BLACK CUBE ZITAT

“The most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting.”

Sol LeWitt

SAMMLUNG BLACK CUBE

SAMMLUNG BLACK CUBE

- Inszenierung von Bedeutungslosigkeit

- Alterität – Andersartigkeit

- Verweigerung der Extase / Bewegungsrichtung nach innen

- Der Kubus sieht von außen aus wie von innen – vermuten wir! – Hülle oder Volumen / Negative Space

- Präsenz statt Signifikanz

- Jedes Objekt wird eingeteilt nach drei Kategorien: Signifikanz, Funktion, Präsenz. Das gilt für Kunstwerke wie für Menschen.

- Angst und Empathie

- Präsenz ermöglicht Empathie, d.h. die Wertschätzung des Dings/Wesens an sich.

- Wir spiegeln uns in Objekten mit starker oder reiner Präsenz unabhängig von ihrer visuellen Ähnlichkeit.

- Ich erkenne eine Charakteristik die wir teilen, die jenseits der Form liegt, also keine Antropomorphie ist.

- der Kubus markiert die Grenze zur Bedeutungslosigkeit, bzw. ist ein Index auf einen Zustand der leeren Signifikanz. = Nirvana (nir=kein; van=bewegung: Bewegungslosigkeit, Stille der Zeichen), Tod, Einheit, Auflösung

- Dreidimensional vs Zweidimensional – Das Loch im Raum.

- Werk als Vorstellung oder Idee statt als Erlebnis

– Das Verhältnis von Abbild, Beschreibung und dem Werk an sich.

- leeres Zentrum: Die Kabah als Nicht-Abbildung, die das Zentrum bildet aber nichts enthält.

Dem Kubus, der keine Narration hat, eine Narration geben und dadurch seine Spezifik zu zerstören.

Die Unruhe im Angesicht des Kubus zu kommunizieren.

exhibition photo BLACK CUBE

What I forgott is the exhibition photo: The separation of body and eye finds its symbol in the exhibition photo. I don’t have the theoretical argumentation yet but maybe we can use that: a bit like in erschauern/begreifen. we make exhibition photos of the space with the black cube but without people, and present them in the third part as documentation of what has just happened. and we talk about what we see on those pictures, while we project them on the white wall behind us.

Dieses Paradox à la Descartes wird durch eine Ikone unserer visuellen Kultur bekräftigt, das Ausstellungsfoto ohne Menschen. Hier endlich sind die Betrachter, wir selbst, eliminiert. Wir sind da ohne da zu sein; einer der größten Dienste den die Fotografie ihrer Rivalin Kunst leistet. Das Ausstellungsfoto ist eine Metapher für den Ausstellungsraum.“(11) This idea of the bodyless space will be broken up by the minimalists (among others) as we will later see.

cube

The cube caracteristic is exactly this that he doesn’t allow anthropomorphism. He is too fat for his height, too tall for his width.
The quality of the cube for me is that it reduces form to an abstract symbol but a symbol for something that is yet to come, yet to be defined. This quality gives it automatically an ideological charge or a religious one. Maybe more a religious. In 2001, Space Odyssey the monkeys are busy with surviving. Suddenly appears a black monolith changing everything, giving an impulse for civilization to start. Of course this is a very simplistic explanation for the birth of intelligence and everything that came along. But what is interesting about this monolith is his radical difference, its radical strangeness, its alterity. The cube also has this alterity. It has this alterity in the bare pre-human nature but it has also this alterity in our ultra modern city landscapes. It remains different, from another planet. A form, an abstract symbol that if descended from the sky  for sure would not remain bare and innocent for long. People would make it theirs. And most probably people would make it their deity.

Gregor Schneider set a Black square in a wall into the masonry of the Frankfurt Museum für Moderne Kunst. It was just an ordinary cube. Nothing was differentiating it from any other cube but the contract made personally with the museum director. According to this contract the work must remain in the museum wall for fifty years then be personnally collected by the artist. In 2052, Schneider will be older than eighty and the Museum Director responsible for the square over ninety: vita brevis, ars longa.

Whether it is a work of art or a sacred space depends on the eye of the viewer.

An object without narration. How to give a narration to an object who doesn’t have one? What could this narration be?
Of course it has a narration. Its narration is its referentiality. But what to do with that?

some thoughts of Didi and Rancière (in Alfredo Jaar catalogue)

The problematic of the black cube, its doubleness is the question to know if it is a subject or an object. This is what you expressed once:

Am I alone in the room watching a black cube?

or

Am I in the room with a black cube?

There is surely an acception of what art is in the choice of the more relevant question. It is not a surprise to read that Didi makes a similar differentiation. Not about a piece of art but about the viewer.  He speaks of a “double distance” from which we should see things, being at the same time distanced and concerned. He speaks of viewers as rope walkers “confronting the dangerous space involvment where we move gingerly, risking falling  at every step (into belief, into identification); remaining in balance with our own body as an instrument assisted by the balancing pole of explanation (criticism, analysis, comparison, editing). Explanation and involvment no doubt contradict one another, as the straightness of the balancing pole contradicts the improbability of the air. But it is solely up to us to use them together by turning each into a way ot revealing what has not been thought by the other.” This is actually the same as what I was saying in The consequence of infinite Endings with the couple fascination/critical distance. The problem of the gaze (on images of war and disasters) is precisely that it is always problematic.

If I watch I place myself in the position of the passive spectator who (with an esthetical pleasure or not) watches the pain of others.
It I don’t watch I withdraw from the world and play the ignorant.

Rancière in his article writes about images and their capacity to evoke compassion. He states that we don’t like this anymore. We don’t like photographers to appeal to our sentiments and pity “even less when it is in large expensive formats on the walls of museums and galleries”. “Compassion, he states, is not the pity for the unfortunate, it is the capacity to feel with them. The classical war photography has lost this power.
Conceptualism in that sense (the conceptualism of Alfredo Jaar, for example) is the construction of a sensory arrangement that restores the power of attention itself. “Conceptualism” and “compassion” are the two faces of the same attitude.

Since Debord it is clear to us that the media are the instruments of the power, bombarding us with with too many images and destroying the power of the image as such. Rancière speaks against what has become a cliché and gives examples where it is not the too big amount of images that has constituted the abuse of power but the contrary the liquidation of images, the withdrawal of images from the public eye (for example the images of the first Gulf War). It is not the amount of images that counts but the way they are contextualized, the way they are “staged”. Alfredo Jaar speaks of “giving to images their context”.

Für eine unruhige Ästhetik – Programmhefttext für Vivier, Gladbeck August 2009

FÜR EINE UNRUHIGE DRAMATURGIE

„Eine Stimme kommt zu einem im Dunkeln.“ So beginnt Samuel Becketts Prosatext GESELLSCHAFT. Eine Versuchsanordnung. Ihre Elemente: Dunkelheit und Sprache. „Darum handelt es sich also,“sagt die Stimme.

Der französische Philosoph Georges Didi-Huberman schreibt über die Dunkelheit: “In dem Maße, indem wir die Erfahrung der grenzenlosen Nacht machen, wird die Nacht zum Ort par excellence, in dessen Mitte wir absolut sind, wo auch immer im Raum wir uns befinden mögen.“ Becketts Prosa ist gewissermaßen Dunkelheit der Sprache. Durch ihre andauernden Ellipsen und Verschiebungen, die gezielte Verwirrung der Begriffe und die sich ebenso spielerisch wie unheilvoll immer wieder selbst hinterfragende Erzählhaltung, erschafft sie einen schwarzen Raum, in den sich der Leser begeben muss, ohne einen Sinn für seine Ausmaße und die Anwesenheiten darin entwickeln zu können. Wir tasten uns voran, von Begriff zu Begriff, und finden doch in der Bodenlosigkeit der Beschreibungen keinen Halt. Je weniger wir sehen, desto mehr spüren wir uns selbst, werden zum Mittelpunkt. Aber zum Mittelpunkt wovon? Was ist dieser Ort in der Kunst?

Andere Zeit, anderer Ort: In Lewis Carolls fantastischem Kinderbuch ALICE IN WONDERLAND klettert die kleine Heldin in einen Kaninchenbau und stürzt bald darauf senkrecht in eine endlos scheinende Finsternis. Sie stürzt und stürzt. Als sie schließlich auf festem Grund landet, gilt ihr erster Blick der Richtung, aus der sie kam: „Sie sprang sogleich auf und sah in die Höhe; aber es war dunkel über ihr.“ Wir erfahren nicht, ob es gerade Nacht ist, oder ob Alice lediglich in ein schwarzes Loch im Himmel schaut. Es handelt sich um einen Zustand. Der Himmel ist dunkel. Alice scheint, im Zentrum dieser Dunkelheit angekommen zu sein.

Die Kunstgeschichte hält viele dieser unheimlichen Kaninchentunnel bereit, und nicht immer sind wir so souverän wie Alice, wenn wir in einen von ihnen geraten. Heinrich von Kleist und Clemens Brentano stürzen 1810 in eine unendliche Nacht, als sie zum ersten Mal vor Caspar David Friedrichs radikalem Gemälde DER MÖNCH AM MEER stehen: „Das, was ich in dem Bilde selbst finden sollte, fand ich erst zwischen mir und dem Bilde; und so ward ich selbst der Kapuziner, das Bild ward die Düne, das aber, wo hinaus ich mit Sehnsucht blicken sollte, die See, fehlte ganz. Nichts kann trauriger und unbehaglicher sein, als diese Stellung in der Welt: der einzige Lebensfunke im weiten Reiche des Todes, der einsame Mittelpunkt im einsamen Kreis.“ Der unter Kleists Namen veröffentlichte Text ist weniger eine Kunstkritik als ein Erfahrungsbericht. Er ist ein ergreifendes Dokument des Erschauerns, der menschlichen Verlorenheit angesichts einer ästhetischen Erfahrung, und er ist der Versuch, etwas zu benennen, vielleicht einen Raum, vielleicht einen Zustand, der kein Abbild unserer Realität ist. Vielmehr ist er selbst Realität. Das Eintauchen darin kann nicht ohne Verletzung von statten gehen: „So ist es, als ob Einem die Augenlider weggeschnitten wären.“

Dies ist nicht der Traum eines kleinen Mädchens, eine andere Gefährdung kündigt sich hier an. Die Stimme in Becketts GESELLSCHAFT scheint ebenfalls davon zu sprechen: „Der Gebrauch der zweiten Person kennzeichnet die Stimme“, erklärt die Stimme und spricht uns dabei direkt an, “der Gebrauch der dritten die des wuchernden anderen“. Dieses wuchernde andere – was könnte das sein? Wir sind offenbar nicht alleine in der Nacht des Werks, etwas anderes ist anwesend und wuchert, lebt, ist im Begriff diesen Raum zu füllen, aus ihm hinaus zu wachsen. Es ist kein „Reich des Todes“, im Gegenteil, dieses Reich ist bewohnt. Instinktiv erstarren wir, stellen uns tot, versuchen uns nicht mehr zu bewegen, aus Angst, der Boden könnte unter unseren Füßen nachgeben, der Raum kippen, wenn wir nur den Kopf wenden. Wir sammeln unsere Sinne, konzentrieren uns auf uns selbst, auf unseren Atem, das Pulsieren unseres Blutes, suchen die Sicherheit des vertrauten Körpers, kneifen uns, verletzen uns, schneiden uns in die Haut, lassen das Blut an unseren Fingern entlang rinnen und in der Fläche versickern.

Bei Licht betrachtet: Die Kunst hat ihren Ort und wird über diesen bestimmt. Die Grenzen der Repräsentation schaffen diese erst, das Werk definiert sich von seinen Rändern her. Wir kennen unseren Ort: auf dieser Seite der Leinwand, auf dieser Seite der Bühnenkante, auf dieser Seite des Blatts. Und doch gibt es Wucherungen, gibt es Auflösungserscheinungen. Es gibt die Extase des Kunstwerks. Die Stimmen sind die schlimmsten: ihrem Wesen nach Schimären, zum Körper gehörend und doch immer körperlos und flüchtig, sind sie schon immer Grenzübertreter und Eindringlinge. Jedes Wort spricht aus uns und in uns. Der Homunculus im Kopf, der Geist in der Maschine. Ist der Ort der Kunst schon längst in uns, der Abgrund innen?

Letzter Versuch: Martin Heidegger beschreibt den Raum als das Walten der Dinge in Beziehung zu einander. Jedes Ding schafft durch seine Anwesenheit im Raum einen Ort, verortet sich. Also ist der Raum der Kunst ein Raum des Begehrens, den Werk und Betrachter miteinander teilen und untereinander verhandeln. Wir verorten uns in ihm. „Der Raum“, schreibt Georges Didi-Huberman, „ist nicht dadurch gegeben, dass er sich messen lässt, sich objektiviert. Der Raum ist abständig, der Raum ist tief. Deshalb ist er für uns an sich schon ein Moment des Begehrens, der Protention – worauf Merleau-Ponty abzielte, als er von einer Tiefe sprach, die unter dem „suchenden“ Blick entspringt.“

Diese Tiefe, die unser Sehnen im Raum der Kunst eröffnet, ist ein schauerlicher Abgrund – schauerlich im doppelten Wortsinne von erschauern und schauen. Man kann an diesem Wort erkennen, dass es einer aktiven Hinwendung bedarf, eines subjektiven Verlangens, das das Schauen antreibt und so den Schauer zulässt. Wir stehen also nicht passiv, fallen nicht willenlos. Wir erschaffen den tiefen Raum, indem wir uns selbst in Beziehung zu diesem anderen, dunklen Ort setzen. Tatsächlich blicken wir in ihn wie in einen Spiegel, der die Tiefe unserer eigenen Sehnsucht zeigt.

Jan-Philipp Possmann

Johannes vom Kreuz DUNKLE NACHT

http://www.philos-website.de/index_g.htm?autoren/johannes_vom_kreuz_g.htm~main2

two quotes from O’Doherty for BLACK CUBE

There are two quotes from O’Doherty that I believe are important for the LP we are doing now: The first one is simple, it relates to the darkness/night:

Seiner Sicht beraubt, hielt [der Zuschauer] sich an sich selbst und entwickelte aus sich den Inhalt des Ereignisses. [In einem Instant-Kunstwerk] verschmelzen die beiden Träger von Erwartungen, die Galerie und der Betrachter, im weißen Raum zu einem einzigen System. (117)

The other one is more complex and I want to discuss this sometime this week. There are 2 things here: 1) the separation between eye and body, which is important for the question of size of the cube. and for the whole first part of course. 2) the idea of absence. I don’t understand his point, but of course i can realte to the idea of absence in Die.

„Zuerst nahm das Auge von dem Objekt wie von einem Gemälde Besitz, und dann führte der Körper das Auge um das Werk herum. Dies bewirkte ein feedback zwischen der Bestätigung der Erwartung und der bis dahin latent gebliebenen körperlichen Empfindung. Auge und Betrachter verschmelzen dabei nicht miteinander, sondern arbeiten aus gegebenem Anlass zusammen. Das fein eingestellte Auge erhielt einige Sinnesdaten von der Seite des Körpers, den es verlassen hatte (Empfindung von Schwerkraft, Bewegung etc.). […] Der Betrachter und das Auge sind die Notare unserer Erfahrung. Sie begleiten uns, wenn wir eine Galerie betreten, und die Einsamkeit unserer Kunstwanderungen ist obligatorisch, weil wir die ganze Zeit ein kleines Seminar mit unseren Stellvertretern halten. In diesem Sinne sind wir nicht da. Vor einem Kunstwerk gegenwärtig zu sein, heißt, dass wir uns zugunsten von Auge und Betrachter absentieren, die uns berichten, was wir gesehen hätten, wären wir da gewesen. Das abwesende Kunstwerk ist uns oft näher als das gegenwärtige. (Ich glaube, dass Rothko dies besser als jeder andre Künstler verstand.) Diese komplexe Struktur der Kunstwahrnehmung ist unser Trip nach „Anderswo“, sie ist eine fundamentale Bedingung unserer provisorisch eingerichteten moderne Identität, die von unseren labilen Sinnen immer wieder aufgerichtet wird.“ (63 / 65)

So let’s keep these two in mind!!

state of the art – answers to answers IV

I will only reply very briefly to some qaspects of your last post.

20.10.2009

I like the idea you give about sharp abyss. We often speak of longing when we speak about landscape. We want to be part of what we are looking at when we are for example in a beautiful nature. We want time to stop. We want to dissolve into the landscape we are mentally building. You are very true that thinking of nature as picturesque or as a landscape is already making what you call a cut in space. Be it a mental one. What then if we are there watching the abyss on a steep cliff? Everybody knows that feeling that comes sometimes for a fraction of a second. We are there and we actually want to jump. For a fraction of a second. We are not doing it. Jumping would be making this longing true. We would become the landscape. But we are not doing it. D.

This could also be an indea for Black Cube text. Can we find or write something about standing at the abyss? about making that step into another reality? You describe it very nicely

The question of autonomy in art is maybe really a misunderstanding. What I mean is that the art piece is autonomous in the sense that it is useless, or rather not justified by some external necessity, other than to be an art piece. That would be the difference between art and propaganda, art and journalism, art and interior design… You are of course right, that some art pieces need the viewer to become complete, include certain actions and behaviors, thereby becoming OPEN as opposed to HERMETIC, and I would say, in many cases transgressive.

Isn’t that the main argument of Greenberg? That the Tafelbild is the highest form or art because it is always the same, no matter how and where it is displayed? Total autonomy, from representation as well as from physical and spatial limitations. We of course know, that this is a chimare! wishful thinking.

state of the art – answers to answers

25.07.2009:
During our research we have decided to concentrate on art pieces. An important terminus by defining what comes into the range of art and what doesn’t has been aesthetic intentionality. Let’s assume that we reduce our research on artifacts, on aesthetic phenomenons that are in the world with the intention of making them as they are. The best example to illustrate this differentiation is of course the couple nature/culture or here, the differentiation between the (visual) perception of a natural environment and the (visual) perception of a piece of art. The transcendentalist would argue that there is no essential difference between both. God is the maker of all things as each artist is the maker of his works of art. We are not going to argue on that here. Nature is beautiful. I understand the notion of the picturesque but also the one of landscape (speaking of landscape is always speaking as an aesthete) in this affirmation: “It seems to be made for me to look at it, for me to contemplate.” The thing is that it is certainly not made solely for that purpose and most probably it is not made for that purpose. Nature is ruled by laws of functionality in the first place. Its beauty is a result of this functionality. Let’s accept that here. There is no aesthetic plan behind. We decide thus to be aesthetical functionalists within this project. Our analyze and our research would narrow on aesthetical phenomenons where the primary function is precisely to be apprehended as such.

18.09.2009:
I believe there is more to the nature/culture-separation than this. As we have stated before the concept of space and of Aesthetic as a way of feeling oneselve in a space (room, the world, nature, the totality of things called reality…) (see G. Böhme) is central to our approach. We can then say that art constitutes different spaces or rather a space within a space. Now we can speak of transgression, of movements and of longing (in the sense of directionality).Of course the concept of space is tricky for example in sculpture (see Heidegger) or music. The point I am making is this: we contemplate nature while already being in it. We can gaze at a deep valley from a mountian yet the valley and the mountain where i stand are part of the same spatial continuum. Artistic production means making cuts in the space, drawing borders. The concepts of pitoresque and landscape imply a gradual movement towards such a separation of space. “It seems to be made for me to look at it, for me to contemplate.” – yet it is also not, since i am in it and do not have the safe distance to fully fall into contemplation. This to me is the main differentiation.

I wonder if the phenomenon of the sharp abyss, the depth that seems to draw us down when standing on a verge, is somehow comparable to transgressive art. There might be something of an almost artistic separation of space here. I am not sure.

20.10.2009

I like the idea you give about sharp abyss. We often speak of longing when we speak about landscape. We want to be part of what we are looking at when we are for example in a beautiful nature. We want time to stop. We want to dissolve into the landscape we are mentally building. You are very true that thinking of nature as picturesque or as a landscape is already making what you call a cut in space. Be it a mental one. What then if we are there watching the abyss on a steep cliff? Everybody knows that feeling that comes sometimes for a fraction of a second. We are there and we actually want to jump. For a fraction of a second. We are not doing it. Jumping would be making this longing true. We would become the landscape. But we are not doing it. D.

But we are not out of the problems here. Reading Rancière has taught us that in aesthetics there are no boundaries between disciplines. Rancière positions himself as the anti-essentialist breaking all our certainties about the specificity of one art discipline towards another by trying to define art disciplines outside of the range of their technical realization. Film, he states, existed before the actual invention of the first camera. he doesn’t take here into account natural phenomenons like the camera obscura but narrative techniques that lead to a cinematic experience. Flaubert, he states, was a filmmaker. On the other hand he discusses a picture taken by an SS-officer in Auschwitz and finds its direct lineage in a painting of Rembrandt. Flaubert’s intention was not to make cinema and the intention of the nazi was certainly not to position himself in art history. Rancière, like we two do, positions himself as what he is: a reader, a spectator telling about his experiences with art and analyzing them. Making links.

This to me is why Ranciere is interesting for what we try to do. I am not so much interested in his discussion of disciplines and techniques. But very much in the role of memory and experience in the formation of aesthetic situations.

Why exactly would we make a differentiation between being spectators of art, spectators of picturesque landscape or spectators of ourselves?

Basically the same answer as above. But to be more precise: the spectator in nature knows he is in a continuum of space. In moments of contemplation – when looking down into a valley – he tends to FORGET this continuity and to establish a frame, separating the distant view from the neardby surrounding. He so to speak creates an aesthetic situation out of a real situation. He arranges the surroundings to a picture and thereby creates more distance. This is actually the REVERSE OPERATION from transgressive situations in the contemplation of art. In the pictoresque the spectator steps out of the space, in transgressive art he steps into it!

yes you can say so. So we could state that actually the situation of creating a mental picture (landscape) in nature is a movement towards nature. It basically consist in applying a frame to nature while the transgressive situation is a movement from the artifact towards the viewer. It explodes the frame (whatever that frame used to be).

I relate the best to pieces of art that have freed themselves from their authors. I like the idea of art being an activity where someone abandons something to history. He leaves his work as a historical artifact of its time. His authorship becomes irrelevant at the moment when he offers his work to a public. The art piece is in between it pairs. Experiencing some representatives of Minimal Art in a Museum in Geneva has been the first impulse, the first permission, as Morton Feldman would say, for becoming myself an artist. But experiencing art is also entering in relation with the author of that work.

I am not convinced here. Is this really the case? A) Factual: do we perceive art works like this? If i am in some random gallery and a painting catches my eye, i do not engage in a relationship with an author. Instead I engage in a relationship with an idea, an utterance, an intention. But that is not the same. B) Conceptual: is this the point in art? As we have said, art is offering heightened experiences in the freedom of not having to react, free to contemplate, endure, enjoy or not to enjoy. Is the absence of the artist – or his transformation/disappearance into a fictional role within the work (performance art) – not a conditio sine qua non for this experience?

Someone has had a vision, someone has worked and re-worked a certain material for me to see it how it is. Being myself an artist I need to imagine a fellow artist behind a work and even more important, I need to think a work of art in the continuity of the carrier of the artist. I need to think it in evolution. Maybe that’s the true difference. Every art piece has an author and places itself therefore in history. The cycles of nature are very different. But then again we could argue on the definition of nature. What is that actually? And how often were we placed into an environment that we could call “natural”? Here again a huge discussion opens. Does this mean an environment not touched by man? An environment preserved by man? When do we start to talk about nature? Are the numerous national parks on this planet the last remnants of nature? Are the parks of our cities nature? The plants growing in our houses? The hair growing on our heads? I am not sure that I want to enter into this question of ethics. Let’s stay in the aesthetics.

You are essentionally making the same argument I made some time ago, when saying that we have to have intentionality to talk about strategies – hence we have to omit natural phenomenon. I believe that is NOT the reason. Intentionality is just one aspect of aesthetic encounters. In fact intentionality is NOT the subject of our research, at least not central to it. Instead we are looking at phenomenon, occurrences firstly and then at strategies. But even then the person of the author does not necessarily come into play!

I find difficult to speak of strategies without including the idea of intentionality. How could that be?

We have talked about transgressive phenomenons in art. To be short let’s say here that they are moments and let’s say here that they are moments where the distance between art piece and perceiver becomes blurry. Moments (and we are back to the idea of intentionality) where the art piece manages to suck the perceiver inside of its reality. This notion is rather vague and needs to be defined more precisely. Is the fact of being moved by something (and let’s assume that we are talking about an art piece here) not already a transgression of my position towards this something? And if we even go further: is the fact of something catching our attention not already a transgression? A transgression of what? Of our freedom to pay attention to things and not to others? It seems to me that we enter here the beautiful world of media criticism. Our notion of transgression, for sure, needs to be clarified.

Let’s start to shed some light by analyzing the terms you proposed. You are using here three metaphors, which are indeed central to our issue. But the metaphorical does not imply the factual!
The first one is “to be moved”(1). What do you mean by this? I assume that the common meaning of the expression derives from the concept of fluids and electric currents moving through the body. Very simply put: Being in a state of excitement means there is a lot of movement going on within. Being moved could then refer to the internal, to bodily and cerebral activity. So when we say, I was moved by this or that, we do not mean that we are moving in space or that we change position. We are in this sense constantly moved, e.g. stirred, stimulated, by our surroundings. Böhme speaks of the “ecstasies of the things”, meaning that all things extend and thereby influence what is around them. But this is not specific to art and it does not constitute a transgression of spatial frontiers.
“catching attention” (2). The term implies in fact a violent movement of grasping, of intentionally changing the given direction of a thing, person. The figure implies consciousness as something in constant movement – maybe inside the brain, maybe outside (the gaze wandering around from object to object). And the objects are in this figure less ecstatic as they are – let’s say – sticky. So they catch the gaze, and indeed they manipulate us insofar, as they change the course of our consciousness’ traveling. This is the way attention is created. So why should we speak of transgression here? I would not use this term here, since the catching and changing does not imply any experience of spatial movement or confusing.
“to pay attention” (3). This figure implies, that our attention is given, paid, to something, one. In this way we are giving out attention to the objects, and by doing so – I suppose – we activate their aesthetic potential. So you were right in forming an opposition between “catching” and “paying”. I wonder however if one is possible without the other. Can we decide to pay attention to an object, if it does not extend toward us, if it does not make itself “sticky”, to remain in this terminology.
What I am trying to show by these awkward word-plays is, that while the terms seem to imply a certain transgression or violence, forcefulness in the act, we are not dealing with transgressions here in the sense we are using it. Reading Böhme’s ideas about ecstasy and atmosphere might really make this more clear to you.

I’m not sure I follow you here.

The notion of transgression is a very powerful one when we talk about art. It has been used a lot since the late 80’s to talk about art that intentionnaly is meant to shock the audience (G. Bataille, histoire de l’oeil should come on our list). So we are primarily talking here of transgression of moral rules valid in society. The transgression we are talking about is an aesthetic one. It presupposes the autonomy of the viewer towards the art piece and the autonomy of the art piece towards the viewer. This is very questionable whilst desirable from a political point of view.

Why is that so? Is the autonomy of the art piece not the very idea of art? What is your concept of autonomy here?

The art piece autonomous from the viewer. The two being radically different. In the case of installation art but actually in most of the art being produced since the the 60’s the idea of the autonomy how I understand it becomes blurry. The viewer is always asked to some extend to participate in the art work. Be it physically or mentally. He is often asked to “finish” the work or to take position towards the artistic proposition. He is, to that extend, part of the work. I don’t want to generalize here. But it is often the case. Maybe the word autonomous is not the best.

Our contemporary visual culture is constantly working on transcending the visible to all the senses. Installation art is art where you are in the art work, going to the cinema nowadays with the possibility of the Dolby Surround is an experience of total submersion into an universe. But is this different than the horrific experience made by the first viewers of the movie L’arrivée du train en gare de la Ciotat from les frêres Lumière? Is the progress of the technique not just accompanying the progress of our habits as viewers? It is a common sense to say that the visual is ruling our contemporary culture. Didi-Huberman goes back as far as to one of the first theologists, Retullus, in order to reverse the common sense and speak of “la haine du visible”, the hatred of the visible. We constantly want to go beyond the visual, to transgress its possibilities. But is this such a strange thing?

I totally agree that there is a movement towards the desolution of the frame, the frontiers between art and reality. Maximum realism. But the quest for maximum realism is necessarily a dead-end-street. How could it be otherwise? What would be the aesthetic gain of a TOTALES KUNSTWERK? If I don’t know it is art, how and why should I enjoy it? The joy of art lies precisely in it’s limitations, it is in the alternation, not in the sameness. This is not a political claim, but an observation.