Cita textual

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one thing that really irritates me is that a large proportion of art today doesn’t talk about life, but instead talks about art…i don’t find it interesting…and i see no emotion in that.

– CHristian BoLtanski114

In the chapters of this section I discuss four works. Each work is a metaphorical mirror and each work has at its heart a gathering of moments, fragments and present instants that relate to life as it is lived. To make each work the eye of the camera has been utilised to gather data that becomes an archive of accumulated moments of ordinary life. There is, however, something else these works have in common. Each work is a quiet confirmation of the collapse of what we once understood as private and public domains. Sandra Phillips, in her catalogue essay for the exhibition, Exposed: voyeurism, surveillance and the camera, (2010), says:

As the camera has become more easily concealed, and as we lately have come to feel protected because we are watched, the spy who used to be consigned to the shadows is now tolerated in the open, can in fact be you and me with a cell phone, even as we in turn are observed through the ubiquitous surveillance camera.115

Traditional notions of the separation between the private and public domain continue to erode, morphing into a new paradigm that has not yet stabilised. And the watched are frequently in agreement that they should be watched because it makes them feel safer, or as Zygmunt Bauman says, ‘…perhaps we just consent to the loss of privacy as a reasonable price for the wonders offered in exchange,’116

A chance experience of wonder and the discovery of the ephemeral, mirror-camera qualities of a reflective birdcage toy (the innocent eye) give way in these chapters to an exploration of a different kind of mirror. It was a mirror work that provided the impetus for this research

114 _{Grenier, C, Sante, L (foreword) 2009, The possible life of Christian Boltanski, MFA Publications, Boston,} p. 168.

115 _{Phillips, SS (ed.), Baker, S & Brookman, P et al 2010, Exposed: voyeurism, surveillance and the camera,} exhibition catalogue, 28 May-3 October 2010, Tate Modern, London, UK, p. 11.

project and it came in the form of the work The Life of C.B. by Christian Boltanski. This on- going work is a portrait that will take years, possibly decades, to complete. The work builds day by day utilising a gathering of streamed digital data sourced from a trio of fixed position closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) until the artist’s death. I do not see the cold, relentless stare of the CCTV camera that populates our streets, public buildings, shopping malls and schools as an innocent eye and yet this mechanical device is incapable of thought. This eye is relentless in its ability to capture what falls within its gaze, a perfect tool for surveillance (watching). The CCTV camera makes a continuous gathering unlike, for example, 35mm film where the fragment is clearly defined and one can cut and separate each frame in the edit process. In the digital stream, is each day a fragment of life or is it each hour, each minute? What constitutes a fragment is not as clearly defined in a data stream. In this chapter and the next I include excerpts from an interview with Christian Boltanski,117 _{described by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, co-} director of the Serpentine Gallery, London, as one of the most revered, living artists in France. Obrist makes the claim that it was No Man’s Land,’118 _{a massive work shown at the Park Avenue} Armory, New York, in 2010, that finally cemented the artist’s position as ‘one of the greatest contemporary French artists.’119 _{I also include excerpts from an interview with Nicole Durling,} senior curator, Museum of Old and New Art, where the work, The Life of C.B. resides as part of the permanent collection.

This entire research project had its genesis in a moment of the everyday – the domain of the breakfast table resplendent with newspapers. My curiosity was aroused when I read a story that appeared in The Mercury, a daily newspaper published in Hobart, Tasmania. The headline read, ‘Walsh puts his money on life as art’.120 _{Coincidentally I was holidaying in Tasmania in} January 2010 when the story was published, staying in one of the original pavilions now called the MONA Pavilions. The ‘Walsh’ referred to in the headline was David Walsh the owner of the property, then called Moorilla, where I was staying. The ‘life as art’ part of the headline was a new work, The Life of C.B. 2010- , by the French artist Christian Boltanski, commissioned for David Walsh’s new museum MONA. The story outlined the making of a work based on an archive of gathered surveillance data from three CCTV cameras. One might more particularly call this self-surveillance – the artist voluntarily placing himself within the constant gaze of these cameras for the rest of his life. The purpose of this self-designed intrusion into his studio being to create a portrait composed of an infinite number of fragments of the lived experience, a portrait that will remain largely inaccessible at any given time. Viewers will only ever be able to see fragments of the portrait relating to the present moment (subject to time delay), and 117 _{Transcripts of both interviews can be found in the appendix.}

118 _{Obrist, HU 2011, Christian Boltanski, The life of C.B., in ‘2010-Present’, in Birnbaum, D, Cotter, S, et al} 2011, Defining contemporary art – 25 years in 200 pivotal artworks, Phaidon Press Limited, London, p. 452. 119 _{Ibid., p. 452.}

only if they travel to Hobart to witness the installed work. To complete this work the artist will be under camera surveillance whenever he is present in his studio in Malakoff (five kilometres from the heart of Paris), for the rest of his life. It was Susan Sontag who said, ‘…photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality…’121 _In this case the artist is ‘taking his own photograph,’ over and over and over again until he dies. Not a conventional still photograph (the kind referred to by Sontag) but rather a stream of images that form a memento mori of the artist’s making.

The Life of C.B. was commissioned in 2009 by Tasmanian-born art collector David Walsh

for his new museum that would be called the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). The manner of making The Life of C.B., the purchase price of the work, the transgression of private space made public space and the manner of exhibition of the work were all components of an unusual agreement made between the collector and the artist. The Life of C.B. raised questions. What would it feel like to work day in and day out under constant self-imposed surveillance? Would the effect be similar to that of Jeremy Bentham’s much discussed Panopticon or ‘all seeing place?’122 _{Has the artist given sufficient consideration to the consequences of being} constantly watched? With the proliferation of CCTV cameras in our cities it is inevitable that the Panopticon analogy arises given that we, the inhabitants of the cities, cannot see the watchers – those who review the gathered CCTV data stream from the many cameras – and we do not know the end purpose of this gathering.Interestingly Bauman maintains that today we live in a post-panoptical world.123 _{He believes we have passed beyond the Panopticon} into another surveillance paradigm that is yet to be clearly defined. Whereas David Lyon, a sometime collaborator with Bauman, claims that, ‘Franz Kafka’s description of shadowy powers that leave you uncertain of anything (who knows what about you? How do they know? How will this knowledge affect you?) is perhaps closer to the mark in today’s database world…’124

The interior landscape of Boltanski’s studio, typically a refuge, a sanctuary in which to create work, would now become public and the thought process as it transmogrifies from the artist’s brain to hand as he works in his constantly surveilled work area, would (potentially) also be witnessed. The studio is under surveillance from three vantage points and the gathered data transmitted to Hobart, Australia, and screened in a public place. Obrist says that The Life of

C.B. acknowledges the life of the artist as ‘…a public ritual, or rather as a ritualised making-

public of the private that is, in a sense, constitutive of artistic existence as a collapse between

121 _{Sontag, S 1977, On photography, Picador, New York, p. 15.}

122 _{Bauman, Z & Lyon, D 2013, Liquid surveillance: a conversation, Polity Press, Cambridge, p. 11.} 123 _{Ibid., p. 4.}

work and non-work.’125

Exactly how the purchase agreement was developed has morphed into mythology. What is known is that David Walsh will pay for The Life of C.B. by making regular monthly payments for the rest of the artist’s life. Rather like a purchase on lay-by. For Walsh, determining the exact number of payments was the critical factor, his approach to decision making related to his mathematical skills used to amass a fortune from gambling. Using probabilistic modelling Walsh predicted that Boltanski had eight years to live and therefore his ideal would be ninety- six payments. If Boltanski lives longer and therefore payments continue beyond the estimated date, Walsh will be deemed to have ‘lost’ what is often mythologised as a ‘bet with the Devil’ – Walsh being the ‘devil’.126 _{For the artist payments continue until his actual death, no matter} how long he lives. Art critic Charles Darwent conducted an interview with the artist in Paris after the purchase had been made public and during the interview the question of the contract was raised prompting the artist to say, ‘…he believes I will die before eight years, and I do not. It is very interesting, this idea of chance, no?’127

Chance is a dominant theme in Boltanski’s work as I will discuss later in the chapter. Chance or randomness are also referred to as aleatoric processes and while evidence of the aleatoric approach exists in all art forms, one of the strongest connections for me is music and in particular the American composer John Cage. Sandywell reminds us that the ‘…ubiquity of aleatoric processes and chance experimentation is often taken to be a symptomatic expression of postmodern times…’128 _{In his biography of John Cage, The Roaring Silence – John Cage:}

a Life (1992), David Revill writes, ’…the practical basis of all Cage’s work, his hallmark,

the technique he sought to develop, was that of chance operations – usually generated with reference to the I Ching.129 _{The making of non-intentionality was the way he put his world} view into practice.’130 _{While Cage used the I Ching, Boltanski drew on his own life and the} circumstances of his birth, which he believed exemplified chance.

The aliveness of The Life of C.B., this ever-changing catalogue of living material, stayed with 125 _{Obrist, HU 2011, Christian Boltanski, The life of C.B., in ‘2010-Present’, in Birnbaum, D, Cotter, S, et al}

2011, Defining contemporary art – 25 years in 200 pivotal artworks, Phaidon Press Limited, London, p. 452. 126 _{Glaetzer, S 2010, ‘Walsh puts his money on life as art’, The Mercury, Edition 1, 2 January, p. 3.}

127 _{Darwent, C 2010, ‘Christian Boltanski on gambling with his life and getting an audience to feel his pain’, Art}

Review, issue 38, pp. 76-78.

Reprinted 2010, Monanisms, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, p. 124.

128 _{Sandywell, B 2011, Dictionary of visual discourse: a dialectical lexicon of terms, University of York, Ashgate} Publishing, Farnham, p. 132.

129 _{The use of the I Ching by Moira Smiley, Inga Swearingen and April Guthrie was discussed in section 2, chapter} 3, ‘The Innocent Eye and the Moment’, in relation to the making of the experimental sound piece for the work

Arcadia.

130 _{Revill, D 1993, The roaring silence: John Cage: a life, Arcade Publishing, New York, section eleven (1950-1952),} pp. 2-4.

me and in March 2010, in a curious twist, I followed the work to Tasmania where I now reside. On 24 January 2011, three days after the official opening of MONA, I viewed the work for the first time. In a functional sense the live feed from the three cameras in Boltanski’s studio in France is digitally streamed twenty-four hours a day to a server on site at MONA where images are screened on nine screens in what Boltanski calls a cave. Each day the live feed is recorded onto Blu-ray discs and archived in a large library cabinet within the cave thereby accumulating an archive of the gradual disintegration of the artist from 2010 to death.131 _{The use of the word}

cave is significant, something the artist has fostered given his ongoing desire to create myths.

The nine monitors are actually located in a dimly lit bunker of utilitarian appearance at the ferry dock outside of the MONA museum proper rather than underground in an actual cave. Boltanski’s lone pavilion at MONA presents as a box-like metal structure – functional and spare with a rabbit hole entrance (one domestic size entry door). In accordance with museum policy there is no signage and inside there is no curatorial panel to inform the spectator. The bunker presents as an uninviting museum services facility rather than a cabinet for an artwork by a revered French artist. In the next chapter however, excerpts from my interview with Christian Boltanski make it clear this is exactly what the artist wants. The siting of the work in a cave or bunker evokes Plato’s metaphorical cave, a darkened space within which the flickering video monitors provide the movement. Are the prisoners within the cave (the spectators) looking at shadows or the sunlit reality?132 _{Perhaps the design of the bunker simply confirms the artist’s} predilection for dark, mysterious and atmospheric exhibition spaces in preference to white box galleries. Nicole Durling, senior curator, MONA, says:

Christian determined the positioning and the style of housing…He did not wish to install the work within an environment where people are expecting to view or experience art. Perhaps it is his wish to be outside of the expected paradigm in an attempt to create a greater poignancy.133

Upon entering the dimly lit bunker spectators are confronted with a bank of screens which some might presume to be a security area causing them to leave without further enquiry. If the spectators stay they effectively become voyeurs. The watchers watch from a safe place where they cannot be identified. Phillips maintains that, ‘we cannot blame the camera for what it has done to us; nevertheless, it has made certain human predilections much easier to satisfy… Human hunger for seeing the forbidden has not changed. The technologies to

131 _{Obrist, HU 2011, Christian Boltanski, The life of C.B., in ‘2010-Present’, in Birnbaum, D, Cotter, S, et al} 2011, Defining contemporary art – 25 years in 200 pivotal artworks, Phaidon Press Limited, London, p. 452. 132 _{Rubenstein, M-J 2011, Strange wonder: the closure of metaphysics and the opening of awe, Columbia University}

Press, New York, p. 22.

facilitate it have.’134 _{Today technology has created within us a desire for experiences, excitement} and information that must be delivered quickly. I believe that today’s spectators look for a fast entry point into a work. If this is not apparent they will more than likely move on to the next offering greedy for excitement or the unexpected. As Bauman says (quoting Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen), ‘…here it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place…In our sensation-addicted world, ever stronger stimuli are needed to keep the attention awake for longer than a fleeting moment.’135 _{The spectator moves on rather than spending time trying to} establish what it is they are actually looking at – in this case a bank of nine screens providing a unique and constantly changing view of the living artist. The eye of the spectator glances, slithers, across the screens, committing to no particular screen. In the darkened room the light comes from the screens. The images flicker uncertainly.

P l at e 1 3 i M a G E s 2 9 - 3 1

The Life of C.B., 2010- , MONA, outside the bunker, iPhone image Greer Honeywill The Life of C.B., 2010- , MONA inside the bunker, iPhone image Ross Honeywill

On one of my visits to view The Life of C.B. a fellow ferry passenger followed asking if the bunker was a toilet, despite the bank of nine active screens, and seemed surprised when I answered in the negative. The bunker is both confusing and disorienting unless one has some knowledge of the artist, the work and the reason for the placement. Roger Scruton in his paper, ‘Photography and Representation’ (1981) said, ‘…that the medium in photography [and I include CCTV data capture] has lost all importance: it can present us with what we see, but it cannot tell us how to see it.’136 Adding, ‘…the camera may create an atmosphere – it may be an instrument of expression – but it is unable to make any precise or cogent analysis of what it

134 _{Phillips, SS, ‘Looking out, looking in: voyeurism and its affinities from the beginning of photography’, in} Phillips, SS (ed.), Baker, S, Brookman, P et al, 2010, Exposed: voyeurism, surveillance and the camera, exhibition catalogue, 28 May-3 October 2010, Tate Modern, London, UK, p.11.

135 _{Bauman, Z 1995, Life in fragments: essays in postmodern morality, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, p. 157.} 136 _{Scruton, R 1981, ‘Photography and representation’, Critical inquiry, vol. 7, no. 3, University of Chicago Press,}

shows.’137 _{Nearly three decades later, Phillips said that:}

…surveillance has become especially compelling to contemporary artists…perhaps because it engages a certain anxiety felt in culture. What characterizes most surveillance photographs is a spirit of distance, abstraction, and a certain placid ambiguity. By definition they are without affect. Most often we have to be taught what these pictures mean.138 Phillips says that in this respect the works ‘…resemble conceptual art.’ 139

Subsequent to the first viewing of The Life of C.B., I discussed the work with Durling. The discussion began with the curator’s description of how the time delay between Australia and