2W7 Reflection

Eat the Weak was very much a highlight of the past week as was the discussion on Spectacle on the Tuesday. First, I will talk a little more about Eat The Weak. My involvement in all of this is very much a silent partner for which I have been taking little or no credit. It doesn’t mean though that I don’t wholeheartedly believe in it. The point of the event was to level the audience and the filmmaker to the same playing field. It was intended to be a tough realization of the real world for the participants and a social experiment of sorts to see how the audience react to a diverse quality and subject of films. Our hope was that they would latch onto the really appalling stuff but that wasn’t the case. In fact, people were very supportive of whatever was being shown. It was also noted that most of the questions were ‘how’ related. This is interesting and as my collaborators pointed out, very few people were interested in why. This is perhaps reflective of the current mood towards photography and video in general and even art to some extent. People are more interested in how than why. This could be attributed to the increasing usage of camera equipment in the vernacular world of photography but might need further investigation. The age range of people attending our event was somewhere between 22 and 35 which gives an idea of the technical knowledge of cameras within our audience. Add to that, that most people attending were foreigners and have to be technology savvy in order to keep in touch with their families abroad, so it isn’t necessarily a fair assessment of society, but could illustrate a future people. Anyway, the event went well and people got stuck in with their questions. We weren’t able to film the whole event but I was able at least to film my piece that was shown. If we do another event (which is increasingly likely) lessons will have been learnt and a bigger crew may be necessary, Here is the live rendering of my piece.

With regards to the discussion on Spectacle, I believed that I had prepared myself rather well for it and am pleased with my level of input. It was nice to know on a personal level that the things I had read stuck in my mind and I was able to coherently employ them. Some very good points were made throughout the discussion. These points covered aspects of why do we need to be distracted and who is doing this. Obviously some of these questions are eternal to a certain degree and may never be answered. Yet they address very large issues that put society at risk or rather keep it under control. The conversation could have gone off on all kinds of tangents, which just goes to show how relevant it still is in the modern world. Not just for art but also in regard to how society works and survives. I had pulled some of the following quotes from Guy DeBord’s “society of the spectacle” (1967) which were regarded as relevant:

Guy DeBord on spectacle as a form of distraction…

“To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more that its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.”

DeBord, G. (1967) Society of the Spectacle, Black & Red, Detroit (1995) Paragraph 21.

A comment which very much reflects the modern internet connected world. This in turn encourages a desire for distraction to some degree.

“The society which eliminates geographical distance reproduces distance internally as spectacular separation.”

DeBord, G. (1967) Society of the Spectacle, Black & Red, Detroit (1995) Paragraph 167.

The relevance of art as being reduced to a memory, of which we then distract ourselves with.

“When art, becomes independent, depicts its world in dazzling colors, a moment of life has grown old and it cannot be rejuvenated with dazzling colors. It can only be evoked as memory. The greatness of art begins to appear only at the dusk of life.”

DeBord, G. (1967) Society of the Spectacle, Black & Red, Detroit (1995) Paragraph 188.

This quote is interesting in relation to appropriation and my thoughts on Japanese culture. It illustrates the Japanese landscape as not necessarily being a bad thing.

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participated in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces and author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

DeBord, G. (1967) Society of the Spectacle, Black & Red, Detroit (1995) Paragraph 207.

In short, much of DeBord’s provides ammunition for collapsing all dialectical relationships. Obviously time has passed considerably since DeBord’s book and so this collapse has quite possibly taken place. However, despite the intentions of Baudrillard to render it invalid and as meaningless, class distinctions have only strengthened. Having watched Adam Curtis’s (BBC) The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) <http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_philosophy.htm> [Accessed 29th June 2007], its possible to relate this same distinction to the unsuccessful plans of New Labor whereby an intention to eliminate class has only increased it. Perhaps this is why the Spectacle is still a relevant discussion for today’s society, although it comes now in a virtual form aswell. It has seemingly reached every point of people’s lives without them knowing and for who’s benefit? Flusser’s argument that a philosophy of photography is necessary for those who start brandishing cameras willy nilly because thiese people will only succumb further to the distraction of the device and therefore passively maintain it. The same could be said of art, if that is indeed what it is anymore. Baudrillard seems to think that Art is dead and Video is indicative of this.

“With video, the image is interiorized, you penetrate into it, and there, almost at the molecular level, you can surf anywhere and effectively do anything. For me, this is the end of art and rather resembles a technological activity. It seems to have become the orientation of many artists.”

Baudrillard, J. (2005) The Conspiracy of Art. Semiotext(e) P55

The technological activity is very much the focus of the modern individual and further reinforces the ‘how’ questions which were asked by the audience at EAT THE WEAK. In short, the masses are becoming more functional and the artists less functional. The gap between artist and audience is decreasing. However, the risk to this is naivety and ignorance of the principles of the tools they are using, otherwise the passive control continues and we have changed nothing. People therefore need to know the relevance of what they are doing. They are all aware of signs and their meanings. They are all to some extent skeptical of what the images might or might not be saying. They merely need to be educated in the right way in order to understand the power that the camera has over them or could have if they allow it to.

In terms of other things this week, I have been organizing some proposal ideas for exhibition opportunities in 2008/2009. One of which makes use of the japanese woodblocks of Hiroshige and Hokusai in the gallery’s coolection. It relates a little to the Japanese landscape works that I have been making and seeks to apply them in a relational way to the past.