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Chapter
6 The Unified Field But what about works, then, which have not been repeated many times and have not yet changed in a memorable way? How can these works be conceptualized as possible future events? Bogers’ video and sound installation The Unified Field, one of Peter Bogers’ most recent works, seems to offer a good opportunity to consider this situation, shedding light on more than one aspect of what one could define as “performativity”. In The Unified Field three large video projections are combined with sound comes from ten small speakers that are suspended from the ceiling and spread through the space. They hang in equidistance to each other such that they form an imaginary grid. The audible sound is that of multiple voices, singing or chanting in a choir-like manner, pausing and resuming their activity at exactly the same instance. They are synchronized according to a rigid audio-pattern. The images projected on the wall are black-and-white and slightly blurry, exposing the image of a grid, as a “visual result of what affiliates all sounds: the rhythmicity in the alternation of collective and simultaneous in- and exhalation.” According to the artist, the figure of the grid exemplifies the idea of a unified field, “a term used in transcendent meditation, which refers to the possibility that synchronized positive human thoughts could be capable of influencing everyday reality. The number of participators and the power of thought determine the level of influence.”28 From behind the projected grid, an abstracted “talking head” elaborates on the functions of the human brain and the way synchronizing our thoughts could solve problems on a bigger scale. Apart from the idea of unification, a perceivable difference between the voices, coming from various cultural backgrounds and language communities, is key to this work. In today’s media reality, we are continuously confronted with all kinds of information, that is, data, sound patters, images, which are similar and yet different in significant ways. Media formats look much like each other around world, but still appear as foreign if they do not come from contexts we are familiar with. The viewer of satellite television, for instance, constantly finds himself in an area of conflict between recognizability and unrecognizabiliy (which is basically the situation the artist found himself in when getting a satellite dish at home). As Bogers has indicated, an important element of his more recent works is the idea that especially sound can make this strange union of synchronization and difference more tangible, as it were. In The Unified Field, the ambivalence mentioned above translates itself into the way the audience moves through the exhibition space, choreographed by the emerging sound patterns. From close-by, every single voice that comes from one of the speakers has its own, distinct quality. From a distance, all the voices together form a unified, carefully conducted choir. This constant movement constitutes an “event” which is based on the very possibility of both closeness and distance. The experience of a multiplicity that, from far, appears like unified whole, but from nearby disclosed itself as a pattern of difference (and vice versa), is what lies at the bottom of this work.29 One could understand this quite literally: that the literal movement of listening to the individual speakers and taking a step back as well as wandering around is rather fundamental. It is in that respect that The Unified Field becomes a performative installation, in which audience participation plays a central role. This implies that, whenever the work is reinstalled, the possibility of this movement, as trajectory or choreography, has to be guaranteed. More than with other works by Peter Bogers, the particular spatial parameters of an exhibition site become determining for the failure or success of future re-installations. In this context, the grid-like structure of the speakers is quite crucial (both conceptually and in its visual impact), as well the distances between the speakers and between speakers and images. But apart from the spatial configuration that the site allows for, thinking of re-realization as a form of preservation also includes to be aware of the specific sound conditions. If a space absorbs too much sound or has an overwhelming echo, this could alter the experience of the work in a significant way (which might not necessarily be a problem, but something that has to be considered). Another aspect that has to be taken into account is the fact that the voices are not dematerialized, but bound to a specific medium, to specific bodily circumstances that also involve the body of the audience. Both the visibility of a framing medium as well as the bodily responsiveness of the audience are of quite some importance for the work to function in the way it does. The voices are not dematerialized, divine, ideal pieces of information, but related to specific conditions created by the global media. That is, however immaterial they appear, the possibility of transmitting and receiving is dependent on the possibility of transmitting and receiving bodies – whether or not these are human or technological. In that respect, materiality and mediality have to remain visible conditions of the work. The question therefore is, whether in a scenario, in which the speakers could be replaced by hidden sound sources (using directed sound devices, for instance), these conditions would be disguised. At the other hand, if the invisibility of the medium is a condition of media reality today, this would likewise be a fact that would ask for attention, and even more so, for specific technological solutions in the context of the exhibition. In order not to destroy the self-reflexive medium-relatedness of the work, this invisibility would have to be made visible as invisibility. With other words: the near-to invisible or hidden character of information transmitters would have to be exposed as being a condition of what we perceive. |
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ON THE PERFORMATIVITY OF DOCUMENTATION AND PRESERVATION
OF VIDEO INSTALLATIONS |