Medrano says she doesn’t know what kind of chemical she splashed on her face, nor was she warned about the product or its potential danger — and such perilous oversights are all too common in the industry. Injuries related to chemical exposures such as Medrano’s range from skin irritation and burns to allergic reactions in the lungs or on the skin. Other hazards include lacerations from material such as broken glass left in trash cans, lung problems from removing mold, and nasty falls on slippery floors. “If the elevator is broken, I have to drag heavy bags to the basement using the stairs,” says a Salvadoran janitor who cleans dot-com offices.
– Michele Holcenberg, “Janitors and Custodians,”
http://www.buildingbetterhealth.com/topic/janitors

“If you become aware of an unusual and suspicious release of an unknown substance nearby, it doesn’t hurt to protect yourself. Quickly get away.”
-the US Dept. of Homeland Security’s http://www.ready.gov

A couple of years ago, I attended a presentation by an artist who had worked with the web-based group RTMark), among other politically-motivated arts groups, that was about political art after September 11. During the question and answer session, another attendee expressed her dislike for the work of RTMark and questioned the political commitment of such work in general. The problem was the seeming lack of risk for the artists, which was translated as a lack of genuine commitment. In other words, if the artists really meant what they said, they would be on the front lines of demonstrations risking injury, fines and jail. Or at least they’d be politicians. I left wondering what it means to consider art, or even political action, in terms of heroic risk taking.

This anecdote has stuck with me, and I often come across other situations and debates where similar terms arise. On a recent trip to Germany, I was fortunate enough to catch At Your Own Risk, an exhibition at the Shirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, and further consider the concept of risk. Curated by Markus Heinzelmann and Martina Weinhart, works were included by Christoph Buchel, Critical Art Ensemble (with Beatriz da Costa and Shyh-shiun Shyu), Camilla Dahl, gelatin, Jeppe Hein, Carsten Holler, Ann Veronica Janssens, Sven Pahlsson, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Julia Scher and Ann Maria Tavares. The particular relationship to risk varied from work to work, as was the aesthetic and conceptual strategies used by each artist.

One possible way of reading conceptual differences among the works is in how each creates a different sense of time for the viewer. Simply put, there seem to be differences in how each work positions the relationship between risk and the exhibition’s visitors. Some work, for example, creates the experience of an aftermath, a risk in the past tense. This is more significant than a simple difference in narrative approach however. How we are positioned/position ourselves in relation to our understanding of risk says a lot about how we perceive our ability to enact change in our own lives. Or as Neils Werber discusses in the catalogue, whether we are taking risks (making decisions about our own future) or experiencing danger (living with the choices of others).

The environmental/architectural installation by Christph Buchel creates such an experience of a past, a past where the outcome of taking a risk is now known. Upon entering Buchel’s work, one finds herself within a decomposing, yet not completely destroyed, apartment. A radio and electric lights still function amid the vacant rooms that include a collapsed kitchen filling with dirt and a completely flooded, and eerily still, bathroom. As a visitor, walking through with other visitors, the feeling is voyeuristic, as if you are part of a scientific team exploring an urban ecosystem post catastrophe. It’s this feeling of being an observer that provided me with the feeling of temporal distance, along with the nostalgia provided by my experiences with dated, post-apocalyptic films like Mad Max and The Omega Man. Relating to present trauma through the past is one way of making sense of new experiences, as well as a way of using traumatic experience in order to harness emotional power, for good or bad.

Many of the works dealt with an abstract sense of the present, offering the chance to make theatrical choices within the confines of the work. Camilla Dahl’s Champaign Bar dares viewers to suck champaign from rubber nipples (on their knees, of course) as it’s poured over a seductive, faux-porcelain appliance. If you like taking blank pills for fun, Carsten Huller’s Placebo Tablet Tank, a lotto-like machine that spits placebo pills out of a large aquarium, may help you out. Stepping into Ann Veronica Janssens’s fog filled room (if you don’t have asthma), it takes about five seconds before you have no idea how you got in, as you wander through a mist that changes colors from one spot to the next.

Only a couple of the works in the show dealt specifically with technological risks/dangers, and while not completely focused on an uncertain future, there certainly is a sense of looking at risks that are not, nor can be, completely decided upon in the moment. As Paul Virilio’s Unknown Quantity suggests there is the feeling (largely supported by contemporary experience) of dangers/risks increasing exponentially as the complexity and interconnectivity of technology expands.

Julia Scher’s Embedded uses closed circuit surveillance video within a seductive sculptural installation of beds to relate an ongoing story that makes each visitor a new character (Goldilocks perhaps). The story involves a simultaneous past, present and future, as visitors will see video images of those that preceded them, making them aware of a delay in the broadcast, while also aware that some unknown future visitors will be looking at images of them. While video surveillance is already ubiquitous in contemporary public life, and anyone familiar with the Web has probably seen private web cams of some sort, the future direction of surveillance technology and our understanding of “public” are not necessarily certain. Scher provides an opportunity to question both the social and personal aspects of voyeurism and control, and points to some of the epistemological problems with the public/private dichotomy in the first place.

Biotechnology has become an increasingly contentious, global topic, affecting philosophical, economic and religious ideologies. With growing evidence of the mobility of genetically modified (GM) material (GM “polluted” crops like soy, corn and canola), there is also growing resistance to the acceptance of this unregulated genetic drift. Legal cases like Monsanto vs. Percy Schmeiser, the battle for labeling standards, the Mexican governments attempts to preserve the integrity of its corn stock, and now the EU’s effort to ban the importation of GM foods from the US are some of the manifestations of this resistance. Critical Art Ensemble (with Beatriz da Costa and Shyh-shiun Shyu) project, Free Range Grain, takes the methods of risk analysis to the audience, giving EU citizens an opportunity to see if such a ban is proving successful in keeping GMOs out of the food supply. For the exhibit, a portable lab was set up in the Schirn where visitors could bring in food products and test them for evidence of GM material, demystifying both the subject of GMOs and the science behind genetic research.

In the exhibition catalogue, Neils Werber makes the argument that the dichotomy of risk/danger is unavoidable, that “no round table discussion, however broadly representative its participants, changes anything about the fact that, time and again, decisions involving high risks and lasting consequences are imposed on others as dangers.” The attempt to democratize decisions then, merely “shifts their focus.” It is this concept that I’d like to consider in conclusion and take us back to the opening quotations that I’ve yet to mention.

One of the curatorial strategies employed in making a cohesive, graphic statement with the exhibition was the approach to labeling. Instead of the standard wall tags, information was printed on those bright yellow floor signs often used to warn of slippery floors (the catalogues also had bright yellow covers with singular, black symbols familiar as hazard warnings, like those for fire or electric shock). Usually, the institutional/curatorial hand is less visible and therefore more difficult to consciously consider, so this instance of institutional visualization provides plenty for contemplation.

If as Werber suggests, risk (agency) comes at the expense of danger (passivity), where does the transfer of control occur here? We are told that we, as viewers transformed into participants, are taking risks; that the artists are taking risks by making participatory work; that the curators are taking risks by organizing such a show; and finally that the institution is taking risks by hosting the exhibit. I certainly do not mean to minimize these risks or the significance of the acts involved, rather quite the opposite. But, if these are risks, taken knowingly and with active involvement, where is the site of danger? Well, this is a complex question, for sure, but one worth considering.

It’s possible that the signage, as insignificant as it may seem, reveals something of a subconscious here, almost like an institutional Freudian slip. The little yellow sandwich boards, warning of a just mopped floor, are institutional indicators themselves. They are standardized, isotype bearing markers of a seemingly benevolent power looking out for our wellbeing, saying, “Be careful! Don’t slip.” We see them in malls, shops, schools, hospitals, and museums: those public spaces where you may visit, work, or just pass through. So we slow down and move more carefully, aware of the risk if we don’t. But behind this institutional display of paternal caring are those like Medrano and the Salvadoran worker quoted above. Institutional risk creates personal danger for those in service or considered expendable, whether it’s one’s health or retirement savings. Of course, I don’t mean to simplify the issue to one of worker safety: institutions depend on many forms of power transference in order to sustain the illusion of control and the appearance of benevolence, whether local or global in scope. And while the problem of inequality in the risk/danger dichotomy may remain problematic, shifting the focus might not be such a bad idea. Maybe it’s who’s doing the shifting that matters.

At Your Own Risk June 27- September 7, 2003 at the Shirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
Catalogue published by Revolver, Frankfurt am Main, 2003

image: installation view, Critical Art Ensemble, Beatriz da Costa and Shyh-shiun Shyu “Free Range Grain,” with fog from Ann Veronica Janssens’s “Schirn.”
photo by Ryan Griffis