File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1997/97-02-19.172, message 99


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 




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