The Viewer As A Collaborator or The Art of Goosebumps Choose Your Own Ending.

Reading the reader and all the blog posts the one thing that I wanted to discuss was the viewer as a collaborator. As someone mentioned way down the page the audience doesn't fit the bill for a collaborator, the weren't there for the birth of the concept nor were they present to nut out the vehicle of delivery and artwork protocols. So the title collaborator does not fit but I'm not that comfortable with the audience being labelled participators. How about hijacker? Artwork hijacker. (I know this word is mired in the muck of terrorism but I think it can still be considered for an appropriate label for a viewer [atleast for discussion]).

Its an interesting concept to think about. The artist creates a work with an element of interactivity, a work intended to be hijacked. At the point of hijacking the artist has relinquished control of their work and are open to the changes that the audience with perpetuate. (If you think about it, artists who are prepared for their artwork to be hijacked are just aware that hijacking is an inevitability and they have embraced it. All viewers take what they want from any artwork bringing all their luggage from the past, even their mood on the day of viewing will shift and twist the concept and the image reading to match their disposition at the time).

So I'm going to finish off this post with an example. Olafur Eliasson's 'The Weather Project'. Basically a large 1/4 sphere of light placed in the top edge of a wall, the 1/4 is extended to 1/2 by the mirrored ceiling t0 create the illusion of an artificial sun lighting the inside of a space. Viewers would enter the room and lie on the floor, gazing at their own reflections in the large mirrored ceiling in relation to this giant celestial orb lighting up the sky. Sounds like an experience I would love to have. Anyway, one day when this was showing at the Tate Modern, a group of protestors entered the room and lay on the floor in such a way that the words 'Fuck Bush' were spelled in the ceiling. A work that previously was an awinspiring spectacle was hijacked and became a politically motivated protest. Any other viewer coming in to the exhibition at this time would've had a vastly different experience with the protestors that anyone has had prior to the political display. Artwork Hijacked, from concept to visual execution.