ennoia

2002

sculpture: cast concrete vessel, water, 42 x 42 x 38 inches

performance: the artist lies down curled up inside the sculpture, which is filled with water, she is moving slowly inside its walls emerging from time to time to take a breath, duration 6 hours

series of self-shot photography based on performance, dimensions variable, limited edition, 3 + 2AP

collection: private collections in New York and St. Louis

Credits

created, choreographed, designed and performed by Monika Weiss

production support: Diapason Gallery Sound and Intermedia, New York

Ennoia premiered as a performative sculpture with live sound and video projection at Diapason Gallery in New York [2002], where it was performed in collaboration with Stephen Vitiello, and curated by Michael J. Schumacher as part of a series of curatorial projects Modes of Listening

Artist Statement

From Greek “concept” and “thought in mind”, Ennoia was inspired by my reading of Gnostic texts. It is the edge of light that collapsed into this world, into flesh.

Curled-up inside the vessel’s interior shape I lie almost motionless. The vessel is shaped like an octagonal chalice, reminiscent of a medieval baptismal font and filled with water. During the several-hour performance, I move slowly along the inner walls of the vessel. From time to time I emerge from and submerge into the water. Sounds of the immersion are picked up by underwater microphones installed in the basin. I repeat the performance on several different days during the time of the installation.

Suspended perpendicularly to the basin from the ceiling a video camera films my figure immersed in water. This “bird’s eye” view is projected onto the wall just beyond the basin, translating the view from above to a flat, painterly representation. A reflection of that projection can be noticed on the surface of water. At times I look directly at the camera’s lens, and the viewer may see my gaze in the projected image. The image itself is composed of live and pre-recorded forage, creating a visual tension between the presence of my body and the virtual depiction of an earlier act of immersion. As I remain in the water-filled vessel, the uninterrupted video projection (the image of my immersed body) appears more real than my live body.

Through the long-term immersion –the symbolic transgressing of the boundaries of body – Ennoia creates a site of undefined ritual, in which the viewer can symbolically immerse herself or himself. At the same time the boundaries between the action/sculpture and the viewer are impenetrable. The relationship of body and vessel, which contains both body and water, seems hermetic. I remain silent, almost absent despite enormous focus. My body is naked, anonymous, in a semi-permanent state of duration, deprived of attributes, as if generic. It is a body of an adult woman yet curled up in a position calling to mind the non-gendered vulnerability of a child.

In 1996 I encountered an octagonal medieval baptismal font in a Polish church in Wrocław, which inspired a series of sculptures, installations, and performances. Koiman (1998) included a sculpture made from cast-concrete, overflowing continuously with eighty gallons of recycled, used motor oil, creating a river of oil on the floor that reflected a video projection on its surface. In 2001 I began a series of performative installations that included a similarly sculpted vessel with water and my own body.

- Monika Weiss, New York, 2002

Essay Excerpts

The very matter of being there seems to be a formative constituent part of Weiss's artistic practice: the here and now of the subject, the momentum of appearance, the long-lost Benjaminian aura through its contemplative aspect and the immediacy of its impact on the viewer. This understanding of the spatial features of artistic practice seems to be internalised by Monika Weiss in a very conscious way. It accustoms the feminist awareness of the spatial conditions of artistic production but its core rests in both the conceptual gesture and the existential understanding of corporeality. [to read full text click here]

- Aneta Szyłak, Your trap shall be your shelter: The hidden desires and public appearances of Monika Weiss in Monika Weiss: Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York and Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montréal, 2007

Consider the remarkable installation, Ennoia that was enacted at the Diapason Gallery in New York in 2002. The word Ennoia derives from the Greek (in the writings of Plato) and means "concept" and "a thought in mind." Weiss, who was inspired by Gnostic texts, said "I think of Ennoia as an edge of light, of consciousness, which collapsed into this world, into body, into darkness."

The artist seemed to meld her own body to the contours of the water-filled sculpted basin in which it was submersed as though it were a secondary skin; a shell-like armature for her vulnerable body, providing protection. Like an embryo in vitro, the font was interpretable as exoskeleton containing a nourishing vat of amniotic fluid, replete with the waters of her life. Throughout the six-hour duration of the installation, the artist immersed herself in the water and periodically emerged from it. The basin resembled an octagonal medieval baptismal font. The image of her body curled up fetus-like within it was then projected on the proximate wall.

The "performance" - as in all such works by Weiss - is really more enactment than performance per se. There is no artifice whatsoever in the enactment. Weiss is not a "performance artist" in the traditional sense. First of all, her body embodies the syncope, and that body inhabits intervals that are her own as she dramatically represents the self in action and gesture but most importantly, she simply is. She achieves rapturous syncope in this movement of removal, within disappearance, and voluntarily in absentia. [to read full text click here]

- James D. Campbell, Drawing on Syncope: The Performativity of Rapture in the Art of Monika Weiss in Monika Weiss: Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, and Galerie Samuel Lallouz, Montréal, 2007

Exhibitions

Ennoia, Diapason Gallery Sound and Intermedia, New York, 2002, curated by Michael J. Schumacher

Monika Weiss - Vessels, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, 2004, curated by Nina Colosi

Monika Weiss - Intervals, Remy Toledo Gallery, New York, two-person exhibition with Carolee Schneemann - Infinity Kisses, 2004l, curated by Asher Remy Toledo

Monika Weiss - Five Rivers, Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York, 2005-2006, curated by Susan Hoeltzel

You Won’t Feel a Thing: On panic, obsession, rituality and anesthesia, Instytut Sztuki WYSPA, Gdańsk and Kunsthaus Dresden, 2006, curated by Aneta Szyłak