oppotunity.

PART 2

Performance_ Different world?! Idealistic?! Part of real world?!

Does performance have to be idealistic? Can performance be idealistic? It quite depends on how to define the word ‘Idealistic’. In my opinion, it does not always follow the word ‘Utopia’ but I would say that Utopia can be a part of Idealistic, which I would define as what we want to be rather than what we have to be therefore it can be diverse to different people.

For the way to be idealistic, what can we do? There is nobody who can attain your dream, there is only yourself. However, giving opportunities is not that difficult actually that is what I am trying to do at the moment by making installations.

What do people think about them when they see the reflection of them on surfaces such as mirror, water, window, and so on. Some people just see their faces or their bodies exactly the same as they really are and some people see parts of them in the way of dreaming.

Mirror – People want to be prettier or better on mirror. Mirror reflects people exactly like them and also reflect their dream, which people usually have inside of their mind so that they can see what they want.

Water – Water also reflects the real shapes of objects but as soon as a water drop fall into the water, the reflected shapes of the objects are distorted and then the shapes become to the real shapes again as time goes by.

For that reason, I am looking at materials which can reflect the shapes of people and also encourage people to have many questions about themselves within these kinds of elements. In addition, if there are space and time limitation as contexts, the consequences of these works are more significance.


So What?!

I’m thinking about an installation like the picture beside. It doesn’t really matter how it looks like at the moment but as I’m thinking about company buildings as a place of placing my work, this kind of structure would be a good start because we can see stairs quite easily in these kinds of buildings and it also does fit to my theme of continuity nicely.

When I thought about the idea of giving people opportunity to be idealistic, I was thinking who really needs something idealistic in everyday lives mostly. Then I came up with people in company building, who actually do the same jobs everyday and get bored quite easily. In that context, an installation, which can give the people opportunities to look at their dream or ideal worlds, has significant meanings.

Meet a place with opportunities to look at what they want but not in a completely different place from where they live or work…