Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Thoughts on Installation Art in terms of :
STATISTICS
300 square metres scaffold netting. 2000 metres green nylon rope. 75 stainless steel grommets. 10 ladders. Approx. 150 cable clips. Installed over 48 hours. Approx. total construction and preparation time of 3 months (not including conception).
HUMAN RESOURCE
23 assistants and helpers
DE-INSTALLATION OF WORK
2 pairs of scissors and 10 minutes
*Go here to see it when up
EPHEMERALITY
The process of taking it down is as deeply satisfying as putting it up. The wreckage has a reckless and poignant quality, with an edge of hysterical laughter creeping in the edges: this, the source of so much sweat and worry - in the end, nothing. Documentation in a faded way in images. Only the vague experience of it, held in memory by people who have seen it, who had a hand it making it, touched it at certain edges and angles. For myself, no sense at all of preciousness, in fact, I am light. As happy in the destruction as construction (and in a sick way, maybe even happier), because this is the natural course of things. The same afternoon, the space was used for a cocktail reception.
LABOUR
For what? Outside E.H.'s attic where I sewed most of the sails, I could see a house being built. Construction workers grow dark in the midday sun - mixing concrete, laying concrete, drilling, welding, bending, pouring, lifting, knocking, smoking, eating, drinking. I do the same thing concurrently - sewing, pinning, folding, cutting, smoking, eating, drinking. In the end we are trying to build a thing that we can see. But the thing has a different use. A house has a fixed value, and a house may be used to live in. You cannot live in an installation. What do we use it for then? Is the difference in the product as a result of the difference in our labour? Hence value? Hence access? How am I different from a construction worker?
FAVORITE REACTION
A dark little Indonesian man works at the High Commission in building maintence. He spent two years on the coast of Melaka, building buildings. He described himself as Orang Laut, i.e. 'Saya orang laut, mesti taulah' ('I am a person of the sea, of course I can tell'). For him, the shores are the mountains (or rather gunung berapi/volcano), the sails are the fishing nets, the concrete is the sea. I am questioned, as a KL person, how and why I should talk about ships and the ocean, since there is no such thing in the city. I replied that this is a city ocean, and I'm lost. He called me 'lang lui' (pretty), which is always nice.
AUDIENCE
Still have immense trouble describing what I do when people here (KL) ask 'what do you do'. 'Sculpture', I find, satisfies both myself and them. I flirt with 'set design, but not really, but something like it', but I think... ok, no. Installation is sculpture because sculpture is material, space. Installation is an exploded sculpture. Installation is an exploded planet, in which one planet has exploded to create many planets, which as a whole, is another universe.
BEUYS
If I make objects, I think of Marcel Duchamp, if I make installations, I think of Joseph Beuys. Thought as a form of sculpture, sculpture as a form of action.
"My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture. . . or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone.
THINKING FORMS--how we mold our thoughts or
SPOKEN FORMS--how we shape our thoughts into words or
SOCIAL SCULPTURE--how we mold and shape the world in which we live:
SCULPTURE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS; EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST.
That is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished, processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change."
-from Carin Kuoni, ed., Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990), 19.
MONTIEN BOONMA
I wish I could have met him.
MALAYSIAN ART (More thought and examples needed here, but am running out of steam)
'Installation' is becoming ubiquitous, but for all the wrong reasons. There is a proliferation of the form, but not an increase in quality of conception or execution. We use installation, yet we do not think about it. It has become too convenient, objects hung in space. Conversely there is a sort of backlash, in which it is referred to in a derogatory manner as 'installation bullshit' (source : personal conversation with Dr. Jolly Koh, Malaysian abstract expressionist painter).
300 square metres scaffold netting. 2000 metres green nylon rope. 75 stainless steel grommets. 10 ladders. Approx. 150 cable clips. Installed over 48 hours. Approx. total construction and preparation time of 3 months (not including conception).
HUMAN RESOURCE
23 assistants and helpers
DE-INSTALLATION OF WORK
2 pairs of scissors and 10 minutes
*Go here to see it when up
EPHEMERALITY
The process of taking it down is as deeply satisfying as putting it up. The wreckage has a reckless and poignant quality, with an edge of hysterical laughter creeping in the edges: this, the source of so much sweat and worry - in the end, nothing. Documentation in a faded way in images. Only the vague experience of it, held in memory by people who have seen it, who had a hand it making it, touched it at certain edges and angles. For myself, no sense at all of preciousness, in fact, I am light. As happy in the destruction as construction (and in a sick way, maybe even happier), because this is the natural course of things. The same afternoon, the space was used for a cocktail reception.
LABOUR
For what? Outside E.H.'s attic where I sewed most of the sails, I could see a house being built. Construction workers grow dark in the midday sun - mixing concrete, laying concrete, drilling, welding, bending, pouring, lifting, knocking, smoking, eating, drinking. I do the same thing concurrently - sewing, pinning, folding, cutting, smoking, eating, drinking. In the end we are trying to build a thing that we can see. But the thing has a different use. A house has a fixed value, and a house may be used to live in. You cannot live in an installation. What do we use it for then? Is the difference in the product as a result of the difference in our labour? Hence value? Hence access? How am I different from a construction worker?
FAVORITE REACTION
A dark little Indonesian man works at the High Commission in building maintence. He spent two years on the coast of Melaka, building buildings. He described himself as Orang Laut, i.e. 'Saya orang laut, mesti taulah' ('I am a person of the sea, of course I can tell'). For him, the shores are the mountains (or rather gunung berapi/volcano), the sails are the fishing nets, the concrete is the sea. I am questioned, as a KL person, how and why I should talk about ships and the ocean, since there is no such thing in the city. I replied that this is a city ocean, and I'm lost. He called me 'lang lui' (pretty), which is always nice.
AUDIENCE
Still have immense trouble describing what I do when people here (KL) ask 'what do you do'. 'Sculpture', I find, satisfies both myself and them. I flirt with 'set design, but not really, but something like it', but I think... ok, no. Installation is sculpture because sculpture is material, space. Installation is an exploded sculpture. Installation is an exploded planet, in which one planet has exploded to create many planets, which as a whole, is another universe.
BEUYS
If I make objects, I think of Marcel Duchamp, if I make installations, I think of Joseph Beuys. Thought as a form of sculpture, sculpture as a form of action.
"My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture. . . or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone.
THINKING FORMS--how we mold our thoughts or
SPOKEN FORMS--how we shape our thoughts into words or
SOCIAL SCULPTURE--how we mold and shape the world in which we live:
SCULPTURE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS; EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST.
That is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished, processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of change."
-from Carin Kuoni, ed., Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990), 19.
MONTIEN BOONMA
I wish I could have met him.
MALAYSIAN ART (More thought and examples needed here, but am running out of steam)
'Installation' is becoming ubiquitous, but for all the wrong reasons. There is a proliferation of the form, but not an increase in quality of conception or execution. We use installation, yet we do not think about it. It has become too convenient, objects hung in space. Conversely there is a sort of backlash, in which it is referred to in a derogatory manner as 'installation bullshit' (source : personal conversation with Dr. Jolly Koh, Malaysian abstract expressionist painter).
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