What does it mean to be a visitor? Can you visit your own home?
Earlier, I filmed myself pretending to be a guest leaving my own house to fill a video narrative. After, I rode the N over to the SFMOMA for the closing weekend of the installation of The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson. Everyone who I shared the elevator with was headed to the same place. When I got there, the dark room, filled with 9 looming screens, each focused on a single musician was filled with people, and the sounds of the instruments wove between the bodies and spilled out into the hallway.
Many writers much better than I have written eloquently about the impact of The Visitors, so while I may not be able to add much more, it’s a piece that compels you to try.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to experience it, you can watch this video for a taste, or if you’re in SF, go see it tomorrow (Sunday) for the last day it’s up. The main things to know are that it’s a single take over 9 different cameras where a group of musicians play a song together with less than 3 lines of lyrics. In one, there’s a naked man laying in a bathtub playing a guitar. Another shows a woman playing a cello at the top of a grand staircase. It sounds silly and perhaps boring, but it’s incredible how much variation and depth of detail emerge from this premise over the course of the 1+ hour runtime.
It doesn’t feel like an accident that to view the full experience, you must roam around the room from screen to screen, and to do so, you must move through the other visitors, meeting their eyes as you search for the eyes of the performers. You can’t help but see their faces illuminated in the soft bluish-white glow of the screens. And at some point, the boundary between audience and performer blurs. The song is so simple that it invites you to join in the chorus, humming or singing softly to yourself. Being shot in a single take without edits, everyday sounds come through with the music: the occasional dropped object, sharp breath, and participant chatter. In this mix, I find myself confusing the sounds of the audience with those of the performance, too.
a still from one of the screens during the installation
Like the best films let their actors shine, this piece lets its performers shine. A simple rhythm with simple lyrics, the piece sets a stage for the chorus of different instruments to improvise, dance, and play with those constraints. At times, the musicians are playing as quietly and delicately as they can, whispering the chorus hauntingly, and as soon as you’ve adjusted, they crescendo into a deafening instrumental symphony.
I don’t have a good musical ear, but I find myself trying to pick apart the different instruments in the sounds. It’s helped by the fact that each screen gets its own speaker, so I can wander closer to get a better gauge.
At some point as I’m wandering, I’m surprised by a sudden impulse to cry. I quickly glance away from the eyes of a stranger across the room to hide my sudden emotion.
On the 2nd watch through, I sit in the corner facing the crowd and watch people more than the screens. I see a woman smiling with that rare mix of awe and joy, an older couple hugging each other tightly, a kid jumping on his mom who is laying on the ground listening to the music. I see serious expressions entranced by the music and watch them diffuse into unexpected laughter at some of the more absurd points (Ragnar, the naked bathtub man at one point takes off his towel to wipe up some spilled champagne and puts it back on in one swift motion).
By the end, the song has burrowed its way into your heart. I’m not surprised to catch parts of the melody whistled in the bathroom and at the cafe.
I think what makes the piece so successful is how it plays with paradoxes.
There’s a naked man in a bathtub and an ancient mansion. There’s a striking performance and cigar breaks. Everyone is separated on different screens, yet creating something beautiful together.
In an article in the New Yorker in 2014, Peter Schjeldahl writes:
The Visitors” was entrancingly beautiful and intensely moving. Numerous viewers wept. Why? The reason is politically visionary, in a way: “Alone, together,” Kjartansson says. The work affirms individuality and community at once. It would be awfully nice if life were like that—as it can be, for an occasional spell, under the aegis of art.
As the audience, we mirror the paradoxes as we watch: crying, laughing, contemplating, relaxing. We stare at separate screens while sharing the same space, and in the end, we huddle together to watch the conclusion.
During the end, as they all migrate from their individual screens to congregate in one to celebrate and walk off into the horizon, a little kid (in the audience) yells “bye!!” Some of the adults laugh and join in.
Joy and helplessness. Irreverence and transcendence. Alone, together.
Bye-bye Visitors. I’m looking forward to the next time we meet.
Updates
I’ve been working on some exciting new features for playhtml recently and exploring what it would look like to create a game that plays out on the existing internet. I’m looking for some early beta testers for this! reply/message me if you’re interested :)
After almost a year of procrastinating on releasing a new product for internetsculptures.com because of all the logistical hurdles. I have finally pushed myself to releasing a small initial drop of the Phone Pillow. I’ll be sending an insider newsletter to subscribers there soon about the progress :)
I’m trying out a short-form content series called “Will it internet?” (shout out to Elan for the name and brainstorming!). I just released Episode 1 and would love to hear any thoughts or ideas for what I should try next :)
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