The Duveen space in Tate Britain is empty. A heavy stone, neo-classical atrium. The word 'empty' is used in the sloppiest sense, no space is empty. This space is full of connotations, histories, political and social associations, memories of what has happened there before and what might happen in the future. But it is empty of artworks, no sculptures, no paintings, no installations… or so I think.
There is a family of five. Perhaps tourists. They walk casually as though through a piazza, maps in hand. Sound spills into the space from adjacent rooms. I am sat near a pillar towards the south end of the space. I read the information panel about Martin Creed’s new piece Work 850. The work is partly sponsored by Puma, the sportswear manufacturer.
A runner appears round the corner. Explosively cutting through the space. He enters my line of vision of life-size then gets smaller and smaller but never invisible. His shrinking image is accompanied by the rhythm of his feet, starting loud and becoming ever more quiet until inaudible. The runner turns a corner at the end of the space and disappears out of sight. The effect is incredibly cinematic. Statically observing this rapidly moving body is like a quick but steady ‘zoom-out’ shot.
Another runner. The same carving through the space. A palpable expulsion of physical energy. Then another. Eventually I recognize the runner I first saw. They are on a loop. So the notion of an empty space is transformed. The gaps between the runners in the space become a ‘charged negative’. The waiting punctuated by moments of concentrated and directed action. The in-between times do not feel like a nothingness, the inactivity has been filled with expectation, as tightly choreographed as the runners’ action… An equivalent to the drawing exercise in which you sketch the space surrounding space an object, everything but the object, and in doing so reveal it by the shape of its absence.
The sparseness of the scene encourages a greater focused scrutiny of other details. Great attention is paid to the runners: their running style, who has the biggest thighs, the tightest Lycra, their varying combinations of sportswear, who’s running out of breath. The runners can be seen anticipating the erratic movements of the public – there are no cordons demarcating ‘no walk or no run zones’. Some are oblivious, allowing the work to ‘run through them’, or be overtaken, unaware they themselves were any sort of obstruction. Others watch leaning against a wall. Occasionally you hear a runner make a sharp intake of breath. The compact minimalism lies not only in the visual sparseness; but the activity itself, running: the most elemental of physical expression. This is reinforced by the linearity of the work, the runners taking the same programmed course, parallel to the walls, following the schema laid out by the architecture as much as the dictates of the artist.
To lock your gaze on a runner is to simultaneously become hyper-aware of the construction of the space, how it orchestrates your eye through its symmetry and calculatedly draws attention to certain decorative features by aligning itself with the effects of perspective. The rows of squares that pattern the floor (seven per row) are noticed for the first time. I note the lighting and the colours. Aside from the runners and the architecture, the most consistent visual motif is the invigilators; dark-berry-red shirts, black trousers, white ID cards, either on hip or round nick, either still or pacing within a particular zone. They are spot-lit not just by their uniformity but by the contrasting (but equally consistent) tempo of their movement. All has become like music.
Observing the runs, a game of ‘spot the differences’ emerges in me; little similarities are tracked, deviations are counted, all the while metaphors are searched for. While watching I recall a buried memory: I had taken my youngest brother, four years old at the time, to the park, to ride his scooter. We stopped at a path, midway up a hill. He excitedly ran further up the slope to gain momentum, while I sat on a bench and watched. He got on the scooter, full of excitement and glee, then whizzed down, past me, past other pedestrians and couples and dog walkers, I could hear him wailing with excitement, until he was reduced to a dot, and eventually out of sight. It was a happy moment. As he ran up the hill becoming present again – smiling so much, I was moved to tears. Perhaps a delayed reaction to his temporary disappearance. I thought of his childhood rushing by, of the incredible difficulty if not impossibility of retaining moments of time, how (for me) his disappearance did not just prefigure aging, but loss and ultimately death.
Wednesday 27 August 2008
Saturday 23 August 2008
Music is Food / Oliver Payne and Nick Relph
I saw this 3 minute video at Herald St Gallery – (who represent the duo Oliver Payne and Nick Relph) on the 18th July 2008. This video’s opening title reads 'Frieze Film' .
One wonders what the marketing executives of the respective sponsors thought upon seeing this work. Those who are charged with assessing the use of the corporation’s logo: that they are formatted as was agreed in the contract, at the right size, no smaller than those of other sponsors who have donated the same amount, that the text in relation to logo is correctly proportioned - and most importantly that the brand is not undermined. I imagine there might have been some hesitancy among these executives: as when one suspects being the victim of a very sophisticated and subtle slight, so subtle one hesitates to take offence for fear that there was no slight at all – and yet the doubt remains.
Usually the sponsor’s credits are sandwiched either side of a film, or just at the end; if it is a press release, or an information board, they are to one side, in a corner, marginal. Usually artworks present themselves and operate oblivious to the logos and funding creditations that accompany them.
It is commonplace for works not to recognize the financial contributors to their production. It is a very specific blind spot: there is no end of works that comment, or are in themselves, the trace or documentation of their physical process or material manufacture; or make a point of communicating the contributions of the personnel who made them - especially collaborative works exploring authorship.
This is an opposite scenario to the institution hosting the work; the visibility of an institution’s dependence on a corporate sponsor is exactly the motivation for the company to sponsor in the first place.
One can see why artists suffering this blind-spot are so widespread: the individuality, ethics and autonomy of a practice can immediately be called into question when juxtaposed with a particular sponsor. It leads to an explosion of questions around who we should work for, accept money from, to what end – what is the danger and potential of compromise – is one immediately co-opted? and to whose gain? Will the benefits fall to a company whose policies you are happy with - or will their policies conflict with arguments made by your work? Far better to feign ignorance, or declare such considerations beyond the concerns of one's practice. Nonetheless the financial chain of production, visually symbolized by the corporate logo, is as worthy a subject matter of a work of art as its material or conceptual process - Either there is an interest in the circumstances of production - or there is not. Just as a site-specific work recognizes its physical circumstances, could it not also engage with its financial environment. I.e. be economically-sensitive?
Oliver Payne and Nick Relph are clearly not afflicted by this blind-spot… Their 3 minute digital animation: Music is Food begins with a circle against a monotone grey background, in the corner of the frames are right angled ‘L‘ shapes – similar to a videogame gun-sight - the circle, slowly rises like a sun. There is no turning of blind eyes. Payne and Relph turn the opposite way. They look the sponsors in the eyes – unblinkingly - as directly as we are asked to look at the diagrammatic disc, or circle, or sun – and risk a metaphoric burning of our eyes. This disc, glides with the certainty of direction possessed by an astronomical body. The proceeding smoothness calls to mind the alignment of stars and moons creating eclipses. One thinks of cartoon representations of Mayan temples activated by sundials: the interlocking shifting bricks of archeological adventure films, depicted as graphic little blocks and lines, sliding into position with uniform speed - as though ordained. These simple geometric shapes evolve into a diagrammatic landscape - in which the London Eye (or the outline of a tyre-tread) becomes recognizable. The picturesque scene is completed with a silhouetted template of Big Ben – descending from the top right hand corner of the screen with the easy efficiency of an electronic automated windscreen wiper or sunroof. Going from black, grey and white to colour, the apotheosis of the film emerges as the BMW roundel in the centre: (the famous circle divided into blue and white quarters). It seamlessly rotates anti-clockwise as text rotates from the bottom of the screen clockwise - gliding from outside the frame entering in an arc and eventually halting above the logo: 'Frieze Film is sponsored by BMW and supported by Channel 4 and Art & Business'.
Looming over the aforementioned references is the spectre of the Channel 4 test card and its ident, called ‘round and back’ (used from 1982 – 91) in which animated blocks slide from the edge of the TV frame to form the Channel 4 logo itself the number 4. With TV idents in mind (and a channel switch) the Big Ben also calls to mind the Thames Television ident of London’s skyline – appropriate when we consider Frieze is a London fair.
This cool, distant, shrugging of shoulders, or prostration at the feet of corporate power and influence takes product placement to such an extreme that it is reduced to absurdity, to the extent the work acquires the whiff of Dadaist prank: the Power Point lecture reprogrammed to go out of control and overstate its statistics, or a demo of a Tetris game, that can’t escape ‘demo mode’… All the while an honesty is being mined in this yielding to (and recognition of) corporate presence. Simultaneously a very classical tradition of the representation of an artist’s patron is being toyed with, revived and reworked. It is commonplace for Renaissance paintings to include a portrait of a patron in group depicting a Biblical event. The funder’s portrait often inserted among a watching crowd – as though an ordinary bystander (to emphasize humility), other times the patron’s face would be given to a much more central character in the depicted scene. The difference is that the veneer of self-less generosity has been stripped – the patron’s face is all, anything else is marginal, if represented at all.
Behind the inorganic, icily unemotional, overtly constructed façade of the animation one can sense Payne and Relph’s delight and despair (a delight shared by many of the first generation of Pop artists) in their appropriation of the populist visual environment. And behind Payne and Relph’s delight and despair, even nostalgic warmth (born 1977 and 1979 respectively). After all this is not the appropriation of the immediate visual noise (of 2007), or Channel 4’s current visual identity – but that of near two decades ago. The animation’s score, by Alexis Taylor (of Hot Chip) makes music of a blend of test card monotone washes, simplistic homemade Casio keyboard tunes, and early 8-bit videogame jingles. The sonic simplicity compliments the visual aesthetic: that of material made on rudimentary graphic design packages or programmed on a Commodore 64+ - the early home computer that took videogaming into a domestic space and out of arcades. Here we are in the land of games on cassette tapes, Sega’s Master System, Thundercats and Transformers. To see the work through the lens of a diaristic picture book, is to recognize and shudder at the thought that, the autobiography of every Western Europe born 80s kid is intertwined with the growth spurt and boom of corporate globalization and its branding.
One wonders what the marketing executives of the respective sponsors thought upon seeing this work. Those who are charged with assessing the use of the corporation’s logo: that they are formatted as was agreed in the contract, at the right size, no smaller than those of other sponsors who have donated the same amount, that the text in relation to logo is correctly proportioned - and most importantly that the brand is not undermined. I imagine there might have been some hesitancy among these executives: as when one suspects being the victim of a very sophisticated and subtle slight, so subtle one hesitates to take offence for fear that there was no slight at all – and yet the doubt remains.
Usually the sponsor’s credits are sandwiched either side of a film, or just at the end; if it is a press release, or an information board, they are to one side, in a corner, marginal. Usually artworks present themselves and operate oblivious to the logos and funding creditations that accompany them.
It is commonplace for works not to recognize the financial contributors to their production. It is a very specific blind spot: there is no end of works that comment, or are in themselves, the trace or documentation of their physical process or material manufacture; or make a point of communicating the contributions of the personnel who made them - especially collaborative works exploring authorship.
This is an opposite scenario to the institution hosting the work; the visibility of an institution’s dependence on a corporate sponsor is exactly the motivation for the company to sponsor in the first place.
One can see why artists suffering this blind-spot are so widespread: the individuality, ethics and autonomy of a practice can immediately be called into question when juxtaposed with a particular sponsor. It leads to an explosion of questions around who we should work for, accept money from, to what end – what is the danger and potential of compromise – is one immediately co-opted? and to whose gain? Will the benefits fall to a company whose policies you are happy with - or will their policies conflict with arguments made by your work? Far better to feign ignorance, or declare such considerations beyond the concerns of one's practice. Nonetheless the financial chain of production, visually symbolized by the corporate logo, is as worthy a subject matter of a work of art as its material or conceptual process - Either there is an interest in the circumstances of production - or there is not. Just as a site-specific work recognizes its physical circumstances, could it not also engage with its financial environment. I.e. be economically-sensitive?
Oliver Payne and Nick Relph are clearly not afflicted by this blind-spot… Their 3 minute digital animation: Music is Food begins with a circle against a monotone grey background, in the corner of the frames are right angled ‘L‘ shapes – similar to a videogame gun-sight - the circle, slowly rises like a sun. There is no turning of blind eyes. Payne and Relph turn the opposite way. They look the sponsors in the eyes – unblinkingly - as directly as we are asked to look at the diagrammatic disc, or circle, or sun – and risk a metaphoric burning of our eyes. This disc, glides with the certainty of direction possessed by an astronomical body. The proceeding smoothness calls to mind the alignment of stars and moons creating eclipses. One thinks of cartoon representations of Mayan temples activated by sundials: the interlocking shifting bricks of archeological adventure films, depicted as graphic little blocks and lines, sliding into position with uniform speed - as though ordained. These simple geometric shapes evolve into a diagrammatic landscape - in which the London Eye (or the outline of a tyre-tread) becomes recognizable. The picturesque scene is completed with a silhouetted template of Big Ben – descending from the top right hand corner of the screen with the easy efficiency of an electronic automated windscreen wiper or sunroof. Going from black, grey and white to colour, the apotheosis of the film emerges as the BMW roundel in the centre: (the famous circle divided into blue and white quarters). It seamlessly rotates anti-clockwise as text rotates from the bottom of the screen clockwise - gliding from outside the frame entering in an arc and eventually halting above the logo: 'Frieze Film is sponsored by BMW and supported by Channel 4 and Art & Business'.
Looming over the aforementioned references is the spectre of the Channel 4 test card and its ident, called ‘round and back’ (used from 1982 – 91) in which animated blocks slide from the edge of the TV frame to form the Channel 4 logo itself the number 4. With TV idents in mind (and a channel switch) the Big Ben also calls to mind the Thames Television ident of London’s skyline – appropriate when we consider Frieze is a London fair.
This cool, distant, shrugging of shoulders, or prostration at the feet of corporate power and influence takes product placement to such an extreme that it is reduced to absurdity, to the extent the work acquires the whiff of Dadaist prank: the Power Point lecture reprogrammed to go out of control and overstate its statistics, or a demo of a Tetris game, that can’t escape ‘demo mode’… All the while an honesty is being mined in this yielding to (and recognition of) corporate presence. Simultaneously a very classical tradition of the representation of an artist’s patron is being toyed with, revived and reworked. It is commonplace for Renaissance paintings to include a portrait of a patron in group depicting a Biblical event. The funder’s portrait often inserted among a watching crowd – as though an ordinary bystander (to emphasize humility), other times the patron’s face would be given to a much more central character in the depicted scene. The difference is that the veneer of self-less generosity has been stripped – the patron’s face is all, anything else is marginal, if represented at all.
Behind the inorganic, icily unemotional, overtly constructed façade of the animation one can sense Payne and Relph’s delight and despair (a delight shared by many of the first generation of Pop artists) in their appropriation of the populist visual environment. And behind Payne and Relph’s delight and despair, even nostalgic warmth (born 1977 and 1979 respectively). After all this is not the appropriation of the immediate visual noise (of 2007), or Channel 4’s current visual identity – but that of near two decades ago. The animation’s score, by Alexis Taylor (of Hot Chip) makes music of a blend of test card monotone washes, simplistic homemade Casio keyboard tunes, and early 8-bit videogame jingles. The sonic simplicity compliments the visual aesthetic: that of material made on rudimentary graphic design packages or programmed on a Commodore 64+ - the early home computer that took videogaming into a domestic space and out of arcades. Here we are in the land of games on cassette tapes, Sega’s Master System, Thundercats and Transformers. To see the work through the lens of a diaristic picture book, is to recognize and shudder at the thought that, the autobiography of every Western Europe born 80s kid is intertwined with the growth spurt and boom of corporate globalization and its branding.
My first step would tear its first step
I trudge through the concrete building, up unyielding steps, I turn the corner and I am confronted by another staircase. It is unlike any other I have seen before. One that will never creak, but might tear.
It is in the centre of a large white room. Light, from windows on the left, passes through it. It is red. Its first step – if you are ascending, or the last if you are descending - hovers at least half a metre from the ground. From afar you might think it is made of cloud. Closer it seems to be a red gauze. The light switch, the steps, the banister, the wall fittings – all made of this gauze, Perhaps it was spun by celestial spiders. Closer still you can see it swaying gently in the draught. The white ceiling is obscured by the red floor at the top of this stairway, which stretches across the expanse of the room. It occupies the room with such serenity that I could easily believe that the concrete building has been constructed solely to encase, protect and keep sacrosanct what is before me, all the other rooms mere preparation for this one.
There are others in this room. Watching, daring to touch, walking round, contemplating, playing, flirting, crying, laughing, chatting – all of them, like me: lumpen, fleshy, gravity bound, inevitably and unbearably weightier than the architecture at the centre of the illuminated space.
These thoughts tumble by as I turn the corner and absorb its impact. On first encounter I feel a glove has been thrown to my feet, a provocative mocking of my mass. A dare to climb the staircase. A dare laced with the full knowledge that I cannot. That my first step would tear its first step. And so I must remain bound to the white floor. I can look, I can imagine, but I shan’t enter.
What lightness would I need to ascend this stairway? What weight might I shed to achieve it? An extreme diet? Burdensome memories? Could it be a quality of character I am lacking, one of ethics, one of knowledge, of self-discipline, of self-awareness, of grace? Is there a state of being to be reached that would allow this ascension to the red floor? If only for a beat, for a nanosecond?
All this is evoked and as quickly crumbles, when I must recognise the staircase is an artwork. ‘Staircase – V’, in fact. It is made of polyester and stainless steel tubes. It is the work of Do Ho Suh, born 1962, and a team of old craftswomen, with rare skills not likely to be passed on to another generation. It is part of a group show – Psycho Buildings, Hayward Gallery. It is not a mythic doorway but an evocation of an apartment he once lived in. It is these bare facts that I temporarily escape or avoid, and in the duration of escape and avoidance become like a free-runner re-mapping the routes of thought prescribed of me, creating and projecting my own paths and structures.
It is in the centre of a large white room. Light, from windows on the left, passes through it. It is red. Its first step – if you are ascending, or the last if you are descending - hovers at least half a metre from the ground. From afar you might think it is made of cloud. Closer it seems to be a red gauze. The light switch, the steps, the banister, the wall fittings – all made of this gauze, Perhaps it was spun by celestial spiders. Closer still you can see it swaying gently in the draught. The white ceiling is obscured by the red floor at the top of this stairway, which stretches across the expanse of the room. It occupies the room with such serenity that I could easily believe that the concrete building has been constructed solely to encase, protect and keep sacrosanct what is before me, all the other rooms mere preparation for this one.
There are others in this room. Watching, daring to touch, walking round, contemplating, playing, flirting, crying, laughing, chatting – all of them, like me: lumpen, fleshy, gravity bound, inevitably and unbearably weightier than the architecture at the centre of the illuminated space.
These thoughts tumble by as I turn the corner and absorb its impact. On first encounter I feel a glove has been thrown to my feet, a provocative mocking of my mass. A dare to climb the staircase. A dare laced with the full knowledge that I cannot. That my first step would tear its first step. And so I must remain bound to the white floor. I can look, I can imagine, but I shan’t enter.
What lightness would I need to ascend this stairway? What weight might I shed to achieve it? An extreme diet? Burdensome memories? Could it be a quality of character I am lacking, one of ethics, one of knowledge, of self-discipline, of self-awareness, of grace? Is there a state of being to be reached that would allow this ascension to the red floor? If only for a beat, for a nanosecond?
All this is evoked and as quickly crumbles, when I must recognise the staircase is an artwork. ‘Staircase – V’, in fact. It is made of polyester and stainless steel tubes. It is the work of Do Ho Suh, born 1962, and a team of old craftswomen, with rare skills not likely to be passed on to another generation. It is part of a group show – Psycho Buildings, Hayward Gallery. It is not a mythic doorway but an evocation of an apartment he once lived in. It is these bare facts that I temporarily escape or avoid, and in the duration of escape and avoidance become like a free-runner re-mapping the routes of thought prescribed of me, creating and projecting my own paths and structures.
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