Inspiration : Scattered Crowd

I'm not sure, but I think I remember hearing William Forsythe say in an interview that economic realities at least in part led him to his ideas for Choreographic Objects.  Any institution can commission one of his installations - installations which do not require extensive rehearsal time, dancers' payments or theatre, lighting, sound or travel expenses, etc. Referring back to my post on Miwon Kwon's book, William Forsythe's installations seem to be precisely what Kwon is troubled by.  The installations go up from institution to institution making both them and Forsythe money with seemingly no concern for any enduring relationship to the site or the community.  For me, however, I see Forsythe's installations as a possible answer to Kwon's call for a process of double-mediation.  

For example, the effect of "Scattered Crowd," an installation with sound and 4000 balloons, is to create an ecological space where the physical environment and the "organisms" in it are in relationship.  To use Richard Serra's words (ironically enough) to help describe Forsythe's: "The works become at part of the site and restructure both conceptually and perceptually the organization of the site."  So, though Forsythe's installations are not tied to the site in a traditional sense, I feel that the space and the work are co-constitutive, and because of that, though the installation can be reproduced elsewhere, it can never be reproduced exactly.  The work creates an ecology specific to that location alone. 

 

When I look at the pictures below of "Scattered Crowd" I can imagine that if I had been part of it, something of the experience would have remained long after the installation was taken down and that the space itself would have been indelibly changed for me. 

 

-Alicia Laumann