Janet Cardiff A Survey of Works, including Collaborations with George Bures Miller May 25 to Sept. 8, 2002 Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal Paradise Institute June 28 to Sept. 2, 2002 National Gallery of Canada
This mid-career survey of work by Janet Cardiff and her collaborator/husband George Bures Miller was substantially put together by P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York with Carolyn Christov-Barargiev. It comes on the heels of the artists' stunning success as Canada's representatives at the Venice Biennale (the art-world's equivalent to the academy awards), where they received one of three special jury awards for Paradise Institute.
Immerse yourself in Forty-Part Motet: a reworking of Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, 1575 (2001). Forty large speakers, propped up on stands (each is roughly mouth-height), are installed around the circumference of a large white cube. (Its original installation under the fan vaults of the reconstructed Rideau Street convent chapel at the National Gallery in Ottawa afforded far more drama.) Apparently unscripted sounds can be heard of the choir members preparing themselves for performance. They exercise their voices, make small talk and clear their throats. Mildly unnerving: some of these sounds may be coming from the other visitors in the room, but you can't be sure. Then it starts: a soaring rendition of the choral motet. Breathtaking. You might want to sit down and close your eyes, in the well-accepted pose of long-haired music consumers, and completely lose yourself. Don't, or you'll miss a unique surveillance opportunity. Each singer was recorded individually with dedicated audio tracks piped to the separate speakers: one speaker — one voice. Move around and the individual singers start to emerge. This isn't remarkable in itself, except that because the voices are not voices, but mechanically reproduced traces, they can be scrutinized with a degree of intimacy not possible in the flesh. Get right up close and have a good listen. You won't embarrass anyone, and if you're lucky you'll catch some glitches.
To Touch (1993), one of the earliest works in the show, presents an old worn table surrounded by wall-mounted speakers in a darkened room. The distressed table top is equipped with sensors that trip audio recordings of conversations, breathing, music and clips of old movie soundtracks: a variation of the adage, “if walls could talk.” Like much of Cardiff's work, the savvy use of new technology substantially accounts for its allure, and there is a pervasive but unspoken promise of an “interactive” experience. In the end, the extent of agency viewers have in To Touch consists of tripping one of nine prerecorded soundtracks.
Cardiff's furtive control extends throughout the museum and out into the city in a series of audio and video walks that have become her signature. Using the audio-guide (a staple of museum education departments for the past two decades) as her format, the artist leads viewers with her recorded voice through unofficial and private itineraries designed specifically for each site. As the tours proceed, ambient sounds, vague allusions to crimes and the voices of fictional characters are woven in. The audio quality is immaculate and employs a technique referred to as binaural recording. Two microphones mounted on a foam head approximate the geometry of human hearing and give a surprisingly spatial dimension to the sound. The effect is unsettling, and you can't be sure whether the children's voices heard in the distance or the jet flying overhead is real or not. Cardiff's own voice is deadpan and conspiratorial. She aims for passive neutrality: what she refers to as a “trance voice.”
Cardiff calls the Paradise Institute “a mystery-spy movie,” and that might significantly characterize much of the work profiled here. Both Playhouse (1997) and The Muriel Lake Incident (1999) are important precedents for the Venice entry, and are really variations of the same work. While B-thrillers provide the mood (and style), these pieces push the mystery outside the film screen into your head (via headphones), and provoke reflections on the cinematic apparatus itself. Each piece is a tour de force of model making and recreates, in miniature, the grand movie theatres of the past with convincing details, precise sight lines and extreme foreshortening. As always, the artist's voice draws you in and redirects your attention away from the movie, which nevertheless provides a visual analogue to the vaguely menacing situation being portrayed outside the frame. Interesting but (perhaps more important) entertaining.
The avant-guard once saw its mission as subverting the hierarchies that defined authors and patrons, and nurturing a creative readership by developing new aesthetic strategies. Today artists are veering away from such lofty ideals, as if any notion of dynamic viewers participating in the cycle of artistic production and reception were better left to pinkos and anarchists.
Cardiff and Bures Miller's work is like a highbrow theme park. It's smart, fun and stylish. Forget the unfulfilled promises of “interactive,” we don't use that word anymore. Try “immersive”: no pretension to utopian aesthetics, but still very sexy.
Marcus Miller Montreal, Que.