CLAIRE BISHOP installations

The viewer | Questions that challenge art installation | Alternative words to describe an ‘installation’ | What would you want the installation to appeal to within the viewer | What is the metanomic part of the narrative | Why are you installing something | Is it a temporary structure | What is the mode of encounter as the viewer steps into the space | What are the 3 characteristics that an installation can be decoded | Interaction with viewer |


This book INSTALLATION ART 2005 a critical history . revisiting well known artists from the 60's.
Bishop questions what kind of experience does installation offer?

Chapter 1-  THE DREAM SCENE:
is based on psychological/ psychologically absorbtive dreams.
Art installation - is a direct communication of what the artist wants rather than what the curator wants.
the viewer is at the Mersey of the artist.
A curator makes an installation, the artist installs work. 
The idea of concepts being matter and material.
How can we think differently with these texts?

The dream scene: Clare Bishop

This book was written for Bishops Phd and argues 4 perspectives of art installations. Curators makes an installation and artists install the work.

The art installation is direct communication of what the artist wants rather than what the curator wants.

Interaction with viewer: is to help measure how it’s received, how can the viewer participate and contribute in a useful wayto measure a learning element? What I te idea of authentic?

Critique of the idea of landscape? Do we need to define a real experience? From a dream, a simulated experience, theatrical set?

This book INSTALLATION ART 2005 a critical history. Revisiting well known artists from the 60's.
Bishop questions what kind of experience does installation offer? And Why it exists.

Installation art was born out of the 1950’s happenings, and environments and developed in 1970’s-80’s also influenced by architecture, cinema, performance art, sculpture, theatre, set design, curating,land art and painting. Now a huge diversity comes under ‘installation art’. Some heighten awareness of senses, visual stimuli or minimum perseptual, steal self preence, discourage from contemplation or insist that you act-write-drink-talk-eat etc.. all these offer a different approach to the history of installation and focuses on the viewers experience rather than the materials.

P22 Kaprow said galleries were the ‘stillborn’ and sterile spaces for looking but not touching….jim dine and kaprow said that immersive environments were a rejection of conventional art galleries.

John Dewy (art as experience 1934) to develop as beings, we need to actively enquire into and interact with our environment., to enlarge our capacity for experience, heighten vitality and complete our interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events. – (could this be the transformative potential of the aesthetic experience)?

There are 4 sections to this book.

1.    The viewer

2.    Activation and decentering consciousness

3.    Self reflexive and fragmented

4.    Viewer and model

Chapter 1-  THE DREAM SCENE:
is based on psychological/ psychologically absorbtive dreams.
Art installation - is a direct communication of what the artist wants rather than what the curator wants, the viewer is at the Mersey of the artist.
A curator makes an installation, the artist installs work.  The idea of concepts being matter and material.  How can we think differently with these texts?

The viewer physically enters theatrical immersive or experimental space, but now describes any arrangement of objects in any space.

The difference between ‘installation’ and ‘art installation’ is now blurred. Both heighten the viewers awareness of how objects are positioned/installed in space. This addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space.  Installation art- proposes an embodied viewer whose sense of touch, small, sound, are as heightened as their sense of vision- which is the key to the characteristic of ‘installation art’.

Julie Reiss(1999 the space of installation art) remarks that the viewer is regarded as integral to the completion of the work/experience.

Does the installation prompt conscious and unconscious associations in the beholder?

What are the 3 characteristics that an installation can be decoded?

The main characteristic – nonsensical/magical/visceral irruptions into everyday consciousness for the sake of growth.

The structural characteristic- apothecary/pharmacy/ clinic/

The primary sensor – visual/audio/touch/smell/ hemp rope to imbue a sense of a past history of Deals industry/sterile/

What is the mode of encounter as the viewer steps into the space?

Dark and murky/clinical and white and light/ disturbing/pleasuable/ a fleeting experience of ‘extraordinary happiness and anxiety/ panic/joy/terror/

What culturally recognised symbols are being used?

What is the platform for departure for the viewer?

What is the Meta-narrative (beyond the narrative)?

Is it a temporary structure?

Does this place new emphasis on the viewers presence within the space?

How does the space outside of the installation relate to the installation? Does it become site specific, interchangeable, will the people doing other things in this sphere entangle with installation?

Why are you installing something? For something to play in/to look at something/ to gather information/ gather stories/ a lost history/facts/ names/

What is the metanomic part of the narrative (using a name of something to describe something else that is closely associated) : ie apothecary/clinic/pharmacy/hospital.

What would you want the installation to appeal to within the viewer? Do you want to orientate the viewer inside himself, appeal to their internal centre, historical memory, cultural ideals, ?disorientate/displace/

Perhaps through free-association – allowing meaning to arise through individual affective and verbal connections to the immersive scene.

Alternative words to describe an ‘installation’.

Environment/ happening/public exhibition sphere/immersive environments/interactive art/fluxus/ ephemeral site ( a single situation that can be dismantled and transported/destroyed art structures/experimental station/designed art space/specialist space/

Questions that challenge art installation.

Is installation just another word for ‘landscape’?

The viewer:

As an active element of the composition.

The co-creator.  Activated spectatorship.

Give the viewer ‘occupations’ like moving/ adding/writing/speaking/telling something.

Fully interactive role.

Rearangeable environment with something?

Contributor
audience involvement
tenant of culture (relational aesthetics p14)
The beholder R.A. term