Review by Ed Krcma
Collaboration with Marcel Baettig
On a small television screen, a man (actually Marcel Baettig, one of the two creators of the work) is seen sitting at a table apparently carrying out a conversation with an absent partner. He talks to space – to an empty chair – prompting the immediate questions: what is he saying? To whom? Are we, as spectators, involved? Does he address us? He does not look at us or acknowledge our presence as watchers of the film, so it is tempting to regard ourselves as (somewhat voyeuristic) secret spectators of whom the man is unaware. Are we then in a position of comfort, free to move about, discuss, react to the action without detection? Is our dialogue with the artist as one-way and dislocated as his mysterious conversation. Are we able to maintain a discrete distance and remove from the art work? What is at stake in our involvement?
The action changes. Now we see another figure on the screen, occupying the space of the other actor in the dialogue – the person that the man is addressing, yet now the man is absent. Who is this new figure and why does she not appear to be engaging in the conversation as we expect?
About five meters away is a small room, sealed from the rest of the gallery space by constructed walls and a pink bead curtain that covers the door. A sign says ‘One at a time please’. Another exhibition-goer comes out of the room and we realize that she was the incongruous other actor in the artist’s conversation. We enter the room and in front of us is a table with an ashtray (complete with extinguished cigarettes) and other domestic paraphernalia. There is a seat glued to the floor inviting us to occupy it. On the other side of the table, in the corner of the room, is a small camera above a television set. Displayed on the screen is the artist (as seen on the TV outside) and ourselves as we watch. We occupy the space of the person he addresses – and we can see ourselves being spoken to. But what is being said, and how to react? To just watch and spectate seems faintly ridiculous and feels uncomfortable. We see ourselves being spoken to, assimilated into a narrative we don’t understand and have no control over. We are not complicit or secure. Moreover, there is a leather jacket hanging up behind us with a large pink plastic phallus protruding from the pocket. Are we in danger? And remember the TV outside – who is watching us now? The power of an unknown, voyeuristic gaze is unsettling.
Between us and Baettig on the screen we are watching is a mirror. Indeed, we can see the actual mirror in the room beside us. But there is movement in the mirror in the film that we glimpse and it compels us to remain in this uncomfortable situation and watch. Figures appear and disappear in the mirror – they are lovers, and they are playing games. It is another story, another narrative that intrigues us but that we cannot understand; it flickers in the mirror tantalizingly. How does that action relate to the bizarre situation in which we find ourself? As we attempt to piece together and decipher, to make sense by looking, so we are aware that others outside are looking at us.
Dynamics of the gaze, control, disorientation and comprehension are all at work here. The emphasis is on narrative, theatricality and performance. We might feel that there is a script to be followed in our response to this piece – a set of actions, codes and practices that would make the situation comprehensible, coherent and comfortable. Like actors spliced from a different performance, we can only watch awkwardly as the new, disorientating play carries on around us. Nevertheless, we are involved and we are necessary. We complete the piece – give the action its focus, its object. It is our performance, which seems not at all like a performance, that pivots the play.
We might feel then that our subjectivity is usurped and appropriated rather aggressively by the artists. So what is our relationship to the artists? And to the work itself – can it be regarded as external to us, as an object to which we can maintain some detachment? We are embroiled in an unfamiliar world, one constructed by the artists and one that, curiously, we both complete and have no influence over. It is at once amusing and disturbing to view ourselves being spoken to; we are glad and amused to be so thoroughly involved, yet we cannot forget the threat of the dildo behind us, and the fact that we are likely to be being watched by unknown eyes, and we cannot ignore the glimpses we catch of dark sexual performance in the mirror.
Garland and Baettig set up narratives and dialogues that have no resolution. We can never be sure of the logic of the narrative in which we are involved, and we are made acutely aware of our unfamiliar position by the fact that we are able to view our own incongruity.