Tune Falls Flat for Audio Poetry

The RISD Museum unveils two new works

BY CHLOE MALLE

PEOPLE SAY I WALK too fast, but I just always thought of myself as girl having somewhere to go, as a girl on a mission. It took walking through-or rather sporadically stumbling up-the aurally arresting Farago Staircase, the centerpiece of the spring exhibit at the RISD Museum's Sitings to realize that "people" may be right. Sitings features two installations: "Displace," from two-person team Liluye Jhala (MFA Digital Media 2005) and Inmi Lee (MFA Digital Media 2005), and Tanya Zolotnitsky's (BFA Painting 2006) "Untitled." The two were the winners of a RISD-wide contest curated by Lisa Tung, the goal of which is to draw attention to the "architectural idiosyncrasies" of the Museum's four-building complex. And if my experience is typical, people will have plenty of time to admire the museum's unique structure thanks to the intentional foot traffic created by "Displace."

"Displace" And That Place

The theme of "Displace" is immigration and, surprisingly enough, displacement. This focus is highlighted by the geographic, maplike aesthetic of the movement-triggered speakers that line the staircase. Jhala refers to the poetry and the presentation of the poetry are as a "topography of typography" in Siting's brochure. The speakers are displayed on layered plaster cutouts whitewashed to match the wall. The amorphous plaster cutouts frame and camouflage the speakers in an awkward Chuck Close-ish arrangement. The uneven layering of these cutouts evokes the color gradation used on maps to describe the topography by showing varying altitudes. This connection draws attention to the relationship between the topography of natural formations and the topography of human expression.

As the site of "Displace," the Farago Staircase contributes greatly to the overall aesthetic of the interactive sound installation. The staircase is isolated from the rest of the museum, but the sounds from the main exhibition hall are heard, and the window on the landing offers a keyhole view onto the events in the rest of the museum. This set-up provides an interesting exhibition space, in that it is simultaneously isolating and connective. The implied upward motion of the staircase and the theme of movement and migration complement each other. In this respect, the installation succeeds in meeting the goal of the contest: to call attention to the museum's architecture.

However, the intended connection between the fluid diagonal of the staircase and the forward movement of the audience is stymied by the effort required in listening to the poetry emanating from the movement-activated speakers. Thus, "Displace" is an exhibit that depends on its viewers. As Jhala writes, "The movement of visitors triggers spoken poetry dealing with the subject of immigration and displacement psychologically and physically. Technically, it functions with micro-controllers, soundchips and motion sensors."

The Sitings pamphlet description of the installation leaves one with great expectations. However, the actual effect leaves much to be desired. The speaker quality is more reminiscent of talking Mattel dolls than of audio fine art. Like battery-operated Barbies, each speaker has a track of two or three brief poems that repeat indefinitely. This repetition is inescapable because even upon advancing up the staircase towards the next speaker, one is unable to fully leave the previous recording behind, as museum-goers following behind discover the barely intelligible garble. Unless you are the sole visitor to the RISD Museum, this problem repeats along the entire staircase resulting in sporadic spurts of poetry jumping at your eardrums. And even if you are lucky enough to be on the staircase alone, the noises from the rest of the museum don't allow for close concentration on the words of the poem.

The voices reading the poems are soft and timid, encouraging hovering and long waits on landings. For each individual speaker there are different vulnerable voices reading the two or three poems. Though the poems are transient and fleeting, only the direct, simple poems are effective as they are the only ones certain to be understood. One of the poems complains, "I am constantly being asked, 'Where are you from?'" While obvious, this line is quickly understandable and so better involves the viewer than the obtuse, philosophical verse of the other poems, whose obscure vocabulary and garbled one-word flourishes chirping whisper-soft were more than I could stomach.

When reading poetry I often need a third, or even fourth, reading to truly grasp a poem's meaning. Theoretically, this need for repetition should be solved as those behind you reactivate poems you've just heard, allowing you to listen to the poem once more, but unfortunately, listening to grainy verses that you may have already forgotten as you simultaneously try and focus on another poem you've activated impair the experience. For an exhibit that focuses on migration, a seeming contradiction arises in that the inaudibility of the poems force visitors to stop and hover at every speaker, trapping them into a molasses-like progression.

The staircase begins to resemble a traffic jam as strangers congregate in stunted motion. When there is movement it is slow and stilted, and when we must stop it is abrupt, illogical, and uncontrollable. The confused pace is irksome and incredibly frustrating. However, the uncomfortable group movement may be a conscious decision by the artist to evoke the vulnerability of immigration and movement controlled by others. Immigrants and displaced persons are in movement, but the movement is often strained and punctuated, like my trip up the staircase. The exhibit succeeds in alienating the viewer, conveying the feeling that we are all immigrants in transition and constantly translating the language of the artist into one that we recognize as our own.

Call Of The Wild

At the top of the staircase is Tanya Zolotnitsky's seemingly simple construction: a work of art basking in juxtaposition. Translucent, plastic cutouts decorate the window at the top of the stairs. It is unclear, at first, whether these cutouts are on the inside or outside of the window. It is also unclear whether there is a hidden Rorschach-like pattern or if this is simply an abstract assemblage. The viewer is skeptical, questioning: what is she hiding behind these shapes? But Zolotnitsky explains in the exhibit's brochure that she is not hiding anything, "It is my intention to bring randomness into the museum setting. This quality, abundant in a natural setting, is usually missing in the carefully curated museum space." Zolotnitsky answers the demand of the contest to reorganize the viewer's perception of the museum space. Through the multi-layered view into the garden she aggressively challenges the way we perceive the relationship between architecture and its natural surroundings. The randomness of the cutouts creates the sensation of wilderness and unpredictability. As the visitor ascends the staircase, his point of view shifts constantly, thus personally animating the window collage through his physical movement.

Once at the top of the staircase, the view is of the museum garden, engulfing the visitor with feelings of forced nature. The cutouts, Zolotnitsky explains, "allow the viewer to look out onto the city; but from a distance they ask the viewer to consider the contrast between the institutional museum space and a naturalistic setting." This contrast forces the viewer to evaluate his experience in both worlds and attempt to resolve how these different experiences coexist, evoking feelings of immigration and movement between two settings-the natural and the manmade. The cutouts highlight nature's displacement and our own as we navigate through two contrasting worlds.

Stairway To Heaven

The cutouts are a perfect supplement to the spoken poetry. "Displace" stresses the universality of displacement, and "Untitled" confirms this universality by convincing the viewer that he is migrating back and forth between the city and the displacement of nature. The journey up the staircase is an uncomfortable jumble of sounds that certainly succeed in, if nothing else, displacing the viewer. "Untitled" acts as a reward for the museum-goer, as if we have finally passed the test of confusing one-word emotions and now may revel in the translucent merging of nature and man's construction.

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Chloe Malle B'08 sporadically stumbles through life

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