Dark Matters: Artists See the Impossible
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco, CA
28 July – 11 November

by Tonya Warner

The latest show at Yerba Buena is meant to “uncover the unexpected, the invisible and the hidden” and “allow us to experience what we only suspect exists.” Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? Considering the show as a whole, however, these tidbits from the press release seem to work more to help establish a mood more than to accurately describe the work at hand. Indeed, this exhibition is quite atmospheric (the one element keeping it all together), helped by grey walls, dim lighting, and an excellent sound design by Charles Norman Mason. His soundscapes appear throughout the space, relating to the particular work(s) they are close to, and are calculated in their interaction with each other in such an open area. The effect is one of mystery and paranoia, drawing very heavily from the tropes of television and film soundtracks. There is a vague sense of conspiracy theories as we are presented with pictures of CIA agents and the products of various forms of surveillance.

The only problem with such a heavy-handed imposition of theme is that some works just do not fit, while others are completely reinterpreted, possibly outside of their original intentions. Take, for example, Bull.Miletic’s video installation, “Heaven Can Wait,” dizzyingly composed of sped up footage shot from revolving restaurants throughout the world. Now, seated in the context of this exhibition, this piece is read solely in terms of surveillance, completely forgetting about the socio-economic implications of the revolving restaurant as an entity and the difference between what the artists call “panoramic spectatorship” and spying. Or, there is Sergio Prego’s mesmerizing video “Black Monday,” wherein he records a small explosion in his studio from multiple angles and configures these images to give a sense that one is spinning around the billowing smoke. Set to a perfectly synched ambient electronic soundtrack, “Black Monday” effectively manipulates space and time to create a virtual “3 Dimensional” sculpture. The effect is hypnotic and fresh, creating a visual dialogue that looks both high tech and antique in its methods. It is a great piece – the only question is, how does it fit?

Off in a separate gallery sits the signature piece of the exhibition – Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin’s “Listening Post” – which consists of little LED screens hung in a grid. Words flash on and off the screens according to different variables – the words are sometimes small, sometimes large, sometimes scrolling, sometimes still but always working in relation to each other. The content for these screens is culled in real time from public internet forums and chat rooms. While I was there, it went through various phases, including one which gathered sentences that started with “I like,” read off one by one by a computer voice. Most were fairly comical, such as “I like Bjork . . . I guess” or “I like a man’s bum.” It definitely attracts crowds, who will sit and watch for extended periods of time, mesmerized, waiting to see what the screens will say next. It feeds off of our attraction to computerized communication and the anonymity and lack of context it engenders. Knowing that this text is coming from real people, unaware what they are typing is becoming part of an art exhibit also gives the piece a tinge of the fascination reality TV shows once held.

“Listening Post” does exceptionally well in an exhibition unspokenly devoted to Big Brother (by which I do not mean the TV show), however, as I stated earlier, as a whole it doesn’t really hold up under consideration of the individual works. Still, the engaging qualities of the pieces themselves and the overall effects of the sound design (also featured on its own in the courtyard) make the show worth seeing.

http://www.ybca.org/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=3234
Charles Norman Mason - http://panther.bsc.edu/~cmason/
http://www.bull.miletic.info/
Sergio Prego - http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/past/?object_id=172
Ben Rubin - http://www.earstudio.com/

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