the case of Box (ahhareturnabout) rendered indiscernible, the experiential dimension of the artwork takes center stage. Above all the expressive, onomatopoeic qualities of the voice suggest a simultaneous presence of actors and spectators. It generates the illusion of a simultaneity of production and reception which is usually intrinsic to theater. Within the works conception—and this is what constitutes its aesthetic virtuosity—, the perception and experience of the work itself seems to be integrated, in effect something that in a visual artwork (in contrast to a theater performance) by nature takes place retroactively. “Why do you gaze one on the other?” asks the young girl in Photograph and “We were … being positioned. [ … ] Come into … the light,” says the voice in Background (1991–1994). By using such dialogue that seems to address the spectator directly, Coleman opens up the representational level of his work to the situation in which it is presented. In Lapsus Exposure, the viewer sees a group of musicians on break in a recording studio. A speaking voice discusses the production of images and argues about the sound quality of the live voice over the recorded one. Topically, Coleman’s works often deal with performance situations, or rather the making of a performance, while simultaneously referring explicitly to their own event-like character. The content corresponds to the impact that the work has on a viewer. I will discuss this particular aesthetic structuring of an artwork at greater length in relation to Box (ahhareturnabout). Although Coleman’s works are representations, they also present something, place it in the world and render it existent. Their performative power is shaped and allegorized on various levels, as demonstrated in Initials (1993–1994), where a child’s voice spells out individual words and gradually familiarizes itself with them letter by letter, first the sound and then the meaning, as if the phonetic components of the words were physically present in the exhibition space, and in this manner their plasticity is made concrete for both the speaker and listener.
With the exception of a few authorized illustrations Coleman prohibits any documentation or technical recording of his work. His works are only constituted in the here and now of their perception and in the recollecting (necessarily subjective) speaking and writing about them. There is nothing that places itself above the situation in which the work is perceived; no privileged body such as a video recording that can be employed to verify the objective content of what is remembered. Equally in writing about these works I can only rely on my memory. Of course, to a certain extent, every artwork relies on the reconstruction of memory, but in Coleman’s work this instable process is reflected in the work itself. His works deal with how memory operates by raising the subjective and incomplete quality of memory to the structuring principle of the artwork. Topic, structure and reception by the viewer enter into an inextricable bond. In a work like Photograph, Coleman shows only the preparations and pauses rather than the event itself, thereby emphasizing the missing part of the representation while at the same time the omissions in the memory one has of the work effectively become a constitutive element of it. Coleman operates within a structure that cannot be fully grasped and reconstructed, always remaining fragmentary, and indeed it must remain so because the work relies on the discontinuous appropriation and recollection of the viewer. He sees representation itself as a dynamic and not as a static reality, produced through the viewer’s perception, appropriation and recollection. This intrinsically fragmentary existence of the artwork lays the ground for Coleman’s exploration of ways of representing history and historical experience. Central to this is the medium of the projected image, whose nature lies in being an image that takes place in space and time, and in the presence of the viewer between the projection device and projection surface. By presenting the projected images in a series, Coleman negates the permanence of the individual image, so that one must remember it. While watching the series of images, one instinctively compares and connects the preceding images, which now are part of one’s memory. In this manner Coleman renders the process in which his work is formed in a viewer’s mind into a structural part of the artwork, which is reinforced by the subject matter.
Box (ahhareturnabout), 1977
Box (ahhareturnabout) from 1977 is the work of Coleman’s that most strongly cites and involves the body. It takes up the rhythm of the human pulse and hence is based not on a formal but on a structural similarity with the body. Already from a distance one hears a hollow beat that fights its way through the exhibition like blood pumped through the body by a beating heart; an even, thunderous beat which reverberates like that of the systole and diastole of the human heart. When Box was shown at the Popes’ Palace in Avignon in 2000 as part of the extensive exhibition La Beauté, this beat passed through the solid walls of the building, becoming louder the closer one got to the installation. On entering the room it reached the limit of the tolerable; the rhythm took possession of the visitor’s body almost violently, and made it the resonating chamber for an artwork. Gilles Deleuze wrote that rhythm’s “capacity reaches much more deeply than the gaze [or] the hearing.”12 Similarly the beat of Box had such a total impact on the body, going through it uncontrollably and with a vengeance.
The room was so dark that one had to feel one’s way through it. At regular intervals it brightened for fractions of seconds, allowing a glimpse of scenes from a boxing match. The visual staccato of stark black and white contrasts was no less violent to the eye than the acoustic beat was to the rest of the body. The flare-like flashing sequences of images were so brief that it was impossible to follow the course of the match. Rather than proceeding towards a climax one experienced the sequence of images as a continuous repetitive loop. The poor quality of the documentary material, the interference and the disjointed movements of the figures indicated that the footage was vintage. The visual staccato of stark black and white image contrasts reinforced the sense of the violence of the artwork. While the beat pulsated from an enormous loudspeaker, words and fragmented sentences like “Do it—again, again—stop, s-t-o-p, return … aha/aha, ah … go on, go on … again, again” spoken by a male voice could be heard from another loudspeaker. Commands like “break it, break it, stop, s-t-o-p-i-t,” a description of the fear (“regressive, to win, or to die”) and of the doubt and pain (“ooh … aah … the liver … the liver”) of the fight, were repeated several times as if someone were thinking out loud, interspersed with loud breathing or gasping. The voice seemed to be articulating the inner thoughts of one of the boxers, as if one became a witness to the boxer’s inner state of mind; speaking in an overly dramatic manner, like the voice of a body that has reached the limit of physical tolerance. The expressive intensity of its onomatopoeic quality recalls Antonin Artaud, who speaks of the “visual and plastic materialization of speech,” 13 of using it “in a concrete and spatial sense” and dealing with speech as with “a solid object, one which overturns and disturbs things.” 14 Fragmentary and veiled allusions like “Murphy’s the best” or “... the wood … the sticks … not capitals ...” in a vague, regionally specific, coded manner suggest a historical and local anchoring of the work—depending on one’s knowledge of Irish culture and history, e.g. if one knows that Murphy is a brand of Irish beer as well as a character in one of Beckett’s novels. In Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard talks of the “resonance of an image, which arouses echoes of the past.” 15 Similarly, Box connects to a history that never becomes concrete.
Box is Coleman’s only work that is based on documentary material. The images in this artwork are taken from footage of a fight between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey, to which the artist added regular black film frames. The September 22, 1927 Chicago fight is legendary in the history of boxing. It was the rematch of two world heavyweight champions. Jack Dempsey, responsible for taking boxing mainstream, was one of the most famous athletes of his time. He was the first boxer to earn millions of dollars. Like no other Irish athlete before him, he embodied the American Dream of working his way up from being the son of a penniless immigrant family of Irish miners and shoe shiners. Famous for his lightning speed punches, Dempsey succeeded in holding the heavyweight title for almost seven years. In 1926, the “caveman” who was considered unbeatable lost the world championship in front of a crowd
