Sorry for not posting in a while. The last few weeks were unexpectedly busy.
Anyway, I had the pleasure to attend the last weekend of the
Richard Wilson exhibition at the Barbican two weeks ago.
The show was free of charge and displayed three larger works along with two video pieces. First off was the gutted cab. Giving a somewhat dwarfing and bizarre impression already while being mounted on a structure and displaying its insides like an Emmental cheese, what was even more impressive is that all the alterations done to the cabs in- and outside happened in the shortest time possible. A video installation in the front showed the artist slowly but steadily piercing his way through the vehicle, starting at the engine and coming out at the trunk. From what I could tell, he used the same or similar tools which would be employed in professional rescue operations. Something which makes perfect sense in the light of the task ahead.
I found it interesting to witness how Wilson manages to capture the inherit and underlying force and violence of the machine and manages to throw it right back at its -or to be more precise, our- face(s). All the physical forces that a machine deploys and sets free seem to be captured in the aesthetic act of the performance, although its important alteration seems to entail a certain human element. It's still violent what Wilson did, fair enough, but it's not as cold and precise in its mode of operation like the mechanism he takes apart. The sweat, his problems breathing and getting the right angle with a tool to move on to the next step let the whole performance appear to be almost archaic. The humidity and elasticity of the human body against the solid and repetitive action of the machine.
Next up was a structure which resembled a squashed version of a chip shop trailer. Although the structure seemed chaotic at first, you realized that all the creases in the structure were done with mathematical precision. It served as a well-balanced contrast towards the concept of the first piece. Rather than struggling as human
wetware against the mechanism, this tension is reversed and re-appropriated in this piece as a sort of artistic intervention into the shapes of chaos and complexity. Knowing that the creases on the structure would never exist like that in the event of its actual squashing, Wilson manages to liberate the common object from its sole teleology and transfers it to a new perceptive plane.
The last piece was a caravan mounted on a rotating frame and having one of the walls removed so that the audience could take a peek into it. It was interesting to see the caravan from all possible angles and in all detail, what was even more interesting was to see the inside move around, depending on what current angle the caravan was spinning. At the very end of the exhibition, you could find a video screen which displayed an inside-view of the caravan. The camera was mounted on the spinning part of the structure, so the only clue of movement which the audience had was the movement of the inside parts, since the camera itself was in perfect sync with the spinning object and therefore presented the illusion of a static view.
My impression of that piece was one of suspension. Firstly, a suspension from the obvious use of the caravan, to transform its usually horizontal movement into a rotation which didn't allow for an actual moving onward, but more of a perpetual movement. Secondly, the suspension of the observing eye via the static view of the camera. There was no movement to speak of judging from a quick glance at the video. It was only after a while that the eye recognizes cupboards being opened, cushions moving around in weird angles and doors being flipped open. It seemed very much like a recording of zero gravity, something one might be familiar with from movies like
Kubrick's 2001.
All in all, a very good show and a very good concept explored in a lot of interesting and fresh varieties!
Pictures in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License.Labels: Installation, Performance, Video Art
