Cisternerne
This weekend we went on our first Visual Arts Living and Learning Community outing. Our arts coordinator, Sophie, took us all to The Cisterns, also known as Cisternerne in Danish. It is an underground gallery space in what used to be the water reservoir for the city of Copenhagen. The exhibit currently on display, Sophie explained on the bus ride there, is a site specific installation by the Japanese architect Sambuichi in which he plays with the history and architecture of the space.
To enter the exhibition space, you step into the dark. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, and the first ting I saw once they had was my own reflection. A large mirror is hung at the entrance, so as to reflect the little light from above into the space below. It was disorienting at first to be confronted with an image of myself and took a minute to process. As we discussed in my art history class this week, to see art is to look and make sense of the image. When we don't know what we are looking at it takes longer to understand what is in front of us. Once my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I was ready to see the art.
My ears needed to adjust too. In the confined space, every sound is amplified and echoes off the walls. At first I was annoyed by the noise, and I was angry that people would continue to whisper and talk in what felt to me to be such a meditative space. But soon the voices turned into Danish white noise and I was able to tune it out as if it were background music. In areas and moments where there were fewer people, I was very attuned to the the ambient sounds: the plick of the water drops hitting rock, the clack of the wood floorboards under my feet. These too were amplified in the space, but only added to the experience. At one moment I was nearly alone in a long hallways and I closed my eyes for a calm meditative moment.
The art itself is hard to describe. In the dark of the underground, it was hard to take photos, and the few photos I was able to take do no justice to the experience of the space. The site specific installation was primarily a path of wooden walkways through the space, above a few inches of water. The artist played with the use of mirrors to reflect the little natural light that entered the space through two skylights. A few glass cubes and artificial sources of lights were scattered throughout. There was also a camera-obscura projection, but I did not see it (or rather, I must of looked at it but not knowing what I was looking at not understood it and hence not 'seen' it). What I was most interested in was the space itself: the archways of the cisterns, the metal escape route stair-case, the moss growing naturally around it. These purely useful aspects were appealing in their own way. The artist has played up the particularities of this environment, which brings aesthetic value and creates a sense of wonder to even its most banal aspects. It is quite difficult to imagine the space as anything other than this installation, as it was so dependent on and so highlighted the space itself. And of course since the installation is site specific, it is impossible to imagine it elsewhere.
There seems to be a metaphor within this exhibit for the study abroad experience in general. Coming to Copenhagen, or any new city, is like entering into a dark unknown space one is excited to discover, yet one is first forced to look inwards at oneself. Then one must start adapting to and coming to accept the "noise" of a foreign language as part of the experience itself. The differences between one's new city and one's home are amplified and echo in odd ways. The experience itself can be hard to put into words and explain to those who haven't seen it or lived it for themselves. One may need time to learn how to 'see' and to be in the new space, and need to find some time alone among the crowd. And yet, one looks forward to what more there would be to see, hear and enjoy. And then one exits back into the light.