In the last quarter of the twentieth century, art evolved into a wide range of practices in response to the changing social, cultural and environmental conditions. These changes are reflected in the plurality and scope of art forms, media and in subjects of artistic activity.
Society has developed in such ways that artists have become increasingly aware of the concerns this development has brought about. Their responses have revived the original concern of the avant-garde with socio-political issues. Art, yet again, addresses life, but this time on an unprecedented level. It could be said that art has been undergoing a process of democratisation that encourages plurality.
Hybridity, Multi Media and Art As Multi-Sensory Experience
This plurality has manifested itself in many layers. A diversity of a range of art forms has not only co-existed but has often merged into new hybrid forms. New advances in technology introduced new media, thereby prompting a move away from traditional genres of painting and sculpture.
As these new media have been explored, so have the processes of production and reception. One of the principal features has been the introduction of perceptual and temporal modalities as art works became multi-sensory experiences engaging vision, sound, motion, light and other senses over a duration of time. This new mode of perception extendes to the viewer who is now required to actively participate.
Video Art: Annika Ströhm’s Summer 9
An obvious art form that engages almost all senses at the same time and over a duration of time is, of course, video. Watching the Swedish artist and musician Annika Ströhm’s video Summer 96’affects the viewer’s senses almost effortlessly.
The young woman in the video sings, dances, and moves about aimlessly inside the country summer house and its surrounding garden. Gentle rhythm and rolling melody engage the spectator who, almost involuntarily, connects with the girl by humming along and moving to the sound. The connection between the woman and the viewer is established as she looks into the camera, and even a sort of intimacy is implied as the camera offers an odd close-up.
But the flow of sound and motion are interrupted by amateurish camera work with its shaky shots and awkward angles, and by changes in tune of songs and mood of the object. Also, the seeming intimate connection between the girl and the viewer is revealed as non-existent as the viewer continues watching her. There is something in the manner of her behaviour that makes us realize that although she is performing or perhaps role-playing, her performance is not meant for us.
Active Audience
Such ambiguity creates tension as it plays on the viewer’s expectations of conventional narrative structure and the notion of gradual familiarization, even bonding, with the character. For all its simplicity, video work like this leaves the viewer with more questions in the end than a ‘proper’ film. The implication for the consumer of contemporary art is that he has to reflect and think outside the box to be able to construct a meaning of the work.
Human Interest
In Summer 96’, figure is at the centre of the work. Return to figuration after the reign of abstract art and then conceptual art of the preceding periods is another important feature of art after 1975. Figure and the way it is presented in Annika Ströhm’s video testify to the renewed interest in a human, as the object and the subject, and his or her relationship with the world.
Sources:
Book 4: Themes in Contemporary Art, edited by Gill Perry and Paul Wood, Yale University Press, 2004
DVD 2, Video 5, Film and Video Art Compilation, Band 11, Art of the twentieth century, The Open University
Zuzana Minarikova - I live in London and work in publishing in Bloomsbury which is an exciting part of London, full of museums, galleries, bookshops and ...
