Tanscendent Technology
卓越的科技
本届的卡塞尔文献展随处可见的是那些“重型”科技作品，但是展览中那些最最卓越的，令人印象深刻的还是那些简单，基础并和环境有关的声音和灯光装置。
这些优秀的装置包括 Insitut Mathildenhohe 里的主打 Janet Cardiff 和 George Bures Miller 的个展， Antony Gormley 和 William Kentridge 的作品。
KASSEL, Germany—Lengthy video, slide shows, and other tech-heavy works abound at documenta 12. But many of the most resonant works in the show employ technology in a much simpler way, distilling the time-based genre to environments powered by light and sound.
These works—along with select pieces at Sculpture Projects Muenster and major solo exhibitions of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (through August 26 at Insitut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt), Antony Gormley (through August 19 at The Hayward, London), and William Kentridge (through August 5 at Stadel Museum, Frankfurt)—confirm that unexpected applications of the most basic technologies can produce art that is immediate and surprising, yet intellectually and visually transcendent.
Add a Splash of Water
For his ethereal and unsettling Blind Light, Antony Gormley has constructed a large glass room lit by fluorescent bulbs and filled with ultrasonic humidifiers that emit a dense mist. Viewers wander within this synthetic, incarcerated cloud, but given its brightness and density, visibility is only about two feet. The space seems to collapse into opaque blankness, and you experience something like the "blinding light" of near-death experiences.
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's site-specific Tiki Tiki Bar, a highlight in this excellent mini-retrospective, also uses water, but here it is modulated by darkness, color, and kitsch. The work is located in the museum's basement, which was formerly a reservoir, and visitors don rubber boots and climb down dank poorly lit stair into the building's deepest bowels. From there the escort tells you to step down—into five inches of water—and follow the sound of the music. As with Cardiff's well-known "Walks," the work evokes a contract of trust between artist and audience, and its success depends on a certain interplay of anxiety and relief. In Tiki Tiki Bar, you must trust that everything will be okay as you wade through a dark, cavernous, water-filled basement in the middle of a small town in the middle of Europe.
If you are able to surrender to the piece, the rewards are great. As you move along, you hear the sounds of vintage Hawaiian crooning. The water ripples and light glances off the tiny waves. Eventually, just beyond the furthest pillar, a thatched Tiki bar appears. It is festooned with colored lights, its counter strewn with used cups, an empty bottle, and oranges and lemons spiked by tiny umbrella toothpicks. Gently lapping water and tracks like Blue Velvet amplify the strange, nervous beauty of this amazing installation.
Mirrors, Lenses, Animation
The binaural recordings central to many of Cardiff and Miller's works have been described as the "auditory equivalent of an old-fashioned, three-dimensional stereograph," which is the rudimentary technology at the center of William Kentridge's recent anamorphic and stereoscopic drawings at the Stadel. Using mirrors and other reflective surfaces, Kentridge has discovered a new way to bring his intelligent drawings and ideas to life.
Appropriating several of Albrecht Durer's prints in the permanent collection, Kentridge has enlarged, duplicated, and reversed them such that, when viewed in double via mirrored lenses, they coalesce into uncanny three-dimensional tableaux. Meanwhile, other, circular drawings laid flat rely on a polished metal cylinder to anamorphically "correct" their distortions-what is seen from above as a blur of charcoal, is pulled together into the image of a fly or a landscape of convincing depth.
Kentridge is best known for films in which he painstakingly animates his drawings into moving, thought-provoking narratives. Here, in the piece de resistance, What Will Come (Has Already Come), anamorphic drawings are projected downward onto a circular pedestal with a metal cylinder. The image of an airplane flying seamlessly around the cylinder with no projection shadows or interruptions is exquisite legerdemain. As always, the lasting fascination of Kentridge's work is that he uses such visual trickery not as facile one-liners, but as entrees into the complex idea and history of human perception.
Reflections and Projections
As with Kentridge, the success of Olga Neuwirth's time-based works is based on a simple and central trope of reflection. In ...miramundo multiplo..., a musical score is being written onto frosted glass. From "behind" or through the glass, we gaze onto the creative process-but is the composer writing backward or are we seeing a mirrored image? Adding another layer of complexity is the surrounding soundtrack, which supplements the scratching of pencil on glass with a beautiful trumpet concerto and texts by Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin.
Gonzalo Diaz is another artist whose work has an immediate gee-whiz quality, yet still manages to cast long thoughtful shadows. Eclipsis is a black room in which a single theater spotlight projects onto the rear wall. When you stand directly in front of the beam, your shadow reveals words on the wall: "You come to the heart of Germany to read the word art in your own shadow." This is not the first time the artist has played on materials and words in a way that hovers between indictment and haiku. In Al calor del pensamiento (1999), the thermal coil of a long space heater is searingly scripted: "We search everywhere for the unconditional and we find only things."
Rites, Strings, Lyrics, Words
Documenta's inclusion of historic work reveals a precedent for Diaz's surreal application of home appliances: Tanaka Atsuko's Electric Dress (1956, reconstruction in 1986) is a cloak of wired lightbulbs.
Like Atsuko, Mary Kelly finds potent symbolism and effect in using artificial light to feminist effect. The inscribed walls and backlit wall panels of her domesticated white cube, Loves Songs: Multi-Story House, glow with texts like: "I grew up dodging bullets in Angola. So the term ‘feminist' didn't mean much."
Nearby, Churchill Madikida has also created an intimately theatrical installation. But his Status is keyed to the rites of ritual rather than the rites of confession or passage. Coffins lit with flashing red lights and surrounded by candles, petals, projected images, and loud guitar music immediately recall works by Cardiff and Miller, such as Opera for a Small Room and the Grand Guignol-esque The Killing Machine.
The strings and sculptural sound at the center of Saadane Afif's Black Chords Plays Lyrics also echo Cardiff and Miller. Afif's 13 black guitars (rigged with a rotating pick programmed to a single periodic strum) are configured around the space and together perform a single piece. The abstract chords share the off-kilter, melancholy mood heard in the soundtrack of Tiki Tiki Bar.
Likewise, Susan Philipsz's The Lost Reflection, seen/heard under the Tormin Bridge in Müenster approaches the sonic spirituality conjured by Cardiff in The Forty-Part Motet (2001). Philipsz's two-channel recording of a duet from Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffman sings back and forth across the water, telling a story of doppelgangers, unrequited love, and stolen reflections.
Headphones and History
Headphones, made popular by Cardiff and Miller, were central to works throughout documenta. In her painted table with pullout panels and haunting soundtrack, Das Konzentrationslager der Liebe, Sonia Abian Rose smuggles motifs from Rubens, Brueghel, Poussin, and Greek mythology into Nazi<
卓越的科技
本届的卡塞尔文献展随处可见的是那些“重型”科技作品，但是展览中那些最最卓越的，令人印象深刻的还是那些简单，基础并和环境有关的声音和灯光装置。
这些优秀的装置包括 Insitut Mathildenhohe 里的主打 Janet Cardiff 和 George Bures Miller 的个展， Antony Gormley 和 William Kentridge 的作品。
KASSEL, Germany—Lengthy video, slide shows, and other tech-heavy works abound at documenta 12. But many of the most resonant works in the show employ technology in a much simpler way, distilling the time-based genre to environments powered by light and sound.
These works—along with select pieces at Sculpture Projects Muenster and major solo exhibitions of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (through August 26 at Insitut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt), Antony Gormley (through August 19 at The Hayward, London), and William Kentridge (through August 5 at Stadel Museum, Frankfurt)—confirm that unexpected applications of the most basic technologies can produce art that is immediate and surprising, yet intellectually and visually transcendent.
Add a Splash of Water
For his ethereal and unsettling Blind Light, Antony Gormley has constructed a large glass room lit by fluorescent bulbs and filled with ultrasonic humidifiers that emit a dense mist. Viewers wander within this synthetic, incarcerated cloud, but given its brightness and density, visibility is only about two feet. The space seems to collapse into opaque blankness, and you experience something like the "blinding light" of near-death experiences.
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's site-specific Tiki Tiki Bar, a highlight in this excellent mini-retrospective, also uses water, but here it is modulated by darkness, color, and kitsch. The work is located in the museum's basement, which was formerly a reservoir, and visitors don rubber boots and climb down dank poorly lit stair into the building's deepest bowels. From there the escort tells you to step down—into five inches of water—and follow the sound of the music. As with Cardiff's well-known "Walks," the work evokes a contract of trust between artist and audience, and its success depends on a certain interplay of anxiety and relief. In Tiki Tiki Bar, you must trust that everything will be okay as you wade through a dark, cavernous, water-filled basement in the middle of a small town in the middle of Europe.
If you are able to surrender to the piece, the rewards are great. As you move along, you hear the sounds of vintage Hawaiian crooning. The water ripples and light glances off the tiny waves. Eventually, just beyond the furthest pillar, a thatched Tiki bar appears. It is festooned with colored lights, its counter strewn with used cups, an empty bottle, and oranges and lemons spiked by tiny umbrella toothpicks. Gently lapping water and tracks like Blue Velvet amplify the strange, nervous beauty of this amazing installation.
Mirrors, Lenses, Animation
The binaural recordings central to many of Cardiff and Miller's works have been described as the "auditory equivalent of an old-fashioned, three-dimensional stereograph," which is the rudimentary technology at the center of William Kentridge's recent anamorphic and stereoscopic drawings at the Stadel. Using mirrors and other reflective surfaces, Kentridge has discovered a new way to bring his intelligent drawings and ideas to life.
Appropriating several of Albrecht Durer's prints in the permanent collection, Kentridge has enlarged, duplicated, and reversed them such that, when viewed in double via mirrored lenses, they coalesce into uncanny three-dimensional tableaux. Meanwhile, other, circular drawings laid flat rely on a polished metal cylinder to anamorphically "correct" their distortions-what is seen from above as a blur of charcoal, is pulled together into the image of a fly or a landscape of convincing depth.
Kentridge is best known for films in which he painstakingly animates his drawings into moving, thought-provoking narratives. Here, in the piece de resistance, What Will Come (Has Already Come), anamorphic drawings are projected downward onto a circular pedestal with a metal cylinder. The image of an airplane flying seamlessly around the cylinder with no projection shadows or interruptions is exquisite legerdemain. As always, the lasting fascination of Kentridge's work is that he uses such visual trickery not as facile one-liners, but as entrees into the complex idea and history of human perception.
Reflections and Projections
As with Kentridge, the success of Olga Neuwirth's time-based works is based on a simple and central trope of reflection. In ...miramundo multiplo..., a musical score is being written onto frosted glass. From "behind" or through the glass, we gaze onto the creative process-but is the composer writing backward or are we seeing a mirrored image? Adding another layer of complexity is the surrounding soundtrack, which supplements the scratching of pencil on glass with a beautiful trumpet concerto and texts by Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin.
Gonzalo Diaz is another artist whose work has an immediate gee-whiz quality, yet still manages to cast long thoughtful shadows. Eclipsis is a black room in which a single theater spotlight projects onto the rear wall. When you stand directly in front of the beam, your shadow reveals words on the wall: "You come to the heart of Germany to read the word art in your own shadow." This is not the first time the artist has played on materials and words in a way that hovers between indictment and haiku. In Al calor del pensamiento (1999), the thermal coil of a long space heater is searingly scripted: "We search everywhere for the unconditional and we find only things."
Rites, Strings, Lyrics, Words
Documenta's inclusion of historic work reveals a precedent for Diaz's surreal application of home appliances: Tanaka Atsuko's Electric Dress (1956, reconstruction in 1986) is a cloak of wired lightbulbs.
Like Atsuko, Mary Kelly finds potent symbolism and effect in using artificial light to feminist effect. The inscribed walls and backlit wall panels of her domesticated white cube, Loves Songs: Multi-Story House, glow with texts like: "I grew up dodging bullets in Angola. So the term ‘feminist' didn't mean much."
Nearby, Churchill Madikida has also created an intimately theatrical installation. But his Status is keyed to the rites of ritual rather than the rites of confession or passage. Coffins lit with flashing red lights and surrounded by candles, petals, projected images, and loud guitar music immediately recall works by Cardiff and Miller, such as Opera for a Small Room and the Grand Guignol-esque The Killing Machine.
The strings and sculptural sound at the center of Saadane Afif's Black Chords Plays Lyrics also echo Cardiff and Miller. Afif's 13 black guitars (rigged with a rotating pick programmed to a single periodic strum) are configured around the space and together perform a single piece. The abstract chords share the off-kilter, melancholy mood heard in the soundtrack of Tiki Tiki Bar.
Likewise, Susan Philipsz's The Lost Reflection, seen/heard under the Tormin Bridge in Müenster approaches the sonic spirituality conjured by Cardiff in The Forty-Part Motet (2001). Philipsz's two-channel recording of a duet from Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffman sings back and forth across the water, telling a story of doppelgangers, unrequited love, and stolen reflections.
Headphones and History
Headphones, made popular by Cardiff and Miller, were central to works throughout documenta. In her painted table with pullout panels and haunting soundtrack, Das Konzentrationslager der Liebe, Sonia Abian Rose smuggles motifs from Rubens, Brueghel, Poussin, and Greek mythology into Nazi<
[attachment=49464]
Antony Gormley, "Blind Light" (2007). On view at The Hayward, London
Photo © Stephen White, courtesy the artist and Jay Jopling / White Cube, London
Antony Gormley的这件作品是一个封闭的空间，里面打了很多普通的热光灯，排放的雾气营造了一种类似天堂或地狱的感觉。
Antony Gormley, "Blind Light" (2007). On view at The Hayward, London
Photo © Stephen White, courtesy the artist and Jay Jopling / White Cube, London
Antony Gormley的这件作品是一个封闭的空间，里面打了很多普通的热光灯，排放的雾气营造了一种类似天堂或地狱的感觉。
[attachment=49465]
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, "Tiki Tiki Bar" (2007). On view at Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Photo courtesy Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Janet Cardiff 和 George Bures Miller's的这个装置“tiki tiki bar”是一个会发出微弱的夏威夷舞曲的小酒吧，过时的音乐昏暗的灯光，装置被安排放在展区的地下室，那里曾经是下水库，观众必须爬下楼梯，穿上塑料长靴才能接近作品。
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, "Tiki Tiki Bar" (2007). On view at Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Photo courtesy Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Janet Cardiff 和 George Bures Miller's的这个装置“tiki tiki bar”是一个会发出微弱的夏威夷舞曲的小酒吧，过时的音乐昏暗的灯光，装置被安排放在展区的地下室，那里曾经是下水库，观众必须爬下楼梯，穿上塑料长靴才能接近作品。
[attachment=49466]
William Kentridge, "What Will Come (Has Already Come)" (exhibition view) (2007). On view at the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Photo by Alexander Heimann, courtesy Stadel Museum
William Kentridge, "What Will Come (Has Already Come)" (exhibition view) (2007). On view at the Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
Photo by Alexander Heimann, courtesy Stadel Museum
[attachment=49467]
Gonzalo Diaz, "Eclipsis" (2007). On view at documenta 12
© VG Bild-Kunst,Bonn 2007 / Gonzalo Diaz, photo by Egbert Trogemann, courtesy documenta GmbH
Gonzalo Diaz, "Eclipsis" (2007). On view at documenta 12
© VG Bild-Kunst,Bonn 2007 / Gonzalo Diaz, photo by Egbert Trogemann, courtesy documenta GmbH
[attachment=49468]
Tanaka Atsuko, "Electric Dress" (1956). On view at documenta 12
© Ryoji Ito / Takamatsu City Museum of Art, photo by Julia Zimmermann, courtesy documenta GmbH
Tanaka Atsuko, "Electric Dress" (1956). On view at documenta 12
© Ryoji Ito / Takamatsu City Museum of Art, photo by Julia Zimmermann, courtesy documenta GmbH
[attachment=49471]
Mary Kelly, "Love Songs: Flashing Nipple Remix, 2005." On view at documenta 12
© Mary Kelly, photo courtesy Postmasters, New York
Mary Kelly, "Love Songs: Flashing Nipple Remix, 2005." On view at documenta 12
© Mary Kelly, photo courtesy Postmasters, New York
[attachment=49472]
Mary Kelly, "Love Songs: Multi-Story House, 2007." On view at documenta 12
© Mary Kelly, photo courtesy Postmasters, New York
Mary Kelly, "Love Songs: Multi-Story House, 2007." On view at documenta 12
© Mary Kelly, photo courtesy Postmasters, New York
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Saadane Afif, "Black Chords plays Lyrics, 2007." On view at documenta 12
© Saâdane Afif, photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy documenta Gmbh
Saadane Afif, "Black Chords plays Lyrics, 2007." On view at documenta 12
© Saâdane Afif, photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy documenta Gmbh
[attachment=49474]
Churchill Madikida, "Status" (2005). On view at documenta 12
© Churchill Madikida / Michael Stevenson Gallery, photo © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2007, by Egbert Trogemann, courtesy documenta GmbH
Churchill Madikida, "Status" (2005). On view at documenta 12
© Churchill Madikida / Michael Stevenson Gallery, photo © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2007, by Egbert Trogemann, courtesy documenta GmbH
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Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, "Opera for a Small Room" (2005). On view at Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Photo courtesy Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, "Opera for a Small Room" (2005). On view at Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
Photo courtesy Institut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt
[attachment=49476]
Alice Creischer, "Mach doch heute Lobby" (1998-2007). On view at Documenta 12
© Alice Creischer, photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy documenta GmbH
Alice Creischer, "Mach doch heute Lobby" (1998-2007). On view at Documenta 12
© Alice Creischer, photo by Jens Ziehe, courtesy documenta GmbH
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Suchan Kinoshita, "Chinese Whisper (Stille Post)." On view at Sculpture Projects Muenster
Photo by Roman Mensing 2007
Suchan Kinoshita, "Chinese Whisper (Stille Post)." On view at Sculpture Projects Muenster
Photo by Roman Mensing 2007
[attachment=49478]
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, "Phantom Truck" (2007). On view at documenta 12
© Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, photo by Katrin Schilling, courtesy documenta GmbH
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Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, "The Radio" (2007). On view at documenta 12
© Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, photo by Katrin Schilling, courtesy documenta GmbH
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, "Phantom Truck" (2007). On view at documenta 12
© Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, photo by Katrin Schilling, courtesy documenta GmbH
[attachment=49479]
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, "The Radio" (2007). On view at documenta 12
© Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, photo by Katrin Schilling, courtesy documenta GmbH
