Cyprien Gaillard, Entropy and Immateriality
SHETLAND WAR RUINS PROJECT
’Real Elements of Fictive Wars (Part IV)’, Cyprien Gaillard, 2005. Film still. Image at: http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=60
In reading so far, something mentioned quite often was the prominence of art today which responds to ruins with time-based media, i.e. photography and film. Both 'document’ a physical place, preserving it in time through mechanical means, man-made technical devices (rather than through hand and eye as in drawing). Was this general rejection of traditional art material simply following of changes in modern art as a whole? Or are there other reasons why contemporary artists I’ve looked at so far tend not to paint/draw/sculpt ruination but instead photograph or video it, or make performance works in response - ways where elements of control, the artist’s 'ordering’ of the world around, (making, for example, images of the picturesque, as in the Romantic era), are less explicit in the work?
I started also considering the idea of 'immateriality’ in these contemporary media. Film can be described as more 'immaterial’ - time is needed to experience it, and as a viewer you are not aware of it as an object, but a replaying of changes images. The artist Cyprien Gaillard (see above) has many elements of immateriality in his practise. For example here, he sets off fire extinguishers - as a performance the 'work’ only lasts as long as the gas is visible, and after this is only accessible through the film. Gaillard also works with Land Art, happenings, and themes of ruination and time in alternative approaches to photography and print making. 'Immateriality’ in contemporary work such as Gaillard’s can include:
Time based media (video, sound) - doesn’t have a single fixed, stationary form.
Work which decays over time, never in a fixed state, only happening once, cannot buy or sell it.
Performative - cannot be experienced again in the same way, only accessible to an extent through documentation.
Works which are physically invisible - things outside of our perception (i.e. Robert Barry, above).
Non-figurative/realistic - something abstract, not depicting material reality.
A concept, an idea, or something imagined - exists only in the mind.
I was interested in exploring how immateriality could be related to ruination on a different level - our new contemporary awareness after the destructive changes of the last century. Christina Grammatikopoulou in 'Shades of the Immaterial’(whilst talking about Conceptual Art) mentions contemporary principles of “…destabilisation, opposed to harmony, control, power and capitalist exploitation” - this is ruination of ideology and the idea of order itself, as well as physical ruination. Gaillard’s practise is underpinned by his belief in entropy, a progression towards ultimate ruination and chaos. I was interested in questioning through my writing how his practice, and those of other artists today, was influenced by these new levels of contemporary ruination.