Ann Hamilton
2-25-2015
Trahern Theatre, APSU
The lecture of Ann Hamilton was a moment of clarity for me; the way she embraces everyone and everything has a stunning way of rubbing off on an entire crowd. I am inspired by the way she has changed what it can mean to be an artist. We are all artists so long as we are aware and can connect with the things and people that make up the artwork. We all contribute to art because art is a human force that directly impacts us.
As shown in the work The Event of a Thread, an artwork composed of rows of large swings inside a previously unused building creating an indoor park of magnified proportions. The art is not exclusively in the structure, form or aesthetic, but in the impression made on each and every one of us that experiences it. Art is felt and connects people, and the more it connects with us the more meaning it can have. In this way, Ann Hamilton takes art as an object, idea or medium, and uses this all to create an experience, the ultimate artwork that effectively becomes memories and exists in an almost ethereal realm as art medium.
Ann Hamilton, in an interview during The Event of a Thread, said that "the challenge of our time is the Challenge of Empathy...", I think that brilliantly outlines her personal goals to bring one another together, whether through her artwork or the experience and memory it creates. In Quiet No Land, a large outdoor spiral tower, she presents an object but the real artistic venture is in the experience that others get out of the work as it is interacted with physically. She utilizes anything from the space to create a tapestry of experience, often taking on multiple or all the senses by using sound, visuals, motion and the location of the viewer/participator in regards to the space. The memories of the artwork are the only residuals that truly express the experience of the art.
In this way, painting and photography seem so limited by so few senses, chiefly limiting the time of experience to a single moment, feeling or experience.
Hamilton has ultimately explored time itself as a medium, such as with the gravity installations at the Guggenheim, in which a book falls down a wire track around the gallery space, intermittently ringing bells. The space interacts with each viewer individually, unique to their location over the whole time they visit the space. It does not take full attention, but is subtle and integrated into the surroundings.
The art of Ann Hamilton makes me admire the subtleties that each of our senses experience throughout the day of which I do not acknowledge. Often too busy to pay attention to the mundane, our experiences are dulled. Hamilton enlightens us by opening up our awareness to the experiences, and invites curiosity within through our senses.
A Moment in Time at Machine Falls, 2020. Digital Photography.
A Moment in Time as Art
7-9-2020
The older I get, the more I become content with not needing to categorize and catalog all the events and experiences of life. Living in the moment and trying to engage in the senses will create more in-depth experience than any photograph can.
This has been a problem for me because while I love the art of photography, I often find it less engaging or captivating than other means of making art. A photograph does not reach out and take over your whole experience. A painting might have a smell, but a rendered forest just doesn't smell like a forest, or feel like the moist air of the canopy shaded floor.
I still engage in photography because I love the act of it, and any photograph will probably say the same so long as the enthusiasm is there. An image can create a whole world, and engage in emotion and feeling. It can introduce you to things never previously imagined. Nonetheless, the images represent but do not present the subject matter. There is no fault in artwork that doesn't engage on all levels of senses. What's important is that all art suggests themes of time and existence that remind us of the present. Art effects us by simply existing, there to be interacted with and contemplated on, and reminding us to compare the moment we are in right now to the expanse of memories and pasts we can liken to.
In this way, all art is able to create new experiences and memories, and effectively make a mark in time.
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