The Role of the Audience

The Role of the Audience

‘The last half a century has seen a shift in the way we judge an artwork’s success or impact. The audience’s reception, interpretation and in many cases participation are now of equal or greater interest than the artist’s intention and method of production. Art in this sense provides a respite in Western culture from passive consumption.’

                                                                                               

Within in this essay I will respond to the above quote concerning the role of the audience. First I will consider the assertion that the role of the audience has changed over the last fifty years and discuss how it has changed. I will use examples of artists who have shown consideration of the audience’s interaction in their work. Secondly I will look at possible reasons for why the role of the audience has changed. Here I will focus on the increasing use of art in new technologies and the ways that art is available to a wider audience.  I will consider how this has changed audience expectation and how artists have responded.

My study of Art, artists and the theory of Art from the last half century has led me to understand that there existed a gap between artist and audience; where interaction was non existent, where interpretation was limited and art itself was directed towards the enjoyment of a select few in the world: for the most part the privileged and wealthy. Within the last fifty years however, Art has broken away from the narrow boundaries of paint, canvas, stone or bronze and developed into many practices. These new media have opened the possibility of wider audience participation.

Within the last fifty years the barriers between art and audience (where the artist played the active role and the audience held the passive role as a mere recipient of the artist’s work) have been broken, establishing a closer artist-audience relationship. This includes both a greater awareness of appealing to the audience, and the artist considering the audience as the subject of the work. A clear example of this second type, where an artist has centered the work on the audience, is the artist Graciela Carnevale. Her approach in including audience participation is perhaps a very extreme example. Her 1968 work in Argentina, is a particularly dramatic example of how the audience has been looked at in terms of participating within the work. Her work consisted of preparing an empty room, with totally bare walls. The room had to be completely empty in order to achieve a neutral space for the work to take place. The audience, who were in fact visitors to the works opening, were led into the pre-prepared room and then unknowingly locked in. Rosario (1968) notes:

‘There is no possibility of escape, in fact the spectators have no choice; they are obliged, violently, to participate. Their positive or negative reaction is always a form of participation.’

Carnevale’s experiment forces the audience to interact, to become the work itself; the work becomes a study of human emotion and the reaction to the unexpected.

The role of the audience hasn’t been confined to torturous experiments; the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija creates comfortable environments rather than pressured ones. For example, he sets up temporary kitchens within art galleries and shares a meal with his audience. His work, like Carnevale, requires the audience to interact with each other. He differs however as he interacts with them instead of isolating them, creating an opportunity for conversation and an exchange of culture.

Audience interaction and participation seem to be regular features in today’s exhibitions. The clearest example of an exhibition utilising audience interaction and participation is Anthony Gormley’s ‘Blind Light’ exhibition. His works ‘Blind Light’ and ‘Event Horizon’ both change the traditional image of the work and the person viewing it by placing the viewer within the work (technically making them part of the work). Not only does Gormley change people’s ideas of the how the viewer interacts with his work but also how they understand ideas such as structures and perceive the world around them.

Of his work ‘Blind Light’ he is quoted as saying:

Architecture is supposed to be the location of security and certainty about where you are. It is supposed to protect you from the weather, from darkness, from uncertainty. Blind Light undermines all of that. You enter this interior space that is the equivalent of being on top of a mountain or at the bottom of the sea. It is very important for me that inside it you find the outside. Also you become the immersed figure in and endless ground, literally the subject of the work.

            (Hayward Gallery, 2007, Anthony Gormley, Exhibition Guide,)

Here he describes the thought process he uses to challenge the audience. He suggests that by challenging people’s perception of structure and its role, that the audience, in their unsettled state, experiences a feeling of solitude and isolation. When I went to the exhibition and stepped inside the glass structure I experienced how it limited my vision and altered other sensory perceptions. There was no smell or distinctive sounds, no clear images just sudden blurs coming and going in a dim haze from emerging passers-by to reassure you that there was something, although perhaps hidden in the mist. The work was a discovery of resolve, determination and personal control of fear. This fear was masked by the majority of my fellow audience by laughter.

In this example the work becomes not about the work but about the person inside the work, and it is here where the role of the audience is vital. With no audience the work is just a see-through box with mist inside of it. Yet as soon as a person steps inside the structure it stops being merely a structure in a gallery space, but a personal journey: a journey to make it to the other end.

Gormley’s work ‘Event Horizon’ explores the notion of the unknown and discovery, raising many questions that are relevant to the world today. For this reason, I suggest, the exhibition is unconfined by the walls of a gallery. ‘Event Horizon’ literally takes the audience out on to the roof and requires them to scan the rooftops for the pieces of the work. For me, the important thing about this particular work was how, and what, it makes you feel and understand. Leaving the gallery and standing on the roof, brings you unexpectedly back outside into the world; into the middle of London. The feeling of not being safe in a gallery but searching the world (the landscape of the city) is the whole point of ‘Event Horizon’ for me. You both discover Gormley’s figures standing on the nearby buildings, and are aware that there are other figures hidden and as such unknowable. Searching the landscape creates a feeling of the insignificance of one person standing in a city of over seven million. How many had I walked past, looked at but not seen?

My interpretation of the work differs from Gormley’s intention, yet my interpretation is my own and, as such, valid. When compared with ‘Blind Light’ I would say that Gormley’s intended effect on the audience is different but the way he positions them within his work is similar: in both works the audience is placed at the centre.

Gormley describes ‘Event Horizon’, in this way:

The title comes from cosmological physics and refers to the boundary of the observable universe. Because it is expanding, there are parts of the universe that will never be visible because their light will never reach us. I think that one of the implications of Event Horizon is that people will have to entertain an uncertainty about the works dimensions: the spread and number of bodies.

            Anthony Gormley, Exhibition Guide, Hayward Gallery, 2007

How has the role of the audience changed then, if in fact it has changed at all?

The role of audience depends on the particular artist we look at. Each artist has his or her own agenda: a particular question or viewpoint that they wish to explore. It is logical then that the audience and their role depend on how the artist sets out to explore their ideas. With the examples of Graciela Carnevale and Rirkrit Tiravanija, the use of the audience was central to the work as they focused on reaction and interaction: studies of the audience and behaviour. Two very different tests, two very different results: one of hospitality and freedom, the other, hostility and violence.

With Anthony Gormley I looked at two different pieces of work, both focused on the reaction of the audience but each explored a different aspect. Blind Light set out to question the audience perception of the environment, looking at how the audience reacted when challenged. In many ways Blind Light looks at the emotions of the audience: the personal experience. Event Horizon is a very different piece in the sense that it is not particularly meant to emotionally challenge, but to help the audience to understand that what is seen and understood is limited. The example Gormley uses is the expanding universe. He looks at what we, the audience, can see and shows that there is always more, unseen, unknowable and out of reach.

Not all art work, however, requires audience participation and interaction. There still exists art that maintains the traditional relationship between artist and audience. In this relationship there is an artist, their work and a viewer standing at a distance analysing and critiquing the work. This relationship requires limited interaction and audience participation. This type of art, the creation of a piece of work for interest, beauty or symbolism, will always have a place in all types of society. Art has not then changed but expanded.

Why has the role of the audience has changed?

Over the past fifty years changes throughout the world have occurred that have granted people in all areas of society greater freedoms; whether they be political freedoms, freedoms of sexuality, acceptances of different race, or changing opinions towards the opposite sex, they have all influenced the world in which we live and this has effectively expanded the art practices we know. There is now greater freedom to push boundaries and allow artists to take greater risks within their work than ever before.

However much art as a practice has changed, it doesn’t answer why the role of the audience has changed and why art has become open to all. At the start of the essay I wrote about how I judged art as traditionally available only to those who could afford to access it. In the last few decades a source of information has been granted accessible to most homes and has therefore brought information to new potential audiences: this is the internet.

The Internet is, as curator David Ross once said, an intimate space. In it we find the same tension between closeness and distance we found in early modern art. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Boris Groys suggested that the Internet did not, as many have claimed, accelerate reproduction to a dazzling high, but in fact brings back the original in art. This sudden implosion of the reproduction environment has in fact scattered the mass experience of art, and returned art interpretation to a more local, even personal level. Having left the shared space of the museum, we are at home or in our office, or maybe even alone at a computer in a museum. We are engaging, participating, creating, manipulating and being manipulated. (Bosma)

Here she states the effect that the internet has brought to art and how it replaces the gallery by bringing it into peoples homes which has made art itself become more personal than it has perhaps ever been before. Art now includes the exploration of different visual effects using new technologies, changing perception and persuasion. These media can include both moving, still and changing images requiring audience participation and interpretation.To a certain point, a combination of advances within technologies and the increase in its availability has meant, Bourriaud (2002:12) suggests, “a decline in ignorance”: bringing art to the home has emancipated and liberated the minds and opinions of the audience. This is why the role of the audience has changed over the past few decades. With the breaking of boundaries in terms of where art is seen and acknowledging the audience,  the opportunities for artists has changed and their relationship with their audience has become a closer, forcing the artist to consider the audience in his or her work in terms of  how their work will be received, perceived and in turn judged. With this, audience participation has become increasingly important.  

Conclusion

In my opinion, over the past fifty years the role of the audience has developed and expanded in line with advances in the use of new technologies. These technologies reach an ever-expanding audience and offer artists new methods of creating artistic effects and a greater variety of outlets. In the past few decades what we consider to be art has developed with new, contemporary materials as well as new ideas and forms of representation and with that a greater role for the audience has occurred. The audience’s reception, interpretation and, in many cases, participation is now taken into greater consideration and is seen in the art produced today. When we look at pieces of work such as Graciela Carnevale or, more recently, Anthony Gormley’s Blind Light exhibition, we see work that sets out to challenge the audience, not only mentally but emotionally: work that sets out to make them think and consider.

I have argued that the ‘traditional’ art produced in the past fifty years (and previously) still exists, it is still relevant and has an important social role either to capture beauty, interest or as a piece of symbolism. I have also argued that the new technologies have created new artistic methods, new audiences and new outlets for art. Art these days is not just used as a visual pleasure, it is also required to be able to persuade (when used for advertising or for book covers etc.). Art has moved on from a wholly static medium to an important part of the success of films, games and television. A greater understanding of the importance art has within this large range of media has lead to a greater appreciation by the audience.  It is this greater appreciation that has allowed artists to create more imaginative work in order to actively engage and challenge their audience. The audience is no longer considered as a passive consumer.

Bibliography

Bosma, J. Art as Experience: Meet the Active Audience www.context.furthertxt.org/?q=node/38 (Accessed 20/12/2008)

Bourriaud, N. (2002) Relational Aesthetics France: Les Presses du Reel

Hayward Gallery (2007) Anthony Gormley Exhibition Guide

Rosario (1968) Project for the Experimental Art Series  in Bishop, C.(ed.) (2006) Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art London: Whitechapel Ventures