If you walk down Prefontaine between 6am and 10pm and look in the windows of 4culture, you can see and hear art. You’ll see monitors installed on the wall inside the gallery, with video work of various artists playing on a loop. The loop gets longer as each month of the year a new work is added to it. The audio is projected towards the street with speakers installed on the outside of the building.
When I walked past last Thursday night, the imagery and sounds were of someone else walking past a street in some other place. I wasn’t so much moved by the videos themselves but by the whole indoor/outdoor, inside/outside installation. Simply by walking down the street, without anyone noticing or caring, I was inside a piece of time-based art. This is something. This is art being used.
I find a lot of relevance in Nicolas Bourriaud‘s Postproduction as I find my way as an artist in 2009. He explains how artists today are finding new uses (conceptual and practical) for things that have already been produced. New function creates new meaning.
[image courtesy of 4culture]
Heather Dwyer– who works at 4culture–created the installation, called “e4c” (for “The Electronic Media Gallery” at 4culture). I don’t know if the code-like acronym really serves the piece; it might add an unnecessary layer of deciphering for passers-by.
It is no longer a matter of starting with a “blank slate” or creating meaning on the basis of virgin material but of finding a means of insertion into the innumerable flows of production.
-Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction
