Installation in the 21st Century

I’m going to use the word installation here to talk about a certain sphere of multi-disciplinary work of contemporary artists. The word is a rough fit, but it’s the most appropriate I can find.

As an artist, when you come to an understanding of and insight into installation, you are considering an awareness of certain art-related issues:

an awareness of volume, manifest as form or non-manifest as space.
an awareness of presence, the quality of existence in a particular space.
an awareness of experience, being present in a space, at a location, at a time.
an awareness of the integration of subject and object, perceiver and perceived.

Installation requires space: Traditional space, architectural space, institutional space, non-traditional space, private space, public space, etc.

Specific to Los Angeles, an artist here 30-40 years ago would have found this space, an abundance of it. The Los Angeles of today (or the whole world for that matter) is different. That space has been claimed and divided. That space has been filled with a booming population and aggressive construction. The space has been possessed and molded in the image of countless groups and peoples. We have all “made our mark” on this space.

I “own” this space, have invested time and energy into fashioning this space with the forms and institutions that I desire - the space is filled. You “own” your space and have invested in it similarly. Space is limited – there is finite space available on the earth. Our spaces share proximity, their boundaries abut each other. We exist on a spectrum of friendly neighbors to hostile conflict.

As the population of the world grows ever larger, there is an ever increasing number of “artists” in that total population. For the artist then (especially the young artist), there is always the competition for the prime “space to show” - Where the eyes are looking, where the audience is. There are only so many plazas, so many atriums, so many galleries, so many living rooms, so many museums, so many warehouses of note. If you accept that all artists have in common that they “show”, then there is a premium for space to show.

An artist cannot successfully and meaningfully mine the same space in slightly different ways and generate the same response, the same effect, each time. There can only be so many “site specific reactions” of importance before the only meaningful reaction to a site is an awareness of its’ overuse and exhaustion. It’s the creative equivalent of strip mining.

You can see this in a pronounced way in street art. The same location can only be tagged or bombed so many times before what was once an audacious and daring placement just becomes more noise. The piece by the first writer to hit that water tower or overpass is much more effective and noticeable than the piece by the tenth.

The challenge of the installation artist in the 21st century is, then, not to react and guide the aesthetic *of* spaces but to seek out and establish an aesthetic *between* spaces. To be a mediator and interface between already existing and established forms and institutions - “filled spaces”. We are seeking an aesthetic of “learning to inhabit the world in a better way” (Bourriaud)

This is almost the old painter’s insight all over again. We are moving away from the center of the image, the subject matter, and to the edges of the canvas and the frame. This is where we draw the boundaries of context and consider how those boundaries interact with other boundaries, drawn by other people with other values.

Everything happens at the edge.