Installation Art and the Elaboration of Psychological Concepts: A Definition of the Term ‘Excursive’

Abstract

This paper focuses on installation art and its potential to employ and elaborate psychological concepts. As Claire Bishop argues, installation art has a psychologically absorptive character because it activates and immerses the viewing subject. To analyze this immersive experience, she refers to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the premise that subject and object are intertwined and reciprocally interdependent. In this paper I refer to these registers of artistic perception in order to explore the concept of ‘excursive object’, which was introduced by the contemporary artist and theorist Peter Tzanev in a site-specific installation (Credo Bonum Gallery, Sofia, 2018). It refers to both Elizabeth Helsinger’s term ‘excursive sight’ and to Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘discursive object’. Whereas the latter is a discursive textual formation, which consists of apparent internal relations inside a statement, the excursive object of art emerges as a less perceivable configuration of elements. It does not result in a clear perceptual experience and reflects the unstable phenomenological interdependence of subject and object. Thus, Tzanev’s novel excursive objects depart from the usual modes of perception. His concept reveals the viewer’s particular experience of unstable configurations of elements in installation art. Furthermore, it could be explored as a resourceful term to describe perceptive situations in the psychology of contemporary art.