The "Art" of Communication

Image acquired from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/saschapohflepp/301854633/
Artist: saschapohflepp
Rights for this image can be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en


The artwork of Rebecca Horn combines both the physiological and psychological to create art that can be invested in by the artist and the viewer. To explain, Horn used items such as sticks to extend the "feeling of touch" that is made when a human interacts with an object. She states that she can feel, grasp, and touch them while maintaining her distance. This extension of the body includes literally adding to the physical state of the body in order to simulate that of touch. The physical and psychological aspects are seen in a film Horn produced titled, "Berlin" where two people had magnets attached to their legs. The physical connection that was or was not made, depending on the individuals placement to each other, resembled the difficulty that we, as humans, sometimes have with direct physical contact and communication. In correlation with this concept, the reason that touch and direct communication can be difficult to engage in is because of the fear of how that person might react (or how we are supposed to engage). This was another concept that Rebecca Horn was interested in and was reflected in her film titled the, "Eintazer."
Dialogue was also something that Horn found intriguing. Instead of using it in what is considered the normal form (which is the conversing between to individuals), she used objects to to paraphrase her meaning, or introduce a new way of speaking. Specifically, she used two swings that would sway in the same motion therefore trying to symbolize the act of clear communication between two individuals. This process of exploration shows how the act of communication between non-living objects results in finding the idiosyncrasies as well as the complicated issues of communication that we (as humans) deal with every day.
Rebecca also tried to determine the type of communication that takes place when masks are used. She sees them as tools which symbolize, "...the loss of facial identity through the necessity of rejecting oneself as well as of being in complete possession of oneself." I believe this means that there is a process that must take place when an individual puts on a mask. The "rejecting of oneself" indicates that the individual wearing the mask must take on the characteristics of it. That the identity of the person wearing the mask must subject themselves to its full symbolic state by loosing their own identity. When speaking of, "being in complete possession of oneself," I think this is simply in addition to what was just said. Namely, that when a mask is put on, a person becomes that of the mask. Therefore, one can put on a mask and still be in complete possession of themselves because the mask is then their identity. I may have over analyzed this, but the subject matter discussed here intrigued me. These are my thoughts and therefore they may not accurately reflect what Horn was trying to convey.
Implementing the experimentation of simple concepts, such as the oddities that take place within communication into artwork, can reveal a multitude of amazing results that we either take for granted or never realized exist.