In the Body, in the Room, in Space
<p>When I was invited to write this essay on Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, I thought: I could begin anywhere. In the body, in the bedroom, in outer space. I could begin outside the locked door of a hotel room. I could be on the beach or on another planet, waiting in a port or performing onstage. Perhaps I should begin in a tidy, green European park, encountering a series of strange large incongruous objects: a lump of volcanic rock; a slender modernist bench; a lamp post. Or I could begin in a dislocated exhibition space, walking on a polished concrete pathway through a white hangar which is gradually filling with the complicated, intense sounds of a tropical rainstorm. I could go back to the past, meeting a flickering vision of Marilyn Monroe as she dances alone in a darkened space. I could cut forward to the future, lying on a metal bed-frame inside a bunker in a disused power-station, surrounded by reproductions of famous sculptures that have been strangely swollen by apocalyptic rain. I could begin inside my own body, listening, tasting, smelling, blinking: a room infiltrated by a musky scent; a gallery flooded with the sound of a recorded aria; a pattern of moving lights that respond when I move. I could begin at the greatest distance imaginable from myself, disembodied, floating in a virtual reality that is suspended in deep space…</p>
Authors: Daisy Hildyard
Artists: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Part of: TextWork
ISSN: 27269949