Mona Hatoum: 'Current Disturbance'
In: A Quality of Light: a collaborative visual arts event. Penzance: St. Ives International, 1997, pp. 21-23
Mona Hatoum's Current Disturbance has developed from a work made recently for the Capp Street Project in San Francisco. In its new form it responds to the size and nature of the upper space at Newlyn Art Gallery. Disrupting the traditional associations of 'A Quality of Light', it presides over a volatile space and demands an active response from the viewer.
Current Disturbance is entirely self-contained and is remarkably simple in its elements: a wood and wire mesh structure of cages, light bulbs, and some electrical wire. In a completely darkened space, the walls of cages create a four-side transparent cube. Within each of the 240 cages is a single light bulb individually wired to a central junction box. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling illuminating the junction box at the centre of this transparent room with an unruly web of wires sprawling across the floor and up to each individual cage. In what appears to be a random fashion, the light bulbs fade on and off; starting with just the glow of the filament, they sometimes become very bright before shutting off and sometimes hold a level of intensity. The sound of the current flowing into the light bulbs is amplified, so that the 60-cycle hum intensifies and drops off as the current surges and recedes in the different wires. An image that comes to mind is one of a malfunctioning nerve-centre where some of the synapses are misfiring. Literally, Hatoum has disturbed the current and it is that disturbance that generates light and sound.
Current Disturbance relates to a larger body of Hatoum's work - including The Light at the End (1989), Le Socle du monde (1993), Light Sentence (1992) and Short Space (1992) - that is concerned with perceptually and psychologically destabilizing space. It embodies a tension that comes, in part, from contrasting elements that are hovering around an equilibrium. The strict regimentation of the physical structure seems at odds with the erratic activity it contains. The individual cages hold the bulbs like so many cells or compartments meant to order and discipline the recalcitrant occupants. As a group, however, they form a perimeter. They protect the delicate mass of wires inside almost like a membrane that refuses penetration yet shows moments of weakness. The light that burns steadily in the centre grounds the entire structure. When the perimeter is active the interior is almost impossible to see. When the exterior bulbs go dark the central bulb illuminates the interior like a sentry keeping watch. The structure is transparent, yet impenetrable. We are caught in its presence, yet we cannot enter it. One has the sense that the energy is building up - that the piece may self-destruct, providing a sense of resolution. But it doesn't. In a manner familiar from other works by Hatoum, the installation sets up a coexistence of opposites - presence and absence, light and dark, motion and stillness. It exists in a state of fluctuating and perpetual resistance.
[MC, ed. DC]