Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Hoarder

Recently this writer had the opportunity to interact with an installation occupying the fullness of a gallery dedicated to art (Pan:ic! Interactive Art Space by Al DiLorenzo). The installation itself was a super saturation of imagery and stimulation, one on top of another on top of another with the overabundance marked primarily by a complete and absolute lack of any style, voice or directive connection. It was akin to a hoarder’s domocile with visual/spatial imagery being compulsively warehoused, unable to be discarded. This installation took collection art to its next logical incarnation – hoarding. This “viewer” reminisced about the first installations experienced, as well as those only glimpsed through history archives (Duchamp would probably be one of the earliest, if not the earliest). Then there was the “sky light” structures of the 1970 where the “viewer” looked up to an opening that simply showed the sky. Many artists played with this in different manifestations. The 80’s found installations to be reproductions of intricately detailed everyday tableaux’s. Eventually the format expanded to whatever cohesive inclusion the installation artist desired (real or imagined) until the current one just witnessed. Following the installed trail of installation (the residue, the trace) one finds the earlier work exhibiting “direction” on the part of the installation organizer, to reproduction of experience, to self-conscious production or generation of experience, to the final abdication of any kind of control (the ability to discriminate and discard experience). Not surprising is this chronology and progression of development. Folks like Ranciere were consciously (or unconsciously) affected by the rather acerbic estimation of Arthur, “Beyond the Brillo Box,” Danto. From his “After the end of art”: “Art began with an “era of imitation, followed by an era of ideology, followed by our post-historical era in which, with qualification, anything goes… In our narrative, at first only mimesis was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and, I should say, the final moment in the master narrative. It is the end of the story.” Today’s art (and that includes installation), is often affectionately referred to as art after the end of art (Ranciere’s Art regime). Fair enough this art historical thread of narration for what is/has been. Not to be quibbled with. But there is another insight for why and how installation became hoarding. One a bit more “Lacanian,” in a sense. To address this more anthropological take, we need to go way back in the way back machine of western culture to classical Greece. In spite of our blasé and passé belief that all there has been defined and redefined, much of its own contemporary “why” of art is not. Indeed, the Greeks themselves spent surplus energy just trying to define simple things, like “the good” (see Plato or Aristotle). One of the myths addressing this was that of Orpheus. Homer may have been real but the story of Orpheus embodied what to Plato was reality – the form of art (though Plato denigrated both). Especially in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice we find the repetition of Orpheus’ art in relation to task. Indeed, art follows this thread all the way to the present, though the present stresses the task as that of capitalist entrepreneur. With installation, from Duchamp on, we find some task involved with the experience of the installation. The installation originator formulated the experience for some specific “viewer” experience (How does an art gallery show differ from a wholesale coal repository? Take the time to appreciate the splendor of the eternally changing sky. Etc.). Amongst the art entrepreneur’s, Disney would have been most notorious. Art after the end of art finds not only a shift in what is presented, but a shift in the artist herself. No longer addressing a task in terms of relationship to those experiencing the work (social or otherwise) but rather a totally un-tasked “shared experience” (the culture of a shared economy?). We all know the art snob diatribe that now everyone is an artist. And in actual deed many institutions, both of art and social service, rely on this maxim to equivocate what is produced and its interpretation. Evidence from Pan:ic! shows that the artist is no longer engaged in terms of a task like Orpheus, but something else is on display. True, true, true that one of the cutting critiques of art in the late 90’s was that so much of it looked like homework. The artists felt tasked to produce it; evidence of the “post modern” position of the artist “solving” an art “problem” (there is such a thing?). With Pan:ic! we find the artist no longer bothering a task of what ever sort or relationship. Rather, we find the artist as one burdened with continuous art stimulation and experience (everyone is an artist implies everything is art). The “art show” itself becomes a way of “sharing” (the new, shared art economy?). In a “Lacanian” sense, the burden is the artist, what makes the artist an artist. The artist no longer interacts with the world for some or any purpose (art up to Brillo). After all, it is an “interactive” art space. Rather, as Pan:ic shows, the artist is now someone existentially burdened by a continuous stream of sensual, intellectual and visual stimulation – objects, and light, and texture, oh my! Much as junk mail, or spam, the hits just keep on coming. And we all know, it is such a task to sort, define, and chose to deal with this inundation of valuable stuff. Hoarding is just too convenient.

Tags: Al DiLorenzo, art, Art Installation, Criticism, Culture, Pan:ic!