"Negative seeing"

Robert Smithson, earth art, and the eco-phenomenology of "mirror displacements"

Ming-Qian Ma

pp. 321-338

in: William S. Smith, Jadwiga Smith, Daniela Verducci (eds), Eco-Phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

Mounted randomly in various geo-ecological loci in Yucatan, Mexico, Robert Smithson's earth art of the "Mirror Displacements" stages an eco-phenomenology characterized by "a wilderness of unassimilated seeing." His leitmotif of an "anti-vision" or "negative seeing," which paradoxically enables the world to appear counter-intuitively through the mirror displacements, presents itself as an artistic rendition of Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenon of givenness. Theorized as the third phenomenological reduction contra that of Husserl and Heidegger, Marion's phenomenology of givenness postulates a phenomenon saturated with intuition, which appears absolutely and unconditionally, beyond the limits set by the horizon and the transcendental I. In both Smithson's eco-phenomenology of the "Mirror Displacements" and Marion's phenomenology of givenness, the appearance of this saturated phenomenon is, as Marion epitomizes it, "invisible according to quantity, unbearable according to quality, absolute according to relation, irregardable according to modality."

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Heidegger Martin

Marion Jean-Luc

Smithson Robert