This propositional work is about exploring the experience of space using the body. New standpoints allow for new perspectives, changing ordinary patterns, new viewpoints and new understandings.

Quotations from participants:

“I was surprised by how comfortable it is to lie in my shower, there is an elevation for the head I don’t even need a pillow. Legs are sticking out, butt is in – everything is ergonomically perfect for lying down.“

“Pure being or looking at something, a different view creates imagination. You don’t have to engage to create, but the brain creates it based on what’s in front of it.“

“An object becomes something else and very quickly it changes into something different just by changing the direction from which it is viewed or the way something is used.“

“Now I worked in a room in which I have been spending a lot of time for a number of years, so I was not in a position that was significantly new to me so the views were relatively familiar and I didn’t feel some strong sensations. But I liked it that this time I felt these positions in a relaxed state, without a task I had to do, like cleaning or fixing windows, with a feeling that I was doing something meaningful and I embraced this space in a better way without frustration because by looking at it I was trying to become a part of it.“

photo: Andreja Hotko Pavić

Standpoints

Jasmina Fučkan

“The work, is, I believe, always trying to be a kind of flat surface, like a plinth or a platform, for the viewer’s experience.”[1] – Antony Gormley

This propositional work is a kind of performative study of a short-term activation of sculptural relationships which relies on experimentation with the sense of orientation.  Such experimentation is not unusual in contemporary art, quite the contrary, it can be seen in the works of some of the most significant contemporary sculptors who deal with the exploration of the physical, material and perceptual characteristics of the living body, such as the American artist Charles Ray (the works Plank piece I and Plank piece II, 1973; Shelf, 1981), the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm (the One Minute Sculpture series, from 1988 to the present) or the British artist Antony Gormley (Three Places, 1983; Testing a World View, 1993; Drawn, 2000/2007).

According to the artist’s propositions, the participants of the encounter become aware of the relationship of their body (standpoint) in correlation to the room they are in. They do so by focusing their attention on the perception of differences between how they see it (viewpoint) and how they feel it.

The initial visualisation is followed by the search for appropriate locations in the centre of the room, along the walls and in the corner, which would suit the physical surveying of architectural proportions of the space for movement and its blocking boundaries. Physical positioning in different parts of the room is accompanied by the artist’s proposition to change the position from standing to squatting or lying down, and each of them brings a different experience of orientation, gravity, weight or lightness.

As adults, we are the least closely connected to the ground level, although this was our first and most favourite experience when we were children, and it is also our final experience in sickness or death.

Standpoints condition viewpoints, and on a universal level, viewing truly means participating in the image of the world. One of the most important questions of contemporary sculpture is thus that of the possibilities of relativising the dominant politics of gaze.

[1] Field Activities. A conversation between Antony Gormley, Ralph Rugoff and Jacky Klein, in: Antony Gormley: Blind Light, Hayward Gallery Publishing, London, 2007, p. 59.