...to catch the drift

It is considered quite fashionable, in modern day art, to say it is basically the role of the viewer to discover the artwork (or the meaning of it). Such a set-up can, of course, be an excuse for doing what ever and not necessarily something that makes sense. One can't though always carry on a metaphysic meaning of things. The game, if we can call discovering the meaning of an artwork a game, doesn't always imply such. But the amusing or interesting part of such game is when doubts are raised; what is the meaning of all this? Is it bullshit? Does the artist think I'm fool? Etc...

It's like when Jean Baudrillard, the French sociologist and community critique, says in his article "Conspiracy of the art" that modern day art takes advantage of these doubts; how impossible it is to valuate or locate aesthetic value in modern art. And the modern art depends on the guilt of those who don't understand the joke (the game) and those who know that there is nothing to understand in the first place. But anyway while people participate and try to grasp the joke the game is working. Of course does this sound pretty banal, but if one succeeds well the result can even lead to a brain injure.  

But the case is that not everybody succeeds in innovating doubts or carry on speculation lead from an artwork. There lies the difference between artworks that continue to create and artworks that just "are" and nothing more. Modern day artworks must have a respond from the art lover; otherwise they don't make sense...or do they?  

This ropewalk has the tendency to make the modern day art rather heavy. But these writing are not, though, intended to solve alleged task. These writings are intended to cover an artwork by the Icelandic artist Darri Lorenzen, which was shown in a group exhibition in Berlin, Ballhaus Ost 2006.

When we enter the exhibition space, in Ballhaus, Darri´s work is hard to locate. In fact it's barely viewable. Still we pretty soon discover a fan standing on a trunk (coffin?). The fan is in full action moving from left to right. Located beside the fan are two very small microphones. In continuance we discover a sound that surrounds the space (in this sense it is fitting to say that the space is surrounded). The source of the sound can be traced to the fan/or that the fan makes the sound? (the sound of the wind, coming from the fan, is amplified). That is the work. Now it's just the question if the work is able to drag us/the viewer/the art lover...etc... into the game/But do we play the game?

Of course there is always a big different between an impressionistic postproduction and the first impression (or like David Hume would express it a big difference between impressions and ideas, but we are not going in that direction). To make the difference then even bigger we'll endeavour to work with ideas that didn't necessarily come alive while the work was experienced (at the exhibition); not spatially seen and not in coherence with time. No, when this cognition is being merged into words the work, as such, is far away both spatially and in time. But the fact that we are composing a text about it says it all...or does it?

Lets start off with the title. Catch the Drift . What does it tell us? What circulation of meaning dose it imply? Of course there are similarities between the simplicities of the work, meant in a configurative way, and the title. But hold on, the title implies some interpretative possibilities. What doses he tell us? We are supposed to figure out the work, watch out that it doesn't fly pass us, understand the tendency, capture it etc. But it also brings us to the question were the work can be found. The fan. Is she the work? Does the fan play the part of the rock star in the work?           

These speculations lead us to another work/project by Darri. The work "Ris" (Loft) which was shown in The living Art Museum (Nýlistasafnið) in Reykjavik 2000. In that particular work poses the artist a ladder against a ceiling made by him self. The ceiling is surrounded by high frequency sound barely audible and with no visible source. That work also rises questions about the work as such, though slightly different one. Are the ladder and the ceiling the work? Is the work the sound? The name of it, "Ris" (Loft) involves that one should be able to find the meaning in the ceiling. But the ceiling is empty. Or is it? We can, after all, hear something in the space, which, nota bene, is a constructed space in the sense that it was not there before and belongs therefore not to the museum. The artist has created an extra space inside the showroom; something that gives his work a considerable singularity.

The same goes for Catch the Drift only in a different way because there one can say that the whole showroom is a part of the work as the sound surrounds it. Therefore is the fan, just as the ladder in Ris (loft) , not the work but tools to create it. But what is it then? Are we any closer?