Reliquaries are containers intended for objects imbued with what Frazer calls “sympathetic magic.” Generally they have some remnant of a saint or the items for the story of Christ and date back to as early as the 6th century. Other belief systems have their versions as well, and reliquary types of objects can be found in literary references dating back to the pre-christian era. This idea of a vessel which contains a referent to an important person or object, while not containing the source object in its entirety, greatly intrigues me for its potential as a format for expression of the personal story.
In my practice I work from the personal story – specifically my personal story – attempting to articulate it in the broader context of interactions with traditional forms non-literary narrative such as sculpture, soundtracks and animation. In telling this story I am faced with certain internal challenges, such as what do I reveal of myself and how do I access those revelations, and external issues regarding the public display of the works generated by my practice, such as what do I bring to the world as an artist.
My project will use the metaphor of the reliquary, and the relic within, to explore my own story and a constellation of the defining issues of my life. The project consists of a set of pedestals with sculptural reliquaries on top set into a controlled environment of light, moving images and sound. Viewers of the installation will be able to examine the individual reliquaries closely to catch glimpses of relics and hear murmurs of narrative and see snatches of animated imagery in the interior of the reliquaries. The narrations available will be deliberately vague, allowing for personal interpretation of the viewer and mitigating Foucault’s concerns about the tyranny of the author. Signage at the entrance of the installation will provide cultural background on reliquaries, but not on the actual content (both literal and figurative) of the reliquaries in the installation.
In the first case, I will only be able to solve this through practice and interaction with the audience. As Richard Fineman says in his autobiography “what do you care what other people think?” But of course one does care, and indeed has to care in a world where judgments are being made that can impact career, political life and medical insurance. Its reminds me of a juggling act.
In the later case, audience will always, and indeed can only, bring their own set of associations to their perceptions of any object, and all the more so to an object intended to create a story of some kind and spark off associations. There is a balancing act here, rather than a juggling one, of finding the right degree of representation to facilitate a direction of interpretation rather than attempting to create a specific narrative within the viewer. It is better to leave a few signposts in the woods rather than cut a highway through it.
Western culture has some commonalities of experience and self-narrative, some well known and others less so. We (those indoctrinated in western culture) are all influenced by these stories, in a way referred to by Carl Jung as a “Collective Unconscious.” We each can graft our own story onto these common stories and identify with it in through our own filter. I intend to be explicit about this mythological narrative at what Barthes would call the level of first-order schema and allow for multiple contingencies of decoding and “a halo of virtualities” by using the common narrative of the relic and its sympathetically magical associations to external referents. By providing a sign, or “caption” as Benjamin might call it, explaining the location of the referrer to its western cultural analog, namely the role of the reliquary in early christian church, I hope to leave a signpost through the forest of my personal revelations and place them in a broader context of a collective revelation.
I see my role as an artist as that of narrating my own story as I have moved through society and been moved by society. The difficult and perhaps insoluble question, for example, of birth-rights and the rights of those giving birth requires a dialog of some kind even if that question or balance can never be resolved. At least in narrating these personal stories I may strike up a resonance with society at large. I firmly believe in the transformative power of art.
The setting of a gallery, in which this installation will likely take place, by necessity creates an self-selecting audience of gallery goers. This is not a public at large, but a group of viewers who have taken the time to go somewhere to see art. As such, they are likely to be open to experiencing a work of art as an intentional object with some meaning attached to it by the artist. At least I will have their attention, and it would be a desired outcome for me of their experience being one of grasping at my story, but coming away with more knowledge about their own. The defining issues of my life have a commonality with all other lives while also being unique to me, yet by narrating those issues it is possible to create an empathic response and perhaps create an awareness and understanding on the part of the audience.
What kind of work can I generate in my practice that integrates the issues I wish to explore and narrate and the forms which I find intrigue me aesthetically? I do not wish to use or explore “new media” for its own sake, that is to comment on new media through new media. Rather, my goal in creating a new work is to use all the means of aesthetic expression which will support the constellation of issues and narratives I am trying to explicate in any given work.
The installation will be enclosed by an open structure containing controlled lighting. As they move through the reliquaries they will be able to examine them closely and discover what is inside them. They will also be able to hear the murmuring narration of an individual reliquary and smell its defining smell. There will be a time-based enhancement of experience for each reliquary when they are individually highlighted with controlled lighting and their soundtrack is brought up, making that reliquary the center of attention for a time.
Disneyland took the diorama to new heights of expression when it added what they called “audioanimatronics” to their displays. I will use these methods of centering attention with highlighting with light and emanating sound to lead a vague narrative through the installation. Many museums now use new media techniques and guided narration as a way of presenting their collections. I find these environments fascinating and challenging as a way of guiding an audience’s experience of a work of art. I also find the work of artists who use enclosed spaces as a way of bringing together poetical ideas and associations within a given work, such as the assemblage boxes of Joseph Cornell and Bette Saar. Combining these two approaches strikes me as a unique idea. I plan to take the new media guided narrative of museum and Disneyland and combine it with the symbolic and poetical imagery of Cornell and Saar – using my own lexicon of imagery and narration – and create a new kind of work.
The installation will involve eight sculptures presented inside an open metal framework that run through a computer controlled “show” with a predetermined time, pattern and content. The metal framework will hold focused spotlights that are computer controlled. The sculptures are on pedestals of the same height, with an LCD panel inside them and an embedded speaker beneath them. Two of the sculptures will be larger than the remaining six and be presented at opposite ends of the long axis of the installation. A subfloor will allow for cabling to connect to the sculptures and overhead lighting, and the larger stands will be equipped with a computer or computers controlling the show. The subfloor may also contain pressure-sensitive pads to determine the location of viewers as they wander through the installation.
Each sculpture will be a container – a cube or a sphere – with a viewing portal which will hold a “relic.” Within in the cube or sphere and behind the relic will be a color LCD panel displaying an animation expanding on the narrative of that individual sculpture’s relic. Beneath each sculpture and embedded in the column is a speaker which plays a soundtrack in coordination with the LCD panel and lighting system. The sculptures will also have interior controlled lighting. Each pedestal will also have the ability to generate a specific order associated with the relic.
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