Hans Schabus: Next Time I’m Here, I’ll Be There
The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery
London, England
1 March – 1 June 2008

by Rea Cris

The Barbican has commissioned a new piece from Austrian artist Hans Schabus, who is know for creating site specific installations that physically destroy or change the spaces they inhabit. For this piece, Schabus has played on the fact that the wall of the Barbican’s gallery, The Curve, is 80 meters long, or the same length and width of a large aeroplane. As the name implies, the gallery is semi-circular to mirror the Hall it is adjacent to. Schabus has bolted 461 chairs that can be found throughout the Barbican for its various activities, as well as those found hidden away in storage. This simple gesture is a reflection upon the history of the Barbican, which opened its doors in 1982. Arranged in accordance to colour and shape, the various chairs have been bolted at a 90-degree angle onto the wall. Immediately our sense of spatial agreement is thrown into a serious funk. To accompany the exhibit, 12 speakers stream sounds from other parts of the Barbican to create “a representation of the whole building in one space at its heart”.

But rather than amuse our senses by artificially altering the gravity of the room, so to speak, Schabus would rather have us focus on the chairs themselves. Schabus has commissioned a text from Margit Emesz, a design historian, to outline and discuss the function and symbolism of the chair throughout history – an excellent read in itself. Chairs, it is argued, have been used through history as a means of denoting power and maintaining social control. Emesz explains that sitting is less natural a posture for humans than squatting, yet in the West, from its earliest example of the throne, through the orderly rows of schools and churches, and finally in their modern incarnation of offices and aeroplanes, chairs have been used to pacify and control the individual. Schabus choose the idea of an aeroplane as it demonstrates the control of seating as well as social structure. No where else is social status so evident in relation to the physical seat than in an aeroplane. Strangely enough, Schabus’s aeroplane is strangely devoid of the most important seat on the whole plane: that of the pilot. Aeroplanes makes us subordinate to a faceless power in the cockpit, the true seat of power in the whole plane, which is simultaneously also the most stressful, just like the throne that equally represents power and relinquishing freedom.

But I believe that Schabus has missed out on another object that controls our thoughts subconsciously - that of the carpet. Having boarded planes, starting at 40 days after being born, I am quite familiar with aeroplanes. I have flown in Boeing 747s, propeller planes, charter planes, though strangely enough the though of the new airbuses scares me. I realized that what was missing from Schabus’ exhibit was the temporary comfort aeroplanes allow (or deceive) us to feel. It would have almost made more sense to me if Schabus had carpeted the whole gallery and then bolted the chairs. No matter how perilous or temporary travelling is, an aeroplane offers a close intimacy and comforting fabric which render the flight comfortable and bearable. If seats were made from plastic or the interior of a plane was entirely composed of hard surfaces, there would not be the same, if temporary, serenity that currently reigns in-flight. It is perhaps the claustrophobic cocooned environment which makes aeroplanes so comforting for me, and is this why Schabus’s white, expansive, endless boundaries and hard surfaced ‘plane’ leaves me cold. Perhaps Schabus should realize that first class with their bed/seats and roomy armrests have actually done nothing other than alienate their co-passengers and made them suspicious of each other. Perhaps back in economy we are squished and squashed next to each other in orderly rows to obey and behave, but at least it has brought us closer to each other.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=6849

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