Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and the Persistence of the Diorama
The dioramas that Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster created in New York for the DIA Art Foundation present us with heterogeneous temporalities and places. These display boxes, which are about the size of a small theatre stage, are fascinating because they captivate the gaze and project the body into an intriguing space bathed in light. The models for these works are the dioramas installed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. They are also a simplified form of the dioramas exhibited in Paris in the architectural complex Daguerre first devised in 1822.1 Many of the Parisian diorama’s technical and formal characteristics remain in the display boxes of the chronotopes & dioramas installation. What is on view in these spaces? Worlds, landscapes, environments in various climates, objects—especially books, because Gonzalez-Foerster created the dioramas in response to a question: “how will books survive or disappear.”2 Disseminated in these spaces, the books are like “beings affected” by “the climate or environment, like all other species.”3 They are living bodies that through their very existence form links with one another.
Gonzalez-Foerster’s viewing devices are also accompanied by a “textorama,” a sort of “literary map” that is displayed on a large wall. This map includes quotes from books that reflect the artist’s literary travels. In the installation context, this approach seeks to incorporate Mikhaïl Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope and “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature.”4 Chronotopes & dioramas is effectively the
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