Nothing Special

I’ve added one last image and video to my video Manifesto Piece; this blog consists of a few thoughts on the project. Duncan White also mentions the video in a post about Street Art, writing that “the policing of street space combined with its commodification, has forced artists to consider more closely the increasingly mediated condition of the ‘street’ itself.”, an observation which was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to London 13 years ago. Even then, London’s street space was totally rationalized, accounted for – either for commercial or public purposes, there was sense of it being instrumentalised to produce certain types of behavior.

With Manifesto Piece, hand-drawn posters of different texts were stuck around London in various public spaces and filmed. The texts are corporate slogans fronted with the phrase ‘we want to’, converting them into demands, promises or unfulfilled yearnings. Taking inspiration from Nietzsche’s statement ‘We want to be the poets of our lives’, and the use of the phrase ‘we want’ in political speeches, philosophical tracts, polemics and corporate verbiage I was interested in the commonality between these different discourses. Each lays out a vision of a belief in something; each tries to sum it up succinctly in a way that will resonate with the wider culture.

Zizek (and others) have pointed out how the ‘spirit’ of ’68, was embraced by the new capitalism which evolved out of this anti-hierarchical movement, “presenting itself as a successful libertarian revolt against the oppressive social organizations of corporate capitalism”. Fittingly, May ’68 revolutionary slogans like “Be realistic, ask the impossible” could be imagined as corporate taglines for a high-tech gadget; even current tracts like The Coming Insurrection contain slogans such as “Get Going” which wouldn’t be out of place advertising weight loss, a brand of trainers, or an MBA programme. These overlaps in language could simply be a consequence of the limited number of expressions at a writer’s disposal, but perhaps point to a desire to get beyond mere words, to kick off some sort of action through the use of this instructive voice.

The use of the ‘we’ also posits a collective expression, whereby the many become one; it also implies the existence of ‘them’, the ones left out, excluded in this act of inclusion. Dave Beech discusses this in relation to Ranciere’s take on the politics of participation, namely that it necessarily implies division; an inclusive practice that neither can nor does include all necessitates the separation of society in to participants and non-participants, or “them” and “us”. (Include Me Out, Art Monthly (April 2008)).

Although he is talking about the political implications of participatory art, the question of them and us applies also to the use of the collective ‘we’ by politicians and corporations. Positioned in public spaces varying from run down side streets to shiny new developments, the posters ask who the ‘we’ the text refers to is, and conversely who the ‘them’ is.

The them/ us divide of the public realm is thrown into sharper relief now that ostensibly public spaces like city centres, housing estates and shopping precincts are increasingly being run by private companies. As private developers prefer an ABC1 clientele, a whole section of the ‘public’ is excluded, and not especially welcome: not just the poor but also photographers and political protesters. This tendency towards explicit (e.g. gates communties) or implicit sectioning off of public space to ‘undesirables’ is also reflected in virtual space. Sylvere Lotrigner spoke of plans to create a ‘gated community’ online, while rumours have been circulating for years about a new Web in which access is only free to big sites, with all smaller ones being pay-to-view.

The use of corporate slogans in what looks like illegally posted bills onto spaces normally reserved for public transport announcements or commercial adverts reflects the confusion as to where the public is positioned in relation to the corporate world. Is there any distinction between public and corporate space? And if the citizen is a consumer, then perhaps the posters are an expression of the danger of becoming so wholly integrated with commercial concerns that even a radical practice cannot ‘see’ or speak beyond it.

I’ve been thinking more about how the costs of video production affect the way its valued, and realized my last post had a pretty obvious omission from the discussion of low budget styles of filmmaking: the No Wave cinema of 80s New York. Described by critic J. Hoberman as ‘unpolished ‘on the street verité’, made with an ‘aggressive anyone-can-do-it aesthetic’, the films had a listless, punk quality which echoes the notions of deskilling and of rejection of ‘specialist’ craft and techniques that I was thinking about in the context of Conceptual Art. Unlike earlier avant-garde film practices, like Structural film, No Wave tended towards ‘content-rich, performance-oriented narrative films’ (Hoberman again) that, explored through loosely told stories “thematics of role playing…and the exploration of power relations and sexuality often in combination”, according to Christian Höller in the Oberhausen catalogue.

This citation attests to their critical rehabilitation, and underlines the process by which ‘subversive’ cinemas (and art practices) get co-opted into a mainstream or corporate aesthetic by marketing execs looking for genuine, authentic instances of uncommodified ‘cool’ and/ or and film historians, curators and academics perhaps looking for something similar albeit not for commercial ends. Something low-cost, unspecialized and low budget nevertheless accrues value, through its aura of authenticity rather than the ‘mental labour’ involved.

This links in with my last post where I was trying to work through the relationship of cost of production to a moving image work’s ‘value’. I wondered whether funders’ desires for expensive looking productions influence the type of work that gets made – does it skew the output to certain types of film-making (which, for example, No Wave would sit uncomfortably within)? In a different context Omar EL Khairy’s article in Mute about Clio Barnard’s The Arbor gives an account of how funding bodies affect the work, arguing that the ‘issues’ presented in it- ‘delinquency, addiction and squalor’ and race were favoured for the narrative focus of the film by the funders and were integral to the packaging (distribution, publicity, contextualising) of the film. In a different way, then, funding parameters affect the style of work being made.

Another angle on the question of value was also offered by Dave Beech’s article ‘On Ugliness’ in this month’s Art Monthly, which outlines both the ideological dimension of beauty and the potential of ugliness to create an uncomfortable rupture into the smoothness of corporate culture. He discusses philosophers like Elaine Scarry and Roger Scruton, whose aim is to reinstate beauty and, although perhaps not obviously stated, devalue ugliness- for aesthetic as well as ethical/ moral reasons. Roughly speaking, beauty and goodness correlate, and their stance could be caricatured as “why must we allow radicals and avant-gardists to take it away from us?”

An association is thus clearly drawn between reactionary practices and beauty and on the flip side, ugliness and radical, avant-gardist practices. He asks, “does ugliness refer to a part of the aesthetic spectrum that can never be satisfactorily incorporated or instrumentalised”, suggesting that beauty occupies the other end of that spectrum. The beauty he refers to, and believes they advocate, harks back to a Victorian belief in the ‘character building’ effects of beauty, one which is all about retaining order and being obedient. Making the leap back into video, would that imply that ‘ugly’ videos have more chance of being critical and disobedient?

It obviously depends how we define ugliness- a cack-handed lack of skill, intentional or not; or a polished kind of repulsiveness. Beech puts forward artists like John Russell as examples of an ugliness that- unlike, say, Impressionism- will not ‘weather with age’ and be selling postcards 100 years from now. And his work certainly isn’t lo-fi; it’s just intentionally repellent in a hyper-saturated, digital-surreal way. Maybe ugliness isn’t about a lo-fi aesthetic but, as Beech says, about a rupture, an obstacle that can’t be ignored.

The work of Ryan Trecartin could be an example of this tendency, combining a YouTube-style, paranoid self-performance (‘cheap’) idiom with a ‘wildly stylized’, super post-produced and excessive look. The results are pretty ugly, in that a bad-taste/ confounding kind of way that both repulses and transfixes, without being cheap to produce.

I’m going to pick up almost exactly where I left off, since, as usual, by the time I got to the end of my post I realised I had touched on something interesting (to me) but had run out of space. I was asking how we value artists’ film and video- and whether high production values are guarantors of quality, at least in the eyes of funders.

There is a question here around how images accrue worth according to their production values, a topic addressed by Hito Stereyl in her essay on poor images. She noted the hierarchy of image quality and value- a kind of pyramid with a select few hi-def, hi-res images at the top and piles of low-res, ‘poor images’ at the bottom.

A similar diagram could be drawn for videos- big-dollar Hollywood productions shot in 3D/ HD displayed on huge crystal display screens at one end, crappy mobile phone videos shared on YouTube proliferating at the other. This ‘lumpen proletariat of images’ resides beneath official culture, circulates mostly on the web, and has a potentially subversive character, which she links to Juan García Espinosa’s notion of Imperfect Cinema, in which a correlation between ‘perfect cinema’ and ‘reactionary cinema’ is made.

This recap of two previous posts relates to the subject I’m considering here- how the notion of deskilling, a well-known strategy of conceptual art, manifests itself in moving image work. Alexander Alberro, in his book Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, discusses the turn away from the “skills, virtuosity, and privileged forms of artistic knowledge in the production of art” which became a hallmark of conceptualism, describing Lawrence Weiner’s performance “An Amount of Bleach Poured on a Rug and Allowed to Bleach”, which does exactly as the title instructs, as emblematic of this tendency.

Using easily accessible materials and non-specialist techniques, work by him and others “disavow(ed) inherited notions of artistic competence”, devalued the significance of skill, and was easily reproducible using cameras, photocopiers or directly ‘stolen’ by being ripped out of catalogues (e.g. Seth Siegalaub’s “Xerox Book”, which is the main focus of Alberro’s book).

This embrace of everyday materials and techniques, plus Weiner’s proposal that the piece need not be built, challenged the corellation of ambitious art with expensive materials, or any materials at all. Of course, as is well documented, these dematerialised practices still managed to produce commodifiable objects in the form of authentification certificates. As Alberro points out, if the materials are easily accessible, and artistic competence is devalued, it is the ‘mental labour’ which creates value, reproducing both capitalism’s division of mental and physical labour and the privileging of the planning/ design (concept?) stage over construction.

Robert Barry’s question, “how do you present an art that can’t be photographs in magazines devoted to color reproductions and things like that?” (i.e. that doesn’t look like art) is an interesting one to transpose into the moving image context.

One version of it could ask “How can a work which is not interested in big budget production- or indeed specifically rejects it- get state funding?” If a work doesn’t look expensive, because it uses found footage, or explores the signification of degraded imagery (like Steryl’s ‘poor images’), or uses available technologies like webcams, mobile phones and screen capture it may be harder to justify the funding. Particularly when films involving actors, costly location shoots, props, sets and costume design obviously look expensive and therefore more value-for-money.

Does this imply that a particular type of work- that necessarily involves high expenditure- will be funded, while ‘cheaper’ styles wouldn’t be? Artists like Klara Liden and especially Kalup Linzy, come to mind, whose deliberately low-budget, home-movie aesthetic complements the technology used in its production, intentionally playing with the associations conjured up by it (e.g. non-exclusivity, narcissism, self-performance).

It would be hard to imagine this type of work getting funding (pre-fame that is): it wouldn’t be specialist enough to ‘deserve’ money- unless, as in the conceptual art model, the mental labour appeared arduous or specialist enough to compensate for the relative ease of production. Perhaps this sort of work will become more common as funding cuts start to really hit in the UK…

Post-event despondency has set in a bit following last Friday’s InCounter. After weeks of organization and running around trying to remember a thousand and one little details, all of which are equally important for the smooth running of the night, its back to normal life and the realization that money’s scarce and that all that effort was, after all, unpaid. But every email I receive of positive feedback is a reminder of why we do these things: the generosity of the people involved, and the sense of coming together to make it happen, cheesy as it sounds, makes it all worth it.

But it’s tricky. On the one hand I hate the notion that life can only be lived with an “only worth it if it makes money” mentality which reduces every transaction to an opportunity to profit financially; some things are worth doing unpaid. But my aversion to that mentality means I inadvertently fulfill exactly the criteria that neo-liberalism demands from us as workers and citizens: ‘flexible’, willing to work for nothing if we love something enough and fully cognizant that its our ‘responsibility’ to make opportunities for ourselves. Or, in other words, become part of the Big Society: if you really want to be an artist- or an end to homelessness, youth crime and poverty- volunteer!

So by working for free and not asking for funding, we set a precedent that artists don’t need it; but then applying for funding- especially as an individual artist- is an incredibly time-consuming process with slim chances of success.

Alternatively, you could decide to work a little more- especially if freelance- and self-fund your practice, since at least the money is guaranteed that way. Again, this is the ideal artist from the perspective of a government intent on cutting funding for the arts: work more in order to pay for it yourself. It’s a perfect illustration of ‘the system-compatible, neo-liberal self-exploiter’ type of artist that Dominic Eichler in Frieze writes about, the other two models being the ‘neo-bohemian’ and the ‘self-institutionalizer, dependent on public funding’, none of which are especially palatable choices, as his essay’s title- Its Complicated– suggests. However the self-exploiter does rely on having freelance income, which will be harder to depend on as jobs for artists in school projects, community arts and teaching are reduced.

There have also been articles in Art Monthly regarding the funding of artists films, which is bound to suffer under the cuts. One solution could be to give out smaller bursaries for films, with concomitantly lower production values, but to more artists. Wouldn’t this spread the available money, meaning less for each individual, but a healthier artistic community overall? Addressing the issue of how non-commercial art could continue to function is an Open Meeting at no.w.here, whose aim is to ask “What kind of non commercial art practices will there be in the future age of austerity? Where are supportive spaces where group discussion, collective thought, and critical practices can grow and disseminate if they are removed from the Universities or if they become too expensive to access?” Good questions, especially once more and more spaces like theirs start to really lose money.

Another perspective on the funding and making of films is offered by Juan García Espinosa, of Third Cinema. The first line of his essay, For an Imperfect Cinema, written in 1969, is “Nowadays, perfect cinema — technically and artistically masterful — is almost always reactionary cinema.” He finishes by arguing that a film shouldn’t be judged on quality, or the camera, format and technique used to make it (a Mitchell or 8mm camera are offered as examples). Rather, the important question to ask for him was “What are you doing in order to overcome the barrier of the “cultured” elite audience which up to now has conditioned the form of your work?”

Its interesting to consider this in relation to moving image work- where do well-funded, high production values videos or 16mm films (extremely expensive and specialist in today’s world) fit, when everyone can make a video of sorts just using their mobile phone? I’ve run out of space- but will hopefully return to the question.

Something I have been meaning to rant about for a while is the prescribed individuality that is integral to the creation of our digital identities on social media platforms. Facebook, Youtube, but also to a lesser extent art sites Artslant, re-title, not to mention dating sites, all involve at least some self-definition within parameters they set out (taste in movies, music, books, religious/ political beliefs etc).

It’s another case of choice but within a structure where the more significant choices have already been made; for example, belonging to a social media platform is more of a necessity than a choice, and for those who do opt out, part of their identity is then defined by this choice. Last year I had been thinking about how self-definition works in personality tests and the industry of self-help/ self-actualisation that depends on classifying one’s personality- stuff like are you an optimist or a pessimist? A leader or a follower?

There is an almost comical adherence to the notion of personality as a rigid entity rather than one that fluctuates according to surroundings and circumstances. The cult of personality is also well suited to the process of self-definition through consumerism, in which our particular personality type must find expression through our consumer choices- one of my favourite tests was the Indie test, to determine how ‘alternative’ you are, mainly based on what clothes and music choices you make. Talk about cooption of dissent!

Tying in (maybe) with some of these ideas is an essay by Janet Kraynak, which I re-read today, ostensibly about Bruce Nauman’s sculptural practice but hinging on ideas of participation as submissive and dependent. She develops this idea from the writing of Alain Touraine, who first coined the term ‘programmed society’ 40 years ago, a loaded term synonymous with the rise of post-industrial technocratic society.

Put simply the technocratic society valorizes efficiency and productivity (as opposed to ‘old’ ideals like freedom, self-determination), a ‘business-ontology’ (as Mark Fisher puts it) currently being implemented by the Con-Dems. ‘Optimum’ performance, in the mechanistic meaning of the term, becomes the desired model for subjects and institutions as well as corporations.

Another important aspect is repression through inclusion, rather than exclusion –not enforced by the police but through comfortable conformity, through fully participating in the systems of consumption and social life, where, however, ‘opting out is not a possibility’. Closely related to inclusion is participation, which is actually the central theme of her essay: drawing on Tourlaine’s, notion of ‘dependant participation’, where the subject, although ostensibly ‘free’ to participate in society, is actually to a large extent obligated.

She uses this framework for understanding Nauman’s work within this tension of participation and control, where the viewer is both ‘beseeched and thwarted’, becoming willing yet not exactly free participants in his installations. Joining the chorus of grumblings about relational aesthetics she also contrasts this with the supposedly benign, democratic aesthetic of inclusion which masks both the potentially problematic power relationship between artist and viewer within RA practices and the economic arrangements allowing them to thrive.

Amongst many strands that I’m trying to tease out is the relationship between programming/ rationalization and the performance of identity within contemporary culture. As she points out, programming is all about a scientific, rationalised process of information gathering which is then subjected to number-crunching in order to enable its parsing as information, and not just a jumble of facts and figures. This analysis creates a statistically accurate picture of past behaviour and can to a certain extent predict the future.

Then its just a small step to prescribing (programming) the future, as users of Facebook and Google have found- advertisers don’t just place ads in your profile based on your previous inputs for the hell of it, but because its a fair predictor of future activity, i.e. future consumption.

This is the closed-loop variation of capitalism in its networked phase, personalized ads targeting you with ever increasing precision, where any response further shades out that picture and thereby feeds back into the loop. “Free’ internet services, along with ‘free participation” are both apparently underwritten by a contract with hidden costs, one that we are seemingly quite happy to pay.