On the Periphery
Years ago during a sculpture class in art school, we were given an assignment to create a piece of art based on time. But before we began the usual sketching and researching we needed to participate in an experiment: to look out a window and focus our attention at a single point in space, and for 3 minutes don’t look away. Blink if needed, but don’t move your eyes from that point. Let your mind wander. Where does your mind go and what do you see? What do you feel? Notice the details.
The other day, thanks to a story shared by the band Metronomy on Instagram, I followed the trail of links to the endearing and surprisingly existential Arthur Cares, a radio program on BBC4. The basic premise of the show is “People with minor problems seek the advice of 12-year-old Arthur.” Listeners are encouraged to call in and “leave a message after the roar.” A LION ROAAARSSSS in the background. On the most recent episode Joseph Mount from the band Metronomy asks Arthur,
“When I go to an art gallery or a museum, I don’t really know how long I should stand in front of something and look at it before I’m allowed to move on. I’ll have a little look at something like the Mona Lisa and maybe give it 10 seconds and walk off.”
Even with me being a visual artist, a humorous problem I admit I find myself having. I’m sure many people feel the same way. How long are we supposed to look at something really?
Luckily Arthur contacts the art critic Jennifer Hickey who has some advice. She suggests that when you visit a museum or gallery to only look at a few pieces. Spend time with them. Get to know them. Give yourself the permission to take as long as you like, and to the benefit of yourself AND the museum, you have a very good reason to return later to view the other art pieces. Often, it is easier to spend more time with things you do like because it feels good to look at it. You enjoy the colors or the shapes or the composition. So, more advice: potentially you need to spend longer with something you don’t like to figure out why it is you don’t like it.
Arthur’s dad adds later,
“If you spend more time with something what you see can change. How you feel can change. And often we don’t give ourselves that much time.”
Arthur’s rules: Slow down. Remain curious. Question our motives.
During my assignment experience of focusing on a single point, I opened my window and looked out of my dorm room across the campus and focused on a small garden. After a minute, I remember my eyes going a little fuzzy and my brain going a bit blank. But suddenly, my periphery lit up with movement: a group of friends gathering together to play soccer. A man on a balcony smoking a cigarette. Lights turning on in someone’s office. A white dog breaking free of a leash and chasing after a squirrel. I forgot what the garden looked like, but I remembered the moments happening outside of my focus. And then, an idea! A revelation for my sculpture. A forced periphery machine. I don’t have photos of the finished piece but it looked something like this:
A very simply constructed booth. To engage with the piece you get in the booth and position yourself facing forward, throw the curtain around you to block out as much light as possible, and use a large circular wheel (sort of like a Lazy Susan with a hole) to reveal one of eight holes drilled into the exterior panel. The wheel blocks all but one hole and allows you to only see a portion of your normal view, which essentially forces you to look at things that are in your periphery. The added darkness from the curtain helps illuminate these singular views giving them more significance, allowing you to maybe, just maybe, find the importance in something you would have normally ignored or overlooked.
Towards the end of the episode, Arthur instructs Joseph to look at a piece of art (Night Sky #19 by Vija Celmins) for 4 minutes and 37 seconds (the same amount of time as The Look, one of the songs Joseph wrote for Metronomy) as a way to help Joseph understand that if he expects someone to sit with his art for a certain amount of time, he should feel obliged to do the same for others. In this way, there is an immediate empathetic connection. An agreement between artist and viewers, and a new structure to look at art. Imagine how much more we can notice and how much more we can feel connected when we set expectations and agree to give equal attention to things.
Arthur makes a final request of Joseph:
“One night soon, go outside with a blanket and lie down and look at the sky when the stars are out. And just notice the details. Because everything is kind of there for a reason.”
Maybe we should choose to remain still, and look at things for just a little longer. Maybe we should all take the time to sit and wonder and ponder. There could be things right in front of us, in our periphery just slightly up and to the left on a balcony smoking a cigarette, or a light turning on in an office, that can help us engage more with the world around us.
