Archives
Contribute
| South Asian Art - In Memory Of Prashant H. Fadia |
Minna Philips
08/19/2008
A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing- Martin Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinkingâ€
A paradox similar to that of the ‘presence of absence’ discussed in the previous article is ‘limitations in continuity’. To understand this paradox, the concept of displacement is highlighted in this article. For those who have experienced displacement, especially from one’s culture, there develops a clear sense of the concept of the opposites- inclusion and exclusion, inside and outside, here and there and so forth. Displacement automatically sets a starting point and an ending point- it puts one in between here and there. The in-between as we know is a place where variables exist, a place that is a little too unsettling for comfort and lacks a particular definition. For the displaced, the ‘here’ becomes the immediate surrounding or the space that envelops him or her, and “there†becomes a place that is yet to come- still unknown.
In the works by Robert Smithson, (1938- 73) that range from drawings, paintings, installations, land art, photography and video work, displacement is a continuous theme. A well-known example is the “Spiral Jettyâ€, created at the Great Salt Lake in Utah in 1970. The Spiral was built using black basalt rocks taken from the shore and built up to a height just above the waters, so viewers could walk on it as though they would on a pier. Since its creation in 1970, for nearly three decades the Spiral had been buried under water. But in 1999, it made a dramatic re-emergence at the time of a drought. It is now fully emerged with salt crystals accumulated along the black basalt rocks that give it a shimmering along the edges. What was interesting to Smithson was this kind of natural transformation and how the Spiral adapts to the circumstances that were beyond his control after its construction.
This work especially gives us a sense of the “here and there†that is mentioned above. In order to see the work, one has to travel to Utah or to see it in its other variations like photographs, videos and drawings one visits the museums and galleries. The work is place-specific and temporal in that it exists in its reality only in one place (as opposed to paintings that are transportable) and it may or may not exist, depending on the natural conditions in the Great Salt Lake. This sort of impermanence is reminiscent of the concept of displacement or the in-between, where temporality and change are the only constants.
How does a visual artist establish continuity in this state of temporality and change or reflect Heidegger’s quote at the beginning of this article? Smithson’s series called the “Mirror Displacements†done in multiple locations reflect this notion. Mirrors are partially buried at an angle, in the ground along the paths of Smithson’s travels. A viewer sees the ground and the surroundings that are partially hidden because of the mirror interventions and the mirrors themselves reflect the skies. All of the viewer’s vision is partial as we see: the partial ground, the partial surrounding, the partial reflection of the skies- this scattered vision is what we see as a whole and it is constantly in motion since the reflection in the mirrors is time-based. (Visions change according to the time of day)
On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash, while surveying sites for his work ‘Amarillo Ramp’ in Texas. Despite his early death and even after so many years, many contemporary artists take inspiration from his writings and art works. What makes Smithson’s work inspiring to the new generation and the generations to come are the possibilities that arise out of the ideas that he left behind. Although most of his works exist only in the form of photographs and video work, as like from a fond childhood memory, these visuals stick in our heads to arise when needed to inspire our thoughts.
|
You may also access this article through our web-site http://www.lokvani.com/
Minna Philips
Spiral Jetty
Yucatan Mirror Displacements