Tour Guide, Copenhagen, Denmark
| 7 mins read
'Elsewhere' (Annorstädes) is a multi-projection video art work which seeks to transform the reinforced concrete landscape of the Malmö C underground station into a wide open space.
The video installation is placed on the railway station platforms in Malmö, and created by Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez. It is a continuation of the tradition to place and display art works in the public space. Approximately in the middle of the 20th century it became common to decorate metro stations with monumental art pieces, such as mosaics and sculptures.
Among the most famous metros known for their art are the metropolitan railways in Moscow and in Stockholm. Although these two metro-art-places are different, they have some features in common. Art in the metro stations tell stories about time. The feeling of time in this contemporary art work was realized by using a modern technology. In historical context, moving images in public places were the commercial panoramas and rolled screens; they appeared definitely later than sculptures and mosaics. It is not easy to recognize the city from the window on this video. The images from the same place were repeatedly moving without beginning or end.
The archetypical point of view on an art work in metros and on 'Elsewhere' of Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez sends us back to prehistoric times — to the origin of art and to the first rock paintings. The City tunnel in Malmö Central Station and in Triangle are the underground stations which could be perceived as the caves.
Caves protected the ancient man from dangers, much in the same way the metro stations in Moscow, London and in some others cities in Europe protected their citizens from the Germans air strikes during the Second World War. The art historical point of view forces me to think about art in the underground transport platforms in Stockholm and Copenhagen again.
The metro in the capital of Sweden is famous for its length and multiplicity of monumental images on the walls. Anybody who has been in Kastrup—the railway station in the airport of Copenhagen, which lies only some 30kilometers from Malmö C - can see the huge photos on its walls.
This tradition of using art in public places is a relatively more complicated practice than monuments, statues, and memorials dating back to the second part of the 20th century, when it became common to use the alternative places for contemporary art.
All kinds of landscapes, watercourses, forests, private apartments and living places, offices and industrial districts, churches, stables, cemeteries, churchyards, parks, airports, airplanes and trains are just some of these places which artists, curators, and art institutions chose for there exhibitions. If one could suggest where art shouldn’t be, art was already there!
Reasons for seeking new locations for the exhibitions are numerous. One of the most important to mention is that in the beginning of the 1960s, a major development in art genres and movements started. It developed from the classical (oil painting, watercolor, sculpture) arts to the more complicated forms consisting of installations, performances, photography, video, etc. These forms required to be installed in new places. Furthermore, artists were also looking for new places to get closer to the viewer, interact with an audience, and to maintain a dialogue. They wanted to talk to the audience directly, and for the audience to notice it; they did not need to go to the art museum or to the gallery.
When we are using the metro in Stockholm, such as for going out or coming into Östermalmstorg or go into the University metro stations, for example, then we can look at the artwork made by Siri Derkertor Françoise Schein. We notice the artworks even if we are not interested in art at all.
Stockholm’s metro can be called a long art exhibition stretching 110 kilometers. Almost all metro stations of Stockholm are decorated by sculptures, carvings, mosaics, paintings, installations, and reliefs created by hundreds of artists. In that context, Stockholm is not an exception. We can see art inside metros of many others cities, and now in Malmö.
In the essay "Making Space for Art" Mary Jane Jacob, who is a professor of sculpture at The school of the Art Institute of Chicago and curator specializing in public arts *1, tried to answer the question about what we achieve with the new exhibition places.**2
On one hand, the contemporary works of art demanded to be exhibited outside traditional museums or galleries because of their different shape and forms. On the other hand, these art forms wanted to give the viewer an opportunity to find their own way and to free them from old art institutions.
'Elsewhere/Annorstädes' is a multi-projection video art work, which was inaugurated on the 7th of December 2010. But, there is already a theoretical illustrated book about it by Karin Faxén, which was published the same year in Malmö. Karin called her book “The art in the City tunneln.” She researched the history of Malmö in the context of public spaces, and the film in art history as well as describes all of the art works in City tunneln, including Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez’s 'Elsewhere'. What is this art work? Through, a projection which looks like the images shouted from the train we are watching on the salt flats of Uyuni, the roads of Saigon, the plains of Siberia, Patagonia, and so on.
“The video installation Elsewhere at Malmö Central station is traveling, through space and time” ***3 – as stated in the book of Karin Faxén. It is difficult and almost impossible to understand where the parts of the whole work are taken from, but we are lucky to find the description on the home page of the artist and in some other resources. To understand this video work like any video installation in general, one should stop and spend some time watching. May be this is one of the meaning or purpose of the installation.
Facts: Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez was born in 1973 in Chili. She lives and works in Paris. Video installation Elsewhere/Annorstädes costs : 950,000 €.
14.01 – 05.02.2012, an exhibition of Tania Ruiz Gutiérrez in Malmö took place in gallery Rostrum.
_______________________________________________________________________
*1 P. Marincola, What makes a great exhibition?, Questions of Practice , Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, 2010, p.172.
**2 M.J. Jacob, Making Space for Art , from: Marincola Paulina, “What makes a great exhibition?, Questions of Practice”, Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, 2010, p.134-136.
***3 K. Faxén: Attraktion - Konsten i Citytunneln, Bokförlaget Arena, Malmö 2010, p. 65.
REFERENCES Barker, Emma, Contemporary Cultures of Display , Yale University Press, 1999.
Faxén, Karin, Attraktion - Konsten i Citytunneln , Bokförlaget Arena, Malmö 2010.
Marincola, Paulina, What makes a great exhibition? Questions of Practice , PhiladelphiaExhibitions Initiative, 2010.
Ruiz Gutiérrez, Tania, Elsewhere/Annorstädes/Ailleurs , Allubi Atque Allubi, Frankrike, 2010.