I’ve just watched Chicago Tonight’s piece on “Outpost” – Lou Mallozzi’s performance work I wrote about in post 28.
Judging by the TV footage, audience reactions to the work encompassed interest, surprise, embarrassment, nonchalance and in one instance, deliberate provocation in the form of pirouetting. I wasn’t expecting the coolness of Mallozzi’s approach – he describes the visitors to the museum in an unemotional, detached way – but I suppose this makes sense given that the work is inspired by our electronic surveillance culture. (I treasure a photo in John Baeder’s “Sign Language”: NO JAIL FOR ME WE HAVE A ELECTRIC EYE says a homemade shop sign in shaky writing, suitably summing up the strange comfort we find in spying.) However, it’s not primarily surveillance “Outpost” has made me think about, but rather the relationship between artist, artwork and audience. This relationship is not collaboration but at the same time, it is interaction – one more reason to think about how “solo” work is never really so solo after all.
Without an audience, art is just a collection of objects; but bring in an audience (however small) and it becomes art. How does this happen? I don’t think it’s magic and I don’t think that galleries are portals to other-worldly transformations. I think it’s more that artwork lives and dies by its opportunity to communicate. There’s a line of communication from the artist to the viewer via the artwork and back again. (Now that I come to think about it, this explains the odd sensation of only really seeing my work properly whenever I exhibit it for the first time.) Art is just language – one form of human communication amongst many…
Reading this back to myself I realise it’s awkward and unsatisfactory and doesn’t sum up what I’m trying to get at, but I’m going to leave it as is and remind myself that such instances are the very reason I prefer the language of art to the language of writing. Words are just too limiting.
