An \u201cobject,\u201d like an animal, possesses a dual nature: anthropological, when defined as an artifact, and poetic when posited as a metaphor, symbol, or allegory. It appears, then, as the embodiment or image of the \u201cOther,\u201d that which human beings confront in their understanding of the world. For its part, the \u201canimated\u201d qualifier harkens etymologically to anima,<\/em> whose two meanings of \u201csoul\u201d and \u201canimal\u201d served in Classical philosophy to make distinctions between living beings and to place them in hierarchical order. Thus conceived, the \u201canimated object\u201d can be an instrument of thought for conceptualizing the difference between nature and culture, human and non-human, subject and object. While art history may not have given much attention to the animated object\u200a\u2014\u200adistinct from the \u201canimated image\u201d\u200a^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).<\/span>\u2014\u200adiscourses in anthropology, psychology, literature, and film have taught us to consider the dialectical relationship between subject and animated object as being typically unidirectional: human beings, projecting their fantasies and desires, humanize objects and endow them with a soul. Animism, denoting an inclination to attribute properties of the living to inanimate objects, exemplifies precisely this one-way relationship. Generally dismissed in modern thought,^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> the concept allows us nonetheless to consider Western literature\u2019s strong influence (through its descriptions and metaphors) on the perception (even the apprehension) of the object\u2019s effectiveness.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Partaking in the renewed interest in the animated object are recent studies in Thing Theory. Contrary to animist thought, this theory emphasizes the primacy of dialogical relationships between the object and the one perceiving it. Moreover, of particular interest in the context of the \u201cmaterial turn\u201d in visual culture is the importance of the everyday object in current artistic production. Thus, I propose we reconsider a recurring object in these practices\u200a\u2014\u200anamely, the chair\u200a\u2014\u200ain light of theories on \u201cthe thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Guillaume Lachapelle, L\u2019avanc\u00e9e<\/em>, 2009.
photo : Guy L\u2019Heureux, permission de | courtesy of the artist & Art M\u00fbr, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Literary and philosophical in origin, these new theories present a poetic conception of the object in lieu of an anthropological concept founded on primitive belief, such as shamanism, animism, and totemism. Joseph Beuys\u2019 Fat Chair<\/em> (1964) exemplifies the spiritual and mystical considerations characterizing this traditional conception. Seeking to restore the primal union of man with nature, the work\u2019s material composition renders visible the process by which the material itself is put into action. In the work, a formless mass of natural material\u200a\u2014\u200aanimal fat\u200a\u2014\u200ais placed on a chair; having been refrigerated, this material is first solid then gradually reverts to its original state. By this natural process, Beuys\u2019 work enables us to conceive the animated as the essence of nature, as the performative nature of all living matter.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Note that Beuys\u2019 oeuvres are part of the development of reflexive thought on magic and the sacred in non-Western societies in anthropology and ethnology from the early twentieth century onwards. The first years of his production coincide, in fact, with the publication of seminal works on such questions as animism and totemism; these include Bronislaw Malinowski\u2019s Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays<\/em> (1948), Mircea Eliade\u2019s Le Chamanisme et les techniques archa\u00efques de l\u2019extase<\/em> (1951, 1968), Alfred Kroeber\u2019s The Nature of Culture<\/em> (1952), and the works of Claude L\u00e9vi-Strauss, including Tristes Topiques<\/em> (1955), Anthropologie Structurale<\/em> (1958), La Pens\u00e9 Sauvage<\/em> (1962), Le Tot\u00e9misme Aujourd\u2019hui<\/em> (1962), and Mythologiques<\/em> (1964).<\/span> This vision is akin to animism, which, in ascribing a soul to natural phenomena, attempts to restore nature\u2019s animated condition, however inanimate it may appear to us.^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics<\/em> [1913], translated by A.A.Brill [1918] (London: Routlege and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1950).<\/span> The works of Brian Jungen provide another example of this kind of transference. Shapeshifter <\/em>(2000), which presents a whale skeleton made entirely of plastic patio chairs, prompts us to revisit the boundary between the natural object of the skeleton (or indeed the fossil^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - On the connection between totem objects and fossils, see W.J.T. Mitchell\u2019s admirable text, \u201cRomanticism and the Life of Things: Fossils, Totems, and Images,\u201d in Bill Brown, ed., Things<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 227-244.<\/span>) and the cultural object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tangential to classifications by which the object is conventionally defined, the question remains as to how one should name the borderline object. In the cases before us, the chair-object affords two distinct moments for interrogating its classification: the first, with its displacement from the home sphere to the artistic, as its use-value is replaced by its artistic value; and the second, when the referent to the chair is lost. With Jungen, this loss is incurred by the production of new imagery that blocks immediate recognition of the chair-object; and in Beuys, by the juxtaposition of two materials, the animal fat and the wooden chair. The unclassifiable object tends to disappear behind the \u201cthing.\u201d In other words, it is at the moment that objects renounce their objectivity, their own nature, that one may perceive the \u201cthing,\u201d which is not a sign, not an art object, but merely that thing that had once been human or had been part of the human being.^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - John Plotz, \u201cCan the Sofa Speak? A Look at Thing Theory,\u201d Criticism<\/em>, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Winter 2005), 113.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The poetic function of furniture-objects can also serve to illustrate the transfer of \u201cobject\u201d to \u201canimated thing.\u201d On the one hand, through their function in everyday life and contiguity to human domestic and private space, they embody what Roland Barthes\u2019 referred to as \u201cthe world\u2019s human signature.\u201d^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - Roland Barthes, \u201cThe Plates of the Encyclopedia,\u201d in New Critical Essays<\/em>, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 24.<\/span>Moreover, philosophical discourse attests to many examples of their metaphorical use: one might think of the bed, illustrating the concept of mimesis in Platonic philosophy and expressing the distinction between the sensory world of objects and the intelligible realm of ideas; of the table, with which Marx presented the fetishism and mysterious, ungraspable nature of commodities; of drawers, chests, and cupboards with which Gaston Bachelard argued the difference between image and metaphor; or of the arrangement of traditional household furniture, which Baudrillard considered representative of a given period\u2019s family and social structures.^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy<\/em>, Vol. I [1867], translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels [1887] (marxist.org: Marx\/Engles Internet Archive, 1995, 1999); Gaston Bachelard, La Po\u00e9tique de l\u2019espace<\/em> (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1957); Jean Baudrillard, Le Syst\u00e8me des objets<\/em> (Paris, Gallimard, 1968).<\/span> On the other hand, furniture objects depicted in literature, particularly of the nineteenth century, realize the fantasy of animating and giving voice to objects.^{9<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 9 <\/a> - Examples of this fantasy abound in the fantastical creatures and objects described in the works of Honor\u00e9 de Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffman, and Edgar Allen Poe, along with the animated objects and caricatures of J.J. Grandville and John Tenniel.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Adrienne Spier, Waiting Rooms<\/em>, 2003.
photos : Patrick Mailloux, permission de |
courtesy of the artist & Dare-Dare, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
These poetic considerations are made explicit in Adrienne Spier\u2019s Waiting Rooms and Offices<\/em> (2003). Here, Spier used abandoned, run-down furniture that she took apart\u200a\u2014\u200adismembered, so to speak\u200a\u2014\u200aand then attached to a pulley system that spectators could manipulate to animate the objects. The chairs, whose movement suggests typically human gestures, bring out the latent playfulness of the scene, alluding to the analogy between \u201cliving\u201d object and toy, engendered by myths, tales, and fables.^{10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 10 <\/a> - Baudelaire describes the moment when children, vainly attempting to grasp the essence or \u201csoul\u201d of their toys, shake them, throw them on the ground, dismember them, until, broken to pieces, that marvellous life is extinguished: Baudelaire, \u201cMorale du joujou\u201d [1853], in Curiosit\u00e9s esth\u00e9tiques. L\u2019art romantique et autres \u0153uvres critiques<\/em> (Paris: Garnier, 1986), 207.<\/span> At the Istanbul Biennial in 2003, Doris Salcedo\u2019s Untitled Installation<\/em>, comprising 1,600 instances of the chair, also revealed the poetic value of the object. Squeezed between two outside walls, Salcedo\u2019s chairs betray the wear and tear of time and the visage of their previous occupants, reminding us that, in Ric\u0153ur\u2019s words, \u201cto be born is to attain a durable world … and to die is to withdraw from such a durable world.\u201d^{11<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 11 <\/a> - From Paul Ric\u0153ur\u2019s \u201cPr\u00e9face\u201d to the French translation of Hannah Arendt\u2019s The Human Condition<\/em> [1958]: Condition de l\u2019homme moderne<\/em>, translated by Georges Fradier (Paris: Calmann-L\u00e9vy, 2005), 22. (Our translation.)<\/span> That, too, is the \u201cthing,\u201d enriched by the memories of the soul that men have given it, by the desires they have projected upon it, and by time and use. Nonetheless, Spier\u2019s dismantling of furniture and Salcedo\u2019s multiplication of chairs have both withdrawn the object from the everyday continuum and suspended it in a linear temporality, obliging the viewer to navigate between the memory of the object and that which is presented, between the various contexts and discourses that predispose it to interpretation: the relationship between spectator and animated thing<\/em> thus becomes dialogical, that is, an exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"\"$ Doris Salcedo, Untitled Installation<\/em>, 8th International Istanbul Biennial, 2003.
photo : Sergio Clavijo \u00a9 Doris Salcedo, permission de | courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New York
& White Cube, Londres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
This to and fro between the object and its context, between the object and the stories and descriptive discourses accompanying it, produces a temporal and narrative ambiguity that is exploited in film. Guillaume Lachapelle\u2019s Avanc\u00e9e<\/em> (2009) plays on cinematic language by presenting a miniature chair, set into motion by means of an electrical apparatus. The miniaturization of the furniture also contributes to the object\u2019s loss of utilitarian value, to the disquieting nature of the animated object, and to perception of the object as a \u201cthing.\u201d The miniaturization prompts us to consider the \u201csecret life of things,\u201d^{12<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 12 <\/a> - Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection<\/em> (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 54.<\/span> which endows them with a \u201clife in itself.\u201d From the point of view of a Heideggerian definition of the \u201cthing,\u201d it is the revelation of \u201cbeing in itself\u201d that initiates the definitive passage from object to thing. The thing comes into being by suspending the usual conditions of the object\u2019s existence, removing it from its ordinary context\u200a\u2014\u200aor, in poetic terms, by way of its \u201cdisenchantment,\u201d which strips away the fantastical narrative to restore it to its essential nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As such, the life of the object no longer seems mysteriously imbued with the invisible forces of nature, but by its very quality of \u201cbeing a thing.\u201d With this, it regains its mystery (and its silence^{13<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 13 <\/a> - On this topic, see Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience<\/em>, translated by Liz Heron (New York: Verso, 1996).<\/span>), since it can only be rendered by its poetic value. One can see this transformation in the coordination of various objects, materials, and places in the installations of Guillaume La Brie. The title of the exhibition itself is revelatory: \u201cMoiti\u00e9-moiti\u00e9, une exposition \u00e0 50\u2009% Guillaume La Brie<\/em>\u201d (2011): it is the very walls of the exhibition venue (Centre Clark) itself that provided the materials for the assembling of furniture-objects. Thus, on display next to a totem-like columnar structure made of two TV furniture units and pieces of drywall is a chair to which is clamped its translucent double. Here, the materiality of the thing and its animated character combine: the other<\/em> chair obliges us to take notice of the object\u2019s material construction, while the mirror effect and transparency turn it into a ghost, a memory of the object. A similar poetic process was at work in Les envahisseurs de l\u2019espace<\/em> (2007), an installation that staged an array of furniture-objects that were enclosed, cornered, even crushed by sections of wall to create a veritable \u201ctheatre of things\u201d in which the identity of the \u201cinvader\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aobject or spectator\u200a\u2014\u200aremained an open question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Guillaume La Brie, Moiti\u00e9 moiti\u00e9, une exposition
\u00e0 50 % Guillaume La Brie<\/em>, Centre Clark, 2011.
photo : permission de l\u2019artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Guillaume La Brie, Les envahisseurs de l\u2019espace II<\/em>, Galerie de l\u2019UQAM, Montr\u00e9al, 2007.
photo : permission de l\u2019artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Thus, the animated thing<\/em> demonstrates the effectiveness of poetic language, as understood by Aristotle, for whom its function, essential to the expression of muthos<\/em> (translated as fable<\/em> or story<\/em>), was to \u201crepresent things as in a state of activity,\u201d to show the inanimate as animated.^{14<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 14 <\/a> - Aristotle, Rhetoric<\/em>, III, 11, 1411b 24-25, translated by W. Rhys Roberts (New York: The Modern Library, 1954).<\/span> Between the object\u2019s be<\/em> and be not<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200anot yet, not enough, or too much an object^{15<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 15 <\/a> - Jacques Aumont, \u201cL\u2019objet cin\u00e9matographique et la chose filmique,\u201d Cin\u00e9mas : revue d\u2019\u00e9tudes cin\u00e9matographiques\/Cin\u00e9mas: Journal of Film Studies<\/em>, vol. 14, no 1 (Fall 2003), 197.<\/span>\u200a\u2014\u200athe essence of thingness<\/em> is action. With an ambivalence that signifies its movement, it appears as a fragment of the real that can never be truly grasped or understood: the strangeness of the thing\u200a\u2014\u200aits \u201cotherness\u201d^{16<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 16 <\/a> - Bill Brown, \u201cThing Theory,\u201d Things<\/em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 12.<\/span>\u200a\u2014\u200amakes it into the other<\/em> that can open up discussion. Yet, the back and forth movement is also representative of the spectator\u2019s reflexive process and interpretations of things. Therefore, the chance encounter of thing and subject, as described by Bill Brown, emphasizes the multiplicity of possible virtual story fragments which the object possesses and imposes: \u201cthrough our lives, we look through objects (to see what they disclose about history, society, nature, or culture\u200a\u2014\u200aabove all, what they disclose about us), but we only catch a glimpse of things.\u201d^{17<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 17 <\/a> - Ibid., 4.<\/span> Finally, the artist\u2019s use and transformation of everyday objects through deconstruction, multiplication, and miniaturization separates the object from its objectivity, thus rendering the animated thing visible as the poetic materialization of our rapport with things and, more broadly, with mystery. The <\/em>Open<\/em>^{18<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 18 <\/a> - Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal<\/em>, translated from the Italian by Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2004).<\/span> may well be the term that best encapsulates this relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Translated from the French by Ron Ross]<\/p>\n
Adrienne Spier, Doris Salcedo, Guillaume La Brie<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1303,"featured_media":171348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281,882],"tags":[],"numeros":[3550],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[335],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[2356],"artistes":[3555,2499,3556],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-171437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","category-post","numeros-75-living-things","statuts-archive","auteurs-dominique-allard-en","artistes-adrienne-spier-en","artistes-doris-salcedo-en","artistes-guillaume-la-brie-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=171437"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=171437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}