Aura in Digital Art and the Author's Signiture in "Great Wall of China"
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Secondly, and this relates
to Greenberg as well, Benjamin makes the classic mistake of
ascribing the status of art to the artifact, when any
contemporary artist (or theorist) assumes that art is not to
be found in the thing but in the process...the artifact is
only a trace of the art, and usually that which is of least
value. The art object is only valued by those who have a
sentimental and bourgoise attachment to material things. In
this sense Benjamin has been seduced by what I see as the
corruption of art. I guess this is why I like making art
that is designed to be experienced but not handled or kept.
My art seeks to be immaterial and experiential...where both
the reader and the writer are engaged in a moment becoming
art. This is not
unusual...artists have pursued this "purity" for centuries,
and since the 60's (with performance art, post-object art
and now neo-conceptualism) this has been the mainstream
dynamic of art. Duchamp's Fountain is a prime (and early)
example. I have seen this work and it has no aura so far as
I can see. Nor does it have an artists "signature touch"
visible anywhere on it (the "signature" on it is not the
artists but somebody elses - written by the artist). The
whole point of Duchamp's work was to destroy the art object.
The irony is that so many now see the urinal as a work of
art. I don't see it that way. I see the urinal as a urinal,
not as a work of art. If I was to see it as art then I would
be missing the point Duchamp was trying to make about art
and how we perceive it. Whenever I see it in a museum I
laugh because just by being there Duchamp still gets to make
the museum, and most of the artworld, look very silly
indeed. dd:
This may be exactly the message Duchamp wants to convey. The
artifact he hooked on his message is the specific
installation of having a Fountain on a wall of a museum not
to use it but to look at it (thus still working with an
object, which finally was dismissed as well in Daniel
Buren's empty gallery rooms). And maybe in this specific
space lies the irreproducible aura (because
reproducability is not reproducible anymore in the context
of readymade-art), as it lies in the specific moment,
reader and writer are engaged in your immaterial
art. SB: Perhaps. I am
extremely suspicious of the concept of "aura" in respect of
anything. I know it does feel amazing when you face the
"Mona Lisa" for real, or confront Rodin's "Gates of Hell" or
settle down to watch "2001" in a big cinema. This is what I
understand, in large part, the aura to be. However, it is
also possible to look at these same artifacts and not see
that aura. The thing is that the aura of an artifact is not
a function of the artifact itself but of the viewers
expectations in regard of it, and these expectations are not
a product of any engagement between viewer and artifact but
rather an aspect of the education, the cultural
conditioning, of the viewer. When I was first starting
out as an artist, too long ago, my main interest was
formalist abstract painting. My intent was to try and
produce images that could not be read as having any meaning
at all, that could only be seen as what they were, coloured
areas on a material substrate. As part of this I use to
spend a lot of my time walking around looking at things and
trying to forget what they were at the same time. Sometimes
you could succeed and, for instance, do so to the degree
that you would be nearly run over because the rapid scale
shift of a 2D abstract shape you were so enjoying only, at
the last moment, resolved in your mind into a rapidly
approaching car. It is also entertaining to look at art like
this...that is, to look at it and at the same time dismiss
from your mind its status as art and any knowledge you have
about the history of the artifact. This is hard to do, but
you can do it...and presto, the aura is gone. This can be
refreshing as it allows you to see things without the
filters imposed upon them/us by society. To me Duchamp was
seeking this state in Fountain. Of course, with other
disciplines this is not necessarily an issue. In literature
people do not feel that a book is only art if it is unique,
has an aura and is hand written to ensure we can all see the
author's "signature". Of course not. With literature what is
valued is the immaterial and abstract aspect of the
book...the text we hear in our heads as we read. It is just
that some disciplines, such as art, are weighed down by
their close relationship to "things", and this can cause
people to mistake "things" for art. Heidegger, I think, and
certainly Nietsche, addressed this issue in depth. Did not
Heidegger refer to the "thinginess of things
thinging"...suggesting that the existence of things is not
in their materiality but in their interaction with other
things? This focuses the argument on process rather than
artifact. Benjamin and Greenberg missed that one. So, in answer to your
question, I do not seek to find the author's signature. I
doubt its existence. I do not believe in the singularity of
being nor the singularity of the author (I see beingness as
a node in a complex of interelations, coming into being only
in so far as those interactions allow it and only as a
dynamic "coming into", never as a static "I am")...so how
can I entertain a notion such as "signature" and the values
that flow from that idea. "The Great Wall" directly engages
with this through how it questions the origin of
things...although I think "Babel" expresses this idea better
with its blurring of the subjective in experience (that
everyone can see everyone elses "point of view" and none is
defined as primary). dd:
Lets dwell on the author's "signature" and sort things out.
By asking about the "signature" I didn't mean so much a
unique piece like a hand written book but rather this
immaterial and abstract text of the book or any artifact we
hear in our heads as we read. We know that this text (in its
materialization by letters) has been generated by all the
authors the author has read. And we know that the text (in
its immaterial materialization by the reader) is written by
all authors the reader has read. This is actually what
Foucault and Barthes meant by announcing the author's death
or disappearance.
SB: This relates to
what I have just said about the aura and its contingency.
The author too is a contingent construct. I would argue that
the very idea of the "self" is a contingent construct, a
thing that only exists in its relation to certain other
things. This is a very fragile thing as you only have to
disturb one of the key relational elements and the self is
either shifted radically or destroyed. If this is the case
for selfhood then it is clearly even more the case for the
notion of "author", which is an even more socially
contingent construct. The same can also be said of the
"reader", of course. So, it is on this level that I mean
that I do not recognise the idea of the author's signature.
It is a question of ontology, not aesthetics or
stylistics. dd:
To come back to the narrow question about the author in "The
Great Wall of China": This intertextuality takes up a new
quality when the words (materialized by letters) are
provided by Kafka and rearranged by a language machine,
which has been set up by you. Let me explain what I mean.
The applied language machine in "The Great Wall of China"
does not generate any meaningful sentences. The text is
'de-semantisized' again and again, no matter how often the
user starts the machine. There is text but no meaning. This
corresponds to the text used itself. In Kafka's story the
myth tells of a messenger on his way with the emperor's
message, which is particular for the person addressed by the
narrator of the story. As we learn, the messenger is on his
way for ages, and the message may never arrive. The only
thing the narrator and the addressed person know is that
there is a message. Of course Kafka does not reveal how the
message about the messenger already can have arrived.
Nor does he have to, since the longing for a message has an
anthropological dimension. Your work
seems to adapt this idea: Knowing there is a message on its
way is quite similar to having text but being unable to make
sense of it. In both cases one is told that one is missing
something. It is pretty clear, without Hermes - the Grecian
name for messenger - and without hermeneutic efforts the
text will not give away its message. However, Hermes will
never arrive in Kafka's story and hermeneutics doesn't help
to understand the text in your piece. Is Kafka's original
text the message one needs to know in order to understand
your appropriation of Kafka's text? SB: For me the wall
itself is the central metaphor in the Kafka, not the message
or the messenger. However, as Kafka treats all these
elements the same I can see the relevance of your point and
question. Kafka's wall is never finished, it has no
beginning nor any end...and in many respects it has little
purpose, other than offering an opportunity for
administrators to administrate (a constant Kafka theme). In
my "Great Wall" this is also explicit, although the metaphor
I use is language itself. In "Great Wall" it is language,
not the message or the messenger, that is seen to fail as
textual meaning is infinitely deferred. The meaning of the
work is only legible if you stop reading the texts and start
looking at how the interactivity functions. It is in the
relations between the parts and how one aspect alters or
effects another that the actual "text" of the work is
revealed. I don't think you need to
know Kafka to "read" "Great Wall." It might even help if you
have never heard of him...I'm not sure. However, if your
understanding of Kafka's story is that it is about how
people seek to obfuscate to infinity simply to ensure their
own interests then it might help. It is the old Kafka story,
perhaps clearer in "The Castle", of the institution
superceding the individual, that individual then becoming a
willing cog in the machine that ensures that institutions
hegemony. dd:
Are you saying you could have equally used any other text by
Kafka or even any text of any
author? SB: Yes. It would
have made little difference to the resultant texts in the
work or its appearance. The only value in using the Kafka
words is in the viewers knowledge that I used them and the
associations that knowing this brings to the work. It is a
case of manipulating the frame or context of the work. I
could even have lied about it, and it would have made little
difference (unless I publicly admitted the
lie). |