Open to the Public: Artist and Viewer as Collaborators
In the Gallery Space
The museum is considered a place of authority, authenticity, and knowledge. We accept what the institution presents to us as the right way of thinking and feeling about work that is accepted as ‘good’ art. Yet without our own experiences, thoughts, and feelings, many of the works in museums do not hold any real significance to our lives. How can museums reconnect with the public to create a space that celebrates exciting and multidimensional works that don’t just speak at the viewer but speak with the viewer?
Charles Garoian suggests that museums need to be challenged and rethought as a process to connect museum viewing with our everyday lives:
“By challenging the mythic assumptions of the proscenium, which distinguishes and divides performers’ representation of reality on stage from the reality of the spectators’ lives in the real world, Artaud sought reciprocity between theatrical performance and the performance of everyday life.”
Without this connection between the work and everyday life, art is defined and valued only as acknowledged by higher sources leaving the viewer with a possible sense of awe but with nothing learned or experienced that actually contributes to the cultural experience of art.
The museums’ authority creates a hierarchy of voice and view:
“The enormity and splendor of many museums bears down on the eyes and ears, strained to see and hear so much under such awesome and, yes, constrained or regulated circumstances. But for many … there has been no introduction to such a world.”
The museum deems what art and which artists are worthy, authentic, and interesting. It is a guarded institution that reinforces the hierarchy that controls and defines ‘good’ art.
“ ‘…the guards, they’re nervous. Not just about us, but about their bosses. They must own the pictures, and the guards would lose their jobs if anything bad happens.’ That last observation, a child’s intuition, touches on so very much—that the guards (so easily criticized or scapegoated by a new young visitor, because they are there, constantly watching and, if necessary, speaking up) are really at the very bottom of a ladder that becomes increasingly invisible, yet powerful, as one climbs the rungs. Needless to say, it is the curators and the trustees who are the “bosses” the boy mentioned—“rich white folks,” he later called them when asked to be more specific.”
The rich, white curators and trustees determine the value of a piece. The artists depict their personal views. The processes of creating art and determining its value is private and separate from the exhibition. The viewer is no more than an anonymous observer and the lowest member of the artistic hierarchy, merely a ‘layman.’ The exhibition space is structured for viewing only, excluding other kind of interaction with a piece. This model is built around an anonymous relationship between the artist and the viewer.
The four artists discussed in my exhibition plan challenge this traditional model, which I will refer to as the museum model. Individually, their work challenges specific aspects of the traditional museum model. Collectively, their work leads to the question: How can the artists’ and viewers’ collective knowledge be pooled to create a conversation enabling learning and growth on both sides? Or stated in another way: how can the relationship between the artist and the viewer become more intimate? The philosophy of art driving their work is exemplified in this statement:
Most museum exhibitions require you to look at work and gain an understanding and experience just from looking at it. Come make work with the artists. Without you as the viewer these works could not exist or would not work in the same way that they do with your help. These works all realize the importance of the viewer, not just as critic or analyzer of the work, but as a specific part of the piece.
Andrea Fraser, Alex Golden, Annie Abraham and Cat Mazza challenge the dichotomy between artist and viewer in the museum model. Their pieces transform the viewer from anonymous observer to participant to collaborator. Transformation of the role of the viewer and his/her relationship to the artist challenges the entire traditional museum model.
Through Andrea Fraser’s “Projection,” Alex Golden’s “Puff,” Annie Abraham’s “The Big Kiss,” and Cat Mazza’s “Nike Blanket Petition,” we can begin to understand different approaches to viewer participation and viewer collaboration with the artist and artwork. In some, just the way the piece addresses or even places the viewer in a position of importance and significance is enough to create intimacy. In others, the viewer is placed in a situation that stimulates realization from a present experience. The last two artists literally collaborate with the audience by asking them to act through the Internet or act in the actual making process. Intimacy is created by giving the viewer weight through their presence, their actions in the gallery space, their participation in the actions of a piece, or through the actual making process.
Andrea Fraser’s “Projection” is an installation consisting of two life –sized video projections on opposite walls in a long, narrow, darkened gallery space. In both projections the same woman dressed in the same clothes sits on the same chair in a seamless black background. The projections consist of twelve short monologues that loop continuously between the two walls. As one monologue fades to black, another monologue begins on the opposite wall. The actress addresses the camera directly, creating the illusion that she is speaking both to the opposite projection of herself and the audience in the middle of the gallery space. The monologue is a reformulation of video recordings of intensive psychoanalytic consultations that Fraser participated in.
"Projection" Andrea Fraser
This installation speaks about the psychological projections that structure the interaction between artists, their work, and their viewers. Artists, as people learned in the art world, are seen as demi-gods and their work as masterpieces. Take, for instance the language used to describe the significance of placement in the gallery: “…Olympia was first relegated to the secondary Musee du Luxembourg, to be given a place of honor…,” “In a perverse echo of history, Olympia’s downgraded installation at the Orsay was countered by the place of pride given to couture’s bombastic Romans of the Decadence; the enormous picture reigns as the only painting in the museum’s magnificent central hall of sculptures.”
"Olympia" E. Manet
The language in these quotes is one of grandeur—supremacy bigger than life and humanity to the point of putting art into the same category as religion. Indeed, the viewer can even make an offering in the museum collection box. The analogy between museums and places of worship is clear. It reflects cultural ideas of art.
Andrea Fraser in "Museum Highlights a Gallery Talk"
Fraser questions this hierarchy in this piece and many of her other works such as “Museum Highlights: a Gallery Talk,” where she takes visitors at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on an overly dramatic tour. Why are museums places of authority? Why is the artist portrayed as genius? And why is adoration of artwork comparable to that of religious saints? Once placed in a position of prestige, it is difficult to question these pieces of art and without question the gallery becomes a cathedral: a place of worship rather than a place of connection and learning. Questioning the motives and challenging the model behind this structure opens up a dialogue between the artist and viewer. The first step in changing the museum is to create a space that is about a discussion; foregoing the absolute ‘truth’ for a realistic and growing point of view. Instead of being preached to the work is ‘open to the public.’
Andrea Fraser’s “Projection” places the viewer in the middle of the work. The work doesn’t just sit in space but literally confronts and ‘sees’ the viewer. The viewer is transformed from a stagnant object unrelated and unaddressed into a significant part of the piece. Although not necessarily thought by Fraser at the beginning of the making of this piece, through the affirmation of the viewer’s presence, the work gives the viewer importance. The piece speaks to and also speaks about the viewer. Part of the ‘discussion’ is about the viewer’s point of view, which is accepted as valid and significant. The viewer becomes significant to the piece, their views are important.
Alex Golden’s installation, “Puff,” transforms the viewer into a participant. His piece forces the viewer to go through an experience that provokes strong emotions. It is also an experience that most viewers can associate with. The viewer enters the gallery space and is faced with an octangular device that they must enter in order to see the rest of the gallery space. A woman in a uniform on a video screen beckons them into this device. After taking that step into the device, a series of events happen: the doors to the device shut, lights flash, clicks and whistles sound, music plays, fans turn on and off in a rhythmic fashion. Suddenly the fans all turn on as a camera on a robotic arm swings out and takes a picture of the viewer. The arm then swings back into place and the doors to the rest of the gallery space open. The viewer walks out into a gallery turned lounge with a couch and a television screen where they realize that everyone in the room has watched them enter the gallery space in real time.
Golden’s work takes an emotion—the fear of being watched and judged when one is the center of attention—and makes every viewer experience it in reality rather than through Golden’s depiction through an object. The viewer becomes part of the work through their own provoked experience. Golden’s “Puff” shares similarities with Bruce Nauman’s "Live-Taped Video Corridor,” where viewers are asked to enter a ten-meter long and fifty centimeters wide corridor that has two video monitors at the other end of the entrance to the corridor. The top monitor shows a closed-circuit tape recording of the camera from the entrance to the corridor. As you enter the corridor you appear on the monitor but as the viewer travels closer to the monitors, they become farther away in the monitors and can see themselves from behind. In both of these pieces the power of authority, alienation, and surveillance all play into the feelings generated by the museum model. In “Puff,” as other viewers witness the reaction of the person entering the exhibit, the new guest becomes part of the piece for others as well. The viewer is transformed from an anonymous observer to an intimate participant. By making the installation about the participant’s experience, the participant’s experience is deemed just as important as the artist’s.
“Projection” and “Puff” both use the viewer’s presence as a form of collaboration. They place the viewer’s experience and intelligence on a level of significance and, in Golden’s piece, a level of significance equally important to the artist’s. These pieces redefine what it means for art to be open to the public; they create greater equality between the artist and the participant and promote open discussion and growth. The viewer as participant is allowed to bring his/her own point of view without feeling unimportant or belittled. Although viewers can and are present in the physical space in the museum, they are not actively present in the way achieved through these two pieces. It is this ‘actively present’ quality that transforms viewer to participant and creates a museum space that encourages the viewer to connect to, interact with, and learn from the art.
Annie Abraham’s piece adds another level of viewer/artist collaboration. For her installation at Over the Opening, Abraham asks the viewer to literally participate in her piece by kissing through real time on the web to create “The Big Kiss.” The viewer sits at a computer screen through which they can see and interact with a viewer at a different computer in the space. These images or videos of the two viewer’s interacting intimately are then projected on the walls of the exhibition space. This installation depends upon viewers’ participation in order for her work to become a reality. Similarities can be seen in the work of Victoria Vesna, who works through multimedia technologies to bring understanding to our new human condition in a time of advancing technologies. In “Quantum Tunnel” viewers are asked to leave a genetic trace by swiping their finger over a specified surface. At the same time the visitor’s image is taken and presented with the faces of the other visitors. Just like Abraham’s work, the viewer must perform or act in the exhibition space.
"The Big Kiss" Annie Abraham
“The Big Kiss” speaks about our changing sense of intimacy and connection due to the development and use of the Internet. With this installation, viewers compare their past experiences with kissing, touch, and physical intimacy to their behavior over the Internet. By focusing on this comparison she asks viewers to understand how the Internet experience has changed people and society. Now millions of texts, videos, and sounds are available to be shared by people across the world in the touch of a second. Viewers experience the dichotomy of the Internet’s alienation from physical touch while also experiencing the Internet’s ability to connect people through a wider social network than the world has ever seen. This work creates a community of experimentation within the gallery space creating connection and growth of information not only between viewers but also through the artist and the viewer as co-artist. Becoming co-artist, the viewer is welcomed into the Internet community, gallery community (made up of museum visitors), and the artistic community.
This work also addresses the alienation of the viewer from the ‘higher’ thought of the artist and museum. When views and ideas are placed in a system of institutional hierarchy, there is a loss of significance of a singular or voice of lesser background (a person who doesn’t have a background in art). Abraham’s work gives the viewer’s experience and understanding significance by allowing the viewer to collaborate in the performance of the work. Abraham elevates the viewer beyond participant to a maker of the piece. She creates equal significance in artist and viewer.
Cat Mazza’s work in “microRevolt” allows viewers to participate in the making of the work in a similar manner. Creating a software called KnitPro that is accessible through the Internet, Mazza asks those in the international knitting and sewing communities to create a knitted square for the “Nike Blanket Petition,” a blanket of a black Nike swoosh symbol on a red background. From 2003-2008, a detached group of international knit and crochet hobbyists participated in this microRevolt project. Each 4 x 4 inch stitched square that makes up the Nike logo acts as a signature for fair labor policies for Nike garment workers. Over the five-year period, forty countries have been represented through virtual and handmade squares that were collected on tour, electronically, and by post.
"Nike Blanket Petition" Cat Mazza
The accumulated multi-colored squares were knitted into the border of the Nike Blanket at Garanti Gallery in Istanbul Turkey in November 2007, and the blanket was completed in 2008. The collected squares of different textures, patterns, and colors are assembled as a border around the swoosh symbol, symbolizing the community that is assembled behind this action.
This knit quilt is an assembly of views, all equally important. This work may be the most powerful of all four. It gives voice to the smaller voices of a community and creates a collective voice that looms larger than any single voice. Unacknowledged by the artist at the time of conception of the idea for the “Nike Blanket Petition,” this piece competes with the museum’s authority and allows other viewers to place their own vote. In this work, the greater community has the ability to create and take part in the making process.
Mazza’s and Abraham’s work both ask the viewer to perform and participate in the actual
making process, asking far more than just their active presence in the work. By asking the
viewer to perform, the artist is asking the viewer to collaborate and become an artist by
contributing to the creation of the artwork. This puts the viewer’s abilities and voice on an
equal level to the artists.
When the viewer and artist participate in the process of making art, they share an experience that creates both meaning and connection. Like all experience, that creates learning and growth for both artists and viewers. The museum is not a place of views out of reach from the general population but a community and a place of shared experience. The museum is transformed in the way described in this quote:
“I can, even now, remember the description I dread of the enormous rooms, the marble floors, the hushed silence that threatened to envelop the children, so they felt, and dared in them the urge to make noise as a statement of self-assertion: ‘It was the hugest place I’ve ever been in,’ a girl said, adding, ‘It was like—well, everyone was holding his breath, and so we were whispering at first, and then we giggled, and then we really spoke up, and then people would stare at us, and they didn’t stop, but we wouldn’t stop talking either. A friend of mine—she said she wanted to scream so everything would be more ‘real,’ like it is where we live.’ ”
Fraser, Golden, Abraham and Mazza appreciate and respond to the desire among viewers to become participants and make the experience real. They give the viewer the ability to probe deeper into the work creating a direct connection between their own lives and the artists’ intentions and thoughts. The artist and viewer can learn through each other’s experiences and see their connections to each other and the rest of the world. The viewer does not need to accept the museum’s authority because they themselves can connect to and analyze the work. The viewers can see the work’s implications, meaning, and value without the museum’s input.
With these artists’ work, the museum will become a place transformed. Rather than artist and viewer, there will be an artist and participants or collaborators. Rather than an anonymous viewing experience, there will be an intimate participatory experience. Rather than the religious experience of awe, there will be connection, experience, and the creation of meaning. Rather than the hierarchy of the artist, the critic and the layman, there will be a community of participants. Rather than a one-way dialogue, there will be a two-way discussion. These pieces all work to create a museum exhibition that is really ‘open to the public.’
Alex Golden. “Alex Golden.net,” (November 2007), http://alexgolden.net/ (accessed October 4, 2009).
Bibliography
Adams, Robert McC. “Museums beyond Treasures and Traditions.” American Philosophical Society, vol. 135, no. 3 (September 1991): 332-338.http://www.jstor.org/stable/986771 (accessed November 30, 2009).
“Andrea Fraser: Professor, New Genres.” UCLA Department of Art.http://www.art.ucla.edu/faculty/fraser.html (accessed November 30, 2009).
“Andrea Fraser: Projection.” Friedrich Petzel Gallery, (2009). http://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/2009-05-09_andrea-fraser/ (accessed December 2, 2009).
“Annie Abrahams.” Net, Art, Video, Performance, (2009).http://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/the-big-kiss-ljubljana/ (accessed October 4, 2009).
“The Avant-garde at the Musée du Luxembourg: From Realism to Impressionism.”Musée d’Orsay, (2006). http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/history-of-the-collections/painting.html (accessed December 3, 2009).
“The Big Kiss.” http://www.bram.org/toucher/TBK.html (accessed October 4, 2009).
“Bruce Nauman: Live-Taped Video Corridor.” Media Art Net, (2003).http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/live-taped-video-corridor/ (accessed November 30, 2009).
Coles, Robert. “Whose Museums?” American Art, vol. 6, no. 1 (1992): 10, 11.http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109042 (accessed November 30, 2009).
Garoian, Charles R. “Performing the Museum.” Studies in Art Education, vol. 42, no. 3 (Spring, 2001): 236. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1321039 (accessed October 4, 2009).
Golden, Alex. “Alex Golden.net.” (November 2007). http://alexgolden.net/ (accessed October 4, 2009).
Mazza, Cat. “Nike Blanket Petition.” microRevolt. http://www.microrevolt.org/web/blanket.htm (accessed November 5, 2009).
Newhouse, Victoria. Art and the Power of Placement. The Monacelli Press, 2005: 215, 217.
“Quantum Tunnel.” Victoria Vesna, (2007). http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/projects/2007-present.php (accessed December 4, 2009).
Notes
1. Syrig, Avery. E-mail to Andrea Fraser, November 30, 2009.
2. Syrig, Avery. E-mail to Cat Mazza, November 30, 2009.
Wall Text:
Most museum exhibitions require you to look at work and gain an understanding and experience just from looking at it. Come make work with the artists. Without you as the viewer these works could not exist or would not work in the same way that they do with your help. These works all realize the importance of the viewer, not just as critic or analyzer of the work, but as a specific part of the piece.
Checklist of Objects:
- “Puff” by Alex Golden
- “Projection” by Andrea Fraser
- “The Big Kiss” by Annie Abraham
- “Nike Blanket Petition” by Cat Mazza
Floor Plan:
The exhibition will be in a walk through format. Once viewers have walked into the entrance to "Puff" they will have to walk the rest of the way through. Viewers will enter the exhibition through Alex Golden's "Puff" which will lead them into a kind of sitting room/bar/lounge area. You will exit this room through the opposite side of the entrance. The next room will lead directly into Andrea Fraser's "Projection." there will be no seating in this room. The entrance and two exits to the room will be on the long sides of the room with the projections of the two short sides. Walking to the two exits in the room housing "Projection" viewers will be able to physically take part in Annie Abraham's "The Big Kiss" or Cat Mazza's "Nike Blanket Petition." In both of these spaces viewers will be able to sit and work on the artwork. Adjoining both of these room will be a small cafe/bar/lounge sitting area. The exit from the entire exhibition will be through this room.
Floor Plan Flow Chart:
Octagon
Entrance
into "Puff"
"Puff" by Alex Golden
Exit
Entrance
"Projection" by Andrea Fraser
Exit Exit
Entrance Entrance
"The Big Kiss" Adjoining "Nike Blanket
by Annie cafe/bar Petition"
Abraham lounge by Cat Mazza
sitting area
Exit
