Correspondance

Well, during the 1930s and after, I was thinking more specifically about the University of Princeton and the mathematician and economist, John Nash. Together with other researchers working under the direction of von Neumann, Nash was interested in game theory. This entire Princeton context is well known, because Einstein and von Neumann spent a lot of time just watching the students play. Like the others, Nash used to play often. Every day, they got together in a communal room. But Nash invented his own game, which obviously was named Nash. Nash is a bit like the Chinese game of Go. It provides pure information with a simple game board containing a series of hexagons and black and white chips. When you play, you must use all your chips, black or white, and, according to the colour that you began with, attempt to draw a line from one end of the game board to the other. The crucial point of Nash is that the first player is potentially the winner. However, even with  pure information and the fact that the first to play has more chances of winning, it is nearly impossible to predict the outcome. Too many things are constantly at stake, so you can never predict for certain the result. One can conclude that there is too much pure information. ¹

Liam Gillick, 2000

   On the edges (Sur les bords) presents a borderline position, an uncomfortable position. Jean-Christophe Nourisson's work doesn't make us feel at ease. Contemplation is no longer the requirement, the matter of course. The simple exchange of visual pleasure between his works and us as viewers leaves us with a feeling of emptiness. Naturally, the colours, the forms, the figures, the volumes catch the eye, but the intention is other than a visual 'trip'. The work demands reflection.

The viewer in front of the work of art or how to avoid plain contemplation.

   When walking around in his environments and installations, Nourisson puts the viewer intellectually and physically to test. His installations of "pictorial" (the photograms) and "functionalistic" (the furniture: table, benches) elements consist in objects connected topographically and contextually to reality. These objects determine the limits. They embrace the entire space, but they also go beyond.

   This conception is not new. Like an echo it follows up on the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the 20th century, and regenerates their initial exploration: the relationships between art and reality, within a vision of art as a whole ². Nourisson invites the viewer to reflect upon this questioning of reality, where the quality of each constituent element of the exhibition space is devised as an extension of public space. It is by playing with the roles assigned to the viewers, to the space and to the artist that the installation of objects (furniture) re-explores the notions of exhibition space. Nourisson's fragmentary redistribution of a set of objects (public and domestic furniture) occupies the whole space through a ping-pong of visual suggestions. It is these objects themselves, together with their abstract aspect, that makes up the work of art.

   But there is work to be done. The viewer has to become aware of his position. Only the viewer can fill in what's missing in order to comprehend what is at stake. "In a situation where mainly the modern viewer still continued to violate the order of conversation, he is suddenly engaged in a complex fabric in which the relationship to the work of art - that has become in a hegemonic manner a polysemous proposition up for discussion - is just as important as the relationship to other people, that which I call 'the exchange impulse"³. The physical position of the viewer in the exhibition space influences not only this comprehension, but also the point of view that results from it. The conjunction between the viewer's status as a participant (he accomplishes the work of art) and a spectator (he is the one who has to comprehend the work of art, thereby revealing its interpretation potential) gives him the possibility to judge, to be part of it or to leave with full knowledge of the facts.

The viewer's dialectics ⁴

   The viewer ponders over his relationship to the present environment. The work of art is in this sense the threshold, the interface between the environment and the viewer/spectator. It compels the viewer to confront reality and to become aware of the world and the importance of society. But the work does it in a specific way !

   Nourisson stages a complete system that refers to the relationships between physical and mental space. He puts to the test certain characteristics of Modernism (the style of functionalism apparent in the benches and the table) and of Post-modernism (the photograms titled The Leftovers / Les Résidus). We will get back to this.

   Let us pursue with the predominant position that the viewer occupies while reading Nourisson's work. To this end, we must mention the exhibition Environments, Situations, Spaces, which took place in 1961 in New York and showed the works of George Brecht, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg... The declaration was explicit : “the exhibition is unique, because it is the first group show put together by artists working with the whole physical space, creating environments that demand from the viewer a full and active participation". Hereby, one grasps the relevant references to the exhibitions When attitudes become forms (by Szeemann in 1969) and The Eagle, from the Oligocene to today (by Broothaers in 1972) transformed into subjects in Nourisson's photograms Following in the footsteps of his renowned predecessors, Nourisson makes a reference to and pursues this mission of de-sanctification of art, the artistic process, thereby making the viewer become more involved.

    Once again, we encounter viewer participation ! Despite today's major invention of so-called "interactive machines" (computers, cd-rom, dvd...) and the new theory of relational aesthetics in the arts, rare are the examples whereby the viewer really participates ⁵. Nourisson does not simply stop at physical experience; he is interested in offering the viewer a physical setting capable of making the viewer reflect on his situation and relationship with the surrounding architecture.

    The viewer encounters an architectural space (the exhibition place, the art centre, the white cube as a resonance chamber) and a set of so-called functional objects, destined à priori for a specific use. However, the original functions of this space and these objects have been removed. For example, the exhibition place, now an art centre, was originally designed as a movie theatre (the sloping floor, no windows) and a wooden table measuring three meters in diameter, on which are placed in the middle a dozen architect-type lamps, has lost its function of table as it is tilted, thus unstable, and it is no higher than just above the knees.

    This configuration compels the viewer to resort to his superego (Freud), his conscience, i.e. his mental space. But for the viewer to grasp a meaning, a certain context and a set if conditions must previously exist. "The viewer establishes a connection between the work of art and  reality by decoding and interpreting the work's intrinsic qualities, and in so doing, he adds his own contribution to the creative process" ⁶ These conditions are hence the meeting point between a viewpoint and a space via a judgement: a reassessment of his values.

   After the avant-garde movements of the 1920s (from object to space), after Minimalism and Conceptual art (from space and object to the viewer as actively engaged in the meaning process of the art piece), Nourisson adds his contribution. The choice of forms (furniture, photogram) and the manner of questioning the viewer's position (his role) in the artistic process (by a game of cross-references to the modern and Post-modern movements; their respective de-functionalism and de-sublimation) reveal how Nourisson ceaselessly pursues an endless exploration as to how the art piece is perceived in the exhibition space. Nourisson states: "the exhibition space is what first of all determines perception. Thus, there is an initial physical reaction, then the exhibition space creates meaning. The work of art and its space are always perceived simultaneously, they are deeply connected (...). Insofar that a situation offers itself to an exhibition space, this space interests me. It is a public space, where words and ways of seeing are shared ” ⁷. The artist than ads: "I have expressed my criticism regarding autonomy in the arts for a long time. I am more interested in the situation between the work of art, the space, the time and the viewer. I am fond of constraints and difficulties that force me to adjust my intention according to a situation of real construction." ⁸

The Leftovers (Les Résidus) :

A critique of Modernism from the point of view of its Post-modernism, and conversely.

    We can interpret this approach from the point of view of a questioning of our era, which navigates between Modernism and Post-modernism. Fond of the beginning of the 20th century, of architectural Modernity and its influence on the artists of the time, Nourisson knows however that he cannot perform a Modernism revival, aware of the fact that Post-modernism came along, imposing its symbols to the detriment of its power of representation. The work The Leftovers (Les Résidus) turns out to be a remnant of Modernism, which has passed through the filter of Post-modernism.

Similarly to the transformation of a modern city into a post-modern megalopolis, we are able to observe an identical phenomenon in pictures (here in a general sense : photographic image, film and digital image, social image). A semantic (in the sense of language creating meaning) and semiological (in the sense of symbolic function) shift in meaning of the image's status is apparent from the appearance of the reproductive image (its modernity) to the virtual signals of the digital image (its Post-modernism). From a symbolical status (representing abstraction), the image went through the status of representation (representing the concrete) and attained the status of the sign (representing the outlines, the surface of the concrete).⁹

The Leftovers (Les Résidus) embody this phenomena.

They are a succession of a series of thematic photograms. Beginning with Picasso's guitar and ending with contemporary architecture in Rotterdam, Nourisson reviews all the great inventions of artistic and architectural Modernism in the 20th century. At credac, one of the series embraces some of the important exhibitions of the past century (the first Dada celebration in 1920, Senza titole - Dodici Cavalli Vici by Jannis Kounellis in 1969).

   The method used to create the photogram - an image composed of a single silhouette of the represented subject possessing a strong red outline  decomposes and consumes the initial image: a photocopy of a reproduction of a photography of a specific exhibition!

   In About Love Tokyo (film by Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 1994) the action is set in places that typically represent the contemporary city; it moves back and forth between the remnants of Modernism and the Post-modern deconstruction of urban fabric, where the individual surfs on the asphalt waves between corals of concrete and waves of passing cars. "Like two fragile silhouettes, the two main characters wander about in a de-humanised landscape of suburban areas in the Japanese city, which resembles a scenery with huge highway link roads, looking like small figurative silhouettes in an abstract space. These shots resonate like the juxtaposition of the human and a Constructivist nightmare”. ¹⁰ Like this film, The Leftovers (Les Résidus) express this loss of identity.

   So, we are tempted to ask: what can I do to survive without loosing my integrity?

   In Nourisson's work, the use of deconstructed media images, by means of the modern and Post-modern methods that produced them, seems to be one of the means available to go beyond all forms of alienation.

Christophe Le Gac

Translated by Pernille Grane

¹ Liam Gillick, "Nash", excerpt from art press, special number, n°21, "Forgetting the exhibition" (Oublier l'exposition), 2000.

² It is necessary to specify that this idea of art as a whole supports two visions. On one hand, the German vision by Wagner, a global project conducted in a demiurgic fashion. All of the know-how is dedicated to a common cause, all the unique resources dissolve in the common project. On the other hand, the French vision, where the specificity of each artistic discipline is respected. It is an accumulation of skills that reunite to form a complete work of art: the common project is a conglomerate, meaning the self-effacement of the group in favour of the individual.

³ Christian Ruby, "The viewer caught in the dia

logue" (Le spectateur saisi par l'échange), parpaings, n°20, October, 2001, Publisher Jean-Michel Place

⁴ Hegel defines dialectics as a law residing at the foundation of the essence of thought and reality. For example, Modernism/Post-modernism and work of art/viewer are a priori isolated, but in Hegel's definition, nothing is entirely

separated.

⁵ It is important to distinguish between the concept of participating and the idea of an actor (as in theatre or film). Here, the difference lies in the acts. The viewer is not to act. He is not asked to take objects, to paint or to cook. The viewer is invited to participate in the work of art's creative process and he has to be aware of his state of mind.

⁶ Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp of the sign (Duchamp du signe), Collection Champs, Publisher Flammarion, 1999, Paris. (translator's note: this is a pun with the expression "the chant du signe": the swan song)

⁷ and ⁸ Excerpts from the conversation bet ween Valérie Pugin and Jean-Christophe Nourisson in the exhibition catalogue Figures of circumstance (Figures de circonstance), Theatre Comedia, Aubagne, January, 1997.

⁹ Jacques Aumont, The Image (L'image),Publisher Nathan, 1990, Paris.

¹⁰ Excerpt from the synopsis.