Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits” are a mixture of fashion, sculpture and performance which generate a complex series of meanings. They draw on the history of the idea of the ready-made or found object and also on ideas of ritual, modernity and the possibility for fantasy within the contemporary world. Each of these aspects of Cave’s work enables him to be thought in relation to the continuing history of process art and the idea of system of objects. In order to demonstrate this, it is first necessary to clarify the meaning of these terms.
According to Jean Baudrillard, the term the system of objects may be understood to refer to a specific way of relating to objects. Specifically, it names a concern with “the processes whereby people relate to them [objects] and with systems of human behavior and the relationships that result therefrom.” In this sense, the study of a system of objects is just as a much to be considered as the study of the “more or less consistent system of meanings that objects institute.” Within this context, process art may be understood directly as a way of thinking about art objects whereby the process of bringing them into being and the process of their various uses within different modes of art is understood as taking prevalence over the idea of a reified and finished art “object.” In this sense, process art sees an art object as being a collection of movements that the final object evidences but which it does not stand over against as a final or “finished” product.
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"Nick Cave and Process Art".
According to Leslie Coldwell, artists associated with process art “created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.” As such, not only can process art be understood as a movement concerned with the processes through which people relate to objects, but it is also directly concerned with actively generating the possibility for new kinds of processes and modes of relation.
Cave’s Soundsuits may be understood to relate to this understanding of art in two key way. To begin with, they are frequently constructed from found objects, and are represent a process of reconstruction and in order to generate and develop new modes of signification. No only does Cave employ combinations of found objects, but he also makes use of objects of various styles and techniques associated with contemporary fashion. One suit, for example, combine fashionable patterned leggings with a tree like structure that disguises any of the recognizable features of the person who wears it. As such, the suit directly recalls processes whereby meaning is formed, but also serves to disrupt these and, in doing so, to generate the potential for new of modes of relation to emerge.
The content of these new kinds of relation is intimately linked to Cave’s own interest in ritual and practices which involved a radically different relation to objects than that which usually occurs in contemporary society. When discussing his the creation of his suits, Cave states explicitly that “the starting point was looking at ceremonial rituals from around the world and the roles in which they play in terms of accessing the power within myth and transformative state of mimesis.” As such, Cave’s work is directly concerned with investigating older ways in which objects functioned in society and in using this to reinvigorate contemporary processes of object relation. It is this commitment to various modes of object relation, together with a use of found and discarded objects that makes Cave’s work an important contribution to the history and practice of process art.
