JAMES KAUM

When James Kaum first shared his concept for a proposed fourth-plinth installation in Trafalgar Square, London, it was as a universal horror many artists had been circling in our recent past had been shocked to life. The work, a large-scale fiber-optic sculpture, a moving, shimmering, glowing, pointing work personified both possibility and precarity: every strand potential, every pinpoint a sight. In and through the work, Kaum challenges each of us to call into question our understandings of freedom, and at what price we’re willing for it to be sacrificed. Kaum’s approach meshes the beautiful and the baleful, combining each to force a choice between revelation and unease. If lyrics were brought to life, Kaum’s work would be the manifestation of “red light on the forehead of the informant” to borrow a lyric from Little Simz.

Generally, we don’t see the possibility of impending threat as universal. Yes, the surveillance state should cause this, but Kaum illuminates a unique duality. The power of surveillance derives from its potential – the classic “I have a feeling I’m being watched” – but its actual insidiousness doesn’t lie in potential, it lies in persistence. It is not a matter of when, but of how often. Not where, but how widely. And the proposed location for the work couldn’t be more apt, nor more ironic. Lord Horatio Nelson, who led the British Navy to victory in the square’s namesake battle, died after being shot by a sniper. Literally by an enemy he could not see, from a location he could not identify, at a moment he could not anticipate. To insert a work about surveillance on this site is to invite a persistent reckoning with history, as well as to compel an acknowledgement of its contemporaneity. Yes, a celebrated British victory, but also the foreshadowing of the true cost of being watched.

Add in Kaum’s singular use of red, and one encounters color in its multiplicity. Red as blood, as rage, as light, as warning, as sign, as indicator. Each possesses a single characteristic, being red, but each also serves slightly different purposes. Red light on a camera, or red-light camera. Red as a celebration, or as a warning. Here, each use tends toward its more sinister implication, and apart from the potential sailor’s delight, red is usually far more foreboding.

Add in the work’s shape – a 3D parabola, or a paraboloid – and you find another, equally sly, reference to surveillance. The Very Large Array, a series of 27 parabolic antennas, is primarily used for astronomy, but can also track satellites. It is as if Kaum splits surveillance into the micro, or individual, and the macro, global and universal. The other familiar use of the parabola? The microphone. The quintessential device required for all types of surveillance.

The true measure of sophistication in Kaum’s Trafalgar Square project is his capacity to address issues in such multifaceted ways. The object is both a sculpture and a referent, the lights, both an illumination and a metaphor. Perhaps a much more modest version would be an everyday object, but at this scale Kaum transforms the familiar convey a power beyond the functional. Yes, let there be light – but with the caveat that one must always be aware of its source, and its potential.

Text: Brett Levine