Talking Russian

Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в

I have recently been reading about Ilya Kabakov's theory of the 'Total Installation' and it has been very interesting and insightful in terms of the way I choose to go about the creation, set up and publication of my works. I wanted to do some background reading within the discipline of installation art, as it is an area I have never explored within my own work before.

"One is simultaneously both a 'victim' and a viewer, who on the one hand surveys and evaluates the installation, and on the other, follows those associations, recollections which arise in him; he is ovecome by the intense atmosphere of the total illusion."
The expectations and social habits that the viewer takes with him into the space of the installation that will remain with him as he enters, to be either applied or negated once he has taken in the new environment.

"With a total installation, there is no divide between the artist and the audience. In a way, you create a painting and you allow the viewer inside the painting, which has become three-dimensional instead of one-dimensional." [1]

Audiences are typically saturated by the stories that the Kabakovs tell through their monumental works. They become the characters in the art that is taking place all around them. For example, in The Toilet, above, (originally erected for Documenta IX in 1992) viewers stand at the corner of a house in which they hear intermittent singing coming out of a toilet. Niccolo Sprovieri, who has known the Kabakovs for two decades and showcased their work at his gallery in London 14 years ago, reflects on this powerful work: "You are by the toilet in the corner of a room. You hear the voice of someone, sometimes singing, sometimes laughing. The idea is that everyone has shared rooms in this house and there is only one room in which you can be alone, a place where you can express yourself without fear of being judged."