To Martian Anthropologists: an Artistic Perspective out of the Fish Tank
With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the forms of art performance are restricted and challenged. Could we re-examine alternatively the relationship between ways of seeing art and human beings. To Martian Anthropologists tries to propose some possibilities.
Currently on display at the New Taipei City Arts Center, To Martian Anthropologists with 15 domestic and foreign participating artists, is the center’s first contemporary art exhibition serving as a warm-up for the upcoming New Taipei City Museum of Art. Due to the precaution of social distancing against the pandemic, a contingency measure is adopted for the exhibition: apart from the exhibition venue at the center, another online exhibition space is established. People do not need to attend personally the exhibition site. With any digital device that can surf on the internet, the exhibition can be watched online, anywhere and anytime, which subverts the traditional mode of visiting an exhibition in person.
At the moment when the pandemic is raging, museum, art gallery, exposition and auction, etc--each has launched online exhibition venues. As a breakthrough and survival strategy under the pandemic, online exhibitions have suddenly become demanding, and they are also regarded as a curatorial design with a prospective, futuristic vision. However, the curatorial logic of To Martian Anthropologists is different from the above-mentioned alternative approach: physical exhibitions or works directly transformed into online exhibition. The curator Chun-Yi CHANG has established the online space as the main venue of this exhibition and the exhibition venue of the center, as the second exhibition venue; what the artists showcase in the physical exhibition venue is the “clue”, the key that guides the viewers to enter into the online exhibition space.
As Chun-Yi CHANG mentioned in the curatorial statement, “In the exhibition’s domain name, the artists choose “web pages” as the specific site where their works take place….In addition, the artists will extend online works to the physical exhibition venue….” To put it differently, the artistic creations are not only physical presentations, but have to respect the logic of web pages. The art training artists received in the past, such as the mastery and operation of materials, techniques and space planning, is often regarded as a demonstration of artistic professionalism. But in the current exhibition, the restriction of creation forms a great challenge for most of the artists.
Before visiting this exhibition, if the viewers are well informed of the above-mentioned points in advance, they can choose to visit the online exhibition directly (connecting to the internet to see the 720-degree virtual interface of the exhibition venue at the center), or just take a trip to the non-typical physical exhibition venue where many questions and puzzles might be brought about. In addition, if the viewers can carry a mobile phone or tablet computer, it will be more helpful for a smooth and easy on-site visit.
Online as Primary, Offline as Secondary
What are presented in the center are not so much “works” but a part or segment of a work left on the scene: the first exhibition room of “white space” displays 11 works and the second exhibition room of “black space” shows 7 works, and the two exhibition rooms are connected by the entrance hall where the ceiling fan of Chih-Sheng LAI is installed. Due to the small scale of the two exhibition rooms, the curator gives up the partition walls to divide the venues, and simply uses the light bulb’s red wire in Joyce HO’s work to dramatically draw the frames of the exhibition space. The second exhibition room takes advantage of echo and dialogue between the various works to create a dynamic rhythm of visiting itinerary. The different strategies of space design for the two rooms produce a sense of light breathing.
To meet the needs of the physical space and internet, the participating artists showcase 19 physical works and 17 online works, derived from and evolving with the artist’s personal style. Take for example the works of Chih-Cheng LAI. The online work Increase and Decrease which appropriates the internet symbol of loading is similar to the grayscale ceiling in Breeze in the physical venue. The two concepts employ different means to achieve the same end.
All the objects in the two exhibition rooms as clues aim to guide the viewers to enter into the online exhibition space. For example, I'M LITTLE BUT I HAVE BIG DREAMS by Wan-Jen CHEN shows a square LED panel light in the physical venue, while in the online exhibition area appears several groups of tourists sitting or lying on the beach with a common point of phubbing. At this moment, the viewers through their screens are playing on their phones to look at the tourists .
Joyce HO presents a white shirt (20200529) in the physical exhibition venue and the metronome in the pocket keeps ticking anxiously. The corresponding online work shows a pair of hands typing on the desk as if playing the piano (No Surprises). Another work 20200804 demonstrates a light bulb nearly above the water in a water glass, immobile; in the online version 20200610, the light bulb steadily falls into the water glass with a dynamic picture of a sleeping girl beside. The viewers are able to follow the on-screen instructions by clicking the mouse and press pause to prevent the bulb from falling into the water glass. However, people should be more interested in knowing what will happen when the light bulb falls into the water glass.
Jui-Chien HSU’s online work Material Store makes a list of the material items he often employs in creation, and Yannick DAUBY’s acoustic works created for this “material library” are broadcasted on the radio in the physical venue, and only getting online can we know each material’s corresponding segment of sound. Yung-Chun SHIH’s online work Home Theater is a wooden room of one-shot film, but the physical work is presented in a planar wooden frame structure, settled with the doors, windows and chairs used in the online work, just like the symbolic setting of a stage play. The viewers can enjoy through the “window frames” the artistic scenery in the physical exhibition venue.
Martian Language of Art
The original phrase “to martian anthropologists” comes from In the Name of Art. For an Archeology of Modernity by the Belgian art critic Thierry de Duve in 1989. The author borrows “Martian anthropologists” as a metaphor to introduce a perspective beyond the earthling’s prejudices and to explore what human beings call “art”. Chun-Yi CHANG takes the book as a reference and hopes to encourage an open attitude of seeing contemporary art, for artistic creation often breaks the established conventions.
In analyzing most artworks in this exhibition, it is easy to feel a contagious sense of déjà vu. The artist transforms or reshapes the identity of daily objects. For example, Chien CHI’s Fish Tank on Live is derived from an aquarium and uses mirrors to reflect the outside world. Letter by Chih-Sheng LAI and Is it a Bathroom? by Jui-Chien HSU utilize cleaning supplies as creative materials. On the wall in the exhibition room displays Discreet Works (thanks to Bruegel), collaborated by Eric WATIER and Chun-Yi CHANG, consisting of 50 proverbs, which corresponds to 50 bizarre behaviors transcribed into textual narratives from the painting of the Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel in the 16th century, such as: “Throw your money in the water.”, “Pass your hands through a plank.”, etc. The online version of Discreet Works (thanks to Bruegel) is similar to Where's Wally?, a sort of activity book which Bruegel had initiated 500 years ago by transforming the Netherlandish proverbs into the painting. The work circulates in the translation between word and image.
Nowadays, people have already become inured to all sorts of artworks. Although “beauty” is no longer a criteria for contemporary art, Letter by Chih-Sheng LAI allows people to appreciate the beauty of a toilet paper roll, elongated and flowing with the wind. Yet, how are the aesthetic mechanisms produced and established? Dorian GAUDIN’s Pharmakos challenges and stimulates our thinking to the question in concern. He lines up the 9 ceramics he asked the curator to buy from Yingge and invites the audience to vote online for the ugliest one every week. The ceramic with the highest votes will be smashed in the physical exhibition room. The elimination will not stop until the last one (should it be the most beautiful?), which can be called the “cruel stage” of the world of ceramic.
By Hammer Price, Claude CLOSKY rethinks profoundly the price and value of art. The artist samples auction items and transaction amounts from international auction companies such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s, without revealing the names of artists and works. Under such a condition, the artist shows a pair of artworks each time and gives the viewers full liberty to judge intuitively which one is more expensive. Just like a puzzle quiz, whether it’s a correct answer or not, cheering and booing sound effects are invented just for entertainment; in difference to a puzzle quiz, there is no correct answer for the trading rules of art, and the price might not be able to reflect the actual value of an artwork.
Break the chain of prejudices
The internet has brought far-reaching convenience, but for most artists, online exhibitions are still an unfamiliar field. To Martian Anthropologists has challenged, first of all, how curators and artists can jointly construct an experimental exhibition that spans parallel times and spaces where the artists are similar to a rotating planet, gravitationally revolving around the other planets at the same time.
The works in the second exhibition room respond in particular to such characteristics. Yu-Cheng HSIEH exhibits two large screens: one is a blue screen covered with fluorescent paint to simulate the projected image without signals (Calibrate: Blue Screen). On the blue screen appears the outline of a light bulb, which seems to be the shadow of the light bulb in front. However, the light bulb is not on and how can there be a shadow on the blue screen? The artist prepares a hardly detectable foreshadowing that demands the existence of the other online work Blue Screen: two bottoms “Login” and “Logout” are installed. When the former is clicked, the white screen turns into a blue screen and simultaneously activates the light bulb in the exhibition room. Two parallel spaces are thus connected instantly. In addition, James Ming-Hsueh LEE’s light box Distant Hollow and Craig QUINTERO’s The Truth is Out There are connected in a dynamic attachment, which embodies the spirit of the online version of Distant Hollow: if you want to know what will appear on the screen, you must have the other getting online at the same time. Like the works of LEE and QUINTERO, Jun-Qiang NIU’s Self Portrait explores the dialogue between “visibility/invisibility”. The work consists of 12 paragraphs written in Braille (tactile writing system) typed on the cowhide and the content is about the description of the artist’s appearance speculated by his blind friends. People visually impaired can read Braille which becomes an unreadable tactile writing for most people seeing well. In doing so, the artist questions if “visibility” is the authentic subject matter, which echoes, in an indirect manner, Wanderer’s Clock #3 by Ya-Hui WANG. The clock hand moving in the matrix often fails to match the scale, which poetically suggests that time is subjective, even if people count 24 hours a day.
Accordingly, the online and physical exhibitions of To Martian Anthropologists seem to parallelly coexist in time and space (during the exhibition period) , and yet, can pass through each other. The audience shuttles between the two and actively explores the space where art generates--let’s call it, for the time being, “the third exhibition venue”, or we can regard it as a creative zone where the viewers dominate their interpretations and the relationship between individual and art.
In the past, we were accustomed to the model of “single exhibition”: walking into the physical space, following the itinerary instructions, and putting an end to the visit. To Martian Anthropologists tried to break away from the accepted conventions and make a further experiment : when the internet is more than just a reference or plan B for a physical space, how to manage the online/offline spaces as an integrated whole? When the viewers shuttle between the two exhibition venues, like an anthropologist’s tracing and investigation, is it possible to create a positive attitude of seeing art, rather than just a passive character of appreciation? If the exhibition can slightly untie the inertial bond of seeing, then its core intention will be realized: jumping out of the fish tank and seeing a new perspective of art.
Ying-Hui WU
Long engagement in art criticism. She assumed various roles, including reporter and general coordinator of ARTCO Monthly; reporter and vice director of the culture section of China Times.