It is certain that, from a cognitive point of view, every experimental
activity man carries out needs practice. Without creating a clear practice
program - a kind of project - the whole experimental feature will be
lost. It may seem paradoxical the fact that a limited experience may
potentially benefit from practice; there is however a whole range of
exterior relationships that have a decisive contribution to the final
result. And these can only take place if they are practised.
Godel’s theorem (of imperfection) states that no logic, no knowledge
is complete, but rather incomplete, for they are built upon elements
which cannot be explained without referring to other elements which
do not belong to that system. The slightly heterodox(1)
use that is made of this theoretical postulation serves simply to corroborate
a practical conclusion.
The issue of the means and consequent experimentation, as the driving
force of the development of all the ruptures that occurred in the meanwhile
has been thoroughly discussed throughout the course of our century.
What we wish to state is that whenever experimentation is understood
as an essential value of the work, it is assumed in a way that allows
only two interpretations of it: either it is seen as experimentation
based on innocence,(2)
which is claimed to be an observer of developments that were not established
before; or it is seen as based on experience – and in this case
the issues previously referred to are subtly introduced. When facing
an experimental intention based on previous knowledge, the problem of
how to do it is immediately raised, and with it, the introduction of
operational functions that include the capacity for manually work and
concepts. Basically, these will limit the area of intervention, whose
dimensions are proportional to the level of proficiency – practice
– revealed in their manual usage.
One of the perverted consequences of this almost compulsive need to
experiment in the domain of art is closely related to the recognition
that the means are overestimated, the intrinsically modern definition
of “purposeless purpose”, an art exclusively focused on means.
The analogy that is drawn between this principle and a clear tendency
towards a formalist attitude, strikes us as a direct consequence of
a relationship that was meant to be dialectic – experimentation
is always dialectic- but which is a cause and effect one, thus revealing
an engaging “efficiency”: an intense focusing based on the
quality, which is beyond suspicion, of who knows how to wisely handle
the resources.
A sign of our time is therefore the existence of a certain disphoria
as far as experimentation is concerned(3)
, which emphasises other elements of the process of creative production.
We introduce here a new notion for the contemporaneous authorship: the
bureaucratic one.
The latter is precisely the one that is born out of a reaction to the
ungoverned experimentation of the whole modernity; where the essence
of making is clearly in a subject position and replaced by organisational
attitudes which make the artist a kind of self-made manager,
withdrawn from the experimental practice - consequently, he is not practised
anymore – and completely involved in a web of collaborators that
are managed and used according to the needs. This withdraw takes part
in a quite direct way in the process of making the artistic production
more and more homogenous each time; the latter is thus more interested
in the end than in the experimental character of the means, which leads
to the establishment, as if by inaction, of a lack of curiosity which
dangerously asserts itself as consensual.
The dry and rhythmic sound of bullets piercing through targets, exposed
as visible proofs of any practice programme (Pedro Tudela, C.A.P.C.,
1999), are a direct reference to an alert which has not resigned to
the leading consensus. They lead the discussion, once more, towards
the avant-garde demand of curiosity and experimentation as fundamental
values of artistic practice. Nonetheless, they raise new questions,
through their own technological tangibility; these questions not only
replace old disagreements about the self-expressive and maniac character
of a great part of the art done in the past, but also updates them,
colours them with new odours and amplifies them, by means of the new
“competitive” relationship it has to establish with a reality
immersed in the astonished unconsciousness which arises when facing
the so-called “new technologies”.
May, then, the growing technological involvement of art (media art
???) and artists (new media artist ???) be understood as
a supplementary sign of the unmistakable and continuous web of complicity
established (unconsciously or not, and till today so often denied) with
the so-called industry of culture, today transfigured into digital entertainment?
Let’s focus on the ungoverned proliferation of the so-called multimedia
technologies, which are present in any kind of initiative that claims
to have the mark of modernity, which is so dear to the consumer legitimacy
we presently live with. We immediately realise that universes predominantly
dematerialised are being massed and becoming vulgar, thus turned into
potential sources of profit of a big deal (negation of leisure), which,
paradoxically, is the management of one of the economic props of the
tertiary sector: leisure. The second conclusion is drawn from the revelation
of a high level of adherence on the part of the public, which is lead
to active participation – the decisive element of interactivity
being thus introduced, while, at the same time, it allows the transfiguration
of the previously passive spectator into the now active operator.
This is will be, in a perverted way, the prophetic occurrence mentioned
by Walter Benjamin when referring to technology; everybody radically
becomes a producer. It is the democratic enlargement of procedures previously
available only to some and now turned into tangible reflexes of a society
which, according to Rubert de Ventos in his work “Utopias de la
sensualidad y metodos del sentido” as far as interactivity is concerned,
sees the idea of “open work” in the context of the analogy
with the “do it yourself” publicity and commercial techniques.
We are, thus, faced with a landscape of imminently sensitive (in the
sense of the socialisation of what is sensitive referred to by Mario
Perniola) and with symbolic codes which compete directly with the contemporaneous
artistic production.
Before this complex setting, the sound of the shots(4)
which are heard in the gallery(5)
(C.A.P.C., Pedro Tudela, 1999) may potentially become a negativity metaphor;
and then propose the catharsis exercise which the use of fire weapons
always makes possible: the fascination/charm/spell of the power of destruction.
The destruction so often foretold by the avantgarde and always not succeeded(6)
is here presented with a mask, as a metaphor – as a place to practice
– as work in progress, something upon which it is possible
to improve. In this new conceptual attitude lays its distinction when
faced with the inactivity of the past. Nothing is proposed as a solution,
we are simply offered one possible way. Not even the aim is specified,
we are merely proposed some possible hints(7)
and then the metaphor widens the negativity horizons and opens a much
more vast area of intervention.
As in the words of the Catalan philosopher Santiago Lopez Petit, “The
excess of order can never produce fear, but the excess of disorder can.”,
this probably is one of the certainties about negativity, the deliberate
escape from a state of tolerant lethargy – mediocre indifference
towards reality – which asserts its lack of alternatives (coinciding
with the critical thought); hence, it avoids the possibility of a positive
formulation, since to assume itself in that manner would mean that it
would cease to be worthy.
Appendix about the importance of sound in contemporary
visual arts
As we saw before, there is a clear tendency to include sound in some
of the art made nowadays. This is also an issue worth exploiting in
order to better understand not only that fact itself but also its consequence:
the works become more hybrid in terms of subjects.
In accordance to what was said above, an exception is opened for the
fragmentary option made by the musicians that introduce sampling as
a way of working, in clear conceptual consonance with our time. Contemporary
visual arts are very much interested in the introduction of methodologies
that threaten authorship and, above all, profit from the possibilities
offered by technology; therefore, all these experiences are being closely
followed by artists.
Digital technology decisively opens one of the core issues of artistic
production ever: the myth of originality. Musicians can, by means of
sampling, produce aesthetically acknowledged work, although without
being associated with some kind of theological form of mediation(8)
, which is so often referred to as an essential part of artistic production.
“First I fix some drums’ loops, cut some bites. I get a ,
bleach it and take only the part in the middle. On top of that I put
pieces of the rhythm case 808, percussion of the case 272, other pieces7bitess
of the case 909. Then I make a riff on the strip and I make something
to go with it. While that is working, I remove the original riff and
I work in the one I’ve just done and then I remove that one until
it has again the first and the last riffs – I am trying to see
what fits in and what doesn’t.” (A Guy Called Gerald)(9)
To understand a fragmentary aesthetics like “drum n’bass”
in its most interesting experimental exponents is extremely important
to the production of artistic objects that, without any kind of prejudice,
may profit from what technology potentially offers to a tangible formulation.
To radicalise the sound decomposition (already started but limited by
technical difficulties, by the series of avantgarde that came up in
the course of our century), as it was made, allows in the first place
to manipulate the materials used as sources, making them implode in
fragments which may be decoded and allowing for its rebuilding as an
aesthetic operation, not producer anymore, but reproducer
, in the sense that this is, above all, about selection rather
than creation. This epistemological change allows for a whole
range of possible associations which may be exploited according to the
fragmentary will of each one who intervenes. On the other hand, it is
decisively opposed to a society that normalises itself by slowly suppressing
every possibility of difference – fragment.(10)
A sceptical attitude may be relevant to the development of the work,
as in any other area. Recent examples lead us to think that the fact
that languages are becoming more hybrid by means of the sensorial crossing
may quickly end in an innocuous state of things which is formatted in
the majority’s preferences. A methodology which turns fashion appendixes
into effective components is essential to the cinema, plastic arts and
music.
There could be no better ending than Antoni Muntadas’ words: artists
would have to maintain the same critical attitude that is the basis
of the most clearheaded works of history of art; those who find themselves
associated with a specific period of time and place, in one word, a
context. With the virtual hypothesis: to understand this new space;
to understand the tools and the possibilities one has to act in that
same space and finally, act as a sceptical person.