SYMPOSIUM BEIJING

Field of Vision

Transcript of presentation delivered by Michael Wright

These are very simple diagrams and their intention is to provoke rather than to explain, to provoke a questioning response from you the audience.

The essential concept of the Field of Vision has its roots in a diagram drawn by the projects instigator, Stephan Hausmeister, which was derived from the philosopher Wittgenstein, which articulates the relativity of vision… that the perception of relationships in our field of vision is completely determined by ‘location’. The Artists contributing to the project understand and work from this concept. From Wittgenstein’s model you have a point of view, from one perspective a star is perceived to be on the left and a circle on the right. If you move your position and view this arrangement from the other side the star and the circle are still in the same relation but your perception of their relationship has changed, it is reversed, the star is perceived to be on the right and the circle on the left. This is really a model of the subjective, ‘qualitative’ nature of how we experience relationships rather than solely a quantitative assessment of fact.

In this diagram if one thinks of ones view of the world as being based in a physical location we have a point of view and this point of view does not sit in a neutral space but in a cultural narrative. We view the world through narrative structures. What we see or don’t see is the result of viewing the world through the filter mechanism of the narratives, which have been constructed for us, narratives which we inhabit and which inhabit us. The individuals’ subjective view of the word is really through the construct of a cultural field.  We view everything both within and outside of our cultural field through the construct of the narrative that we inhabit, so that as we look out from our point of location everything perceived is filtered through the cultural field we are located in.

The idea of who owns, who generates the narrative is a massively important issue. Narratives define the way we see the world. Who produces those narratives? Television, producers, artists, historians, writers, journalists, politicians, Advertisers, they construct the narratives by which we make sense of the world.

Artists of a critical persuasion have been and are in a position of trying to re-see the narratives, using their own subjective experience, and examining other peoples experience to re-see and reshape, to modify or challenge existing or prevailing narrative structures.  The most radical thing the artist does is not to work with old imbedded narrative structures, but to work with what is emergent, that’s our job, I think, collectively that we visualise what is emergent now, and this always needs new strategies.

Artists work with the available technology. Marshal McLuhan stated that the technology creates the language of a culture.  We now have the Internet which gives us another language another way of making sense of the here and the now. Artist are working with the internet not for it’s novelty but because it gives us another model, another way of visualising the here and the now, the emergent.

This is a simplified diagram of what is taking place in the physical construction of the Field-of-vision. The Field-of-vision is constructed from lots of different individual stories, individual visions which have been projected onto this field here. Views of China from the outside and China from the inside are juxtaposed and viewed together.

The radical element in the Field-of-vision is that it brings together many different visions that a curator would not normally bring together. Curators and artists usually try to create a unifying vision, a unifying idea which binds and gives aesthetic and conceptual coherence, effectively turning the vision into a product. The process is highly selective and generally exclusive. This doesn’t happen in the field. The Field-of-vision is an attempt at a democratisation, a way of trying to visualise a wider picture, a more democratic picture of what is going on, of what is emerging now.

It is important to know that these images in the field, once they are transposed onto the internet. are accompanied with a textual narrative which the viewer will be able to lock onto when they click on an image, so it is not just a field of images for the eyes, it is also a field of narratives, of visions, a way of seeing hidden narratives. The interesting aspect of the field will be how it exists on the internet in a way which will allow a comparison of the various fields constructed to date in China, New York, Germany. The possible permutations of correspondences will be the real life of the fields.

This draws up issues of globalisation. Visiting Documenta 11 in 2002 a major issue that was highlighted thematically was the relationship between globalisation, networking, and the role of the artist in creating alternative models of art production, other than producing art for an international market. The international market is controlled largely through the dominance of commercial centres, whose vested interest is in the promotion of its own power and status, which inexorably subsumes the artist’s narratives within their given cultural and commercial value system and accompanying narratives.

Pre-globalisation, colonial models dominated the world, based on the relationship between distinct cultural fields, China, America, Europe, Asia, East, West, Soviet block etc. and these would be in tension with each other, competing borrowing or colonising. The model that is emerging under the prevalence of globalisation is that these cultural fields are perceived to have an increasing overlap… merging together. This points to the idea of an increasing common culture of a shared technology, of sharing the same common narrative. It was predicted in the 1980s that, with the demise of Communism and the ascendancy of global capitalism, the only common cultural narrative which would exist for the world would be consumerism.

Our perceptions are oriented to a habitual binary model of opposites, and this equally applies to our relationship to cultural narrative, a positive defined by its negative. This binary model was enacted through the Cold war through negative projection from both sides, which defined the good in ones own culture by its bad opposite. The binary narrative of fear of ones perceived cultural opposite served the political purpose of creating cultural cohesion and collective sense of purpose. This binary model persists, refocusing on new perceived threats, with the demise of the soviet block as the primary threat, post 9/11 the focus has shifted to ‘Axis of Evil’ and a new model of the necessary projection of fear has reformed to ‘War on Terror’.

Artist have had a major role in relation to undermining binary models by persistently transgress boundaries, by enacting a process of de-differentiation, enacting flux of concept and material, fulfilling a role of mediating or moving between different domains, physical and perceptual, concrete, conceptual, psychological, emotional and political, moving across boundaries and most importantly across cultural boundaries which are simplistically characterised as opposites by the application of the binary model.

The old colonial model was of communication from the centre, the abstract, absolute, universal and divine, channelled through the centre of power as the axis of cultural and political energy epitomised by the Emperors chair, (emulated by Mao). All the cultural energy was channelled through the centre and disseminated to the periphery.

It can be perceived that the people who control the media also have a common agenda of generating narratives from the centre of commercial and political power. It is their narrative which is disseminated to the physical and cultural periphery. In the Documenta 11 alternatives to this essentially neo-colonial model were highlighted and in particular models of regional localised production, functioning to visualise localised narratives. The decentred model has partially existed through regional arts programmes and institutional arts structures which have an uneasy relationship to and challenge the values of the market. Instead of being bound to the flow of international market forces the alternative paradigm is localised centres of artistic activity connected and communicating with each other. The regional arts model has politically still to account back to the centre for its arts funding, however the internet allows for a more radical decentred level of production, a model without a controlling centre. It is a challenging model, a model we are not used to, this model has a visual correspondence in the aims of the Field of vision project.

The Internet as a network, the technology allows us to move away from the centre and still have a network of related and unrelated communities in conversation. This model, prior to the internet, paradoxically, was a characteristic of the urban environment, the city being many networks in close physical proximity. However people who were not based in the urban environment were in principle subject to the influence of these urban networks as power and culture are disseminated outwards. Regional artists could not successfully participate without migrating to and competing at the centre. On this principle the industrialisation of society has been one of increasing urbanisation, of migration to the centre to access these economic and cultural networks.  With the advent of the Internet cultural production can more readily function outside of the city and still be connected, potentially allowing for a reversal of the flow to the urban centre, at least from the perspective of art production.

This potential de-centred networked model of culture has massive implication for the potential generation and understanding of narrative in the arts. There is now a potentiality of a culture constructed from a plurality of narratives, displaced by space but potentially connected and networking in potential simultaneity and plurality. The internet has the potential, as a technological and cultural structure, to both generate and hold a complexity of cultural dialogue, operating as an alternative to the narratives generated from the cultural centre; centres whose tendency is towards homogeneity of narrative rather than plurality, hierarchical, competitive and exclusively product oriented rather than attentive and inclusive of regional and local narrative.

The Consumer Thesis:  The process of industrialisation and globalisation generates a welcome expansion of consumer choice, wealth is generated, and if not through enlightened democratic governmental control, in the form of equitable taxation and governmental intervention, by a process of ‘trickle down’ a society develops collective wealth and opportunity. This is the Capitalist thesis, the belief in  ‘progress through globalisation’ which is promoted as the sole model which will liberate all cultures into the ‘freedom’ and happiness of consumer choice and democratic governance, a new global creed to replace the failed project of socialism.

The thesis continues….Inexorably consumerism will reform closed political systems, undermining their power base through the power of global patterns of consumerism, promoted by the free market economy and enforced trade agreements, in which corporate companies (who are subject to little or no accountability) distribute worldwide. On this model ‘freedom’ is exported world wide and reactionary governments forced to subsume the consumer model. Consumerism is based on competition and choice and the best will ascend through the application of consumer choice, every child in the world will have access to Homer Simpson, the supermarket, Walt Disney and appropriate the narratives of consumer culture.

The most optimistic model is of a global culture absorbed and running alongside a local culture in which a community has a commonality with other global communities, sharing a common information technology and narratives while maintaining its own localised cultural idiosyncrasies and specific regional identity. While this can be observed as occurring for certain sections of urban communities world wide, in reality, for those who are marginalised from the centres of power and who actually produce the commodities, this model is not experienced as liberating but exploitative, inequitable and unsustainable. Consumerism, it seems is dependent of persistent forms of exploitation of the weakest members in the global community, unaccountable shareholders and corporate management determine the limits of their lives in pursuit of competitive products for the consumer market.

It is disingenuous to criticise a model of consumerism from the privileged position of being a comfortable consumer and further indefensible to criticise others in pursuit of the same privileges when it will mean potential escape from degrees of drudgery unimaginable to present day western consumers. There is an inexorable momentum towards urban industrialisation taking place world wide and most dramatically in India and China, the factories of the world. The presumption is that the wealth generated will generate better conditions for many.

In the West the momentum of industrialisation has passed its zenith into a culture of service and ‘creative’ industries.  Society is now accompanied by degrees of anxiety incommensurate with the privilege and comfort enjoyed by the majority. Depression afflicting one in six. The presumption is an increasing disillusionment as social problems of failing citizenship and social cohesion appear to be under threat from 40 years of unbridled consumerism.  The primary critique of Consumerism is that this social model generates and functions on a permanent state of dissatisfaction, based on a permanent  sense of ‘lack’. Consumerism has an in built requirement for discontent which promotes unrealistic levels of consumption in the search for happiness.  This in turn generates an aggressive competitive rather than a cooperative cultural mind set.  This negative aspect of consumerism is destabilising, generating delusory levels of dysfunction in the form of unrealistic aspirations, (the cult of celebrity) dependency on entertainment as a staple and inexorably anxiety as citizens are reduced to spectators. There is in the consumer model a form of barbarism, consuming without understanding or accountability, in a state of anxiety generated by the fear of potential loss and the unrequited sense of longing unfulfilled.

While some communities are gaining from  globalisation in reality the divides between rich and poor are increasing rather than diminishing, fuelling a reactionary cultural backlash towards western culture in the form of fundamentalism and in extremity generating terrorism. The perilous ecological threats from unbridled consumerism, fostered through the globalisation model are becoming clear and the political and social tension generated by inequitable access to supply are increasing rather than diminishing political instability.

It is inevitable that the critical intellectual and cultural dialogue has turned to an examination of this ascending consumer model and a preoccupation with re-examining and articulating alternative cultural models. Recent movements in the arts are refocusing on relationship and the significant role of the artist redefined, not as producers of artefacts for the market, but as facilitators of perception. By focussing on the relationships present in the world, as experienced locally, the arts are drawn to practices of intervention, redefining an aesthetic outcome as a means of generating a shift in consciousness, a shift of relationship (Relational Aesthetics).

In the sixties Marshal McLuhan predicted certain accompanying cultural shifts that would emanate from the expansion of the media industry. What follows are a set of binary shifts from a literary culture and technology to a film digital media technology/culture.

It is a given that ‘we’ that is the ‘haves’, the consumers, rather than the have nots now inhabit a global culture constructed from a homogeneity of consumer narrative structures. The media industry has a symbiotic relationship to markets and the flow of capital, both following and promoting, overtly through advertising and implicitly in the value systems embedded in documentary and entertainment forms of mass communication. Political models equally follow consumer models using consumer models of branding, attempting to gage and mirror back the expectations of the consumer, spin replacing polemical dialogue. Sound bites, advertising, jingles, theme tunes, hackneyed film and documentary narratives, inhabit our interior space. Fictions have replaced histories with consumer ideals indoctrinated through incessant repetition. Identities defined by consumption patterns. The consumer narratives form the cultural landscape which we inhabit and more insidiously which inhabits us, flooding the imaginative space of our personal and collective interior. It is impossible to communicate meaningfully without referencing these narratives as they are imbedded in the very physical surfaces, social, language and visual cultural fabric. In this respect one is forced to communicate in relation to, that is in compliance with or in reaction to these given collective cultural narratives.

In the interest of maintaining a necessary sense of novelty the media industry constantly seeks new forms for the same structural message. The same binary narratives of the hero and the anti-hero find new permutations for the same essential plot. Consumerism runs on the appearance of generating apparently new forms but in reality reiterates the same familiar and reassuring pattern of unreflective consumption and easy prejudice. In this sense popular press and entertainment draw the consumer into a sense of curiosity, shock/horror headline, only to repeat the same structure which reassures in its utter fixity of formula… novelty without change. It is essentially a market force which runs on the engine of unreflective desire, consumption without accountability, enactment without consequence and inevitably into escapism accompanied by alienation.  In this respect it becomes a cultural imperative to subvert the conventions of narrative.

The response to consumer culture has been a rear guard action of attempting to assert phenomenological and social reality, by subverting the normative state of passive acceptance of given narrative structures.

A deal of contemporary art of significance is concerned with inversions, utilising either the mirror of excess and absurdity (Paul McCarthy, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ofili) or moves in the opposite direction to reduction… art that reduces art to a hole…an empty space ( Matta Clark, Turrel, Robert Irwin) or a reflective surface (Richter, Kapoor).  an absence ot things, an empty space (Martin Creed), a perceived negative….a non event… emptied space becomes a necessary construct in a world which is so utterly filled with distracting delusory narrative and arbitrary stimuli. By creating spaces emptied of either the artist’s or agreed social narratives what is left for the viewer to contemplate but the stuff of the here and the now of their own consciousness, present in the actuality of  inhabited time and space.

In relation to the dominance of consumer culture art production becomes bound either to the consumer narrative of delusion and escapism or forms a counter culture, a ploy to focus the viewers attention back onto their own expectation and responsibility for their own consciousness.

Aspects of emergent art practices under the form of relational aesthetic point to a potential form of art work as a polemical conversation in which aesthetic unity is abandoned in preference to a visualised dialogue of ideas and conventions, which generate a potential corresponding dialogue in the mind of the viewer. The work is not an assertion or an expression of… but a visual paradigm of the contradictory and conflicting tendencies inherent to sentient thought. The art work both proffers and contradicts what it appears to state, it is essentially anti iconic, utilises aesthetics yet is anti aesthetic, anti homogenous, irreductive, asserting contingency, complexity, tensile and reflective, and in essence because its form is consciousness, non consumable as commodity.

Michael Wright, Beijing, September 2006