RADAR 11 - H ²0
Publication Date: June, 2004
Interview with Allyn Massey - May 6, 2004

Byrne:

When you're putting together an exhibit (an installation), first you look at the whole space you're working with and how objects will appear to the viewer. It's as if you look at different elements of that space and rather than taking an object and putting it in that space, you're defining the object by where you put it....

Massey:

I do think that placement has a tremendous potential for metaphor...just as with the monitors of the woman's cleavage being up high. [There were 6 identical TV monitors displaying a woman taking a breath in and out, again and again in Wallpaper at School 33 in 2000], and the speaker suspended over the diving board playing Caruso [in Lullaby Villa Julie College, 1997] those were bookend pieces: my parents on some level...It's very important to know how we perceive things and if we become childlike in response to the scale of something and if we are comforted by the scale of something, actually...

Byrne:

I am used to being presented with a perspective rather than being in the perspective and able to have different experiences of the piece....

Massey:

There's a philosophy in Japanese gardening, that you position many elements-objects in the garden, flowers, a low bush, a rock garden, etc.-in such a way that the person who physically moves through the space is asked to bend over and look at something and to basically, physically move, so that it's this kinesthetic experience...I'm very interested in how we as humans move through space.

I'm also very interested in how afraid people are to experience the unknown. So, you can either make someone feel trapped and want to get out...or leave the exhibit as an open gestalt where they can choose to experience by choice [or] to not experience it ... so that they're able to engage with it at whatever level they are comfortable with..[I am trying to establish] that flow of how do you move in and out of a piece; how comfortable are you when you're there; and what sort of space is there....My way of handling this is to walk through the space again and again, trying to see what it is I want to see, trying to feel what it is I want to feel [by experiencing the piece].

Byrne:

In a statement you posted at one of your exhibits, you said, "No one knows more than you do/ It is what you think it is/ I believe you will sense something real/ Seeing takes believing in your own realness and seeing takes time..." When you're thinking about a piece, what is it that you hope the audience would experience as they walk into the room?

Massey:

I had curated a show that I had entitled Jump , and there is a space between what your eye is seeing and what your body may be feeling, orwhat your intellect is processing. That was the jump: the space between when your intellect may be chugging away and deciphering it [the art] as compared to how you're physically experiencing. I am really interested in fear and how a lot of times when people don't know what it is intellectually, they don't allow themselves to physically experience it...and that experience of giving yourself time...seeing takes time...and believing in yourself enough to stay, and let it sink in. I was more curious to know what they were seeing when they were seeing and understanding what they were looking at....That's also what I'm trying to do with installation work. I'm trying to welcome somebody into a space and have it be a scary situation and a comforting situation in that they begin to become aware of how they are going through the world.

Moria Burn