| BORDER & LINE
(deutsche Version hier!)
Notes on a Rainer Junghanns Installation
I
The drawings of Rainer Junghanns all contain lines which act as the surrounding borders of image components or connections between individual image components. Sometimes they merely suggest something, and sometimes they are significant signposts. In some works these lines amount to completely free forms and in others they build up to form a structural network which then overrides any individual line. In this way, a texture with specific semantic and syntactic features extends over the entire surface of the work.
Allied to these drawings of recent years is another body of work where the original graphic line patterns are extended into three dimensional drawings and converted into woven wire or string creations. As part of this artistic and conceptual transition away from drawings to spatially constructed works, one development is the use of seismographic display cases, where a line represents the hint of a vibration or movement. The act of sealing off the image inside a wooden enclosure and locking it away behind a sheet of glass has its own aesthetic validity as an intellectual statement relating to the content. Equally, the specific material quality of these wooden frames or display case parts and the assembly style of their distribution is an essential aesthetic feature of these works.
Colour is kept to an absolute minimum. However, Junghanns never uses pure white or pure black – colour is not given symbolic overtones in his work, such as the embodiment of absolute purity or innocence on the one hand set against the complete negation of it on the other. The contrasting effect of colour as a signalling device is not a priority in the development of an image, but, as before, it is the physical quality of the materials bearing the colour which is paramount.
II
The spatial Installation "Border & Line" in the large exhibition room of the Centre of Contemporary Art in Christchurch, New Zealand contains all the above mentioned artistic features of Rainer Junghanns´ drawings and objects: lines are laid out in the room, in the form of a 20m long band of salt and exactly parallel to it, an equally long band of coal lumps, each as wide as the pattern of the floor panels (12 inches, or approx. 30cm).
The coarse granulated salt is not completely white and the coal has a charcoal grey sheen. The same sensitivity towards materials is articulated through the components of these lines as in the drawings and objects. At the same time, these lines are essential elements of the semantic an syntactic textures in the room, with light and sound building further components. Junghanns has designed special modules to make this all technically possible.
As in the case of his work with "finds", where these components have a certain interconnecting influence on one another, he also achieves a particularly incisive impact with the "Border & Line" installation. He uses the principle that sensors sound out a room and what they find materializes into something discernible which can be communicated to others.
It makes no difference whether this sensory element is initiated by the use of technology or has a purely physiological character i.e. the inherent sensual qualities of certain things or materials that determine the "way they are" become discernible in both the process and product of the artistic work (and its reception by others).
For beneath the salt and coal bands, light pads have been installed. The taped sound of an ocean wave near the New Zealand coast can be heard through the loudspeaker. This sound, acting as the articulation of the elemental force of nature, activates the light pad in the salt band. A movement detector registers the viewer´s presence exactly halfway across the room, i.e. 10 meters in, which then illuminates the light pad under the coal band, while at the same time the light pad with the Nietzsche text "Ich" [="I"] is illuminated on the back wall. The closer the viewer approaches the wall, the easier the written text becomes to read. In the actual, structural room, an acoustic room all of its own is simultaneously created. From the second loudspeaker, the recitation of this Nietzsche poem with song is heard increasingly louder, and, depending on the position of the viewer in the room, takes over from the other sound: sound gives way to speech.
The visual and acoustic creation of a feedback loop presupposes the willingness of the viewer to overstep certain lines and limits within the room. Only then can the movement detector be activated and the process of light and sound described above can begin. Only then can the (German) text be clearly received audiovisually. It is only then, by viewing it at close quarters, that the remaining images on the wall are revealed, i.e. a series of Polaroid shots of drawings on an grey and black background.
As an interactive installation, this room setup embroils the visitor in a space-time discourse. Only when the viewer gives the installation more than a fleeting and passive glance from the entrance way, and actually becomes a participant in the centre of the room, do the semantic textures reveal themselves over many different sensory levels.
III
The lines leave a trail which has to be followed, the whole room needs to be explored and time taken to let the effect of what happens be absorbed, so that this installation can become a realm of new awareness. There is certainly a deliberate religions quality involved here. The back wall with the two loud speakers and light pad is set up like an altar where the Word is revealed. The illumination of the text is reminiscent of sheet lightning, i.e. it is a light picture in the true sense of the word. It is able to draw the viewer so intently that this image appears to become independent of the text.
This borders on elemental, archaic imagery, with the kind of intensity which preceded written languages in the history of civilization and culture. According to biblical tradition, it was the "word" that was there at the beginning, and in the history of religion it established itself over the image which became taboo ("thou shalt not make... false images?). However, it was really the graphicness of a totem or a fetish which was there in the beginning as the embodiment of a fateful power, and the later monotheistic religious taboo on images was directed against just such graphic qualities.
However, even people in the modern word occasionally adhere to the archaic principle that pictures have magical powers, and, even in the case of technologically devised images, attempt to manipulte and override what is actually depicted to control reality through the image.
In the case of this installation, personal involvement guarantees some control over events and some say in the sound/language and light/image. The ancient origins of salt and coal on the one hand and the technological construction of a light and sound module governed by movement on the other, are by no means irreconcilable opposites.
The things that technology allows us to perceive with the innovation and addition of electrical energy, (which in any case only take proper shape once our own human energy is supplied in the form of movement), are inherent in the culturally encoded, historical significance of salt (water – sound of the ocean wave) and coal (earth – bearer of energy).
Salt was sacred in many cultures and, along with bread, is still today an essential part of a ritual welcoming ceremony in Eastern Europe. It was one of the most important goods traded on the old caravan and sea routes, and attracted heavy customs duties and taxes during the Middle Ages, because it was so highly regarded. Coal, the fuel generating warmth and light, used to be nicknamed "black gold". The industrialists of the coal and steel age had it to thank for their prosperity.
People have a special psychological-existential relationship to the essential elements of water and light (sun, fire) and to the tings the earth produces. This relationship goes well beyond standard rationalistic notions to a shared world view. So there is an underlying allegorical element to this installation, not only in the Nietzsche text ("...everything I touch turns into light; everything I leave behind turns into coal..."), but also in the fact that the light pad for the coal and the one on the wall only become visible when activated by the movement of the viewer. Equally, the placement of the other components is not complemented by further lighting as in conventional exhibitions. Instead they hang in exactly the position where the activated installation causes the light to fall.
Everything the earth devours and later turns into coal, sinks into a realm of darkness, which was always an underworld full of demons, unruly and untamed destructive powers in the old mythologies and fairy tales. Set against these images are their counterparts with ethical and ideological demands that man might transcend onto a higher plane, in cathedrals reaching heavenward, or later in the social emancipation of "brother, up towards the sun, freedom... to the light". The protagonists of social progress also used a quite archaic, vivid imagery with that kind of "above and below" dichotomy as the modern equivalent of medieval heaven and hell images.
In this installation lines are used as a visual guide to spatial and intellectual orientation, in a direct and a figurative sense. The realm of new awareness knows no limitations that would set territorial boundaries, but it is a realm which is only open to those who are prepared to put some of their own effort into reaching a new awareness.
Jürgen Raap
Translation: Sue McRae
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