A Capella Architecture
Pernille Albrethsen
White, light, pink. These are the tones of Susan Philipsz’s minimal intervention at Malm� Konsthall. White is the architecture stripped bare, leaving the empty, white-washed space on display. Light is the sunlight that pours in from the skylight, facade windows and ceiling lanterns. And pink is the blossoming, pink cherry trees that color the windows from outside the hall and–as there is nothing else to look at–color the experience inside the hall.
The only element Philipsz has added to the 2000 square meters of exhibition space is her singing voice–subtle and ineluctable. She sings a rendition of three different pop songs, Watch With Me (Joe Wise, 1972), Nothing Lasts Forever (Echo and the Bunnymen, 1997) and Pyramid Song (Radiohead, 2001), unaccompanied and recorded in real time with audible breaths and pauses.
This is not the first time that Philipsz has lent her voice to unlikely songs and introduced the music into unlikely settings. She often presents her songs in public places–previous spots have included a supermarket, a pedestrian underpass, the harbour front in San Sebastian. Contrary to the sound piece in Malm� Konsthall, her site-specific interventions have an element of surprise as passersby happen upon the subtle, almost intimate, renditions of popular songs (from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, the entire album, to The Internationale). Philipsz creates an unsettling intersection between private and public experience, in which the viewers’ own histories with the songs are blended with Philipsz’s personal (and public) rendition of the tunes.
The sound installation in Malm� Konsthall also surprises the viewer, but disrupts a different set of sensibilities and expectations. Visitors enter the Konsthall expecting to see something, and they are confronted with what appears to be nothing. The naked voice of Susan Philipsz has a prominent impact in the vast, empty, white room. There is something about Philipsz’s unvarnished, unstrained rendition of the pop tunes that evokes the sensation of singing in private–in the shower or while taking a walk. She does not turn the space into a music venue. And this is not a spectacle. The exhibition’s central song Watch With Me asks for company at a time of transition, to stay a while. Philipsz is also asking visitors to "watch" with her–the title of the installation, "Stay With Me," is an alteration of this title–to watch what is not hanging on the walls, to watch the architecture of the space, to watch each other, the white, the light, the pink.
After a few minutes in the vast, empty space the architecture slowly begins to make itself manifest–the white-washed space, the raw floor boards with the exposed nails, the particular grid structure in the ceiling, the skylight lanterns and the white columns dividing the room. The lack of a physical object to focus one’s attention creates a situation where the viewers are put on display. Once you enter Malm� Konsthall you are both beholder and part of the work. The installation is apparently, and deceptively, simple. Its different elements–viewers included–are intertwined so that it is impossible for the viewer to disentangle herself from the situation.
We know this kind of art–from artists such as Yves Klein, Michael Asher and more recently, Rirkrit Tiravanija who activate the viewer by emptying out the gallery space. Or at least we think Philipsz is emptying out Malm� Konsthall to contest the asserted, or assumed, neutrality of the white cube. While her intervention is rooted in a more recent tradition within visual art (the consciousness of the institutional frame), Philipsz is not challenging the institutional power as such. Still, there is something about the way people respond to the work and how they move about in the exhibition that addresses the Konsthall not only as architecture but also as institution.
A majority of the visitors tend to slow their pace as they enter the Konsthall. They walk around silently or communicate only through whispering. Philipsz’s gentle, naked voice in the vast, empty space seem to have a disarming impact evoking an almost humble and respectful attitude. The infinite repetition of the songs and the played-down performance invokes a kind of ritualized atmosphere with an almost sacred aura. At the same time, this is an open and welcoming space and, as the title indicates, it wants you to stay. As a site for contemplation, transition or meditation it associates to the sentiment of old cathedrals or the cathedrals of our time, the historic art museum. You might even say that instead of challenging the institutional setting Philipsz’s sound intervention underlines the pristine qualities of the art institution–it empowers the space, both as architecture and as institution. As a result, Philipsz’s work creates a balance where space and sound work feed off each other, embracing each other in the oblong white cube.
Naturally, the singing underlines a sense of time in the work. Not least because each of the three songs has been recorded three times and everything has been recorded in one run which means that the actual recording amounts to about 45 minutes including pauses in between the songs. This might seem like superfluous information. Most visitors probably will not notice the subtle details that differentiate one rendition of a song from another. Still, as you move about in a space which you have never really seen before, listening to the naked voice singing, breathing and pausing, you are likely to experience the simplest transition of all–that of time passing.
