Installation (pronounced in-stuh-ley-shuhn)
(1) Something
installed (which can be physical, as in plant or equipment or weightless, as in
software).
(2) The
act of installing (to install) or the state of being installed.
(3) In
military use, any permanent or semi-permanent post, camp, station, base etc, maintained
to support operations.
(4) In art,
an exhibit (widely defined) where the relation of the parts to the whole and
the context of the space where exhibited are sometimes claimed to important to
the interpretation of the piece.
(5) A
formal ceremony in which an honor is conferred or an appointment made to an
office (the state of being so honored or appointed being to be “installed”).
1600–1610:
From the Middle French installation, from the Medieval Latin installātiō. The construct was install + -ation. The verb install (which was used also as instal and before that enstall) was an early fifteenth century
form used to mean “place in ecclesiastical office by seating in an official
stall”. It was from the Middle English installen, from the fourteenth century Old
French installer, from the Medieval Latin īnstallō
(to install, put in place, establish), the construct being in- (in)- + stallum (stall),
from the Frankish stall (stall,
position, place), from the Proto-Germanic stallaz
(place, position), from the primitive Indo-European stel-, stAlǝn- & stAlǝm- (stem,
trunk). It was cognate with the Old High
German stal (location, stall), the Old
English steall (position, stall),
the Old English onstellan (to
institute, create, originate, establish, give the example of), the Middle High
German anstalt (institute), the German
anstellen (to conduct, employ), the German
einstellen (to set, adjust, position),
Dutch aanstellen (to appoint,
commission, institute) and the Dutch instellen
(to set up, establish). The
suffix -ation was from the Middle English -acioun
& -acion, from the Old French acion & -ation, from the Latin -ātiō,
an alternative form of -tiō (thus the
eventual English form -tion). It was
appended to words to indicate (1) an action or process, (2) the result of an
action or process or (3) a state or quality.
The mid
fifteenth century noun installation (action of installing) was a reference to
the processes (both administrative & ceremonial) of appointment to church
offices or other positions, and in that sense was from the Medieval Latin installationem (nominative installātiō), the noun of action from
past participle stem of installare. Of machinery (in the sense of plant &
equipment), the first known use in print, describing the “act of setting up a
machine; placing it in position for use” dates from 1882 but it may by then
have for some time been in oral use. Installation
& installationer are nouns and installational & installationlike are
adjectives; the noun plural is installations.
Installationism & installationist are non-standard forms used in art
criticism.
In
computing, an “installation” can be of hardware or software. With hardware, the point of distinction is an installation is something which is permanent (or, even if temporary, installed in a manner of something permanent), as opposed to a mere connection (such as plugging to a
USB cable). In software, the idea to is
transfer from an external source (the internet, a place on a network or transportable
media (diskettes, optical discs etc)) onto a device's permanent storage, the
installation process usually taken to include putting things into the state
where functional use is possible.
Installations can be as simple as copying a single file to a drive to
long, interactive processes involving multiple external media and on-line
registration or validation procedures.
Some installations are effortless while some are worse than others, as
those who have enjoyed the experience of installing the earlier
versions of Nvidia’s video drivers for some flavors of Unix can attest. Especially in software, the terms “pre-installation”
and “re-reinstallation” are common although “un-install” is more common than “un-installation”
(the terms “failed installation” and “corrupted installation” are also not unknown
although in most use, IT nerds usually clip “installation” to “install”).
Installations
and Performance Art
It’s
now unfashionable, and probably thought reactionary, to attempt to impose
definitions on the various expressions of Western art. There was a time, in living memory, when such distinctions were taken seriously, one squabble about whether an entrant in an
Australian portraiture competition could be considered “a portrait” (and by implication the work of “an artist”) or “a mere caricature”
(and the thus the scribblings of “a cartoonist”)
ending up in the Supreme Court of New South Wales (Attorney-General v Trustees of National Art Gallery of NSW & Another
(1945) 62 WN (NSW) 212.).
Portrait or caricature? Mr Joshua Smith (1943, left), oil on canvas by Sir William Dobell (1899–1970) and Joshua Smith (1905-1995, right).
Wisely,
Mr Justice Roper (1901–1958) decided the bench was not a place for amateur art
criticism and agreed the work was indeed “a portrait”, holding, inter alia, that “portrait”
“…means a
pictorial representation of a person, painted by an artist. This definition
denotes some degree of likeness is essential and for the purpose of achieving
it the inclusion of the face of the subject is desirable and perhaps also essential.” Of the work in question, he observed it was “…characterised
by some startling exaggeration and distortion which was clearly intended by the
artist, his technique being too brilliant to admit of any other conclusion. It bears, nevertheless, a strong degree of
likeness to the subject and is think, undoubtedly, a pictorial representation
of him. I find as a fact that it is a
portrait…” Given that, the
judge found it unnecessary to consider whether the painting was a “caricature”
or a “fantasy”
which was a shame, even if it wouldn’t have been something on which the verdict
hung.
Year
later, in an essay he titled The White
Bird (1987), the English painter & art critic John Berger (1926–2017)
would discuss the relationship between artist, artwork & viewer and the tension
between accurate depiction (“imitation” as he sometimes called it, a growing trend in
modern portraiture) and creative expression: “The notion that art is the mirror of nature
is one that only appeals in periods of scepticism. Art does not imitate nature; it imitates a
creation, sometimes to propose an alternative world, sometimes simply to amplify,
to confirm, to make social the brief hope offered by nature. Art is an organised response to what nature
allows us to glimpse occasionally. Art sets out to transform the potential
recognition into an unceasing one.” With that, one suspects Mr Justice Roper would have concurred.
Finding
legal proceedings tiresome, the art industry solved the problem of
what does and does not belong in galleries by embracing “installations” and “performance
art”, two categories without definitional boundaries and thus able to
accommodate anything which can’t be squeezed into one of the traditional
slots. In retrospect, it is course easy
to identify stuff stretching back many centuries which could be classified as
either but in the modern age, there’s certainly a perception curators are now artistically
more promiscuous. It thus both
impossible and pointless to try to define “installation” and “performance art”
but some characteristics certainly are identifiable.
Installation
art tends to be three-dimensional, is often site-specific and designed to transform
the perception of a space in which it exists and the range of materials used is
unlimited, the genre notable especially for the use of everyday objects, video
& audio content and often, interactive components. Installation art has encompassed unmade beds
so there’s some scope. Just as there’s
no one type of installation, nor are there defined parameters for the mode of display:
installations have been hung from ceilings, wrapped around buildings and sat on
the seabed. In gallery spaces however,
the most frequently seen installations are those on the floor with sufficient
room surrounding them for the viewer to walk around, experiencing the work from
multiple angles and perspectives. Installations
can be temporary or permanent or even in some way vanish, decay or be destroyed
during the exhibition and in more than one case, the “installation” didn’t
actually exist.
The context of location can also dictate the definition. Wax figures of Lindsay Lohan & Paris Hilton might be all or part of an installation if exhibited in a gallery but when on display at Madame Tussauds in New York City (left), they are a tourist attraction. More typically, installations combine artistic technique with social or political comment: Gabriel Dawe's (b 1973) Plexus series (centre) was made with a reputed 60 miles (97 km) of embroidery thread hooked from floor to ceiling in a repeating overlay while Judy Chicago’s (b 1939) The Dinner Party, 1974-79 (right) was a feminist piece but one which later attracted criticism because some degree of “ethnic exclusionism” was detected.
Performance
art, as the term implies, is a form of “live art” where “something happens”,
the actions of the artist or performers components of the work. Perhaps best thought of as a form of
encapsulated theatre, performance art would seem to depend on movement, sound, color
and sometimes text although, being art, some performance art has been wholly
static. For that reason, Empire (1965), Andy Warhol’s (1928–1987)
eight-hour, slow-motion film of an unchanging view of the Empire State Building
must be considered performance art although, given the nature of the
experience, it really must be the viewer who is thought the subject. Performance art is of course intrinsically ephemeral
and Empire played with that idea,
each moment of the production seemingly the same yet in tiny ways different, rather
like the exercise in textual definitional philosophy lecturers like to give students to
ponder: “Is the river the ‘same’ river from one day to the next when almost all
the molecules of water are different?”
US rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, hip hop identity & fashion designer Ye (formerly the artist known as Kanye West (b 1977)) and Australian architect & model Bianca Censori (b 1995): In Maimi, Florida, December 2023 (left) and in Paris for Fashion Week, June 2024 (centre & right).
The
recent, much publicized appearances by Mr Ye and Ms Censori attracted all sorts
of comments and the consensus was the project (one presumably restricted to the
warmer months) was a promotional device for him and to some extent that seems
to have worked, despite Mr Ye being mostly unnoticed while in the presence of
his photogenic muse. Although there are
references to the pair being “married”, it’s not clear if that is their legal
status and in artistic terms that may be significant. What is of interest is whether in these
appearances Ms Censori should be thought a “performance artist” or Mr Ye’s “installation”;
both have been suggested and there’s no reason why the two states can’t be
simultaneous.
Mr Ye & Ms Cansori at Paris Fashion Week, June 2024, the latter in character or possibly, installed.
No comments:
Post a Comment