On Installation

By Susan Hinnum

Facts:
The notion of "installing" does not necessarily have anything to do with the "installation" and, in fact, encompasses only one method (of working). "Installation" is, on the other hand, the term for an artistic genre. An installation's basic form is space, and to work in this space with a setting off; a space within the space within which the artist alone determines the rules. When it works, the distinction between the presentation and the location is dissolved.

Installations are three-dimensional but are, despite this fact, neither comparable to sculpture¬which always insists upon its own physical presence (independent of the exhibition site)¬nor to decoration. If a work of sculpture is to be understood, the spectator must move around it. In this lies one difference between it and installations, which do not¬like sculpture¬contain elements such as a front and a back. A work of sculpture is autonomous and is therefore experienced as an independent being, while an installation exists only when "the location" is assimilated into the work.
The difference between installation-art and decoration-art is that, even though both appear to adapt themselves to the room, decoration is "appendant," and thus subordinated to the room, for example the church building and its "appropriate" forms of decoration. Installations, which merely use the room as a kind of 3D-material, work differently.

Even though the room is the genre's physical form, (most) installations can be experienced in the same way as a tableau; as something taking place on a stage. Thus if we conceive of the installation's room as a stage upon which a narrative is played out, the next step would be to investigate the conditions of the narration.

If an object is placed in a room it is generally experienced as a closed, and therefore autonomous, universe; an object-work. It is different when two objects are placed in the same room, for then a relationship between the objects will automatically be formed¬or at least sought after. One can conclude from this that a semantic field is automatically created between the objects.
If three (or four) objects are placed in the same room, the semantic relationships between them become all the more complicated, while at the same time they behave as semantic referents in the room. This double relationship¬that objects function both as signs (actual form) and meaning (phenomenon)¬is further complicated when the room in which the objects are placed is likewise of a semantic character. An installation's room, i.e. the actual location that forms the work's outer boundaries, also appears as both a sign (a room as a room) and as meaning (a room as space). The complex interplay that is always initiated when an object and a room meet is further intensified, since both (as form) constantly vacillate between representation as "signs" or as "meanings." This situation applies in the case of installations and perhaps more than anything else defines the genre, since the artistic utterance is not dependent upon the experience of the physical objects themselves, but rather by their representation in a particular room¬and they can only be understood in this room. This fact means that the installation is the only artistic genre that does not consist of object-bound works of art.
An utterance is displayed on the stage, and if the utterance is understood, art (or perhaps rather the experience of art) arises in the mind of the spectator, i.e. within the spectator's own mental world. One might argue that it has always been this way, namely that the experience of art is always an unparalleled private experience that originates in external stimulation. If we attempt to draw a parallel with more traditional genres such as painting and sculpture, however, the difference between works of art (in the sense of object-works) and installations becomes clearer. Painted canvas and carved sculptures are actual objects¬they exist in reality, they are tangible. Furthermore, a classical work of art is always determined by the difference between "interior" and "exterior" space. In order to be an object-work, the work (the object, phenomenon) must incorporate its material and thereby form an independent, closed and autonomous universe. In order to be objects among other objects in the "exterior" space, both paintings and sculpture must contain their own boundaries¬only then are they works.
Installation-artwork, on the other hand, cannot be embedded in an exterior space, for the presence of that "space" is a condition for there being installation-artwork at all. This means that an installation cannot, like other (object-) works, be inscribed in a room, in the sense of a boundary. Since the installation defines itself as an open space, it is not capable of being a work¬as object¬among other work-objects.

The genre installation genre should thus be understood as artwork not merely placed in a room, but conditioned by and functioning in and with this room. A conceptual parallel with classical painting may be drawn, in that one can understand paint/canvas/frame as an interdependent triumverate. One might say that the frame is the area that defines the physical extent of the painted canvas, just as the room, in the case of installations, comprizes the actual physical frame of the work. The room thus forms an actual physical frame for an installation work.

When viewing an installation, it is thus not the presence of physical objects that we see, but rather their representation in a particular room¬and only in this room can they be understood. Chemists operate with the concept of catalyzation, which means that a material (the catalyst) initiates a chemical process (catalysis) without being consumed itself. Something similar¬even if not directly translatable¬takes place during the art experience determined/demanded by an installation work. An installation may not, as a matter of principle, be moved, since it is bound to, and determined by, the room in which it belongs. This also applies when an installation artist is working within the rooms of a gallery or museum.

Context:
After the break-down of the modernist work of art, and throughout following period of dissolution and the pluralistic period, which begins in the early 1960's, we can no longer observe any dominant artistic direction in the international visual art scene. Because of this it has become increasingly difficult to analyze and, not least, explain the various initiatives in the art scene. Thus it appears obvious that we can no longer speak of a development in the sense of a forward moving and historically conditioned chain of events. We can nevertheless clearly observe that the minimalist backlog, which extends all the way into the late 80's, is succeeded in the early 90's by a re-insertion of the human being into the center of art¬this center corresponding neither to Enlightenment nor Modernist understandings of the concept. "Center" should be understood as exclusively that part of reality that individual human beings can relate to through their experience. The concept of the center has thus become individualized.

If one may speak at all of a common practice within the visual arts since the beginning of the 1990's, one would do so in connection with context art, i.e. works that exist as works by the virtue of their contextualization. Contexualized works most often take the form of video, photography and installation, and it is especially true of the installation that the traditional relationships between form and content are broken. Installations can only be read in the gap between the object (as the content provider) and the context in which the work is shown (as the form provider). The contextualized work is oriented toward social space and constitutes itself more and more cognitively outside of the classical European aesthetic tradition. The reference to aesthetics now lies only in the surface of the work and then only as a semiotic reference to the tasteful and/or harmonic.

In art of the 1990's¬especially installations¬the conditions for the presentation of a work are radically different from those of earlier art. The decoding, especially of installations, lies neither in any reference to an aesthetics of "the beautiful" or "the sublime," but rather first and foremost in ethics. The renunciation of the notion of transcendence, the opening toward social space, and the resulting critical (and moral) investigation of the individual's actions simply point away from aesthetics and toward ethics as a provider of the tools necessary to interpret the work. It might appear to over-shoot the mark to claim that it is precisely ethical rules that underlie art today, however there can be little doubt that a moral aspect at least plays a decisive role in art in the 1990's.
A work of art is perceived both as form (sense of space and time) and as sign (linguistic expression). It is therefore of decisive importance for a more perceptual experience of the work that the instrumentalization of the "picture" and the "sign" is no longer based upon "the beautiful" but on the moral ground of ethics. Thus even if aesthetics continue to play an essential role in the perception of works of art (including installations), works are most often tied to morality, and should therefore be decoded from a moral standpoint.

Installation-art as a genre has to a great extent liberated itself from problems connected to the tradition and materials of classical art, in that the work does not preclude any actual craft in a traditional, art-historical sense. In the last few years there has been talk of the "no-skill generation," which refers to the new group of art students, whose work lies in the medium and not, as earlier, primarily in the material. This development, to the extent to which one can speak of a development, is dependent upon the generation's working with a contextualized praxis, which most often manifests itself as an installation.
The context art of the 1990's thus presents itself entirely differently from earlier art in terms of both form and content, and as a consequence the concept of visual art itself is undergoing radical change. Since the 1960's, the boundaries between visual art and related genres have become more and more blurred, and the concept of visual art is now undergoing radical change. Neither is art's institutional framework in keeping with the times, since the installation genre bypasses the private collector and directs itself toward institutions¬toward the exhibition room, the gallery and the museum. Installation-art relates to the public through its investigation of, and dependence upon, the context of its location. This practice constitutes a schism, in that it implicitly points out the danger of the work's self-destruction, which implies the work's dependence upon a perceptual space, which implies that precisely the physical space (location) is understood as an actual and dynamic contextuality.

Generations follow generations and reactions, reactions. The calculated power-plays and strategic games with the institution in the 1980's has given way (again) in the 1990's to an almost naive belief that art can actually accomplish something. This is, to a certain extent, a revival of the worn notion of the avant garde, yet without modernism's worship of the lofty work. The perceptual space that is revealed in the installation establishes an artistic process that no longer expresses itself in the encounter with the work, but through the work. Here may lie the most essential key to the understanding of the usefulness of the installation genre in the 1990's.