The second installment of this year’s Colloquia series “Interactivities: Conversations with Media Artists and Theorists” was presented on Friday, October 27th at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee by widely acclaimed installation artist and pioneer Mary Lucier and film scholar Melinda Barlow, from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Barlow is a researcher of Mary Lucier’s work, having edited the book Mary Lucier (PAJ Books: Art + Performance), a compilation of writings by and about Lucier, as well as drawings and ephemera surrounding the artist’s projects. She is also the author of the forthcoming “Lost Objects of Desire: Video Installation, Mary Lucier and the Romance of History”, to be published by the University of Minnesota Press.
Barlow introduced the subject of video installations by pointing out the contradictory nature of installation art, as an ambivalent media that offers, on one hand, the materiality of an environment that engages the audience in a concrete and tactile experience and, on the other, the impermanence of ephemeral objects – a consequence of the transient nature of most such work, displayed only temporarily at any given location. To illustrate this, Barlow paraphrased the California-based scholar Margaret Morse, stating that, when installation art is concerned, “you had to be there”.
“Being there” is in the core of the interactive essence of video installations. Throughout the presentation both Barlow and Lucier presented rich documentation of some of Lucier’s projects, including “Asylum, a Romance” (1986), “Oblique House” (1993) and the never realized “Portrait of Rosa Mendez” (1974). With very few exceptions - such as “Dawn Burn” (1975), currently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco - most of the work discussed is unavailable for visitation, which means we must rely on the paper and image trail left by the artist and compiled and analyzed by the scholar. Melinda Barlow’s evocative writing and description of Mary Lucier’s pieces appears as an appealing alternative to the impermanence of the work, making the artist-scholar dialogue particularly relevant and enlightening, in this context.
Lucier closed the presentation by showing the kaleidoscopic finale of “The Plains of Sweet Regret” (2004), an installation originally commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art.
As beautifully edited and touching as the now single-channel piece “Arabesque” is, Barlow is quick to remark that watching its projection is “nowhere near the experience of being in the space”, where it was shown in four large video projection screens and two 43” plasma monitors, with Lucier’s multi-layered version of George Strait’s song “I Can Still Make Cheyenne” reverberating from four loudspeakers.
The travel-inclined colloquia audience can take comfort in the fact that “The Plains of Sweet Regret” is currently installed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor (until November 19th) and will be shown at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. in New York city from March 10th to April 28th, 2007.
A website about the project including an inspired essay by Laurel Reuter is also available at http://www.ndmoa.com/MLsite/index.html
The Colloquia with Mary Lucier and Melinda Barlow was a unique opportunity to watch the interaction of artist and scholar and how blurry these boundaries become when both parties are so deeply invested in the work. Mary Lucier is clearly an intellectual herself, while Barlow’s descriptions are meant to be an “evocation” of her pieces. “[Lucier’s work] gives me permission and freedom to be lyrical”, she says.
It seems to me that the presentation last Friday was led by a practice-scholar and a theory-poet, and it wasn’t always easy to tell which was which. Like with video installation in general and Mary Lucier’s work in particular, “you just had to be there”.
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On a side note, a remarkable complement to the Colloquia was to see Mary Lucier in action at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where, over the weekend, the artist shot her next performance / video installation. Lucier installed three cameras in Windhover Hall, the lobby of Santiago Calatrava-designed’s Quadracci Pavilion in order to capture “the changing light and mood in this space as she videotapes visitors’ interactions with the site”.
A test video preview of Lucier’s work at the MAM can be found at http://www.mam.org/exhibitions/lucier_shoot2.htm
Barlow is a researcher of Mary Lucier’s work, having edited the book Mary Lucier (PAJ Books: Art + Performance), a compilation of writings by and about Lucier, as well as drawings and ephemera surrounding the artist’s projects. She is also the author of the forthcoming “Lost Objects of Desire: Video Installation, Mary Lucier and the Romance of History”, to be published by the University of Minnesota Press.Barlow introduced the subject of video installations by pointing out the contradictory nature of installation art, as an ambivalent media that offers, on one hand, the materiality of an environment that engages the audience in a concrete and tactile experience and, on the other, the impermanence of ephemeral objects – a consequence of the transient nature of most such work, displayed only temporarily at any given location. To illustrate this, Barlow paraphrased the California-based scholar Margaret Morse, stating that, when installation art is concerned, “you had to be there”.
“Being there” is in the core of the interactive essence of video installations. Throughout the presentation both Barlow and Lucier presented rich documentation of some of Lucier’s projects, including “Asylum, a Romance” (1986), “Oblique House” (1993) and the never realized “Portrait of Rosa Mendez” (1974). With very few exceptions - such as “Dawn Burn” (1975), currently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco - most of the work discussed is unavailable for visitation, which means we must rely on the paper and image trail left by the artist and compiled and analyzed by the scholar. Melinda Barlow’s evocative writing and description of Mary Lucier’s pieces appears as an appealing alternative to the impermanence of the work, making the artist-scholar dialogue particularly relevant and enlightening, in this context.
Lucier closed the presentation by showing the kaleidoscopic finale of “The Plains of Sweet Regret” (2004), an installation originally commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art.As beautifully edited and touching as the now single-channel piece “Arabesque” is, Barlow is quick to remark that watching its projection is “nowhere near the experience of being in the space”, where it was shown in four large video projection screens and two 43” plasma monitors, with Lucier’s multi-layered version of George Strait’s song “I Can Still Make Cheyenne” reverberating from four loudspeakers.
The travel-inclined colloquia audience can take comfort in the fact that “The Plains of Sweet Regret” is currently installed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor (until November 19th) and will be shown at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. in New York city from March 10th to April 28th, 2007.
A website about the project including an inspired essay by Laurel Reuter is also available at http://www.ndmoa.com/MLsite/index.html
The Colloquia with Mary Lucier and Melinda Barlow was a unique opportunity to watch the interaction of artist and scholar and how blurry these boundaries become when both parties are so deeply invested in the work. Mary Lucier is clearly an intellectual herself, while Barlow’s descriptions are meant to be an “evocation” of her pieces. “[Lucier’s work] gives me permission and freedom to be lyrical”, she says.
It seems to me that the presentation last Friday was led by a practice-scholar and a theory-poet, and it wasn’t always easy to tell which was which. Like with video installation in general and Mary Lucier’s work in particular, “you just had to be there”.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On a side note, a remarkable complement to the Colloquia was to see Mary Lucier in action at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where, over the weekend, the artist shot her next performance / video installation. Lucier installed three cameras in Windhover Hall, the lobby of Santiago Calatrava-designed’s Quadracci Pavilion in order to capture “the changing light and mood in this space as she videotapes visitors’ interactions with the site”.
A test video preview of Lucier’s work at the MAM can be found at http://www.mam.org/exhibitions/lucier_shoot2.htm
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