| In preparing for any discussion concerning the merits or characteristics of installation-based artworks—their physical and aesthetic properties and their ideological origins—it first seems necessary to elaborate upon the ways in which such works are experienced. This discussion relies upon an understanding of the different experiences encountered through narrative artworks and artworks belonging to a second category, which I will call “experiential abstraction.” |  |
Narrative Artworks and Experiential Abstraction – Julie Wills
In preparing for any discussion concerning the merits or characteristics of installation-based artworks—their physical and aesthetic properties and their ideological origins—it first seems necessary to elaborate upon the ways in which such works are experienced. This discussion relies upon an understanding of the different experiences encountered through narrative artworks and artworks belonging to a second category, which I will call “experiential abstraction.” Works within the first category, or narrative artworks, construct a story, sequence or conclusion—provided by the artist—through a combination of symbolic references and literally depicted events. The compiled references lead the viewer through a trajectory of experience that mirrors the experience of the artist.
Works within the second category, on the other hand, provide referents through existing associations with objects and materials, their contexts and their proximity to other objects—a practice ideally suited by installation art. The experience of such works incorporates multiple ideas simultaneously, which are encountered by a viewer as an abstract understanding, rather than as a specific narrative trajectory. Any narrative readings supplied by the viewer rely upon the viewer’s own experience and history.
Narrative artworks possess a didactic sensibility, as the artist’s experience is conveyed to the audience intact. The analysis of narrative artworks frequently relies upon biographical information used to further describe the specifics of the artist’s experience. The audience’s experience is thus always secondhand; certainly, the artist’s conveyed experience may resonate with a viewer, but narrative artwork does not incorporate the viewer’s experience directly. Experiential abstraction, on the other hand, relies upon the viewer’s experience, as neither trajectory nor outcome is predetermined. That is, these works present a set of referents with ambiguous and frequently psychological and psychosocial rationale for their inclusion or combination. The audience’s response to the work relies upon the viewer’s own psychological and experiential history and understanding. This is not to say that such work is arbitrary in nature; quite to the contrary, successful examples of experiential abstraction rely upon a deliberate and simultaneous engagement of objects, contexts and the complex experiential, somatic and psychological understanding that their combination evokes in a viewer. Experiential abstraction engages both the viewer’s intuition, in presenting a complex situation to be experienced immediately, and the viewer’s capacity for lateral thought, by requiring simultaneous analysis of disparate facets of the experience.
Gill Perry has written an intriguing account of the works of a number of contemporary artists working in an installation format, all addressing ideas of house, home and the domestic. These artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Doris Salcedo, Cornelia Parker and Mona Hatoum, all produce works that act as exemplars of experiential abstraction as defined above; as such, Perry’s essay provides a useful site for analysis.
In his discussion of Louise Bourgeois’ Passage Dangereaux, Perry asserts that the work is intended to be experienced through an “infinite number of viewing positions,” and that such works “encourage the viewer to reflect on his or her changing relationship with the objects in the display.” Both of these characteristics of audience engagement with the work are in keeping with experiential abstraction. Perry further notes that the work “does not seem to offer any fixed or clear meanings”; this too can be in keeping with experiential abstraction, but in itself is an incomplete assessment of the capabilities of such works. Experiential abstraction does not require a prescriptive, and perhaps even negates its possibility. In this way, such works are not didactic in the traditional sense, but are rather exploratory; any outcome is arrived at through interaction between artwork and audience.
However, Perry also attributes to these works what Mieke Bal has called “an overdose of narrativity.” “In other words,” says Perry, “the wealth of possible references (personal, sculptural, cultural) suggested by this crowded collection of objects invites the spectator to find stories that will somehow explain the work.” The works, however, cannot be adequately explained through the biographical tendency often used to analyze narrative artworks. Biographical summaries of Salcedo’s works, invoking Colombia’s political turmoil, or Hatoum’s works, invoking her Lebanese heritage, fail to describe the audience’s personal experiences with the works. Such biographical details, while providing a referent, also externalize the viewer’s response to a work; these tidy summaries of the artist’s experience are quickly comprehended but fail to explain the complex intrigue experienced through audience encounters with the works.
This inadequacy of description presents the question: are such works narrative at all? Do they follow a narrative trajectory, and if so, what action provokes which reaction? The works may, as Perry says, invite the audience to create narrative structures, but the works deny this possibility as well. No sequential narrative can adequately maintain the complexity and simultaneity of the viewer’s response to the works.
As Martha Rosler has observed, “art is about private experience in the context of a world made up of other people.” By nature, artworks are rooted in the artist’s individual experience, but the most compelling examples also undertake an analysis of such experience as it relates to psychological, interpersonal, and societal interests. The presentation of these works does not intentionally invite speculation about the concrete events of the artist’s personal history, but rather engages in a larger analysis of complex and simultaneous social, somatic, and psychological structures.
Making art and writing are two forms of thinking that are interrelated and compatible but not interchangeable; they are two methods of thought with two different procedures and outcomes in terms of understanding. Art has a special ability to produce the simultaneous awareness and understanding of numerous complex and interwoven components of human experience. This awareness incorporates linguistic influences, but is not communicable in the same simultaneous fashion through written or spoken language. Like the different experiences of writing and producing artworks, reading and encountering art have different procedures and outcomes. The most satisfying experience encountered through installation-based artworks does not dictate the sequential events of narrative, but rather offers the simultaneous perceptual awareness and inquiry of experiential abstraction.
