I had the fortunate opportunity to go to the Bruce Nauman exhibition held at the Tate, and many pieces caught my eye. Bruce Nauman is an inventive artist using a mixture of sound, film, video, lights and sculpture within his works. Figure 1 is his piece 'One Hundred Live and Die', and not only did the bright lights caught my attention, but the words that were being lit. The sentences of 'come and die', 'laugh and live', 'live and live', 'die and die' are all really sticking words and the colourfulness of the lights make it feel like it is on opposite spectrums, being playful about words that have both positive and negative meanings. What is also interesting is how people reacted to the piece, you could see how everyone waited until all the lights lit up (me being one of them) because of the bright and eye-catching effect. It also interesting because now lots of people are posting bright lights and neon signs for aesthetics, where here, although it has the aesthetics of these beautiful lights, the deeper meaning of the words changes the mood and meaning completely.
Figure 1: One Hundred Live and Die 1984, Bruce Nauman
(Source: Yi Ting Liong, 2020)
The first room when walking into the exhibition are videos of his studio, having office swivel chairs for people to sit on. For Bruce Nauman, he isn't focus on the aesthetics but capture his work for what it is which I can relate to in my work with mod roc. It so interesting because you are sitting there almost waiting for something to happen, I manage to catch a rat run across the floor and for me it's like either you see something happen or you don't and those little moment, nothing special like a rat, gives that sense of almost accomplishment int he sense of seeing something maybe happen?
Figure 2: One Hundred Live and Die 1984, Bruce Nauman
(Source: Yi Ting Liong, 2020)
The piece 'Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning) piece was really captivating, also because I was able to hear the sounds of the videos from other rooms of the exhibition (thinking back to Peter Adjaye and how sound bleeds). The different screen of the man rotating in different directions was definitely weird but very immersive. Moving around the room depending on where I was standing you could hear the sounds traveling. Because the man is spinning, the sounds have the same effect of being closer and louder to then for a moment being slight quieter. It is very disorienting but strangely also very entertaining to look at. My focus is also instantly drawn to his mouth when the man says the words, maybe because hearing different words my mind wants to try and find which video the sounds are coming from. The video is also not spinning in a spot but is traveling from side to side which adds on to the disorientating feeling.
Figure 2: Anthro/Socio (Rinde Spinning) 1992, Bruce Nauman
(Source: Yi Ting Liong, 2020)
In the piece below, I had some really mix feelings with it. The sounds that were being played were instructions or the lady to follow but the instructions were more commands, sit, stand, roll over. It made me really uncomfortable at how a man's voice is ordering the mime to do almost like commands for a dog. Although interestingly it is like a choreograph where the person performance are doing that actions but adding more to it, such as when the order is sit (sits on chair) then lie down, the person then lies on the chair, roll over (they roll over on the chair). How the projections are also displayed was interesting because the videos started at different times playing the same concept but different videos.
Figure 3: Shadow Pupets and Instructed Mime, 1990, Bruce Nauman
(Source: Yi Ting Liong, 2020)
In the last room, there were projections on all four walls, three of them focused on the hand movement doing different things in very slow motion. The colours that are used were very saturated and very distinctive. The closeup of hands doing acts that can be seen for children's entertainment (making a balloon animal, card magic) which was inspired by a Las Vegas performance he had seen. Because these videos are slowed down, my focus go to the slight movement of the fingers and hands, looking at the movement and the interaction between the fingers and hands with the objects.
Figure 4 - 6: Falls, Pratfalls and Sleights of Hands (Clean Version), 1993, Bruce Nauman
(Source: Yi Ting Liong, 2020)
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