Neophytos Christou, Dennis Sharp, 2021

Dialogues between culture, film, sound and space through The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image at The StoreX

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The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image has been a collaboration between The Vinyl Factory and the Hayward Gallery, who staged their first off-site show, featuring works by artists Stan Douglas, Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller, Rachel Rose, Cyprien Gaillard and Kendrick Lamar-collaborator Kahlil Joseph. However, this is by no means a mere video art show. It brings to the foreground cultural identities, contemporary anxieties and the role of the DJ as a cultural agent, while revisiting the interrelation of moving image, sound and space.

The Infinite Mix presents itself as a journey where voyagers are invited into an experiential landscape which feels at once part of the city, the world and neither. Through a maze of multi-screen installations, holograms and 3D projections, the role of sound in contemporary video, is explored through daring superimpositions of image, space and sound, using new and reworked music by Kendrick Lamar, Aretha Franklin, Sonic Youth, and others. The labyrinthine procession of spaces, the blurred boundaries between what is and what is not part of the show, the sensory-focused exhibition ‘rooms’ and oscillation between former and latter, become extremely impactful tools, whereby the spectator begins to operate in an artificial cultural time, elaborated within this narrative. Time suspension and constant dislocation become the parameters which enable user-engagement as the site transforms to one of active meaning making.

The informality of the spaces, the enigmatic films and sounds, all amalgamate to the construction of a deeply immersive, sensory universe which washes over the audience and provokes constant questioning on the works of art and both their meaning and evocative impact. Conscious or subconscious decisions of the spectator, on where attention is directed, condition him as ‘filter or mixer’, and ‘The Infinite Mix’ asserts its place in time by rendering the viewers as ‘already intelligent, engaged and potentially subversive consumers of art works’1 following, somewhat, the model of the ‘distracted consumption of the always-on infinite scroll economy of the internet’2.

The ‘institution of art’ understood as established sites for the organized presentation and consumption of art, functions as a ‘productive and distributive apparatus’ 3 within a ‘totally administered society’4 and by extension part of a broader understanding of the art market. Buren’s practice of institutional critique locates the institution’s impact as a site of active meaning making, where the museum or gallery ‘makes its 'mark,' imposes its 'frame'... on everything that is exhibited in it, in a deep and indelible way,’5 and it does so since what is shown ‘is only considered and produced in view of being set in it.’ 6 In our post Y2K era, however, the lines between modes and purposes of production become more complex; with the inclusion of Kahlil Joseph’s short film, (despite the disillusioning ‘freedom’ of the media of film and sound from such conditions,) the inherently commercial purposes of the film’s production7 somewhat remain within territories of the instrumentalization of art and its ethical premises by economic and political interests, reminiscing Walter Benjamin’s aestheticization of politics. The institutionalization of art does not merely depend ‘on its location in the physical frame of an institution, but in conceptual or perceptual frames’,8 a prevalent mechanism which internalizes the institution to the individual. As Fraser puts it ‘the institution is inside of us, and we can't get outside of ourselves.’9 If art as an institution constantly revises and transforms itself, then in its transgressive moments the shifting ‘nature of aesthetic experience, the value of art, and the role of the spectator’ 10 become more visible. ‘The Infinite Mix’ brings forth concerns around such issues, which arguably take on new dimensions in the ever-shifting dialogue between works of art, curation, space and spectator. It is a departure from the white cube gallery’s detached realm, the isolation of individuals from quotidian concerns, yet an aspect of it survives in its post-modern street format, which enables and enhances the observers’ submersion in utter dedication of aesthetic appreciation. However, the ten works brought together under Ralph Rugoff’s curation, accomplish to form a composition which breaks away from linear narratives. The space is transformed into a sequential experience and the spectator is upfronted by cultural histories, issues and realities far beyond their immediate context, while still forming a connection between viewer – subject – space.

Jonathan P. Watts, ‘The Infinite Mix’, Frieze, Issue 184, [Online Source: Oct 2016] Ibid.

3 Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1984), p.22 4 Andrea Fraser, ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’, Art Forum, (New York: September 2005), p.5 5 Daniel Buren, ‘The Function of the Museum’, in Museums by Artists, ed. A, A. Bronson and Peggy, p.58 6 Ibid., p.58 7 Part of Kendrick Lamar’s performance for Kanye West’s Tour 8 Fraser, p.4 9 Ibid.

10 Sarah Hegenbart, ‘The Participatory Art Museum: Approached from a Philosophical Perspective’ in ‘Philosophy and Museums: Essays on the Philosophy of Museums’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 79, (Cambridge University Press: 2016), p.322 1 2

The silver lining, however, in this case perhaps lies in the dissolution of architecture into a series of rooms, transitory spaces, a series of materialities, components and experiences in a mashup, collage-like composition where individual elements are transformed into new ‘meaningful complexities’11. No distinctions between space and works, no imposed frames but rather a transformation of space through the works and, at a larger scale, all the works and spaces into a composition. Revisited ideas of shared public space echo Cedric Price’s ‘Fun Palace’ ambitions where different pacings and forms of leisure and cognition are explored through self-participation, social observation and interconnection to all other realities beyond site boundaries. The paradoxical life occurrences taking place outside its walls transcend the physical space, projected in a suspended time realm.

In the wake of a new era in the brutalist building’s life, the spectators experience a meta-life transformation, an urban phenomenon where the bare-naked state of its architecture reveals its entropic character. Through the informality and ‘honesty’ retained, it manages to lend itself as a perfect site for the constructed hypnotic journey.

From the gallery ‘rooms’, to the car park, to the staircase, to the almost hauntingly vacant transitory spaces one may observe a series of transformations in the essence of these spaces; they become vehicles of speculation and dislocation but at the same time their own meaning is altered by consequence. They become interior landscapes inextricably weaved into the fabric of ‘The Infinite Mix’ whose tittle may even suggest that this is also an intention of the exhibition. Thresholds brining in the urban fabric unsettle and reconnect the constructed narrative to the outside world. Through the café and retail space, even though elements of dislocation and surprise still hold the narrative together, the more commercial and economic susceptibility of the show may become more visible with the promotion of exhibition products in such areas.

The blurring of the boundaries seems to be a recurring theme in multiple aspects of the ‘The Infinite Mix’. The micro and the macro are collapsed and magnified at the same time, the shifting scales and their superimposition stem in stories such as Rachel Rose’s Astronauts where the galactic, the universal and the human become interchangeable components, overlapping scales, times and places. No fixed beginning or ending, but fluid experiences implicitly address our own mortality, located in alternate points of time and space, within a more expansive cycle of operations and fabric of time. Places and times outside ourselves deepen the spectrum of what is seen and what is perceived, as the viewers become tiny sensors registering the shifts and juxtapositions of the composition, finding new interpretations in our reading of the world.

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Human susceptibilities are put into question, allowing our very human nature to be seen as bare, naked, incomplete and futile to so many variables. ‘The Infinite Mix’ in this aspect manages to create yet another juxtaposition where the composition of different works creates a landscape of shifting scales which in turn render visible the irrationality of humanity’s own dispositions; as a component that truly unites us, but also as the factor that brings about our greatest failures, divisions and destructions. Is this deconditioning and detachment an exploration of the medium’s capacities via varying frequencies of light and sound or is it an attempt to stir a different questioning?

Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky, (Perspecta Vol.8, Yale School of Architecture: 1963), p.45-54 11

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From the middle floor, down a couple of flights of the decaying staircase and through a set of utility doors below a Fire Exit sign, one finds himself out of the building, into the Car Park. Uncertainty. Dislocated, with all senses apprehended, going back and forth, or waiting for other participants to show themselves, the voyagers are slowly headed into the final space of the exhibition. Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife and Ammonite Dub, a 3D film and audio installation that break away from all linearity and unfold a visual phantasmagoria, from Rodin’s dynamite-damaged sculpture Le Penseur outside the Cleveland Museum of Art, to a series of violently swaying windblown trees, to a firework delirium above Berlin’s Olympiastadion. The musical accompaniment is a dub remix of Alton Ellis’s 1970 politically charged Jamaican classic ‘A Black Man’s World’ featuring a loop of the phrase ‘I was born a loser’ and the 1971 remake ‘Black Man’s Pride’ with a looping ‘I was born a winner’. The composition asserts urban, architectural and natural landscapes charged with embedded memories of traumatic historical events. The social concerns of the work frame events and memories into our built environment, shadows of the manifestations of socio-political phenomena. The bombing of the Rodin sculpture by The Weather Underground12, in support of Black Power and in demonstration against the Vietnam war, juxtaposed with the ‘riotous swaying’ of windblown Hollywood Junipers, or Juniperus chinesis, an asian ‘foreign’ element. A firework frenzy above the Nazi-built stadium, where African-American Jesse Owens won 4 gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games, set against a German oak tree back in Cleveland, Hitler’s gift to the African-American gold-medallist, standing in the courtyard of the athlete’s former high school.

The place where Owens faced no better life, even after his ground-breaking achievements; what awaited him was immense difficulty in securing a means of living and a complete neglection by President Roosevelt to congratulate or

A radical left militant organisation active in the 1960-1970s, with political goal to create a revolutionary party to overthrow American Imperialism. Anti-imperialist and anti-racist, allied with the Black Liberation Army and the Black Panther Party.

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invite him to the White House. The artist’s ‘multi-layered tapestry’13, a visual ‘tour-de-force’14 of manmade objects, buildings and trees, amalgamates to a complex history of racism, revolution and resistance in both the US and Germany.

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The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image, Artsy [Online Source: 2016] https://www.artsy.net/show/hayward-galleryat-southbank-centre-the-infinite-mix-contemporary-sound-and-video/info 14 Ibid.

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The theme of black representation touched upon throughout the exhibition from Cecilia Bengolea and Jeremy Deller’s Bom Bom’s Dream, to Stan Douglas’s Luanda Kinshasa, to Kahlil Joseph – Kendrick Lamar’s m.A.A.d, to Gaillard’s Nightlife, however only two out of the ten artists are of African lineage. The general approach and attention to this matter and aspects of the work seems rather lacking and not un-problematic. In the most recent events comprising the BLM15 movement, the premises and ethical aspects of the work acquire a new relevance and potential for further progress in the institution’s direction.

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Black Lives Matter Movement, decentralized political and social movement advocating for non-violent civil disobedience in protest against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people. Founded 2013.

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Nightlife forms an exemplary paradigm of the exploratory character the exhibition takes on in investigating the potentials of these multi-media compositions. The ‘vacillating volume and reverb of the film’s dub soundtrack conjures a shifting sonic space that mirrors the ghostly materiality of the film’s 3D visuals.’16 Our notions of the staged and the real are mixed into evocative compositions which delve into the capacities of the medium to engage spectators in cultural histories, politics and poetics of film, performance and music. Breaking away from linearity, more experiential, musical structures are put forth, presenting us with a potential internalisation of the infinite mix by institutions and the initiation of greater discourse around politics of music and the DJ as a cultural agent. Beyond these concerns, Gaillard’s work manages to bring the multiplicity of topics touched upon in ‘The Infinite Mix’ together, as cultural histories are confronted by the entropic character of his framed landscapes, mirrored at the same time in the decaying space of display, a time-worn open car park where the city’s pulse is felt closer, perceptually reprojecting its topics back into the world and suggesting a new dialogue between setting, sense of place and themes and theoretical preconditions of the work. The adjacency of ‘The Infinite Mix’ to life beyond its walls feels more palpable than ever, where the continuous mixing of cultural identities, histories, music and social phenomena manifest in the most destabilizing of relationships.

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The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image, Cyprien Gaillard Nightlife 2015 [Online Source: 2016] https://theinfinitemix.com/ 16

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Illustrations

Figure 1: Author’s Photograph of Ugo Rodione’s THANX 4 NOTHING, 2016 Figure 2: Author’s Photograph of Ugo Rodione’s THANX 4 NOTHING, 2016 Figure 3 Author’s Photograph of Ugo Rodione’s THANX 4 NOTHING, 2016 Figure 4: Author’s Photograph of Store X hermetic transitory space – part of the exhibition, 2016 Figure 5: Author’s Photograph of Store X hermetic transitory space – part of the exhibition, 2016 Figure 6: Rachel Rose Everything and More, Installation Image 2015 [Online Source: The Guardian], https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/07/theinfinite-mix-review-store-hayward Figure 7: Rachel Rose Everything and More, Installation Image, 2015 [Online Source: Dazed], https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/gallery/22641/9/theinfinite-mix-installation-images Figure 8: Rachel Rose Everything and More, Installation Image 2015 [Online Source: The Guardian], https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/07/theinfinite-mix-review-store-hayward Figure 9: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - OPERA (QM.15) (2016) Installation Photograph, [Online Source: Delvenhadl Martin Architects], http://www.dmarchitects.co.uk/projects/view/the-infinite-mix Figure 10: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - OPERA (QM.15) (2016) Installation Photograph, [Online Source: Delvenhadl Martin Architects], http://www.dmarchitects.co.uk/projects/view/the-infinite-mix Figure 11: Author’s Photograph of Store X Car Park Space – part of the exhibition, 2016 Figure 12: Author’s Photograph of Store X Car Park Space – part of the exhibition, 2016 Figure 13: Shift International Online Magazine, Store X Staircase Photograph, [Online Source], http://www.shift.jp.org/en/archives/2016/12/the-infinitemix.html/2/ Figure 14: What Happens In Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife, Public Delivery Magazine, [Online Source: 2016], https://publicdelivery.org/cyprien-gaillard-nightlife/ Figure 15: What Happens In Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife, Public Delivery Magazine, [Online Source: 2016], https://publicdelivery.org/cyprien-gaillard-nightlife/ Figure 16: What Happens In Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife, Public Delivery Magazine, [Online Source: 2016], https://publicdelivery.org/cyprien-gaillard-nightlife/ Figure 17: What Happens In Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife, Public Delivery Magazine, [Online Source: 2016], https://publicdelivery.org/cyprien-gaillard-nightlife/ Figure 18: What Happens In Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife, Public Delivery Magazine, [Online Source: 2016], https://publicdelivery.org/cyprien-gaillard-nightlife/ Figure 19: The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image, Kahlil Joseph’s m.A.A.d 2014, [Online Source: 2016] https://theinfinitemix.com/ Figure 20: The Infinite Mix: Contemporary Sound and Image, Cameron Jamie’s Massage the History 2007-9, [Online Source: 2016] https://theinfinitemix.com/ Figure 21: m.A.A.d 2014 Installation Photograph, Bernier/ Eliades, Art Basel 2016, [Online Source], https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/39159/KahlilJoseph-m-A-A-d Figure 22: m.A.A.d 2014 Installation Photograph, Bernier/ Eliades, Art Basel 2016, [Online Source], https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/39159/KahlilJoseph-m-A-A-d Figure 23: Author’s Photograph of Rachel Rose Everything and More, Installation Image 2016 Figure 24: Author’s Photograph of Rachel Rose Everything and More, Installation Image 2016 Figure 25: Author’s Photograph of Rachel Rose Everything and More, Installation Image 2016