Dividing Wall
Som en forskydning af barens facade ud på pladsen eller en prisme, i hvilken omgivelserne spejler sig og fragmenteres, bugter en 30 meter lang væg af glas og stål sig midt igennem i Karriere Bars udeservering.
Skillevægge og rumopdelere er almindelige i offentlige rum og på restauranter, men de fungerer sjældent som Dan Grahams Dividing Wall. I stedet for lydabsorberende og uigennemsigtige materialer er Grahams væg lavet af reflekterende halvgennemsigtigt og perforeret stål og glas. Det betyder, at man kan lytte igennem nogle paneler og se igennem andre, og se henholdsvis som man ser gennem et vindue, og som man ser gennem et kighul. Man kan dog aldrig undgå at se sig selv i den reflekterende overflade, mens man lytter, ser eller smugkigger.
Graham bruger skillevæggen som et medie, der bliver kommunikeret igennem, snarere end som en barriere, der skal stoppe kommunikationen. Hans brug af skillevægge udspringer af arbejdet med video i de tidlige 70’ere, som handlede om forholdet mellem publikum og performer. For eksempel Two Consciousness Projections (1972) hvor en mand foran et live publikum filmer en kvinde, der ser det, han filmer, direkte på en monitor, de fortæller så på skift hinanden og publikum, hvad de ser. Senere begyndte Graham at bruge spejle på lignende måder i sit arbejde med at skabe anderledes rumligheder, som kunne sætte spørgsmålstegn ved de grænser, vi normalt navigerer efter.
(NH)
Dan Graham, født 1942, USA
Dan Grahams mirror installations is loved by architects and artists but unappriciated by the art critics. In his two-way-mirror art pieces viewer and beholder become one and architecture becomes nature. His piece at Karriere Bar in Copenhagen does the same. The post-minimalistic pioneer argues, that simplicity is not the way.
INTERVIEW WITH DAN GRAHAM
by Matthias Hvass Borello
Karriere Bar
»Architecture is not about making monuments or form, but about relating to the surrounding city in a certain way. But that also means that it has a sense of history, because the cityplan is changing.«
In 1978 Dan Graham started designing arcitecture models, that were halfway between sculpture and pavillions, you might have seen on world faires or in garden architecture. Another work from the same time was a modification of normal suburban housing. And his work is always in terms site specific but in the same time involved halfway between architecture and art. And when it’s outdoors it has a lot to do with landscape.
»In the case of the Karriere Bar the sky is very important, because my installation is build in two-way-mirror-glass so whereever site you might see it from the light becomes both reflected and creates transparence at the same time. On big officebuildings the light is always outside because it’s reflected, and on the inside it’s transparent, so the people can look out. Like surveillance. On the outside the building relates to the sky, but it’s like the corporate bulding says: ’We are the environment’. So what I’m trying to do, is to make it both transparent and reflective. It’s unlike many sculptures, which are objective. In my work there is also subjective relations between two people on each side, because of the two-way-mirror-glass on each side. Here I’m making a relationship between the two people sitting down on either side of the installation in the same time as the sky and the windows of the bar. Both Jeppe and I had the idea of moving it outside in the summer to get a stronger relation to the light.«Is it all about breaking down a distance to create a social phenomena? »It’s more to do with peoples perception, because people will see themselves looking and on the other side people will see them. And of course people walking by outside will be reflected. And the funny thing about bars and cafés is, that people are always watching other people and also the passerbys on the street, and they often have mirrors so you can see yourself. You’re watching while people are watching you. So this is the social phenomena of a bar. People watching also watching yourself while other people watch you is very much a bar-architecture. My work is very much about public dissipation and it might be a little freightning for small children, but even the slightly elder children could have a lot of fun with it, I think.«
Can you describe your goal as to make a small playfull community with your pieces? »Yes. Yes. As opposed to Olafur Eliasson who wants this mass spectacle. There was a Danish art museum, who wanted a piece on the roof like my piece at DIA Foundation, but instead they never contacted me, and his doing the piece. It’s a competition among the younger generation, where they simplify things from the sixties. What I like about Jeppes work is that it’s not spectactically large, and downscale is always important.«
What’s the primary challenge for site specific art in your opinion? »My work is very specific to the social use of the space, which in this case is: people watching. But the mirror has been a kind of cliché in the art world, so while the collectors doesn’t like my work, I’m doing a lot af projects in the public space. If your work isn’t liked by museums, like mine, you prefer to make works for the lobby, which is the most public space in the museums. I did a piece like that called Heart Pavillion, because the lobby is often a romantic meeting place.«
Art in The Public Sphere
Is it the role as voyeur or the relation in the moment you are focussing on?
»It’s intersubjective. See, when I was fourteen I read Jean Paul Sartre, and he talks about children having a sensation of themselves as an ego when they see another person looking at them, as they look at the other person. So the mirrorage comes from Sartre. Sartre was actually secretary for Martin Heidegger who wrote the book Being and Time. And a lot of my earliest readings on these writers has had a major impact on my work.«
When does a public piece work well? »When the general public seem to love the work.«
Then it works well? »Yeah! The general public should appreciate it. Personally, I like to see the daylight change in the pieces. The visual effects of the light. What I like the best, is seeing older women acting like small girls in front of the piece. Women tend to do that more than men. Maybe they’re more used to the mirror?«
Do you think the engagement with public art needs an aesthetic pleasure?
»Yes. I don’t think you need any aesthetical training or understanding of art as such. I think the aesthetic approach has a lot to do with relationship too. It’s a natural phenomena. To me a lot of critical art seems to be quiet cynical. I tend to be a quiet optimistic person.
I want to open up the function of the museum and keep it open to everybody.That’s the kind of social scheme, that I’m into. It could be because my mother was a educational psychologist for a preschool program for black children and my political interests are going back to the political interest of my mother. After the Second Wold War America was very socialist and communitarian. Unconsciously I might be going back to that period when I was born and America was socialist country. Scandinavia was too until recently.«
The Critics
How does art critics relate to your public works as such?
»Critics have never liked my work and it’s never reviewed, but I have done a lot of writing on other peoples work. Art critics often go back to great visual ideas, and sometimes the application doesn’t prepare them for my works. And for most af them, they don’t like my works. That’s because critics look for a simple trademark. In other words, I’m different from Olafur Eliasson, Olafur Eliasson takes workideas from me and a lot of other people and romanticizes them. His work has a hermetic aura, while mine relates to nature, what’s not romantic in the same way.«
Why do you think the critics don’t like your work? »Because it’s too early. I do it, and then people come along and simplify it. Like Olafur Eliasson. He has basically taken his artworks from some of the artists from the sixties; me, Robert Smithson and others, and made them kind of romantic spectacles and very simple. Jeppe likes the work, but it’s the general public and the artists whos work I like, whos opinion means a lot to me.«
So do you think you have a second change now with the critics? »I think there are better changes, when I work in a social system, that I agree with, and in France I did a lot of work in the eighties, because the government regionalized art and the art centers was often combined with big gardens and chateaus and I was doing a lot of garden art then. Now there’s a socialist green Mayor, who has designed a tramway around the edges of the city, which is a lowfare transportation for old and working class people. And every station gets its own work of art. So I have done a piece. Leftwing-critics in Paris was worried about the piece at the tramway in Paris, if it was too entertaining, because it was a problematic area with a lot of crime and riots. But the Mayor wanted this to happen, and when i was there, there was a lot of indian tourists videotaping, and I saw the police there and they seemed to like the piece all of them and children were just running around enjoying it. To me European socialism is very important and socialist ideologies come from Europe. I have done a lot in Scandinavia.«
Dan Graham
»My earliest works was all about time. I did a videoinstallation with a two-way-mirrored timedelay. See, in the sixties almost all works was about proces, and how we relate to our selves in the proces, and I was very much involved with music and particular with a minimal composer called Steve Reich, a friend of mine. In this time and in his music the time has a lot to do with brain time. An extended form of present time. A kind of consciousness, which I also think had a lot to do with the psychedelic drugs of that time. And I think art was trying to get away from the renassance perspective with a simultanious present time, so we were all very much involved in works, that were timebased and for my sake timedelayed videos.
Now I’m very interested in two things: the changing light in skyscrabers and peoples perception of them selves. In most pieces I use curved material, so you actually have anarmorfic distortions, which changes when you change. In a way I’m gone back to more simple forms, but I like work that changes while you percieve it.«
Is there a coherent Dan Graham-critique in your works? »Whats coherent, is my use of humour in my works. For example I did a ying-yang water pavillion, which was a parody of a work by Bill Viola in the nineties, where everything was supposed to be new age. Also politically speaking, I’m jewish and i promissed myself, that I would never do anything in Austria, but then there was a castle in a remote area, which had a lot of art works, and I did a waterpavillion in the shape of the Star of David. Well, my critique is often about playfullness and the humorous parody. In my architectural works the critique points at the enlightenment and that times view on the difference of work in the city and leisure in the nature as you see it among french impressionist. Basically my garden pieces are pleasure pavillions in that old sense. In stead of being just educational it’s about being playfully educational. The germans has a term for this. They call it ”lust pavillion”. The two-way-mirror-glass tries to deconstruct the power of the city, where everything is consumerist – you’re alienated, and you have to by the product to feel less alienated.«
How will you describe your career so far? »Financially, unsuccesfull. But a lot of architects love my work, and i think, when I do things in public situations, it works out very well. I know the works that really don’t work, one went for the Venedig Biennale, but when I’m at the really big shows, they often work out well. In the public and among the fellow artists it’s worked out well, but because I’ve never bin succesfull, I’m still doing the things I really like.«