Event: Andreas Zybach speaks at Western
Bridge Saturday, April 26, 1 pm (free)
"You Complete
Me” mixes conversations around interactive art and relational
aesthetics in a series of works that are less viewed than experienced.
Works include Martin Creed's "Work No. 360: Half the Air
in a Given Space," a room half-filled with silver-gray balloons,
Mungo Thomson's skyspace in the form of a bounce house, Andreas
Zybach’s “0 — 6.5 PS”,
a long tunnel which uses visitors’ weight to generate hydraulic
pressure. The exhibition also includes a commissioned poster by Jordan
Wolfson and a commissioned sculpture by Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon,
and makes local introductions of the work of Mungo Thomson and Mark
Soo.
Let’s
think about what has resulted from one hundred years of artists
working to activate the passive viewer. We are familiar with
art asking something of us; we have allowed it to make these
requests, though we may at times regret giving up our separation
from the work. Our position of passivity was also perhaps a position
of autonomy. Was there some coercion involved as we relinquished
voyeurism for a more engaged role? Does interactivity make art
more democratic, or can it also be a kind of tyranny? Can open
forms result, as per Nicolas Bourriaud, in the creation of “micro-utopias,” or should the work retain the potential
to express or generate antagonisms and conflict?
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