The unknown that we know

Now it’s getting messy, real and quite scary: the virtual is all that cannot be imagined, the reality of the virtual is the reality of change. In Lundahl & Seitl artwork:”Symphony of a Missing Room” which was presented in Gothenburg museum of Art, a virtual room is suggested “, an existing virtual parallel to the physical spaces". What’s missing in the room is the virtual room, the unimaginable possibilities of what a room can become, the unknown and cannot be known potential of a specific museum room. What the artists propose is this unknown room, which is exciting.

The proposal is executed as follows: the audience receives very good ear phones with a recorded voice (a voice with a typical lord-of-the-rings-princess flavor, definitely going for a fantasy vibe) which guides them through parts of the museum. Later, vision is restricted, and performers are leading the audience by hand. The audience is instructed to imagine the speculated narrative of the artists presented in the museum “A sensorium of imaginary architecture is built, often in direct relation to the concepts and visions of those artists whose works were placed in the museum long before.” An alternative room imagined by the artists is suggested to the audience where they are facing the choice to submit to the imaginary alternative or resist it. To block potential experience by submitting to an already inscribed narrative or deal with the frustration that come with resisting it. At that moment the focus turn to the imaginary the excitement and fear of the virtual is lost, replaced by what is already very possible and imagined.

How then can the idea of a virtual room be productive? How can the virtual stay virtual instead of being pinned back to a specific imagined alternative? In the first moments after receiving the earphones, a sensation of disorientation is created because the spectator cannot distinguish sound from the earphones and sounds from the museum, that sensation is then amplified by performers walking in the room where again the spectator doesn’t know if they are regular visitors of the museum or not. A certain potential exists in this situation, the effect of the earphones creates a friction between what the audience hears and what they see. Later, the depravation of vision creates a retreat to the imaginary, the potentiality is actualized in imagination. There actualization in the imaginary is very problematic, it doesn’t open up to the virtual. Art should open possibilities to experience, it should insist on staying on the border between virtual and actual, between experience and imagination. Art should be brave enough to discard of what is already know without anticipating what can be achieved with this action. It’s imperative to produce situations with potentiality through creating a constant disturbance and not to fall into an already known interpretation of an already confirmed imagination. “Symphony of a Missing Room” promises the virtual by inscribing an alternative imaginary room, instead of taking a step into an unknown and leaving the audience alone to face the virtual.



Uri Turkenich