Lecture by Kate Mondloch

Installing Timne Gallery-based media installations propose an exploratory duration-an open-ended time in which viewers can come and go as they please. This lecture will consider the various modes of temporality in influential pieces by Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Consolation Service, 1999), Doug Aitken (electric earth, 1999), Douglas Gordon (24 Hour Psycho, 1993), and Bruce Nauman [Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage), 2001], the temporal structures of which have informed much current critical writing on gallery-based media art. This lecture will investigate the conditions that grant viewers the apparent right to determine how long they will observe screen-reliant art installations and assesses the critical import of the observer's shifting power. It concludes that viewer-determined duration is central to the complexity of media installation both in terms of its critical leverage and its ideological complexity. Kate Mondloch (Ph.D., UCLA) is currently Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at the University of Oregon where she is completing a book on the topic of screen spectatorship and contemporary art. Her most recent article, "Be Here (and There) Now: The Spatial Dynamics of Screen-Reliant Installation Art," appeared in the fall 2007 issue of Art Journal.