Live Ingredients
Chloe Hawkins
Rirkrit Tiravanijia, Untitled 2005 (the air between the chain-link fence and the broken bicycle wheel), 2005. Glass and stainless-steel structure with transmitter; wood structure with receiver and furniture; DVD player and two monitors; two antennas; and wallpaper. Installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David M. Heald ? 2005 SRGF.
Rirkrit Tiravanija is known for creating art installations that invite viewers to activate the work through their own experience of it, with it, with one another. Instead of filling a gallery with paintings or sculptures, art objects to be sold, Tiravanjia provides a collection of ingredients for an experience the viewers may enact and share, which can be anything from cooking a meal to taking a yoga class. My most vivid memory of attending his show Untitled 2002 (he promised), sponsored by the Guggenheim last October: walking into the space in Soho to see a plainclothes mime, balancing precariously on a tall unicycle, arm stretching upward to retrieve a child’s silver balloon that had floated out of reach. His efforts had drawn a small audience from throughout the gallery, which was hosting a variety of activities suitable for children (but enjoyable for all ages). When the mime snagged the balloon, he was rewarded with a round of smiles and applause. A beautiful moment born from playful interaction. An odd occurrence in a New York City gallery; a typical result of Tiravanija’s work.
In his recent show at the Guggenheim, Untitled 2005 (the air between the chainlink fence and the broken bicycle wheel), the tone of the work is more critical and serious though no less interactive. Tiravanjia raises vital questions about our freedoms of speech and provides through example and instruction a multidimensional blueprint for enacting freedom of expression. While many of his past installations have used the gallery space to encourage playful and unconventional interaction between the people on-site, this show incites person-to-person communication within a vast space, invisible to the eye–airwaves, the spectrum of radio and television broadcasting.
Centered in the gallery are two chambers, a sealed glass room housing a homemade transmitter, and a plywood room holding the receiver, a television. The transmitter broadcasts a DVD from within the gallery, which is picked up by the receiver, providing an example of a Low Powered Television Station, or LPTV, a type of television broadcast that can be picked up within short distances. Blue writing covers the walls from floor to ceiling. Words and images present a blue print writ large: delineates the technology of airwaves; describes how the creation of the Federal Communications Commision, better known as the FCC, led to government and commercial control of the broadcasting spectrum; and finally, offers do it yourself instructions for creating your own LPTV out of commonly available materials such as a chain link fence and a broken bicycle wheel. It may sound like a boyish hobby, a garage science experiment, but in the project’s grassroots construction lies its potency. Tiravanja shows us how these discarded, common materials can be manipulated to give us the freedom to communicate in broadcasting, a difficult goal to attain through official channels.
The culmination of these structures and texts raises powerful questions: Is freedom of speech in broadcasting possible under the regulations of the FCC? How does strict government control of the airwaves affect the content and quality of the information we receive? How does accepting information from FCC approved sources affect our own relationships to our local, national and international communities? By leaving these questions open-ended and refraining from suggesting intentions for which we might use LPTV technology, Tiravanija simply and stongly encourages us to be active, critical and creative participants in the local production and distribution of information and knowledge. I have come to expect a personal invitation to engage with others from Tiravanija’s shows. Here, I found it most physically in a stack of posters, inconspicuously located on the gallery floor, accompanied by a box of rubber bands, which seemed to imply, "here, take one, you could use this." Printed with the text and images from the walls, the poster, free for the taking, allows us to access all of the information from the show at any time. What we do with the information provided is up to us.
