The Valerio phenomenon cultivates this potential as a kind of everyday technique. The slides however introduce it into the museum. Being the place where our most differentiated ways of relating to objects and their symbolical meaning are displayed and cultivated, the slides bring in a moment that is all about ones relation to oneself.
In Hollers work the object becomes a tool, a device to produce these moments. Sliding down Holler's structures, one does not communicate with the sensitivity or the specific subjectivity of the artist- as we might do when we contemplate other artworks such as e.g. drawing- but with oneself. Or rather one communicates with a different side of oneself. The fact that we do this, is of course, his idea. But in the experience of the work, we are confronted with ourselves, and especially with our physical selves, more than with the artist. The sculptural object, in other words, becomes a tool to explore and experiment with ourselves. It not only serves the perception of one's self, but engenders transformation of one's self.
This operational dimension is crucial: the work seduces us to act upon ourselves. (p23)
Carsten Holler: Test Site (Unilever Series) , 2007 by Jessica Morgan. ISBN-10: 1854377124ISBN-13: 978-1854377128
so if the works seduces us to act upon ourselves- can it also encourge this to happen collaborative, or with others? reports from Test Site suggest that there was a sense of group excitement at the top and bottom of the slides - a 'transformational energy
and from the Tate http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/unilever-series-carsten-holler-test-site
"What interests Höller, however, is both the visual spectacle of watching
people sliding and the ‘inner spectacle’ experienced by the sliders
themselves, the state of simultaneous delight and anxiety that you enter
as you descend".
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