joiner mellowness: MIT show argues for art as an inquiry into the world

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

MIT show argues for art as an inquiry into the world

Will Ferguson, reporter

(Image: Rashid Johnson/Electric Universe, 2009)

At times the distinction between scientific inquiry and artistic experimentation is clear, the distance vast. At other moments the edges are fuzzy, and it is nearly impossible to disentangle the two. Yet wherever we draw the line between science and art, a close look at human history reveals common roots in abstract ideas and speculation.

Both disciplines revel in addressing the mysteries of a strange world, concludes Jo?o Ribas, curator of a new exhibition dedicated to art as a form of inquiry that complements, amends and even expands upon the explanations offered by science. On display at the MIT List Visual Art Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, In the Holocene explores the work of artists traversing the 19th to 21st centuries, and makes a convincing case for art as an account of the world in and of itself.

To build his case, Ribas blends a unique amalgam of writings, film, photographic prints and abstract representations, including Max Frisch?s 1980 novella Man in the Holocene, by which the exhibition?s name was inspired. The Holocene is the period from the last ice age to the present, and the story is about an ageing narrator who gathers passages of literature, preserving what human knowledge his village has as a flood threatens to destroy it.

Two of the more compelling works included in the exhibition were created by film-maker Germaine Kruip and the late philosopher Roger Caillois.

Kruip?s film Aesthetics as a Way of Survival documents the phenomenon of the bowerbird. As you learn in the short film, males of the species arrange coloured objects to woo their female counterparts, indicating the important role of aesthetics in evolution.

Meanwhile, Caillois?s 1963 book Le Mim?tisme Animal shows us that mimicry does not always confer an evolutionary advantage. The book, on display with an exhibition print, gives an account of Phylliidae insects, which look like leaves - a useful disguise - but have the unfortunate tendency to engage in cannibalism when they mistake each other for food.

From different points of view, both works clearly illustrate that the natural world is not always as straightforward and discernable as many left-brained readers might be inclined to believe.

Yet while most of the works give much to mull over, some of the pieces left me drawing a blank. Even with the explanation included in the programme, which points out the impact that the unpredictable volcano Vesuvius has had on science and art in general in western Italy, Rosa Barba?s film The Empirical Effect seems misplaced among the other works. It takes a viewer from an observatory atop Vesuvius, packed full of people, goats, scientific-looking equipment and a giant floor map of Italy, to a series of shots portraying life in the surrounding urban areas. While the profound impact of the volcano on the culture and lives of the local inhabitants is evident, the film doesn?t seem to add anything to the larger exploration of the ways in which art pushes beyond the boundaries of science.

But in spite of this, as a whole, the exhibit is well worth the visit, illuminating a deeply influential - perhaps even symbiotic - relationship between art and science throughout their evolution.

After delving into the past, Ribas rounds things out with works that provide a speculative glimpse of a future after humanity. Trevor Paglen?s photographic print The Clarke Belt illustrates dead communications and surveillance spacecraft perpetually orbiting above the equator. Like it or not, these satellites will be humanity?s legacy until the sun exhausts its nuclear fuel and expands to swallow them and the Earth alike in a few billion years.

Ribas says art is a form of inquiry that may help us to ponder this future in a way that science cannot. ?It is an open question I want to pose but don?t think to have the answer to,? he says. ?I think what is really interesting to explore is to what extent one frees the other.?

In the Holocene runs at the MIT List Visual Arts Center until 6 January.