Object Action Object

8/2/2019 Object Action Object

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Object Action ObjectCool and Balducci

Begin action. Live. A woman sits on a standard office chair at what appears to be arather typical office desk. In her hands she holds a very ordinary piece of string, whichshe uses to silently make shapes along the desks surface. A loop is thrown like a lasso,barely falling beyond the surfaces edge before it is coiled back and coerced into acircle, which is then pushed into the figure of an hourglass before being smoothed out

again into a single line. These actions are repeated and developed as the string isfolded, moulded and twisted into innumerable permutations. At first glance it couldbe tempting to view these actions as gestures of bored distraction performed absent-mindedly whilst whiling away lost hours, for idly passing the time. It soon becomesclear however that the womans actions are nottactics against tedium, but instead havea definitive structure or logic, and a sense of intent or purpose that remains difficult to

determine or define.

Knowing what something is notis not the same as knowing what somethingis. It ispossible to display certainty in the elimination and refutation of one particular

classificatory order and yet remain uncertain about the validity of claiming othercategorical certainties in its place. Rejection of one possible set of meanings mightthen operate in the space before other meanings have begun to fully form, in thenascent state before something can be wholly or coherently declared. The recent

exhibition of the work of Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci at Site Gallery in Sheffieldoperates in the space of such indeterminacy, where the notion of uncertainty orinbetweenness might be applied as much to the status of the artists practice in

general, as to the transitional shifts and fluctuating status of materials explored withinthe work itself. For some time now Cool and Balducci have shown work in the context

of performance festivals and events, but this is the first occasion that their work hasbeen interrogated over a sustained period within a gallery, where they have selected toframe it as a particular form of visual arts practice. The exhibition marks a moment oftransition and transitivity for the artists as their practice shifts, and they relinquish thefamiliarity of one set of framing conventions and histories in favour of the as-yet-

unexplored possibilities of another. Over six weeks the artists propose to show a seriesof video works and a number of sequentially performed actions. The gallery becomesa space to rethink and explore their practice from a different perspective whereunfamiliar surroundings enable a different kind of lived encounter with the work, in

order that it might be explored afresh.

Cool and Balduccis work often presents a prosaic inventory of commonplacematerials - which has previously included string, paper, thread, salt, effervescentaspirin, scotch tape, a nylon bag - within exquisitely and economically executed liveactions and recorded moments. The artists are certain about what the work is not,

and the tightly choreographed statements that surround it deliberately excludeparticular references that draw unwanted connections and parallels to certain types ofperformance or live art practice. The work is not about the ephemeral, transitory oreveryday, they claim, but an interrogation of matter; an exercise in exploringelemental states and spaces of material transition. They request that their audiences

attend to the material nature of the work itself that they remain as close to the factsor truths of the work as possible, resisting the temptation of elaboration or


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interpretation, emotion or sentiment. The psychologically or associatively inflectedreading does not appear to be welcomed by the artists. They assert that their practicefunctions in a system devoid of external signs. The frame in which the work operates

thus is somewhat instructional in tone; we are told to curb our enthusiasm, reign inour errant imaginations.

Pause. Cut to black. Begin action. A video is projected onto the wall. Untitled. A neutralspace is framed within the shot. There is an open window letting in light towards the

right of the frame, which affords an incongruent moment of asymmetry to anotherwise symmetrical scene. A woman sits at a table on which a large white sheet ofpaper lies, flat and inanimate. The woman inserts her hands beneath the paper,fractionally further apart than the width of her body. She begins to lift her hands,slowly drawing her palms and the two ends of the paper towards the centre, towards

each other. In time the two ends of paper begin to touch and the paper shifts from aregister of flatness to one of form as it actively envelopes space, crossing from two tothree dimensions. Gradually, the woman eases the edges of the paper back down to

the surface of the table, and it returns to its former inertia. Her hands remain beneaththe paper.Pause. She begins to lift them once again but this time the gesture appearsinverted. The paper folds in the opposite direction along a barely perceptible crease -an action that inescapably echoes the gesture of closing a book. The woman coaxesthe surfaces of the paper together between her hands, steering them towards

verticality. Eventually the two planes of paper become synthesised, momentarilyescaping the horizontality of the table to rise together as a single form. The flat

surfaces of the paper run perpendicular to the angle of the filmic frame, whilst theirpaper-thin facet directly faces the camera. Carefully held in place, the paper seems tooscillate between visibility and invisibility. There are rare moments when it becomes

virtually imperceptible, when it appears to almost disappear.Pause. Cut to black.

In other work there is a similar sense of disappearance; the further illusion of solidmatter melting into thin air. For example, in one work a single sheet of paper isinched along a table whose surface is striated by broad bands of light reflected onto itfrom an unseen source. As the paper enters the areas of reflected light, its whitenessand the white of the light on the tabletop become alike, equivalent. In this space, the

table and the paper itself disappear: they are just white. It is no longer possible todiscern the edges of either the paper or the table. There is only an unreliable andindeterminable white matter, extending the appearance of form into space. Distinctentities coalesce and blur; the inert begins to stir; directional trajectories change midflow; flatness becomes form and then returns to flatness; light appears solid; matter is

dematerialised; objects deliquesce into shadow. There is a strange kind of trickery ormagic at play in the work, yet we are asked to observe this with empirical coolness.There are six video works shown in sequence that bear witness to similar actions, andduring the exhibition a sequence of twelve actions will take place as a live andrepeated occurrence in the gallery: daily and continually for six weeks. In the work,

the woman (who is in fact the artist Marie Cool) functions as a form of catalyst orenabler, creating moments of energy or momentum that allow these silenttransformations to take place. She is not there as a performer. Her role is rather moreperfunctory: she is there to make something happen. Cool operates as the final or

missing element in an existing circuit; her body closes the loop thus activating or

charging the other objects in the space. She makes the other objects live, initiating


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the moments of transition and material slipperiness that, we are told, form the focus ofthe artists enquiry.

However, there are other transitional moments and unstable states at play - otherthresholds that cannot be ignored. In some senses, the work operates at the interstice

between the physics ofbeingand the philosophy ofbecoming; between ontology andphenomenology; between what something is and how it is then perceived. This shiftbetween the actual and the perceptual might be understood in relation to the

transition or translation that inevitably takes place between the artists intentions andsubsequent interpretation of the work by the audience. In spite of its apparent controland precision and their insistence that it functions as a closed system - Cool andBalduccis work is a site of tensions, instabilities and critical inconsistencies. Whilstsome of these form an integral and intentional part of the work, other moments of

uncertainty appear more like glitches that rupture or unravel the logic of the artistsrhetoric; functioning as a form of unanticipated and involuntary noise that conjuresseemingly uninvited associations and creates space for the potentiality of other

meanings that do not sit so squarely within the artists rather prohibitive framework ofinterpretation.

Pause. Cut to black. Begin action. A video is projected onto the wall. Untitled. The space issilent. I am reminded of a sanatorium. A woman enters from the right clasping twosheets of paper between closed palms. The woman is Marie Cool - I already knowthis. She looks a little tired. There is a feeling of expectation, anticipation. Her hands

seem caught in prayer, held at head height in a form of yogic salutation. She begins.The pages tremble. She remains expressionless; she does not give anything away. Thepages continue to tremble; and this trembling becomes the site of a persistent humanpresence. Gradually she opens out her hands as though they were hinged at the

thumbs, carefully retaining a sheet of paper on each palm in precarious balance. Thepages flutter like butterflys wings warmed in the sun. I can feel her concentration, thesense of her breath held. These are actions borne of hours of repetition and rehearsal.Their simplicity belies the possibility of error, the potential for the clumsy or failedrendition. Simplicity can be terribly unforgiving. In spite of her emotional withdrawalor restraint, there is still a task to be performed, a precision required. I am trying to

look only at what is taking place, but find myself thinking about other things.

Paradoxically, Cools dispassionate and distanced presence becomes strangelycompelling and resonant, her withdrawal charged. At times her mannerisms reflectthe sense of evacuated subjectivity witnessed in the gestures of spirit mediums, where

the body functions as a conduit for the passage of other and unseen energies; thepassive transmitter or link between separated entities or worlds. Cools controlled andaustere denial of self-expression also recalls a particular ascetic practice, where thedisciplined withdrawal of individual agency could be read as either a punitive gestureor as a form of emancipation. Alternatively, her body language evokes that of a page-

turner - the human prop within an orchestral context - silently and obedientlyenabling anothers performance; dutifully dulling her own stage presence so as not toupstage the main event. However, individual psychologies are not so easily repressed,reminds Denis Dercourts film The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de Pages, 2006), and awilful sense of agency may still be harboured silently within the most passive and

unassuming of guises. Still waters run deep.


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In the work, Cool is proposed as matter alongside other matter, just another object inspace. On occasion, she attempts to physically withdraw from the scene such that weonly register the force or movement created by her body, or appears as a shadow,

fluid and impalpable. At other times, her body functions as a line, or as an edge, or asthe apex of a triangle constructed from masking tape. This desire to blend into the

background or become equivalent can be understood as a form of existentialosmosis, a categorical slur or disturbance at the boundary between body andenvironment. The gesture of camouflage or of becoming something other can then

be seen as a paradigm of compulsion as well as of criticality, where the condition ofsimilitude might provoke a crisis of being analogous to a form of psychosis, a sense ofself becoming porous or formless. For Rosalind Krauss this crisis of distinction occursas a body involuntarily responds to the ... peculiarly psychotic yielding to the call ofspace... a failure to maintain the boundaries between inside and outside, between,

that is, figure and ground. A slackening of the contours of its own integrity, of its self-possession ... the body collapses, deliquesces, doubles the space around it in order tobe possessed by its own surrounds.i Here, the withdrawal of the body becomes

psychologically charged.

It is difficult perhaps for the body to remain neutral in the way that an object might. Italways carries other and existing meanings; it can never wholly shed the associationsthat have accumulated around it. The human body functioning within a restrictivesystem or rule has the tendency to be read as submissive or as resistant; as alienatedand oppressed or the site of latent revolt. In fact, the work itself occasionally

emphasises the presence of Cools body or draws attention to the relentless duration ofher inexhaustible and purposeless labour. This is particularly true of the sequence oflive occurrences in the gallery space, where Cool can be witnessed in the process ofengaging with various installed objects and arrangements: taut threads pulled tightly

across the width of the gallery or intricately webbed in a corner like a cats cradle;geometrical structures and soft spheres suspended from the ceiling; two large tablesdisplaying an innocuous array of stationery - paper, string and masking tape stationary, in waiting. In a number of the actions, Cools body is the measure bywhich materials become stretched or shaped, or against which a particular fit issought. The reach of her outspread arms; the slight width of her body; the tentative

angle between her neckline and elbow in a given position; the span between her fingerand thumb, determine the distances and relationships between one object ormovement and another. These correlations perhaps echo the idea of a canon ofproportions in which the body is inscribed within a geometrical logic, epitomized byLeonardo Da Vincis Vitruvian Man where the measurements of the body optimallycorrespond to the dimensions of both a circle and a square, absolutely perfectly andwith total symmetry. A system or structure is asserted into which the body is insertedand expected to comply; a system that perhaps fails to take into account the possibilityof all too human variables.

The idea of human variability (or even fallibility) becomes extended or enacted in thespace of the gallery as the two sequences of actions play out; over and over, again andagain. It is unclear whether the live elements follow or anticipate the actionsperformed to camera; whether the recordings offer a particular optimal articulation

made possible only through innumerable earlier and unseen rehearsals and successful

repetitions, or whether they present a unique moment caught on camera which thelive actions subsequently seek to replicate, endlessly attempting to repeat the


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unrepeatable. The videos at times appear as controlled experiments, produced in theknowledge that any error or discrepancy in the performance can be erased or wipedaway. There is more at stake in a live context perhaps, a different kind of tension is

established. Whilst Cool and Balducci have rejected the critical frameworks of theatre,they still appear to want to retain some of its conventions - the attentive silence, the

controlled distance between an audience and the action itself. Encountering the workdirectly from the front would still appear to be the privileged position for viewing Cooland Balduccis practice, for not only does this offer the conditions for moments of a

particular symmetry, but many of the transitions and transformations proposed onlyreally work when viewed from certain angles and from a certain distance. The videosmake the conditions of silence, distance and the frontal viewing position possible in adifferent way to the live actions. They begin to indicate a sense of the optimal mannerin which the work might function; they set up propositional conditions of viewing

which are impossible to attain in a live context.

Whilst the live occurrences mirror the same sequential format of the looped video,

they are unable to echo its capacity for endless and unchanging replay. Theperformative strategy of loop and repeat is inescapably not the same as that made

possible through filmic technologies. Whilst the sequential nature of the live actiondoes not change, neither does it stay the same. Certain actions seem more susceptibleto these involuntary fluctuations. It is impossible to ever exactly duplicate an action orother time-based gesture. In an article on the philosophy of repetition within artpractice, Brian Dillon draws on a rich history of ideas ranging from Kierkegaard to

Deleuze in order to suggest to explore repetitions double nature: it names both anendlessly predictable recurrence (the relentless crawl to infinity that is the experienceof boredom, for example; or the equally unreachable horizon of obsession) and aceaselessly renewable starting-point.ii Here, rather than creating the condition of an

endless equivalence or same-old sameness, The repeated experience, it turns out, isalways something different ... Repetition, paradoxically, is always new.iii

Cool and Balducci refer to both the video works and live occurrences as sequences,drawing on the terms filmic connotations where it is used to describe a piece of filmshowing a single incident or set of related actions. Whilst this might be seen as an

attempt to contextualise the work in relation to a tradition of film and video, the termsequence has also gained currency within a particular strand of conceptual artpractice, where it is used as part of the vocabulary for serial or systematic processes ormethods. In The Serial Attitude Mel Bochner defines sequence as the state of being in asuccessive order.iv The term serial can also be used to describe a particular musical

composition in which all twelve chromatic tones of the octave appear in strict orderwith no note repeated before the sequence is completed. Similarly, twelve actions byCool and Balducci take place in the gallery, in a strict order that has beenpredetermined in advance like a form of grammar. The work seems to follow the logicof a particular conceptual trajectory of practice, echoing the tone of Sol LeWitts

assertion that, To work with a plan that is pre-set is one way of avoidingsubjectivity.v Cool and Balduccis actions are equally pre-set, where unwritteninstructions or plans for the work are followed with absolute precision, whichprevents the gestures from collapsing into the territory of the habitual or

improvisational. In hisParagraphs on Conceptual Art, LeWitt suggests that, When an

artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all the planning and decisions aremade beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a


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machine that makes art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; itis simply intuitive it is purposeless.vi

Whilst rule-based actions and serial repetition have perhaps become synonymous witha particular conceptual vernacular, this anti-subjective logic can still be complicated

or disrupted by the presence of alternative (and at times contradictory) theoretical,psychological or even existential associations. Potentially there is a risk that the gestureof endless repetition might be interpreted through a psychoanalytical register, as

indicative of an obsessive behaviour or a form of compulsion-repetition. Alternativelythe model of endlessly repeating an action is inflected with a sense of the absurd,where it can be seen to evoke the Sisyphean model of indeterminable or purposelesslabour. In the essay,Bound to Fail, Christy Lange suggests that, Conceptual art,despite its associations with objectivity, acknowledged and mined the subjectivity and

flaws of its own methods.vii She points to a particular statement made by LeWittwhere he states that, "Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece orseries of pieces is a device that is used at times only to be ruined."viii Here perhaps, the

rule or instruction can as easily become the rules of the game, whilst the repeatedgesture might allow for a form of ludic infinity and the possibility of incalculable

permutations or improvised rehearsals within a given structure. Similarly, in thecatalogue for the Open Systems:Rethinking Art c.1970 exhibition, Johanna Burton alsonotes the apparent contradiction or counter-intuition evident in early conceptual art,as recourse to systems enabled rather than denied access to the rhizomatic,perpetually variable and vehemently nonlinear, while making visible the myriad

structures designed to contain and order.ix These various inconsistencies and doublereadings are not necessarily incompatible then, or indicative of the failure of theconceptual work to communicate effectively. In fact the incongruent meaningsproduced by these different perspectives can at times be understood as points of

desirable friction; an integral and welcome part of the work rather than unnecessaryinterference at its periphery.

Pause. Begin action.Live. Cool places her hands over two sheets of paper and then slowlydraws them towards each other until their edges meet. She continues to applypressure until the touching edges of the paper lift together in a peak and break away

from the tables surface, striving towards verticality. Over and over, again and again,the paper refuses to become fully upright and instead collapses - flaccidly - towards theleft or right, forcing Cool to unceremoniously draw a close to the action and move onto the next task in her sequence. It is almost possible to sense the artists frustration atthis stubborn, repeated failure; the barely perceptible moment of rupture as - against

the rules - a sense of Cools enduring and individual endeavour becomes palpable.Whilst I can imagine the precarious elegance of a successful rendition of this action, Istill like its failedcounterpart and its resultant, if reluctant, state of endless andindeterminable rehearsal. It operates as one of the more poignant moments ofdesirable friction in the work, which I hope will not become too smoothed out in time.

For me, I suppose it is these difficult and resistance moments that have encouragedme to repeatedly return to view the work over and over again, for ironically it is oftenthe glitches and blips in the logic of a seemingly objective or even closed systemthat become most compelling.

Copyright Emma Cocker, 2008Response to the exhibition by Cool and Balducci at Site Gallery, Sheffield, 3 May - 14 Jun

2008. Commissioned by Dance Theatre Journal, 23 (1), pp. 18-23.


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iRosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London,

1994), p.155. Her reflections draw on Roger Caillois analysis of insect mimicry in Mimicry and

legendary psychasthenia, trans. John Shepley, October, Vol. 31 (Winter, 1984), 30 (originally

published in Minotaure, Vol. 7, 1935).ii

Brian Dillon, Eternal Return,Frieze, Issue 77, September 2003.iii

Dillon, Eternal Return, 2003.iv

Mel Bochner, The Serial Attitude, first published in Artforum, December 1967v

Sol LeWitt,Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, first published in Artforum. September 1967vi

LeWitt,1967vii

Christy Lange, Bound to Fail, Tate etc, Issue 4, Summer 2005,

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue4/boundtofail.htmviii

LeWitt cited in Christie Lange, 2005ix

Johanna Burton, Mystics Rather than Rationalists in Donna de Salvo (ed.), Open Systems.

Rethinking Art c.1970 (exh. cat), Tate Publishing, 2005.p.67.

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