Ways of seeing and making space
In 1966, the North American magazine Artforum1 published an article by Robert
Morris which quoted a text written by Tony Smith. The narrative spoke about
a strange walk along a road under construction (the famous New Jersey Turnpike).
Although today the story might not seem particularly striking, back then, it
triggered one of the most intense aesthetic-artistic debates of the last century,
the consequences of which still linger on.
What Smith had done was to describe a setting; to describe a “to be in”;
to describe a journey across the countryside which could not longer be conceived
as a natural space. At the same time, he did so by using a terminology completely
at odds with on the one hand, the notion of experiencing the landscape as a
passive and sublime contemplation and, on the other hand, with the supremacy
of the subject’s visual perception in the space. Smith wrote:
“The fact of experiencing the road was something which had been socially
mapped out yet not aknowledged. And I thought that it had to be clear that this
was the end of art, since the vast majority of paintings would appear way too
pictorial after such an experience. There is no plausible way to frame it; one
just needs to experience it”2
Of course, neither the roads themselves nor the journey across the countryside
were anything new. However, the novelty lay in the way of experiencing them
and, also, in the narrative chosen to expose the facts. Due to several reasons
which would be irrelevant here, the subsequent heated debate lingered on until
the autumn of 1967. It is often understood as a theoretical and academic discussion
linked to the need of legitimizing a series of artistic practises which would
not fit within the limitations established by the formal discourse of the period.
As a consequence, the radical transformations in art production, distribution
and reception are slightly left to one side, together with the necessary broadening
of the artistic scope used by contemporary artists and the subsequent reconsideration
of their role within society.
What had in fact been turned upside down was, on the one hand, the way of understanding
the relationship between the subject and its social, spacial surroundings and,
on the other hand, the aesthetic perception of the latter. This aesthetic crisis
led to a series of inquiries which eventually spread the heterogeneous fields
of human activity: Land Art, processing Art, minimalism, ephemeral art, urbanism,
music and architecture. As consequence, it became obvious that there was not
any possible way back to the modern scenario where the sublimate observer contemplates
a naturally immaculate landscape.
The gaze of the observer ceased to be neutral. And, in analogy to Smith’s
text, which could modify the paradigmes used to understand aesthetic perception,
this new “looking at” and its subsequent “doing, this new
way of experiencing a space and then reproducing it or, in other words, to socially
codify a given space, all these experiences came to be understood as one.
I have focused on the gaze because, what first striked me when observing Aleix
Plademunt´s work was the persistent, almost violent presence of his photographic
eye. Such a way of “looking at” seemed to me the foundation stone
for the composition of the image, which belonged to series entitled Common Spaces.
The images displayed scarce elements: empty and desolate spaces framing remains
of human intervention.
In a historical study analyzing the socio-economic transformations undergone
in Tuscany during the 13th century, Henry Lefebvre links the transformations
(which involved centralising the economic power of small and medium landowners
and the subsequent relationship between cities and the countryside) with a metamorphosis
of the actual Tuscan Landscape. In fact, properties became re-organized: cultivated
lands spread around a central stately villa and cypresses framed the connecting
paths between the two. Therefore, the new socio-economic order (known later
as Capitalism) led to the transformation of the landscape; led to a profitable
re-organisation of the space which Lefebvre links to the aesthetic innovations
of the period (visual innovations which would allow the actual representation
of those cypresses decorating the properties of the new landowners):
“Thus, a new representation of space emerged from such a process: the
new visual perspective seen in paintings and originally drawn up by architects
and geometricians. Knowledge came out of practise and then developed from it
by formalising and applying a logical order.”4
Once aware of the fact that one does not naturally stand in a place; that “being
there” is already an intervention; to be aware that one’s gaze (whether
contemplative or not) is a socially codified way to organize the space; once
being aware of all these factors, the dividing line between representating and
interceding in the space disappears. Therefore, in Spectators, Aleix Plademunt
intervenes in space by placing stall seats facing the landscape. Besides the
careful composition, one can not help perceiving a humoristic approach to the
image, as if the joke was about the monolithic and contemplative subject; that
first impression gradually gives way to a certain uneasiness: the empty seats
and the absence of a public in which one feels included become something sinister.
For, of course, it has been a long time since the establishing of that new political
order which Lefebvre writes about. Nowadays, the experiencing of a social construction
of the landscape determines a consumist, show-like experience, in the same way
that one re-reads urban spaces as mere consumist redoubts. The images become
a caustic invitation to sit down and contemplate the transformation and destruction
of the landscape.
At a time when concerns about the environment seem to be in fashion (when, paradoxically
enough, green seems to be the best corporate colour for marketing purposes)
Aleix Plademunt joins the group of art producers who are aware of the patina
of rhetoric and good intentions when referring to such issues. In fact, both
the problem formulation and its plausible solutions require a search for new
ways of “seeing”; new ways of perceiving and thus, producing the
social space. He knows that, on the on hand, the old socio-political positioning
needs to move aside to give way to new discourses (for the old regulations used
to represent art are no longer valid). On the other hand, and since symbolic
productions have gained in importance in the current social order, Aleix Plademunt
also understands that it might be precisely in the cultural context where one
could find the key to understand this new representation of language.
The other option being, of course, sitting down on the seats, hypnotized by
the sublime show of human destruction.
Kamen
Nedev
November 2007
1
Artforum, spring of 1966
2 Wagstaff, “Talking with Tony Smith”, p.19. Quoting Foster, Hal,
Return of the Real, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997, p.51
3 Lefebvre, Henri, “Social Space”, in The Production of Space, 1974
4 Ibid.