Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 7 Number 2, August 2006
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Schimmel,
Paul, and Lisa Mark, Ecstasy: In and About Altered States. Distributed
by The MIT Press for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Reviewed by
The Diatrope Institute
When done well, exhibition catalogues supplement the theme
of a show while translating how the work “feels” when we actively engage
with it. Ecstasy: In and About Altered
States, the catalogue for an exhibition at The Los Angeles Museum of
Contemporary Art (MOCA) from 9 October 2005 through 20 February 2006 exemplifies
how this balance is accomplished. Impressive in its handling of a complex topic,
the end-result captures the scope of “ecstasy” and the dynamism of the
installations that rely on sensory interaction, (although their experiential
impact could not be replicated or reproduced in a static publication). It also
thoroughly examines the contributions that were more traditionally composed.
Coupling the large, often double-page reproductions of the representational and
experimental art forms with short statements on each of the 30 artists and
specially commissioned essays (by Carolyn Christov-Bakargieu, Chrissie Iles,
Midori Matsui, Lars Bang Larsen and
Diedrich Diederichsen) the book magnificently conveys the essence of the
installation, painting, sculpture, and new media on display.
MOCA has a long history of presenting innovative,
speculative, and controversial exhibitions. Ecstasy
builds on this history and further establishes this venue’s reputation as
a cutting-edge museum, one that allows artists to challenge museum-goers in
terms of form and content. Topically the pieces, which were intended to
highlight the relationship between human consciousness and ecstasy, convey where
current ideas intersect with a range of contemporary art practices. They succeed
technically as well. Perhaps the most note-worthy accomplishment of the show is
its ability to touch so many perspectives. Broadly speaking, the projects fell
into two groups. On the one hand, some presented representational works, largely
capturing metaphysical conditions. These included the wall-scale,
resin-suspended pill paintings of Fred Tomaselli; Charles Ray's photographic
self portrait, Yes, which depicts the
artist on LSD; and Franz Ackermann's recent Mental
Maps, abstract paintings that represent cities using his own subjective form
of GPS.
The second, and more diffuse group was comprised of artists
who explored the notion of phenomenological experience and perceptual anomalies
that play on disjunctions in scale, or disrupt our means for spatial
orientation. These works dismantle us perceptually and propel us to think about
the conventions of perception in the process.
Carsten Höller's Upside Down
Mushroom Room falls in the second group. It impressed me from the moment I
opened the book. Included in a series of full-color plates used to introduce the
art before any printed text appears, its scintillating strangeness defies verbal
explanation, although many of the contributors tried to explain how the dynamics
worked. The artist’s gigantic, fly-agaric mushrooms are illuminated from the
floor and hang from the ceiling of a room that is rotating slowly. [Mushrooms
were evident in many of the pieces. No doubt this is because the mushroom as a
path to altered states of consciousness has a long tradition.] Within the space
he creates, the ceiling and floor appear to change places. Gloria Sutton’s
essay explains that before entering visitors make their way through a
ninety-eight-and-a-half foot long pitch-black hallway. On leaving the darkness
of the corridor, the ceiling and floor seem to switch places. The effect is that
it seems the nine ten-foot-high mushrooms appear to sprout directly from the
ceiling. I could not quite picture
how it works in real time from the essay. Nonetheless, I was impressed to learn
that Höller’s installation replicates the upside-down projection of images
onto the retina before the brain inverts what one sees. It is also worth noting
that this project refers directly to the retinal experiments by George Malcolm
Stratton in 1896, for which he wore specially adapted glasses to turn the world
upside down using a lens system to return the retinal image to its source. All
in all, it was because I could not fully comprehend the piece that I was so
taken with it. I will look for in my travels so that I can solve the conceptual
mystery and partake of it experientially. Another original and imaginative
installation in the second group is Jeppe Hein's Moving
Walls, discussed by several commentators. Here the museum walls almost
imperceptibly begin to close in on the viewer.
Of the five commissioned essays, Lars Bang Larsen’s was
particularly thought provoking. Just
as I began to read the book, I saw a clipping of Philippe
de Montebello, Director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, speaking about
the many people who visited to the Met in the days following 9/11.
The museum was opened as a service to the city, although the
administrators had no idea whether anyone would venture in so close to the
tragedy at the opposite end of town. People did come, no doubt drawn to the
timeless beauty created over so many centuries. Here, it
seemed, they could enter another reality and quietly dialogue with something
intangible that art touched. This something lived in this space of silence and
beauty and allowed them to engage with a reality that even the felling of the
towers could not erase or take away. Larsen’s essay seemed to
understand how the two realities co-existed. He speaks of the ambivalence of
ecstasy, pointing out that the word means leaving one’s position and going
outside one’s self. He pairs it with corruption, writing that they imply each
other like two sides of the same coin. Through his comparison he grounds the
concept within our world.
Diedrich Diederichsen’s essay, “Divided Ecstasy: The
Politics of Hallucinogenics,” on the other hand, was a bit of a
disappointment. His glorification of drugs as a liberation reminded me of all
the artists I know who were compromised by their drug experiences. This
primarily historical essay outlined some of the debates and works connected with
drugs and the mystical debates, filling in many associations that bring together
art, ecstasy and mind-altering experience. Having no images it seemed less
developed than the other written contributions. It was a critical commentary
rather than a creative engagement with the vast terrain art exposes.
Finally, the book was a pleasure on almost every level,
although I was disappointed to find myself unable to imagine how some of the
interactive projects worked in real time and real space. Nonetheless, the
combination of excellent images, general articles and artist specific essays
worked well and helped me conceptualize the active viewing experience.
Integrating historical foundations with contemporary views was an
important element in the strong presentation. The collection demonstrated that
artists define mind-altering realities and ecstatic states in many ways.
Establishing ecstasy’s relationship to the artist's state of mind and as an
experiential effect created for the viewer was a useful contribution. Selections
that pursued drugs, the process of self-observation in literary works; and the
"dark side" of altered consciousness rounded out this book that will
appeal to all who have probed the questions of altered states of consciousness.