WORK_SPACE
Xin Cheng >

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Discussion with Peter Madden,
Ashleigh Kilmartin, and the artist.

Sarah Hopkinson: Well thanks for coming everybody. We decided to have a bit of an open discussion about Xin's exhibition. It's going to be lead by Peter and Anna, and Xin is happy to field questions.

Peter Madden: I don’t know what first is and I don’t know what last is, but I suppose there’s always gotta be a start somewhere. I did that weird pedagogical thing where I wrote notes and had thoughts and tried to link them together and then got frustrated with that. But I wanted to discuss, or at least introduce a notion that was an effect of looking. Especially a sort of looking that is entailed with the performance work such as the sort that echoes here. Regarding something like the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible. The Library I am aware of, and it is a place of quiet; of study, and of so many individuals. My first hints at such echoes were by way of the glass doors at the entrance, proceeded quickly by the glass on the interior, which acted as something from what I perceived as the art itself. The interior caused more static than the first two, and I was reminded by something Duchamp noticed and wrote as a thing called “a delay in glass”, notes made in the green box for his final work, one of his larger works, The Large Glass. He was interested in, and I am too, by the effect that, when one approaches a large, liquid still surface, on the interior of that layer, is a slight reflectiveness, which, is, in a way, the said delay. The busy thoroughfare of this library terminal is echoed visually and intentionally, by the artist.

Strangely or naturally, I'm not sure, but I just need to unmyth, the myth of Narcissus and Echo. How Echo, the water nymph, of having fallen in love with Narcissus, (apparently, according to some myths, a thespian) a swing that tragically ends in unrequited love, for Echo cannot possess the beloved Narcissus, as Narcissus pines only for self love. Echo fades away, coldly unable to ever converse with Narcissus, being indefinitely cursed to repeat the last words on Narcissus' lips. But I am in a library foyer and not at the edge of a crystal pool that has never been stirred.

Something else that Duchamp also said that was one reason why I came to the space with one of his ideas, is that there is this coefficient that exists between the artwork and the viewer, and that in someway you place yourself and you make the work in relation to it. This is all common knowledge now, but helps me think about how to place the echo, not as a static object, but more as an aesthetic effect. This space here has a certain theater to it. We the audience are involved in a mise-en-scene; not quite empty, but rather quiet. And of the objects the echo, the performance an echo of place and endeavour, both different and ignorant of each other. Although the latter, the artist, is more aware of this than the first party, those that disappear up and beyond. This concept pulls us into what I think is the sliding scale of echoing effects within the installation.

When I first came into it, things I wanted to notice, were put in again and removed by things that appeared at a lengthy notice. I was drawn to the architectural symbol of this shape here, which in some sense, echoed the death of space or at least time. Then I was informed that the invitation that was sent out, this object here, this little box, that appears over here is in some way, an attempt to mimic the interior space there. So i saw that as a practical echo. And then of course, one would say - I found myself falling into other objects and trying to, at no point did i reach a steady place to decide what those objects might mean to me, because as soon as I started to function with one thing, another thing moved in and appeared and gave me other sorts of ideas.

But a lot of those ideas were disappearing and empty. I mean that empty bag was somehow synonymous with the way i was feeling. I mean there's a smear and a little arrow that points to a face print - two face prints. I kept coming back to something that was, for me, like as though it kept going round, it kept revolving, was the stack of the four books there, that also somehow having an echo to the rectilinear space that was here. The books of course are part of the library. And, in a way I acknowledge that there are books that are withdrawn and put out, and left out. And then we have an object that seems to be part of it's replacement, or do I wonder in some sort of technological fright, that these books and the CD's are representative of that loss. Which seemed to be made even more emblematic by that little dying flower that was on top of that. That that was in some way a gesture. And at the bottom I read the title of the green book as The Utilisation of Wood Waste. Which yeah, which I found quite humorous, and I found that humorous idea made the dissipation of my frustration a little bit sweeter.

The echoing effects couldn't help but fall into little poetics with how I was relating to them. Echoing effects place oneself into it's effect. You become part of it's appearing and disappearing, intimately as much as we approach such work, we are left with a sort of longing. And I thought that dying flower, as much as other sorts of things that are here as well, even the tipped over things, was a part of that. And I wrote an hour or so ago as i finished writing my notes and struggled for an out, my thoughts drift to the Argentinian writer Borges with an apocryphal short story of an infinite library, The Library of Babel, a dizzying discourse on infinite being and it's perpetual regress. I'm left wondering how happy I am to have an installation consign itself in a series of ever murmuring disappearings, to the oblivion of my memory. So I suppose in a way I was trying to say that I'm really happy that when i go to artworks they never resolve themselves. For me, this watching has given me the chance to discuss again which myself how that effect becomes poignant in some works. In ways, for me I kept thinking about how nice it was those echoes kept happening, even with that empty desk, which seemed to speak to the artist in the studio. Or the reader there which was, for me, trying to read the event of the installation.

Ashleigh Kilmartin: Pete you've addressed already aspects of things like, the structure and the theatrics, which really - they do have performance status - but I feel like it's almost giving it false status and false aggrandisement to talk about such a quiet work. It’s in this place which is quite a transient one. I think there's obviously good things in our idea of echoes, about how this is a space which is always changing, always moving. People are quite likely to walk past without any clue as to what's going on. Instead of something like myth or some kind of theatre, like you've alluded to, to me this is more a practice. I have trouble seeing this as performance. (addressing Xin) Perhaps this is because I have seen some of your work before, Xin. This is an issue we spoke about earlier.

(addressing the audience) How do you approach a work when you've seen another work of the artist which hasn't been presented in such a formal way? To me this isn't so much a finished work – it can never be a finished work – so much as a process of growth. There's a lot of echo of that idea of growth or evolution in the work. You can see it in the actual plants that we have around the bottom, they’ve been move around quite a bit and have changed. Everything has just being shifted. There's also echoes of information, Xin piles books with CDs, which are both forms of data. I could say the viewers can't access any of that data, but there's always that issue of having different forms of storage. Then having those transmitted onto the web cam or onto the website raises questions of how sincere or how true that different information can be. By basically seeing it on the Internet you've got that delay there, but this time it's not through glass, it's completely different data.

(addressing Peter) I’m really interested in how you see it the work as performative or theatrical. Could you… (discussion opens to wider audience)