Follow the Red Line

Maria Karlsson; MA degree show 2006. VALAND School of Fine Arts

Reflections; Paula Smithard

The MA degree exhibition Follow the Red Line by Maria Karlsson transformed the gallery space of the School into a dramatic non-visual experience. By means of an installation consisting of heavy fabrics used as curtains, which blocked all natural light, and no artificial overhead lighting, the visitor was guided to take hold of a rope at about waist height. A tiny glow of red light marked the beginning of the rope. Feeling one’s way along the rope, the visitor began to find a path was being carved out for us by the artist. Turning gradually to the right, in order to keep following the rope, the shade of darkness became black as the entrance was left further behind. With no light whatsoever the darkness seemed to close in; the space felt smaller. As the space began to feel as if it were pressing against me I began to think I couldn’t breathe properly; a feeling of anxiety and panic to creep up inside me. How much further I wondered? Surely it was the end in a moment; but no. Rounding a corner the visitor was forced physically downwards to keep their hands on the rope as guide, turning again into what felt like it might be the centre of the room I became aware of the textures the rope, the coldness of metal as the rope lead to a steel bar; the textures and temperatures of touch became noticeable. Smell too seemed to be a powerful aspect of the experience, the pungent aroma of rubber and then a whiff or two of something akin to the remains of burning; maybe ashes, I thought. Feint sounds were apparent, was this a sound piece too? By this point the path seemed never-ending and temporal as well as spatial co-ordinates seemed to be lost. Moving onwards the visitor suddenly reaches the end of the rope and lifting a hand in front finds a door to push open; release, light.

The exhibition represented, for me, a powerful disorientation; a loss of control. The exhibition exposed our dependence upon sight. Equally, it was a dramatic way in which to experience touch, smell and sound in a different way to the usual encounter with a gallery space. It was the visual disorientation which led to the re-orientation of the other senses. The heightened sensory perceptions of touch, smell and sound seemed all the more powerful because they were derived from the taking away of sight, not the adding of smells and sounds. These were smells and sounds that I never noticed before walking into the installation, when I was standing in the adjacent empty studio space which was brightly lit. The heightened sense perception did not feel empowering, though, because of the loss of sight, indeed the experience of the installation felt like an endurance test.

I felt like I had been turned into the guinea pig of some artistic and scientific test; a performer in some unknown game. I was reminded of the history of performance art in which the endurance of the artist became a significant feature. Was this performance art without an audience? Was the visitor the performer; the artist? We could not see the performer or an audience; we could not see the art.

The challenge of this exhibition lay its changing the rules of our engagement with exhibitions and gallery spaces. The installation would have different and less potent implications in a different kind of building with a different purpose. The exhibition relied, in part, on the context of the art school or gallery space. Art effecting institutional critique has seldom operated through these sensory means. Participatory art practices have rarely occurred without an audience, or so forcibly foregrounded the participant as the performer. Performance art, too, has not often placed the single audience member or participant so dramatically at the centre of the experience of the artwork itself.

This ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork implied a critique of the authority of the gallery space. The exhibition could not be seen, controlled or mastered. Was this, then, a critique of the art institution? Was the artist controlling the visitor and the institution? The exhibition functioned metaphorically as a critical challenge to our habits of seeing and seeing art in particular. As an Art School the context played an amenable host to these transgressions of social and cultural norms.

Go to project: Follow the red line