Project Room SouthA hanging, wax ceiling is hung in a certain area of the exhibition place. Daylight travels through it, illuminates it and creates shadows. A two, three or four dimensional field appears between the wax ceiling and the reflections of the shadows on the walls or on the floor.The field also consists of the "void", its volume (still in the process of being) defined. This part of the field and the shadows behave as material elements of the art work. "Space is the basic material of my work" (Šušteršič). The author "materialises" the space. The void is treated as a move towards the objectification of nothingness. The emptiness of the field can be affected by the spectator's presence. The spectator changes the image of the work, and introduces activity. At the same time, the intervention affects the spectator's way of moving in those places where the hanging ceiling is lower than the participant or viewer's height. The participates in the field when he/she is beneath the suspended ceiling or when he/she causes shadows of his/her own figure in the field.
STUDIO 016The spectator's activity is even higher in the "Studio 016". The exhibition place, work room no. 016 on Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten has two parts, one big and one small. Šušteršič decreases the height of the location with the use of a raised floor. The floor is elevated from the entrance at an angle, and the spectator immediately becomes aware of this "empty" place when he, she enters "Studio 016" since the incorporated floor is shifted away from the wall. The experience of walking also forewarns of the emptiness under the floor.The non-material element, the sound, is foreseen in both parts of the room. In the first (the larger one) the spectator or the participant activates, in certain places, the sound of synthesised music. The sound travels through the space. In the second, smaller part two ear-phones are suspended. The visitor can decide not only to observe the activities in the bigger area, but also to listen to the recorded sound of walking. From the point of view of sound, the rooms are interactive: when the spectator activates the sounds in the first room, the recorded walking sounds in the other room are temporarily interrupted with a "noise" of different nature. The spectator is an observer and at the same time a performer. The audiences in the first and in the second room have different views and different experiences. They can of course swap places at any moment, but they always remain in confrontation to each other. The sound recording of the walking can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly when the spectator listens to the sound of footsteps as the action of an unknown person, and secondly when he reads a note saying that the walking was recorded while Šušteršič walked from the Academy entrance to her studio. The nature of the floor, materials (metal, concrete and wood etc.) change from room to room in the school, which is why the recorded sound "material" also changes. It seems that the sound of footsteps also acquires a physical function. It can cause an association with the person who moves. Walking is a process of transportation through the space. If artists who declared walking as artistic act provokes the idea that walking is on its way towards objectivisation as an art work, then Šušteršič also draws our attention to specific characteristics of the material used in the construction of the building in which her exhibition takes place. Her intervention erases the borders of the physically limited studio and expands it "mentally" with the use of sound into the area of the whole academy. By this the site-specificity of the work increases, if indeed it is possible to "measure" it. The recorded material can be seen as an experiment to implant the memory into the art object. The memory of the action of walking which needed to take place in order for the sound to be recorded. The past of the recorded action and the present when the visitors walk into the room, therefore enter into confrontation. By not moving the objects into different exhibition places Šušteršič enables the material to develop. She "recycled" the wax used for the suspended ceiling, transformed it into wax bricks and used them again for independent objects and structures in new spaces. The wax bears the memory of time, by which it changes its colour and transparency, and at the same time the memory of the object in which it used to exist. The process of the transformation of the wax is itself recorded on video by the author, and is occasionally exhibited together with her art objects. Šušteršič and Wilson investigate the problems of perception of space as work of art. The art works are in a state of metamorphosis. Even when we have already conquered and familiarised ourselves with the given situation, we always come across new experiences of the object.
The Art Work and the WordThe experience of effects is of primary importance. My words do not analyse or simulate the work; it remains independent of words.I can no longer return into "Studio 016" or to "Project Room South". I entered once more "20:50" and it was still able to affect me while "all the words are nothing" (Shakespeare, Othello).
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