Black Bucket Essays
Volume 2, Issue 1
“The value of art is in the observer."
- Agnes Martin
Natalia Gonzalez
It could be that empty walls are having a resurgence; or in the very least a revision.
A few months ago I attended a performance at the Documenta 14, in Kassel, Germany. The project called Social Dissonance is by Spanish artist Mattin.
The work consists in hour-long, cumulative sets of ‘durational concerts’ (video recordings can be viewed here).
The normal route to participation in art happenings often unfolds as participants regurgitate their ideas - and Mattin examines the impossibility of escaping one´s ideology.* This is why what went on during the performance was of less consequence to me than the parameters of its staging. Here is a short blurb of what happened: there was an outflow of accusations pointing at the power dynamics of the wide-ranging group (i.e. who felt entitled to speak and why, who was silent and why).
Included were handouts with a broad instruction. This slip of paper might have been dispensable, and to prove it I can´t remember what it stated. According to my experience of the performance, Social Dissonance was an artwork of the audience´s confrontation with emptiness. This made the work unusually powerful.
The performance impaired the capacity for critical distance because of the immediacy of its demand - we were constructing the work as we were observing it. One of the two artists** who facilitated the performance made the following conclusion, ‘We could have done so many things; there was so much open space but somehow we decided not to make any decisions in order to change the situation’.*** She, too, seemed to struggle with the freedom entailed by the void. Or so I thought. With later research of the project, I found out that the two artists were designated to be the performers, that the audience was to have been their instrument, and that the work was about how we are instrumentalized.
Mattin -the author- forces the hand, in fact the whole body of the audience. This situationist move brings to mind the 2008 São Paulo Bienal (I was not there, so I cannot write from personal experience). For that project, it was the institution´s financial and political crises which induced the hand of the curator, Ivo Mesquita, to adopt artistic license. He conceived what the Brazilian press referred to as the ‘Bienal do vazio’, the empty biennial. In effect, the entire second floor of the pavilion was bereft of artworks while the first and second floors were planned as areas of reflection on the biennial as a model. This conception was greatly controversial and two of the curators abandoned the post; one at the very idea. The exhibition was received by many as an inadequacy rather than as an aesthetic/artistic response to a site-specific urgency.
In these two instances it appears that the observers were engulfed in the rarity of nothingness. Its value was made ambivalent.
* “Social Dissonance.” (2017, May 11). Tabakalera- International Centre for Contemporary Culture, City Council of San Sebastian, www.tabakalera.eu/en/social-dissonance-mattin-documenta-14-kassel-athens.
** The artist Mattin, who was absent, collaborated with a group of artists who were present for the events.
***“social_dissonance_kassel@socialdissonan1.” Periscope, www.pscp.tv/socialdissonan1/1OyJArQneNMxb.
Volume 2, Issue 1
“The value of art is in the observer."
- Agnes Martin
Natalia Gonzalez
It could be that empty walls are having a resurgence; or in the very least a revision.
A few months ago I attended a performance at the Documenta 14, in Kassel, Germany. The project called Social Dissonance is by Spanish artist Mattin.
The work consists in hour-long, cumulative sets of ‘durational concerts’ (video recordings can be viewed here).
The normal route to participation in art happenings often unfolds as participants regurgitate their ideas - and Mattin examines the impossibility of escaping one´s ideology.* This is why what went on during the performance was of less consequence to me than the parameters of its staging. Here is a short blurb of what happened: there was an outflow of accusations pointing at the power dynamics of the wide-ranging group (i.e. who felt entitled to speak and why, who was silent and why).
Included were handouts with a broad instruction. This slip of paper might have been dispensable, and to prove it I can´t remember what it stated. According to my experience of the performance, Social Dissonance was an artwork of the audience´s confrontation with emptiness. This made the work unusually powerful.
The performance impaired the capacity for critical distance because of the immediacy of its demand - we were constructing the work as we were observing it. One of the two artists** who facilitated the performance made the following conclusion, ‘We could have done so many things; there was so much open space but somehow we decided not to make any decisions in order to change the situation’.*** She, too, seemed to struggle with the freedom entailed by the void. Or so I thought. With later research of the project, I found out that the two artists were designated to be the performers, that the audience was to have been their instrument, and that the work was about how we are instrumentalized.
Mattin -the author- forces the hand, in fact the whole body of the audience. This situationist move brings to mind the 2008 São Paulo Bienal (I was not there, so I cannot write from personal experience). For that project, it was the institution´s financial and political crises which induced the hand of the curator, Ivo Mesquita, to adopt artistic license. He conceived what the Brazilian press referred to as the ‘Bienal do vazio’, the empty biennial. In effect, the entire second floor of the pavilion was bereft of artworks while the first and second floors were planned as areas of reflection on the biennial as a model. This conception was greatly controversial and two of the curators abandoned the post; one at the very idea. The exhibition was received by many as an inadequacy rather than as an aesthetic/artistic response to a site-specific urgency.
In these two instances it appears that the observers were engulfed in the rarity of nothingness. Its value was made ambivalent.
* “Social Dissonance.” (2017, May 11). Tabakalera- International Centre for Contemporary Culture, City Council of San Sebastian, www.tabakalera.eu/en/social-dissonance-mattin-documenta-14-kassel-athens.
** The artist Mattin, who was absent, collaborated with a group of artists who were present for the events.
***“social_dissonance_kassel@socialdissonan1.” Periscope, www.pscp.tv/socialdissonan1/1OyJArQneNMxb.
