Act/React Response

The act/react exhibition is an event that invites curiosity, experimentation, contemplation and communicative relationships not only with the interface of the pieces themselves but with one’s self as well. Each installation offers unique and creative styles of interactivity intended to bring to surface the means by which sensational communication can manifest. Not all dialogues adopt the form of text. Conversation is a system by which information is absorbed, interpreted and usually followed by a response. Stimulation can be diverse ranging from text, words read or heard, and visual stimuli from colors, movement, composition and even sonic environments that are clearly familiar or ominous. Some of the work at the gallery had only one stimulus; however the more interesting and engaging pieces had several.

I found the installations constructed by Daniel Rozin and Janet Cardiff to be the most captivating. Daniel Rozin’s work Snow Mirror is a beautiful recreation of a poetic snowfall. A quick glance from the entrance attracted and encouraged my eagerness to enter the space. Upon entering the dark room one immediately is compressed onto the hanging screen at which point the falling ashes begin to distinguish your presence within it. No sounds could be heard. At first it appears as if the purpose of this piece is to play with the virtual particles and maybe reminisce of childhood winters. What I found to be of better interest was how the image of me was positioned from a low angle. This conscious choice made by Rozin never really allowed me to look directly at myself. Forced to gaze onto myself represented in such a gesture that implied power and authority and yet I had none was very interesting to me. This act of looking is not to be read as a reflection. This is an act of looking at how one observes oneself through the eyes or in this case, the eye of something else. I felt as if every pixel is symbolic to the objective eye. Each white flake represented someone’s vision upon my body. As more snow accumulates I gain a better view of myself, but still that figure is obscure because appearance is not the only factor that contributes to my identity.

Janet Cardiff’s To Touch was another installment that I could spend infinite hours with. I approached the various works in the exhibition through a two-step process of emotional experimentation and systematic explanation. In the room where Cardiff’s work was set up was a single worn down table. I circled the table a few times until I found a spot, stain, crevice or scratch that seemed complex with personality. As I ran my finger down the long and troubled scratch a women’s voice whispers behind me. Her words were interesting. She spoke of pain and misfortune. I listened attentively to her voice for a few seconds and imagined her descriptions unfold in my mind. She pauses for a breath, only her voice does not return. Understanding that I must physically interact with the table to hear more I begin to pass my hand all over the dry and splintery wood. In the pursuit of discovering the table’s response to chaotic and indiscriminate movement versus one or two light touches spaced far apart in time I began touching every part of the table as fast as I could. Soon, many voices began to speak over one another. The volume reached higher and higher levels. Dialogues that barely made any sense before make even less now as the ideas begin to contradict themselves. Gunshots can be heard in the background and then suddenly a car crashes. When I heard the tires screech and smack into I assume another vehicle I stopped moving. I literary thought what have I done? Only a few seconds ago I had witnessed an accident, but now it has amounted to nothing but a memory. The room is silent. I leave feeling that somehow my experience or memory has too become inscribed into the wise and elder table.

I think these two pieces are similar in that they both tend to conjure memories but dissimilar in their approach. Snow Mirror made me recall all the small sounds of winter or the lack there of, which is why I feel there were no sounds accompanied in this work. I thought of how differently snow crunches depending on how cold it is outside and how there are no chirping yellow birds. I thought of how snow erases everything, but here it actually made me visible. However, in To Touch memories were brought about by verbal association and less visual stimulation. Of course the table itself did have me considering how time accumulates and manifest itself through features like scratches, rust, or mold. Cardiff’s work allowed me to consider past versus present versus future and how they might all collapse onto one object, place or being.

Field Report: Art Incounters

Last Sunday I was fortunate enough to meet both Professor Iverson White and filmmaker Charles Burnett in spite of all the cats and dogs. The work they presented was Self-Determination and Killer of Sheep respectively. The most interesting aspect I found that these two films shared was how they each found distinct but similar methods of allowing the viewer space and time to navigate alternative meanings and interpretations.

White spoke briefly of his inspiration for the short, stating that a story from a troubled woman on his block prompt him to write a poem on her situation. The fascinating tidbit of his anecdote was not so much of how he decided to present her story but of how he decided to end it. He does not offer a direct answer, but rather a suggestion of what the first step might look like. That step can be as misdirected as throwing a few bottles of liquor away, which would only dispose the product of the root problem (which in the case of Self-Determination, is the mistreatment, neglect, and betrayal of a domestic relationship) or it can acknowledge and commit to confrontation.

The structure and length of the piece lends itself to be shaped by our imaginations. We are only granted passing glimpses of who these two people were before they met each other, but even then with the conclusion of the film it seems they were talking of themselves all along, locked in a cycle of mouse and cat: disappointment and infidelity. This film isn’t so much about a situation as it is about the progression of participates involved. The tricky thing here is that we think we see the path these characters undertake, but all the while it is us who pave the way.

Like Killer of Sheep, the strength of the film depends on our imaginations and how open we allow ourselves to be. We don’t really know what lies at the heart of Stan’s insomnia. We don’t know why his son so desperately needs money. We don’t know why the man lying next to the car motor is hurt, nor do we know the significance of Stan’s daughter’s canine mask. At the end of the day we don’t much of the events prior and post the beginning and ending of Killer of Sheep, but that isn’t to say we can’t understand them.

These two films encourage the viewer to observe the unobservable. In turn, by understanding something that hasn’t been dictated, you engage with the world presented to you more dynamically. By allowing such open ended films to exist, we’re able to revisit old experiences finding that they too have changed with the passage of time.