Page 123 - Hrobat Virloget, Katja, et al., eds. (2015). Stone narratives: heritage, mobility, performance. University of Primorska Press, Koper.
P. 123
“wanna walk under the rock?”: land art, time, and tourist passages
ed in his City and Perray’s »archeology of the present« (ibid.) in his modest land perfor-
mances in different parts of the world.
Engaging the rock: tourist passages
Stoniness, then, is not in the stone’s ‘nature’, in its materiality. Nor is it merely in the mind of the observer
or practitioner. Rather, it emerges through the stone’s involvement in its total surroundings – including
you, the observer – and from the manifold ways in which it is engaged in the currents of the lifeworld.
Tim Ingold
I have for many years searched for the possibility of letting the viewer ‘stroll’ in the picture, forcing him to
forget himself and dissolve into the picture.
Vassily Kandinsky
After the rock concluded the journey at the LACMA, awaited by a crowd in the middle of
the night, there was still considerable amount of work to be done to turn the rock into a
sculpture. Michael Heizer arrived and camped on what was effectively a construction site.
Several compromises were made in design due to safety requirements, thus Levitated Mass
at the LACMA in contrast to the New York one, with a hidden support structure, has the
steel plates on which it is positioned clearly visible. That represented somewhat of an anti-
-climax for some of the early visitors.
After the opening ceremony, when people actually jammed the slot, daily local visi-
tors and tourist trickled down to the proportion where the passage may be experienced in
solitary, in pair or a group, yet never a truly large one during my time of observation.
My observation spot was a lawn, no shade in a blazing sun, where many people passed
before entering the passage. The recurrent phrase I heard – it felt like The sky over Berlin –
was: Wanna walk under the rock?« – hence the title. It was a phrase of invitation, among
friends, acquaintances, to take a stroll. Hardly anyone said no. I sat taking notes and ta-
king pictures while nobody paid any special attention to my activities. On the day of the
LACMA’s 50th anniversary, people were informed that photos will be taken for the promo-
tional purposes, so I was simply one more person taking pictures. Yet on the day when the-
re were no crowds nobody was disturbed by my picture taking either which indicates the
activity is entirely integrated in what is expected to be a museum experience. The LACMA
brochure actually encourages tourists to take pictures and post them on social media by su-
ggesting two spots in particular, the main entrance Urban Light installation and Levitated
Mass. Yet, interestingly enough, less that one third of people I observed took pictures. Some
did engage the rock by posing, majority by walking, and minority – mainly the children –
by running (which is not permitted officially but is tolerated).
In his seminal work on photography Camera Lucida (2010) Barthes reflects on the
social game of posing, of »making another body, transforming in advance into an ima-
ge. » (Barthes 2010, p. 10). In contemporary practice of digital snapshots by tourists the
image often appears to be constituted within the space of extimacy, where the exterio-
rizing of intimacy is both accepted and expected. The extimacy at Levitated Mass was
at the forefront in posing performances by couples of all ages while the individual and
group posing were closer to Barthes’s notion of making another body, playing the soci-
al game of posing.
121
ed in his City and Perray’s »archeology of the present« (ibid.) in his modest land perfor-
mances in different parts of the world.
Engaging the rock: tourist passages
Stoniness, then, is not in the stone’s ‘nature’, in its materiality. Nor is it merely in the mind of the observer
or practitioner. Rather, it emerges through the stone’s involvement in its total surroundings – including
you, the observer – and from the manifold ways in which it is engaged in the currents of the lifeworld.
Tim Ingold
I have for many years searched for the possibility of letting the viewer ‘stroll’ in the picture, forcing him to
forget himself and dissolve into the picture.
Vassily Kandinsky
After the rock concluded the journey at the LACMA, awaited by a crowd in the middle of
the night, there was still considerable amount of work to be done to turn the rock into a
sculpture. Michael Heizer arrived and camped on what was effectively a construction site.
Several compromises were made in design due to safety requirements, thus Levitated Mass
at the LACMA in contrast to the New York one, with a hidden support structure, has the
steel plates on which it is positioned clearly visible. That represented somewhat of an anti-
-climax for some of the early visitors.
After the opening ceremony, when people actually jammed the slot, daily local visi-
tors and tourist trickled down to the proportion where the passage may be experienced in
solitary, in pair or a group, yet never a truly large one during my time of observation.
My observation spot was a lawn, no shade in a blazing sun, where many people passed
before entering the passage. The recurrent phrase I heard – it felt like The sky over Berlin –
was: Wanna walk under the rock?« – hence the title. It was a phrase of invitation, among
friends, acquaintances, to take a stroll. Hardly anyone said no. I sat taking notes and ta-
king pictures while nobody paid any special attention to my activities. On the day of the
LACMA’s 50th anniversary, people were informed that photos will be taken for the promo-
tional purposes, so I was simply one more person taking pictures. Yet on the day when the-
re were no crowds nobody was disturbed by my picture taking either which indicates the
activity is entirely integrated in what is expected to be a museum experience. The LACMA
brochure actually encourages tourists to take pictures and post them on social media by su-
ggesting two spots in particular, the main entrance Urban Light installation and Levitated
Mass. Yet, interestingly enough, less that one third of people I observed took pictures. Some
did engage the rock by posing, majority by walking, and minority – mainly the children –
by running (which is not permitted officially but is tolerated).
In his seminal work on photography Camera Lucida (2010) Barthes reflects on the
social game of posing, of »making another body, transforming in advance into an ima-
ge. » (Barthes 2010, p. 10). In contemporary practice of digital snapshots by tourists the
image often appears to be constituted within the space of extimacy, where the exterio-
rizing of intimacy is both accepted and expected. The extimacy at Levitated Mass was
at the forefront in posing performances by couples of all ages while the individual and
group posing were closer to Barthes’s notion of making another body, playing the soci-
al game of posing.
121
