Beth B: Crosby Street Project • New York
Beth B’s multi-media installation “Out of Sight/Out of Mind” divides the single exhibition space at Crosby Street Project into three spatial zones that are combined with one another through soundproof doors. Consisting of a replica of a rotary machine (a spinning chair that was used in the 1820s to treat mental illness), a block of four padded cells, and a video-projection in the back chamber, this disturbing installation quotes from and questions the way state institutions and the media handle violence and the abnormal behavior of individuals. It has the lifeless silence of a department in an ethnological museum but also the adventurous, semi-dangerous enticement of amusement-park thrills. Here, the blunt seriousness of a sociological study is infused with a provocative and ambiguous tone. What could strike one at first as primarily polemic and even didactic—another case of art addressing perceived social wrongs—gradually assumes multiple resonances and layers of meaning. There is also a streak of dark humor within the raw and dramatic arrangement of the installation’s components in the space.
The parts of the project function more
as narrative, than as agitative or instructive, elements. They challenge
the audience physically to integrate into the narrative; for instance
one can spin around in the dizzying, high-speed rotary machine, and within
the padded cells one immediately imagines what it would be like if the
doors were actually locked. “Out of Sight/Out of Mind” belongs
to a series of similar projects that the New York-based artist—who
is more known for her videos and films—has carried out in the last
several years. The titles of Beth B’s sculpture-installations like
“A Holy Experiment”(1995) and “Under Lock & Key”
(1993) already indicate that the visitor voluntarily assumes the role
of an experimental subject, becoming a protagonist within a preset situation
that takes place in spaces that are usually “out of sight”—prisons,
isolation cells, psychiatric treatment rooms. Our guest role in such simulated
yet still nerve-racking environments is not without a certain irony, but
it also leads us to an awareness of our own “Out of Sight/Out of
Mind” thinking, such as the many times when we sit in front of the
television screen receiving information about someone’s prison sentence,
incarceration in a psychiatric clinic, or even death penalty—all
forms of removal from society—after which our interest abruptly declines
or disappears altogether.
In “Out of Sight/Out of Mind” the narrative doesn’t start
as one might expect with the causal event (an act of violence, the committing
of a crime, or the breaking of a social taboo) but with the result (incarceration,
isolation) and here Beth B reverses the normal sequence of rooms in her
ersatz institution. Stepping into the space from the street, one immediately,
and surprisingly, finds oneself in what should otherwise be the most hidden,
screened-off room: a high-ceilinged square enclosure with a white, heavily
padded wall in the back. In the center is the rotary machine—a huge
frame made out of dark wooden beams, in which hangs an ominous chair equipped
with restraining belts for the patient’s arms and legs. This construction,
reminiscent of a children’s swing as well as of a torture instrument,
creates another even more isolating space within the space, which seems
both inviting and threatening.
From this innermost “treatment room” one passes through four
narrow doors into four bright, entirely padded cells, each housing a small
bench—a kind of confession bench. While no sound is supposed to enter
or leave, the cells themselves are filled with speech. From hidden loudspeakers
male and female voices recite quotes from, among others, Marilyn Monroe,
Antonin Artaud, and Van Gogh; figures who were considered to be cultural
icons but who were also seen as psychologically fragile and extreme. These
simultaneously sterile and history-filled cells serve as a kind of intermediate
station in the installation and can be exited on the other side.
With some relief one enters the last quasi-public room where a video-montage
is projected on a large screen. In this staccato-cut video Beth B mixes
historical newsreel footage of breakneck public stunts with television
footage and commentary on the case of a 13-year-old murderer who was sentenced
as an adult. This is the judgment room, where decisions are made. Sitting
on the long bench that is covered with the by now familiar upholstery,
and watching the screen, the visitor gets the uneasy feeling of having
to expect his or her own judgment (or punishment, or sentence) from the
authorities, whoever they are.
“Out of Sight/Out of Mind” is not “experience art”
or even “self-experience art” in a spiritual or moralistic sense
but a multi-media work that moves between documentary and fiction, as
do Beth B’s films; it involves the visitor as a witness similar to
the way her films involve the viewer. While the film spectator remains
a passive witness, the visitor of the installation becomes an active one.
In spite of the complex statement that equally deals with rules in both
past and contemporary society, the exhibition has an insistent clarity
and balanced rhythm of forms that borders on the minimal and austere.
Here one is not confronted or crowded with masses of facts or objects
(which undoubtedly would be available). Instead, the rotary machine, the
padded cells, and the “judgment room” communicate silently on
their own, forcing us, by touching our fears and individual sense of justice,
to also reflect on whether institutional responses to violence can be
violent themselves.
While Beth B’s installation is imitative of threatening things out
there in the world, in the challenging location of an exhibition space
it remains eerie and disconcerting. Illuminating the “dark places”
of the human mind and social structures, it succeeds in letting the “out
of sight” intensely enter into one’s mind. One leaves somewhat
dizzied and confused but remarkably open to a host of troubling questions
concerning deviancy and control.Sabine Russ
Brooklyn, New York
1995
translated from the German by the author and Gregory Volk