Aaron Lish Professor Michael Newman Paper #3 April 30, 2012 The Boundary Between Art and Life

Is art life? and Is life art? are two questions that, either implicitly or explicitly, come up frequently in reading about contemporary art (Meyer-Hermann, Perchuk and Rosenthal 2008, Pellico 2008, Lafuente 2005, Hirschhorn 2004). As art critic and writer for Frieze Magazine Pablo Lafuente wrote in an article about Thomas Hirschhorns work, it is a fine line between art and life, and art cant help trying to cross it (2005). Personally I am less interested in the questions of whether art and life are one in the same, but am more interested in the boundary area between the two. According to the sociologists Ian Sutherland and Sophia Krzys Acord knowledge production emerges in the connection between oeuvre and daily life (2007: 129); thus, I am interested in creating situations that cause the viewer to ask themselves whether what they just experienced was art, or just an experience. The blurring of the boundaries between what is art and what is life may produce a shifting back and forth, a disequilibrium or an oscillation, in the viewer as his or her brain tries to decipher what is being experienced. Another way to look at this oscillation, or shifting, is that by creating a reality different from the one the viewer knows, her thinking will shift between what she is actively experiencing and what she inherently knows through past experiences. As the two do not match, she will naturally try to discover which reality is the correct one (Bublitz 1998); yet, there is no correct answer there is only the conclusion which each individual viewer comes to. However, as a result of the brain shifting between these two realities in an attempt to figure out what is being experienced, there is a likelihood that new ideas will be produced, possibly a new way of seeing the world will result, and even new knowledge may be created (Sutherland and Acord 2007). And it is for this reason that I am most interested in contemporary art that is effective in blurring the boundaries between what is art and what is life. Two internationally recognized artists who are known for creating experiences through their work which blur the lines between what is art and what is life are Thomas Hirschhorn and Carsten Holler. There are similarities between the two in how they achieve this blurring between art and life, yet there are significant differences between the two artists work. In the following few pages I will briefly discuss two of these artists projects that best show how their interactive-based art works leave the viewer questioning whether they experienced art or life, or both.

Both of these artists employ interactivity in their design, or in the form of their work. Hollers work is almost exclusively interactive, whereas some of Hirschhorns works do not require the viewer to physically engage with the work for the piece to be complete. For this paper, though, I will look at a Hirschhorn project in which the viewer interacts with the work just by entering the exhibition space. However, unlike early interactive sculpture, like Bruce Naumans corridor pieces, where it is only the viewers presence that alters the space and completes the work, and which Hollers works could be seen as a new generation of, Hirschhorns installations allow the viewer to experience, or consume the content of the work which is presented through the use of images and text and a highly constructed space (Perrillat 2005) reminiscent of Allan Kaprows View of Words (1962). Another way of looking at how both artists consider interaction comes from the quote Works of art subject people by their mere presence; one cannot feasibly choose not to look at, or hear, a work of art upon entering its space, for by the time it is apprehended, its agency has already acted upon the recipient (in choosing to turn away at this point the recipient only reinforces the agency of the work) (Windsor 2011). Or from Hirschhorns own writing we have I want to make an experience. An experience is something from which I emerge changed. An experience transforms me. I want the public to be transformedI want the public to be active, participate. Evidently the most important participation is activity, the participation of reflexion [sic], questioning, making your brain work (Hirschhorn 2004). First, we will take a look at Carsten Holler: Experience at the New Museum October 26, 2011 to January 22, 2012. This show consisted of numerous perception-altering works from the past 15 years as well as a few new pieces. Examples of the works Holler was displaying which allowed the viewer-participants to explore their world in new ways included: sliding down a three-story high slide, lying in a sensory deprivation tank, donning upside-down goggles that through the use of mirrors send an upside-down image to the eye, and walking through a hall of mirrors reminiscent of an amusement park or fun-house. Each of these works was designed to cause the viewer to experience his or her world in a much different way than he or she was used to, and as a result would leave the viewer puzzled by what had been experienced. Or as Gregory Volk of Art in America wrote Hller's rollicking spectacles set up private, disorienting and transformative experiences [] (2012.) To better understand the context behind this experientially-based work as art we can look to a paper published by the Tate Modern by Mark Windsor, a post-graduate student at the University of Sussex titled Art of Interaction: A Theoretical Examination of Carsten Hollers Test Site (2011). Windsor cites Bourriauds Relational Aesthetics (1998), Alfred Gells Art and Agency (1998), and John Deweys Art as Experience (1980), among other sources. The corner-stone of Windsors paper, though, is the idea that through empowering the viewer as a participant in the completion of one of Hollers high-speed, beautifully finished slides (they are more than something to look at, they are to slide on) the viewer shifts from the role of recipient to now being both the subject and the object in the artwork. As a result, the experience the viewer-recipient has is a product of the art object, or index; but as the viewer becomes the index once they enter the slide, the experience which is created in the

viewer is as much the art1. This line of thinking supports the idea that the experience is the art, as was first suggested by Dewey in 1934 (1980). The other critical piece to Windsor in describing how Hollers slides work as art is that by the viewer-recipient being a producer of the experience which is the art, he or she is put onto an equal hierarchical level with the artist, making the work much more democratic and egalitarian than one would expect in a top-down capitalist society (Bourriaud 1998). As a result, the simple act of sliding now takes on a political element, but in a very apolitical way. As Windsor shows, there is a sound basis for Hollers work to be considered art. However, on the surface the works at the New Museum were more reminiscent of a carnival than an art museum. In fact, as Karen Rosenberg wrote for The New York Times (2011): Warning: You may emerge from Carsten Hller: Experience, at the New Museum, dizzy and covered in salt. You may also feel: panicky, exhilarated, confused, bored, intrigued, violated, cranky. After my visit to the show [] I felt all of the above. This sounds much more like a day at the amusement park than at an art museum. But, Windsor also points out the philosophical underpinnings here as well. Drawing from Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtins writings, Windsor (2011) suggests that a carnival celebrates a temporary liberation which creates spaces that are both anarchic and utopian in which people can relate openly and freely. It is not important for the viewer to know this, though, if Holler is interested, as I am, in creating an oscillation between what is known and what is being experienced as a way to provoke further thinking about their experience and what it means. In trying to reach a conclusion about his or her experiences the viewer may come to some of his or her own discoveries about the joy of being anarchist, or how constraining a life lived in fear can be, or how enlightening it is to be allowed to be an active participant in an artwork, or How far a viewer goes with his or her thinking is dependent upon how engaged they become with the work, and by how unsettling the dichotomy is between the two realities (the one experienced and the one known). There is concern though that visitors to art institutions may be becoming desensitized to whether relational works are art. As Rosenburg (2011) points out in her New York Times article on the New Museum show: [Hollers+ show may even be a sign of the movements decline. Does relational aesthetics still mean anything when the experience of visiting a museum any museum has become so performative and interactive? To a viewer who has lined up for Marina Abramovic and Alexander McQueen, and live-blogged the whole process, anything less than a giant slide is been there, done that[] That same viewer may also at this moment find a more compelling laboratory of participation in Zuccotti Park2.

Gell writes of the prototype as that which is taken from the index through a natural process of inference; and the index as being the art object (1998). 2 The plaza became the site of the Occupy Wall Street protest camp in New York City. During the demonstration, activists occupied the plaza and used it as a staging ground for their protests throughout the Manhattan Financial District.

In other words, do viewers question whether what they experience in an art museum or gallery is art or not the way they did when Tiravanija first served Thai curry for free at the 303 Gallery and called it art3? The placing of a work within the context of an art institution as a way to have the work be considered, and therefore also questioned, as being art does not have the same effect that it used to. Rather than going to bigger extremes within the gallery or museum, the way that some artists are continuing to push the limits of what is considered art, and thus continuing to blur the lines between art and life, is by taking the art projects to non-art settings. By hosting these art projects, or experiments, off-site in unconventional settings, but in settings which are actually more appropriate to the subject matter at hand, there is a hope that the work will have a stronger effect on the viewer through the works unexpectedness. This is supported by the sociologists Sutherland and Acord, who state that Meaning-making is not merely a point of orienting towards established conventions, but involves responding to unpredictable encounters in other-oriented ways (2007: 133). Thomas Hirschhorns off-site work Swiss-Swiss Democracy is a wonderful example of this idea in that not only was it housed in a non-art related venue (the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris), but it was a setting where visitors were coming with an intention to learn about Swiss culture or as Pablo Lafuente wrote in Frieze Magazine They were already interested in the cultural product when they came in [] (2005). This resulted in there being a much greater likelihood of the visitors interacting more fully with the space, even though they may have had no idea upon opening the door that they were entering a live art project. Lafuente wrote: The nature of the institution and the different activities that Hirschhorn programmed[] worked as hooks that encouraged a real involvement from the visitors. And then: []once inside, they were offered any number of excuses to stay and get involved with whatever was going on. Whatever was going on included daily conferences by German philosopher Marcus Steinweg, nightly theater performances designed to profane the myths around William Tell4, a research library, a bar, and the publishing of a daily newspaper. In addition, the walls had been covered in cardboard with popular slogans about Swiss democracy, magazine and newspaper clippings, and quotes from significant political philosophers plastered about. Visitors were welcome to sit down and read the books on political philosophy which Hirschhorn provided, or peruse the daily newspaper while ordering a coffee from the bar.
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One of Rirkrit Tiravanijas best known, or at least most often referred to works, is his 1992 piece Untitled (Free) which was installed at the 303 Gallery in New York. For this piece Tiravanija brought the gallery directors office into the gallery space, along with the office supplies, packed away artwork, etc., as well as set up a make-shift kitchen and eating area. Tiravanija then cooked and served Thai curry to the viewers / guests. The audience was an integral part of the performance as they ate and socialized. In fact, in the materials lists for his installations lots of people is listed along with the rest of the materials / objects needed to produce each installation (Performance Anxiety 1997: 1). Untitled (Free) clearly shows the relational nature of Tiravanijas work, but this piece in particular is also a very clear example of how his work blurs the lines between gallery and social space, art and life, artist and viewer. 4 William Tell is credited as standing up to Austrian insurgents and is associated with Swiss Democracy at a mythological level. The stage director Gwenal Morin every day of the exhibition proposed a burlesque show, each being an adaptation of the William Tell legend, the founding myth of the Swiss democratic identity (Perillat 2005).

Besides creating a question of where does art stop and life, or in this case political protest, begin, Hirschhorn also created a shifting, or separation, between formal philosophy and street philosophy, or the thoughts which pervade contemporary popular culture. In this case, the separation was between the reality of Swiss democracy and the public perception of Switzerland as a model democratic state. As arts writer Laurence Perrillat wrote for the online magazine Idea (2005): One of the underlying principles of the exhibition is precisely to produce and reproduce discourse[] Drowned in a textual and visual overabundance, one cannot but feel a gap between sentences tagged on the cardboard walls and the books of political philosophy made available for the public by the artist. The link between these two types of discourse, beyond their evoking democracy, is the found thought aspect in the meaning of found object. Thus, in the gap between the political philosophy and the pop-slogans is where the found thoughts, or new ideas, can occur. This is echoed by the quote from artist Allan Wexler who states that exploring the gap between two different things is where the sparks happen (2012). In briefly comparing these two artists we see that both engage the viewer through inviting him or her to interact with the work in some way. Hollers works involve a more physical level of interaction than much of Hirschhorns works, which initially engage the viewer on a more cerebral level, often through the use of text. However, both hope to change their viewer in some way by having provided them an experience. And, although neither artist calls their work political, both have politically relevant underpinnings to their work. Hirschhorns projects are much more blatantly political, whereas Hollers works do not appear to be political at all, at least until you discover some of the underlying philosophy behind the creating of a carnival-like atmosphere and realize that there is actually a hidden political undercurrent there. Lastly, through creating experiences for their viewers, experiences that are vastly different than what most viewers will have ever considered as art before, there will be a questioning of whether what they saw and did was art, or just an extension of life. This blurring of the two is what will result in what Hirschhorn called for in his work when he wrote the most important participation is activity, the participation of reflexion [sic], questioning, making your brain work (2004). And as Windsor quotes from art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann in her essay on Test Site, one of Hollers earlier slides projects, The visitors experience is *+ not just an important part of the work; it is the work and it is the meaning of the work (2011). My art-piece, The Secret, shown at The Art Institute of Boston in January 2012, is a good example of how I utilize some of the same philosophical underpinnings as Holler does. With this piece, which included a 7 foot 8 inch long, 3/8th inch diameter, slightly curved piece of hollow aluminum that was propped against a wall with the top placed just below an existing eye-bolt screwed into the wall, the work appeared to be a minimalist sculpture. However, if the viewer stopped to read the statement for the piece they discovered a set of instructions on how he or she was supposed to physically interact

with the object. Thus, the art object, or index, shifted from being the aluminum rod to being the viewer herself. Unlike Hollers work, however, the instructions required the viewer to enlist six other gallery visitors to interact with the object, and with each other, to carry out the rest of the instructions. So rather than creating a solitary experience, The Secret was designed to create a group interaction, potentially with people you did not know. This piece was created as a relational work with a focus on social interaction as a critical component of the experience. For like Holler, the experience created was as much, or more, the art than was the minimalist sculpture. And like Hollers work, this piece was likely to create confusion as to what was being experienced, not only as to whether or not it was art or summer camp, but in carrying out the instructions on how to use the art object the aluminum rod will often times appear to defy gravity as it floats upward!5

The objective is for the aluminum rod to be lowered from chin height to waste height, but that the only contact with the rod can be on the participants outstretched index fingers. Further, everyone must maintain contact with the rod at all times. In attempting to maintain contact, while also lowering the rod, it inevitably will have more pressure on it in some areas compared to others, which causes it to rise up, causing others to have to put more upward pressure to maintain contact, which lifts it more. However, as there are so many fingers contacting the rod, and everyone is trying to lower their hands, it appears to float upward!

Works Cited Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. 1998. Participation. Ed. Claire Bishop. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006. 160-171. Print. Bublitz, Ute. Beyond Philosophy, Reconciliation and Rejection, Three Essays on Aristotle and Hegel. Brisbane, Australia: Universal Texts, 1998. Web excerpt from print. 18 Feb 2012. Dewey, John. Art as Experience. 1934. New York: Perigee Books and Putnam Publishing, 1980. Print. Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1998. Print. Hirschhorn, Thomas. 24h Foucault. 2004. Participation. Ed. Claire Bishop. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006. 154-157. Print. Lafuente, Pablo. Thomas Hirschhorn. Freize.com. Freize Magazine, No. 90 (2005). Web. 20 April 2012. Laurence Perrillat . Swiss Swiss Democracy. www.idea.ro. Idea, No. 20 (2005). Web. 23 April 2012. Meyer-Hermann, Perchuk and Rosenthal, eds. Allan Kaprow: Art as Life. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008. Print. Pellico, Melissa. George Brecht. The Art of Participation, 1950 to Present. Catalog. Ed. Rudolph Frieling. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Thames & Hudson Publishing, 2008. Print. Performance Anxiety. Catalog. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1997. Print. Rosenberg, Karen. Where Visitors Take the Plunge, or Plunges. www.NYTimes.com. The New York Times (2011). Web. 29 Dec 2011. Sutherland, Ian and Sophia Krzys Acord. Thinking with art: from situated knowledge to experiential knowing. Journal of Visual Practice 6 (2007): 125-140. Print. Volk, Gregory. Carsten Holler. www.artinamericamagazine.com. Art in America (2012). Web. 20 April 2012. Wexler, Allan. Cocktail Party Answers. Pacific Northwest College of Art. Bison Building, Portland, OR. 14 March 2012. Artist lecture. Windsor, Mark. Art of Interaction: A Theoretical Examination of Carsten Hollers Test Site. www.tate.org.uk. Tate Papers, Issue 15 (2011). Web. 11 April 2012.