La puerta al final del pasillo

This room is the physical representation of the artist’s goals, fears, insecurities and self-demand. Will it be possible to cross the door? Can he finally escape?

Operation:

• “w” key: forward movement.
• “s” key: backward movement.
• Mouse: point of view movement.

Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development

The goal, the achievement, the title, the door at the end of the hallway, we all want to reach that destination at some point. It can be a long, short, simple or extremely complex trip, it doesn’t matter, you always want to get there. When we cross the door and see that what we find, no matter how wonderful it may be, is not what we were really looking for, we try to follow the same path again, in a kind of blind hope we walk again and we find again what we were not looking for. After this we decided to go out. But do we really want to go out? Wanting to leave and not wanting to arrive would not make sense if the journey begins, there is a reason we are there, it is because we want to stay there… Or not?

In reality, there are times when we don’t want to make that trip, but in one way or another we do it, whether because of family, friends, criticism or our inner voice that says “you can’t get out of here, you have to get there.” Speaking from an artist’s point of view, what makes you an “artist”? Do you need an achievement to be able to call yourself an “artist”? Do you have to create a masterpiece to be able to call yourself that? And not just name you, but recognize you as an artist.

I think it’s a simple answer, the artist is the one who makes art. I think we agree with that. But in reality it is not such an easy answer, because there is something much deeper in this mystery, because the question is not really “Who is an artist?”, but “What do we call art?”

At first you might think that “art” is a painting, a sculpture, a song, a dance, etc. But when we talk about contemporary art we don’t talk about any of these works, but it is still art, it is something more complex to define, because it encompasses a lot. For example “Get Out of My Mind, Get Out of This Room” (1968) by Bruce Nauman. In this installation you can see a white and practically empty room, in it there is a lamp, an audio that repeatedly plays the name of the work and the viewer present feeling everything. I want to emphasize “feeling,” because by thinking that way we get closer to a possible definition of art. The spectator’s experience is something that cannot be reproduced, even if it is photographed or recorded, what he felt at that moment cannot be documented, because it is exactly that, a momentary experience. No matter how much progress there is in the reproduction, the same thing always happens, the feeling is momentary, being inside that white room is not the same as watching a video of that room on YouTube. Although it may seem like it is the same, it is not, this installation by Nauman cannot be reproduced and be exactly the same as in 1968. At the same time, in addition to feeling, art creates new values, as César Aira explains in On Contemporary Art (2013) “If it is art, or for it to be art, it must create new values; it does not need to be good, on the contrary: if it can be described as good, it is because it obeys already established quality parameters, and it can be put then, according to this new 18th century concept reinterpreted by me, in the field of “crafts”… “Creating values” is intervening in the personal history of the viewer, creating a taste for it, giving it a new look…” In contemporary art the object takes a back seat, the main thing is the story. That is why the reproduction of Nauman’s installation can be seen but it will not be the same as the original, because in the video there is no information other than the audiovisual part, all the background, the story, the curator is missing. We must also not forget that when we talk about “Get Out of My Mind, Get Out of This Room” (1968) we are talking about an installation, Boris Groys in Installation Policies (2010) points out that art is no longer an object to be marketed but to be exhibited, the curator is the one who gives public meaning to the work, he is in charge of showing it and explaining it, while the artist is in charge of making it.

To try to answer the question I asked at the beginning, I am going to emphasize what César Aira raises in On Contemporary Art (2013), since the story and the creation of new values ​​make art art and not just an object that in the best of cases could be said to be beautiful. Therefore, it could be said that the artist is the one who creates a work that tells a story and makes the viewer question himself and change his point of view, the artist is the one who seeks to do the undone, otherwise his work would become a craft.

Literature

• GROYS, Boris. ([2010], 2014). “Política de la instalación” en Volverse público: las transformaciones del arte en el ágora contemporánea. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra, pp. 49-68.

• AIRA, César. ([2013], 2016). “Sobre el arte contemporáneo” en Sobre el arte contemporáneo. Buenos Aires: Literatura Random House, pp. 11-56.