contemporary monkey

Imagine you’re floating in a narrow hole in the ground, a mile deep in the earth’s crust.  It’s useless to scream because nobody would hear you.  And there you are, for the rest of your very quiet and still life, getting to know your new neighbor, mother earth.  It wouldn’t be a comfortable way to complete your up to now agitated and anxiety filled life, but if you were promised a hoist back up to civilization after an hour or so, it might be worth the day-long effort it would take to get you down and back up.  Your day would be filled with the earth belching, squealing, screaming, farting, rumbling, whatever earths do when they’re not being paid attention to.  If you’re an environmentalist, it’s your version of swimming with dolphins.  If you’re a monk, it would make your wooden, mountain-top shanty seem like Las Vegas in comparison.  In fact, if you’re a monk, you’d buy a one way ticket.

Doug Aitlen

Los Angeles artist, Doug Aitken has made such a hole.  While you can’t go down it, he makes the trip more convenient by bringing the sonic chat show up to the surface.  Aitken has just completed a five-year project that demands you to make a visit to a sculpture park in the middle of Brazil.  In the same vein as James Turrell, Aitken’s project requires remoteness, a sense of place, and a nice spot to move some dirt.  He’s in luck because a collector by the name of Bernardo Paz has provided him space to do it in Brazil’s Instituto Inhotim.  We mere dreamers, however, are out of luck because the space is a six hour drive from Rio de Janeiro.  Aitken’s Sonic Pavilion is billed as a quiet space on a hill, lined with frosted glass on all sides, presumably to take you out of one world, and into another.  Inside the room is the hole, with a microphone - a really good and brave microphone - dropped one mile down into a concrete-reinforced earth barrel.  The sounds are retrieved, amplified and filtered through room speakers, where, we’re told, the noise never repeats itself.  We’re going on the theory that Aitken isn’t taking us for a ride, and the microphone really is down there.  And it’s really making the sound coming out of the speakers.

The project is such a great idea that it’s unthinkable no one has thought to use the internet as a delivery network.  Earth racket to everyone, anytime, anywhere.  Science museums, to mention the obvious patron, would love this, but it’s equally interesting as art.  Keep the hubbub going 24 hours a day by sealing it inside a quiet room in a gallery or museum.  I’m sure there isn’t money to be had by Aitken’s gallerists to do this, but the outrageous publicity wouldn’t hurt sales for any of Aitken’s other projects either.

Spock, the better days

I’d even settle for a peaceful room in a gallery with limited visitation rights.  The gallery could sort out a queue system where visitors spend 15 minutes in a darkened, sound-baffled room, and we could all imagine ourselves trapped in the great void of nothingness.  Like Spock when his body was shot off into space.  Except Spock was dead, sort of.  You could even send in a hopelessly stubborn child to correct misbehaviour.  Let him scream his complaining little lungs out.  You couldn’t send in Paris Hilton though, because the earth would probably run away.  And then where would we be?  Floating in Spock-like nothingness watching the earth flee the solar system.

(Don't worry, I wouldn't call this art either)

Attention all artists: stop the inconsequential discussion with yourselves in the secluded and singular vacuum World Of One.  The reason nobody understands what you’re doing is very simple to explain: your work doesn’t mean anything to anyone but you.  This is not public art.  It’s not even contextual art.  It’s Art for One.  I hope you liked it, because the rest of us passed it right by.

In the June/July issue of Art World, Anna Barriball describes her recent time-based project in this way: “I like using things that have fallen between the cracks in some way, making the invisible visible.”  What’s she’s talking about is a series of text-based posters she’s made for the London Underground that use very short and featureless phrases in place of visuals.  One of the text reads, “on way to birthday party”.  Another: “I think I’m being watched”.

I remember seeing the latter not too long ago.  Those that use the London Underground will probably agree with me that the first thing on anyone’s mind while using the underground is, where’s the exit.  I’m usually placing full concentration on avoiding the push and pull of the stinking masses, while stepping over their left-behind detritus.  When I’m dodging people on the platform at Kings Cross, the last thing on my mind is art.  Especially art I have to work to understand.  Even the masses of sudoku gamers couldn’t be bothered.

Barriball goes on to say that these un-imaginative phrases were taken from the back of photographs, and she wanted them to be experienced in the present.  Her hope is that they trigger people’s memories or immediate experiences.  Her hope is misplaced by an underground mile.  The only thing they’re going to trigger is hunger satiation for rats after midnight.

I don’t know which is worse, this specific and pointless concept, or Art World for wasting valuable paper and ink.