Mark Dion: Nos Sciences Naturelles, 1992 – Unseen Fribourg, 1995
Mark Dion: Nos Sciences Naturelles, 1992 – Unseen Fribourg, 1995
“Penser-classer” (Thoughts of Sorts) is the title of a work by Georges Perec, condensing Western culture’s desire to reduce the world to a prescription decreed by logic. (Educational kit, Unseen Fribourg, 1995)
New York artist Mark Dion was invited to Friart for the first time in 1992 to take part in the group exhibition Nos Sciences Naturelles (Our Natural Sciences). As its name suggests, the exhibition presented the natural sciences as different narratives constructed under the influence of groupthink. Mark Dion called into question the capacity of museums to represent the world. His research had parallels with Brechtian thinking according to which that while a photo of a factory may be the direct imprint of the light that has been in contact with the political, socio-economic and psychological realities of people exploited by industry, these realities can in no way be reproduced in the photo. In the same way, a study in ecology can only give substance to one facet of a measurable, computable reality. Scientific subjectivity was substituted for the camera objective. His installation, Observations of Neotropical Vertebrates, did not publish research results but rather the research process: a fax listing the names of vertebrates, stuffed animals, the fact that the only information available was that observation had taken place. The scientific-artistic eye is situated and therefore limited. In the framework of an exhibition itself, the visitor’s gaze is also limited (conditioned) by that which is presented by the institution. Thus in Dion, only stuffed animals that were part of the natural history museum’s collection were exhibited. Dion’s faxes helped give form to that which is rendered invisible by the process of the mediation of sciences and culture. What else may have escaped the observation of the artist-researcher in Brazil? What else is the public prevented from seeing?
In 1995, Mark Dion inaugurated Unseen Fribourg, his first solo exhibition in Switzerland. Formally he made a distinction between nature (the animals photographed) and culture (the vestiges of humanity on Earth) making the public think about our impact on our environment. Once again, his pseudo-scientific process shed light on what is lacking. It was not the results that were exhibited but the research process, which was historicised to give substance to a discursive space. The thinker-classifier aesthetic is thus used in order to call attention to a decoding and classification of reality. Unseen Fribourg did not simply invite a reflection on our relationship with reality but rather a reconsideration of how we construct our particular reality and how the vestiges of the past feed into our collective construction of the future (local, Swiss, global).
Today, our own exhibition process (1) echoes Mark Dion’s approach in an attempt to give substance to the history of Friart. We present objects that we can only describe and put into context with stories told elsewhere: the history of art, accounts of the lives of people we have met. As with any quest story, the idea that a history of Friart existed was presaged prior to our participation in its writing. Very often, words, space and time are lacking to give form to objects that have preceded us and that will come after.
Text by David Meszez, presented as part of the exhibition Friart est né du vide. L’esprit d’une Kunsthalle, MAHF Museoscope, 27.08 – 17.10.2021.
(1) The exhibition mentioned is the 2021 Friart anniversary exhibition, Friart est né du vide. L’esprit d’une Kunsthalle, MAHF Museoscope, 27.08 – 17.10.2021.
Translation: Jack Sims