carsten höller: experience

Me at Carsten Höller at the New Museum. 

To begin with: there was a slide through three floors of the museum. There was also a quasi sensory deprivation tank, a super slow-moving carousel, numerous pairs of kooky goggles, and many other pieces, that in concert, contributed to the exhibition's reputation (in multiple places) as a "playground" and/or "amusement park."

I participated in all interactive pieces, including completely disrobing and entering the Giant Psycho Tank (the sensory deprivation tank listed above), and let me tell you, being nude in an art museum, even if no one can see you is a strange experience. And it's not at all like the conundrum of the tree falling in a forest: if you are nude in a museum but no one can see you, you are still nude! However, the piece that I enjoyed the most and that really made me think about my "experience" with and of the art, was the piece pictured here, Infrared Room.

Its components are listed as:

"Three infrared cameras, three infrared lamps, three video projectors, three computers with specially designed software, monitor, and cables, dimensions variable." 

At the New Museum the piece was set up in a completely dark room that you enter through a curtain, like many video installations at museums. So I entered like I typically would at a museum: slowly and quietly so as to be least obtrusive to the other viewers. There was one other lady in there, but after about a minute of both of us standing very quietly and very still, she walked out, bored of looking at our static "reflections" on the three video feeds. 

When she left, I did what any slightly childish yet self-conscious person might do: I oriented myself directly in the center of the room and started doing an utterly inane and overly exuberant dance. As I was dancing, watching myself on the projections, I realized that sometimes Left Sarah was moving slightly before Right Sarah and Center Sarah, and sometimes Center Sarah took the lead, and so on and so on. My "reflections" were not really in-sync with reality. It was a very out-of-body experience, seeing myself doing three different things at different times. Sometimes I felt that one reflection was "me" because it was in-sync with my movements. I also became hyper-aware of the "now" and "the present" and could feel the out-of-time-ness of the "reflections" affecting my perception of my own relationship to time and space. 

The video room was not only a fun thing, in creating a small, badly coordinated group of Sarah cheerleaders, but it also made me think about the experience of viewing art, and particularly how video art is frequently presented in a quiet, dark room. There is a reverence and respect to entering and experiencing most video art in such a room that requires that one be quiet, be respectful of others, be unobtrusive. I might never have noticed the "specially designed software" altering the video projections had I entered into a room with many people. I would have come and gone quietly, and made as little movements as possible so as not to disturb the viewing experience. My small, inconspicuous movements would not have been enough to notice the delayed playback. 

The piece takes the typical behavior and experience of viewing video art in a darkened museum gallery and turns it completely on its head - changing not only the experience of viewing the art, but the relationship of the viewer to the art. Because without any viewer - without anyone to be filmed and projected onto the screen, is there really any art at all?

This has been my months old reflection on an experience that I quite enjoyed and will hopefully remember for some time to come. Thanks for reading!