Two glass doors were the only objects preventing the rest of the visitors to the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) from being disturbed by the barrage of discordant dissonances resonating in the gallery beyond. On Thursday afternoon, October 11, 2012, I arrived for discussion section at UMMA (part of the perks of taking an LS&A Theme Semester class), and to my dismay discovered that the focus of our trip would be on an extremely eccentric exhibit, consisting of a two sets of three successively positioned television screens mounted on podiums mirroring projections on two walls of the gallery.
In its translation from website to gallery, the Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries exhibit “ISN’T IT THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD? PART 1: WANT TO DO GOOD? KNOW HOW TO SHOOT A SEMI- AUTOMATIC HANDGUN?” demonstrates how changing the context of art affects the way in which the observer perceives it. The simplicity of the format further highlights the work itself, which is….spam?
“THE RICH DØN’T WAIT IN LINE WITH YØU BECAUSE THEY CØULDN’T FIND A CLØSER PARKING SPACE.”
Isn’t “art” supposed to look more like a picture? Instead of moving pictures, flashing words filled the television screens, forcing me to read the art, rather than just watch it. Isn’t “art” supposed to be stationary? Instead of walking around the exhibit to appreciate different viewing angles, I felt compelled to stand very still in one place in order to compensate for the frenetic flashing all around me. Chopped up with hyphens, the text hardly ever held a complete thought on the screens, presenting perhaps a subtle critique of the increasingly fragmented nature of news broadcasting and American attention spans.
After a while, I got tired of reading word after hyphenated word, blaring messages in block letters, and I tried reading the faces of my classmates instead. With brows furrowed and arms crossed over notebooks and pens, they stood silent, still, and opposite. I swear the screens were magnetized. The gravity of the subject matter pulled my classmates in, and held them there, reading the words blinking on and off the screens. Guns, rape, cancer. Black font starkly bleeding against red, white, and blue.
Calling something art causes you to pay attention. Perhaps the music was meant to annoy me, to drive home the dichotomy of the painful issues printed on the patriotic flag. In order to make sense of it all, I was forced to think about these uncomfortable topics. I ended up with a headache.
Behind my classmates, a reflection effect similar to the wall projections appeared on the glass wall of the gallery. As we observed the art on the screens and walls, the outside world passing by observed us through glass walls. In this way, we, the audience of the art, had unknowingly become a part of the exhibit…a translation of America to Americans.
“What is art but a way of seeing?” –Thomas Berger
Lydia Koehn
