"Normal" people think that extreme sports are for the sake of adrenalin. But this experience is not for getting stimulants from the organism because the use of synthetic drugs is far easier and more effective. Neither they are for showing off, driving an enormous and fast car involves the least effort with the most output and is way "cooler".
Extreme sports are for certain people who need to experience space and time in more complex way.
It is not necessary to jump from cliffs to gain unmediated experience of space. This experience is also gained through constant exploration. Eliasson does his Iceland trips for a few months each year for that reason. Being immersed is more effective than exposed to intense agitation on short occasions.
That is why sublime is a troubling concept for me. Burke and Kant describe it almost as a shot of vodka - experience that happens and ends. In the postmodern world, with land greatly altered by humans, the sublime is different. The new sublime for me is the realization of the vast difference between mediated imagery - for instance the National Geographic photography on one side; and the personal experience of space on the other. The first and very important step is the realization of the gap between illustration and subjective experience.
"Hiker is a person who finds the most difficult way to a place where she/he has no business whatsoever."
In Bulgaria many people dissatisfied with the economy look for a parallel reality. Luckily, for now, they manage to find spaces, defined vaguely as "nature", that act as outlets. But they are not just places to escape, these spaces give a different experience of reality. They make visible the fundamental difference between life as doing and life as being. These two modes of life are vital for each person although the significance for each of them is different for different people. Washington DC metro area, where I moved eventually, is a space that does not offer much unmediated experience. The environment is meant to deprive people from the life as being and force them into life as doing even in their free time. Whenever not making money a person has to spend. Boys of Baraka is a documentary about the Baraka school that took failing Afro American students from Baltimore to Kenya for a school year of middle school classes. Although a social documentary the film deals with conflicting concepts of space.
There is an obvious link between sophistication and extended subjective experience of space.
This is what makes Eliasson's work political. His agenda is to make art about engagement rather than passive contemplation. His work promotes subjectivity, the act of exploration and the freedom to take action. The intellectual agenda is to bring awareness of the gap between images and experiences, the passive and the active, the representation and the unmediated. He encourages his audience to explore the contemporary sublime.
Although my work has not been about the difference between images and experience it is influenced by this issue. I have been trying to illustrate my concern of space through images or to defy/question other images mediating the experience of space. I find this concern with space in other artists work although theirs might not be as directly aimed at unmediated spacial relationships as Elliasons artwork is.
Robert Henke (also as Monolake)
Excerpt from Signal to Noise album here
This is completely synthetic electronic soundscape with no lyrics, no narrative, little composition as there are no crescendos or quiet moments, it does not imply or create a mood intentionally. And also it has no clear rhythm structure as no percussions were used. The music is more an experience than a container for meaning.
His music however is a mediated experience also, one can get into it only if previously sharing the same ideas about spatial relationships and what music can be.
I thought of making visible and untangle boundaries in a space, thus trying to emphasize the gap between the concept of space and the concept of place. I don't know if I'll be able to use fog machines and also he did very similar work in the 1970s and again in the 2000s. I thought that the light will create more opaque projection in the smoke and what is on the photos is not enough for my purpose.
Spatial installations. Not sure whether they are about (un)mediated relationships and the gap between image and experience, however, reflect interest in space as something to be engaged.
Lead Pencil Studio
Void as the substance
What the above images are lacking (maybe I haven't experienced the work personally and talk unprepared) is political context. They are about space but not so much about personal engagement and its responsibility. "You move and your perception of space changes", in other words the notion of space is dependent on the person engaging it. Nevertheless great work to see.
to be continued
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