Social Pool

Due to its location in a remote and scarcely populated region—visitors are advised that several hours of driving from Los Angeles, plus a willingness “to walk a long distance to reach the pool from the nearest road,” are required to reach the destination—one automatically thinks of Land Art installations in the American West, like Walter de Maria’s The Lightning Field in New Mexico, Robert Smithson’s famed Spiral Jetty, or Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels in Utah. Conceived in the 1970s by artists in and around New York, already then the epicenter of the contemporary art scene, these works were a critical response to and refusal to go along with both the increasing commodification and institutionalization of art and the rampant destruction of the ecological environment. While Barsuglia’s work shares a palpable and explicit idealism as such—he suggests that the drive and walk to the pool should provide “time to reflect on social values, dreams, and reality”—it masterfully avoids lapsing into nostalgia. On the contrary, Social Pool engages the fundamental social and economic changes of the last forty years. Barsuglia’s work is the product of an economic system in which the commodification of the private sphere is not some dystopian vision but has long become part of everyday life. In this scenario, art and its mediation are increasingly oriented on the service industries and are to be entertaining instead of educative in the spirit of humanism. One prime example of this development is the revival of live performance and contemporary dance in the museum, which to the greatest possible extent involves their transformation into a saleable commodity and a tool of the entertainment industry.

The title of Barsuglia’s work consciously plays with the possibility that Social Pool may well turn out to be a kind of aesthetically enhanced yoga lesson, or a weekend excursion, and thus has nothing to do with enlightened thought and productive perplexity when encountering a baffling object; rather, it seems to be geared to serving a single purpose, relaxation: offering escapism instead of criticism, distraction instead of transgression. Social Pool takes its orientation from contemporary consumer society and is set out as if it was embodying its promises: an experience that will change you; relaxation, inner calm, and contentment in seclusion. And of course, one stays on line, otherwise the work simply cannot be found.

As a sculpture, Social Pool functions literally like a pool for bathing; one dips into its water to relax and unwind. Ingeniously, Barsuglia combines the various meanings attached to concepts like art, pool (the symbol for carefree prosperity par excellence, in particular in the desert), relaxation, and nature. In this combination Social Pool becomes a highly complex replication of the ideological contradictions of a society that has elevated seclusion and tranquility into luxury items for stressed city dwellers permanently active in communication networks. This desire for retreating into seclusion and personal pleasure is reflected in the pool’s design and utilization: along with disclosing the secret GPS coordinates, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in West Hollywood hands out to visitors the key needed to open the pool cover. The cover is needed to prevent the water from evaporating and once opened can be used as a ground cover to sunbathe on—a quite amazing engineering and design innovation. Moreover, the installation has an automatic filter and chlorine system, powered by a solar cell on the cover. The pool is divided into two halves: one is rectangular and filled with water, the other square and dry (it serves as the changing area). There is just enough space for one to two persons in the water. Sitting on the bench installed in the pool, a high partition prevents the view into the adjacent section. Overdetermining the ideology behind the installation, Barsuglia stipulated that only individuals or small groups were permitted to use the work and the key had to be returned within 24 hours.

With its grotesque, self-conscious slickness and unspoken defiance against the surrounding nature, Social Pool combines elements of the ridiculous and the sublime. That the work is only reachable by taking on a strenuous and difficult journey underscores the absurdity of the whole undertaking. This toil is comparable to the search for the ultimate retreat: no internet search is too time consuming, no plane flight, train trip, bus journey, or voyage across the seas is too much trouble if at the end we can finally get away from it all and celebrate a rendezvous with our true self for a week or two. For Barsuglia, such a withdrawal from society is no solution. One should take him by his word when he reframes the long and difficult journey, impossible without GPS coordinates, into a time for reflecting on our consumer-oriented lifestyle that feeds on our insatiable lust for entertainment. The opportunity for retreat Barsuglia offers is briefly amusing, indulges our ego, follows the pleasure principle, and is anything but egalitarian. In short: its source is life in late capitalism and the you’ve-earned-it attitude of our consumer society. Barsuglia leaves it entirely up to the visitor what they do with his proposition. Whether the prestigious job and apartment in a top-quality location really justify such a libidinal investment in the status quo is a decision each one of us has to make for ourselves. Barsuglia gives advice, not orders.

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Perhaps an excursion out to the Social Pool is really the same as a day at the spa, or the destination turns out to be a remarkable work of art, perhaps even initiating a life-changing experience; indeed, who knows, Social Pool may herald the mellow beginning of a social revolution. Read Less