Post 17: Ground and background

I am thinking about these two terms, ground and background, and the varying ways they function for objects. Actually, mostly for artwork. Artworks can be hung on the wall (background) or placed on the floor (ground) (and surely arranged in many other ways as well, but I’m just thinking about these two). Generally, “hanging on the wall” seems to imply suspension, a certain form of potential energy, an abstinence from gravity, whereas “sitting on the floor” implies a there-ness, a final destination-ness, an in-the-way-ness, possibly a greater inertness. These qualities seem to rest largely within the respective words “hung” and “sitting.” Is the action an object must carry out to reside in a certain place what determines the qualities of its state of being more than the fact of it being in that particular location? Or, is its action one in the same with the location itself? What happens when you distinguish between the action required to be in a location and the actual location? (...) One determining factor of the feeling of a wall or floor object surely comes out of the fact that we (people) are also things on the ground. This strangely creates a way that we can compare ourselves to ground items that we can't do with wall objects. Which in turn sets up a different relationship between us and an object on a wall in our lack of a shared place of existence.

Though, when I was only making visual work that went on a wall, I feel like I thought of the wall as a ground. Rather than being something the work was placed on when it was done, it was the starting point that the work got built up from. It always seemed necessary and sensible to have some sort of ground, and seemed illogical to start building things, even building them conceptually, “in the air”--without consideration of the surface they would inevitably have to lean on. What does it mean for art objects in that they always have to be attached to some surface? What does it mean for the things I build specifically in that the surface I rely on is always the ground? Why use other surfaces as grounds when the literal ground can be used?

One thing I can say is that having a distinct front and back is very important to my works, and grounds and backgrounds are useful tools for setting up the orientation of an object, and how it is perceived. A background lets you know where the front of something is and the ground lets you know where the top is. (An additionally useful thing about this reasoning is that it can be subverted to produce the reverse effect--a true back facing out from the wall will appear as a “front” and a true bottom facing up from the ground will look like a "top.")

A background actually feels like a two-dimensional form of ground. Ground on its side. Ground that displays. It creates a more concentrated way to look at things, and I like that it allows for an object to both exist on a ground and have a clear front.

Other elements to think about:

-Background as behind and ground as below

-Ground always containing horizontality and background always containing verticality

-What different temporarinesses or permanences do grounds and backgrounds have?

-In what ways am I equating a wall with a background?