Delphine Richer
About Untitled II, interactive installation
"Untitled II" is an interactive installation, visually very simple: in a dark space, you only see a square of light projected on the floor by a theatre spotlight. As an audience, depending on your temper, you can think that is not interesting and leave the space or feel there is probably more to discover and stay. If you start to play with the light, you will understand that is actually a switch: when your hand (or your body) is under the light, a printed text is lighted on the wall; but if you move to the text to read it, the light immediately switch off. You must be under the light to light the text which is too far to be read from your place. You could feel annoyed by this situation or curious. To read the text, you still have a possibility: to cooperate with someone else and share the roles... Then every scenarios of organisations are possible.
About the text.
Depending on the authorization of the editor, I would use an extract from Un hangar, à l’ouest (notes) by Bernard-Marie Koltès or an other text which I have written myself. In both cases the text is talking about the happening situation inside the artwork (by poetic, symbolic or literal ways).
Text I
Extract from Un hangar, à l’ouest (notes) by Bernard-Marie Koltès
Text II
"The motivations that led me to write this piece were so numerous that they finally become the main difficulty in writing it. Imagine that one morning, in this hangar, you witness two simultaneous events; on the one hand, the day that rises, in a way so strange, so unnatural, slipping into every hole in the metal sheet, leaving parts in the shadow and modifying that shadow, in short, like a love relationship between the light and an object that resists, and you say: This is what I want to tell. And then at the same time, you listen to a dialogue between a mature man, worried, nervous who came there to look for some drug or something else, with a big guy who likes to terrorize him and who, maybe will finally hit him for real, and you say: this is the meeting I want to tell. And then, very quickly, you understand that the two events are indivisible, that they are a single event according to two points of view. Then, comes the moment where it is necessary to choose between the two, or more exactly: what is the story that we will put on the front of the stage and what other will become decor. And it is not necessarily the dawn that will become decor. "
He is waiting, probably immobile, the darkness stirring up his curiosity towards the object of my reading... This pretext of situation, this point of tension that we can use to play. How long can I "abuse" his patience? What would be his signs of impatience? After having access to the text, would he do the same like me? Would he also play with this power or would the discomfort be too strong? Perhaps all of this would have no kind of importance to him or perhaps would he be disappointed with the content of the piece... Don't we expect that the artist brings us the artwork instead of creating a situation? Don't we expect that he gives us something to see rather than showing us ourselves? Do I feel manipulated or free to influence the artwork by my behaviour? In any case, our actions determine it, whether I leave or stay, whether the other waits or leaves, whether we speak or keep silence, whether someone else intervenes or not...
I arrived the first but embarrassed to ask for this service, I volunteered to enlighten first. Therefore, I wait my turn after a brief full of innuendos organization.
They told me to wait behind the one who "takes and gives the light". I waited my turn...
We were four people. We broken up the rules by reading the text loudly. Finally, there is nothing to see, just the situation and its possibilities. The artwork is actually what is happening.
He entered alone, saw the square of light on the floor, wondering what it could mean... just one more square? He left without having any contact with other.
Facing his back, I could observe without any shame. His posture, his build, his gestures. I was under the spotlight, like on stage, but my place was an observatory.
By Delphine Richer