closing >< opening
On the 15th of January 2021 Ji Youn Kang, David Pirrò, Daniele Pozzi and Hanns Holger Rutz joined a video call to talk about the Through Segments project. Originally, we planned for a retrospective discussion on our collaborative process, to review how things developed and how they eventually concretised in the Kunsthaus exhibition in September 2020. We recorded this discussion with the aim of extracting excerpts that could potentially become documentation fragments, perspectives and retrospectives on the project.
As the conversation developed, we noticed that some 'things' were still left to be said, some fundamental aspects of the project somehow escaped the Kunsthaus piece. Soon, the conversation didn't point to a closure of the project anymore, but to a new opening, a new iteration. Our chat, which was originally planned to wrap things up and to collect final thoughts, turned out to be the occasion for a new beginning. Building on our previous experience in 'Through Segments', and following the desire of further engaging with its questions, we decided to continue our collaboration and to reconfigure our teamwork into a new piece that, while departing from those things 'left to be said' in Kunsthaus, it aims at 'opening' rather than 'closing', but also at transposing those aspects that were central in Through Segments into a new site (the web), and a new format (a browsed-based sound piece).
trascription of an excerpt from our video call:
DP
Personally, I have the feeling that the 'Through Segments' project is, somehow, still not finished. Even if we had an exhibition, a common process that led to the exhibition, an opening, a recording, and a documentation, it still doesn't feel finished to me, it is not really complete. And I have been thinking about how to bridge the gap, what is missing for the project to be complete, somehow. Of course, a nice documentation is part of it. But this kind of documentation that we all do, the sort of documentation we have now in the research catalogue - with pictures, recordings and so on - it's not enough, in a sense. I was asking myself what could be a form of 'documentation' that completes this project. I thought that maybe a small 'mockup', a simplified version of our installation, could bridge the gap. I'm thinking of a piece that runs online, something that works just in a browser. A web page, where our sound installation is running, which is a mockup, or a simplified version of our four pieces, put together in some way that resembles that space we have worked with. And this is my proposal for you now: if we all agree, and if we all have time for it, maybe we could try to create this 'mockup' of the Through Segments installation for the web? It cannot be something that simulates the full blown installation, that is not possible, and I know this is maybe an utopian project. My proposal is also related to some other discussions I'm having right now with Hanns Holger, but also with Gerhard Eckel and Luc Doebereiner. Somehow, all this kind of documentation of artistic research, or of our artistic practice, really falls short in conveying a big chunk of what constitutes our work. Especially in our context, that is working with algorithms, having access to them, and really having some kind of material connection to them. So I'm thinking, here and in other contexts, how to make this aspect of our practice more accessible to the audience. Maybe this is a possibility to do it.
HHR
this question of the closure is very interesting. It's something that always happens, how do you close the project? And sometimes I have the feeling you should let it go, in a way. For me, the culmination really was to have the piece in the space. And now, you really have to grab yourself 'by the hair' to go back and regaining some of the energy to keep this process going. I have the feeling that, internally, I also would like to continue the process somehow, because I agree with David that the process itself is kind of not terminated. On the other hand, making a piece, and showing the piece, is like a cesure, it's a point when something is let go. This is our statement, it doesn't mean it's the final statement of everything, but it's something. The other thought I had is about this idea of documentation, what it means to document a piece. And also this question of how to reveal the artistic research, in a way. What is the format to show the artistic research. I'm not so unhappy about the non-completeness of this documentation. In the same way, I'm usually very skeptic about the video documentations of pieces, in general I like more photos and sound, this more fragmentary representation of what happened, because in any case video does not convey the experience of being in that space. I mean, I don't know what 'mockup' would mean, but could that really represent what we were doing? I also have the feeling that the process is not finished, that we still could say something about it. But does it really have to be closed down to what was shown in the installation? That's for me a question mark, whether this kind of transportation of an installation, which you cannot do because it's site specific, and the physical space belongs in the piece and you cannot simulate it. You cannot also just take the sound and simulate it in the browser. Or you can do it, it's a demonstration. But I don't know if it helps the piece, because it would be something entirely different than being in the space, and understanding how sound travels in the space, and how the different sounds mix together and so on. So, I'm thinking that it would be nice to keep going, but I would even call it a different iteration, or a different thing that could come out of this. I would think of this more as this idea of reconfiguration. It's a different thing, it takes elements and ideas and tries to continue a process, but I don't think it would be a 'documentation' of our piece.
DP
You are completely right, it cannot be a documentation in the classical sense, that is just not possible, as you said. 'Through Segments' in itself is site-specific, it was thought for that space. I'm not thinking of doing this as a kind of representation, or simulation. There are a few specific aspects, of each of our work, that each of us can choose to highlight somehow. How a specific process in our program works, there are a few things that probably we can pour out, and make it such that it does not seem to be a proxy for the installation. You are right, it is a completely different thing, and it should be clear that it is a different thing. Maybe it's difficult to make it clear that it is not meant to be a substitute for the real installation, but a substitute for explaining how we work. How we work with the algorithms, what are the things that we are looking after. Maybe it's an utopian thing that I'm thinking just right now, but it was not just intended as a sort of 'documentation' of the work. It is a part of our process, of how we developed our things.
