Let us compare, for example, Mercader\u2019s work with Yayoi Kusama\u2019s Infinity Mirrored Rooms<\/em> (IMRs<\/em>). These mirror-covered chambers dissolve their own inner walls through reflections, immersing us in a limitless spatial continuum created by the infinite regression of our reflections. The feeling of immersion is made even more pronounced by the fact that these rooms are closed spaces in which the visual surroundings occupy the entirety of our perceptual field. The art historian and essayist Florence de M\u00e8redieu calls this quality the \u201cenclosure of the apparatus\u201d in her eloquent chapter about \u201cinhabiting the image,\u201d in a book about modern art. Commenting on several installations (by Bill Viola, Mona Hatoum, Ilya Kabakov, and Barbara Kruger, among others), she identifies two formal motivations that contribute to immersion besides the enclosed space: the \u201clarge size of the image\u201d and the \u201cluminous atmosphere enveloping the viewer.\u201d^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - Florence de M\u00e8redieu, Histoire \u00admat\u00e9rielle et immat\u00e9rielle de l\u2019art moderne<\/em> (Paris: Larousse\/SEJER, 2004), 597 (our translation)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"Yayoi$
Yayoi Kusama<\/strong>
INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM \u2013 LET\u2019S SURVIVE FOREVER<\/em>, installation view, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2017.
Photo: courtesy of David Zwirner, New York; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo\/Singapore\/Shanghai; Victoria Miro, London\/Venice & Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
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Gros et d\u00e9tail<\/em>, however, was not closed: a wall with windows opened the space on one side, so that I was not, strictly speaking, \u201cimmersed.\u201d The two works also differ more profoundly in one key respect: their mode of meaning. Mercader\u2019s mural asks us to discover an iconography for the most part, whereas a paradigmatic IMR<\/em> invites viewers to interact with the space in which they are immersed; in one the semantic sense predominates, whereas the other primarily operates in a pragmatic way. An IMR<\/em> encourages us to move so as to explore perceptual possibilities and discover, through exponential reflections, the complex play of mirrors that the work contains.<\/em> A visitor\u2019s every gesture creates a reaction, and their participation proves to be complementary to the apparatus. The immersive space of such a work is not an inert or passive reality that simply needs to be perceived; it exerts some agency on the person entering it, enlivening the space by producing reflections and turning the person into an element perceived by whoever else experiences the work at the same time. Like water, an immersion in which we are affected by its pressure and have to adapt to its specific conditions, the space of an IMR<\/em> is an environment<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The immersive, operative space is characterized, therefore, by its enclosure and the nature of its environment, the latter allowing subjects to interact with their surroundings. This interaction, in turn, indicates that one is immersed not in a still image but in a complex, dynamic, and changing context.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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As a result, immersion cannot be reduced simply to spatial inclusion: it also corresponds to change in the environment.<\/em> To return to Mercader\u2019s work, I didn\u2019t feel that I was submerged in a particular environment or ambience. How can I then reconcile the feeling of immersion that I experienced when I encountered the work and the two aspects apparently inherent to any immersive work that it seemed to be lacking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"doux$
doux soft club<\/strong>
entre-bleu<\/em>, performance, Camping de la Batture SEBKA, Kamouraska, 2023.
Photo: Audrey Mainguy, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Immersion as Form and Experience<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The issue is resolved once we posit that immersion develops gradually and that its formal motivations can be only relatively present or active. This is in fact what de M\u00e8redieu proposes when, although she sees a \u201ccomplete\u201d immersion in Viola\u2019s installations, she envisions the immersive experience on a spectrum, appearing, for example, in large-format paintings and taking shape in Monet\u2019s Water Lilies<\/em> at the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Orangerie, even though the \u201capparatus\u201d is not closed and the \u201cluminous atmosphere\u201d that it radiates does not have the degree of presence of, say, Viola\u2019s video installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, well before IMAX technology or the Internet of Things (IoT), the panoramas of the nineteenth century and the illusionist space of painted domes and arches of the Baroque period made a form of immersion possible. All paintings seem to have an immersive potential, as long as their surface suggests a minimal illusion of depth into which one can project oneself. No doubt, this experience can stem just from an individual\u2019s initiative, even in the absence of any immersive apparatus: we can \u201cplunge\u201d into a novel, sports, or music to the point of forgetting the external world. Understanding immersion in contemporary art means considering both the objective and the subjective sides of the phenomenon. A Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto Penetrable<\/em>, a Maurice Demers environment, and a Kusama installation have formal and material characteristics that make an immersive experience possible, which happens as long as viewers react to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Body\u2019s Relationship with Space<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
As for Mercader\u2019s mural, the brief description of my experience seems to indicate two motivations. I felt that I was \u201cin\u201d the work because it was incorporated into the architecture of the place and occupied much of my visual field due to its large format. My body was therefore implicated, as the painted work, which merged with the room\u2019s walls that were its support, \u201ccontained\u201d me. I perceived the mural as being coextensive with the place and \u201cfelt\u201d it as an aspect of the space I was in.<\/em> Although I would be hard pressed to talk about an \u201cenvironment\u201d in this case, the work nonetheless seemed to actively stimulate my relationship with the ambient space and my proprioception, as tenuous as it might be. Its large area also gave it a scale that is greater than mine and led to a kinesthetic response: I needed to move around the room in order to apprehend it in its entirety. This beginning of haptic perception suggests that it is with the entire body, so to speak, that we \u201clook at\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aor, rather, experience\u200a\u2014\u200athe immersive work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I this regard, I would like to mention two projects by the Qu\u00e9bec collective doux soft club^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Composed of the duo P\u00e9n\u00e9lope et Chlo\u00eb, Mariane Stratis, and Marion Paquette.<\/span> that involve covering the interior surfaces of their presentation spaces in an identical blue colour, which can unquestionably create a feeling of immersion. In bleu de lieu<\/em> (2022\u200a\u2013<\/em>23), a pale blue replaces the usual white walls of PHI\u2019s Education Room, transforming it into an environment in a serene shade. Several soft mats and three-dimensional structures of various shapes, all in the same blue, furnish the space and can freely be used by visitors. The desired participation suggests a work envisioned by its creators as an environment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"doux$
doux soft club<\/strong>
bleu de lieu<\/em>, 2022-2023, performance, PHI, Montr\u00e9al, 2023.
Photo: Cl\u00e9o Sj\u00f6lander, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The immersive dimension is expressed even more clearly in entre-bleu<\/em> (2023): the collective carpeted with blue and light-green padded blankets the cabin of the campervan used for the Vrille art actuel artist-run centre\u2019s activities in the region of Kamouraska. Due to its soft hue and texture, this material subtly metamorphoses the vehicle\u2019s interior into a welcoming refuge, like a \u201cpadded space in which we can repose and relax on all the surfaces.\u201d^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - \u201centre-bleu<\/em>,\u201d doux soft club, accessible online (our translation).<\/span> The ergonomic effect becomes even more significant because the reduced space encourages an intimate encounter with the work that is in line with the \u201ccozycore aesthetic\u201d and the collective\u2019s wish to foster the body\u2019s sensitivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto also explores kinesthesia and its associated proprioception in his installations. In Walking in Venus blue cave<\/em> (2001), visitors are invited to enter a biomorphic dwelling with supple walls and move inside it freely, even curl up in a cavity forming there. In both doux soft club\u2019s and Neto\u2019s works, mats, installation elements, and usable props give visitors the power to act (and also not act) in order to interact with and intervene in the work and possibly experience their bodies in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"doux$
doux soft club<\/strong>
entre-bleu<\/em>, installation view, Vrille mobile, Kamouraska, 2023.
Photo: alignements, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Ernesto$
Ernesto Neto<\/strong>
Walking in Venus blue cave<\/em>, installation view,
Denver Art Museum, 2001.
Gift from Vicki & Kent Logan to the Collection of the
Denver Art Museum.
Photo: Marc Lutrell, courtesy of the artist &
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Ambience and Affects<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The interiors created by the German artist Gregor Schneider also mobilize the body and the work as environment, yet they rely on the ambience and affects produced in an entirely different way. Schneider reconstructs the architecture and rooms of actual dwellings. This is particularly the case with his inaugural work, Haus u r<\/em>, a house belonging to his family that he has continually reworked since 1985. Here, the immersion is achieved through the realism of the places and the time needed to explore them. The duration, combined with the feeling of finding oneself in an architecture that is often complex, even disconcerting, exposes visitors even more to its ambience: bare rooms in which sparse clues suggest the recent presence of occupants, rooms with walls in front of walls, a disparity between volumes and scales, a chamber padded with so many layers of insulation material that the only remaining free space is a stifling, cramped cocoon. All this generates if not dysphoric, at least muddled states of mind, ranging from claustrophobia to uncanniness or the impression of being at a crime scene\u200a\u2014\u200astates of mind evoked by author James Westcott in an article detailing his visit to Die Familie Schneider<\/em> (2004).^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - James Westcott, \u201cGregor Schneider and the Flattering Performance Installation,\u201d The Drama Review<\/em> 49, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 183\u201389<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Gregor$
Gregor Schneider<\/strong>
Haus u r<\/em>, 1985-en cours, installation view, Rheydt, 2025.
\u00a9 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn \/ CARCC, Ottawa, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The clearly anxiety-producing tone of several articles about this work is an eloquent testimony to the intense ambience permeating Schneider\u2019s works, considering the a priori realistic and rather banal character of the interiors presented. Die Familie Schneider<\/em> consists of two adjacent houses in a London working-class neighbourhood refurbished by Schneider, which people can visit, one at a time, for twenty minutes. Schneider standardized their floor plans, which were already very similar, to create actual doppelgangers, identically reproducing his subtle alterations and staged d\u00e9cor\u2026 and even the members of the eponymous family. In each house, a woman washing dishes, a man seemingly masturbating behind the shower curtain, and a child eerily covered in a plastic bag in an empty room embody the residents, like silent living tableaux deaf to the presence of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Gregor$
Gregor Schneider<\/strong>
Die Familie Schneider, Walden Street No. 16<\/em>, installation view, London, 2004.
\u00a9 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn \/ CARCC, Ottawa, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Gregor$
Gregor Schneider<\/strong>
Die Familie Schneider, Walden Street No. 14<\/em>, installation view, London, 2004.
\u00a9 VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn \/ CARCC, Ottawa, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Like Westcott, the artist Anne Low repeatedly evokes the anxiety she experienced in encountering Die Familie Schneider<\/em>. She admits her reluctance to descend to the cellar, even to the point of wanting to flee the premises before resolving to go down the stairs. In the conclusion of her article, she states that the work showed her \u201chow psychological disturbance is imprinted on interior space\u201d and describes the spaces of the two houses as \u201coppressively anxious and repressed.\u201d^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - Anne Low, \u201cGregor Schneider, Die Familie Schneider<\/em>: Artangel, London,\u201d C Magazine<\/em> 85 (Spring 2005): 43.<\/span> The silent presence of the three characters certainly adds to visitors\u2019 uneasiness, but the disturbing ambience of Schneider\u2019s works does not need this motivation to make itself felt. In an interview with Schneider, the art historian Erik Verhagen also evokes the \u201cstifling and prisonlike atmosphere\u201d of Haus u r<\/em> and affirms, in relation to Nazi Joseph Goebbels\u2019s childhood home\u200a\u2014\u200awhich Schneider acquired and hollowed out, leaving only the frame and a dirt floor\u200a\u2014\u200athat the \u201cambience there is horrifying.\u201d^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Erik Verhagen, \u201cAu c\u0153ur des t\u00e9n\u00e8bres,\u201d Les Cahiers du Mus\u00e9e national d\u2019art moderne<\/em> 173 (Fall 2025): 98 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This approach once again shows that the physical inclusion of visitors in the operative space is not enough on its own to make a given work immersive. Immersion commences when the work also influences our presence, when it activates the body and the senses in the environment it forms or causes affects through the ambience into which it plunges us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Ka\u00ebl$
Ka\u00ebl Mercader<\/strong>
Gros et d\u00e9tail<\/em>, installation view, Baie-Saint-Paul, 2025.
Photo: \u00c9mile Dontigny, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
By working with an architectural space, Schneider brings us back to Mercader\u2019s project and suggests yet another mode of the immersive phenomenon. Despite the disparity between their respective temporal and spatial scales (an entire building reworked over the course of several years for one, one room occupied for a few weeks for the other), Haus u r<\/em> and Gros et d\u00e9tail<\/em> are process works\u200a\u2014\u200aartworks of which the process of their making is an integral part. Haus u r<\/em> appears as a work in progress that Schneider developed with no goal other than that of making in itself (which recalls Kurt Schwitters\u2019s Merzbau<\/em>). This points to the figure of the artist immersed in their own creative work\u200a\u2014\u200awhich is understood both as a process and as a perpetually reworked material production\u200a\u2014\u200aan immersive poiesis curiously evoking the tunnelling animal relentlessly redeveloping its vast network of galleries in Franz Kafka\u2019s \u201cThe Burrow.\u201d This is surely a place to start digging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From video games to many museums\u2019 virtual exhibitions to large-format projections of paintings that plunge us into the visual universe of artists and are enjoyed by the general public, the immersive experience now seems inseparable from the technological mediation used to produce it. Nevertheless, it was when I stood before a mural painting in a highly traditional Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois house that I experienced an undeniable feeling of immersion last summer.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":273724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[7754],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[958],"artistes":[7799,2261,4009,7839,7825],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-273151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-116-immersion-en","auteurs-patrice-loubier-en","artistes-doux-soft-club-en","artistes-ernesto-neto-en","artistes-gregor-schneider-en","artistes-kael-mercader-en","artistes-yayoi-kusama-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273151","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273634,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273151\/revisions\/273634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=273151"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=273151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}