Les présents relatifs
François Dion
"Que veut dire vivre une journée intensément? Je dirais que c'est mettre le doigt sur la relativité" (1)
Josée Bernard, Carl Bouchard, Frédérique Decombe, Philippe Laleu, Mindy Yan Miller, Christiane Monceau
The two responsibilities of the critic and of the curator of this exhibit are to be close to the pieces and to think about art. The ideas that flood from the activities presented here, in the form of text or exhibition, reveal the preoccupations that guide the sight, research and reflection of the artists involved. When taking into consideration that these works are situated in “the here and now”, the viewer is forced to consider art in the context of contemporary ideas, actual production, distribution of ideas and artistic practices. A major modification that touched our culture in the past few decades has been the shrinking of physical space for the profit of time that continually accelerates, especially in the world of technology. Speed continues to take an increased importance today. Certain artistic productions derived from new technologies are affected by the instant mechanical acceleration they allow. Traditional and more current artistic practices (painting, sculpture, photography…), are inevitably interrogated in this context or the smaller spaces implied by increased speed, to the point that critics suggest that art cannot be considered today without placing it in relation to new technologies. Should we not then reconsider our approach to tackling the subject of technology and to reconsider the facts from reality, to analyze what Paul Virilio calls in Pure Wtzr, “the riddle of technology”, its enigma? Because time has become too short he elaborates that: “it is in the autonomy of the whole and the individual were there needs to be a practice of this reinterpretation…” (2). According to him, we need to reflect on how we conceive of time on the planet and the ways in which we control it. This same idea is explored by the artists united in Les Présents Relatifs, “in a return to the recognition of our mortal identity, of our status as occupying time…” (3). Will time today be a neglected reality? For a long time now we have recognized that it is not objective (even though science seems to need an objective time) but relative. We know, certainly since Heidgger that time and a subject are intimately aligned and in consequence, time is an important given for any existential reflection. We therefore turn to Virilio who has rethought the context of technology that we currently inhabit, implying that we question the place of time within this same context, or more so, that we respond to the question of “how” to be within time.
Some artists are aware of the temporary perspective that gazes on their work. Certain ones between them refuse the technical game, that which goes too fast, the same ones who reject the anguish and dispersal of a time in which all the reversals are taken for granted. These are particular works by these artists that nourish present reflection. Philosophical query marks all of the work and research that brought about the exhibition Les Présents Relatifs. A reflection on a few pertinent points seems necessary in the actual ideological context where we question too often the act of questioning itself, in the Heidegger sense, where in the last lines of the introduction we dive into metaphysics. This context contests the presence and pertinence of art today and how it affects an engagement of the state in cultural affaires. What then is left? What answer could we possibly envision? Certainly resistance, and the philosophy of art could very well be a form. As well as what we desire to construct within it.
Relativity and the Present
Time will not only be a question of perspective or quantity in the context of this exhibit or within the context we wish to evoke. The title of the exhibition suggests altogether something different. The conception of time as a measuring tool or as a simple a matter of duration is split open. These concepts advantageously appear to have a kind of alliance with one of the uses of technology. The relative dimension of time opposes entirely that utility. It seems closer to and better adapted to take into consideration one of the essential aspects of art, that is to say its function of representation. The works of the united artists, and the questions that arise on their part on the formal, aesthetic and semantic aspects of art, converge towards an idea of presence and consciousness. Art has been forcibly anchored in an individual subjectivity and in its function as representational, relative time and in fact the relative present, is directly aligned with a presence to the world, to a “being there” in order to respond to the words of Heidegger.
The present rejoins the idea of “being there” because the presence corresponds with consciousness, an intimate relation between being and time, this temporary-being is also in the first place a being present to the world: “this means to say to travel beside the world under a certain mode of ‘effectuating’, of the putting into the piece a liquidation, but also a contemplation, a query of a reflection that defines and compares…” (4). The works by Mindy Yan Miller, Josée Bernard and Carl Bouchard, regardless of their differences, are concerned by this consciousness and by the preoccupation that characterizes being present to the world. It is within this perspective that one needs to look at the exhibition and to “compare” the divers ideas.
In the installation by Mindy Yan Miller, entitled Drop Out, two times are evoked: the present that is before anything a presence, and historical time. Certainly the piece questions the presence of ideologies that have been understood as consensus, a mass movement, the tendency to organize the present and the future. Ideologies can too often by circumscribed following movements that make up history. But Miller insists before anything on their perennial nature and the time that affects them and carries them onwards. It is in this manner that one has to understand the place of the image evoked by Coca-Cola and the motif “Flower Power”, like the rest of the ideologies that persist. The alteration and the recuperation of ideas remind us at the same time of the possible future that awaits us. The time that affects Drop Out, from the perspective of alteration, is the potential presence of diversion or rejection of that which is a given. Drop Out in English signifies those who voluntary or involuntary leave the system, those who do not function in its gears or are excluded. It’s this potential to leave current ideology that is underlined, the characteristic of being present to the world, to be preoccupied and to question in order to act on the future. The artist’s gestures offer a similar answer already. He diverts the image (the mark), questions the continuity of ideologies that surrounds us, suggest an idea for an alternative use, within time, from what has been and could be. The gestures of the artist then thwarts the duration and reveals the quality of time that reacts to the artist’s thoughts, and on his/her conscience. It is here that the work of Josée Bernard aligns with certain questions posed by Mindy Yan Miller. Yet, where Miller is political, in the sense of Virilio by analyzing an ideology in the form of resistance, Josée Benard articulates an intimate thesis, one of applying a repetition of gestures and seasons. It consists less of a nostalgic memory than of an identity crisis, the kind that runs from a more ancient conception of temporal human activity: those which continually bring back the past the present and then anticipate the future. With the use of film stills taken from forgotten films, recognized through the repetition of cyclical rhythms, a structural function that necessarily implies the before and after. If this analogy seems more political then structural, as well as partially poetic, it remains that this time regulates yet again human activities and their relationship with the world. Nevertheless, the time that repeats itself is never truly the same. The “space where things alter” is constantly alluded to in the photographic installation of Josée Bernard by the representation of a surface that allows us to see the traces left behind when making a mark, the place of anticipation, of projection, and of the labour. The feminine works that are revived in Courte-Pointe (short point) are defined not only by their rapport to the communal time of drudgery but also the activities of the spirit. The objective approaches closely to things to the point of lightly grazing them, the passing time remaining insatiable, waiting in the future and preoccupied in it. The images of Josée Bernard create a closeness between the individual and their environment. It is an existence in the world or presence of being different than the one evoked by Mindy Yan Miller, because it rests upon the other experience of sight and query. It advantageously affects the body, like the signs of time seen as marks on things, bodies, and on the notion of being present – the privileged site to bare witness such a passage. It is here that the research of Carl Bouchard is located. It seems that for him, the body is before anything an experience and consciousness. The body is marked by its consciousness and its relationship to the world and time. The conscious trains query and preoccupation and sees worry. These pieces show this worrisome activity that Deleuze calls the “devenir fou des profondeurs” (to become mad profoundly or on many levels), that is to say a movement regulated by the vast and profound presents (6). The work by Carl Bouchard often approach questions from a romantic angle or from its absence. This absence is not always a non-existence but a presence of what was or of what could be. Self-awareness, that suggests Carl Bouchard is the awareness of the other or “to be with another” (7) or from a more global angle “to be with others”. It applies again with the consultation with the question “how” that Carl Bouchard approaches from the angle of romantic relations. To the question of being marked by one’s relationship with time, he suggests that we are profoundly aligned with the conscience of being at the point of marked experience and on the other hand of what it is to share the world. Waiting, forgetting, and anticipation are temporal formalities from which love can never escape: he looks at the other and himself within the couple and questions “how?” Did Heidegger not write: “To know how to question signifies knowing how to wait, even for your entire life?” (8). Is a conclusion possible? Both query and curiosity have to be pursued. The following quote, taken from the consciousness and the life of Bergson, can maybe serve to bring back our reflection that is interrupted for a moment: “to create for the future, you have to prepare something in the present, and preparation for what will be can only be achieved by the use of what was, life starts from the beginning to conserve the past and to anticipate the future in a duration or past, present and future encroach upon one another and form an undividable continuity: this memory and anticipation are, as we have seen, consciousness itself. And this is why consciousness is coextensive with life.” (9)
We have seen that the artists grouped in Les Présents Relatifs work from the presence of the self to time and its duration but most certainly from the question of being within time and they ask “how”. Because we think about his a lot and have searched to find a convenient usage of time, a consistency, and because we have seen that time is not necessarily within the measurement. A plural of what ifs, relative and not absolute. The works are brought together, the present they envision giving, along with this exhibition, a simultaneous perspective. Also, the installation allows time to fill its double function of distinction and relation by maintaining the necessary conditions to pursue a dialogue between understanding and intuition.
Endnotes
1. Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, “Pure War”, in Semiotext{e) (New-York, 1983) 79.
2 & 3. ibid, 79
4. Heidegger, "Le concept de temps" in Les Cahiers de l'Herne (Paris 1983) 30.
5. "...il y a une analyse de la machine de guerre [...] qui est pour moi l'essence de la résistance" , “Pure War”,132.
6. Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens, Ed. de Minuit, 1969, p.191. A ce propos, voir "Sans titre ou Un plus vaste présent", Livret de programmation SKOL, Montréal, 1996, p.18-19.
7. Heidegger, op.cit.p.30.
8. Cited by Frédéric Laupies, Leçon philosophique sur le temps, PUF, 1996,p.81.
9. Cited by Frédéric Laupies, Ibid, 69.