Teorie della rappresentazione - I modulo

Analysis and Criticism of Phenomenology in Contemporary Art

Neto.She also continued her analysis studying live installations and performances, like the famous Seedbed by Vito Acconci. We are only mentioning this works that are not so important to us for the theme of the image.

Some criticism was made in these years to the phenomenology. They were linked to the rise of feminism, the post-structuralised theory that shows how the body was a necessarily contextualized body for gender, cultural, geographical and social conditions. The work of the American artist Dan Graham seems to underline some other elements while using the mirrors and videos. He refers to the idea of the blind spot, developed by Merleau-Ponty in the fourth chapter of his essay The Visible and the Invisible (1964). In this essay the French philosopher explains how in the act of perception it is impossible to be subject and object at the same time. There is a blind spot, an idea that comes to him from reading an essay by the French psychoanalyst Lacan, The Mirror Stage (1949).

share anyway the experience. See video: https://youtu.be/Sy87T7oNZts

In 2004, in The Weather Project, one of the great installations commissioned for the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London, Eliasson explores the idea of experience mediation and representation. In this installation the representations of the sun and the sky and the fine mist dominate the space. At the far end of the wall there is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps reflecting in the mirror ceiling.

One of the most curious scenes that happen during the exhibition was that people layed in the room and spent time looking at themselves reflected in the artificial sky and enjoying the fake sun at the same time. 20

In a recent interview he underlines the difference between painting and installation art, that are both form of representation but actually very different in the relationship created with the audience. Scenes where just happening when people could enter and experience it:

Lesson 2 Part II

The essay Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia describes the theme of insect camouflage in the natural environment. Bishop lifts up some artists who have created installations aimed at achieving this type of effect.

In many artworks by the American artist James Turrell, space is completely infused with a deep color. In this color room, we lose the sense of space and its boundaries for many minutes, and we are unable to see our bodies. In this kind of experience, you are immersed in the color, filling the color and almost losing yourself.

Another way to increase the self is to fragment the identity and self-perception. The use of mirrors by Graham was quite different from that of other artists who, in the same period, used mirrors to show the fragmentation of the self in a mimetic experience.

The first recognition of the self by Lacan could be better understood in this sense as a misrecognition. The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama works on the topic of self-obliteration, coloring the space and her body with dots. In her

experimentalvideo Self Obliteration (1967) the artistuses dots to cover people, animals andenvironment.

22 Peep Show, also known as EndlessLove Show, is a mirrored hexagonalroom with colour light andsoundtrack in which the viewercannot enter but at least lookinside and see himself or herselfinside reflected infinite times.

Kusama uses mirrors also in her famous Infinity Mirrored Room,installing hundreds of flashing coloured led lights into a mirroredroom in which the dots surround and engulf making hard to tellwhere you and your body end and where the rest of the spacebegins. In other installations she designed also her outfit tointegrate her into the room.

Lucas Samaras is an artist working on the same theme ofobliteration of the self. In Mirrored Room or Room No.2 the space,in which the visitor finds a table and a chair, is completely coveredby different mirrors creating a kaleidoscopic reflection of theviewer inside. The viewer's body is also fragmented showing himsingle pieces.

of the body and not an entire image of him or herself.

A different way to approach this theme is by the use of moving image and throughout the video installation. In Five Angels for the Millennium the videos installation pioneer Bill Viola create a dark room with music and five large projection individually titled Departing, Birds, Fire, Ascending and Creation. In this metaphysical environment the viewer almost disappears while he identifies with the figures.

More recently we could refer to an experimental videogame by Viola, The Night Journey. It begins in the centre of mysterious landscape on which darkness is falling. There is no one path to take and no goals to reach. We could call it a walking simulator or a sort of mystical experience the player could live on the immersive dimension looking for illumination [video: https://youtu.be/XAHiEL2a4Pg].

In the last chapter Bishop deals with artworks that aim to activate the viewer also in a political sense. Starting from the German artist Beuys

Possible to enter and immerse yourself in. For this reason we are now going to analyse directly this topic and the relationship between the concept of installation art and that of immersion.

Lesson 3 Part I – Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media

In the first two lessons we discussed the topic of the installation art through the book by Bishop, Installation Art, we analysed the four step of installation described in the volume without considering the last one, dedicated to the activated spectatorship, concerning the concept of the agency, that is to say the power of the artwork as on the viewer. We conclude with Bishop’s thesis that we can resume here in the last lines of this essay:

We can start from the theme, that is evoked here, that expresses the concept of immersion. What does it mean to be immersed in something? What kind of experience is that one to which Bishop alludes here? And could it be that installation art can be considered the first place to feel the sensation to be