DvsN :

This installation titled ‘End-Less’ is part of the exhibition Middling English by Caroline Bergvall, exhibited at the John Hansard Gallery.
The exhibition runs from 7 September till 23 October 2010.
‘End-Less’ was developed through a number of versions and transmutations, both in terms of its physical existence and implicit concepts negotiated. In previous posts (End-Less I, II, III, IV) we describe a number of versions that stand at the basis of the final installation.

Middling English investigates modes of writing, from the printed letter to a loose realm of visual, audio, kinetic and perceptual writing and reading environments. In our case this resulted in an ‘almost absent spatial structure’.

The exhibition has been developed with a range of collaborators including sound artists Zahra Mani and Adam Parkinson, designer Alex Prokop, the voice of Nicholas Rowe and ourselves as ‘spatial interveners’.

A new exhibition publication, including an exclusive interview with Caroline Bergvall and a description of the design discourse of our installation En-Less, will be launched at The London Art Book Fair, 24 – 26 September.

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We capitalize on slippage. The wires, aiming to describe previously unseen forces in space, are disconnected from one side in order for us to hang four dazzling orange 6kg weight on sets of five cables to organise the required tension. The cables now perform as dynamic, non-vertical plumb weights; as guiders of a non-constructed dynamic surface.

D_ Deliberations re production, installation and cost lead to the development of a more ephemeral structure of closely spaced wires that define dynamic surfaces in space: force fields within the gallery are laid bare. The installation gradually works its way through the two main rooms in the existing gallery space whereby a low, widespread, gradually rising field of wires occupies the majority of the first gallery space, gradually merging along the edges of the space and culminating in strands of wire along the ceiling of the second space which eventually end in four well defined points. Weights bring the complete structure in tension. Plumblines give the second space a more orderly, rational feel in stark contrast to the dynamic, warping forcefields in the first room.

N_ the autographic slips into modes of the allographic. The object as craft, dependent on the crafting hand, transforms in terms of its physical existence. The surfaces are not constructed anymore and instead we explore the notion of composing a light installation; very thin wires connected in space expose implicit compositional forces and thus explore and express context specific information by means of a representational language. The installation is more a ‘site reading’ then it is a ‘proposal’, it exists more as ‘diagram’ then a ‘final result’. In this state of ‘tension’ its purpose is to accommodate a possible re-reading of the gallery space; more than it wants to be seen as an object in the space; it is made ‘to see through’.

N_ the installation exists as an autographic object in space, very much describing a physical presence with minute designed curvatures, subject to site-specific parameters of the interior. The continuous curved object, tracing the inner perimeter of the gallery space, installs an optical erosion of the physical boundaries of the gallery. The curvatures act as a looped infinity wall, known from photographic studios, establishing the optical experience of endlessness, continuing optical space beyond the boundaries of its physical container.

D_ Endless continuity is developed as the very counterpart to the perceived gallery space. The existing curved wall is the anker-point for a fluid endless surface, breaking the Cartesian building while reinforcing perspective down the gallery space. A slick, endless surf of walls is translated as a pure, pristine, dynamic stretch fabric installation.

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Design trajectory of End-Less an installation designed for Middling English at the John Hansard Gallery.

Design process
As a starting point for the design process an initial text ’breaking the building’ by Caroline Bergvall is considered as ‘project brief’ which is evaluated, refined and redefined in regular meetings throughout the design process. The evolving textual pieces and spatial design interact, bounce off, inform, and reinforce each other until they gradually merge into the current installation. Rather than a static, defined concept, the design was therefore a dynamic process made possible by the flexibility of both the textual and spatial proposals.

1. ‘Breaking the Building’; the design of a ‘non object’

D_ Starting from the initial textual proposal by CB, there was a clear the desire to work with/against the existing gallery building. From the outset, it was our intention was to avoid a passive, independent object in the gallery but rather seek an active interaction, in dialogue with the existing structure, of which the defining geometrical characteristics - a single curve and a structural grid - formed the obvious starting points.
Rigid to fluid
Square to sphere
Static to motion - static is motion – static as motion
Endless abstract, depersonalized space

N_ point of departure is an interest in setting up a dialogue between physical and optical space to strategies the breaking of the gallery building on two syncopating levels; engaging with a conceived interior, defined by its walls, floors and ceilings and engaging with the perceived or optical interior, defined through individual perception. Aiming to position this moment of breaking in-between these two categories allows us to complement observations of abstract space (or conceived space) with observing elements of experienced space or ‘perceived space’ to enable a dialogue between that which might be categorized as ‘object-driven’ and that which might be seen as ‘subject driven’. This dual performance allows us to look at space beyond its phenomenological limits.

There was that piece of cardboard lying around, wishing us something for the future…