| Space,… the final frontier… Oh wait, the room's just kinda dirty. Hrm…  |
FIGURE 1: An Te Liu, Matter, 2008 [remounted in 2011] installation: closed-circuit surveillance camera, light, airborne particulates, two projectors Installation view, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2008 |
I turned to Mark and commented that the irony of this work is that once natural propensity for laziness overcomes the viewer, no dust particles are picked up by air currents and launched comet-like across the "screens".
Luckily, we were in a playful Adventuring Mood, and decided to take matters into our own hands. Let the record show that bean-bag chairs incite childish behaviour in gallery goers.
We shifted, we tossed, we brandished our exhibition essays.
In spite of waving maniacally from our bean bag chairs, our insistent flailing was to no avail.
However, An Te Liu had left one camera within reach, so extricating ourselves from our squishy seats, we promptly dismantled the minimalism so inherent to Matter, dangling scarves, maps, and books into the single beam of light hovering above the camera lens. And yes, I will admit… within a few minutes, we had bent down and stuck our faces into that blinding beam.
So. Much. Fun.
The second work by Liu was an installation sharing a room with a projected video work, discussed below. It was a sizable black box hovering over a large, flat and superbly comfy Mies Van Der Rohe daybed. Bonus: This time, prostrating ourselves didn't "deactivate" the artwork. Peering up, we saw space artificially stretched out ad infinitum in a futuristic mirrored construct of galvanized ducts and vents. Though visually interesting in a boxy, kaleidescopic way, the greatest feature of this work is that in spite of the mirroring, we were never able to see our reflection! (Apparently, the future is indifferent to human existence.)
Liu's work was not, however, the highlight of this show. I will skip over photographs in the first room, as these architectural shots by José Manuel Ballester were lackluster at best. Then again, I'm notoriously biased against photography——aka. the ubiquitous plague of the art world. Clearly, it's best to see them in person and decide for yourself.
Back to the good stuff: Let's take a look at stills from Lynne Marsh's exceptional work Stadium, 2008.
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| FIGURE 2: Lynne Marsh, Stadium, 2008 [still] installation: rows of stadium-style wooden chairs, projected video |
The monolithic venue that Marsh explores is in fact the notorious Olympiastadion built in Berlin, 1936, for Hitler by his rumored gay lover Albert Speer, a man who would go down in history as the "Architect of the Devil". Of course, the scandal lay not only with the architect Speer, but with the stadium itself——as millions were sent to the concentration camps, the world's leaders convened in Berlin, of all places, to enjoy the ultimate spectacle of national pride, to celebrate and flaunt strength and youth, to cheer on their Olympians, all the while turning a blind eye as Leni Riefenstahl crafted one of the most powerful pieces of cinematic propaganda in history.
Marsh addresses the chilling historical context of the Olympiastadion as she deftly plays with innumerable multiples, shakes off the confines of depth perspective, and gives a single young organic body (a female body, no less!) dominion over this so-called triumph of mass production and cold, calculated engineering [Figure 3]. As the camera zooms through rows of folded stadium seats, it becomes difficult not to see a double picture of the helmeted heads of faceless soldiers. The image of the stadium shimmers and is reborn as a war machine, as a perpetrator of terror. While this phenomena is difficult to describe, watching this 3 minute clip will clarify: WATCH NOW
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| FIGURE 3: Lynne Marsh, Stadium, 2008 [still] |
Stadium wields significant visual power. It adeptly addresses both sociopolitical history and the history of art itself. Consider how in the image below, the stepped rows of stadium seats are flattened into a single plane, and the human figure seems to hover in space [Figure 4]. This intense visual illusion is steeped in Op Art & Conceptualism; the aesthetic and grid of Minimalism; the overwhelming rigor of Suprematism; the materials and scale of Brutalism; the contemporary practices of using multiples and the body, referencing Installation Art and Performance Art respectively; historical references and use of a female protagonist hearken back to the revolutionary sociopolitical and feminist work of the late 1960s; a focus on humanity and the environment that is echoed in Land Art and its contemporary progeny, such as Edward Burtynsky; and finally Stadium is a work of New Media Art, created using digital filming, green screen technology, and 3D modelling. Whew, exhaustive!
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| FIGURE 4: Lynne Marsh, Stadium, 2008 [still] |
In my humble opinion, Lynne Marsh's Stadium is nothing short of brilliant, and I highly recommend seeing this work in person. The hollow, resonant industrial soundtrack somehow effaces all other sound, augmenting the affect of the visuals. (Side note: it also gives you the privacy to act like a fool, playing with Liu's work!) Further, your position in the physical stadium seats arrayed in front of the film reinvents you as a participant rather than a mere observer. It is astonishing how Marsh has tapped into the filming infrastructure of the stadium. The same equipment used to film sporting events is repurposed to create a deeply multivalent artwork of unparalleled aesthetic purity. As Marsh's camera smoothly pans down this massive structure, step forward from your seat until the screen engulfs your vision… The visual experience is, simply put, epic.
At the end of the day, Lynn Marsh hands us a message of hope. It is in Marsh' work and her work alone that Hyper Space is able to transcend the confines of its respective media and and its locale to become unforgettable. The ease with which Marsh's protagonist flows through a space manufactured to keep crowds ordered, contained, and (when it comes right down to it) submissive is absolutely key.
Her supple movements dismantle the cages that industrialization built for us.
Her body teaches us that our experience of the world cannot be dictated by design, that we are flexible, that we can learn, that we can adapt.
Her negotiation of space is deeply reverent of creativity.
Her grace is a song defying brutality.
