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Installation as Real Space: An examination of contemporary installation art in dialogue with David Summer’s Real Spaces: World and the Rise of Western

Katy (Katherine) McIntyre [email protected]

Carleton University Ottawa, Canada

Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither nor . –Donald Judd (1965)

Today in the twenty-first century, we can visually roam the planet through the internet, travel to distant parts of the world in a matter of hours by airplane, and even bungee jump safely off mile-high bridges. Compared to these corporeal and communicative experiences offered to us by advances in contemporary , it could be argued that traditional painting and sculpture can no longer compete. Moreover, the conventional terms ‘visual ’ or ‘fine arts’ appear to be reductive and outdated nomenclature to refer to the variety of art-making practices that characterize artistic activity within our post-modern age.

An alternative paradigm through which to discuss the history and practice of art is presented by David Summers in his landmark text Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of

Western modernism . Summers, an art historian and professor at the University of Virginia, presents a complex account of world art history to prepare a theoretical basis for a more intercultural art history. Featuring an analysis of art focused on spatiality, rather than an occularcentric approach, his text represents a unique position from which to discuss the future of art.

It is precisely the opportunity for discourse offered by Summers’s analysis of the history of the spatial arts that I would like to examine in this study. I will supplement his account of the rise of Western modernism by expanding his framework to include a consideration of installation art, a dominant contemporary spatial art practice. Focused through a discussion on installation art, I would like to consider how an art history based on spatiality challenges traditional conceptions of the art institution, the role of a visitor, and the character of art discourse. Through an analysis of the metaoptical framework presented in Summers’s text, the

1 real space of installation art will be revealed as a fertile common ground for the instigation of inter-cultural art discourse.

First, this will define the category of ‘real space’ and consider why real space is an appropriate foundation for art historical discourse. Next, we will examine how real space is related to metaoptical space. We will also consider an application of his paradigm of real space in the history of installation art. Central to this paper will be a discussion on the role of the gallery visitor as a ‘subject’. This will be motivated by an analysis of Summers’s arguments, as well as an analysis of subjective experience within art experience as related to installation art. This will reveal the dual nature of subjectivity that a visitor becomes aware of in an encounter with a work of installation art. This study will also feature an examination of how real space is manifest within the institution. Finally, this paper will conclude with an argument that presents installation art as a stalwart vehicle for inter-cultural dialogue on the function of art in contemporary global society.

Real space within a metaoptical framework

David Summers defines real space as the “the space we find ourselves sharing with other people and things”. 1 Real space, then, is local, immediate and scaled to the individual. Summers identifies sculpture and as the principal arts which are contingent upon real space, whereas painting is as art that takes place in a ‘virtual’ space; “space represented on a surface”. 2

Real space has two categories: personal space and social space. Describing sculpture as the art of personal space, he states that this personal space is articulated by the "relations of artifacts to the real spatial conditions of our embodied existences, that is, our sizes, uprightness, facing,

1 Summers, 43 2 Ibid

2 handedness, vulnerability, temporal finitude, capacities for movement, strengths, reaches and grasps." 3 Architecture extends beyond the relational scope of sculpture because it is an art of social space, the place where our ‘embodied existences’ interact with one another. Architecture represents the “actual arrangements”4 of our embodied existences beyond their particular manifestations. Because all art fulfils conditions of space, either real or virtual, Summers asserts that an examination of the spatial conditions of world art can provide a methodological basis for an intercultural art history.

The way that Summers defines real space and virtual space is categorical, dependent upon conceptions of personal, social and virtual space that arguably are absolute. Moreover, the attempt to categorize art history using spatial conditions is not an attempt to prove that all art addresses the condition of space in the same way. Rather, Summers acknowledges that because all art can fit into spatial categories, “all art has a certain universality, even if it is also a principle of difference and division". 5 This reveals that his use of spatial categories aims to provide a universal base for analysis not present all art as unified in spatial ‘harmony’.

Summer’s definition of real space is dependant upon the finite spatiotemporality of the human body. Real space, he argues, is grounded in the “typical structure, capacities and relations" of a human body. 6 We are most familiar with real space as the spatial arena in which we conduct our daily affairs: walking through a city, passing through a building, meeting other people in a specific location. The real space of an individual is also dependent upon time, as real space can only be experienced through the passing of ‘real’ time. 7 Throughout his text, Summers traces the historical foundations for his notion of a ‘spatial art history’, following the

3 Summers, 43 4 Ibid 5 Summers, 38 6 Summers, 36 7 Summers, 38

3 development of both real and virtual space in several seminal historical and cultural art-works up to the rise of Western modernism.

Departing from the methodology of his mentor George Kubler, Summers’s presents spatiality as a foundation for an art historical method permits multidisciplinary analysis. Because the concept of ‘space’ allows for simultaneous analysis of its finite, temporary, local and universal characteristics, spatiality serves as an encompassing, but also flexible, mode of analysis.

Other modes of analysis, such as formalism or iconography, often have been proven too reductive and not applicable across cultures. On the restrictions of formalism, and philosopher Joseph Kosuth posits that: “Formalist criticism is no more than an analysis of the physical attributes of particular objects that happen to exist in a morphological context”. 8

Formalism doesn’t offer opportunity for dialogue in any capacity other than evaluation of physical attributes. Without consideration of function, meaning, social context, and history of use, art historical analysis rooted in formalism proves to be nothing more than a survey of physical appearance. In contrast, using spatiality as a foundation for analysis encourages dialogue that includes formal, contextual and iconographical analysis.

David Summers introduces the term ‘metaopticality’ to discuss the changes in the conception of spatiality in the modern period. Metaoptical space describes a notational proposition of a ‘universal grid’ in three-dimensional space. He focuses his discussion of metaoptical space through a consideration of several historical theories of vision, including an analysis of the development of pictorial perspective and the role that light plays in human sight.

Central to his argument is an analysis of the contribution of the Muslim scientist Alhazen to theories of vision and optics. Alhazen helped to shape the modern scientific understanding of

8 Kosuth, “Art After Philosophy”, 1969

4 the “universal economy of physical light”. 9 A concept of universal space was integral to the description and discussion of physical light. Summers notes that in relation to this notational framework, “all force may be described, predicted and controlled”. 10 Through the consideration of physical light in notational space, light could be measured as ‘objectively’ as possible. As a consequence of Alhazen’s proof of the theory of intromission, the ‘subjective’ perspective that previous theories of vision encouraged could no longer be maintained.

As metaoptical space became the dominant notational framework within which to approach questions of time, space and subjectivity, also began to explore image-making and representation with the consideration of this new conception of space. Developments in scientific theories of vision and light are often reflected by applications of those theories in art- making. The development of conventional pictorial perspective was dependent upon advances in mathematics and science. Likewise, developments in the articulation of metaoptical space were reflected in the image-making traditions of modern artists.

One of the key elements of metaoptical space is that it demands a reconsideration of the role of a ‘subject’ within a given space. Summers employs the term ‘subject’ to refer to the conception of an embodied individual self. 11 However, he also charges this understanding of

‘self’ with the idea that subjectivity is also what is “conditionally and cardinally human”, that responds and engages with human life as a greater phenomena. 12 The primary way that the subject engages with ‘life’ is through the physical senses. The occurrence of force in metaoptical space is the base of sensation as experienced by humans. Summers states that the brain processes this force through ‘schematic intuition’ which “accounts for the fact that we all make

9 Summers, 555 10 Summers, 685 11 Summers also extends this discussion of self as subject in his consideration of the human mind as counterforce. 12 Summers, 559

5 pretty much the same spatiotemporal sense of sensation”. 13 Summers identifies individual feeling and temperament as the second way that humans engage with lived reality. 14 Individual feelings may be related to sensational experience, but they are not contingent upon it. Lastly, the unconscious is presented as an abstract level of subjectivity related to the human mind, which

Summers compares to the philosophical attempt to find “a prime mover of human behaviour”. 15

These levels of subjectivity are manifest through ‘experiences’ in lived reality which constitute, develop and shape the subject as a subject.

Subjective experience has been a central inspiration for artists in the modern period.

There have been many art movements that have featured the interpretation of human subjectivity as a central theme: had at its centre a desire to represent sensation; abstraction focused on organizing shapes and colours through schematic intuition; explored feeling and temperament through representation; set forth to expound the mysteries of the unconscious. 16

Subjectivity within installation art

However, the conditions of subjectivity that exist today are quite different than they were throughout the rise of Western modernism. In the twenty-first century, the age of technology, a human subject exists in a ‘global village’ with six billion other individual human subjects. An individual today not only lives with other people, but lives with the awareness of the subjectivity of other people . As communications technology has developed, people have gained increased access to people in their communities, as well as in the world at large. While the post-modern age has

13 Summers, 624 14 Ibid 15 Ibid 16 Ibid

6 increased the complexity of the attempt, the rise of intersubjective communication possible in a global world has permitted us a common ground to explore what it is to be a ‘subject’.

Art-work that features an exploration of subjectivity through an experience in a particular environment has become associated with the Installation . In a museum context, “installation” refers to the arrangement of objects within a given space. Photos which depicted the whole of a gallery interior without people in them are called “installation shots”.

Stemming from the popular use of the “installation shot”, in art magazines of the 1960s,

“installation art” became a term that described art-works that made full use of the gallery space. 17

In what Claire Bishop describes as an “increasingly canonical history”, Installation art was developed as an art form by artists such as , and through related art events such as Environments, Happenings and Art. Informed by a variety of theoretical concepts, such as psychoanalysis and phenomenology, as well as rooted in multiple spatial arts practices, such as curating, architecture, and theatre, installation art has developed as an inherently multi-layered art form, rooted both in concept and in experience.

Because of the spectrum of art-making events and practices that inform the category, installation art proves to be a problematic umbrella term to characterize a discipline of art. As a category, installation art often simultaneously describes works whose content or subject matter appears to be in direct contrast with other works under the same heading. However, because the category of installation art describes the spatiotemporal representation of an art-work without reference to its subject matter, installation art can appropriately represent art-works with a variety of subject matter despite any seemingly oppositional content. Instead of a conflict of

17 Bishop, 6

7 interests, what emerges are parallel histories of a “particular repertoire of concerns” centered on the spatiotemporal conditions of lived reality. 18

Clare Bishop identifies the beginning of installation art as being rooted in Marcel

Duchamp’s involvement with the International Surrealist Exhibition, which took place January through February of 1938 in the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, in Paris. Duchamp served as the generatuer-arbitre (producer) of the exhibition, and as such attempted to re-invent the by subverting the dominant aesthetics of his day. Instead of “grandiose” formal galleries, visitors to the exhibition encountered carpetless rooms that featured skylights obfuscated by dirty coal sacks. Several Louis XV-style beds with rumpled sheets were placed in the corners of gallery rooms, one of which featured a nearby pond created by Salvador Dali which included water, lake grasses and moss. A coffee roaster in one of the galleries ran continuously, filling the entire exhibition space with the scent of fresh coffee. The art-works were scattered within the exhibiting rooms, arguably overwhelmed by the sheer volume of activity taking place in the gallery space. The lighting plan for the exhibition was designed by the photographer Man Ray, but its installation was not complete by the opening night. As a result, the exhibit opened in darkness. Visitors to the vernissage were handed flashlights with which to maneuver around the gallery. 19 The International Surrealist Exhibition represents a shift in exhibition presentation because those who attended were not permitted to remain observers.

Rather, visitors encountered the art-works of the Surrealist artists within a total art experience that addressed their existence as embodied human subjects.

18 Bishop, 8 19 Bishop, 20

8 Installation art “addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space” 20 , and as such, requires the viewer to apprehend the total entity of the space and the objects it may contain. The viewer bears a role beyond visual engagement: the embodied experience of an individual human subject is the focus of installation art. However, corresponding with the complexity of addressing subjectivity within a post-modern age, installation art also encourages an awareness of universal subjectivity through the anticipation of a subject. 21

The expected response of a model subject to elements of an art-work is anticipated by the artist who prepares the installation piece. Although the individual person who encounters the art-work within a particular space can predict, accept, reject or subvert their expected behavioral response, they are nonetheless aware of their anticipated presence in the art-work because of the fact that they are accommodated by the spatiotemporal presentation of the piece. 22 A visitor is the particular subject of an art-work, but they are also aware of their role as a subject. 23 This acknowledgment of the visitor of their specific and individual participation in a work, as well as their fulfillment of the role of a model subject reveals the dual nature of subjectivity.

20 Bishop, 6 21 This paper will consider the general condition of the model subject as introduced by David Summers and as applicable in installation art. However, Clare Bishop identified four main model types for subjectivity within installation art: a psychological or psychoanalytical model, exemplified by “dream like” installation works; a phenomenological model informed by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on bodily experience; a model based on subjective disintegration and libidinal withdrawal; and a model that positions the active viewer as a political subject. For a thorough account of the specific nature of these four models, please reference Claire Bishop’s Installation Art: A Critical History . 22 Nota bene: There are some works of installation art that feature an attempt to decentre the model subject, either by physically excluding them, making movement cumbersome or by stimulating unpleasant corporeal response. While these works do not ‘accommodate’ a visitor, through their deliberate lack of accommodation, they demonstrate that a model subject was indeed anticipated. 23 Summers, 625

9

The ‘Here’ and ‘Now’: The spatiotemporal conditions of installation art

Because the exploration of post-modern subjectivity occurs within a metaoptical framework, an examination of the spatiotemporal conditions of installation art will support a clearer understanding of state of dual subjectivity. Installation art considers only time and space as its dimensional categories. Moreover, the specific time and space that installation art refers to is ‘now’ and ‘here’: the immediate encounter with an art-work in a specific place describes the particular character of an installation art-work. This character is resistant to photographic reproduction and translation in other mediums (such as museum catalogues or texts). As the artist Robert Irwin asserts: “the relationship between art and viewer is all first hand now experience, and there is no way that it can be carried to you through any kind of secondary system”. 24 Nonetheless, an apprehension of the key spatiotemporal features of installation art can begin to be understood through a discussion of its component parts and particular effects.

Installation art presents physical examples of notational metaoptical space. Manifested in the real space of a gallery, an installation art-work presents an episode of metaoptical spatial relations. This focus on small-scale spatial relations aligns with the shift in scope that metaoptical space has come to represent in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Within the rise of Western modernism, the nature of metaoptical space has undergone a clear transformation. As Summers describes: "the metaoptical grid, the Newtonian space of classical physics, has been not so much superseded as localized, to become the space of technological and institutional prediction and control rather than the space of nature”. 25 Supported by this

24 Irwin, 88 25 Summers, 24

10 ideological shift, this new application of metaoptical space serves as an appropriate framework to examine subjectivity within installation art.

Using the physical representation of metaoptical space as a point of departure, it is prudent to examine presentation of time within the apparent framework. Although its dependence upon real space is unique, the significant feature of installation art is that it exists simultaneously as a space to walk through, as well as “a period of time to be lived through”. 26

Mary Kelley’s Postpartum Document (1973-79) (figure 1) serves as a clear example of the temporal character of installation art. Her piece features 139 individual parts which explore the first six years of the relationship between the artist, a first-time mother, and her son. Heavily reliant on written documents, the component parts of the work are arranged on a large gallery wall in a sequential order which the visitor follows in their exhibit experience. 27 Featuring temporal unfolding as a main theme, Kelley’s piece illustrates how installation art permits a conception of time and space in art that is not possible within a perceptual framework dependent upon single- point perspective.

Evident by its reliance upon a conception of metaoptical space, installation art makes provision for multiple perspectives. Moreover, the multiple perspectives offered feature “plural and fragmented vistas” 28 from each notational position. As a result, the exhibit experience that an individual has in an encounter with a work of installation art is rather complex. The multiplicity of vistas presented offers a new viewing dynamic within the gallery space. Claire

26 Bourriaud, 4 27 Nota bene: Some presentations of this piece in galleries have featured alternate exhibition spaces, such as a series of rooms instead of a singular wall (Generali Foundation). Moreover, the show has been edited and rearranged several times which supports a reading of this piece as contingent upon real temporal conditions because it changes for different exhibition dates. 28 Bishop, 47

11 Bishop asserts that because of this new viewing dynamic, “our hierarchical and centered relation to the (and to ourselves) is undermined and destabilized”. 29

The desire to re-engage with issues of real space has been demonstrated by the redefinition of the space of the viewer in Western modernism to represent the actual space of the embodied subject in Western post-modernism. Suggesting that this refocusing on specific spaces was motivated by a desire to counter “the metric space of technological prediction and control” 30 , Summers posits that the redefinition of spatial engagement was necessary for

Western . Summers identifies the roots of this redefinition in the changes that occurred in modern painting, stating: “it is not simply that subject-matter left painting, it is rather that the painting took its place together with the subject; once it was in that space, painting could only be treated in certain ways and still retain its new status”. 31 Modern painting, typified by the Greenbergian strive for flatness, used the redefinition of spatiality to reflect the desire to focus on what was in the ‘here’ and ‘now’ of the immediate spatial plane of the artist or visitor, rather than on the ‘there’ and ‘then’ beyond the canvas featured in traditional pictorial painting.

The re-engagement with real space that occurred as a result of the repositioning of modern painting and sculpture has been further extended by the installation art movement.

Rather than just striving to be ‘in place together with the subject’, works of installation art seek to create their actual character with the subject through space. The German artist and former biologist Carsten Höller is well known for using his scientific background to create machines as works of installation art that “synchronise with the visitors in order to produce something

29 Ibid. 30 Summers, 624 31 Ibid.

12 together with them”. Holler Jonathan Shaugnessey, of contemporary art at the National

Gallery of Canada, describes the installation of Carsten Höller’s Lichtwand (2000, 2007) (Figure

2) in a recent exhibition of the artist’s work at Shawinigan Space:

We created a new version of the Light Wall for the show that consisted of 21 panels of lights that each contain[ed] 128 25-watt bulbs that flash at a frequency of 7.8 Hz, synchronous to brain activity. The flickering of the light seems almost unbearable at first sight, but after some time of exposure, the onlooker will experience a variety of hallucinations as the eyes synch up to the flashing of light and a simultaneous sound pulse that is emitted. The effect of this piece [is] a spectrum of vibrating colours that appear even with eyes closed. 32

The emphasis that Höller places on synchronicity with the visitor in order to create the subject- matter of his art-works supports a reading of installation art as a movement dependent upon the presence and activation of a visitor for meaning creation. As Höller asserts, the works he creates

“are not objects that can be given a ‘meaning’ of their own” 33 but rather need to be encountered by a visitor in real space for meaning creation to occur.

The re-negotiation of the relationship between an art-work and the subject who visits it in a specific space and time is central to the project of installation art. Installation art features a move from representation to direct presentation; instead of feigning the appearance of texture in a painting, installation art literally presents textures that can readily be felt by visitors. Direct presentation activates visitors through sensory immediacy. As the French philosopher Merleau-

Ponty asserts: “I do not see [space] according to its exterior envelope; I live it form the inside; I am immersed in it. After all, the world is all around me, not in front of me”. 34 The activation of the visitor in installation art is “analogous to the viewer’s engagement in the world”. 35 As visitors

32 Shaugnessy, 12 33 Carsten Höller, Carsten Höller , 2001 34 Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”, 178 35 Bishop, 11

13 encounter art-objects through direct presentation in real space, they are offered an artistic rendering of the spatiotemporal reality of the world.

However, the viewer’s physical involvement with a work of installation art presents a paradoxical engagement with the real world. The immediate encounter with reality that installation art strives to accomplish is, in fact, mediated by installation art itself. The exhibition of The Weather Project (2003), by the Danish artist , serves as an example of this paradox. This art-work, which featured “a semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono- frequency lamps” 36 , hung in main section of Turbine Hall, London for five months during the wintertime. Throughout the duration of its exhibition, the art-work inspired several visitors to stretch out like sunbathers under the artificial sun. 37 However, quite unlike the desired light of sunbathers, mono-frequency lamps emit a duotone light frequency which creates an experience of light and space that is strikingly different from natural sunlight. The work thus creates a light experience that is more similar to the orange-or-black light dichotomy created by a streetlamp in the dark of night than it is to a real sunset. This distinction highlights the disparity between the appearance of nature in lived reality and our representations of it. Representative of several works of installation art that bear similar distinctions, Eliasson’s artificial sun can be considered as indexical to, rather than representative of , reality.

Contemporary art institutions and the ‘place’ Of installation art

Because installation art is often indexical, the context in which installation art has been presented is integral to its meaning. The most common place for the exhibition of installation art remains within traditional art institutions, however, there has been recent interest in creating

36 “The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson”, Modern, 2003 37 Bishop, 77

14 alternative exhibition spaces evidenced by the increasing popularity of artist run centres and outdoor or urban art festivals. Nevertheless, the as the traditional art institution has been central to the development of installation art. Museums with large installation spaces, such as the Guggenheim in New York, or Turbine Hall at the in London, have facilitated growth in the spectacular and monumental scale of installation art. Small scale galleries have also supported the growth in popularity in installation art by offering, as the art collective Group Material phrased it, “four walls of justification” 38 to new works of installation art. The ‘justification’ that the gallery walls offer occurs is as a result of how an art gallery, a recognized social institution, repositions the personal space of a work of installation art within the context of a social space.

Reflexively, as art galleries have helped supported the development of the installation art movement, the focus on real space that is central to installation art has prompted a re- examination of the traditional role of the art institution. Through their embrace of non- traditional forms of art-making, including installation art, contemporary museums appear “less and less as repositories, more and more as sites for the display of constructive imagination, for participation in extraordinary experience (including the experience of art of the past) and for the presentation of the many kinds of social, political and cultural questions art raises”. 39 This changing mandate reflects a ‘ re - of the centre’, 40 wherein the public at large has redefined the museum as a site for their exploration of art in real space.

38 Group Material, 88 39 Summers, 642 40 The third chapter of David Summers’ tome is titled “The Appropriation of the Centre”. The chapter details the changes that have occurred in world history that demonstrate how rulers in specific cultures have appropriated the centres of well known places because they represent “the point where the world is defined” (Summers, 201). The mandates of art galleries, the traditional ‘centres’ of the , have historically represented the interests of institutional directors. While these interests may not have been in opposition to the public at large, the change in gallery

15 Dialogue in installation art: A synthetic proposition

In installation art, a visitor is denied “one real” place from which to observe the work or engage with the whole of it. 41 Without a definitive point for departure, the experience a visitor will have in an encounter with an art-work will necessarily be different from all other visitors.

The infinite number of paths possible through a work supports a reading of installation art that considers difference to be a desired condition of experience. The elevation of difference as a desired condition reflects the challenges that feminist, post-colonialist and other deconstructionists critics have raised in art discourse regarding the privileging of a ‘common’ art experience. Instead, installation art presents only time and space as common constants, and suggests that the differences of experience that are raised are intended.

Moreover, a rise in the popularity of installation art is happening on an international scale, evidenced by the increase in the number of submissions of installation art-works to national pavilions in most of the dominant art biennials in the last several decades. While desires to “immerse or activate the viewer springs from different [cultural] traditions” 42 , the rise in international participation within this art movement supports the assertion that installation art is an inclusive art-making practice featuring a unique opportunity for inter-cultural dialogue.

Installation art depends upon the common dimensional categories of time and space which are universally applicable. Although subject to barriers that may occur as a result of cross- cultural translation, most works of installation art bear the possibility of universal comprehension. Summers provides grounding for this supposition, proposing that: “If ‘points

mandates nonetheless reflects a desire to move beyond the simple characterization of art galleries as institutional repositories of artifacts. 41 Bishop, 13 42 Ibid

16 of view’ are different ‘slants’ on the same thing, this suggests a common reality which is, however, not wholly available to any single individual. This is the most optimistic possibility, since it affirms both individual point of view and shared reality, and holds out the prospect of common, ostensive understanding”. 43 The multiple points of perspective offered within a work of installation art represent a universal base from which to begin cross-cultural communication.

Cross-cultural communication, an exchange that is based on what is common, has undergone a fundamental transformation within the post-modern period. Because what is common has changed, communication has also changed.44 Modern communication and commerce that occurs on a global scale is dependant upon the sharing of a common spatiotemporal framework. While the growing “secular culture of common space and time” posits real threats to the survival of many local cultures, there is also great promise offered to us through communication possibilities. 45 The common ground for discourse that can be forged in a metaoptical framework can be intercultural, facilitated by a worldview that considers the space of lived experience to be multiperspectival.

Because many experiences are possible within real space, meaning within installation art must be determined collectively and culturally. This meaning is achieved through dialogue as a result of propositions put forth in a particular art-work. The French theorist Nicolas Bourriaud, locates this capacity for dialogue as taking place in the interstice between art-works, asserting that contemporary art: “creates free areas, and time spans whose rhythm contrasts with those structuring everyday life, and it encourages an inter-human commerce that differs from the

43 Summers, 580 44 Summers, 553 45 Summers, 654

17 ‘communication zones’ that are imposed upon us. 46 This dialogue features unmediated communication between everyday people, which results in a new arena for exchange.

The extension of the dialogue to the everyday person features encouragement for their contribution: within the actual experience of a work, live comment is possible. One of the most poignant examples of the active nature of installation art is the ability to comment live in real time while immediately engaged in the art experience. As opposed to art-forms like film or traditional theatre, a visitor to a work of installation art is charged with the opportunity to comment on the work. Through live comment, immediate discussion occurs, as visitors can comment on the sensations they experience in the moment they experience them. Art in this way provokes a dialogue that is both ideological and direct.

Similar to the free association encouraged in the Freudian interpretation of dreams, interpreting a work of installation art with cultural analogies and personal memories continues to make it “run” in different contexts. 47 In this way, installation art is not tied to a specific fixed meaning, although it may have had one initially. Experience in installation art forms a metonymic , wherein the language signs in an exhibit translate the lived space of the outside world into the real space within a gallery. This demonstrates a radical break from discreet paradigm of one way communication (artist to audience) as installation art expands into real space and invites multiple stake-holders to create its interpretation. 48

The art experience offered by installation art serves as a vehicle for discussion concerning the interactions between human beings in lived space. and technology serve as tools to allow for this re-examination of lived experience to take place on a global scale

46 Bourriaud, 5 47 Bishop, 16 48 Bishop, 10

18 across cultures. Concerning lived experience and the role of art within it, Bourriaud states: “the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real”. 49 These models for living can be determined as outcomes of dialogue that results from the experience of art in real space, which is analogous to lived reality.

Installation art employs real space to create a proposition from which a dialogue can stem. When one makes an argument within a discourse, a proposition is stated to an audience.

The audience become co-participants in that dialogue, able to put forward their own propositions that contend, debate, affirm, expand or nullify the initial proposition. Regardless of the response action, the proposition put forward is placed in the conversation to continue the discourse. While this discourse has traditionally taken place in art history between artists, then between and institutional staff, installation art extends the actual discussion to the everyday person who visits the art.

As a result, the discourse surrounding art turns to the larger question of the human condition and how we relate and communicate with each other. This necessitates an expansion of the discussion concerning the function of art. What happens is that we inevitably leave the conversation concerning what art is and focus our questioning on what art points to . The dialogic opportunities ignited by installation art are aimed at creating a definition of art that is synthetic with the world, rather than analytically separate from it.

By exploring real space within a notational metaoptical framework, we have considered how human subjectivity is simultaneously defined as individual embodied experience in lived

49 Bourriaud, 3

19 reality, as well as a component part of humanity at large. Recapitulating this dual character of subjectivity, David Summers reminds that:

Human beings may be regarded merely as interchangeable ciphers in a grid, but also as irreducibly unique locations of value established precisely in their absolute spatiotemporal difference. The modern world has shown us many episodes of the obliteration of populations of individuals; but the same conditions may also imply the definition of each individual as centre, a real point, a ‘subject’ and ‘perspective’ at which a world is enacted.50

Despite it historical precedence, the contemporary application of a metaoptical framework is still quite new. Accepting the multi-point perspective offered as a world view within such a framework is still a point of tension for most individual subjects who struggle to accommodate a complex conception of human subjectivity within their own lives.

Real space as it operates in a metaoptical space is an accessible paradigm that can facilitate discussions of subjectivity is a local and immediate way. Opportunities for dialogue are further enhanced when real space is presented in art form that includes the viewer as an integral part of the art experience. Installation art creates a platform for discourse wherein multiple stakeholders – the artist, the critics, the instructional directors and the every day visitor – are included in the conversation. The discourse that arises as a result of an art experience with installation art can occur in the immediate moment through live discourse, through mediated discussion panels during the exhibition of a particular work, through published or causal writing after an exhibit has closed or perpetually through online discussion forums that allow for intermittent discussion of a specific topic. Moreover, this discussion can occur across cultures through participation in international art festivals, through encounters with traveling exhibitions or through the communication possibilities offered across the internet. Regardless of how discourse occurs, it is clear that experience with installation art encourages the cultivation of an

50 Summers, 660

20 understanding of the dual nature of subjectivity. An understanding of dual subjectivity apprehended through a local real space can enhance one’s understanding of the human condition on a global scale. This attempt to understand the subjective condition of humanity has remained a main avenue of exploration in modern and post-modern art-making traditions.

Installation art, as an exemplar of art in real space, has furthered our understanding how to act as a human subject in the world today, not because it tells us what to do, but rather because it asks us to embrace the responsibility for action for ourselves.

21 Figure 1

Mary Kelley Postpartum Document (1973-79)

Image credit: Kelley, Mary. Postpartum Document - Installation shot . 1995. Generali Foundation, Vienna. 11 Dec. 2007 .

Figure 2

Carsten Höller Light Wall (2000, 2007)

Image credit: Holler, Carsten. Light Wall (Lichtstad) . 2000. Fondazione Prada, Milan. 11 Dec. 2007 .

22 Figure 3

Olafur Eliasson The Weather Project (2003)

Image credit: Eliasson, Olafur. The Weather Project. 2003. Tate Modern, London. 11 Dec. 2007 .

23 Bibliography

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The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson. 2003. Tate Modern. 11 Dec. 2007 .

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