Texts > I wish for a rollercoaster
Chronotopy in the work of Lucie Renneboog
“Let’s pretend”
ALICE *
Lucie Renneboog’s expansively developed spatial installations seem to refer to both urban and extraterrestrial landscapes, labyrinths and rollercoasters. Primary they are composed out of packing material such as cardboard, polystyrene foam, sellotape, and multiplex. The idea of the switchback, or the rollercoaster can be seen as idiosyncratic to the tone of her work. Hence her installations are characterised by a touch of adventure, which is exciting but at the core remains innocuous and determined. Precisely because of this incongruity they remain ‘unreal’. The duality, with which Renneboog imitates the foundations of the entertainment business, forms one of the linchpins of her work.
Too large and too delicate, her installations cannot be experienced as a scale-model; they are too much a “drawing in space” to acquire any real gravity. They linger in spheres where the cardboard pieces of scenery of old, low budget science fiction movies are stored. Somehow the illusion is maintained, but not for long, since this is not intended. However the analogy with cinema as such goes further than merely a superficial association with one cinematic genre. Renneboog apprehends the cinematic effect -the enticement of the image and especially the medium’s ability to guide the spectator to another world- as a valid metaphor for the objectives within her artistic vision, which is based upon short-lived entertainment and cheap thrills. Another, more specific similarity with the medium is enclosed in the fact that to a certain degree Renneboog employs the principle of chronotopy in her work. The chronotopic approach is a proven formula in the cinematic world: a movie commences with a sequence in which the characters remain utterly absent and merely the spatial context is displayed. The flight over a landscape or the camera travelling through the deserted rooms of a mansion are classic examples of this procedure. Subsequently a point of convergence emerges out of which the action originates. Such images represent more than merely an atmospheric description or an unveiling of the cinematic site. They define the landscape and architecture as a passive character, as a sine qua non and a catalyst for the stream of events. Unmistakably the spatial data have an effect on the behaviour and the choices of the characters; they become a conclusive factor. In spite of her static or even stable nature the environment transcends into performativity.
In Renneboog’s work a flirtation with the chronotopic procedure is detectable. In spite of their often complex nature, her installations are always marked by the total absence of any human figure or ordinary utensil. Everything refers to the environmental or architectural elements, which the artist consciously presents ‘uninhabited’. Their significance is entirely deterred from the spatial context and not from any narration, illusionary image or theory. The spectator is invited to place him or herself within the environmental propositions, literally or in thought. The created locus, a mirror image of the artist’s desires and imagination, forms the spectator’s guiding principle in his apprehensions of the environment’s suggestive character. The installations, sometimes remarkably concrete in their defective materiality, become the matrices for a mental journey. Nevertheless the suggestion will never become an illusion, never will any kind of focus be engendered, never will there be any story. The chronotopy is impaired, the potential performativity is reduced to the chaotic, cardboard reality of an installation, which as a drawing continues upon walls and which is brought back to the size of a monumental scale-model.
In the impediment of the chronotopic procedure’s finality the installation once more becomes ‘image’ instead of scenery. The constant interaction between inaccessible images and conceivable illusions is clearly demonstrated in the video work, which is often integrated into the installations. Recorded with a vacillating and volatile camera at an obtuse angle, the videos are registrations of the installations. Now and again Renneboog mounts a camera on a telematic toy train or car and makes it ride through the work. Her videos unfold a fragmented and disoriented perception of the installations. They imitate the external characteristics of chronotopy (the movement through space, which we intuitively perceive as an “exploration” or “an attempt at”), but remain essentially directionless and chaotic as do the installations, which have no focal point themselves. From the chronotopic procedure she merely detains the core of vague suggestion.
But a suggestion whereof? Although for the conception of a new work she sets forth from a very concrete inclination, this initial motif does not remain prominently present in the ultimate result. The suggestive disposition of her installations incites the spectator’s ability to associate. Her parallel worlds – worlds that sometimes originate out of the vague desire to be someplace else, NOT in the sense of a dreamworld or a full-fledged Utopia – contain a deceptively playful character. Some installations are built following a seemingly artless –naïve, but at the core romantic method. Renneboog toys with the impossibility and formulates her observations with a wilful and obstinate lack of a sense of reality. Simultaneously and in spite of the latent romanticism, her work is characterised by a certain aloofness, an absence of the subject, by which her spatial propositions and displays enter a wider world of experience, including reflection upon the suggestive aspect of spatial and architectural data. It is precisely in this démarche that the installations unfold their entire intrinsic capacity. They seem to anticipate the spectator’s imagination while in reality they are caught in their chaotic play of dimensions, including the interaction between the two and the three-dimensional and combined with an induced yet never fully realised temporal aspect as a display of performativity.
Gerrit Vermeiren
(translation: Siska Van Daele)
* LEWIS CARROLL, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Oxford/New
York, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 126.
Lucie Renneboog
Solo tentoonstelling Netwerk Galerij.
17/11/01 > 22/12/01