Be Here (and There) Now: The Spatial Dynamics of Screen-Reliant Installation Art

• Published in: Art journal (New York. 1960) Vol. 66; no. 3; pp. 20 - 33
• Main Author: Mondloch, Kate
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Taylor & Francis 01.09.2007; College Art Association, Inc
• Subjects: Art criticism; Art exhibits; Art galleries & museums; Art history; Duchamp, Marcel (1887-1968); Space; Table tennis; Television sets; New York
• ISSN: 0004-3249; 2325-5307
• DOI: 10.1080/00043249.2007.10791263

"A screen is a barrier," wrote the philosopher Stanley Cavell in 1971. "What does the silver screen screen? It screens me from the world it holds-that is, screens its existence from me." 1 Cavell was writing of the cinema, but his words are historically piquant for art criticism. Indeed, many critics have pointed to a "filmic turn" in recent artistic production, some going so far as to portray this as a crisis for art criticism and history. Such was the symptomatic claim of a roundtable discussion published in October magazine in Spring 2003, whose participants warned: "We are now witnessing an intense relativization of the field of the art institution, the art critics, and the art historian by film history, cinema history, film theory." 2 At the same time, film history and theory have proven inadequate to understanding media installations. These gallery-based works are not so much a wholesale defection from the concerns and institutions specific to visual art as they are a provocative fusion of filmic-cinematic and sculptural concerns.