Liminal Spaces in Contemporary Art Installation
Words by Otty Allum
Installation art is described as being three dimensional artworks that are often site-specific. The artwork is exhibited in a way that it is not simply there to be looked at, but it is an immersive environment that can be explored and experienced. Installations often utilise a range of mediums to play to all the senses, such as video, sound art, and performance. The immersive qualities of installation art often cause a viewer to be temporally detached; they are in a place that is at once a gallery space and also a place that is an imitation of somewhere real or imagined. There is something inherently very liminal about being in the space of an art installation; it is different from a painting or sculpture that sits on the wall or on a plinth, here there is a sense of remoteness, whereas in an installation, the work exists alongside the viewer. It seems that there is a blurring between the boundaries of what is art and what are the objects of real life.
Mike Nelson’s ‘Coral Reef’ (2000) spans 15 rooms, the exterior walls of the installation are never seen. The rooms appear to be waiting rooms or cab offices which seem to be in use, with lights and screens left on, yet the inhabitants are missing. The installation was first installed in Matt’s Gallery in London and was opened to the public in January 2000. The artist was initially inspired by mini-cab offices in Balham, where he was living at the time and was drawn to their visual qualities, he felt that these rooms had a transience to them, especially with their position at the front of the building, suggesting that they lead elsewhere. Nelson’s work expresses this sense of liminality with the use of waiting rooms and cab offices; spaces that are only visited when one hopes to end up somewhere else. The visual qualities of the rooms fetishise the aesthetics of poverty, the banal and the wastelands of capitalism. Nelson describes the work as representing societal structures and their convoluted and deep-rooted nature. His explanation of his work could be seen as rather surface level and it lacks the nuance that one may recognise within the work as a viewer. A sense of liminality is reflected in the designation of space; the space is an office or a corridor, a waiting room, but it is also an art installation in an art gallery. This piece expresses the transformative qualities of art; the way that art can be something you can exist in and alongside. It doesn’t have to simply be an object, it can be a place, a space, a room.
Coral Reef by Mike Nelson
Coral Reef by Mike Nelson
Ima Abasi Okon’s ‘Infinite Slippage: nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of M's Hard'Loved'Flesh [I'M irreducibly-undone because]—Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub’ (2019) was first exhibited at the Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2019. The work features a lowered ceiling with office-style ceiling tiles, upon which are cut crystal lamps filled with palm oil and cognac. The work is similar to Coral Reef, in that it makes use of this aesthetic of banality, what with the ceiling tiles and the row of air conditioning units (which play a slowed-down R&B melody) acting as visual signifiers of liminal spaces such as waiting rooms or schools. At the same time, the luxurious cut crystal lamps with their warm glow of cognac, work not in juxtaposition, but in tandem with the tiles; together they act in a parody or performance of upper-class minimalism which appropriates working class aesthetics in an effort to perform taste. In an interview Abasi-Okon talks about how her pieces are essentially a series of objects that are placed together in a particular ‘syntax’ to form a ‘sentence’, thus creating a ‘spell’ which moves the viewer. There is a void or a sense of emptiness present in the installation, but that is the work itself, this empty room is the piece of art.
Infinite Slippage nonRepugnant Insolvencies T!-a!-r!-r!-y!-i!-n!-g! as Hand Claps of M's Hard'Loved'Flesh [I'M irreducibly-undone because]—Quantum Leanage-Complex-Dub 2019 by Ima Abasi Okon
Cut crystal lamps containing cognac and palm oil in Abasi Okon’s installation
In her thesis ‘Liminality in Contemporary Art’, Judith Westerveld explores the concept of liminality in artwork and the origins of the concept. The word liminality comes from the Latin word ‘limen’ meaning threshold and associated with the word ‘limes’ meaning limit, however, a threshold is not a limit, it is a crossing point. The concept was introduced by ethnologist Arnold van Gennep in his 1909 text ‘Les Rites de Passage’, the idea of liminality gained popularity in 1960 when his work was eventually translated into English. Liminality is strongly linked to anthropological study and is generally used to describe the middle stage of a rite of passage, now the word liminal can be used to describe all sorts of events and occurrences in everyday life and popular culture. Van Gennep suggests that liminal stages in life is what gives it shape and breadth, such as periods of separation and reunion.
‘O Magic Power of Bleakness’ was a show held at Tate Britain in 2019, created by artist Mark Leckey. A reproduction of the underneath of a motorway overpass was created in a room in the gallery, there were two video projections on one wall, five tv screens on the adjoining wall and film posters pasted on the wall at the back of the room. The show featured three films by Leckey: ‘Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore’ (1999), ‘Dream English Kid 1964-1999 AD’ (2015) and ‘Under Under In’ (2019), this particular film was debuted at this exhibition. ‘Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore’ consists of found footage of 80s and 90s rave culture, it has a dreamlike and ethereal quality to it. ‘Dream English Kid’ possesses a fast energy and features the recurring motif of the bridge. The overall show is a performance and a spectacle, when Dream English Kid finishes, there is the sound of singing in the corner of the room which signals the beginning of ‘Under Under In’ where the video moves around the room from the TV screens to projections on the overpass, the films explore ideas of folklore and magic combined with that of the class divide. For Leckey the bridge represents his journey from his childhood in Birkenhead to his adulthood in London, the underneath of the bridge seems to symbolise a place that is removed, where the working-class children go to escape poverty and the realities of ‘growing up’.
Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore 1999 still by Mark Leckey
All the films deal with events and themes associated with Leckey’s life, they feature past elements of visual pop culture, expressing ideas of classism and the north-south divide. Many visitors say they experienced a sense of nostalgia in viewing Leckey’s three films, however it could be said that his work goes beyond being simply nostalgic and instead is hauntological. In Mark Fisher’s ‘Ghosts of My Life’ he explores the concept of hauntology and its presence in music and visual culture. Fisher explains that during the 70s, what with the rise of Thatcherism and austerity, society, rather than looking forward to the future, began looking back at the past. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi describes this phenomenon as ‘the slow cancellation of the future’ and this idea is present in visual culture which seems overtly haunted by the aesthetics of the past. Leckey’s use of ideas of folklore and archaism alongside these images of the late 20th Century create an image of a haunting; they express the remote and detached nature of the present. Fisher states ‘it doesn’t feel as if the 21st Century has started yet. We remain trapped in the 20th century’, this idea encapsulates the nature of our present-day visual culture; we are in a liminal state that cannot truly be defined as the ‘present’, but a series of hauntings. These ideas are expressed in ‘O Magic Power of Bleakness’, these elements express the nature of our present-day visual culture; one that is in a state of in-between, fraught by hauntings of the past that are played back on loop.
Dream English Kid 1964 to 1999 AD still by Mark Leckey 2015
These spaces deal with ideas inherent in everyday life and make use of the visual signifiers that signal spaces of transience and liminality. At the same time, the sense of marginality that these works portray calls into question the trends and conventions of 21st Century contemporary art. Particularly, this obsession with ‘minimalism’ which essentially appropriates a ‘banal’, ‘mundane’ aka working class aesthetic, although it seems that Abasi Okon parodies this minimalism in an understated and unassuming way. These particular works speak to the nature of our culture and civilisation. That is, one of development and repositioning, yet at the same time, as evident in Leckey’s work, it is overcome with a preoccupation with the past.
