My artworks presented in this exposition were exhibited within the secondary architectural context of Herzog and de Meuron’s Laban Centre in London. The works were part of a three-person exhibition titled Body Material / Parallax 02 that was identified as a visual art exhibition within a dance conservatoire. The audience at the opening reception and critical review consisted primarily of individuals connected to the visual arts; in the weeks that followed, it was viewed mainly by the dance students, faculty, and staff of the conservatoire. The St Peter’s Seminary photograph and the Lubetkin video were selected for this venue from a larger body of work as these two works made it possible for the installation to contribute to the research process. The original sites of the movement interventions made the installation an experiment in layering a representation of a former era of British architecture onto one on the cutting edge.
After the selection of the works came decisions regarding the materials, scale, and location of the two works within the building. Bevin Court and the Sivill House was installed on the existing wall-mounted video monitors at the building’s entrance. This choice was made in order to integrate the video into the building without imposing further equipment and give the sound of the jump rope a high-ceilinged area around which to bend and ricochet. However, the most meaningful relationship between artwork and exhibition site did not result from a conscious choice that I made, but was one that emerged as viewers experienced the work. The video monitors were located near the featured concrete spiral stair at the Centre’s entrance. To quote Catherine Croft, the Laban Centre's use of concrete ‘contributes to the sense of semi-external space and encourages students and visitors to congregate and mingle’.[1] This link to Lubetkin’s constructivist foundations and brutalist materials is facilitated by the phenomenal qualities of the moving figures in the video and the simultaneous physical engagement of the viewer with a similar staircase. This meaningful parallel between the works was revealed via the work’s exhibition and its reception by the audience. The intervention, now taking the form of a video, continued to intervene within the secondary architectural context of the Laban Centre. An important consideration was how to present work about architecture to a primarily dance-oriented audience. Dance science research posits that a correlation exists between the degree of experience with the type of movement observed that an individual has and the intensity of the brain activity experienced during observation.[2] It would follow that movement intervention involving trained movement and strength and balancing techniques would be an effective method for presenting the subject of architecture to an audience versed in movement.
The St Peter’s photograph was printed on a two-and-a-half-by-two-and-a-half-metre banner and hung against the wall of an outdoor courtyard space. This location was chosen because its signs of neglect, such as accumulation of dirt, sprouting weeds, and cracks in the pavement stones, resonated with the dereliction depicted in the photograph, and because its indoor/outdoor quality related to the photographed space, which was neither entirely enclosed nor exposed. However, once installed, the many reflections on the surrounding glass surfaces proved to make a strong connection between artwork and architecture. These reflections magnified the theme of narcissism central to the photograph. Furthermore, as these topics are not strange to a dance conservatoire audience, it was an ideal aspect of the work to emphasise, considering the context.
While nearly all visual artworks are exhibited within or relating to built space, those based on movement intervention within architecture have the capacity truly to utilise this arrangement. These works offer the viewer an intersubjective experience through the corporeal similarities between observer and performer and the co-intending/co-presenting of built space.[3] This co-intention/co-presentation of architectural scenarios enables the viewer to participate in the act of intervention and generate further potential meaning for the artwork in its reception context.
[1] Catherine Croft, Concrete Architecture (Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2004), p. 114.
[2] Beatriz Calvo-Merino and others, ‘Seeing or Doing? Influence of Visual and Motor Familiarity in Action Observation’, Current Biology, 16 (2006), 1905–10.
[3] Dan Zahavi, ‘Empathy and Mirroring: Husserl and Gallese’, in Life, Subjectivity and Art: Essays in Honor of Rudolf Bernet, ed. by Roland Breeur and Ullrich Melle (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), pp. 217–54 (p. 227).
