spacesof[aesthetic]experimentation

'Press only': pre-opening of Innen Stadt Außen, Berlin

Yesterday I got the opportunity to attend the press opening for Olafur’s latest exhibition: Innen Stadt Außen.

Innen Stadt Außen (Inner City Out) is the first solo exhibition by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b.1967) in a Berlin institution. The show’s central theme stems from Eliasson’s close relationship with this city, in which he has lived and worked for many years. His site-specific investigations within the Martin-Gropius-Bau are amplified and commented on through various ephemeral projects in public space, thus linking the museum to other places within the city.¹

I picked up a press kit – full of papers and details concerning copyright – and a pair of headphones for on-the-go translation into English and managed to be seated in the second row. The work was introduced by Daniel Birnbaum, famous for his writing about art, who talked about the process of curating the exhibition: how do you do an exhibition in Berlin for Berlin? Arguing that it is the meeting – the encounter – that is the art, he explained that it was important to not only exhibit in the museum and pointed to a variety of works that can be found in the city (including pavilions, driftwood, and an amazing bike). Olafur Eliasson’s work was not really about science itself, but rather about things you already know, reminding you of what you know and can do; natural phenomena were simply points of departure for artistic experimentation.

Olafur then spoke of his attachment to Berlin and how he had lived and worked in the city since the early 1990s. Describing it as an unpredictable city, he noted how it had been rather remote and removed from the market which had allowed for experiments without the need for exhibitions.  Luckily, though, and he said it with a grin, more exhibitions had come along since. Rather than tell the gathered press how to experience or interpret his work, he was interested in teasing some of the ideas and questions that he had been attending during the process of putting the exhibition together. Calling it a very personal experience, he talked about the relationship between museums and public space, claiming that we need to recreate a public space that is animated by the values we ascribe to it, such as values, styles, and a reflection of society. Moreover, acknowledging the close relationship between art and politics, he contended that artists are co-creators who can, and should, have serious relationships with wider society on important issues.

Allowing, or enabling, space to be unpredictable allows for meetings to happen. This is a dialogue with space. Creating space by engaging with it. And it comes with a responsibility: to co-create space rather than to conceive of space as fixed, static, awaiting consumption. Working with the museum to admit unclear spaces is not easy but it is important. Olafur also complicated the temporality of the exhibition, arguing that the exhibition had already started as soon as he had started talking about it, and that the memories of the exhibition would also be part of it all. When you walk through, there is an interplay of the inside and outside, bringing the outside into the museum and the inside out in all manner of contortions. He talked about the spread of rooms, where his work spreads over several at a time, not quite fitting into one particular room. But here again, he didn’t want to talk too much; it’s for you to discover yourselves, he said, it’s up to you. He mentioned the two different entrances/exits and abruptly, decided he was going to leave it at that.

Questions followed, once the director of the museum and one of the sponsors’ representatives had spoken. Do you try to teach perception? Do you have a political-societal aim? No, not to teach, but to challenge perception. Perception is a process and can be changed and debated. As you see, you become active; it is a case of actively perceiving rather than passively consuming.  Therefore, it is political, as consumption is a driving force of the world. Art can make possible, as well as investigate, a co-creation of the world; it is both political and critical. Is a volcano a piece of art? This topical question had apparently already been considered by Olafur; noting that near the particular volcano which recently erupted in Iceland, the Earth’s crust vibrates and was a nebulous and interesting space, he playfully suggested people should visit to improve the country’s economy. Where is all the driftwood? There are some logs in the city, he answered, but you don’t need to search for them. Instead, the hope was that you might stumble upon them, happen on a log in an unexpected part of town. The driftwood does not seek to solve problems or issues of space, what we allow space to do and how we share it, but is a way of engaging with space which does so without recourse to fetishism. Quite frankly, Olafur said, it does not even have to be art. The label of ‘art’ adds nothing to the role of the driftwood, furthermore it is not about the market!

The exhibition which we were then able to explore was fascinating. I am not sure I feel like I can write about it: I lack an understanding of art history and am not aware of the constellations of artists it might draw upon or reference. What I can say, however, is that the work is both immediate and extensive. It is not an exhibition that you need to be patient with: it is surprising and captivating. Yet I found that the intensity of the experience did not dissipate. I found myself almost forced to move. To move differently. To watch my shadow, realising it was no longer my shadow. Catching a glimpse of a room full of models, of all sizes and structures, bathed in a yellow-light. An empty room somehow became different;  imbued with a sense of anticipation. And grass at the window sill. And mirrors, lots of mirrors. Not just reflections but constructions of different spaces, a proliferation of new spaces created as you moved in the enormous structure known as the Mikroskop. Some parts of the exhibition felt as if they had been abandoned, leftovers, little holding them together. An experimental assemblage perhaps. And then a room, which you could not see. Bathed in fog and colours, lots of colours. Incredibly intense colour. Pure colour? I think of the fog now. It is blue. Nothing but blue.

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This post is tagged art, city, ethico-aesthetic, inside/outside, relational space