french

Discussion between Pierre Restany and Stéphan Barron about the installation Le Bleu du Ciel
Traduction de Pierre Miville-Deschênes

Pierre Restany : For your installation of the Tourcoing Atrium in January 1994, you invite the spectator to walk up several steps to the top of a pedestal to look at a gray-blue square cut out of a computer screen (the gray-blue of the sky over Tourcoing and Toulon). The spectator, once having seen this interactive gray-blue fragment, can look up through a square window in the roof of the Atrium to perceive the reality of the Tourcoing sky.

Stéphan Barron : Confronted with this often gray “sample” of the sky of Northern France, the spectator compares it to the computerized gray-blue fragment beneath him. He can then proceed to generate an image of the southern sky of France some one thousand kilometres away.

Pierre Restany : What is the origin of the project Le bleu du ciel?

Stéphan Barron : This project goes back to my arrival in Northern France in 1992 and my confrontation with the region's never-ending gray skies. I was amused to Þnd the interactivity between the colour of the sky and its perception (which varies from one moment to another and from one person to another). Le Bleu du Ciel is also a follow-up to previous projects on the perception of global space and on distance.

Pierre Restany : I think it interesting that you should have referred to a personal experience, and a sentimental one, because I also think that Yves Klein accepted the revelation of his blue with an inversely or homothetically positive approach. Klein's acceptance was not the result of a confrontation with the gray drizzle of the North; on the contrary, the physical and psychological conditions were very joyous and positive, with him lying out in the bright sun on the beach at Nice. The blue that he saw was profoundly different in terms of esthetic quality, but, as you well know, this was in 1948; you had the blue-gray experience of the North in 1992, so a certain number of years separate you from Yves Klein and from the physical nature of his intuition. I think that these two ideas have a common point: in 1948, the blue of the sky appeared to Yves Klein like the blue-gray of the Tourcoing sky as a mental image of the void appeared to you. I wanted to underline this somewhat structural and organic parallel with your approach to the blue of the sky.

Stéphan Barron : I would like to return to the concept of planetary interactivity, one that I consider essential. In Le Bleu du Ciel, the spectator is invited to participate mentally in the process of climate and of nature. He participates in the interaction both locally and globally. I've noted a phrase by Bachelard that expresses this idea of interactive participation: “We believe we are looking at the blue sky and suddenly the blue sky is watching us”.

Pierre Restany : To see the blue or to accept or feel that the blue sky is watching implies, obviously, a great degree of psychological participation. It is the phenomenon of distance and of recall of distance to which you are extremely sensitive, the one you wanted to examine in your installation at the Tourcoing Atrium. The concept of distance is important because it establishes a tangible link with the monochrome as a mental image of space. The sampling of a small piece of sky, gray or blue, is infinitely less gray or less blue that this perception of this image of distance in the gray or the blue. Therein lies an extremely precise reference to the impregnation of the consciousness and the awareness made possible by the blue, concepts dear to Yves Klein. The phenomenon is therefore directly interactive, and the whole idea of monochrome is based on this process of interactivity that you define very well with the interaction between the local and the global, between the interior and the exterior. Keeping in mind the double interactive process, I realize that Klein's conceptual, theoretical, practical and demonstrative strategy has necessarily been governed by this interactivity. It was for this reason that Yves Klein, each time he progressed in the self-revelation of his truth, felt the need to organize an exhibition to explain this step forward. Klein was extremely conscious of the fact that it is only with the ebb and þow of interactivity that concepts such as the monochrome or the void become tangible.

Stéphan Barron : In the “telematic” disposition of Le Bleu du Ciel, the passage of clouds at Toulon or Tourcoing integrates immediately with the colour of the gray-blue monochrome. The clouds incite the observer to travel to far-off lands and reveal our desire for ubiquity, one that I wanted to express in this project.

Pierre Restany : As you point out, evoking the blue of the sky implies a relationship to gray. Indeed, one can say that your gray-blue is in some way a variant of the blue of the sky, a dose of gray in the midst of the blue, taking into account the distance and different climatic conditions that affect the sky of our planet. In this mix of colours, with its tendency towards gray, the passage of clouds plays a determinant role. Beyond the traces and rapid markings that either modify the luminous quality of the sky or totally obliterate it, the cloud is more that just an element of gray, a stimulant to desire, an invitation to travel: it actually makes for a greater physical integration to the macrocosm. The interactive machine sets the scene for our psychological processes to come into play. This prompts us to redeÞne—in a precise and profound way—our perception of the world.

Pierre Restany : I am reminded of our post-industrial society's “revolution of the truth”, and the evolution of esthetic criteria in this age of post-modernism. Although the “canon of truth” now replaces the “canon of beauty” as the basis for esthetic values, it is certain that “truth” is not the “truth” that emerges from Cartesian logic. This complex process, this “cultural procedure of appearances” brings to the spectator this dimension of interactivity that makes the installation real and ensures it is perceived as such. Only if the spectator perceives this blue sky as being true will he fully participate in its conceptual and tangible substance, i.e. in the mental image of the void. It is therefore possible to suggest that the esthetic values of post-modern society, those of the post-modern condition, will be determined more and more by interactive machines whose purpose will be to detect this specific truth. To attain this sensation of truth—one that can be credible—the interactive machine will have to make it seem even more real: this supplement of reality is what will make it believable and what will allow us to evoke the mental image of the void.

Stéphan Barron : The sky itself is also an image of virtual reality.

Pierre Restany : At a distance, the sky is absent, it is virtual, it is the epitome of virtual reality, a virtual reality that was not conceived as such before, but which now in effect dominates the whole subject-object relationship in reality: we are in the midst of virtual reality, i.e. at the heart of the matter. What exactly is this interactive truth as criterion of esthetic taste? It is in effect the perception, the sensation of virtual reality upon which this truth is superimposed; the truth of virtual reality is put into doubt by the interactive process of taste and it is signiÞcant that through this entire process one arrives at a concept of truth that takes on the form and substance of virtual reality, i.e. the presence of its absence. It is its lack of material form and even more its reduction to fundamental appearance and at the same time the richness and depth of its mental image that make it tangible.

Stéphan Barron : In the end, virtual reality provokes self-awareness and harks back to our own truth.

Pierre Restany : Reality is in us, truth is in us, but we become conscious of them by way of another reality that is only appearance. However, this latter reality can be considered to be true when perceived by way of interactivity.

Stéphan Barron : We are concerned with an extremely simple form of virtual reality in this project, because the spectator is invited to mentally reconstitute a pure colour, i.e. the colour of the absent sky.

Pierre Restany : When you speak of colour and mental colour, you are referring to the reconstitution of a pure colour and you call for the spectator's mental participation. I think that the mental image of colour is experienced by way of a series of psychological circuits that extend from the interior to the exterior, or from the conscious to the unconscious. Once we participate in this type of ebb and flow, all symbology naturally becomes included: this particular symbology as you well know is of an extremely practical nature, like chemistry or alchemy, like pharmacy or botany. In the language of colour, each colour and each nuance is affected by specific symbolic properties. It is therefore symbology that goes from the spiritual to physical and it is very interesting that from the moment we are capable of evoking the mental image of colour, it is symbology that immediately appears as the first phase in the link between the “I” and the coloured sensation.

Stéphan Barron : The colour blue is tied to the concept of infinity because the sky is the epitome of the unfinished object. You have said that blue is the tangible mark of infinity in its intimate vastness.

Pierre Restany : The colour blue is intimate vastness. When you quote me and say that blue is the tangible mark of infinity in its intimate vastness, we consider it as a sort of global value and a therefore relatively spectacular one (i.e. the entire dialectic and interactive process involved in the mental perception of the colour, the interior and exterior dialectic). The more we enter into the mental image of colour, the more profound blue appears to be. Depth is born of nothing (a concept very dear to Bachelard). The problem of infinity is brought up by the fact that it is the sky that gives us this sensation to a greater degree than the sea. We perceive the blue of the sky as infinite and, insofar as we have perceived it as such, it is this vision of the infinite that begins looking back at us. It is at this moment that a sense of limitless vastness is felt and assimilated. The impregnation of the IKB blue is completed once we begin to fathom the breadth of infinity.

Stéphan Barron : Can blue still be as infinite? Since the conquest of space, we have witnessed an astonishing change. When we broke through Earth's atmosphere, we saw from the exterior that this blue planet is finite, that we are in a kind of blue space ship beyond which there is nothing. We have gone from an infinite and vertical blue to a finite and horizontal one.

Pierre Restany : It took the Soviet cosmonaut Gagarin in orbit around the Earth to see that it is blue. When he returned and revealed his findings, Yves Klein was so happy that he cried. The conquest of space might have become the legend of the century if unfortunately Armstrong in 1969 hadn't walked on the Moon to show us once and for all that the Moon is a dead asteroid, something we already knew but had to confirm anyway. From the moment Apollo gave us this proof, the myth of space adventure went up in smoke. Scientists had anticipated this type of backlash in our planetary sensibility: although there was no communication between them, Russian and American scientists unanimously decided to play down the role of the astronaut and cosmonaut and to avoid their becoming 20th-century conquistadors or a type of demigod. No, there was nothing heroic about them; we have always represented them as specialists of some kind whose role was to stay human, to remain as normal as possible in the special context of space. This refusal to deify the individual protagonists of the conquest of space was entirely planned and corresponds exactly to the phenomenon of cultural prescience.

Stéphan Barron : Surely it is the confirmation of our solitude and the limits of our space that is the great discovery in the exploration of space. It is the loss of an illusion, an optical illusion. And this non-discovery of space has established the foundations for global ecology.

Pierre Restany : This is the new reality of the global economy, of the post-modern condition and of post-industrial society. And it is at this moment that we may speak of post-industrial ecology. We live in a post-industrial society and contrary to what certain modernists would have us believe, post-industrial society has not evolved beyond the industrial stage. On the contrary, industrial production has come to dominate our lives to the extent that objects and the accumulation of objects has become the be-all and end-all of existence. Even our emotions themselves have become industrial phenomena. There is, therefore, a post-industrial ecological movement that refers to this saturation of post-industrial society, one where industry becomes so important that society cannot be conceived without it. As such, it offers extremely striking structural and organic analogies with what we call primitive societies, especially those of the Amazon rainforest. The Indian of the rainforest is incapable of conceiving it beyond industry. Not for nothing has the philosophy of the “primitive” people inspired a movement towards neo-primitivism in the plastic arts, in design, architecture and in theoretical and sociological research. The Indian who lives in a tribal society considers himself to be the most beautiful animal of creation and justly so: when he is born, the women inspect him from head to toe and kill him if he has any defects. Only the healthiest babies survive. These boys and girls then must go through a long process of initiation, an initiation whose goal is to place the Indian in the central position of cosmic harmony with Nature. The relationship between culture and nature for the tribal Indian of the Amazon is very close indeed. The culture of the Indian is his sense of nature, and in effect this is what allows him to live in constant harmony with his environment. He is a good hunter, a good fisherman, he knows how to use natural fibers and how to build the weapons and traps he needs for hunting and fishing. He knows the medicinal value of plants, knows that vines can hold fresh water, knows how to get honey from wild bees, and he knows the nutritional value of the forest's different plants. To grow manioc, he practices slash and burn agriculture with great care, destroying only a minimum of trees for planting. All this makes him the perfect element, the perfect catalyst, the perfect algebraic discriminant in the ecology of the forest. From the moment he is converted to modern Western ways, he is left in a sort of physical and moral decadence; what converted him is the idea that there is something beyond the forest. The Rio Negro Manifesto was the fruit of this immense affective shock that was for me the discovery of the Amazon. You, know, discovering the Amazon is really something, because the climate is hard; it is humid, hot and you have gusts of wind and rain that end up freezing you to the bone, strange as that may seem. The rain season is one of constant and barely endurable humidity, a debilitating phenomenon. Above all, there's the green of the forest and the insects of which there are all sorts; there are 50 varieties of fleas, mites, ticks, flies and mosquitos, the latter being the most civilized because they let you hear they are coming to bite you. The others are much more vicious. This is in addition to spiders, tarantulas and scorpions… the first few days of contact with the Amazon are hell. First, because you are literally devoured by insects—which you fight with So the first days of physical contact with the Amazon are hell. First because you are literally devoured by insects, and ointments are really useless: you have to be bitten many times before your body becomes immune. For a week you become a martyr. Despair sets in and you often wonder whether you should have come in the first place. After this test of endurance, once you've regained some strength, you become accustomed to any wounds, and then, slowly, your vision changes and that pervasive green saturation, everything that seemed more or less like routine or usual, acquires another meaning; the green hell becomes a green theater, which means that fish, snakes, birds, an elusive crocodile, the different shades of green in the trees, all of this eventually becomes an on-going spectacle, the permanent spectacle of life. So everything changes at that moment because you start to really communicate with nature. I realized that, with this extreme phenomenon, this remarkable nature, the reaction of an individual is exactly the same as that he may have with what I have defined as modern nature, i.e. industrial nature, urban nature, mediatic nature. In the end, this industrial and urban world filled with advertisement is homogeneous, symmetrically analogous to the homogeneity represented by the Amazonian forest. So the references and the links are obvious, particularly in regard to mankind and these two kinds of nature. I learned a great lesson when I understood that this approach was above all psychological and cosmic, and that an ecological and cosmogonic dimension does exist. It is between the cosmogonic vision and ecological reality that the osmosis phenomenon between mankind and nature takes place as well as the inclusion of men in the universal communion. So from that point on, I became very sensitive to any conceptual attempt that uses information collected by the humanities (sociology, anthropology, archeology and psychosociology) which try to define non-verbal, visual or perceptible interactive communication networks. This is why I was very interested in the exhibition "Primitivism in Twentieth-Century Art" organized by William Rubin when the MoMA in New-York reopened in 1985, and then more recently at the beginning of the nineties with "Les magiciens de la terre", organized at la Villette and Beaubourg by Jean Hubert-Martin. These exhibitions showed recent conceptual art works and tribal art works on an equal footing as expressions of living and immemorial memory. And why not? These experiments were of course very cultural, but they also looked at the question of political influences on culture, and they never really went to the bottom of things because the bottom of this kind of problem would have been to change all conceptual art into cultural anthropology. There were certainly market factors and some reticences that can be understood. But exhibitions like these act as witnesses and signals; through the cosmogony of ecology, they express growing awareness of structural and social problems that keep the legend of interactive languages alive. In the end, my dear Stephan, perhaps the awareness of this green planet manifesto that opens on to the vast perspective of the blue planet. Seen in this light, the greys and the greens become blue. I end our discussion on the sky's blue with this synthesis, this grey and green mixing in with the blue. We meet under the same blue sky that was Yves Klein's, Bachelard's . . . I think that we belong to a family that maintains a constant concern for its dreams, its insight and and its intuitions.

Published in the CD ROM Earth Art, Edition Rien de Spécial, Secqueville-en-Bessin, France, 2000

Also Published in the HDR from Stéphan BARRON