Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 11:18:02 +0100 (MET) From: jnech-AT-imaginet.fr (NECHVATAL Joseph) Subject: Re: ostrow - Brad wrote: >'The endless (glorious!) flow of representations' does indeed 'devalue and >disrupt' the privileged and insular bowels of faux-art-history cults. I would say that the "endless (glorious!) flow of representations" has been mostly ignored by current art history (one does think of 'Image World' at the Whitney as an exception) & has failed to disrupt it one little bit. This is a Pop art issue. >For some, it's somehow not quite the same smug comfortable world it once >seemed -- this unleashing of (sometimes) brash young digital thought and >culture, tramples established, lurid exonerations, leaving fewer and fewer >established-world artists to indignantly nurse and re-illustrate the same >philosophical texts and repeatedly expound on their 'truly progressive, >significant and exclusive values.' (You can still paint pictures but their >ontology has grown. Digital culture is as much about wider access and >distribution as it is about new tools.) Information technology does present a deep ontological enigma. I agree with you Brad, however this has become mere conventional wisdom - starting from the premise that the 'image' is not an index of the 'locus of reality' but (as your speed oriented productivity indicates), just where we 'locate the image' in an age of instantaneous communication, virtual reality and hypermedia is well beyond the realm of the artist and well into that of the trades(wo)man. The word 'image' is linked in etymology with the Latin 'imitari', which is the root of the word 'imitate'. In the Medieval view the likeness between any thing and any representation of it must be analogical. Here, 'analogy' is 'similitude' in the sense of 'simile' rather than that of 'simulacrum'. Medieval representation imitates the idea of the thing and not its substance. The image of a Hindu devata, latent in canonical prescription, must be inwardly visualized by the icon maker in an act of 'non-differentiation'. This inner image is the model from which he proceeds to execute in a chosen material. The viewer in turn applies his or her own 'imaginative energy' to the physical icon, 'realizing' the devata within the 'immanent space in the heart'. All images are interior and reality itself is 'imaged' within consciousness. >From the Islamic standpoint, the law of all phenomenon can be symbolized geometrically in the way that space, seen as extension, is created by unfolding through the dimensions and can be 'folded up' again, leading back to the point of unity. It is the confusion caused by sculpture in the round, chiaroscuro, perspective and other illusionistic representations in the stages of 'folding up' that underpins the prohibition of images in Islamic art. In modern consumer capitalism everything that was once directly lived becomes representation as images proliferate beyond the viewer's control. Guy Debord has described this 'spectacle' as capital accumulated until it 'becomes an image'. This is the 'televisual' imaging of our desires. The image of desire itself. It alienates us as it permeates our consciousness. Today the 'alienation of the spectacle' has dissolved into what Jean Baudrillard has called 'the ecstasy of communication'. There is a 'loss of private space' and simultaneously, a 'loss of public space'. This is the ontology of electronic interactivity, the body appears to be situated wherever 'its effect is'. Enabled by 'microtechnology', consciousness has left the physical body and merged with the image in an interactive 'outer-space'. Consciousness always seems to be the starting point of any discussion about telematic imaging, the notion of the cause and effect situation, the rapid fire of consciousness back and forth between the remote and the local body. With regard to the 'reading' of images, Roland Barthes has asked if analogical representations or copies produce 'true systems of signs' and not 'simple agglutinations of symbols'. Is it possible to conceive of an analogical 'code' - a 'language' of the image, or is the image 'the limit of meaning'. In Hellenistic usage, aisthesis implies 'physical affectability' as distinguished from 'mental operations'. Ananda Coomaraswamy has remarked that the Greek origin of the modern term 'aesthetic' means nothing but sensation or reaction to external stimuli - what the biologist calls 'irritability'. With this observation the conventional dichotomy of pornography and art is dissolved. Fredric Jameson has even proposed that the visual image is, in itself, 'essentially pornographic'. Duchamp's 'delayed image' is no longer an esoteric encounter. The image has become an absolute fetish. It is even argued that as a consequence of the limited spatial resolution in all physical systems, including the eye, and the nature of light as discrete quanta, every image is in principle a digital one. The image as sheer technology. The reason I bothered to tell you this Brad is to indicate to you just how well within the 'smug comfortable' academic world your views rest. They are now mainstream. Thus it is perhaps a more intelligent stategy on your part to stop the 'faux' attacks on such and engage interactively in sincere dialogue, as that is what this media is designed for. No more unilateral declarations, mind bombs, declarations (all ugly reminders of stupid mail art from the early 80s which people would mail me expecting me to be delighted) for they truly are not consistent with the interactive qualities of internetted digiteria. This is not a one way media, as you know well. >Celebrate these last remaining provincial days (they couldn't conceive of >a world larger than their own) ... where their 'certain cultural >self-esteem,' not to mention a cozy chair in the faculty-lounge and a >self-satisfied chaw of collegial-cud are the real social agenda. > >Time to move-on. Speaker included. The digital image is fast becoming archaic & quaint. Cross disciplinary activities are replacing the role of the artist as image maker. Avante-garde art is now about research, it is art as research, research as art. I find the formulation of the virtual that Deleuze gives us via Proust fascinating in this respect : Art becomes 'Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.' p96, Bergsonism X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X Joseph Nechvatal, Paris, France, Europa http://www.cybertheque.fr/galerie/jnech X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X_X --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005