A Ouija board, stacks of books, pinecones, mushrooms, glass boxes and a refrigerator — an endless stream of objects inhabits the walls and floors of the Tisch Gallery in the current exhibit, "Renovating Walden."
The installation, spearheaded by artists J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion, will be at the gallery from Sept. 9 to Nov. 14. The exhibition explores the Transcendentalist Movement and Henry David Thoreau's seminal 1854 book, "Walden, or, Life in the Woods." "Renovating Walden" was developed at Mildred's Lane, Puett and Dion's artists colony in Pennsylvania, which uses an experimental and social approach to art making. At the core of this exhibition is the rethinking of "being as a practice," which parallels Thoreau's assertion that "being is the great explainer."
The multidisciplinary exhibition is composed of a series of talks, or "lyceums," held in the gallery about "Walden," a photographer's studio and the construction of a cabin in the gallery. This combination is completely unconventional in its attempt to convert art viewers into art participants by providing a space that is interactive and functional.
The first room of the gallery is where the lyceums are held. The walls of the room are decorated with items of a rational, hierarchical style. Oddly, this mathematical structure is aesthetically pleasing against the backdrop of a pine−green wall. The objects dotting these walls do not seem to have intentional placements in relation to each other, beyond their aesthetic harmony.
The room features a medley of chairs and round tables, all at different levels and some even topped with pillows. These directly invite the visitor to inhabit the space and make it necessary for the visitor to explore the space. In this sense, this arrangement is reminiscent of Allan Kaprow's "Yard" — a gallery courtyard he filled with tires — because the visitor must navigate through the work using his or her own body.
When I had to weave through the maze of furniture pieces, I felt active in a way that is atypical for a formal gallery setting. In this way, the exhibition engages a childlike yearning to explore and to examine stimuli with wonder.
The first room's space endorses the sort of intellectual curiosity that spans across disciplines but studies particular facets. The objects on the salon's walls suggest a range of interests, from scientific classifications of species to spiritual pursuit, to aesthetic appreciation of nature.
Topics of lyceums have ranged from "Drawing Rooms and Disturbed Consciences: Parlor Politics on the Anti−Slavery Home Front," taught by Assistant Professor Radiclani Clytus of the English Department and American Studies Program, to "What does Thoreau teach us about sustainability?," taught by Professor Gilbert Metcalf of the Department of Economics.
Future events include a discussion about the philosophical significance of Thoreau's "Walden," a performance by the Tufts Dance Ensemble in response to the ideas and receptions of Thoreau and open class sessions. This comprehensive approach to learning is reminiscent of Aristotle's Lyceum and Black Mountain College (1933−57), both institutions that promoted active dialogue and cross−disciplinary exploration. This demonstrates the practicality of this intentional space in the same way that Mildred's Lane provides a site for collaboration and explorative learning for artists.
In the central room, a cabin construction project attracts a flow of people and uses a variety of tools. This more social art system is unconventional, both in the workers' experiences with one another, and with the visitor's experience wading through equipment and people in the gallery space. The cabin is intended as an inspired response to the exhibition itself, capitalizing on the integration of discourse and participation as a theme in the exhibit. The artist's goal is to make a process of the social methods of work, and the exhibition is more concerned with this process than with its final result.
The process of learning outside of a conventional framework connects to the focus of "Renovating Walden" on system rather than product. The replicated cabin within the gallery has been evolving, but the fact that the cabin's construction will cease and the exhibition will eventually be over suggests that everything we experience is temporary, and that life itself is fleeting. Parallel to Jackson Pollock's emphasis on the event of painting instead of the final product of a painted canvas, the event of constructing a cabin is seemingly more important than what the cabin as a product will look like.
In the central room of the exhibit, this theme of repeated forms that are concurrently chaotic and organized is explored even further with a large arrangement of woodworking tools. This styling suggests that out of the chaos of life, humans like to find structure and document it, but at a certain level, entropy will always exist and be relevant to life.
While the goal of bridging art and the outside world is near impossible, "Renovating Walden" succeeds in exploring crosscurrents of social, artistic and educational practices.
A public closing reception with the artists will occur on Nov. 12, and in the meantime, the gallery is open to all visitors or, in this case, participants.
