that empty place

[egypturnash]

Thursday, I got together with eselgeist and we went to the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

I am not sure whether I have no respect for the 'personal space' of art, or whether other people have too much respect: in a room full of video projected onto hanging white spheres, I was the only person who wandered in among them, looking at things like the way the video spilled off the edges. I've noticed this in other contexts, too - so many people faced with sculpture just kinda look at it and pass by, rather than at least walking all the way around it. I play with reflections on chromed sculptures, I blow on kinetic art to wake it up. Sometimes other people start doing this once they see me doing it. Sometimes they don't.

There was one piece that struck us both differently. A large canvas, with things painted on it, then sealed, then painted over again repeatedly. The earlier layers vanished into the mist of the not-quite-transparant varnish. Chris was struck by the method and wanted to take notes on doing it himself. I was interested in its abstraction, because something about it reminded me of not-quite-dreams I used to have.

For years, every so often, when I was falling asleep, I'd have these visions. An endless plane, filling a lot of the visual field, receding into the distance. Huge and far away and looming. In various orientations to me - maybe above, maybe below, maybe to one side. And there was this feeling of creepy, nameless dread associated with it. Always. Nothing ever happened. Nothing ever changed. Just a place, where something horrible was always just about to happen.

It used to scare me; over the years, it lost that. It was just that creepy, ominous place in my mind I'd pass through on the way to sleep sometimes. I haven't really been there in a while.

Reminded of it in the context of a gallery, I pulled my sketchbook out and scrawled some notes about it. Dunno if I'm going to do any art that tries to recall it; bringing nameless dread into an absolutely empty landscape is tough.

Comments

[orb2069.livejournal.com]

The Philly museum of art has one of Brancusi's copies of Bird in space (http://flickr.com/photos/bitchmuzzle/350818471/), but it's stuck off behind a railing and crowded in with a bunch of other work - Which, IMO, is a really poor display decision: The whole dynamic nature of the sculpture comes from movement reflected in it, and how it distorts it. I spent something like fifteen minutes experimenting and waving my arms around whenever there wasn't anybody else in the room to report me for beeing kray-zee.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yay! I do that too - except I don't even worry about people. I have pink hair and that already marks me as crazy. Or something.

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

I don't understand the first paragraph. I think you're the one with an abundance of respect for art.. because.. you go on to describe how you experienced it and made references to the sheepishness of others.

But I suppose you meant: They were so respectful of it that they dare not touch it. Never ever.. It's only for looking at. Like an antique storeroom where everything is under glass so you can't break it.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

There's not always a clear way to know what you're allowed to interact with, so it's sensible to be more cautious than adventurous when the risk is getting in serious trouble for perhaps even accidentally damaging something.

This means we need large "PLAY WITH ME" signs for the art that it meant to have people within it rather than without.

[eriscontrol.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I've never been to an art museum, but I imagine I am kind of jealous. I love museums, and I love art, and I don't know where I'm taking this sentence.

This is kind of stupid, but that feeling of creepy, nameless dread is exactly the way I feel when I see the Windows XP default desktop image (http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/7448/blissxp9vi.jpg). I could just never find the right words to put with that feeling. I don't know why, but that image is terrifying to me. It's almost too perfect. It's funny how things can affect people differently, isn't it?

[paka.livejournal.com]

I wish there were more exhibits where someone posted in big letters play with the art or something. I love Alexander Calder's stuff, like you know, and I think Calder would have wanted people to touch his sculptures and fiddle with them sometimes - and the last time I came face to face with one, a tiny thing with an obvious crank for people to make it move, the museum guards shoo'ed me away.

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was sick, or half-asleep, or for whatever reason delirious, and I'd stare up from my bed at the corner of the ceiling in my room and it would appear to stretch backward, like a reverse dolly zoom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_zoom). And this was evil, for some reason. Something was there, but you couldn't see it. Something that couldn't be defined but was threatening and wrong. When I think about it under ordinary circumstances it doesn’t make sense, but every so often I can get in the right mood where it takes on a disturbing significance.

Have you ever seen Mulholland Drive? You remember the scene at Winkie's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCpt_yi79Pc)? If you were to describe it it would sound like the silliest and most inoffensive thing possible, yet it manages to take on a menacing aura the way dream-worlds do when not viewed in the rational light of day.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it, but yeah. It's like that. Just the... sense. of impending doom. Something terrible about to happen. Except without even the presence of a focus of doom. Just there.

It was this recurring, endless ominous prelude that was a good part in me deciding dreams are just so much random firing of the system. This image, this memory. This emotion. Why does this utterly nondescript landscape have so much significance? I could theorize wildly but it's just... there. It's the one feature of the landscape. No mountains, no details (sometimes an endless, pale grid, sometimes not). Just an infinite plane separating empty space. And on that plane, invisible but there, is an endless field of ominous dread.

The inside of the head is a weird place.