(Hamilton, 2012)
Ann Hamilton has created this installation with the audience in mind, more than that, she has made them the art itself. In this piece it displays a large room separated with a giant piece of fabric and several large rope swings on each side. Viewers can use the swings which activate the white silk piece in the middle which other audience members can lay under for a meditative experience.
if people are not using the swings, “the event of a thread” does not fully exist. When they are in action, the curtain, made of a lightweight silk twill, rises and dips, and the air is stirred, causing further billowing and fluttering. (Smyth, 2012)
Hamilton has made the audience of the piece the central factor of it. If it is not in use it ‘does not fully exist’. The art is in the experience of the exhibition and not fully in the construction- as in the different reactions and ways the people wish to use the space as uncontrollable as this may be is the pivotal importance to it.
But any initial frisson of anxiety soon dissipates, for one of the triumphs of the art is how it “meets” that presenting enormity of space and—to borrow the verb chosen by the artist herself—“animates’ it. She tames it but without completely sacrificing its inherent wildness. (Spitz, 2012)
Ann Hamilton has managed to use space to enhance the experience of her exhibition. In this review from Spitz (2012) it is said that Hamilton easily relaxes those cursed with agoraphobia in a contradicting manner as the audience aren’t to shy away from the space, but instead should embrace it and really focus in on the different senses to be heightened.
‘where are the audience and what do they bring to the work itself?’
-To conclude, the audience are pivotal to the exhibition. The audience are both the spectator and participant in this piece. They bring life and movement in whichever way they may choose to use the space which overall becomes the art.
Bibliography
Hamilton, A. (2012). The Event of a Thread. Park Avenue Armory, New York.
Smyth, R. (2012, December 6). The Audience as Art Movement. New York Times.
Spitz, E. H. (2012, December 20). Gentling The Savage Enormity Of Gargantuan Space: Ann Hamilton at the Armory. Retrieved from artcritial.com: https://artcritical.com/2012/12/20/ann-hamilton/