The Dappled Light on Your Face
Environmental and Relational Aesthetics in Maybe Your Magic is Working
By Linda Stupart
"The boundlessness of the natural world does not just surround us; it assimilates us. Not only are we unable to sense absolute limits in nature; we cannot distance the natural world from ourselves. Perceiving environments from within, as it were, looking not at it but being in it, nature…is transformed into a realm in which we live as participants, not observers…the aesthetic mark of all such times is…total engagement, a sensory immersion in the natural world."[1]
A pretty boy in a white shirt is talking on his phone, sitting on a bench next to the window. A soft greenish light plays on the edges of his face. I take a photograph, and I am not the only one. Meanwhile, a woman in a flower-print dress and high heels throws a coin into a fountain, stepping back to avoid the splash of black ink as she makes a wish. Everyone is looking beautiful, slightly tipsy and talking animatedly, but quietly. It is indeed a magical day, with Mooney’s enchantment certainly embedded in her aesthetic objects, but also permeating the gallery-goers social interactions, oblivious it seems to our white-cube environment.
In ‘Relational Aesthetics, Nicholas Bourriaud asserts that “art is a state of encounter”[2], continuing to describe a state of practice in which art functions as “the place that produces a specific sociability”, the artist a mediator of experience and interaction, a creator of social spaces more than the producer of things upon which to gaze contemplatively. Mooney’s Different Days, Different Eyes takes the form of indigenous trees planted outside of the second story gallery window, with yellow gels highlighting the dappled light they cast within. Though objects of contemplation themselves, the real trees outside of the gallery function to create a space, a mood and an environment (and here the word is used intentionally for its relation to the natural world) in which our interactions with each other shift imperceptively, but notably, inside a space in which we are no longer spectators, but participants in Mooney’s well-managed social construction.
In understanding Different Days, Different Eyes in terms of relational practice, a work that finds its core not within its object, but rather the largely invisible affect of uncontrollable elements (light) on social interactions, then we might understand the artist’s broader project in ‘Maybe Your Magic is Working’ as one which encourages us to consider the natural environment not only with new eyes, but from an integrated, immersed and active positioning of ourselves. For the exhibition clearly creates a social space (albeit one in which we are encouraged to contemplate ‘other’ art objects) however, it is also clearly immersed in politics of ‘the environment’. Thus, we should consider how Mooney’s relational practice also relates to an aesthetics (and thus a new kind of contemplation) of the environment, and how this practice brings art and nature together with a core piece that projects beyond the limits of representation.
In a pivotal 1966 essay ‘Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty’, Ronald Hepburn bemoans the lack of a contemporary aesthetic engagement with nature. Whereas in the past notions of sublimity, beauty and the picturesque had been discussed largely in terms of the natural environment, this lack of aesthetic engagement with nature suggests a vital part of human experience was remaining unexplored, unappreciated and un-discussed, removed through its indefinable object-ness from the realm of philosophical human contemplation.[3] Now, more than fifty years on, the natural environment is the realm of intense scientific and activist scrutiny. There is, however, still a call for a particular kind of contemplation of the natural world, an aesthetics not necessarily applicable only to the environment, but rather an aesthetic theory of art and nature acknowledging that “both actually involve a single all-embracing kind of experience, which requires a comprehensive theory to accommodate it.”[4] This comprehensive theory, Samantha Clark argues, may indeed have its roots, at least, in various models of contemporary art practice and aesthetics, particularly those grounded in the “‘participatory’, ‘dialogical’ or ‘socially engaged’”[5]. Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics then fits clearly into this model, with Mooney’s project a notable point in this crucial art/nature liaison.
One of the key aspects of Hepburn’s reasoning for the then lack of an aesthetics of natural beauty is nature’s lack of framing devices.[6] Unlike traditional art practices, nature has no definable edges by which we might limit our experiences and responses. Different Days, Different Eyes persistently avoids framing, with objects that are outside of the white cube – an institution that defines itself as ‘culture’ and thus immediately Other, and separate, to nature – which cast light within the entire space, immersing us inside Mooney’s work in a way that surpasses the means of traditional modes of representation. There is also a notable lack of traditional framing devices, actual frames, plinths and the like throughout the exhibition. One cannot stand back from nature when one is inside it, and in the same way to be inside ‘Maybe Your Magic is Working’ is to always actively engage with the piece under discussion.
What, though, is the significance of an artwork in which we find ourselves inside both art and nature, and by extension, what is the worth of an environmental aesthetics that might be encompassed, or mirrored through art practice? Clark answers this question by telling us that “ [Hepburn’s] problematising a lazy aesthetic appreciation of nature characterized by the passive visual enjoyment of ‘scenery’ sliding past the car windscreen has environmental implications, suggesting that a deeper, more fully engaged, and more active aesthetic appreciation of nature can deepen our attachment to nature and foster a more respectful, less instrumental, or at least less thoughtlessly destructive relationship with the natural environment.”[7] Thus, the suggestion is that a less passive engagement with nature, scenery and the environment - the kind of distanced contemplation one might expect when entering an art gallery to look at things - can lead to a more engaged relationship with the actual natural environment. This new vigorous awareness, which also suggests less of a schism between people and nature, is an integral part of the drive to preserve, consider and care for our environment in a climate of ever-dwindling natural resources and spaces.
This possibility for a new aesthetics of the environment, as well as a new appreciation of nature and our relationship to others within it is also self-reflexive, where “even a walk in the local park [and note here the black fountain at the centre of Mooney’s exhibition, which is a hand-made replica of the one to be found in our local park] can become an occasion for full sensory immersion, waking us from the sedative of ordinariness that so often dulls our senses”[8] . Thus Mooney’s relational practices in ‘Maybe Your Magic is Working’ affect not only the viewer’s imagination in relation to the art object, but rather invigorates relationships with our broader natural environment, as we make a space for Mooney’s tree-filtered light even as we find ourselves immersed in it.
*Note: After this exhibition a group of friends and myself spent the afternoon picnicking in a forest. It seemed merely to be the natural thing to do.
[1] Arnold Berleant. 1992. The Aesthetics of Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (169)
[2] Nicolas Bourriaud . 1998. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les presses du reel. (162)
[3] Ronald Hepburn. 2004. ‘Contemporary aesthetics and the neglect of natural beauty’, in A. Carlson and A. Berleant (eds.), The Aesthetics of Natural Environments (Broadview Press), pp. 43–62. First published in B. Williams and A. Montefiore(eds.) 1966. British Analytical Philosophy. London: Routledge. (44)
[4] Arnold Berleant. 1992. The Aesthetics of Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (161).
[5] Samantha Clark. 2010. Contemporary Art and Environmental Aesthetics in ‘Environmental Values 19’. White Horse Press. (352)
[6] Ronald Hepburn. 2004. (46)
[7] Samantha Clark. 2010. (354)
[8] Ibid. (357)