"… eyes may be confused in two ways and from two causes, namely, when they've come from the light into the darkness and when they've come
from the darkness into the light…the same applies to the soul…"
-- Plato's Republic VII
The main and larger sculpture is a full-scale re-construction of a mobile truck trailer. The trailer has an open framework, or cage, revealing
eleven simple forms of varying shape and size, lined-up compactly within the trailer's enclosing framework. The entire sculpture of the
truck trailer, with its cage, components and tires, is fabricated out of aluminum and painted grey. The secondary and much smaller
sculpture is a representation of a short-wave radio. It is made of anodized black aluminum. Both sculptures are situated in adjoining rooms
and are the only objects that inhabit their respective spaces.
There is no artificial light directed at or guiding the viewer to the art in these two spaces. Light in the two rooms, although substantially
filtered and tinted, is wholly dependant on a natural source - daylight. Visibility of the objects and the nature of light in these spaces are
contingent on external conditions, the date and the time of day, the latitude of Kassel and its weather.
The principal sculpture, the truck, is tightly situated in a back room at the end of a grand exhibition hall. The walls of the truck's room have
been painted dark grey. This high-ceilinged space is un-lit. The room's large skylight has been shaded, filtering out most of the natural
light; the room is almost dark. The scale of the truck relative to the cramped dimensions of the space allows little room for maneuver.
Because all entrances into the space are relatively narrow, how the truck gained entry is inexplicable.
Viewers can enter the space two ways, which is also to say they can exit two ways. The installation makes no attempt to enforce a
particular phenomenal or semiotic progression or order of entry or exit. Both points of access to the work involve a slight descent as the
viewer moves into the piece, and a slight ascent as the viewer leaves the work.
The viewer may descend into work through a dimly lit, low-ceilinged passageway that curves as the floor slopes gently downward, or the
viewer may access the dark room the truck inhabits by first passing through a glowing red room.
If the viewer chooses the former entry they are given the chance to accustom their vision to darkness, but as the form of the truck reveals
itself it is obvious that its edges extend beyond view and cannot be fully captured at first. They must decide whether to proceed in order to
take in the whole work. Once in the high ceiling room, they begin to perceive the full breadth and height of the work before them. If they
choose to closely inspect the form, they may walk to either end of the work, maneuvering along the narrow space between the truck and
the wall. Here, the wall curves and tilts forward to both embrace and loom over truck and viewer.
If the viewer chooses to enter through the red room, they first descend a short staircase into a small room drenched in red light. The
source of this light is the floor-to-ceiling windows that fill the entire wall to the right, the room's southern exposure. The glass is treated with
a red transparent film. The room and its contents (including the viewer), and the landscape beyond are bathed in this colored light. From
this vantage point the viewer's entry into the truck room is through a tall, narrow and apparently dark doorway which opens onto a room un-
lit save for a small amount of natural light coming from above and the red light spilling over the threshold of the door.
Entering the space that contains the truck through this red room prevents one's vision from quickly adjusting to the darkness. If the viewer
chooses to proceed after an initial period of adjustment & re-orientation, they will begin to perceive a shadowy assembly of forms that sit
on an elevated platform within a cage-like framework. These forms vary in size and shape, but all are formally reductive, smooth, simple
shapes that suggest platonic Forms, minimalist sculpture, and containers of some unknown industrial-chemical nature. Closer inspection
reveals tires at the back end of the structure and a network of tubes that connect the shapes within the elevated framework. This is the
truck.
If the viewer chooses to stay in the red room before proceeding they will encounter a small black sculpture positioned on the floor. The
sculpture is a re-construction of a short-wave radio receiver, casually oriented in the space as if set there by someone, left and forgotten.
Upon brief examination, it is immediately obvious that this radio is non-functional. Its forms are reduced, simplified, and generic. Its
knobs and crank are fixed in place. Its band indicator is blank. Its antenna is fixed and does not fold down. The hand crank cannot turn.
In the bright red light the black radio becomes a dense object, small but enormously heavy. Both as a radio, and as an object, it is
profoundly mute.
Yet, from some indefinite location in this apparently empty and crimson space, a sound is barely audible. Constantly emitting, filling the
space with its almost imperceptible presence, it transmits what is meant to function as a white noise filtering or deadening external sounds
of the building, the exhibition and the public's activity. Upon closer listening one can detect what may sound like a desert wind or the more-
or-less identifiable static of short-wave radio reception occasionally interrupted by random glitches and squelches --the sound of a receiver
that fails to locate a transmitter.
The scale of the two sculptures, truck and radio, are one-to-one with the their real life counterparts, but in the context of Documenta 12
they are deliberately ill-proportioned to the rooms they inhabit and to each other. While the large room barely contains the immense truck,
the smaller room with its view of the landscape outside dwarf the radio.
In these circumstances, the significance attributed to scale is necessarily unstable. If the truck, while in proper scale, is 'monumental',
then the radio's diminutive size must be disproportionate relative to the scale of its significance, begging a greater connotation than its
small size admits. Conversely, if the smallness of the radio is proportionate to its significance, meaning it only references what it
designates - a radio, then perhaps the truck, no matter how large it is, is just a truck.
There is also an intentionally perceived scale shift of viewer relative to their experience of the rooms and their contents. They must first
experience the impressive scale of the larger exhibition hall with its works by other artists, and if they are then drawn to end of this hall,
they may enter (once again) through either of the two entrances.
Entering the red room the viewer leaves behind the spacious exhibition hall and experiences at once both a reduction of interior volume
and an expansion of exterior space through the red windows. The radio becomes an afterthought of sorts; it struggles to compete with
either the previous works in the large hall or the brilliance of the red light or the landscape outside the windows. It is almost
inconsequential, yet it cannot be denied. It is there and has to be considered.
Conversely, viewing the truck by entering through the dark ramp, the viewer is first compressed by the low ceiling of the curving passage
in order to access the vaulted space of the truck. Then, upon reaching the truck's 'hideout', the viewer simultaneously experiences an
expansion of volume and height and conversely a reduction of light, coupled with the perceived diminution of one's own scale induced by
immersion in darkness.
Situating the truck in such a confined and marginal space problematizes the very conditions of its exhibition. Instead of exhibiting this
piece in the spacious and well-lit grand hall, an environment appropriate to the critical viewing of large, sculptural works, the truck is
relegated to a dark periphery, literally at a remove and off-exhibit, virtually cloaked. The conventions of viewer-ship are literally re-
conditioned and re-routed; the attention of the viewer is, so to speak, diverted in the very act of viewing.
These two entrances are also distinct exits from viewing the clandestine truck and as such have different implications depending on the
viewer's choice of egress.
Exiting via the dimly lit ramp-way allows for a gradual adjustment of the eyes to the well-lit grand hall. Nothing there seems to be altered,
and one is embraced by familiar conventions of display. This arrival is experienced as a return.
On the other hand, approaching the grand hall through the intense glow of red light causes objects there and the hall itself to appear tainted
with a peculiar hue, and re-adjusting one's vision after the red glow causes the light in the grand hall to appear corrupted, artificial. The
return, itself, becomes a form of disorientation -a physiological manifestation of Brecht's 'alienation-effect.'