Final Writing Assignment

 The Interactive Installations of 

Yayoi Kusama and Olafur Eliasson   

By: Jenny Mortimore     
   

            For artists Yayoi Kusama and Olafur Eliasson, natural space and light mean everything. For this assignment I chose two artists that work in a wide variety of media but both find their strengths in digital, environmental installations that challenge their audiences' sense of reality. The two are not completely different but do not define reality the same. In their representative works, Fireflies on the Water and Feelings are Facts, both artists tackle the concept of reality in their own unique ways with great use of space and lighting. Despite using digital technology in their work to illustrate their concept of reality, both artists confront the question of “the world we are missing and the world we need.”

            Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is an activist, feminist, and her paintings and style have been a major influence for artists such as Andy Warhol. She first came to the United States in 1957 to showcase her collection of paintings and to share in her ideas for environmental sculptures using artistic illusions like mirrors and lights. In the latter 1960s, she had become more of an activist in her career and organized many events such as body painting displays in the streets of New York, fashion shows and anti-war demonstrations. Years later in her career, she would become more attached to the digital medium and launched media-related activities such as film productions. Her digital work became more recognized after 1968, with the film, “Kusama's Self-Obliteration" which Kusama produced and starred in. This particular film was awarded at the International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium and featured many techniques that were unique at the time for film artists.

            Yayoi Kusama always retained the central theme of seemingly endless space in all of her work. This central focus of her artistic career has always been to convey this seemingly endless space to her viewers to better convey her idea of reality. Her piece, Fireflies on the Water, from 2002 was an exceptional example of an installation that creates a space in which individual viewers are invited to transcend their own sense of reality. Fireflies on the Water is a carefully constructed environment in which only one person is allowed in the room at a time to create a more intimate setting. Hundreds if lights are suspended from the ceiling with mirrors on every wall and water surrounding the platform the individual walks out into the center of the room on. This particular installation suspends the viewer into a reality of their own while the infinity of lights surrounds them. The mirrors are meant to have the observers see themselves in the infinity of the universe to reflect the reality as infinite and to have the viewer determine what part they play in that reality.

           
Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water, 2002

While Kusama created her environmental installation to be viewed alone and in a personal space,

Olafur Eliasson displays his work in ways that bring individuals together to reflect deeply on their ideas of that environment. A Danish artist and environmental activist, Olafur Eliasson’s works emphasizes the importance of having an honest and insightful experience by becoming apart of the works themselves. In a “TEDTalks” presentation Eliasson explained, “Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility” (Eliasson). For Eliasson the work is a little less about the self, different from Kusama's work, and more about the “big picture” or society and nature as a whole. As an environmental activist, he tries to incorporate the importance of the viewers’ surroundings to make them aware that reality is what they make it based on how they treat the nature and space around them.

            In his installation Feelings are Facts Eliasson, with the help of Ma Yansong, uses a color atlas to have viewers navigate their way through dense fog, seemingly endless color palettes, and a brilliantly illuminated atmosphere. He uses this installation to present exploration into the nature of reality. In a press release for their artwork they even posed the questions, "what should be the basis of our thinking and judgment in a space where reality and illusion interconnect? As we stand amidst such accomplished phenomena, can we re-examine with greater concern our sensations and experiences of that which is around us?" (UCCA). As the audience navigates through the environment of refracted light and the illusions of color, they also seem to navigate through their own sense of reality by defining what it is they are experiencing.

            There is a lot in common and a lot of unique differences between Fireflies on the Water and Feelings are Facts. Kusama’s work seems to be the ultimate self-obsession where the individuals are meant to see themselves at the centre of, and infinitely reflected in, the universe. Kusama’s artworks seem to ask how the spectators view themselves; not only within the artwork, but also in relation to their environment: do they feel what it is like to be ‘a dot in the universe.’ Kusama also uses a more objects in her work to better illustrate her ideas of infinite reality in order to make her viewers feel small, but focus on what makes them unique.

           
Olafur Eliasson, Feelings are Facts, 2010

In Eliasson's work, there is a less self-obsessed message and more focus on a theme of mass individualism. He creates space for the purpose of coming together and being a part of something that can make an impact on the world. A lot of Eliasson's work forces his viewers into a realm of pure perception, reconnecting them to nature and having them use their senses to navigate his artwork. He also separates the individual from reality as defined by modern culture by using as few objects as possible but impacting with one central theme like light and color. He even described artworks like Feelings are Facts as: "the way in which we learn about ourselves, and our world; the processes by which knowledge and understanding are acquired through experience." (Eliasson)

            However, both Kusama and Eliasson create spaces in which individuals challenge their basis of thinking and judgment and become a part of the art itself. It is as if both artists, with their activist backgrounds, are having their viewers interact with the work and become apart of the strong messages they both possess. In her essay, Tactical Media as Virtuosic Performance, Raley describes tactical media as “forms of critical intervention, dissent, and resistance” that can “manifest in virtuoso performance rather than extrinsic product.” Raley also explains it as “new media work that is at once aesthetic design, intellectual investigation, and political activism” (Raley; p.1-2). The works engage the audience in a natural environment with lights as illusion and excellent use of space. Similar to David O'Reilly's theory in Basic Animation Aesthetics, both Kusama and Eliasson believe, "The more elemental and simple an environment, the more exciting and visually rewarding it is when we introduce changes to it" (O'Reilly; p.3).

   

         To work with another one of our readings, I believe that bother artists, although working with a digital medium, possess the “aura” that Walter Benjamin discusses in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin says, "We define the aura of [natural objects] as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch” (Benjamin; III). This aura is present in both of the artists’ work because the audience has the ability to interact with the message in that piece. It is an aura acquired through interaction and, although their perception is not anchored to the past, the audience is never distanced by the artwork.

            Finally, in Claire Bishop’s article Digital Divide she says, "While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital? How many thematize this, or reflect deeply on how we experience, and are altered by, the digitization of our existence?" (Bishop; p.2). After becoming familiar with both artists and their environmental installations, I can affirm that artist working in this variety know exactly what feelings they are projecting through their work and "reflect deeply" on how the audience experiences it. There very much exists a need to have the populace and culture react and become involved with the same feelings as the artists. For activists like Yayoi Kusama and Olafur Eliasson, there is a passionate display of how reality works with nature through the use of digital tools. Both are successful in their own creative ways.

Work Cited

1. "Olafur Eliasson." Olafur Eliasson. http://www.olafureliasson.net/index.html, Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

2. "Information | Yayoi Kusama." Information | Yayoi Kusama. http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

3. "Yayoi Kusama." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

4. "Olafur Eliasson: Playing with Space and Light." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. N.p., n.d. 

Web. 11 Dec. 2013.

5. "OLAFUR ELIASSON & MA YANSONG--FEELINGS ARE FACTS | Ullens Center for             Contemporary Art." Ullens Center for Contemporary Art. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.

6. O'Reilly. Basic Animation Aesthetics. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

7. Benjamin, Walter, and J. A. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical             Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

8. Raley, Rita. Tactical Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2009. Print.