Janet Cardiff, Chiaroscuro, 1997. Audio walk, 12 min. Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco.
Above: Janet Cardiff, MoMa Walk, 1999. Audio walk, 12:50 min. Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Below: Janet Cardiff, Villa Medici Walk, 1998. Audio walk, 16:22 min. Villa Medici, Rome.
Behind the illusions of the art world lies business and the institutions of art. These range from the critics that analyse art to the collectors who buy art to the galleries that display art. Greenberg describes it as the “umbilical cord of gold” that keeps the art system together. [1]
Artists in the early 1990s begun to explore this symbiotic relationship between artists and art institutions through their work.
Canadian Janet Cardiff is one such artist. Born in 1957 she is known for her film and sound works. She examines the role of the gallery institution in our perception of art by redefining a gallery space and how we assume art should be presented.
Cardiff’s first major artwork consisted of a series of walks. These started in the early 1990s and continue up until quiet recently. In these works she reinvents the audio walks often offered at museums that explain the current exhibitions. However in Cardiff’s walks she focuses little on the exhibitions, creating instead a fictional narrative. Most of these walks begin in an intuitional space then either diverge outdoors into the streets or inwards to classified parts within the institution. The viewer is given a headset, and a MP3 and follows the instructions of the voice through the earphones. Cardiff uses binaural technology creating a 3D audio experience. The audio is a mixture of recorded everyday sounds, random fragments of stories and orders given from the alluring voice. A fictional plot begins to play out in an imagined reality surrounding the viewer as they move through the space.
The “white cube” has been thought as the ideal uncontaminated environment to have a ‘pure’ experience of art.[2] It acts like a theatre set. White walls little to no windows, and no architectural adornment. Artworks are careful placed and lit just as actors are.
In one walk Cardiff created for the Museum of Modern Art in New York the participant is taken on a tour of the gallery. Aspects of the pre-recorded audio begin to merge into reality as the viewer is guided to the disregarded stairwells and hidden, prohibited doors. The viewer is taken behind the museum curtain to a “conceptual space of imagined fictions”.[3]
Cardiff recalls:
“I was visiting the new MoMA recently and I tried to find traces of where my walk once existed. But most of the places where I did the walk are now just spaces floating in the air.” [4]
By using unfamiliar voices, inaccessible moments in time and changing locations the work very much lives in the psyche of the viewer. The viewer is the artwork’s keeper as well as it’s actor and audience.
In her works she approaches the subject of the gallery institution in two difference manners. She either changes our perception of it by taking us behind the scenes and treating it as the stage for an illusory narrative or ignores it entirely by creating a fantastical world that transports us deep inside our imaginations. She makes us question the importance of the gallery in the viewing and understanding of art. In her works she merges reality with fiction making the audience question what is true and what is just an act. She pronpts us to ask the same question of all things in the art world, asking what is natural and what is contrived and if it changes the meaning and impact of an artwork.
Artists in the early 1990s begun to explore this symbiotic relationship between artists and art institutions through their work.
Canadian Janet Cardiff is one such artist. Born in 1957 she is known for her film and sound works. She examines the role of the gallery institution in our perception of art by redefining a gallery space and how we assume art should be presented.
Cardiff’s first major artwork consisted of a series of walks. These started in the early 1990s and continue up until quiet recently. In these works she reinvents the audio walks often offered at museums that explain the current exhibitions. However in Cardiff’s walks she focuses little on the exhibitions, creating instead a fictional narrative. Most of these walks begin in an intuitional space then either diverge outdoors into the streets or inwards to classified parts within the institution. The viewer is given a headset, and a MP3 and follows the instructions of the voice through the earphones. Cardiff uses binaural technology creating a 3D audio experience. The audio is a mixture of recorded everyday sounds, random fragments of stories and orders given from the alluring voice. A fictional plot begins to play out in an imagined reality surrounding the viewer as they move through the space.
The “white cube” has been thought as the ideal uncontaminated environment to have a ‘pure’ experience of art.[2] It acts like a theatre set. White walls little to no windows, and no architectural adornment. Artworks are careful placed and lit just as actors are.
In one walk Cardiff created for the Museum of Modern Art in New York the participant is taken on a tour of the gallery. Aspects of the pre-recorded audio begin to merge into reality as the viewer is guided to the disregarded stairwells and hidden, prohibited doors. The viewer is taken behind the museum curtain to a “conceptual space of imagined fictions”.[3]
Cardiff recalls:
“I was visiting the new MoMA recently and I tried to find traces of where my walk once existed. But most of the places where I did the walk are now just spaces floating in the air.” [4]
By using unfamiliar voices, inaccessible moments in time and changing locations the work very much lives in the psyche of the viewer. The viewer is the artwork’s keeper as well as it’s actor and audience.
In her works she approaches the subject of the gallery institution in two difference manners. She either changes our perception of it by taking us behind the scenes and treating it as the stage for an illusory narrative or ignores it entirely by creating a fantastical world that transports us deep inside our imaginations. She makes us question the importance of the gallery in the viewing and understanding of art. In her works she merges reality with fiction making the audience question what is true and what is just an act. She pronpts us to ask the same question of all things in the art world, asking what is natural and what is contrived and if it changes the meaning and impact of an artwork.
[1] Clement Greenberg. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." Partisan Review. 6:5 (1939), 34.
[2] Brian O'Doherty , Inside the white cube : the ideology of the gallery space.(London : University of California Press, 1999), 15.
[3] Bartomeu Mari, "Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller, and other stories." In Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: the killing machine and other stories 1995-2007, ed. Ralf Beil and Bartomeu Mari (Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2007), 18.
[4] Cardiff, Janet. “JANET CARDIFF GEORGE BURES MILLER.” Official website of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (2009), http://www.cardiffmiller.com/index.html (accessed September 20, 2009).
Bibliography
- Heartney, Eleanor. Art & Today. London: Phaidon Press Inc., 2008.
- O'Doherty, Brian. Inside the white cube : the ideology of the gallery space. London : University of California Press, 1999.
- Beil, Ralf and Bartomeu Mari. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller: the killing machine and other stories 1995-2007. Ostfildern : Hatje Cantz, 2007.
- McShine, Kynaston. The museum as muse : artists reflect. New York : Museum of Modern Art, 1999.
- Möntmann, Art and its institutions : current conflicts, critique and collaborations. London : Black Dog Pub., 2006.
- Greenberg, Clement. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." Partisan Review. 6:5 (1939): 34.
- Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York, NY : Basic Books, 2002.
- Cardiff, Janet and George Bures Miller. “JANET CARDIFF GEORGE BURES MILLER.” Official website of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (2009), http://www.cardiffmiller.com/index.html (accessed September 20, 2009).
All images sources from:
Cardiff, Janet and George Bures Miller. “JANET CARDIFF GEORGE BURES MILLER.” Official website of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (2009), http://www.cardiffmiller.com/index.html (accessed September 20, 2009).
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