Exhibition essay on Linda Duvall’s “The Toss”
I feel like I’ve become a bit of a convert to pedagogical theory, especially the kind that tries to grapple with our psychic identifications with one another (or with representations of one another), something I have talked about before in this venue, but I am still trying to figure out how to integrate it into the writing I do about art. So this text feels in many ways like a speculative one that tries to bring a few different theoretical discussions together around one artwork.
Watching the videos in their final form for the first time at the opening last night, and watching how other people watch and respond to them, made me realize how often we, as viewers, want to immediately make hermeneutic sense of a narrative, especially by trying to latch on to the artist’s biographical details. Duvall admits that the impetus for this project was her own experience of being tossed by police several years ago, but has strategically tried to avoid autobiography in The Toss through her aesthetic choices, from the parameters she set for herself to make the project, through to the filmic conventions and editing decisions she made in its presentation. Yet, at the opening last night and in my discussions with others about the work, many people persistently asked Duvall questions about where and why she was originally tossed, as though that would provide an interpretive key or answer to understanding the rest of the installation.
Given that I had just come from a lecture by Mieke Bal on the performativity of curating, where she spoke at length about the importance of curators acknowledging their agency and subjectivity by using framing devices that are obvious in their construction, watching the public response to Duvall’s installation felt like a perfect case study of how these framing devices can sometimes exacerbate viewers’ experiences of a work. Duvall is not a curator, in this particular case, but in The Toss, her installation and editing choices do mimic some of the framing strategies used by curators to stage the encounter between the viewer and the artwork. Though Bal was quite clear that she wanted to prolong the time viewers spend with a work through her framing choices as an artist-curator, and I think Duvall is trying to engage the same kind of long-term viewing as we puzzle out what is happening in the installation, I am always curious about how to toe the line between engagement and frustration. How, as a curator, do you encourage the viewer’s fascination with a work without making them feel that it will take too much (time, patience, investment) from them to fully engage with the work and your curatorial framework? When is interpretive frustration productive, and when does it become an obstacle to fruitful discussion and dialogue?
These questions probably don’t have (simple) answers, but it’s something I wonder about whenever I encounter these kinds of viewing experiences. More and more, it seems to me that pedagogical theories, which often assert that frustrations and resentments are vital to our learning (and viewing) experiences, have a lot to offer in how I think through these curatorial issues.
Really interesting post and essay, Gabby. They go well together. I haven’t seen the show yet, but I did hear Mieke Bal yesterday. In terms of the curatorial framing of the Duvall show, your essay does provide the back story for people who want to know. But it also asks theoretical questions about the art that are particular to your train of thought. I think TPW’s curatorial framing model is really great, in that they invite someone (who is not the curator) to write about the work. The text becomes another creative element in dialogue with the art, rather than an underlying or overly-determining explanation. So audience members can get more information about the artists’ intentions, interesting questions from someone (you) who has spent time really thinking about the work, and breathing room to apply our own questions and interpretations. It’s a win/win…in my opinion.
Thanks again for your thoughts and writing on the work Gabby. I’m curious to know if Linda and I had not mentioned the origins of the “toss” in the press release if anyone would be frustrated by the fragmented narrative in the work. At least on some level, I think the work is pretty clear in terms of the process it’s representing, and it’s hard to miss the tropes of bad tv that Linda plays with, particularly in the use of the music. I think it’s just that audiences still invest too much in the figure of the artist as the default for how we come to meaning in an image. As a curator invested in showing and framing work that asks for a more critical visual literacy, I’d like to suggest that the artist is no longer the default.
Thanks, Sally and Kim, for your thoughts on this. I think there are definitely lots of curatorial framing strategies in place at TPW to alert the viewer to the different subject positions at play in each exhibition, and the essay format and other discursive programming is a huge help in this. And Linda’s installation, even with its fragmented narrative, offers a bunch of possible interpretations of its meaning (I almost wrote a whole text about her use of exposition, setting and costuming and the way that “bad guys” are depicted in the videos instead).
The press release’s mention of the original toss aside, I sometimes also wonder if the audience’s response has something to do with our fascination with and investment in origin stories, with art as well as with cultural texts in general. Asking “how did the artist originally come up with this idea?” is another one of the interpretive defaults, especially in art writing. This comes back to the figure of the artist as the default, of course, and it assumes that there is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the idea for a work and its execution and presentation.
I’m much more interested in the question of “what is this artwork asking from me, as a viewer?”, but I’m not sure how to encourage other people to want to ask that question, too.