Mirror Affect: Seeing Self, Observing Others in Contemporary Art

312 Pages·2016·3.914 MB·English

by  Cristina Albu

Mirror Affect
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Mirror Af fect
Seeing Self, Observing Others in Contemporary Art
Cristina Albu
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-
ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
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Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper
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22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Albu, Cristina, author.
Title: Mirror affect : seeing self, observing others in contemporary art / Cristina Albu.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016003060 (print) | LCCN 2016005798 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0005-2 (hc) |
ISBN 978-1-5179-0006-9 (pb) | ISBN 978-1-4529-5259-8 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Visual perception in art. | Reflection (Optics) in art. | Art, Modern—20th century—
Themes, motives. | Art, Modern—21st century—Themes, motives.
Classification: LCC N7430.5.A33 2016 (print) | LCC N7430.5 (ebook) | DDC 701/.18—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003060
Contents
Introduction: Seeing Ourselves Seeing 1
1 Mirror Frames: Spectators in the Spotlight 31
2 Mirror Screens: Wary Observers under the Radar 109
3 Mirror Intervals: Prolonged Encounters with Others 155
4 Mirror Portals: Unpredictable Connectivity
in Responsive Environments 203
Conclusion: Networked Spectatorship 251
Acknowledgments 263
Notes 269
Index 293
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Introduction
Seeing Ourselves Seeing
The diverting of attention from that which is meant to compel it,
i.e., the actual work on display, can at times free up a recognition
that other manifestations are taking place that are often difficult
to read, and which may be as significant as the designated objects
on display.
— Irit Rogoff, “Looking Away: Participations in Visual Culture”
As we walk through art museums and galleries, more and more contempo-
rary artworks enhance our awareness of belonging to a shared spectatorial
space. We actively observe not only the objects on display but also our move-
ments and the reactions of other visitors. Artworks that include mirrors, live
video feedback, and sensors frame contexts for seeing ourselves seeing and
acting as part of precarious collectivities. They call our attention to the inter-
personal dimension of perception and invite us to develop affective affilia-
tions toward other visitors concomitantly engaged in mirroring processes as
they discover how their reflections are encompassed in infinity rooms or how
their movements expand the sensory potential of responsive environments.
Under these circumstances, individualistic aesthetic rituals give way to inter-
personal and collective modes of observation and behavior.
What has led artists from the late modernist period onward to challenge
the autonomy of the isolated, self- involved art viewer by highlighting the pub-
lic character of the display context? Do works that stimulate mirroring acts
simply deepen our passive immersion in visual spectacle, or can they actually
1
Introduction
2
disrupt purely contemplative attitudes by cultivating interpersonal aware-
ness and performativity? To what extent can they help us reconsider our posi-
tion and limited degree of freedom in social systems? In this book, I seek to
connect these key questions about reflective and responsive artworks with
current debates on participatory art while tying loose knots among minimal-
ist sculpture, performance art, installation art, and new media. I suggest that
a significant number of contemporary artworks with mirroring properties
enable us to perceive ourselves and others as if from a third distance, inter-
twined in a complex social fabric that alerts us to the critical need for recon-
sidering who we are, how we act, and what consequences our choices have
on others.
Mirror Affect charts the historical trajectories of reflective artworks and
the emergence of increasingly public modes of art spectatorship across mul-
tiple media since the 1960s. My account starts with this decade because it
is marked by an extensive use of materials with mirrorlike properties (e.g.,
Mylar, Plexiglas, stainless steel) and a firm contestation of modernist modes
of art viewing that imply a relation of parallelism between an individual be-
holder and an autonomous art object, shielded from all external influences
that might disrupt the privacy of the aesthetic experience. This idealized
spectatorial relation is not a very long- standing convention, but it is a staple
of the encounter with abstract expressionist and color field paintings, which
situate the viewer in a presumably neutral and secluded plane of optical ab-
sorption. Interestingly, on the occasion of the Abstract Expressionist New York
exhibition of 2011, the Museum of Modern Art was so keen on reifying the
aesthetic experience associated with this stylistic tendency that it asked staff
members to adopt introspective attitudes in front of individual paintings for
a set of photographs meant to accompany the New York Times review of the
show. The documentary photographs were so clearly staged that the news-
paper published a disclaimer a week later, announcing that it found this ap-
proach unethical and explaining that MoMA officials had offered guidelines
for the photo shoot.1
Yet modern art did not imply only introspective modes of engagement.
The futurists organized events that provoked audience members into violent
actions in order to make them abandon their roles as spectators and partici-
Introduction
3
pate in destructive actions that were no longer limited to the space of the
stage. Similarly, the Dadaists were determined to denounce prevailing modes
of spectatorship associated with high culture and take participants in their
events outside their comfort zones. Their events at Cabaret Voltaire were pur-
posefully aggressive toward the audience, as they were meant to disrupt and
destroy social and theatrical norms. Although they were less intent on gen-
erating chaos and destruction than the Dadaists, the surrealists also took an
interest in instigating public reactions through visceral and aggressive im-
agery. Well known are the unruly responses of cinemagoers to Luis Buñuel’s
L’Age d’or (1930) and the voyeuristic experiences envisioned by Salvador Dalí.
Eager to erode both the boundaries between the conscious and the sub-
conscious and the differences between the public and the private, the sur-
realists often conceived modes of art spectatorship that placed the beholder
in the limelight. For the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme of 1938, Marcel
Duchamp came up with the idea of creating a system of lights that would
switch on and illuminate the paintings as visitors approached them, hence
setting the visitors on display along with the artwork. Continuities between
these earlier challenges to aesthetic autonomy and the growing contestation
of introspective modes of spectatorship in the 1960s and 1970s speak to the
complex crisscrossing trajectories of modern and contemporary art, which
defy all attempts to impose neat chronological boundaries.
Recent contemporary artworks that gather large crowds around visual
or interactive interfaces have been increasingly associated with the numb-
ing spectacle of neocapitalism that subordinates individuals and perpetuates
egotistic behavior. Accused of providing fake images of democratic consen-
sus and serving the interests of service economies, they have been pushed
outside the circle of participatory artworks, which take social relations as
their main medium and usually catalyze communal ties based on verbal ex-
changes. Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003), which drew large masses
of visitors to Tate Modern to see themselves seeing while immersed in the
light of a gigantic sun, was both hailed as a sublime landscape showcasing
human vulnerability and condemned as complicit with art museums’ com-
modification of sensory experience. More recently, Marina Abramović’s The
Artist Is Present (2010) performance at MoMA and James Turrell’s Aten Reign