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N.º 19 (Junio 2017)
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Artnodes
N.º 19 (Junio 2017) ISSN 1695-5951
Sumario
EDITORIAL
Ana Rodríguez Granell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
ARTÍCULOS
Creating the artworld of literature and technology: The Electronic Literature
Collection as a key resource for digital art research
Raquel Herrera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74-82
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EDITORIAL
Seguramente sea sintomática la emergencia de relatos sobre el porvenir y los futuros especulativos en momentos
de crisis… Del mismo modo lo es quizá la mirada hacia el pasado en forma de nostalgia, apología de la ruina o
la arqueología de la utopía. A través de la idea amplia de futuro y del interés por la futurología actual podemos
discernir la potencialidad de lo «posible» o de los pasados imaginarios como lugar para la reflexión crítica. Un
ejercicio interesante, pues, es plantear los vínculos que se establecen entre el pasado y el futuro como un fenómeno
en sí mismo que aparece con fuerza a partir de la modernidad. Hoy estos túneles del tiempo vuelven a atravesar
muchos fenómenos, tanto en la academia como en lo social, en las prácticas artísticas y mediales. En este número
de Artnodes, vamos a encontrar cómo se sostienen esas futurologías en algunas manifestaciones artísticas y
sociales. Frecuentemente, nos topamos con productos que, en su especulación sobre posibles mundos, apuntan a
futuros distópicos donde los excesos de la tecnociencia nos ofrecen un orden social casi siempre sometido a nuevas
formas de autoritarismo y envuelto en el caos del desastre ecológico. Otras veces, emerge el mito del triunfo sobre
la muerte y la manipulación genética, para ahora abrir paso a preguntas de carácter ético. Nada nuevo bajo el sol.
La pulsión por pensar el futuro a través de nuestra capacidad para explotar la naturaleza material o humana, se
representa hoy como consecuencia catastrófica de nuestro presente. Cuesta encontrar imaginarios de un mundo
más feliz y justo, algo que precisamente se convirtió en un género literario en novelas como las de Edward Bellamy
Looking Backward (1888), curiosamente tildadas de utopian romanticism. Siguiendo la estela de la ciencia ficción
y las narrativas del futuro, siguen sucediéndose de forma abundante manifestaciones televisivas de la distopía,
como la serie Black Mirror, la brasileña 3% o la recientemente estrenada El cuento de la criada, basada en el
homónimo de Margaret Atwood (1985), una autora vinculada a la ficción especulativa. En este sentido, el género y
las elucubraciones se expanden de manera exponencial, bien a través de nuevos senderos como el transhumanismo
o desde la preeminencia de la posición feminista para hablar de nuestras opresiones actuales y futuras.
Pero ¿qué quedó del utopismo romántico? ¿Qué hay de nuevo hoy en esta perpetua actualización del mito
franquesteniano que emergió a mediados del siglo xix y qué retorna? ¿Es la mirada al pasado en clave de futuro
quizá? Ante la proximidad de ese futuro, nuestra aproximación real y temporal a las premoniciones de la distopía
es lo que mayor miedos causa… Pero quizá tiene algo que aportar aquí la repentina aparición de la nostalgia y
el gusto por re-actualizar el pasado. Junto a los múltiples relatos de un porvenir imaginado, aparecen también
regresiones a lo que fueron las promesas del siglo xx, volvemos a paisajes que hoy aparecen como las nuevas
ruinas. Ante esta nostalgia, nos preguntamos qué es lo que motiva nuestra relación con el tiempo y cuán relevante
es este para nosotros.
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3120>
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FUOC, 2017
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
artnodes
REVISTA DE ARTE, CIENCIA Y TECNOLOGÍA
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INTRODUCCIÓN
Pau Alsina
Profesor
Director de la revista Artnodes
Estudios de Artes y Humanidades (UOC)
Fecha de publicación: junio de 2017
Abordar el arte desde lo especulativo implica también pensar otros en estos quiebres, olvidos y mitos de los que podremos jalar para
mundos posibles a partir de la invención de futuros que escapen construir otras narrativas «capaces de ofrecernos una Tierra [earth]
a la lógica de la continuidad y que sigan teniendo la posibilidad de completamente diferente, ante la que estuvimos ciegos», tal como
sorprendernos. Significa preguntarnos por el «qué pasaría si…» expresa Rick Dolphijn en su artículo incluido en este número.
completando la segunda parte de la frase tal y como lo haría el Estas aperturas pueden ser entendidas como prácticas crea-
«idiota», aquel personaje conceptual capaz de generar el intersticio tivas en sí mismas, resultado de una actividad siempre relacional
para la emergencia de otras preguntas, aquellas que no dan por sen- entre los humanos y sus entornos, e inmanente al proceso de la
tadas las conclusiones, ni presuponen agotados los significados de vida (Ingold, 2009). De esta manera, la especulación como herra-
aquello que se busca conocer. Especular es formular esas preguntas mienta de quiebre no puede dirigirse hacia un futuro, ni construir
en forma de ficciones de futuro y buscar respuestas posibles sin una historia. Es en la pluralidad de perspectivas que reconoce en
avergonzarnos de la duda ni el balbuceo. Especular sobre el futuro donde gana su sentido poético y político. A través de este cúmulo
es también hacerlo sobre el presente y el pasado, crear fabulaciones de relatos dispersos –y cuya dispersión protege de convertirse en
contemporáneas, relatos densos que conducen al pensamiento. verdades dominantes– es cómo se exploran los múltiples senderos
Estas ficciones de futuro llevan implícito un gesto de reposicio- e historias ignoradas u omitidas de las artes, que incluyen artistas,
namiento, que dispersa el ideal de un origen primigenio en el pasado materiales, tecnologías o zonas geopolíticas excluidas de los relatos
y multiplica los presentes de la enunciación al margen del impulso repetidos y comúnmente aceptados.
de su racionalidad retrospectiva. Un movimiento que se abre hacia El presente número de Artnodes reúne algunas de estas aper-
los futuros en plural no puede tener si no su contrapartida en todas turas que conviven en sus diferencias, que tensan, resquebrajan,
las conjugaciones temporales. Una apertura que tensa y resquebraja abren mundo, que visibilizan la tensión entre el orden de las cosas
la «hegemonía del presente», y si estamos suficientemente atentas, y los discursos construidos, o, en otras palabras, entre el fluir de la
seremos capaces de observar los trazos de discontinuidad y azar vida y los sistemas con los que la hemos explicado. Estos artículos
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surgen en estrecha relación con los debates acontecidos en el congre- Pinilla. A través del arte y la literatura –alegatos sobre los márgenes de
so homónimo llevado a cabo en el Centro de Cultura Contemporánea las «ocupaciones cotidianas» y la vita activa que se nos impone–, se
de Barcelona (CCCB) y en Arts Santa Mònica los días 27, 28 y 29 de puede constelar un pasado para el cansancio como resistencia y –en
octubre de 2016.1 el mismo movimiento– imaginar un futuro con nuevas estructuras
El presente número comienza con «A manifesto for metallic para la reapropiación de nuestros cuerpos y sus tiempos, colonizados,
avant-garde» («Manifiesto para una vanguardia metálica»), de Radek fragmentados y acelerados.
Przedpelski, que se articula en torno a la pregunta: «¿cómo puede Sobre el rol de los cuerpos en la construcción de imaginarios y
ser el arte atemporal?». O dicho en otros términos: «¿cómo puede el en las prácticas de futuro en el arte, también se centra el artículo de
arte operar contra el tiempo y beneficiar a aquellos que nos sucedan?» Emma Brassó, quien cuestiona en su texto (y la palabra texto aquí
El relato de Przedpelski se articula como una respuesta etológica, no es azarosa) otro de los grandes tópicos del capitalismo: el ser
ética y estética a esta cuestión, en la que se entretejen conceptos auténtico. «¡Sé tú mismo/a!» se nos interpela, cuando en realidad se
filosóficos de Deleuze y Guattari y de algunos de sus interlocutores nos está diciendo: «finge que eres tú mismo mientras representas el
filosóficos en su encuentro y desencuentro con diversas prácticas rol que esperamos de ti». Las paraficciones se entienden como estra-
artísticas; un experimento que busca afirmar «la creencia en el futuro» tegia para ir más allá de los estereotipos de raza, género, creencia,
nietzscheana, en palabras del propio autor. Un ejercicio que aboga mientras se los evidencia y cuestiona. La autora analiza diferentes
por un futuro de la estética continuamente «problemático, en orden casos de creaciones «paraficcionales» (Donelle Woolford, Reena Spau-
de preservar su potencial creativo», irreductible a la anticipación, al lings, Barbara Cleveland y The Atlas Group), a través de las cuales
cálculo y a la predicción. Un futuro ajeno a cualquier formulación «se modifican ciertas expectativas sobre quién está legitimado para
linear, agrietado, en permanente renovación. producir y presentar, para decir y ver». Brassó imagina –y entonces
Si Przedpelski nos introduce la narrativa deleuze-guattariana, propone– un futuro cercano donde los artistas paraficcionales se
Rick Dolphijn, en «The Cracks of the Contemporary» («Las grietas multipliquen y se tornen ubicuos.
de lo contemporáneo»), la encarna con especial lucidez. En su texto, Brassó describe algunas de las prácticas paraficcionales como
Dolphijn aborda la problemática central de este número: pensar el postidentitarias, Jazmin Adler también lidia en su trabajo con cues-
arte en relación con el tiempo, -pasados, presentes y futuros virtuales, tiones identitarias, pero aportando un ángulo diferente, donde no es
actuales, ausentes, permanentes, irrelevantes y especulativos que la multiplicidad de uno mismo la clave que permite imaginar otros
se ponen en juego desde una perspectiva anclada y materialista. En futuros para el arte, sus historias y sus instituciones, sino la pluralidad
su relato, Dolphijn va hilando elementos de la literatura y la filosofía de territorios y geopolíticas que abarque. Adler desentrama en su
con el fin de evidenciar esos momentos de crack –ruptura, quiebre, relato los idearios de modernización y futuro específicos del caso
resquicio– que alteran la linealidad del tiempo y la hegemonía del argentino con el que trabaja, así como los «devenires institucionales
presente en términos económicos, políticos y sociales, y continúan oscilantes». En estos aspectos, encuentra la clave para comprender
jugando con este último mientras nos enfrentan «a una Tierra [earth] la historia de las prácticas de arte, ciencia y tecnología en ese país, y
que por alguna razón fuimos incapaces de pensar con anterioridad». los modos en que las instituciones locales han asumido esos cruces
«El presente territorializa la Tierra [earth], las realidades econó- disciplinares. El «futuro», en la autora, aparece anclado, enraizado,
mica, social y política, mide el mundo, lo repara e intenta realizarlo situado. El «futuro» no es un genérico, un tiempo homogéneo; es, en
acorde a sus estándares [...] Siempre demasiado rápido. Peligro- cambio, un horizonte que construye mundo.
samente rápido» apuntará Rick Dolphijn en su narración. Es contra Adler hilvana su análisis a través del caso de dos propuestas
esa aceleración del mundo, sofisticada e intrusiva propia del sistema (Elevaciones, de Leo Nuñez, y Hysterical Machines y Mega Hysterical
capitalista, que especula Rafael Pinilla en su alegato por una «comu- Machine, ambas de Bill Vorn) expuestas en el contexto de Noviembre
nidad del cansancio». Conjurar la preeminencia de la productividad y Electrónico en Buenos Aires. Una exposición es también el punto de
la acción, con la subversión que implica el «cansancio» y la «lentitud» partida del artículo de Federica Matelli. Esta última se centra en Spe-
en la contemporaneidad, puesto que «si no somos capaces de plantear culations on Anonymous Materials, comisariada por Susanne Pfeffer,
una suerte de “resistencia onírica”, la temporalidad 24/7 neutralizará en el Museum Fridericianum de Kassel, para abordar cuestiones tan
cualquier posibilidad de imaginar –de soñar– un futuro mejor», apunta centrales a la temática de este número como la «futurización» del
1. Coorganizado por los grupos de investigación Arte, Arquitectura y Sociedad Digital (AASD ) y Arte, Globalización, Interculturalidad (AGI), ambos adscritos a la Universitat de Barcelona, y
el grupo de investigación Mediaccions, de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, en el contexto de sus respectivos proyectos de investigación: «Arte, arquitectura y nuevas materialidades»
[HAR2014-59261-C2-1-P], «Cartografía crítica del arte y la visualidad en la era de lo global: Nuevas metodologías, conceptos y enfoques analíticos» [HAR2013-43122P] y «D-FUTURE:
Prácticas de futuro, espacios de creación digital e innovación social» [CSO2014-58196-P].Para ampliar la información sobre el congreso «Arte y futuros especulativos», puede visitarse
el siguiente enlace: <https://artfuturesconference.wordpress.com/>.
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Cita recomendada
HOFMAN, Vanina; ALSINA, Pau (2017). «Introducción». En: «Futuros especulativos del arte» [nodo
en línea]. Artnodes, n.º 19, págs. 2-6. UOC. [Fecha de consulta: dd/mm/aa]
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3122>
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CV
Vanina Hofman
Ayudante de investigación
Estudios de Artes y Humanidades (UOC)
vhofman@uoc.edu
UOC
Av. Tibidabo 39-43
08035 Barcelona
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CV
Pau Alsina
Profesor de los Estudios de Artes y Humanidades (UOC)
Director de la revista Artnodes
palsinag@uoc.edu
UOC
Av. Tibidabo, 39-43
08035 Barcelona
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E-JOURNAL ON ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
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ARTICLE
NODE: “ART AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES”
Abstract
In Bergsonism, Deleuze builds on Bergson’s method of intuition advocating the decomposition of
composites along divergent lines in order to identify the braided co-implication of (1) the virtual
intensive multiplicities and (2) the actual extensive multiplicities. Both types of multiplicities
constitute but two different dimensions of a single, self-differentiating difference, “élan vital
as the movement of differentiation” (1988, p. 91). The concept of machinic phylum and the
corresponding practice of metallurgy follows in A Thousand Plateaus as a radical mutation
of Bergson via Simondon and Leroi-Gourhan, putting duration into things, and thus giving
voice to matter and its inhering forces. Machinic phylum — encapsulated in metals and their
conductive powers and as such weaponised by Turco-Mongol nomads — is confluent with
the vision of the avant-garde. Forged by Marinetti, amongst others, the project of the avant-
garde has promised to disorganise the human by fostering encounters with inhuman life. The
formulation of machinic phylum/metallurgy echoes Bergsonism in its correlation of unformed
energetic potentialities and their actual crystallisations into a “technological lineage” (Deleuze
and Guattari, 2003, p. 406). The ensuing co-implication is — to borrow a phrase from Difference
and Repetition — this “something in the world [that] forces us to think. This something is an
object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 139).
The following paper uses the neo-avant-garde art-work of the Polish engineer-turned-artist
Marek Konieczny; the music of the contemporary Polish-Jewish jazz guitarist Raphael Rogiński,
and the desonant kılkopuz folk by the Nogai artist Arslanbek Sultanbekov, to forge a new
transversal lineage that reveals art as technology, an affective weapon serving as a conductor
of imperceptible forces. This aberrant trajectory will take us through Pieter Saenredam’s
artnodes
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Keywords
machinic phylum, metallic avant-garde
Resumen
En El bergsonismo, Deleuze toma como punto de partida el método de intuición de Bergson,
que aboga por la descomposición de los compuestos en líneas divergentes para identificar la
coimplicación entretejida de las multiplicidades virtuales intensivas y reales extensivas como
dimensión de la simple diferencia autodiferenciadora, “el impulso vital como movimiento
de la diferenciación” (1988, pág. 91). El concepto de filum maquínico y la correspondiente
práctica de la metalurgia evolucionan en Capitalismo y esquizofrenia como mutación radical de
Bergson por vía de Simondon y Leroi-Gourhan, dotando de duración a las cosas y dando voz,
por tanto, a la materia y sus fuerzas inherentes. El filum maquínico encapsulado en metales
y sus propiedades conductoras, empleado como arma por los nómadas turco-mongoles,
confluye con el proyecto de la vanguardia tal y como fue forjado por Marinetti, que prometía
desorganizar lo humano fomentando los encuentros con la vida inhumana. La formulación
del filum maquínico/metalurgia se hace eco del bergsonismo en su correlación de las poten-
cialidades energéticas informes y sus cristalizaciones concretas en un “linaje tecnológico”
(Deleuze y Guattari, 2003, p. 406). La coimplicación subsiguiente es –tomando prestada una
frase de Diferencia y repetición– este “algo en el mundo que fuerza a pensar. Este algo es
el objeto de un encuentro fundamental, y no de un reconocimiento” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 139).
El siguiente artículo utiliza el trabajo artístico neovanguardista del ingeniero polaco devenido
en artista Marek Konieczny, la música del guitarrista de jazz judío polaco contemporáneo
Raphael Rogiński y la música popular disonante kılkopuz del artista nogayo Arslanbek Sul-
tanbekov para forjar un nuevo linaje transversal que revela el arte como tecnología, como un
arma afectiva que ejerce como conductor de fuerzas imperceptibles. Esta trayectoria aberrante
nos llevará a través de la abstracción arquitectónica de Pieter Saenredam, una ontología de la
exfoliación metálica pasando por el cuerpo y la película de 36 mm, con guitarra preparada y
resonantes cuerdas de crin de cola de caballo. Al hacerlo, quisiera proponer el filum maquínico
como método en el campo emergente de la ontoestética deleuze-guattariana. La escritura, la
investigación y la filosofía del arte se convierten de este modo en una práctica metalúrgica
que encuentra su eco en la búsqueda por parte de Deleuze de los afectos de la pintura en
Francis Bacon: la Lógica de la sensación, fabulando una línea nómada a través de las épocas
de la historia del arte.
Palabras clave
filum maquínico, vanguardia metálica
artnodes
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Art as untimely machine in degree. Art (cf. Deleuze, 1994) occupies the Nietzschean future of
the eternal return whereby only difference returns. What returns is
As I understand it, the issue of future aesthetics needs to continue as a repetition of the different, dissimilar and divergent. For Deleuze
to be problematic so as to preserve its creative potential. It needs to and Guattari (cf. 1984, 1994, 2005), art does not operate — does
renew itself perpetually by inserting cracks into the linear formulation not happen — on the level of formal representation, but taps into
of time. In other words, the question of art futures is irreducible a single ontological continuum of materials-forces that cuts across
to the reification of an anticipated, calculated or predicted future the traditional nature-culture, nature-technology, human-animal,
(Anthropogenic, Anthropocentric, Anthropocenic, Capitalocenic or inanimate-animate divide. Unlike in Kant, art is not excluded from
otherwise) as a sure quantifiable thing set in stone, so to speak, or the infinite, the latter neutralised and reduced to the static realm of
as all-encompassing knowledge, or information, extracted from an the supra-sensible (Deleuze, 1994, p. 321), but taps into cosmic chaos
aerial drone vista. Instead, for art to attain its consistency as future, “from which it extracts a chaoid sensation” that preserves and amplifies
it might be usefully understood in terms of the Deleuzoguattarian the vibrations of chaotic forces (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, p. 206).
“abstract machine” (Deleuze and Guattari, 2005, p. 510-514), i.e.
a germinal, open-ended diagram of change conceived as a jagged
“cutting edge” of a territorial assemblage. Such an art machine Art as mycelial bio-logic
functions as an immanent yet anomalous and transversal process
necessarily engaging strata (geological, geosocial, etc.) while Following Deleuze and Guattari, art can be conceived as a semi-
remaining irreducible to them. The future aspect of art thus refers porous membrane, an interface, a conductor and a musical resonance
to its functioning as a machine in the Deleuzoguattarian sense: its box. Art fosters connectivity between heterogeneous series. Such
(art-)work as “a set of cutting edges that insert themselves into the series are not networked digitally — in the sense of binary, dialectical
assemblage undergoing deterritorialisation, and draw variations and connections between fixed entities — but through imperceptible
mutations of it” (Ibid., 2005, p. 333). catalysts (cf. Deleuze, 1994, p. 118-119). One might say that the
Therefore, returning to the problem of Art and Speculative thinkers offer a vision of art as intensive, non-digital neural rhizomatic
Futures, one might say that it is not so much a question of a turn connections that find their correlate in the biological phenomenon
toward material things, on the one hand, or a proliferation of multiple of mycelia, i.e. vast networks of fungal threads in the soil operating
alternative and non-hegemonic micro-narratives, knowledges and via intensive chemical reactions (cf. Wohlleben, 2016, p. 94-101;
identities, on the other. The chief question here is rather how can art Mancuso and Viola, 2015, p. 136-8). As Wohlleben (2016, p. 95) points
be untimely? that is, to paraphrase Nietzsche, how can an art-work out, mycelial webs of underground fungal threads occupy a realm “in
work “counter to time, and therefore […] on our time and, let us between animals and plants”. Both-and-neither animal and/or plant,
hope, for the benefit of a time to come” (Nietzsche quoted in Deleuze fungal abstract machines enter a zone of indiscernibility between
and Guattari, 1994, p. 112). In response to this at once ethological, those categorial determinations.
ethical and aesthetic question, this article draws a certain productive A parallel mycelial bio-logic can be seen in Deleuze’s engagement
mutation of Deleuze, Guattari and their philosophical interlocutors with Spinoza. What Deleuze shows us in his Spinoza books is a
through a series of transversal encounters with diverse art practices. radical reconfiguration of the body. The body is decoupled from
In this way, my experiment seeks to affirm the Nietzschean “belief the organism and instead endures as a precarious set of relations
in the future” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 90) as crucial to formulating new vibrating with inchoate potentialities. According to Deleuze, the body
art ontogeneses. holds together as a composition of “speeds and slownesses between
particles”, distinct yet inseparable from its “capacity for affecting and
being affected” (1988, p. 123). Art too has a body in this sense. In
Art as change fact, it might be conceived as — to borrow Anne Sauvagnargues’s
apt formulation — “an affect of force” (2013, p. 37-46). Already in
For Deleuze and Guattari, art — as distinct from its institutional capture Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, the body is defined simply as “life […]
by the arts — is only ever a question of bringing about qualitative on a plane of immanence” (Deleuze, 1988, p. 123). In turn, A Thousand
change, of creating freedom via an intensive passage through a Plateaus approaches the single continuum of non-organic life from
limit. The thinkers (cf. Deleuze and Guattari, 2005; Deleuze, 2002) many directions. However, particularly relevant for the project of future
understand art as intensive multiplicity that progressively unravels and aesthetics are two formulations. These two are body without organs
thus cannot be subsumed into the category of a transcendent Essence (BwO) (cf. Deleuze and Guattari, 2005, p. 149-166) and machinic
or Form. Art grows as an environment that harbours productive phylum (p. 395-415); the former conceptualised as an embryo or
differences in kind and withers as a mere interaction of differences undifferenciated egg, whereas the latter is confluent with metallurgy
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and panmetallism. It must be pointed out that the embryo is not aligned with the processes of axiomatisation of capital. On the other
formulated negatively as a blank slate but already implies multiple hand, Claire Colebrook (2015, p. 217-34) denounces the category
heterogeneous zones of potential as passages of varying levels of of the post-human as the phantasy of going beyond and before the
intensity. This metastable distribution already carries within it, or on human. Such a phantasy, as the scholar points out, is essentially
it, mobile, elastic and reversible entities that Deleuze (1994, p. 78) humanist and Anthropocentric. Instead, one might follow scholars
calls “larval subjects”. such Elizabeth Grosz (cf. Grosz, Roffe and Stark, 2015, p. 18-19),
Erin Manning (cf. 2016, p. 233-4) and Brian Massumi (2014, p. 92-3)
who use the concept of the more-than-human. Alternatively, one
Art as ontogenetic technology might employ the concept of becoming other-than-human (cf. Grosz,
2004, p. 63) or, better still, becoming anomalous human — becoming
Through an astounding array of syntheses relating to time, ahuman. What is at stake in the above formulations is a vision of an
unconscious psychic processes, space, matter, metal and art, Deleuze open-ended, non-teleological metamorphosis. Rather than arriving
and Guattari offer an account of ontogenesis as a three-dimensional at any particular destination, more-than- human designates ongoing
rhythmic multiplicity. Namely, according to the thinkers (1) relations modulations of intensity immanent to a particular state of affairs but
between chaosmic forces articulate (2) a heterogeneous, porous and at the same time harbouring its virtual potential for change.
resonant surface, or a field, as a matrix of emergence of intensities.
The intensive passages in turn bringing about (3) emergent mobile
subjectivations. The account of ontogenesis as machinic functioning Art as machinic phylum
or synthesis of a number of co-implicated yet distinct aspects is a
refrain that reverberates across all of the Deleuzoguattarian oeuvre. The Deleuzoguattarian formulation of machinic phylum — or, in other
Such vision of complex topological folding performs a mutation words, “a technological lineage” (2005, p. 406) — is particularly
of Freud’s mappings of psychic functioning and at the same time important as it is engages the continuum of materials and forces,
complements the Kantian schemata of active faculties, the latter as postulated by the thinkers, without giving the ontological priority
conception heavily critiqued by Deleuze and Guattari for its reactionary to the human. In their “Treatise on Nomadology” forming part of A
capture of potential and stratification of change. Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (2005, p. 404-16) offer a
The complex account of qualitative change as conceived by Deleuze vision of synthesis pertaining to matter. The Deleuzoguattarian vision
and Guattari cannot in any simple sense be reduced to the notion of of matter is encapsulated in material processes related to metals, such
flows. One further implication of their formulation of metamorphosis as the production weapons and their use by nomadic tribes on the
is a profound reconfiguration of the concept of technology. Technology vast expanses of the Great Steppe. As Deleuze and Guattari point out:
is not something uniquely human, man-made, and not something
uniquely based on a binary-digital paradigm. Suffice it to invoke the What metal and metallurgy bring to light is a life proper to matter, […].
mycelium here as an encapsulation of this alternative technological Metallurgy is the consciousness or thought of the matter-flow, and metal
paradigm. Technology can be understood as a transversal process the correlate of this consciousness. As expressed in panmetallism,
of emergence that produces larval subjectivities in a metastable metal is coextensive to the whole of matter, and the whole of matter
environment. Such larval crystallisations are immanent to their to metallurgy. Even the waters, the grasses and varieties of wood, the
milieu and constitute its after-effect. Thought, too, is an emergent animals are populated by salts or mineral elements. […] Metal is the
phenomenon as it arises in the shock of encounter of a multiplicity. conductor of all matter. The machinic phylum is metallurgical, or at least
As Deleuze points out, “something in the world forces us to think. has a metallic head, as its itinerant probe-head or guidance device.
This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental (2005, p. 411)
encounter” (1994, p. 139).
This metallic synthesis is not so much a case of assigning agency to
metals. Instead, it is a matter of the human and the metallic entering
Art as ahuman alliance — or, better still, composing — a zone of indiscernibility. It is a
matter of forging a field of becomings through mutual use, incubation,
One might also wonder how the Deleuzoguattarian account of modulation and mutation.
metamorphosis relates to the notion of the human. To be sure, the One might ask what is this machinic phylum or rather how does
category of the human effects representational and symbolic capture it function?
of complex intensive changes in an environment, but at the same Deleuze and Guattari (2005, p. 404-11) conceive this concept
time this stratification feeds back into the real as a structuring force as a plane of matter- in-variation. Matter is understood as a field of
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unformed energetic potentialities whose forces already engender Four experiments in future aesthetics.
singularities, e.g. the particular proportion — the specific relation —
Art writing as an aesthetic composition
of ingredients in a metal. The particular configuration of singularities
makes possible certain operations that constitute processes and of forces
events of deformation, such as melting. At the same time, the
The philosophical thought of Deleuze and Guattari destroys the false
singularities and operations are inseparable from the metal’s traits
dualism and opposition between what is traditionally considered as
of expression or qualities such as hardness, colour, weight, etc.
“art theory” — art writing, art criticism, art history, art philosophy
Extending this logic to art, we might say that the process of emergence
— and “art praxis”. As Erin Manning and Brian Massumi (2014, p.
of an art-work is inseparable from its material composition. One
vii-viii) point out, both art and philosophy constitute a practice. Such
might also say — after Spinoza — that metals have a particular
a practice entails an encounter with an outside and a diagramming
spatio-temporal configuration that relates to their affects, what they
of its forces. The following case studies produce a machinic phylum.
can do. For Deleuze and Guattari, metals and metallurgy encapsulate
They attempt to forge a new, transversal lineage that reveals art as
the workings of machinic phylum whereby matter-energy flows are
an ontogenetic technology. Art writing in itself constructs affective
conceived as inseparable from its singularities and traits of expression.
weapons capable of conducting imperceptible forces. Writing on art
Such a formulation runs counter to what Simondon identifies as the
hylomorphic schema. The hylomorphic schema (2005, p. 408-11) composes an art practice flush with the world, a composition that
refers to the essential discontinuity and opposition of Form and Matter might be understood as what Isabelle Stengers (2005) terms “an
whereby transcendent forms are opposed to devalued, passive matter. ecology of practices”.
Matter in this schema becomes reduced to a passive and homogenous
site of moulding or inscription of a fixed form imposed from without. Experiment 1. 1636: Pieter Jansz. Saenredam—
Neither do Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 178) subscribe to the Interior of the Church of St. Bavo in Haarlem2
phenomenological schema of incarnation and embodiment expressed What Walter Liedtke (1982, p. 36) identifies in Saenredam’s
in its vision of spirit/mind and matter harmoniously clasped together architectural paintings is a curious feature he terms “elastic planarity”.
in the flesh of the lived body. Instead, Deleuze and Guattari (2005, p. Saenredam’s art-works operate like a membrane oscillating between
409, 562) overcome the matter-form dualism by adopting Simondon’s the perspectival illusion of depth and surface flatness. In this way,
notion of modulation that has only the in-between. Machinic phylum his church interiors become tensile surfaces that deform the optical
opens up a vision of energetic materiality vibrating with potential,1 coding of space through perspective. St. Bavo creates the hallucinatory
a continuum of materials-forces encapsulated in the figure of the effect of a bas-relief that unravels a haptic space whereby the eye
itinerant metallurgist. The smith — the artisan — intuits and follows assumes the function of touch. The haptic effect is articulated as a
flows of energetic matter but at the same time endures as a bundle close-range view that surveys space by touching, thus disorganising
of relations that become more-than-human. In other words, in the fixed functions of the senses and creating a BwO. The large column
the process of forging weapons, the smith becomes a prosthesis is unmoored from linear time and punctual, homogenous and coded
that enters into composition with an outside, resonating with and space. It is no longer a representation of the column, but a tubular,
amplifying its forces. The nomadic Scythian curved sabre invoked by cylindrical metallic plane that effects a metamorphosis of the human; it
Deleuze and Guattari (2005, p. 404-6) as an example of technological is a threshold that effects intensive passage into a world-yet-to-come.
lineage might thus be considered an art-work that at once expresses If Roland Barthes once saw Saenredam’s work as a depopulated and
and constructs the world, deforms and assembles it in such a way that objectless aesthetics of silence, this silence is a non-representational
the producer and the product enter a zone of indiscernibility. What is realm of whirling planar forces and their affects. To quote Barthes
produced is not a determinate, single identifiable thing, but a process (1972, p. 3), for Saenredam “to paint so lovingly these meaningless
of becoming, a line of mutation and its affects that exceed the lived, surfaces, and to paint nothing else — that is already a ‘modern’
empirical state of affairs. We no longer ask what is a sabre — what aesthetics of silence”. Portions of the painting, especially around the
is an art-work in its essence — but what it can do, which are its large gilded organ, depart from the perspectival illusion and instead
nuances, thresholds, degrees of intensity, how much force and how launch a contorted, Mannerist, manual line that no longer delimits
long before it breaks. The curved sabre extends a mycelial sieve that or outlines anything, but is emancipated as Worringer’s nomadic line
maps the filaments of becoming. (cf. Deleuze and Guattari, 2005, p. 496-99) expressing art’s own non-
1. The Deleuzoguattarian formulation of energetic materiality makes resonance with Karen Barad’s “agential realism” attending to the ongoing differential and nonlinear process of
“mattering” of matter, cf. Barad (2007, p. 145-53).
2. A reproduction of the painting is available at: <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-359>.
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organic and inhuman will. The manual — but not digital — character creates a new organ inside the artist’s thighs at the same time as
of the nomadic line is amplified by Saenredam’s technique of gilding the artist’s sexual organs attain the phase of involution. The artist’s
the organ. In this way, the artist becomes a metallurgist guided by organised — lived, gendered, situated — body enters a zone of
the particular, singular properties of metal alloys. creative atavism bustling with potential, extending a plateau of
intensity. Through its metallic sensations, its metallic coldness,
Experiment 2. 1974-5: Marek Konieczny—Orion’s Sickle3 Orion’s Sickle opens the quivering body to an untimely future. The
and Santa Conversatione4 work disorganises the body by suspending it in a metallic colloidal
Marek Konieczny is an artist associated with the Polish neo-avant-garde envelope, fabulating the possibility of a-sexual reproduction of forces
of the 1970s. Originally an engineer specialising in the construction of through the affective powers of art.
pre-fabricated elements with a focus on curved spaces, in particular
hyperbolic paraboloid roofs rendered in reinforced concrete. In 1974 Experiment 3+4. 2011-7: Arslanbek Sultanbekov’s “Kılkopuz”5
·
Konieczny embarked on a practice called “Think Crazy”, a strategy and Raphael Rogiński —Z ywizna6
that the artist has followed to this day. Konieczny’s art brings into relief Arslanbek Sultanbekov is a Nogay musician who uses the traditional
art as a technology — an engineering of forces that are captured in Turkic shamanic bowed instrument called kılkopuz made from a
expressive materials. Think Crazy encapsulates the Deleuzoguattarian single piece of wood, furnished with two strings made of horse’s tail
understanding of metallurgy as a consciousness of matter-flow. Cast hair. Many Turkic legends refer to the kopuz as a transmutation of
in this way, art becomes an interface between thought and things — human and animal bodies and spirits (cf. Deligöz, 2014). Sultanbekov’s
an analogue modular synthesiser. performance brings into relief music’s timbral quality that overspills
In 1975, Konieczny developed a series of short looped videos called the melodic, formal progression, forging a surface of modulation.
“living images”. Santa Conversatione features an encounter between The performance is a process that maps the forces of kılkopuz’s
gilded humanoid figures. The work engenders a disorganisation of constituent materials via its tonal, vibratory and timbral intensities,
the body. The body is here no longer defined, or individuated, by its thus creating a textured envelope through which music at once
prescribed function or form — head, breasts as form-signs — but by expresses and detunes the world.
a degree of variation. Such a Spinozian vision of the body is defined The kılkopuz effect is further amplified by the Polish-Jewish
by the potential for its non-teleological becoming-other which plays guitarist Raphael Rogiński. In 2015, the musician embarked on
itself out on the three interconnected intensive dimensions: (1) the a dialogue with selected compositions of John Coltrane. In the
haptic vision which rewires the eye as the hand, (2) the flickering process, Coltrane’s compositions were rendered indiscernible
surface of the film and (3) the single frame of the film that acts as through the metallic effects of Rogiński’s prepared guitar. In this
membrane enclosing the coupled and coupling relations of forces. singular experiment, the metallic BwO of the guitar has generated a
Konieczny’s surfaces produce a desire that occupies a plateau of sonorous field whose rippling intensities overflow the considerations
undifferentiated, unformed and inchoate intensity; pure potentiality of pitch. A parallel logic can be seen in Rogiński’s recent collaboration
that is not measured by and resolved in sensual pleasure. with Genowefa Lenarcik — a Polish folk singer from the primeval
Konieczny’s work expresses the idea of freedom wherein the forest in the Kurpie region in north-eastern Poland. The project is
lineages of the embryonic body — the pure potentiality of BwO — mobilised around the concept of Z· ywizna denoting “nature” in the
and the metal are intertwined, thus entering multiple, non-localised Kurpie dialect. Kurpie has been geographically a secluded area
trans-gender connections, passing through various mobile stages, and historically a refuge for outlaws, a sylvan border to state and
encountering provisional functions. The embryonic body and the metal class politics. The Rogiński-Lenarcik encounter reveals nature as
do not engender the relations of control, mastery and dominance ontogenetic technology that puts into contact metallic intensities and
but the relations of reciprocal, yet asymmetrical determination; the vocal vibrations. Such a vision of nature operates like a resounding
relations of resonance induced by mutual use, prosthesis, incubation network of forest echoes (cf. Lenarcik on the importance of echo for
and catalysis. This can be seen in Konieczny’s 1974 body art piece the Kurpie music in Lenarcik and Rogiński, 2016).
Orion’s Sickle whereby the eponymous mythical, world-historical Rogiński links Kurpie’s articulation of resistance to serfdom to the
figure of a hunter designates an intensive passage. Orion’s Sickle vibrations of the American delta blues. Most importantly, the artist
launches an affective weapon — an abstract, nomadic line that (Rogiński, 2016) dissociates himself from the post-modernism that
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he sees as a play, remix and consumption of cultural capital. Instead, DELEUZE, G. (2002). Bergsonism. (B. Habberjam and H. Tomlinson,
he advocates music as resistance, the latter framed in terms of the trans.). New York: Zone Books.
avant-garde. According to Rogiński (2016), “we create a tradition DELEUZE, G. (2003). Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. (D.W.
that is not yet defined, there are tracks, networks, the new human, Smith, trans.). London and New York: Continuum.
the new attitude and new realities”. The artist does not see himself DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F. (1984). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
as an agent, but as a smith. He echoes Deleuze and Guattari for Schizophrenia. (R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. R. Lane, trans.). London:
whom what is at stake in both music and metallurgy is “a continuous The Athlone Press.
development of form” inseparable from “a continuous variation of DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F. (1994). What is Philosophy? (G. Burchell
matter” (2005, p. 411). Such continuous matter-force modulation and H. Tomlinson, trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
gives rise to “a widened chromaticism [that] sustains both music DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F. (2005). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and metallurgy” (Ibid., p. 411). and Schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, trans.). London and Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
DELIGÖZ, A. (2014). “Türk Dünyasında Tırnakla ·Icra Edıl en Yaylı Bir
Conclusion: art future as a new instinctive Çalgı: Kılkopuz. A Stringed Instrument Played Using Fingernails
animal of Turkish World: Kılkopuz”. Türk Dünyası I·ncelemeleri Dergisi.
Journal of Turkish World Studies. Vol. XIV, no. 1 (Yaz 2014), pp.
The four untimely art-works discussed above open up an aesthetics of 141-54. [Accessed: 29 January 2017]. <http://tdid.ege.edu.tr/
the future, drawing a line of technological variation engaging thought files/dergi_14_1/atakan_deligoz.pdf>
and matter. We might therefore conclude this proposal for the future GROSZ, E. (2004). The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the
of art by invoking Marinetti’s Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature Untimely. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin. <https://doi.
from 1917: org/10.1215/9780822386032>
GROSZ, E.; ROFFE, J.; STARK, H. (2015). “Deleuze and the Nonhuman
Capture the breath, the sensibility, and the instincts of metals, stones, Turn: An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz” In: H. STARK and J. ROFFE
woods, and so on, […] Be careful not to assign human sentiments to (eds.) Deleuze and the Non/Human. Houndmills, UK and New York:
matter, but instead to divine its different governing impulses, its forces Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 17-24.
of compression, dilation, cohesion, disintegration, its heaps of molecules LENARCIK, G.; ROGIŃSKI, R. (6 June 2016). Interviewed by Marek
massed together or its electrons whirling like turbines. There is no point Horodniczy. “Scena alternatywna: Genowefa Lenarcik i Raphael
in creating a drama of matter that has been humanized. We want […] a Rogińskii” [Alternative scene: Genowefa Lenarcik and Raphael
new instinctive animal whose guiding principle we will recognize when Rogiński]. Pegaz. TVP 1 [Accessed: 29 January 2017]. <https://
we have come to know the instincts of the various forces that compose vod.tvp.pl/27039445/scena- alternatywna-genowefa-lenarcik-
it. (2009, p. 122) i-raphael-roginski>
LIEDTKE, W. A. (1982). Architectural Painting in Delft: Gerard
Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, Emanuel de Witte. Doornspijk,
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MANCUSO, S.; VIOLA, A. (2015). Brilliant Green. The Surprising History
BARAD, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and and Science of Plant Intelligence. (J. Benham, trans.). Washington
the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham and London: Duke and London: Island Press.
University Press. <https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388128> MANNING, E.; MASSUMI, B. (2014). Thought in the Act. Passages
BARTHES, R. [1953] (1972). “The World as Object”. Critical Essays, in the Ecology of Experience. London and Minneapolis:
(R. Howard, trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, University of Minnesota Press. <https://doi.org/10.5749/
pp. 3-12. minnesota/9780816679669.001.0001>
COLEBROOK, C. (2015). “Who Comes after the Post-human?” In: MANNING, E. (2016). The Minor Gesture. Durham and London: Duke
H. STARK and J. ROFFE (eds.). Deleuze and the Non/Human. University Press. <https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822374411>
Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 217-34. MASSUMI, B. (2014). What Animals Teach Us about Politics. Durham
<https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137453693_13> and London: Duke University Press.
DELEUZE, G. (1988). Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. (R. Hurley, trans.). MARINETTI, F. T. [1912] (2009). “Technical Manifesto of Futurist
San Francisco: City Lights Books. Literature” In: C. POGGI and L. WITTMAN (eds.) Futurism: An
DELEUZE, G. (1994). Difference and Repetition. (P. Patton, trans.). Anthology. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 119-125.
London: The Athlone Press. ROGIŃSKI, R. (8 January 2016). Interviewed by Tomasz Obertyn.
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Recommended citation
PRZEDPEŁSKI, R. (2017). “A manifesto for metallic avant-garde. Art as machinic phylum in Pieter
Jansz. Saenredam, Marek Konieczny, Raphael Rogiński and Arslanbek Sultanbekov”. In: Vanina
HOFMAN and Pau Alsina (coords.). “Art and speculative futures”. Artnodes. No. 19, pp. 7-15.
UOC [Accessed: dd/mm/yy].
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3011>
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Radek Przedpełski
Trinity College Dublin
przedper@tcd.ie
<http://radekprzedpelski.com/>
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ARTICLE
NODE: “ART AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES”
Abstract
In this paper, I want to think about art and philosophy in relation to time. I want to think about
what art and philosophy have in common in that respect, which I consider to be something of
the greatest importance (their common purpose). I do this by reading three books in which this
aesthetics and this philosophy of time ‘happens’, namely Michel Tournier’s Friday and Haruki
Murakami’s 1Q84 and Kafka on the Shore. It is my belief that the three books in question are able
to realise many different interventions in the economic, social and political entanglements that
make up the present. And that they, consequently, are able to offer us a wholly different earth
to which we had been blind. An earth that we, for some reason, were unable to think before.
Keywords
New Materialism, Posthumanism, continental philosophy, time, literary studies
Resumen
En este artículo me propongo meditar acerca del arte y la filosofía en relación con el tiempo.
Quiero pensar en lo que une al arte y a la filosofía en este sentido, que es algo que considero
de la máxima importancia (su finalidad común). Con este fin voy a leer tres libros en los que
esta estética y esta filosofía del tiempo “sucede”: Viernes o los limbos del Pacífico, de Michel
Tournier y 1Q84 y Kafka en la orilla, ambos de Haruki Murakami. Tengo la convicción de que
los tres libros que me ocupan pueden materializar numerosas intervenciones diferentes en los
conflictos económicos, sociales y políticos que conforman el presente. Y que, por consiguiente,
pueden ofrecernos un mundo completamente diferente ante el cual hasta ahora hemos sido
ciegos. Un mundo que, por algún motivo, éramos incapaces de pensar anteriormente.
Palabras clave
Nuevo materialismo, posthumanismo, filosofía continental, tiempo, estudios literarios
artnodes
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An entire difference of nature subsists between what is joined together Let us get back to our books… to the crack as it announces itself
or what is narrowly extended. when Robinson realises that he is unable to live the life that the
Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense deserted island is offering him, and when Aomame, the main character
in 1Q84, realises that the city of Tokyo is not the city of Tokyo as she
In this paper, I want to think about art and philosophy in relation to knew it before. That moment I call the crack. It’s the moment that
time. I want to think about what art and philosophy have in common makes both books. Both books happen at this crack.
in that respect, which I consider to be something of the greatest As readers, we are not just reading, as in following the words from
importance (their common purpose). I do this by reading three books page to page; we actually feel the infinitesimal cracks slowly, but
in which this aesthetics and this philosophy of time ‘happens’, namely meticulously mapping the weakest parts of the old earth’s surface. The
Michel Tournier’s Friday and Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Kafka on book is happening. The earth we believed we were living on — that
the Shore. But before I start with that, I should note that I don’t believe organised, territorialised earth — gently breaks open, as its hard
in the difference between fiction and non-fiction when it comes to (re) surface cracks and presents us with the softness within. The chrysalis,
reading books. As Michel Serres stresses over and over: the difference the pop, is smooth, is infinite, and has an ideal form when it comes to
between novels and philosophy is a very recent invention of academia. resisting the pressures from both inside and outside. But the powers
In fact, the three, above-mentioned works prove to me, once again, that have been hidden inside, powers that have been hidden from us,
that this difference does not exist. All three, in a way, practice the are now slowly, but steadily, surfacing. And of course, this is what
reality of the absurd and the absurdity of reality. As part of a single we fear. For we all know that something is about to happen that will
flow. And it is actually in that flow that they do art and that they do destroy everything as we now know it.
philosophy. We know very well that the crack does not stop with the pop or
It is my belief that the three books in question are able to realise with the city, the beach or the island. When we live through the book
many different interventions in the economic, social and political we feel that because of this crack both Robinson and Aomame will
entanglements that make up the present. And that they, consequently, be cracked, lacerated and laid open. The entire island of Speranza
are able to offer us a wholly different earth to which we had been as well as the city of Tokyo, as they include flora and fauna that live
blind. An earth that we, for some reason, was unthinkable before. it, the languages that live, the organs that make up the biospheres
Let us start with the most absurd moment that actually binds two of that live it… All of its ‘life’ will be subjected to the crack.
these books together. Already in the first pages of these books, both Robinson and
In Tournier’s Friday and in Murakami’s 1Q84, the dying of the Aomame have entered another world, a world that is in no way the
great goat is the advent of something new, of the unforeseen. In same as the world we once knew. The crack has always already
both books, a goat functions as a sort of a sacrifice, becoming the happened long before we notice! Now Robinson and Aomame will
medium through which another earth is invited to realise itself. have to find out how they are cracked, and how the deserted island
This new and unknown earth bears no relation whatsoever to the and the city of Tokyo are cracked. What caused it? Robinson asks us:
earth as we know it. In 1Q84 it presents itself in the opening of the why is this deserted island not functioning like the inhabited world
chrysalis. In Friday it is the opening of the beach. In both books, in which I previously lived? Why are its most elementary systems,
this is actually the grand theme: the smoothest of all surfaces is religion and capitalism, not functioning here? What is this wholly
about to crack. ‘other’ life, that I am suddenly subjected to, all about? Aomame asks
By the way, when I talk of ‘another earth’ here, I mean the earth us: what kind of city is this, this dark and obscure non-place run
in the most material sense of the word as well the ideas that follow by the Little People that never care to reveal themselves (except
from it. And when I say that the earth is unforeseen, I mean that our through the goats’ mouth). I cannot sense this city, and only feel a
thinking falls short, for whatever reason, of understanding this earth. fear revealing itself in this wholly other soft pulse. The new Tokyo
And I guess that in recent times, we have removed ourselves more is a city that oozes out, whose heartbeat is a wave. It is a city that
and more from the earth. I completely agree here with Michel Serres exists only in and through its liquid rhythm, it seems.
when he offers us the recipe of modern western thinking: We (Robinson and Aomame) have no idea what the future will
bring us. Death, for sure. But in what way? As the death it brings
Take away the world around the battles, keep only conflicts and debates, us is ungraspable (again, nonsensical), we are dying to know what
thick with humanity and purified of things, and you obtain stage theater, comes after. Lucretius tells us that everything will reappear but in
most of our narratives and philosophies, history, and all of social science: another form, a form that bears no resemblance to those forms
the interesting spectacle they call cultural. Does anyone ever say where with which we are acquainted. New forms will be formed. New
the master and the slave fight it out? Our culture abhors the world. biospheres will be formed. Should we make notes, should we use
(1995b, p. 3) little stones or breadcrumbs to ensure the minimal of continuity
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possible? Should we try to hang on to some sort of linearity, some the day. Aomame and Kafka are firmly woven into the present which
sort of cause and effect? is why they are in fear of the cracks in the earth underneath them.
There is a crack in the world; Nakata, the hero of Murakami’s For them, the present absorbs everything, as they are absorbed by
Kafka on the Shore had already noticed. There is a crack in the world. the present. The present territorialises the earth, the economic, social
Aomame, in 1Q84, cannot cope with the changing world, is overtaken and political realities of the day; measures the earth; fixes it and
by fear and searches for ways to escape this new earth. In Kafka on intends to realise it according to its standards. Time, with Aomame
the Shore, the other main character, Kafka or the boy named crow, and Kafka, is the gradual movement from present to present, from
has a similar response, insisting on continuing with his life as much the slow and organised shifts in the economic, social and political
as possible. Stuck to the territories they are accustomed to, to the reality of the day. Yet always too fast. Dangerously fast.
grammar they’ve always used, the signs and images with which they Robinson and Nakata, obviously, live a different time. A smoother
are familiar, Kafka and Aomame live a reality that is as real as the time, unquantifiable, which actually lacks a present. They live a world
stars we see in the sky every evening. Stars that have already been in which the economic, social and political reality of the day does not
dead for a million years. matter anymore. Their time knows of a virtual past and a virtual future.
There is a crack in the world, Nakata notices time and again. But this past and future do not have a relation to each other, they do
How is it that Nakata is aware of it? And how come Robinson, too, not desire a relation, they are in every way free, floating, unformed.
all of a sudden, sees ‘another island’? In Kafka on the Shore, from the Robinson and Nakata have found an immense freedom as their lives
start of the book, Nakata, is wholly different from Kafka. Kafka is a are not confined to a present and the limits that it flows into (its past,
pretty, rational young man whose world all of a sudden seems to fall its future). Robinson and Nakata, with smiles on their faces, ward off
apart. Nakata is not rational at all. At least not in Kafka’s sense. Nakata any realisation of a present, using the virtual past and the virtual future
is a strange character. Talking the language of cats but not really of as their tools to intervene in anything that even remotely resembles
man… Moving in ways considered impossible for man too… At night… a present. They never stop playing with the economic, social and
popping up in the strangest places. Nakata, in many ways, is ‘not- political realities that they find on their way. For them, time means to
human’. Post-human, post-organic, post-subjective, even. But perhaps find ways to, always already, disturb the present and to reterritorialise
because of that, he is extremely sensitive to what is going on: extremely it. Facing all sorts of difficulties (obstacles), they live a very joyful life,
sensitive and able to feel the earth in very remarkable ways. All the time very much in contrast to Aomame and Kafka.
he is experimenting with different forms of language as a means of For Robinson and Nakata, the present is nothing but the permanent
exploring the unknown earth, of feeling what forms of life this unknown crisis that allows for an infinite series of interventions. It is a crisis
earth allows for. Kafka is the traditional hero of the story; a tragic figure that they understand only through its cracks. That actually desires (or
who is desperately seeking ways to expand an idea of normality that forces) the cracks to break it open and to speculate upon this new past
might have worked before but that has nothing to do with the world in and this new future. Time, for Robinson and Nakata, does not ‘exist’;
which he now lives. He is afraid that he, that his world, that everything rather, it has to be invented over and over again. (This also explains why
will die. Which has, of course, always already happened. Long ago. both of them do not age: they were not young and they will never grow
Robinson, in Tournier’s book Friday, has the stubbornness (the old). Their time is a pure empty form of time, the eternal truth of time
rationale, the fear) of Kafka, but finds out the hard way that he has to that does not allow itself to be measured. Time itself is permanently
live the life that Speranza, the island, wants him to live. Living on the changing, as it traverses, without limits, the crisis of today. Being
deserted island, he has to explore the unknown earth, he has to feel empty these times are, in fact, the cracks that mark the contemporary.
what forms of life the island allows. And Robinson actually succeeds The cracks which are not so much ‘in’ time, as that happen with the
in living in this world without Others, in this unterritorialised world time (the con-temporary) and consequently they are the same thing.
in which thinking and the earth have once again merged. Where the The cracks that disturb the economic, the social and the political
earth, in all of its appearances, is once again the object of thinking reality of today and that keep on disturbing it (since this form of time
while thinking is the idea of the earth. Where ‘thinking’ and ‘earth’ knows no present). The cracks keep on playing (with) the present.
are actually the same thing. In Tournier’s Friday and in Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore,
Aomame, Kafka, Robinson and Nakata offer us an aesthetics, Robinson and Nakata respectively personify this second form of time,
which is a philosophy of nature, and my claim is that they do that this intervening qualitative force which we could generalise as ‘the
most convincingly in their practising of time. Let me introduce a few creative act’. It is their virtual presence (Robinson and Nakata) that
concepts in order to clarify the different notions of time at stake here... smooths these books, not just from cover to cover, but by making all
First of all, there is the present, which fills time completely with sorts of transversal connections to the crisis of today, thereby cracking
Aomame and Kafka. Past and future for them are relative to the the hegemonies of the present. Again, how different they are from
present, consequences of the economic, social and political reality of Aomame and Kafka, whose lives are by all means locked up in the
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book. Too attached to the ‘worlds of others’ (which is another way to the artwork. Or to express this in broader terms: they only happen
of verbalising the economic, social and political relations they find in thought while they produce the creative.
themselves in), they remind us of Pierre Dumaine and Ève Charlier, Rephrasing ‘the creative act’ in these more general terms shows
from Sartre’s The Chips Are Down, about whom we know, from the us how philosophy and art, the way I’d like to use these concepts,
very start of the book, that they are doomed. Their lives are already are by no means limited to the institutions in which they are today
over before the stories unfold. Stories in which nothing happens as organised. To be the free spirit in the Nietzschean sense does mean
Pierre and Ève do not live but fear the cracks of the contemporary. that one has to be a professor at a philosophy faculty, and the creative
The same goes for Aomame and Kafka. is by no means limited to what the art world accepts as art. On the
There are many things happening with Robinson and Nakata, contrary, mapping the power of philosophy and art as they roam
many accidents that do not just hit them, but that, from the very start around in our everyday experiences could well be seen as a way of
of the two books, realise a wholly other world. The strange accident conceptualising so many of the forces that are not impressed by the
that befalls Nakata in the newsflash at the start of Kafka on the Shore, economic social and political powers of the day and just do things
the shipwrecking that befall Robinson at the start of Friday, tear us differently, to great effect. This way we see how philosophy and art
immediately away from the present and merely function as the starting haunt the political present, for instance, especially in times like ours
points for the series of accidents that are about to follow. They became (in which we see a new fascism, a new consumerism and a new
the men of their misfortunes but, since they did that so well, they must conservatism going hand in hand).
both have lead a very happy life, to paraphrase Goethe. They became Both philosophy and art do not function in the present. Philosophy
worthy of what happened to them, their accidents, the wounds they and art are, in themselves, not taken up in the economic, social and
embodied. Having dealt with their accidents so marvellously, they both political reality of the day. Yet they have a very important role in the
discovered a new life, a new body and, consequently, a new earth. contemporary, since, together, philosophy and art have the power to
The creative act happens with time; it is necessarily useless in crack it. They have the weight of the entire earth at their disposal, to
the present. What happened to Robinson and Nakata, for that matter, put the realities of the present under pressure, cracking them where
was completely irrelevant to the present. It made no sense at all. Let they are most vulnerable, where the surfaces that aim to keep them
us be very strict about this; the creative act cannot play a role in the intact, are most fragile.
economic, social and political realities of the day. The creative act And thus, in the end, reterritorialising our thinking on the cracks of
is, however, extremely valuable for the contemporary as it keeps on the contemporary, (per)forming the cracks that intervene in the present,
fighting the illusions of the present, narratives like capitalism and is not at all limited to aesthetics and epistemology. On the contrary, as
organised religion, like State power and identity. The creative act will the cracks move in every possible direction, they immanently practice
always traverse all of these fables with a single blow, breaking them a philosophy of nature. They necessarily unfold an ecosophy, showing
open immanently. The creative act simply does not function with its us how all the current crises are connected to one another, are all
strategies which aim to secure binary oppositions, secure hierarchies suffering from a similar present, are all dying to be broken open.
and secure the ongoing internalisations of these hierarchies in place. The creative act offers us a glimpse of the earth to come, as it
There are many people who, for that reason, do not want the creative briefly, instantly, intervenes and pushes everything out of perspective.
act to happen. Who consider Nakata to be a crazy person and Robinson The creative act is what matters with the times, it presents us with
a savage (a villain, an outsider). There are many people who defend the contemporary: cracked open to welcome the new.
the strategies of the present. And it is not only the masters that do
so, but also the slaves who fight for their own slavery. Aomame and
Kafka, both very much hurt by the creative act, by the disturbances References
of the reality of the day, by the cracks in the contemporary, actively
choose to fight this wholly other earth with which they are confronted. DELEUZE, G. (1990) [1969]. Logic of Sense. London: Athlone Press.
Because of the fear of the unknown, because of ignorance, because MURAKAMI, H. (2005) [2002]. Kafka on the Shore. New York: Knopf
of all sorts of ‘prisoners’ dilemmas’, they would prefer to neglect or Publishing Group.
even fix the cracks of the contemporary so as to continue their lives MURAKAMI, H. (2012) [2010]. 1Q84 (three volumes). London: Vintage.
in a non-existent reality. Living their lives as a star that can still be SARTRE, J.-P. (1948). The Chips Are Down. New York: Lear
seen though it died a long time ago. SERRES, M. (1995) [1990]. The Natural Contract. Ann Arbor,
So, in respect to this second form of time, how are these disturbing MI: University of Michigan Press. <https://doi.org/10.3998/
powers, these cracks in the contemporary, these creative acts… mpub.9725>
how are they realised? In a single stroke, of course; yet, through TOURNIER, M. (1997) [1967]. Friday. (N. Denny, Trans.). Baltimore,
two means. They only exist in philosophy, while they only conclude MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
artnodes
http://artnodes.uoc.edu The Cracks of the Contemporary
Recommended citation
DOLPHIJN, R. (2017). “The Cracks of the Contemporary”. In: Vanina HOFMAN and Pau ALSINA
(coords.). “Art and speculative futures”. Artnodes. No. 19, pp. 16-20. UOC [Accessed: dd/
mm/yy].
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3117>
This article is – unless indicated otherwise – covered by the Creative Commons Spain Attribution 3.0
licence. You may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided you attribute it (authorship,
journal name, publisher) in the manner specified by the author(s) or licensor(s). The full text of the
licence can be consulted here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.en.
CV
Rick Dolphijn
Utrecht University
r.dolphijn@uu.nl
Muntstraat 2-2A
Room T1.12
3512 EV UTRECHT
The Netherlands
Utrecht University
artnodes
REVISTA DE ARTE, CIENCIA Y TECNOLOGÍA
http://artnodes.uoc.edu
ARTICLE
NODO «FUTUROS ESPECULATIVOS DEL ARTE»
Resumen
El arte lleva largo tiempo reivindicando un futuro más pleno apelando a la emancipación
individual, la autonomía organizativa o la «comunidad que viene». Paralelamente, emergen
propuestas que problematizan algunos de los presupuestos estratégicos de dichas retóricas,
en cuanto que resultan indisociables de una determinada lógica cultural afín al sujeto liberal.
Las apologías de un cansancio susceptible de desactivar la «violencia neuronal» que despliega
el capitalismo contemporáneo (Han), la potencialidad política de la «extenuación» (Bifo) o la
necesidad de «recuperar el sueño tras su asalto» (Crary) vendrían a ser coartadas programáticas
que han hecho suyas numerosas prácticas y discursos que especulan con un futuro que ya no
deberá pensarse desde formas de acción vinculadas a la tradición insurreccional. De hecho, no
costaría demasiado vincular esas especulaciones a una larga tradición filosófica y estética que
cuestionó determinada vita activa como paso previo para fundar un futuro mejor. El presente
artículo pretende abordar las implicaciones de esas «líneas de fuga» a partir del arte y de la
literatura desde sus estrechos vínculos con una coyuntura ideológica y económica que de
una manera u otra sobredetermina la proliferación de futuros, que «tras los duros trabajos»,
solo serán viables desde terapéuticas de la renuncia.
Palabras clave
arte, futuro, trabajo, renuncia, autonomía
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Abstract
Art has long called for a more fulfilling future by appealing to individual emancipation,
organisational emancipation and the “coming community”. In parallel, proposals are emerging
that complicate some of the strategic assumptions of such rhetoric, since they are inseparable
from a given cultural logic related to the liberal subject. Proposals making the case for a fatigue
that is capable of deactivating the “neuronal violence” that contemporary capitalism unleashes
(Han); the political potential of “exhaustion” (Bifo); and the need to recover sleep after its attack
(Crary), would become programmatic restrictions that have endorsed numerous practices and
talks speculating on a future that should no longer be thought of from the perspective of forms
of action linked to the insurrectional tradition. Indeed, it would not be difficult to link these
speculations to a longer philosophical, aesthetic tradition that challenged the so-called vita
activa as a preliminary step towards establishing a better future. This article aims to address
the implications of these “escape channels” on the basis of art and literature from the point of
view of their close links with an ideological and economic situation that in one way or another
overdetermine the proliferation of futures, that “after the hard work” they will only be viable
through resignation therapeutics.
Keywords
art, future, work, resignation, autonomy
Como se sabe, el futuro tiene su propia historia; por eso no estaría perder de vista el impacto de lo que sucede durante esos años:
demás retrotraerse al pasado para abordar algunos fenómenos y, evidentemente, esa atención también debería valer a propósito
que de una manera u otra sobredeterminan ciertos diagnósticos y de la esfera cultural y sus lógicas hegemónicas. De hecho, sin ir
expectativas a propósito del futuro. Posiblemente, durante los años más lejos, se podría hablar de las implicaciones culturales del
setenta se produjeron una serie de acontecimientos decisivos en lo programa neoliberal y su legitimación en las últimas décadas una
que respecta a esos diagnósticos y expectativas; conviene recordar ideología que exalta al individuo-empresa y la eficiencia creativa
que por entonces el Estado keynesiano se empieza a cuestionar como como paradigma: un fenómeno cuyo reverso –uno de tantos– habría
proyecto ideológico en las economías avanzadas; un hecho que los favorecido la respuesta crítica desde todo tipo de especulaciones,
think tanks neoliberales aprovecharán para imponer su programa que en algunos casos incorporan sus correspondientes expecta-
reformista. En clave macroeconómica, este contexto coincidirá con tivas sobre el futuro. Así pues, convendría situar algunos de esos
la ralentización de la expansión material después de un largo periodo discursos –desde el diálogo con las prácticas artísticas– y sus
de crecimiento. De esta manera, los procesos de acumulación de implicaciones teóricas.
capital se reorientan a otros sectores –el espectacular desarrollo del Recientemente, Byung-Chul Han ha abordado en términos psi-
ecosistema financiero se inicia en aquellos años– y se consolidan cosociales lo que a día de hoy resulta evidente. Dicho a la manera
otros paradigmas organizativo-productivos.1 Junto a ello, el impulso foucaultiana, el sujeto de hoy en día no precisa ser «vigilado y castiga-
de las nuevas tecnologías serán la antesala del boom de las TIC do» –disciplinado de manera coercitiva– para legitimar determinadas
y la New Economy, con todas sus «oportunidades» empresariales formas de control y de comportamiento: él mismo las asume de
asociadas. manera supuestamente «libre» sin consideración negativa alguna.2
La inercia de todo aquello es el escenario de hoy en día; por En efecto, la consolidación de la ética liberal con el auspicio de las
eso mismo, cualquier discurso que se refiera, aunque sea tangen- nuevas tecnologías habría favorecido el autodisciplinamiento y la
cialmente, a cuestiones como al desarrollo de las TIC, la financia- disponibilidad total de los individuos a partir de la consagración de
rización de la economía o la reorganización del trabajo no debería una especie de lógica del Yes We Can –fenómenos como un trabajo
1. Para un análisis del rol que juega –y ha jugado– la financiarización de la economía y sus implicaciones sistémicas, véase Giovanni Arrighi (1999).
2. Byung-Chul Han (2012).
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3. El diagnóstico de Han está emparentado con el desarrollo de la sociedad de control deleuziana. Ambos diagnósticos coinciden en la transición de un paradigma disciplinario a otro en el
que los sujetos ya no están sometidos al «encierro» coercitivo-disciplinario, sino sobre todo al control continuo y a la comunicación inmediata que permitiría una especie de monitorizado
permanente. Para ello, véase Gilles Deleuze (2006).
4. Peter Handke (1990).
5. Ni que decir tiene que el vínculo que aquí se establece entre la obra de Peter Handke y Sam Taylor-Wood es meramente especulativo. Las presuntas conexiones y homologías entre
obras relativamente «dispares» –que ni tan siquiera se contempla por los propios autores– simplemente quiere dar cuenta de una «inclinación» respecto a preocupaciones similares. En
el caso de la hipotética solución a los problemas planteados –o las conclusiones– hasta el momento, competen más a la producción literaria que a la producción visual. Esta aclaración
se debería tener en cuenta a propósito de todo lo sugerido en este artículo.
6. Jonathan Crary (2014).
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implicaciones subversivas asociadas. Porque si no somos capaces insomne– decide cortarse el pelo en las afueras de Nueva York en
de plantear una suerte de «resistencia onírica», la temporalidad 24/7 el peor día posible.8 Durante el largo y accidentado trayecto en una
neutralizará cualquier posibilidad de imaginar –de soñar– un futuro limusina –en una especie de anti-Odisea–, distintos personajes entran
mejor. y salen para hablar de diversas cuestiones con una clarividencia
De esta manera, el capitalismo, en su fase avanzada, extrae inquietante, entre ellas el tema del tiempo y su valorización capitalista:
plusvalía a costa del paulatino deterioro del sueño. De ahí que Naptime
(2002), de Cory Arcangel, proponga un escenario inquietante desde —Hay algo que quiero enseñarte —dijo él.
una perspectiva afín a ese diagnóstico.7 En un vídeo se muestra a —Espera. Estoy pensando.
Mario Bros soñando plácidamente, pero su sueño es un loop que Aguardó. A ella se le tensó ligeramente la sonrisa.
únicamente cambia el tamaño y el color de una superficie idéntica —Es el capital cibernético lo que crea el futuro. ¿A qué equivale esa
en su trama: seguramente porque la rutinaria funcionalidad de su medida llamada nanosegundo?
«mundo diurno» –en este caso evocada en sueños de manera aún —Diez elevado a menos nueve.
más rutinaria si cabe» habría colonizado totalmente el inconsciente —Que viene a ser...
del personaje. Como si Mario solo pudiera soñar únicamente que la —Una milmillonésima fracción de segundo —dijo él.
monótona superficie de un océano digital sin profundidad alguna. —No entiendo ni papa de eso. Pero me indica qué rigor tenemos que
emplear a fin de medir adecuadamente el mundo que nos rodea.
—Están los heptasegundos.
—Vaya, me alegro.
—Y los octosegundos. La septimomilmillonésima parte de un segundo.
—Porque el tiempo es ahora un activo empresarial. Pertenece al sistema
del libre mercado…9
7. Para una contextualización de la trayectoria de Cory Arcangel, véase Christiane Paul (2011).
8. Don DeLillo (2012).
9. DeLillo (2012).
10. No costaría demasiado contraponer el compromiso «artesanal» que reivindica Richard Sennet –aquí representado por el viejo peluquero– al de los cuadros gestores y gerenciales
que ocupan puestos relevantes en las economías actuales. Para ello, véase Richard Sennet (2009). Por otra parte, utilizamos deliberadamente la palabra cuadro para referirnos a
la complejidad de clase en términos sociológicos. Básicamente, seguimos las tesis de los economistas Gérard Duménil y Dominique Lévy, quienes consideran el desarrollo de una
estructura de clase ternaria –y no binaria– integrada por la clase capitalista, cuadros y asalariados. Para un análisis de ello, véase Gérard Duménil y Dominique Lévy (2014).
11. Franco Berardi Bifo (2014).
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12. Citar a continuación las conocidas referencias de esa tradición nos parece un ejercicio un tanto gratuito. Simplemente apuntar que en esa lista también se podrían incluir otros gestos
de deserción, como los de Robert Walser –con sus «improductivos» y lúdicos paseos– o algunos de los personajes de Samuel Beckett –este desde otros presupuestos existenciales,
evidentemente.
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Cita recomendada
PINILLA, Rafael (2017). «Tras los duros trabajos: terapias para el nuevo milenio». En: Vanina
HOFMANN y Pau ALSINA (coords.). «Futuros especulativos del arte». Artnodes. N.º 19, págs.
21-27. UOC [Fecha de consulta: dd/mm/aa]
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3100>
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y usos comerciales siempre que reconozca los créditos de las obras (autoría, nombre de la revista,
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puede consultar en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.es.
13. Perry Anderson (2013, p. 123). Puede considerarse demasiado fácil insistir en la cuestión de no pasar por alto la «complejidad del presente»; sin embargo, si se especula con formas
alternativas de relación social, económica o política, nos parece que determinados programas no contemplan ni tan siquiera una mínima parte de esas problemáticas. De ahí que las
expectativas «utópicas» se resuelvan hoy desde reivindicaciones de autonomía organizativa, cuyo alcance, en el mejor de los casos –si se nos permite la licencia–, no van más allá
de la «reserva indígena».
14. A ese movimiento kenótico también se ha referido Boris Groys como estrategia privilegiada del arte para impugnar los valores hegemónicos del presente. Para ello, véase Boris Groys
(2016 págs. 69-70).
15. Véase William Davis (2014 págs. 148-53).
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Rafael Pinilla
Universitat de Barcelona
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
rpinillas@uoc.edu
Artnodes, N.º 19 (2017) I ISSN 1695-5951 Revista científica electrónica impulsada por la UOC
27
CC
Rafael Pinilla
CC
FUOC, 2017
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
artnodes
E-JOURNAL ON ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
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ARTICLE
NODE: “ART AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES”
Abstract
This essay discusses the work of a series of imaginary artists who are, nevertheless, able to
function as authors in the contemporary art world. Described as parafictional artists, the article
emphasises the capacity of such active practitioners as Donelle Woolford, The Atlas Group, Reena
Spaulings and Barbara Cleveland to interact with the art world in a plausible manner, regardless
of the disclosure of their imaginary nature. These interactions include exhibiting and selling
works, giving interviews, publishing books, or doing performances under their own names.
Unlike earlier body-based investigations into identity, parafictional artists develop disembodied
strategies that some researchers have associated with the use of digitally-constructed avatars.
The question of whether the invention of parafictional artists can be considered as a way to
reject or ignore the political implications of “authentic” identities is debated in detail throughout
the article. The essay, however, opts for understanding these imaginary artists with “real”
careers as a means to discuss and negotiate the complex function of artists’ identities in the
contemporary art world. The text finishes by predicting a future in which parafictional artists
will become ubiquitous, and their growing numbers a possible threat.
Keywords
parafictional artist, authorship, contemporary art world, avatar, (post)identity
artnodes
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Resumen
Este ensayo aborda el trabajo de una serie de artistas imaginarios que, sin embargo, funcionan
como autores en el mundo del arte contemporáneo. Descritos como artistas paraficciona-
les, el artículo subraya la capacidad de profesionales tan activos como Donelle Woolford,
The Atlas Group, Reena Spaulings y Barbara Cleveland para interactuar con el mundo del
arte de manera plausible, con independencia de la divulgación de su naturaleza imaginaria.
Dichas interacciones incluyen la exhibición y venta de obras, la concesión de entrevistas, la
publicación de libros o la realización de perfomances usando su propio nombre. Al contra-
rio que en anteriores investigaciones sobre la identidad, basadas en el cuerpo, los artistas
paraficcionales desarrollan estrategias incorpóreas que algunos académicos asocian al uso
de avatares construidos digitalmente. A lo largo del artículo se debate en detalle la cuestión
de si la invención de artistas paraficcionales puede considerarse como un modo de rechazar
o eludir las implicaciones políticas de las identidades “auténticas”. El ensayo, no obstante,
opta por interpretar a estos artistas imaginarios con carreras “reales” como un medio para
discutir y negociar la compleja función que la identidad de los artistas juega en el mundo del
arte contemporáneo. El texto concluye con la predicción de un futuro en el que los artistas
paraficcionales serán un fenómeno generalizado y su creciente número una posible amenaza.
Palabras clave
artista paraficcional, autoría, mundo del arte contemporáneo, avatar, (post)identidad
artnodes
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The Biennial, held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, of what is generally known as post-identity positions as overcoming
is usually perceived as a site for discussing the intersection of identity certain limitations of classical identity politics. It is, simultaneously,
politics and creativity.1 The inclusion in the 2014 edition of Donelle censured by those attacking the Donelle Woolford project as a strategy
Woolford’s performance Dick’s Last Stand — where, dressed up as that disregards the political significance of authentic non-dominant
a man, she re-enacted a routine by the African American stand-up identities and, consequently, conceals the unjust power relations at
comedian Richard Pryor — sparked the decision of the black artists play in the art world.
collective HowDoYouSayYamInAfrican? (YAMS), who had also been
invited to participate, to pull out of the event. After the controversial
withdrawal, two representatives of the YAMS collective explained Parafictional artists
how their retreat from the exhibition was primarily a protest against
“institutional white supremacy” in North American art organisations, Scanlan is, of course, not the first artist to invent an alternative artistic
while at the same time dramatically describing Scanlan’s imaginary act persona and present work through him/her.3 He is, nevertheless,
as “raping black women conceptually” (Springer and Shields, 2014). exemplary of what I identify as an expanding tendency in recent
Despite (or in light) of the above, Woolford is able to navigate contemporary art for artists to work totally or partially, alone or
successfully between the realms of the real and the imaginary. collectively, under a parafictional identity. By that I do not mean
But, why is she invited to participate in exhibitions, interviewed, the mere substitution of an artist’s officially recognised forename
represented by galleries and supported by curators? It is not a matter by a fictitious one, but rather the more complex articulation of a
of tricking audiences about the veracity of Woolford’s identity, as her parafictional artist who, despite their dubious nature, and through
manufactured origin has been revealed by Scanlan at interviews, a variety of strategies, is able to function as an author; that is, to
exhibitions, and online.2 So, why are these institutions supporting produce works and present them publicly under their own name.
a project with potentially racist and sexist connotations? Is it solely Unlike pseudonyms, parafictional artists have biographies, styles and
because Scanlan is a well-connected professional and people like to interests of their own which might or might not correspond to those of
help their friends? Or could it be that the Donelle Woolford case and their “creators”. In that sense, parafictional artists come closer to what
its investigation into contemporary authorship via fiction is relevant the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa described as “heteronyms”.4
in other ways too? I am borrowing the term parafiction from art historian Carrie
Over the years, Scanlan as himself or as Woolford has responded Lambert-Beatty (2009) who uses it to describe fictional art projects
to questions about the intentions of his imaginary act by framing it in that, at least for a period of time, are taken at face value by a number of
an examination of artistic authorship and agency. For example, the people. Through examples like The Yes Men’s impersonation of World
artist herself stated that her ultimate goal is to go “beyond what my Trade Organization representatives at conferences and on television
physical appearance in the art world will allow” (Woolford, 2007, p. programmes, Eva and Franco Mattes’s (aka 0100101110101101.
64) or, in other words, to challenge the expectations that her identity ORG) well-orchestrated campaign to rename Vienna’s Karlplatz as
as a black, female artist generates. Similarly, in the context of the Nikeplatz, or Michael Blum’s presentation of the pseudo-historical
polemic around the Whitney Biennial, Scanlan (2014) explained how feminist translator Safiye Behar at the 2005 Istanbul Biennial,
the art world “tend[s] to lock artists into a certain type and insist that Lambert-Beatty (2009, p. 54) explains how parafictional projects rely
they stay that way”. Woolford’s initial characterisation of herself as on convincing props and platforms invested with credibility to question
enjoying some kind of mobility between the real and the imaginary current “pragmatics of trust”. Following Paul Virilio’s (2000) insight
enables us to connect this project to an expanding discourse within art into how power operates its censorial control not by omitting data but
that, non-extent of polemic, argues for the “liberation” of artist’s from by inundating us with endless information, Lambert-Beatty praises
the expectations associated with their given identities. The form of parafictions for their capacity to train our ability to distinguish, from
flexible subjecthood that Woolford represents is seen by the advocates the vast amount of material thrown at us, true facts from the rest.
1. The so-labelled “multicultural biennial” of 1993, which provoked the outrage of numerous art critics who censured the importance given to political content over aesthetic values, is
mainly responsible for such characterisation. The Guerrilla Girls’ protests outside the museum denouncing the shortage of female artists included in 1987, or the 2006 edition entrusted
for the first time to two non-US curators, have also contributed to the impression of the celebration of the Biennial as being a likely occasion to generate debate around the institutional
(in)visibility of non-dominant racial, ethnic, gender or sexual identities.
2. For example, on Scanlan’s website, Donelle Woolford appears in his list of works. See “Things that Fall” [Accessed: 21 December 2016] <http://www.thingsthatfall.com>.
3. Marcel Duchamp’s development of R. Mutt or Rrose Sélavy are evident precedents.
4. As it is well-known, Pessoa wrote under numerous identities, including that of a futurist poet (Álvaro de Campos), a neo-classical one (Ricardo Reis), and their common tutor as well as
Pessoa’s own teacher (Alberto Caeiro). For Pessoa, these were not mere pseudonyms, but heteronyms, for each had his own biography and intellectual independency which allowed
them to develop their own interests and make their own aesthetic choices.
artnodes
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The parafictional artists whose practices and concerns I am as BC), an “evolving” collaborative implicated in fashion, photography,
addressing here (including Donelle Woolford) also construct their film and publishing that, in a convenient loop, is at the same time
credibility through the use of convincing props (their artworks) and the multiple author of the novel Reena Spaulings that gave birth to
through their inclusion in events at reliable platforms (museums and the artist and dealer.
galleries). The term is therefore applicable and fits the aspirations of
those interested in analysing how reality and fiction work together in
the construction of an artist’s identity. However, my use of the phrase
parafiction significantly differs from Lambert-Beatty’s one: while for
her, the revelation of the fictionality of parafictions puts an end to
their plausibility, I believe that the disclosure of the imaginary nature
of parafictional artists does not affect their capacity to function as
authors. Quite the contrary, for even after their dual nature has been
revealed, parafictional artists are still able to interact with the world
in a credible manner and, in so doing, further question the classical
real/imaginary dichotomy.
Another term that has been used to describe these fictional artists
with “real” careers is that of avatar. Originally a religious concept, Figure 2. Cover of the novel Reena Spaulings written by Bernadette Corporation, 2004.
an avatar now describes any “computer-generated figure controlled
by a person via a computer” (Coleman, 2011, p. 12). Similarly to
the already mentioned heteronym, these virtual characters can have As the preface of the novel explains, Reena Spaulings was written by
characteristics of their own that do not need to match the offline up to 150 individuals working under the corporation’s name. Along with
identity of the person using them. Art historian David Joselit (2005), the significant use of a model of collective creative labour, the stated
for his part, uses the idiom in connection to a series of practices that ambition of Bernadette Corporation was to publish a sort of iconic
he labelled as “navigational art”. He characterised this art as proposals novel of the new millennia. The final text is, however, fragmentary,
that without being examples of new media art per se allowed artists with constant changes of narrator, and chapters which seem to be
to move freely between physical and virtual territories, confusing the side reflections rather than integrated parts of the narrative. The
distinctions between the factual and the fictional. In his words: “the novel also contains a number of crude sex scenes, and a detectable
avatar makes possible an imaginary/real mobility that the artist’s cynicism in the description of how things work within those not-so-
physical presence in site-specific art could hardly allow” (Joselit, glamorous worlds. Nevertheless, in the influential art history survey
2005, p. 278-79). If in previous generations of artists interested in text Art since 1900, edited by the art historians Hal Foster, Rosalind
identity, the truth of their quest was reinforced by the live presence Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois et al., Reena Spaulings is described “as a
of their own bodies, this seems no longer necessary. kind of manifesto or a general theory of avatars” (2011, p. 764), an
impressive account that is worth exploring further.
The novel follows Reena’s rapidly thriving career within fashion
Manifestos and art in contrast with her dispassionate attitude. Reena’s recurrent
ambivalence as a character is supported by what ends up being
Reena Spaulings was originally a fiction in the most literary sense of the novel’s main theme: the protagonist’s struggle between being
the word: she came to be in a 2003 book entitled with her own name authentic and being non-specific. In the book’s pages we can find
which narrates her “rise” from guard working at the Met Museum in an unsubtle mockery of the widespread presentation of the individual
New York to fashion model and cutting-edge performer (Bernadette as a “unique self”: “Funny how individuality makes you generic”, or
Corporation, 2004). The same year the novel was published, Reena “How regrettable when people all around the world start becoming
Spaulings started to operate in the physical world of art as an selves, tooth-brushing, anus-wiping, voting selves, Americans”
immediately successful artist and as an even more lucrative art (Bernadette Corporation, 2004, p. 154, 158, respectively). Against
dealer. Her oil-based portraits of other art dealers, unusable marble this parodic illustration of identity as a set of repetitive, meaningless
surfboards and stained tablecloths turned into Flags have been characteristics, the heroine’s final ability to become no one is
exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the MoMA and at important galleries presented as key to her success.
in major European capitals. Meanwhile, Reena Spaulings Fine Art Beyond the novel’s narrative, the view that artists are better off
has participated in blue-chip art fairs and represents a long list of by giving up any pretension to individuality would seem in line with
profit-making artists, including Bernadette Corporation (also known the configuration of Reena Spaulings (a literary character constructed
artnodes
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by numerous non-identifiable writers, and a profitable artist whose from identity politics (as either the result of a “frustration with some of
artworks cannot be ascribed to any known individual) as well as with the simplifications and binaries of conventional 1970s-style identity
the decision of a series of creative individuals to take on such an politics” or made “by those oblivious to the history of identity politics
anonymous and even alienating non-identity as BC. These attempts and activisms of the past” [Jones, 2012, p. xx]) or towards a more
at configuring artistic subjectivities whose agency is not limited to the complicated, porous and dynamic conception of identity, what Jones
characteristics — bodily or other — of any one pre-given identity, is positively terms “identification”. For Jones, the post-identity rhetoric
what the art historians describing Reena Spaulings as a manifesto in art (which includes expressions like “post-feminism” and “post-
or theory of avatars are seemingly praising. black”) is the undesirable effect of the dismissal of identity politics.
I have already mentioned David Joselit’s interest in the figure of To Jones’ remark about the frustration with the oversimplification
the avatar. In his study on the negative effects of television in the of identity, and the disregard for the history of identity politics, I would
evolution of US politics, Joselit contrasts how both fiction and non- add the suspicion that in neoliberal societies “identity” is just another
fiction televisual genres sell identities “as coherent stable properties” commodity as fuelling the post-identity positions in art.5 For example,
(2007, p. 149) with how artists working with early video — Bruce Bernadette Corporation’s disembodied strategies have been described
Nauman, Peter Campus or Vito Acconci — represented identities as as ways to “remove themselves from a culture that has forfeited the
unstable, and sometimes incoherent processes. He writes: question of self to the functions of capital” (Simpson, 2004, p. 220).
Although I do not agree with the commercially knowledgeable BC
By calling forth animate images, these artists produce avatars whose being described as rejecting the contradictions of capitalism, it is
purpose is to navigate media ecologies as ‘wrong names,’ storing hard to deny that many kinds of identities — not all — are being
potential power in the fissures of commercial character. (Ibid., p. 163) sold to us as stereotyped products. But, can all parafictional artists
be described as post-identities? Is this turn to fiction and rejection
According to Joselit, therefore, in their capacity as “wrong names”, of authenticity a way of positively “freeing” artists and their art from
avatars do not represent a stipulated position (as right names the restrains of identity? And is that even possible?
supposedly do) but have the potential to “liberate” individuals from In 2011 the all-women Sydney-based collective Brown Council
the ties and expectations associated with pre-marketed identities. found evidence of a pioneer Australian performance artist, Barbara
As Joselit goes on to advocate in his so-titled pro-avatars Manifesto: Cleveland, whose sudden disappearance in 1981 prevented her work
from gaining its rightful place in art history. The group first presented
LOSE YOUR IDENTITY. Don’t believe that you’re a piece of property, a “gay their “rediscovery” at the exhibition-homage Remembering Barbara
man” or an “African American” whose “subject position” is the product Cleveland, and then went on to produce several works based on their
of market research. Use icons opportunistically, and share them with findings about her. At first sight, a number of similarities between
like-minded people. Make an avatar! (Ibid., p. 171) Bernadette Corporation/Reena Spaulings and Brown Council/Barbara
Cleveland come to mind. Apart from their coincidental shared initials,
both collectives are committed to working collaboratively and have
Post-identities? chosen names that reflect a group identity. Bernadette Corporation
and Brown Council also share the responsibility of “(re)discovering” an
But why is identity understood as a negative concept from which artist and presenting her to the art world. Yet, while the configuration
artists should be “freed”? Why is Donelle Woolford challenging of Reena Spaulings is, as I have shown, the result of what can be
the expectations associated with her black female identity? Why described as post-identity concerns, I consider the development of
is Bernadette Corporation encouraging artists to become no one? Barbara Cleveland to be aligned with the type of proposals that Amelia
The applauded turn to fiction as an escape from “the balkanized Jones calls identification.
pieties of identity politics” (Joselit, 2005, p. 278) is, as mentioned, Taken at face value, Brown Council’s project could be interpreted
connected to what has been designated as post-identity rhetoric. as the straightforward feminist recuperation of an under-recognised
According to the art historian Amelia Jones (2012), identity politics woman artist who is being “written back” into the history of Australian
of the 1970s and 1980s was primarily based on binary distinctions performance art. Yet, as has been acknowledged by Brown Council,
between fixed categories of “self” and “other”, and on single-issue Barbara Cleveland is an invention; not an actual artist, but a
concerns like gender, race or sexuality. From the 1990s onwards, parafictional one (Smith, 2015). That said, her story is full of parallels to
however, the discourses on identity evolved in two ways: either away the “discovery” of other “enigmatic” female artists whose life is then
5. For a further analysis of the causes driving the post-identity rhetoric in art see the exhibition catalogue Don’t You Know Who I Am? Art after Identity Politics (Kreuger and Haq, 2014).
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conveniently “invented” to fit certain institutional conventions as well accepted. In my view, the intended confusion between imaginary
as the expectations of the art market.6 More specifically, Cleveland’s and factual at work in Cleveland — including the contradictory
surviving documentation and biographical details — including her information about her biography — is an illustrative example of why
late interest in symbolic rituals and performances in the landscape the development of a parafictional artist can be an effective strategy.
— seem to be referencing a series of clichés associated with the Brown Council is a self-declared feminist collective, and its invention
historiography of performance. For example, some of her images of a historical female artist should not be read as mocking the attempts
performing naked with paint over her body suspiciously resemble to “rewrite” women into history, but as a serious questioning of how
photographs of the works of the US artist Carolee Schneemann, and why such rewriting needs to be done.
while Cleveland’s biography and concerns, as well as her untimely Writer and philosopher Peter Osborne (2013) has also signalled the
disappearance, reminds me of another “tragic” figure of feminist importance of fiction in recent art. For him, the actuality of fiction as a
performance art, the Cuban-US artist Ana Mendieta. contemporary artistic methodology is related to the fictional character
of “the contemporary” itself. As he argues, the contemporary is a term
that embodies a fiction both in terms of time — for the periodisation
“contemporary” generates the impression of the unity of multiple
times — and in terms of space — because it projects uniformity over
distant geopolitical areas. In his view, art and artists can only “occupy,
articulate, critically reflect and transfigure so global a transnational
space” if they are able to reproduce themselves something of the
fictional structure of the contemporary (Ibid., p. 28). Writing about the
Lebanese artist Walid Raad and his pseudo-historical projects with
the made-up collective The Atlas Group, Osborne explains how, in this
case, the construction of the fictional group on the one hand, and of a
series of fabricated documents about the actual Lebanese Civil Wars
(1975-1991) on the other, are both strategies intrinsically linked to
the fictional rationale of the contemporary itself. In Osborne’s opinion,
the capacity of Walid Raad to develop a fictional subject position (The
Atlas Group) and semi-fictional content (constructed videos, diaries
and photos relating to the conflict), is what turn his projects into
successful interventions in the context of the contemporary. To that I
would add that by turning to fiction as his artistic methodology, Raad
is able to produce projects that, despite their geopolitical specificity,
fruitfully intervene in the debates around the identity of contemporary
artists in the global art world.
That non-Western artists exhibiting internationally are expected
to refer to their cultural background in their artworks is the centre of
much critique in discussions about globalisation and contemporary
art (Belting, 2009; Araeen, 2011; Chakrabarty, Joselit, Keeling et al.,
2016). Quite evidently, such discussions share a number of concerns
Figure 3 and 4. Barbara Cleveland, performances, undated. Courtesy of Brown Collective. with the post-identity debates about the gender, race and sexuality of
the artist; namely the dynamic by which non-male, non-white, non-
heterosexual and non-Western artists are expected to be discussing
Considering the amount of references to actual events in the history otherness in their works. Therefore, it is not surprising that The Atlas
of art, and the inclusion of Barbara Cleveland at exhibitions and other Group is considered an avatar in Art since 1900 even if this entry does
public situations, I see Cleveland as a parafictional artist who, despite not mention the effects of globalisation in the identity of the artist.
her non-existence, is able to disclose certain truths about how women One could say that by inventing The Atlas Group — a name whose
artists — and particularly feminist performers — are presented and geographical reference could indicate a Maghreb-related origin, while
6. I am thinking about the nanny-photographer Vivian Maier and the “reconstruction” of her life story in several documentary films, or about the late Indian abstract painter and photographer
Nasreen Mohamedi, whose current institutional success in the West would seem to fit a certain curatorial urge to “rethink” modernity.
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its mythical connotations could suggest a global collective — Raad In the New Testament we can read the story of the encounter
“liberates” himself from his given identity as a Lebanese artist. Yet, between Jesus and a man possessed by demons. According to the
rather than using that strategy to produce artworks unrelated to his Gospel of Mark (5:9), Jesus asked this individual for his name, to
cultural background, his various fictional and parafictional devices which he replied: “My name is Legion: for we are many”. This dramatic
allow him to discuss Lebanon’s history in terms that resonate with line, which has been adopted and adapted by numerous popular
the interests of the international art scene. culture ventures — including black metal bands, horror movies and
Although it is possible to interpret parafictional artists as avatars comic books — was also used by Roland Barthes to characterise
that support post-identity positions, in my view, this turn to fiction in the radical plurality he perceived in a new kind of writing which he
relation to authorship highlights something different. Rather than a described as “text” in opposition to the monolithic, fixed, single and
rejection of identity politics, I interpret it as a means to emphasise sacred interpretation of what until then had been known as “work”:
some of the complicated circumstances experienced by artists
working today (including those of feminist performers or non-Western The work has nothing disturbing for any monistic philosophy…for such
practitioners) while they keep participating in the art world. What a philosophy, plural is the Evil. Against the work, therefore, the text could
is more, it is simply not possible to disassociate art from what we well take as its motto the words of the man possessed by demons.
know or imagine we know about who made it, making any so-called (Barthes, [1971] 1977, p. 160)
“liberation” of art from the “real” or fictional identity of its maker
impossible. As Amelia Jones says: In the sense used by Barthes — and more so taken the intrinsic
dependence between the advent of the text and The Death of the
There is no “object itself” that is not entangled in what we believe about Author (Barthes, [1967] 1977) — the phrase “for we are many” can
the artist or agent we believe to have produced it [my emphasis], whether also frame the radical polysemy implied by parafictional artists and
or not we read, ask or otherwise research about the artist’s biographical the menace that their presence implies.
trajectory or identifications. (Jones, 2012, p. 137) Parafictional artists personify a “possession”, the psychological
perception of the multiple others which co-exist in each of us. Plus,
The return to the object that Jones criticises as part of an attempt to if in present-day self-help discourses the call to “being authentic”
separate the meaning of art from the political reading of the identity of is a sort of sacred motto, parafictional artists imply a certain evil
the artist — regardless of whether this is “authentic” or not — could impossibility to discovering one’s “true self”. From quite a different
indeed be one of the consequences of the proliferation of parafictional perspective, the phrase “My name is Legion: for we are many”
artists. Yet, as I have tried to show, most artists (not all) employ has also been appropriated to articulate political demands for its
parafictional others not as a way to “free” themselves and their art connotations of community, specifically of one made up of outsiders.
from their given identity, but rather, like Brown Council and Walid This was the sense in which the collective fictional identity Luther
Raad, and to a lesser extent Joe Scanlan and Bernadette Corporation, Blissett employed a slightly modified version of the expression in the
to modify certain expectations about who is legitimised to produce Declaration of Rights authored in his name:
and present, to say and see, to witness and testify, without having to
disown or reject the benefits of being part of the art world. What the industry of the integrated spectacle owes me, it is owed to the
many that I am, and is owed to me because I am many [my emphasis].
From this viewpoint, we can agree on a generalized compensation. You will
As many as a legion not have peace until I will not have the money! (Blissett, 1995-96, p. 78)
A multitude of parafictional artists are gathering not outside, but During the second-half of the 1990s, the name Luther Blissett
already within the walls of the art world. Apart from Donelle Woolford, functioned as an open source alias that a network of people and
Reena Spaulings, Barbara Cleveland and The Atlas Group, many others activists used to present counterculture proposals that would feed
with various degrees of visibility are starring in all kinds of encounters. off each other. Originated by a group of Italian students, hackers, and
From metropolises such as New York, London, São Paulo, Sydney and artists, Luther Blissett — a name which had originally belonged to a
Istanbul, to numerous other places all over Europe, America and Asia, British-Jamaican footballer — became, over the course of a few years,
events are showcasing the projects of these non-physical entities. the author of a series of media pranks, interventions in the urban
Art fairs, biennials, lectures, auctions, magazines and universities space and politically-minded texts throughout Europe. The supposed
are slowly becoming the vehicle through which parafictional artists lack of control over the name’s use and the invitation to share its
function as actual authors in the contemporary world; yet no one visibility with whoever was interested in appropriating it, turned Luther
seems to be worrying about the possible outcomes of their ubiquity. Blissett into a “readymade author” with democratic intentions. Linked
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artnodes
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White Supremacy.” Interview by Ben Davis. artnet news, 30 May. WOOLFORD, D. (2011). “Interview by Lorena Muñoz-Alonso”. An
[Accessed: 10 July 2014]. <http://news.artnet.com/art-world/the- Art Newspaper, April 1. [Accessed: 3 December 2016]. <https://
yams-on-the-whitney-and-white-supremacy-30364> selfselector.co.uk/2011/05/30/karma-chamaleon-interview-with-
VIRILIO, P. (2000). Strategy of Deception. (C. Turner, trans.). New York: donelle-woolford/>
Verso.
WOOLFORD, D. (2007). “Interview by Raimundas Malasauskas”. Aprior
Magazine, vol. 13, p. 64–77.
Recommended citation
BRASÓ, E (2017). “Fiction and authenticity beyond the artist’s body”. In: Vanina HOFMAN and
Pau ALSINA (coords.). “Art and speculative futures”. Artnodes. No. 19, pp. 28-36. UOC
[Accessed: dd/mm/yy].
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3101>
This article is – unless indicated otherwise – covered by the Creative Commons Spain Attribution 3.0
licence. You may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided you attribute it (authorship,
journal name, publisher) in the manner specified by the author(s) or licensor(s). The full text of the
licence can be consulted here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/deed.en.
CV
Emma Brasó
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ARTÍCULO
NODO «FUTUROS ESPECULATIVOS DEL ARTE»
Resumen
Los cruces entre el arte, la ciencia y la tecnología se extienden en una escena vasta y rela-
tivamente indefinida, modulada por una serie de cualidades inherentes a sus prácticas en
permanente tensión: a las revisitadas fricciones entre disciplinas, medios y metodologías
disímiles que sus obras entrañan, e inevitablemente dificultan su clasificación, se añade la
frecuente labor de artistas tendientes a incorporar saberes científicos y técnicos o bien a
trabajar en conjunto con especialistas en otros campos disciplinares, con lo que se disuelven
las fronteras entre la noción de obra de arte tradicional y los conceptos de máquina, dispositivo,
aparato, artefacto y experimento. Estos atributos no solo obstaculizan el encasillamiento de
aquellas producciones artísticas, sino que además desafían la concepción de obra física y
objetual, estrictamente individual o colectiva, dos categorizaciones que aún dominan la historia,
teoría y estética del arte contemporáneo.
* Este artículo devino del trabajo final realizado en el marco del seminario de doctorado «Tecnopoéticas latinoamericanas.
Discusiones sobre arte, tecnología y política», dictado por la Dra. Claudia Kozak en la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la
Universidad de Buenos Aires durante el segundo semestre de 2014.
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Palabras clave
artes electrónicas, exposiciones, imaginarios de modernización, instituciones, Latinoamérica
Abstract
The crossroads between art, science and technology are extended extend into a vast and
relatively undefined world, modulated by a series of qualities inherent to their practices
in permanent tension: to the revisited frictions between dissimilar disciplines, media and
methodologies entailed by these kinds of works, which inevitably make their classification
difficult, one adds the frequent labour of artists who tend to incorporate scientific and technical
knowhow, or even to work in conjunction with specialists from other fields of discipline, thereby
dissolving the dividing lines between the notion of the traditional artwork and the concepts
of machine, device, apparatus, artefact and experiment. These attributes not only hinder
the categorization of artistic productions, but also challenge the conception of physical and
conceptual works, strictly individual or collective, two categories that still dominate the history,
theory and aesthetics of contemporary art.
This article argues that, in Argentina, this complexity is radicalised by two strands of
analysis designated as “identity” and “institutional”. The former is associated with the
imaginaries of modernisation that run through the history of Argentinean art, science and
technology; the latter refers to the particular logics of growth and expansion of the institutions
that have been promoting the confluence of art and technology from the seventies to the
present day. In order to show the ways in which both aspects converged in certain initiatives,
a 2014 exhibition at the San Martín Cultural Centre, a well-known institution managed by the
Government of the City of Buenos Aires, is analysed. After reviewing the imaginings of the future
and of innovation that have marked the local circuit, as well as the oscillating institutional
developments, the article puts forward possible strategies for exploring imaginaries with a
degree of autonomy with respect to the international scene, related to their own research
and creation contexts.
Keywords
electronic arts, exhibitions, modernisation imaginings, institutions, Latin America
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Zona de tensión I: entre medios, disciplinas Agamben subraya la anulación de la separación entre experiencia y
y metodologías conocimiento efectuada por la ciencia moderna; la experiencia fue
concebida en tanto método para alcanzar el saber. La desconfianza
A comienzos de los años ochenta, Dick Higgins (2001) reconocía que el hacia la selvática y laberíntica experiencia, fundada en la esperanza
concepto Intermedia, propuesto en 1965, continuaba encarnando una de encontrar el camino justo y sustentada en verdades fácticas,
noción sugestiva para analizar aquellas obras surgidas de relaciones impulsó su sustitución por números que pudieran cuantificar los
diversas entre medios preexistentes, desde happenings y performan- fenómenos de manera cierta y calculable, basados en verdades
ces hasta poesía sonora y concreta. Higgins destacaba la pertinencia razonables.
del término porque el mismo conducía a preguntarse acerca de cómo Por un lado, las obras electrónicas se desarrollan en un terreno
los campos conocidos podían intersectarse en una nueva propuesta marcado por la concepción de experiencia –ligada a la noción tradi-
estética. Aquel interrogante hoy admite ser replicado para pensar la cional acerca del quehacer artístico–, relacionada con la intuición, la
vastedad del territorio de las artes electrónicas1 contemporáneas, exploración con distintos tipos de materiales y el desencadenamiento
ubicadas en el cruce de medios, disciplinas y metodologías disímiles. de un proceso creativo que no sigue de forma obligada programas
Aún cincuenta años después de la escritura del famoso ensayo de preestablecidos que rigen y determinan la praxis. Por otro lado, se
Higgins, estas prácticas se encuentran al acecho de clasificaciones expanden en una dirección confinante con la noción de experimen-
propias. En este sentido, Geert Lovink (2007) definió las obras que to forjada por la ciencia moderna. Dada la propia condición de las
incorporan tecnologías como formas en busca de su forma, no solo prácticas artísticas electrónicas, es recurrente que se encuentren
por los problemas que supone la reflexión sobre un campo erigido en sujetas a lógicas maquínicas, cuyas operaciones, llegado cierto punto,
la compleja imbricación arte-tecnología, sino porque incluso dichas no admiten el error: si la obra no funciona, la experiencia estética
prácticas no pueden ser definidas como una única entidad. De ahí no termina de ser desplegada. Por este motivo, los conocimientos
nace el inconveniente de encontrar una categorización satisfactoria
envueltos en la praxis de los artistas que se desempeñan en el cruce
que permita englobar manifestaciones heterogéneas.
entre el arte, la ciencia y la tecnología reúnen metodologías y saberes
La dificultad emergida del intento de clasificación de las artes
propios de otros campos disciplinares, como por ejemplo robótica,
electrónicas se profundiza al considerar otros de sus rasgos princi-
informática, física y biología. Asimismo, en numerosas oportunidades
pales vinculados a la confluencia disciplinaria que las caracteriza.
se conforman equipos interdisciplinarios integrados por artistas, inge-
Emplazadas entre la esfera artística y los ámbitos de la ciencia y la
nieros, neurocientíficos, biólogos y/o matemáticos, especialistas que
tecnología, sus producciones son a veces concebidas como obras
trabajan colectivamente en las distintas instancias de los procesos
de arte, mientras que en otros casos suelen ser descritas como
de investigación y producción artística.
máquinas, aparatos o experimentos, debido al foco puesto en las
etapas de investigación, el predominio del devenir de la propuesta Es por ello que uno de los problemas centrales resulta de la
por sobre el objeto acabado y su proceso de ejecución guiado por exigencia de las artes electrónicas de tener que asombrar tanto a
sucesivas instancias de prueba y error. El carácter ambivalente de la los curadores de arte contemporáneo como a los científicos (Lovink,
obra tecnológica parece hacer eco de la distinción entre experiencia 2007), quienes actúan en esferas diferenciadas, gobernados por có-
y experimento, nociones rastreadas por Giorgio Agamben (2001, pág. digos desemejantes. Algunos científicos presumen que los artistas no
13) a propósito de su estudio sobre la expropiación de la experiencia hacen más que aplicar tecnologías preexistentes y, en consecuencia,
implícita en el proyecto de la ciencia moderna. El filósofo recuerda su trabajo no contribuye verdaderamente al avance de las investi-
las palabras de Francis Bacon, quien asociaba la experiencia al en- gaciones científicas y tecnológicas. En efecto, uno de los debates
cuentro espontáneo del fenómeno, como aquel que procura acertar candentes que ha despertado notable interés durante los últimos años
el camino justo en plena oscuridad, y relacionaba el experimento con entre diversos críticos e historiadores indaga el lugar que las artes
el encuentro resultante de una búsqueda intencionada, desarrolla- electrónicas ocupan en el mundo del arte contemporáneo, así como
da en un sendero iluminado. Frente a las aseveraciones de Bacon, la naturaleza de las relaciones establecidas entre ambos campos.
1. Por artes electrónicas nos referimos a todas aquellas prácticas artísticas que hacen uso material, estético y conceptual de las tecnologías electrónicas y/o digitales en distintas instancias
del proceso creativo. Se trata de una escena extendida, integrada por manifestaciones diversas, como instalaciones interactivas, entornos sensoriales, obras de realidad virtual, esculturas
robóticas, prácticas locativas, investigaciones en el terreno del diseño paramétrico, impresión 3D, arte generativo, bioarte y vida artificial, entre otras. Aunque indudablemente el vídeo
forma parte del campo de las artes electrónicas, no se incluye en nuestro análisis. Dadas sus propias lógicas de desarrollo, cierta legitimación dentro del campo del arte contemporáneo,
su ingreso a las principales colecciones públicas y privadas del mundo y la prolífera reflexión teórica producida en torno a sus distintas prácticas, el videoarte, en sus diferentes
expresiones, no responde a las hipótesis que serán propuestas para reflexionar sobre la conformación y los devenires del campo constituido por las obras arriba detalladas. Tampoco
incluimos el arte sonoro ni la literatura electrónica, cuyas manifestaciones también acabaron conformando una suerte de nicho en el interior del territorio de las poéticas electrónicas.
En síntesis, cuando el artículo acuña la noción de artes electrónicas, alude en definitiva a las poéticas derivadas de la tradición de las artes visuales.
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Zona de tensión II: entre el arte contemporáneo rialidad tecnológica de las obras. Esta impronta impediría a muchos
críticos, historiadores, curadores y coleccionistas comprender las
y las prácticas científico-tecnológicas
dimensiones conceptuales de estos trabajos y, por lo tanto, imposi-
Edward Shanken (2013) señaló que el crecimiento exponencial expe- bilitaría conectarlos con las reflexiones encauzadas por el circuito del
rimentado por el terreno del arte contemporáneo prevaleciente desde arte contemporáneo integrado por aquellas obras que no incorporan
mediados de los años noventa ocurrió en paralelo a la expansión de tecnologías de manera preeminente.
las artes electrónicas. Sin embargo, a pesar de su concomitancia, En suma, las relaciones entre el arte y la tecnología encarnan un
ambos universos no suelen confluir. En este punto coincide Domenico territorio complejo fundado en la imbricación de disciplinas, medios
Quaranta (2013) cuando retoma la teoría de Howard Becker para y metodologías disímiles, el cruce entre ciencias humanas y exactas,
argumentar que en las décadas del sesenta y el setenta surgieron y la participación de artistas, científicos y tecnólogos en trabajos
lenguajes artísticos que desafiaron los mundos del arte vigentes y, por que ponen en jaque la noción de obra rigurosamente individual o
consiguiente, acabaron relegando a sus artistas a un nicho apartado colectiva, y se encuentran inmersos en un campo aún joven, en pleno
del ámbito del arte contemporáneo de entonces. Particularmente, crecimiento y mutación, pero cuyas primeras manifestaciones se
entre los años sesenta y los noventa, fueron consolidándose nuevos remontan a hace más de medio siglo,2 un campo que ineludiblemente
sistemas de creación, distribución y crítica, así como programas integra el mundo del arte contemporáneo, pero que al mismo tiempo
educativos que permitieron transformar el antiguo nicho en un mundo ha ido demarcando una escena con lógicas propias.
del arte independiente, con sus propios códigos y convenciones. Más Si observamos el escenario argentino, notamos que a las situa-
aún, hacia fines de la década del ochenta y principios del noventa ciones referidas en las líneas precedentes, se suman dos factores
comenzaron a crearse instituciones que poco a poco impulsarían la que extreman las tensiones de las prácticas que nos ocupan, con-
conformación de las artes electrónicas como un campo autónomo, formando dos ejes de análisis que identificamos como «identitario»
sustentado en museos, festivales y congresos específicos, como el e «institucional». Mientras que el primero se encuentra suscrito a los
ZKM en Alemania, el InterCommunication Center en Tokyo, el Ars diferentes imaginarios de modernización que han ido tejiendo las
Electronica y el International Symposium on the Electronic Arts. En tramas del arte, la ciencia y la tecnología en Argentina, el segundo se
Estados Unidos, el impulso institucional fue bastante más lento que en asocia al dificultoso devenir de las iniciativas abocadas a promover
Australia, Japón y Europa, hasta que hacia fines de los años noventa las artes electrónicas en nuestro contexto.
se creó la sustancial MIT Press, editorial clave para la publicación
de libros especializados (Manovich, 2003; Quaranta, 2013). Además,
desde los inicios de esa década, el Museo de Arte Moderno de San Aspecto identitario: imaginarios
Francisco, The Walker Art Gallery en Minneapolis, y, en Nueva York, el de modernización
Guggenheim, el Whitney Museum of American Art, el Museo de Arte
Moderno y la Postmasters Gallery, comenzaron a apoyar y difundir En el marco del proyecto de investigación «Arte contemporáneo
las artes electrónicas. de Ecuador» (Centro Ecuatoriano de Arte Contemporáneo), Gerardo
No obstante, aún hoy el circuito de las bienales, ferias, museos Mosquera (2010) aseveró que la cultura de América Latina fue víctima
e incluso programas universitarios dedicados al arte contemporáneo de una neurosis identitaria iniciada en los años setenta del siglo xx,
no suelen intersectarse con las diversas instituciones propias de las de la cual aún no se encuentra curada. La pregunta latinoamericana
artes electrónicas. Por otra parte, su devenir histórico y la actividad sobre quiénes somos ha emergido de una serie de causas específicas
de los artistas que se encuentran trabajando en este campo son propias de la historia de la región, como los múltiples componentes
asiduamente ignorados por los actores del ámbito del arte contem- de su etnogénesis, los complejos procesos de acriollamiento e hibri-
poráneo (y viceversa), muchas veces por un desconocimiento mutuo, dación, la presencia de grandes grupos indígenas no integrados y el
combinado con el hermetismo de los criterios acuñados para pensar enorme flujo migratorio mantenido durante todo el siglo xx (Mosquera,
las obras contemporáneas. Uno de los argumentos fundamentales 2010, pág. 124). Una de sus hipótesis principales sugiere que esta
de Shanken (2013) es que esta desestimación deviene de la mate- neurosis ha expresado sus síntomas en el terreno de las artes plás-
2. Cabe destacar la problematicidad envuelta en cualquier intento de ubicar cronológicamente las «primeras» prácticas localizadas en la intersección del arte, la ciencia y la tecnología. Si
consideramos determinados proyectos artísticos y científicos como, por ejemplo, las creaciones de Leonardo Da Vinci, es evidente que las primeras manifestaciones que imbricaron estas
tres esferas son anteriores al surgimiento de ciertas tecnologías contemporáneas, como la computadora y el vídeo, e incluso previas a la invención de la fotografía y el cine. De todos
modos, aquí nos referimos a la aparición de las primeras obras que en el siglo xx, posteriormente a las exploraciones encauzadas por los artistas de vanguardia (Naum Gabo, Vladimir
Tatlin, Luigi Russolo, Marcel Duchamp, László Moholy-Nagy, entre otros), comenzaron de forma sistemática a investigar las posibilidades artísticas de los medios tecnológicos (Ben
Laposky, Nicolas Schöffer, Zdens̆k Pešánek, Gyula Kosice, Lucio Fontana, Michael Noll, Wen-Ying Tsai, Nam June Paik y los artistas nucleados en torno a EAT, solo por mencionar algunos).
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ticas y ha jugado de rebote a través de la apropiación de tendencias lenguajes artísticos propios y defendieron la consolidación de una
hegemónicas provenientes del Norte. tradición local, aunque en la mayoría de los casos los fusionaron con
La neurosis de identidad analizada por Mosquera resuena en la elementos proporcionados por los movimientos provenientes del Viejo
idea de cultura de mezcla (Sarlo, 2007), la cual parece haber moldea- Mundo. La omnipresencia de las relaciones que mantuvo el ámbito
do la compleja identidad de nuestro país. Es sabido, por ejemplo, que de las artes plásticas argentinas con el extranjero se evidencia desde
para los festejos del Centenario, Buenos Aires se había transformado los inicios del siglo xx en los viajes de formación de artistas como
radicalmente a nivel urbano y tecnológico (Alonso, 2009). La ciudad Emilio Pettoruti y Xul Solar, figuras protagónicas en la conformación
fue entonces calificada como la París de América, denominación de las vanguardias rioplatenses. Más adelante, se advierte en la
generalizada incluso más de un siglo antes de la expansión de los internacionalización de la obra de Gyula Kosice y Marta Minujín, 3
fenómenos estudiados por Mosquera. Esta concepción reverberó en quienes, radicados en Argentina, han alimentando fructíferas rela-
distintos ámbitos de la cultura; con un pie en las tradiciones locales ciones con otros países a través de trabajos y muestras realizadas
y otro en las coyunturas extranjeras, la identidad argentina adoptó afuera, al punto de que el carácter pionero de su producción artística
un doble cariz fundado en un constante pivote entre componentes ha sido internacionalmente reconocido. Asimismo, debemos destacar
rioplatenses e influencias europeas. La querella entre tendencias el desempeño simultáneo de Lucio Fontana y Julio Le Parc en Europa
vernáculas y extranjerizantes modeló nuestros imaginarios de moder- y Argentina. Tras estudiar en la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes y
nización. En muchas ocasiones, la repetición mimética de realidades después de haberse establecido en el extranjero, ambos sostuvieron
exógenas y la implantación de paradigmas ajenos como medios de vínculos frecuentes con el país. La constante apertura argentina hacia
legitimación de las propuestas locales han sido –y continúan siendo– la influencia extranjera consolidó un campo artístico repetidamente
hábitos recurrentes a la hora de concebir la escena local. convocado por la noción de «internacionalismo» (Giunta, 2008), en
En el plano específico de la conformación y el desarrollo de las ciertas fases preocupado por adscribirse a la escena del arte moderno
políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación en Argentina, se hacen mundial y, en otras, concernido por incluir sus propios programas en
ostensibles las fricciones entre dos estrategias dispares que han ido el marco internacional.
alternándose en distintos períodos, especialmente desde mediados Si por artes electrónicas comprendemos un conjunto de prácticas
del siglo xx: por un lado, estrategias político-tecnológicas que tienden que ponen de manifiesto la intersección entre el arte y la técnica,
a disminuir el papel regulacionista del Estado y favorecen la impor- es preciso que el análisis de los rasgos adquiridos por las relacio-
tación de la tecnología, la cual entienden como una vía necesaria nes entre ambas esferas considere el modo en que confluyen las
y eficaz para contribuir al proceso de modernización; por otro lado, tensiones heredadas de la historia de la ciencia y la tecnología en
programas caracterizados por un mayor nivel de intervencionismo Argentina con aquellas provenientes de la conformación y el desarrollo
estatal en los distintos sectores de la economía, mediante la creación del campo artístico. Al sostener que tanto el arte como la tecnología
de instituciones tendientes a promover, regular y solventar el desa- pueden ser entendidos como regímenes de experimentación de lo
rrollo tecnológico. A pesar de los intentos de conciliar los recursos y sensible, Claudia Kozak (2012, 2014) reformuló la teoría del reparto
conocimientos heredados, la producción e investigación científica y de lo sensible de Jacques Rancière (2014), cuyas formas, según el
tecnológica en Argentina estuvo marcada por la frecuente ausencia autor, «estructuran la manera en que las artes pueden ser percibidas
de políticas públicas potentes de mediano o largo plazo, en parte y pensadas como artes y como formas de inscripción en el sentido de
causadas por las continuas crisis políticas y económicas, así como la comunidad» (Rancière, 2014, pág. 22). De esta manera, al reparto
por la propensión hacia la «asimilación», la «copia» o el «trasplante» de lo estético se le atribuye una politicidad de lo sensible. La relación
(Hurtado, 2010, pág. 21). entre estética y política se plantearía entonces en la repartición de lo
En el ámbito artístico, se reitera un esquema semejante. El sensible compartido por la comunidad, distribución que, de acuer-
interrogante acerca de la identidad del arte argentino constituyó do con Kozak, acabaría delineando el modo en que arte y técnica,
uno de los tópicos que signaron la actividad plástica de los artistas, concebidos como regímenes de experimentación de lo sensible,
sobre todo durante buena parte del siglo pasado, y desempeñó un rol son percibidos como tales. La consideración del aspecto político de
central en los debates críticos e historiográficos acerca del arte de la tecnología permite evitar considerar las artes electrónicas como
esta etapa. Mientras que algunos artistas se vieron influidos por los prácticas imparciales que casualmente utilizan tecnologías en tanto
códigos, estéticas y enseñanzas europeas, otros optaron por elaborar instrumentos y herramientas para la creación, posición tecnologista
3. Nacido en la actual Eslovaquia y radicado en Argentina a los cuatro años de edad, Gyula Kosice es reconocido como uno de los primeros artistas del mundo que trabajó con luces de
neón, además de haber experimentado con materiales no convencionales, como agua y plexiglás. Además, desde los años cuarenta desarrolló obras que proponían la participación
activa del espectador, dos décadas antes de que muchos artistas comenzaran a investigar el terreno del arte participativo. Por su parte, Marta Minujín fue pionera en la exploración del
circuito cerrado de televisión, la realización de happenings «tecnológicos» y otras manifestaciones que expandieron el campo artístico.
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que conduce a aceptar pasivamente el proyecto técnico como un generados por el público a través de sensores ultrasónicos, los robots
mandato indiscutible (Schmucler, 1996). reaccionaban moviendo sus brazos en diferentes direcciones, dirigían
Los imaginarios de modernización en Argentina fueron modula- luces hacia distintos puntos del espacio de exhibición y amplifica-
dos por una doble tendencia que, de forma simultánea, «intersectó ban sonidos desencadenados por el comportamiento de las piezas.
modernidad europea y diferencia rioplatense, aceleración y angustia, Hysterical Machines resultó de un proyecto desarrollado en los años
tradicionalismo y espíritu renovador, criollismo y vanguardia» (Sarlo, noventa, mientras que el mega robot fue creado en 2010. Este último
2007, pág. 15). Entre impulsos progresistas, intentos de consolidación posee ocho veces el tamaño y peso de las máquinas histéricas y
de la industria local, desarrollos de lenguajes artísticos vernáculos, es descrito como un enorme robot que solo ha sido presentado en
modos diversos de incorporación de la técnica e influencias persis- grandes escenarios. Ambas obras, ubicadas en una amplia sala del
tentes de los modelos europeos primero y estadounidenses después, centro cultural, fueron las protagonistas del evento.
el país se ha visto surcado por concepciones poéticas y políticas El espacio oscuro, las luces de colores, el ambiente extremada-
ambivalentes. La utopía encarnada por una idea de Argentina como mente frío debido a los potentes equipos de aire acondicionado, el
ícono de nación moderna, forjada hacia fines del siglo xix y continuada entorno brumoso provocado por máquinas de humo y los sonidos
durante la centuria siguiente, tendió a configurar la esfera tecnológica intensos generados por la reacción de las máquinas histéricas a la
como un dominio universal, ejecutada por hombres asimismo univer- presencia del público, marcaban el contrapunto de Elevaciones,6
sales, evitando problematizar los significados locales de los medios, instalación robótica creada por el artista argentino Leo Nuñez y
instrumentos y herramientas comprometidos. Este proceso redundó emplazada en el vestíbulo que antecedía a aquella sala. La obra de
en la disposición de un campo integrado por obras que, aunque cruzan Nuñez estaba compuesta por una serie de criaturas robóticas también
arte y técnica, asiduamente perpetúan los instaurados imaginarios colgadas del techo, cada una integrada por una estructura de madera
utópicos del siglo pasado, fundados en idearios de progreso en cuyo recubierta por largas tiras de papel. Elevaciones se basa en los com-
seno las características propias de nuestro contexto suelen ser igno- portamientos de los mercados y las bandadas, dos casos en los cuales
radas o bien tienden a ser inscritas en líneas discursivas derivadas la suma de las conductas individuales sencillas generan otras más
de otras realidades. Hoy, el campo de las artes electrónicas expresa complejas. Aquí, la altura alcanzada por cada robot era determinada
una inclinación hacia la concepción de la tecnología como entidad por la relación con sus vecinos, según conductas colectivas con
neutral sin cuestionarla. características emergentes. Todos los robots estaban conformados
A continuación, revisamos un caso paradigmático que permite por un sistema mecánico que viabilizaba la movilidad y un software
analizar los idearios de modernización imperantes en el campo de autoorganización encargado de controlar la comunicación entre
constituido por los cruces contemporáneos entre el arte y la tec- las criaturas.
nología, el modo en que dichos imaginarios han guiado el impulso La exhibición de ambas instalaciones contiguas condensaba dos
de determinados proyectos institucionales y los obstáculos que han imaginarios de modernización en tensión en el contexto de las artes
enfrentado para sostener sus iniciativas a lo largo del tiempo. electrónicas argentinas. Por un lado, los efectos lumínicos y los mo-
vimientos automatizados, veloces y desconcertantes de las máquinas
realizadas por uno de los exponentes del arte robótico internacional,
Estudio de caso: Bill Vorn / Leo Nuñez enaltecidas como significantes de evolución y perfeccionamiento
artístico y tecnológico, es decir, como componentes icónicos del ca-
Hacia finales de 2014, durante el Noviembre Electrónico,4 el Centro rácter próspero de la cultura local. Por otro lado, una obra producida
Cultural General San Martín (CCGSM) presentó las instalaciones en Buenos Aires a partir de materiales sencillos, en función de una
robóticas Hysterical Machines y Mega Hysterical Machine,5 ambas estética low-tech contrastante con los materiales empleados por los
realizadas por el consagrado artista canadiense Bill Vorn. Las obras dispositivos de Vorn. Lo cierto es que los espacios dispares destina-
consistían en grandes robots colgados del techo, integrados por dos a cada una de las instalaciones, así como el lugar protagónico
cuerpos esféricos y provistos de válvulas neumáticas que posibili- dedicado a la obra de Vorn en el conjunto de la programación del
taban el movimiento de ocho brazos de aluminio, cuyos extremos se evento, hizo que Elevaciones acabara siendo presentada literal y
encontraban rematados por luces puntuales. Al detectar los estímulos simbólicamente en –y como– el zaguán de Hysterical Machines.
4. Noviembre Electrónico es un evento desarrollado desde 2012 por el Centro Cultural General San Martín, dependiente del Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Fue ideado con el
objetivo de difundir el cruce entre el arte y la tecnología en Argentina, a través de exhibiciones, workshops, conferencias y espectáculos. La edición de 2014 tuvo lugar entre el 13 y
el 23 de noviembre.
5. Registro de las obras en el espacio de exhibición disponible en: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY3V4oSJJpU>. [Fecha de consulta: 17 de enero de 2017].
6. Registro de la obra en el espacio de exhibición disponible en: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkNzVxQVJbc>. [Fecha de consulta: 17 de enero de 2017].
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Aspecto institucional: devenires oscilantes CCGSM exhibió nuevas realizaciones audiovisuales experimentales
y exposiciones de videocreación (Garavelli, 2014). En 1990, llevó a
Los imaginarios de modernización penetran en las instituciones, cabo las Primeras Jornadas de Teoría y Estética del Vídeo Argentino,
de manera simultánea a cómo estas últimas construyen modos organizadas por Graciela Taquini y la Sociedad Argentina de Videas-
específicos de sentir y pensar las prácticas artísticas electrónicas tas. Más adelante, inauguró Flash 2k, exposición y competencia que
o bien recuperando la expresión de Carl Mitcham (1989, pág. 14), comprendió videoarte y presentaciones de DJ, Arte en Progresión,
determinadas «formas de ser-con la tecnología». Así, las instituciones encuentro sobre arte y tecnología curado por Taquini, en el que se
se ven atravesadas por una racionalidad y sensibilidad técnica que incluyeron obras de diversos artistas latinoamericanos, y Cultura y
se proyecta en sus programas y deja entrever una cierta concepción Media, evento también curado por ella y organizado anualmente entre
sobre lo técnico que no se limita a la definición instrumental de 2006 y 2010, que abordó el uso creativo de las nuevas tecnologías a
la noción. Por el contrario, traza un mapa complejo en el que se través de videoinstalaciones, mesas redondas y talleres, entre otras
imbrican herramientas, operaciones y saberes, pero también personas propuestas.
que hacen uso de ellos, e instituciones en las cuales los individuos Aquellas iniciativas del CCGSM, diseminadas a lo largo de un
participan activamente timoneando sus líneas de gestión. período de veinticinco años, ejemplifican la dificultad que las institu-
La glorificación de la obra de Vorn no parecía responder a una ciones dedicadas a promover la enseñanza, intercambio, producción,
perspectiva crítica con respecto a las implicancias del cruce entre el exhibición y reflexión de las artes electrónicas han afrontado en
arte y la tecnología en el medio local, ni a su exhibición en un espacio Argentina, limitando la perdurabilidad de sus proyectos. De esta
como el CCGSM, dependiente del Ministerio de Cultura de la Ciudad manera, el crecimiento y expansión de las instituciones parece res-
de Buenos Aires. Si consideramos que en la ciudad prácticamente ponder a una lógica alternativa al desarrollo continuo y lineal: ante
no existen espacios dedicados de forma exclusiva a la difusión de las determinadas circunstancias políticas, económicas y socioculturales
artes electrónicas, ni suficientes puntos de encuentro de este tipo, acaecidas durante las últimas décadas, emprendimientos de gran
aspectos sobre los cuales volveremos más adelante, resulta indudable envergadura han quedado truncados. Así lo anticiparon el cierre del
que Noviembre Electrónico supone una iniciativa plenamente valiosa. Instituto Di Tella provocado por la dictadura de Onganía,7 y posterior-
Asimismo, cabe destacar la intención de acoger actividades innova- mente la disgregación de las actividades interdisciplinarias del CAyC.
doras, como el workshop de estructuras paramétricas o el encuentro Los inconvenientes para sostenerse en el tiempo que ambos casos
consagrado a la impresión tridimensional, llamado «Interacción 3D». anuncian, claro que allí en parte generados por inadmisibles causas
No obstante, Noviembre Electrónico es definido por la agenda cul- políticas incomparables con los ulteriores contextos democráticos,
tural publicada por el gobierno como un espacio de convergencia preludian un esquema que luego tenderá a reiterarse, resultante de
de artistas, realizadores, diseñadores, desarrolladores y pensadores iniciativas institucionales que afloran, irradian, comienzan a reper-
de la cultura digital, las artes electrónicas y multimedia, descripción cutir en el medio y en un momento determinado son desarticuladas.
que enfatiza el encuentro de actores diversos dentro del campo de la Este tipo de lógica, que podría ser designada como crecimiento por
cultura digital, pero no los ejes conceptuales articuladores de dicha estallido, anticipa subsiguientes devenires oscilantes que han ido
concurrencia. tambaleando hasta nuestros días. Ejemplo de ello es el Espacio
No es la primera vez que el CCGSM alberga iniciativas que apuntan Fundación Telefónica, cuyo cambio de gestión en 2013 desplazó
a promover el terreno de las artes electrónicas. Al igual que el Centro su interés de la intersección entre el arte, la ciencia y la tecnología
Cultural Rojas, el Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana (ICI) y el hacia temáticas asociadas a la educación, la innovación y el impacto
Centro Cultural Recoleta, el CCGSM fue escenario de diversos eventos tecnológico en la contemporaneidad. Otro caso clave es el Centro
que desde los años ochenta continuaron con el impulso iniciado en Cultural de España en Buenos Aires (ex ICI), institución que sufrió
las décadas precedentes por el Instituto Di Tella y el posterior Centro notables recortes en su programación a partir de la crisis económica
de Arte y Comunicación (CAyC), dos instituciones que constituyeron española.
hitos en el devenir del arte contemporáneo latinoamericano en general En consecuencia, a pesar del lugar que ocupa el campo de las
y, concretamente, en la exploración de las posibilidades artísticas artes electrónicas locales en la escena latinoamericana,8 Argentina
ofrecidas por las tecnologías. Con la vuelta de la democracia, el entraña una coyuntura peculiar. Aunque se encuentra considerable-
7. Marta Traba (1973) explica que el cierre del Instituto Di Tella respondió a causas complejas, como las presiones políticas de la dictadura militar de Onganía, pero también la oposición
de la izquierda frente al apoyo proporcionado por las fundaciones Rockefeller y Ford. Asimismo, Traba destaca la pérdida de apoyo financiero de la empresa Siam Di Tella, rescatada
de la bancarrota por el gobierno.
8. El protagonismo de Argentina, México y Brasil en la escena latinoamericana ha sido detenidamente estudiado por José-Carlos Mariátegui en el marco de Alta Tecnología Andina (ATA).
Aquí nos basamos en algunas de sus conclusiones, aunque tenemos en cuenta que, debido a que las mismas fueron publicadas hace más de diez años, el panorama delineado pudo
haber sufrido algunas modificaciones. La investigación completa se encuentra publicada en: J.C. Mariátegui; J. Villacorta (2004)
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mente bien posicionada en comparación con otros países vecinos, e impulso de un lenguaje artístico tecnológico propio ha sido consi-
aún no ha logrado gestionar políticas gubernamentales significativas derablemente limitado. Por lo tanto, aunque el país se ha convertido
y proyectos corporativos capaces de sostenerse en el tiempo, no solo en el escenario de diversos artistas que se encuentran experimen-
como los acometidos por ciertos países centrales como Canadá, Esta- tando las posibilidades ofrecidas por las tecnologías, todavía no se
dos Unidos, Alemania, Holanda, Francia y Australia, cuyas realidades ha fomentado suficiente reflexión crítica sobre la producción local.
a menudo distan de las nuestras, sino también como aquellos que Si durante las últimas décadas los imaginarios de moderniza-
México y Brasil han conseguido encauzar. ción, cimentados sobre la identidad esquizofrénica anteriormente
interpelada, impregnaron las políticas institucionales, será preciso
que, entrados ya en el siglo xxi, sus plataformas procuren encarar
Últimas consideraciones: la irrupción una dirección diferente, mediante la implementación de programas
de lo nuevo en la escena local que deconstruyan los idearios instaurados y sondeen imaginarios
afines a nuestros entornos de investigación y creación. Para ello,
El análisis de los imaginarios de modernización, en conjunto con es indispensable que propicien una praxis que no solo se atenga
las lógicas institucionales que han profundizado en nuestro ámbito a la frecuente demostración de determinados sucesos históricos y
la complejidad inherente a las artes electrónicas, apunta a desna- políticos atravesados por la región, o al trabajo con baja tecnología
turalizar determinados modelos de pensamiento y acción que han desmantelando y reciclando dispositivos tecnológicos, sino que de-
marcado el cruce entre el arte, la ciencia y tecnología en Argentina. linee nuevas tácticas para pensar la condición latinoamericana. Una
Así, es posible estudiar las distintas concepciones sobre el fenómeno vía significativa hacia esta meta consiste en consolidar un discurso
técnico que habitan tanto en las prácticas artísticas tecnológicas que asuma la realidad local, pero que evite ubicar las tecnologías
como en las instituciones que las promueven. Este último punto utilizadas en el centro de la propuesta artística; un discurso que
adquiere un carácter fundamental, debido a que permite bucear en pueda hacer uso de ellas de un modo pertinente, en consonancia con
los modos en que los imaginarios de modernización son asumidos por los conceptos desarrollados por las obras, a través de la exploración
los programas institucionales, al tiempo que estos últimos contribuyen de las relaciones posibles entre los materiales, formas, dispositi-
a la conformación de dichos idearios, un aspecto que aún no ha sido vos y búsquedas conceptuales que guían el proceso creativo. Esta
suficientemente inquirido. alternativa reclama reconocer y ahondar en las zonas de tensión
La desnaturalización de la construcción del pensamiento técnico, entre disciplinas, medios, soportes y metodologías que habitan las
y su relación con la esfera artística, coincide con las reflexiones de poéticas electrónicas en tanto rasgos distintivos de su quehacer.
José Luis Brea (2002), quien, al considerar que el pensamiento técnico Asimismo, exige levantar las fronteras que continúan proyectando
es el afloramiento de un orden de cosas cerrado, sugirió que el arte estas prácticas separadas del terreno del arte contemporáneo a causa
nace de la relación de insumisión entre el pensamiento y la técnica. del mero hecho de involucrar tecnologías. Por otra parte, demanda
De esta manera, se logra desarticular el «asentamiento epocal de un el impulso de un pensamiento crítico sobre la posición regional que
orden de las cosas» (Brea, 2002, pág. 124) y evidenciar su aspecto no recaiga instantáneamente en una toma de posición concentrada
arbitrario. Desde el momento en que se visibiliza la tensión entre en tematizar la fisonomía latinoamericana de las propuestas como la
el orden de las cosas y los discursos construidos en torno a esas única estrategia posible para concebir la latinoamericanidad, aspecto
disposiciones contingentes, el pensamiento llega a expresarse como que, a fin de cuentas, acaba profundizando la confrontación entre la
apertura de mundos. creatividad periférica y la producción de los países centrales.
Nos interesan las nociones de apertura y creación de mundo por- Simultáneamente al emprendimiento de aquellas tareas, los
que orienta al final de nuestro recorrido a lanzar interrogantes sobre programas institucionales deben abocarse a la investigación de las
la noción de lo nuevo que acuñamos, particularmente qué significa características específicas de las obras que imbrican el arte, la ciencia
lo nuevo en el contexto local y qué tipos de prácticas encarnarían la y la tecnología, y comprender el carácter extensivo de su actividad
verdadera novedad. Por lo pronto, la irrupción de lo nuevo requeriría como un fructífero espacio de potencia. En correspondencia con
lograr socavar la sobrevaluada grandilocuencia expresada en las las reflexiones en torno a la transformación cultural y ontológica
tecnologías implicadas, anclada en viejos imaginarios técnicos que comprometida en la sustitución de la alotecnología por una homeo-
continúan concibiendo al artista como un mero operador de botones tecnología, un pensamiento de la polivalencia y la multiplicidades
(Machado, 2000) y hoy ya deberían ser dislocados. Para ello, la misión (Sloterdijk, 2003, pág. 28), la honda exploración de las cualidades de
de las universidades, museos, centros culturales y otros espacios las artes electrónicas llama a quebrar las clasificaciones limitantes,
destinados a la difusión de estas prácticas artísticas adquiere un papel todavía basadas en los binarismos obra de arte-máquina, objeto-
cardinal. Como resultado de los procesos implícitos en el aspecto proceso, artista-científico, inspiración-investigación. Despojados de
identitario y el factor institucional que hemos propuesto, la indagación paradigmas fundados en categorizaciones restrictivas, las zonas de
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indeterminación pueden encarnar verdaderos espacios de potencia. línea]. [Fecha de consulta: 4 de agosto de 2015]. <http://bampfa.
Finalmente, un primer paso imperioso de cara a este objetivo radicará berkeley.edu/media/lovink.mp4>
en examinar las modalidades en que los nuevos espacios pueden MACHADO, A. (2000). El paisaje mediático: sobre el desafío de las
efectivamente desplegar su potencia, aun cuando los imaginarios de poéticas tecnológicas. Buenos Aires: Libros del Rojas.
nuestros tiempos se encuentran asociados de manera indefectible a MANOVICH, L. (2003). «New Media from Borges to HTML».N. WAR-
la expansión tecnológica propia del capitalismo globalizado. DRIP-FRUIN Y N. MONFORT, The New Media Reader. Cambridge:
The MIT Press.
MITCHAM, C. (1989). «Tres modos de ser-con la tecnología». Anthro-
Referencias bibliográficas pos. N.os 94-95, págs. 13-26.
MARIÁTEGUI, J. C.; VILLACORTA, J. (2004). «Insular Areas of Media
AGAMBEN, G. (2001). Infancia e historia: destrucción de la experiencia Creativity in Latin America. Initial findings on art, science and
y origen de la historia. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo. technology in groups and non-represented areas of Latin America»
ALONSO, R. (2009). El futuro ya no es lo que era: Imaginarios de [en línea]. Alta Tecnología Andina. [Fecha de consulta: 3 de agosto
futuro en Argentina 1910-2010. Buenos Aires: Fundación OSDE. de 2015]. <http://oldsite.ata.org.pe/pdf/ATAInsular_areas.pdf>
BREA, J.L. (2002). La era postmedia. Acción comunicativa, prácticas MOSQUERA, G. (2010). Caminar con el diablo: textos sobre arte,
(post)artísticas y dispositivos neomediales [en línea]. Salamanca: internacionalismo y culturas. Madrid: Exit.
CASA (Centro de Arte de Salamanca). [Fecha de consulta: 18 de ju- QUARANTA, D. (2013). Beyond New Media Art. Brescia: Link.
lio de 2015]. <http://fba.unlp.edu.ar/lenguajemm/?wpfb_dl=8> RANCIÈRE, J. (2014). El reparto de lo sensible: estética y política.
GARAVELLI, C. (2014). Vídeo experimental argentino contemporáneo: Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros.
una cartografía crítica. Buenos Aires: Eduntref. SARLO, B. (2007). Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y
GIUNTA, A. (2001). Vanguardia, internacionalismo y política: arte 1930. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión.
argentino en los años sesenta. Buenos Aires: Paidós. SCHMUCLER, H. (1996). «Apuntes sobre el tecnologismo o la voluntad
HIGGINS, D. (2001). «Intermedia» [artículo en línea]. Leonardo. Vol. de no querer» [artículo en línea]. Artefacto. Pensamientos sobre
32, n.º 1, págs. 49-54. <https://doi.org/10.1162/00240940130 la técnica. N.º 1. [Fecha de consulta: 28 de octubre de 2015].
0052514> <http://www.revista-artefacto.com.ar>
HURTADO, D. (2010). La ciencia argentina. Un proyecto inconcluso: SHANKEN, E. (2013). Inventar el futuro. Arte, electricidad, nuevos
1930-2000. Buenos Aires: Edhasa. medios. Nueva York: Departamento de Ficción.
KOZAK, C. (ed.) (2012). Tecnopoéticas argentinas: archivo blando de SLOTERDIJK, P. (2003). «El hombre operable. Notas sobre el estado
arte y tecnología. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra. ético de la tecnología génica» [artículo en línea]. Laguna. N.º 14,
KOZAK, C. (comp.) (2014). Poéticas/políticas tecnológicas en Argentina págs. 9-22.
(1910-2010). Paraná: Editorial Fundación La Hendija. TRABA, M. (1973). Dos décadas vulnerables en las artes plásticas
LOVINK, G. (2007). «New Media: In Search of The Cool Obscure» [en latinoamericanas, 1950-1970. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Cita recomendada
ADLER, J. (2017). «Artes electrónicas argentinas en el zaguán de la escena internacional: idearios
de modernización y devenires institucionales oscilantes ». En: Vanina HOFMAN y Pau ALSINA
(coords.). «Futuros especulativos del arte». Artnodes. N.º 19, págs. 37-46. UOC [Fecha de
consulta: dd/mm/aa]
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3110>
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y usos comerciales siempre que reconozca los créditos de las obras (autoría, nombre de la revista,
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Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (Argentina)
jazminadler@gmail.com
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ARTÍCULO
NODO «FUTUROS ESPECULATIVOS DEL ARTE»
Resumen
En septiembre del 2013 y hasta febrero del 2014, tuvo lugar la exposición «Speculations on
Anonymous Materials», comisariada por Susanne Pfeffer, en el Museum Fridericianum de
Kassel. Tomando tal evento como punto de partida, este texto intenta abordar algunos aspectos
que considero cruciales respecto al arte y los futuros especulativos. Con más de cincuenta
obras realizadas por veinticinco artistas europeos y norteamericanos –en su mayoría hijos
de inmigrantes de primera o de segunda generación– la exposición mostraba una nueva
estética ecléctica que parece entrelazar el estilo pop con el post humanista, el post internet
o el posdigital, con distintos matices que van desde lo abyecto hasta una cierta forma de
futurismo contemporáneo.
La exposición exhibía un presente «futurizado» (o un futuro «presentizado»), al cual se
le puede atribuir cierta reflexión acerca de la «hiper» y «trans» estetización de lo cotidiano
(Lipovetsky y Serroy) de la actual sociedad consumista y posfordista, sobre todo en su forma
de capitalismo artístico, ultradigitalizado. Partiendo del materialismo/realismo especulativo
(Meillassoux; Bryant; Harman) y el #ACCELERATE. Manifesto para una política aceleracionista
(Alex Williams; Nick Srnicek), se intentará contextualizar teóricamente la exposición y profun-
dizar conceptualmente en algunos de los artistas participantes, como Timur Si-Qin, Pamela
Rosenkranz, Katja Novitskova, Josh Kline y Ryan Trecartin, entre otros.
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Estos artistas noveles trabajan con el aspecto material de las nuevas tecnologías industriales
y digitales, y de los objetos cotidianos (plásticos, imágenes digitales, productos sintéticos, etc.),
en obras cuya realidad física está conformada por procesos digitales subliminales y evidencian
así la hiperrealidad en la que estamos sumergidos. Sus obras nacen de una reacción a la
complejidad de la sociedad capitalista contemporánea, a su paisaje cotidiano, y expresan el
entorno real y virtual que las generaciones presentes y futuras se ven destinadas a habitar.
Pero la exposición expresa sobre todo, desde el punto de vista estético y de teoría del arte
contemporáneo, un cambio de paradigma onto epistemológico, que es un síntoma de una
evolución respecto a los paradigmas vigentes hasta ahora.
Palabras clave
realismo especulativo, consumo, posdigital, materialidad sintética, producción
Abstract
The “Speculations on Anonymous Materials” exhibition, curated by Susanne Pfeffer and held
from September 2013 to February 2014 at the Fridericianum de Kassel Museum is the starting
point for this text, which aims to address some aspects that I consider to be crucial in respect
of art and speculative futures. With more than 50 artworks by 25 European and North American
artists – most of them first- or second-generation children of immigrants – the exhibition
demonstrated a new eclectic aesthetic that seems to interweave the Pop and Post-humanist,
Post-Internet or Post-Digital styles, with different nuances that go from the abject to some
form of contemporary futurism.
The exhibition displayed a “futurised” present (or a “presentised” future), to which one
can attribute some reflection about the “hyper” and “trans” aestheticization of the everyday
life (Lipovetsky and Serroy) in the current consumerist, post-Fordist society, in particular in
terms of its ultra-digitised artistic capitalism. Taking Speculative materialism and Speculative
Realism (Meillassoux; Bryant; Harman) and #ACCELERATE: Manifesto for an Accelerationalist
Politics (Alex Williams; Nick Srnicek) as its starting point, this article will attempt to theoretically
contextualise the exhibition and examine conceptually some of the participating artists, such
as Timur Si-Qin, Pamela Rosenkranz, Katja Novitskova, Josh Kline and Ryan Trecartin, among
others.
These novel artists work with the material aspect of new digital and industrial technologies
and of everyday objects (plastics, digital images, synthetic products, and so on) in works
whose physical reality is conformed by subliminal digital processes, thereby evidencing the
hyperreality in which we are submerged. Their works are born from a reaction to the complexity
of contemporary capitalist society and to its everyday landscape, and they express the real
and virtual environment in which the current and future generations seem destined to live.
But above all the exhibition expresses, from the perspective of aesthetics and the theory of
contemporary art, a change of onto-epistemological paradigm, which is a symptom of an
evolution with respect to the paradigms in force until now.
Keywords
speculative realism, consumption, post-digital, synthetic materiality, production
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vo y del #aceleracionismo, que proporcionan un interesante marco unas piezas de mármol cortadas en Verona basadas en un escaneo
interpretativo ontoepistemológico para la comprensión de este caso en 3D de carne de una carnicería de Berlín, y luego tratadas con
de estudio. agentes químicos para que parezcan trozos de carne y jugar así con
nuestra percepción de estos materiales manipulados. Más adelante,
Sachin Kaeley también juega con nuestra percepción, esta vez con
Obras expuestas la percepción de los ojos acostumbrados al mundo digital, en una
instalación compuesta por siete piezas en las que reproduce análo-
En general, la exposición mostraba una nueva estética ecléctica que gamente el tratamiento de las imágenes digitales y su estratificación
parece entrelazar el estilo pop con el posthumanista, con distintos en layers, pero en pintura: «Transfiriendo la técnica y la estética de
matices que van desde lo abyecto hasta una cierta forma de futurismo la imagen digital a una imagen 3D, Kaely lleva el hiperrealismo a un
contemporáneo. En relación con ello, transmiten unas ideas de un hípernivel, y no lo pone al servicio de un uso externo, sino que lo
futuro altamente sintético, por medio de un lenguaje formal que se explora exclusivamente para referirse al medio mismo».3
acerca a la estética de laboratorio y, por otro lado, reconecta con la Llegamos entonces a un artista clave de la exposición, que cierra
estética del afrofuturismo. la primera habitación con siete piezas: Josh Kline. Con las obras Liquid
Las obras estaban distribuidas en los tres pisos y diez cuartos Assets (2012), Trinken Sie ein Stück Natur (2013), Creative Hands
del Museum Fridericianum. Siguiendo el orden en el recorrido, des- (2011), Tastemaker’s Choice (2012), The look, the feel, of Patagonia
tacaré aquellas que considero más relevantes para este estudio. Nano Puff® (2012), Sleep is for the Weak (2011) y Flattery Bath 2
En la primera habitación, encontramos la videoinstalación titulada (2012) hace una panorámica sobre el sector productivo, su cultura
Gratis? (2013), de Trisha Baga y Jessie Stead, que quiere ser una material y constructos identitarios, y plantea cuestiones acerca de
reacción al exceso de imágenes digitales ofrecidas por nuestra era los límites cada vez más borrosos entre el estilo de vida marcado por
postinternet, reflexiona sobre nuestra modalidad de percepción de ese la tecnología y un cuerpo humano completamente comercializado. El
medio y cómo nuestro cuerpo y los objetos son transformados por su resultado son complejos arreglos espaciales en los cuales el impacto
representación en los medios. Los espacios real, virtual y proyectado cotidiano del desarrollo tecnológico y la simulación virtual se hacen
son superpuestos para impactar al espectador en distintos niveles evidentes.
perceptivos. En la habitación número dos encontramos cuatro obras Al entrar en la tercera habitación del primer piso, encontramos
de Pamela Rosenkranz instaladas juntas: As one (Surrender) (2010), cuatro piezas de Timur Si-Qin: (everything I do) I do it for you (2013),
Inner Nature (2012), Purity You Can Taste (Ultra Strong Contents) Melted Yoga-Mat_ALEX_blue_1_2_3_4 (2013), Axe effect (2013) y
(2013) y Purity of Vapors (2012). Como podemos leer en el brochure: Melted Yoga-Mat_GAIAM_GREY_1_2 (2013). Por lo que podemos leer
en el catálogo previo de la exposición, las obras de Timur Si-Qin crean
«las piezas de Rosenkranz son reflexiones materiales sobre el proyecto de un sistema estratificado y abierto con referencias a la naturaleza, a
restaurar un equilibrio entre naturaleza y humanidad, una empresa en sí la cultura, a los mass media, a la tecnología. La obra Melted Yoga-
profundamente ambivalente. Sin embargo, en su trabajo no ofrece la posi- Mat refiere a –y está compuesta de– la alfombrita ergonómica de
bilidad de recuperar una esencia desaparecida de la naturaleza humana, material plástico para yoga producida industrialmente, y así quiere
sino que descubre una nueva forma del cuerpo fragmentado. Sujeto y ser un símbolo de la filosofía industrial y de la relación que esta teje
objeto están fusionados aquí hasta el punto de ser indistinguibles: una entre lo genético y lo económico.
corporeidad estructurada sintéticamente que también resuena en los Axe effect, por otro lado, se compone de una serie de esculturas
trabajos Spandex de Rosenkranz y su pieza Surrender, desde la serie realizadas con un hacha y con botes del desodorante masculino de la
As One. Aquí el sujeto humano existe solo bajo la apariencia de rastros marca Axe, un producto para la higiene masculina que se vende como
de fluidos, una asociación serial generada desde materiales sintéticos y altamente desarrollado: formas, colores y olores sugieren aquí mascu-
refractada por el reluciente espectro de colores de las marcas globales».2 linidad por medio de un producto industrial que está igualmente muy
cargado psicológicamente, con la intención de estimular una reflexión
En el centro de la sala se hallan cinco trabajos de Yngve Holen, material que revele las contradicciones internas y las complejidades
titulados Extended Operations (2013), Your Mothers maiden name? de un producto industrial como este. A continuación tenemos el vídeo
(2013), c130Hs[_t}S//YL”,”Xd`s& (2013), Has symbols such as de Ed Atkins, Warm, Warm Warm Spring Mouth (2013) y una obra
`!”?$?%`^&*()_-+={[}]:;@‘#|<,>.?/ (2013) y Reckon your password is de Daniel Keller, Zion+Platform (Blue Ocean Strategy ERRC grid)
safe? Think again! (2013). En particular, Extended operation presenta (2013): el primero investiga acerca de la materialidad y corporeidad
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en un mundo transformado por la información y la tecnología de la pintura y la fotografía. Se trata de piezas muy complejas, compuestas
comunicación, y la impresión de hípermaterialidad de las imágenes de distintos materiales visuales de orden cotidiano, que se obtienen
de alta definición de hoy, privadas de toda forma corporal o de una como resultado de «acumulaciones poéticas que confían en distin-
realidad física, explorando sus potenciales y límites de representación. tas tecnologías digitales y analógicas, para producir muchos niveles
La segunda obra es una instalación que representa al Seast – Eading pictóricos polifacéticos».6 En el segundo cuarto del segundo piso, nos
Institute, fundado en el 2008, un proyecto que pretende crear las reciben Aleksandra Domanović con unas instalaciones creadas a partir
condiciones para el establecimiento de comunidades autónomas en del dominio web de la ex Yugoslavia «yugoslavo.yu» y la proyección
plataformas flotantes situadas en aguas internacionales parecidas de un film, Code of Honor (2011), y tres impresiones con título NAD
a las plataformas petrolíferas; el objetivo es la creación de sistemas (2013), de Jon Rafman, en las cuales reflexiona acerca de la relación
sociales autoorganizados y libertarios en partes del océano que ningún entre lo real y lo virtual. El recorrido de este segundo piso se completa
estado haya previamente reclamado, formando nuevos y diferentes con obras de Avery Singer y Tobias Madison (en la tercera sala).
mercados no basados en la competición en medio de un mundo En la cuarta habitación encontramos obras de Simon Denny,
híperconectado. Oliver Laric, Tobías Madison, Alisa Baremboym y James Richards.
En el segundo piso, tenemos cinco salas más. Nada más entrar, Entre estas, destacan las obras de Alisa Baremboym: Porous Solu-
nos recibe una obra en vídeo de Ken Okiishi, gesture/data (2013), tion (2013), Syphon Solution (2013), 6-D (2013), Sterile Impression
una «pintura abstracta en formato vídeo» y en el segundo cuarto (2013), Travel Impression (2013) y Syphon Industries (2013). Según
encontramos las fotos de grandes dimensiones instaladas por Antoine la definición de la comisaria, las instalaciones de Baremboym son:
Catala: Image Families (2013), trabajo que se compone de fotos
de gran tamaño –(Not Cat/Pizza/Ass/Car); un dron –(Drone), y dos «Creaciones híbridas, nacidas de un mundo conformado por la tecnología
hologramas– (Object Analysis). El trabajo fotográfico de Catala explora y la ciencia, con el que nuestros cuerpos son confrontados a diario. Los
la relación entre las imágenes cotidianas y los mecanismos tecnoló- materiales usados por la artista, como cerámicas, gel, seda o cables
gicos involucrados en su creación. Estas imágenes tecnológicamente –materiales empleados en la producción industrial de productos de
mejoradas de objetos o elementos cotidianos, si bien en un primer consumo–, evocan entidades que van desde la piel o la herramienta de
momento no parecen merecer mucha atención o reflexión, a su vez laboratorio hasta la maquinaria industrial».7
nos parecen muy familiares, puesto que son imágenes que podríamos
encontrar en cualquier periódico, web o cartel publicitario. Siguen dos vídeos de James Richards que cierran esta sala, para
A estas imágenes responden los hologramas instalados a su dar paso, en la habitación número cinco, al vídeo cuasipsicodélico de
lado, que proporcionan un análisis irónico de esas imágenes, de Ryan Trecartin con título Items Falls (2013), descrito como «repulsivo,
su fisicidad y su carácter táctil: como se explica en el brochure, «la anárquico, francamente repulsivo».8 Los protagonistas son personajes
estética anónima de los infinitos archivos de la fotografía de stock es híbridos y artificiales, con vestidos y maquillajes excéntricos, con
explorada con la ayuda de sus propios medios de producción»,4 y así una gestualidad exagerada y voces mecánicas actuando en escenas
se revela que también la más simple de las imágenes es el producto interiores que recuerdan un raro cruce entre aulas escolares, tiendas
de una masiva y elaborada maquinaria. En lugar que intervenir desde de grandes almacenes o las casas del programa de televisión Gran
el exterior de las imágenes, desvela su mecanismo desde el interior, Hermano. Estos parecen estar en competición para captar constan-
desde su «fuente material», y como nota Pfeffer: temente la atención, se comunican con un lenguaje que podría ser un
nuevo slang juvenil o el lenguaje abreviado de los chats y pronuncian
«no asigna ni al espectador, ni a sí mismo, la posición distante y elevada todos al mismo tiempo frases inconexas.
de un criticismo simplista. Su análisis procede de una forma mucho más Estos personajes casi posthumanos, que parecen disociados
sutil y así dilucida que nosotros mismos estamos, de hecho, inextrica- totalmente de la realidad, representan la experiencia comunicati-
blemente ligados a los mundos de imágenes que nos rodean».5 va cotidiana de hoy en día en los chats y en las redes sociales, y
satirizan y parodian la construcción de la identidad y la interacción
En la misma línea, en esa misma sala, están las obras de Michele en el mundo virtual de todos nosotros, sobre todo –y en modo espe-
Abeles, las cuales se podrían posicionar en el cruce entre el collage, la cialmente exasperado– de los adolescentes. Según Pfeffer son una
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«representación exagerada de la profundidad psicótica de la identidad figura A, Amalgamed city, es un skyline que presenta rascacielos
digital construida en la cultura pop de los formatos de los media inventados y reales típicos de las seis ciudades del Golfo, pero com-
contemporáneos». No menos interesantes son las cuatro instalaciones binados como si fueran una única gran metrópolis. La figura B, Micro
que siguen de Katja Novitskova: Approximation V Chameleon (2013), Council, presenta una mesa de reuniones y conferencias con seis
Branching II (2013), Branching III (2013) y Shapeshifters 4-10 (2013). puestos en miniatura, y quiere expresar «la absurda grandiosidad
Novitskova reflexiona sobre el enorme aparato tecnológico de asociada a los asuntos diplomáticos y burocráticos».11 Y para acabar,
internet y la complejidad de la producción visual digital y su relación la figura C, Kassel Congratulant, es un trofeo realizado en cristal
con la materia. Se trata de imágenes de animales u otras figuras que refiere a los premios que a menudo son otorgados de forma
buscadas en Google, impresas en aluminio a tamaño natural y luego prematura. En su conjunto:
dispuestas en la instalación; igualmente, encontramos cuchillos rea-
lizados con microchips quebrados, arcilla de epoxy, silicona y otros «GCC muestra la disfunción de una cultura de las promesas que está
materiales sintéticos usados en la producción de bienes comunes. siendo cada vez más cuestionada por la población de los estados del
Novitskova, mediante el gesto de dar un soporte material (impresión Golfo. Es la promesa, instrumentalizada políticamente, de modernidad
sobre aluminio) a imágenes comunes de internet, lo que intenta que construye sus rascacielos en ambientes estériles o celebra las cam-
es revelar y llamar la atención sobre el «enorme aparato cultural y pañas políticas con fuegos artificiales, y sus aspiraciones a lo “más alto,
tecnológico» que sujeta y se esconde detrás de las imágenes que más rápido, más lejos” solo crea reliquias brillantes que reproducen el
pululan en internet y nos acompañan continuamente en ordenado- salto entre la promesa simbólica y el material de realización siempre
res o móviles. Estos objetos, creados a partir de material reciclado más ostentoso».12
producido por la nueva industria tecnológica:
La exposición se cierra en el tercer piso, con las perturbadoras ins-
«evocan el significado último de los recursos materiales hasta para talaciones de Kerstin Brätsch & Debo Eilers, a las cuales se dedica
aquellas tecnologías que (se) definen a sí mismas convencionalmente una entera habitación semicircular del museo. Según la descripción
a través de su supuesta inmaterialidad y la superación de los lazos aportada de la práctica artística de Kerstin Bräsch:
con la localidad. Aquellas tecnologías no solo hacen uso de recursos
materiales, sino que en el proceso cambian la geografía natural y social «sus obras derivan de un continuo proceso de desplazamiento, variación
irrevocablemente».9 y reproducción de su propio trabajo, pero sobre todo de la apropiación
de los efectos digitales para la imagen y de estilos artísticos históricos.
Para terminar, en la habitación número seis, en un espacio con for- Sobre todo, estratégicamente se basa en la producción económica
ma semicircular, encontramos al colectivo GCC con la instalación y en los procesos de distribución de nuestro mundo profundamente
Achievements in Figures (2013), compuesta por tres imágenes: mercantilizado».13
Amalgamend City (Figura A, 2013), Micro Council (Figura B, 2013) y
Kassel Congratulant (Figura C, 2013). El colectivo GCC se compone Desde el punto de vista curatorial, podemos considerar esta insta-
de un grupo de artistas que proporciona una panorámica cultural lación puesta al final del recorrido como un resumen de los pilares
y política de una nueva generación de artistas que trabaja en la conceptuales de la muestra. Los trabajos multidisciplinares propues-
tradicionalista sociedad del golfo Pérsico, con la intención de crear tos en Kassel, que han sido realizados junto a Debo Eilers, mezclan
una narrativa multidimensional. De hecho, la sigla GCC se refiere a distintos medios y presentan una estética de difícil definición, en la
Gulf Cooperation Council, la organización compuesta por seis estados que parece cruzarse el pop, el graffiti art con el arte abyecto, con
del golfo Pérsico que se ocupa de la cooperación económica y de resultados cercanos a un sentimiento de repulsión mezclado con
la política de seguridad entre estos países, y que también es uno atracción. Las obras llevan los títulos: S is for Stress Position (bodybag
de los partners comerciales más importantes de la Unión Europea. backzip) (2013), S is for shopping (bodybag backzip) (2013), S is for
La serie presentada para la exposición en Kassel se componía sound (bodybag dicknose) (2013), S is for Sissy (bodybag meo) (2013)
de tres elementos, que constituyen, según explican los artistas, «tres y S is for Spanking (bodybag dicknose) (2013), y los vídeos en loop
diferentes variantes de la cultura festiva autocongratulatoria».10 La KAYA burial (2013) y KAYA Untitled (2012).
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Josh Kline, titulado Sharks and Dolphins, que nos explica las co- bles de la cotidianidad contemporánea. Entonces, como apunta Kline,
nexiones entre las temáticas tratadas en las obras, los materiales, la es natural que artistas que viven en el ciberespacio y que comparten
cuestión formal y los orígenes y entornos de los artistas creadores, y esta condición hayan empezado a sacar provecho y reflexionar sobre
proporciona una interpretación histórica de la muestra y los artistas las herramientas tecnológicas, además de tener un interés común en
participantes. materiales comerciales no artísticos y no convencionales, tomados
Los artistas expuestos trabajan durante el final de dos décadas de la cocina, las farmacias, los trasteros de casa, etc.
(1990-2010), periodo en que el arte y la cultura no miran al futuro,
sino que se limitan a analizar el presente y el pasado, a partir de lo
heredado y sin pretender crear nada nuevo. Para entender histórica- Conclusiones
mente estos trabajos, Kline nos invita a observar el momento contra
el que reaccionan sus contenidos, marcados por tres fenómenos que El caso de estudio aportado es paradigmático en relación con la
determinaron la situación de la década del 2000: sociedad de consumo actual y el momento histórico que estamos
viviendo. Como ha recordado Kline en su contextualización histórica
1. El atentado a las Torres Gemelas en New York el once de sep- de la muestra, los jóvenes artistas invitados a participar representan
tiembre de 2001 y las consecuencias militares en Afganistán, la generación más reciente de creadores nacidos después de los
Irak, etc. grandes cambios históricos de finales del siglo pasado y, de alguna
2. Las políticas económicas promovidas en Estados Unidos y en manera, las generaciones y las estéticas por venir. Sus obras nacen
la Unión Europea que apoyaban las guerras de Bush. de una reacción a la complejidad de la sociedad capitalista contem-
3. El ascenso de internet como medio de comunicación de masas poránea, a su paisaje cotidiano, y expresan el entorno real y virtual
de nuestros tiempos. en el que las generaciones presentes y futuras se ven destinadas a
habitar. Pero sobre todo la exposición expresa, desde el punto de vista
Pero sobre todo el colapso de Lehman Brothers y la crisis financiera estético y de teoría del arte contemporáneo, un cambio de paradigma
y económica mundial que empieza con el crash del 2008 cambia- ontoepistemológico, que es un síntoma de una evolución respecto a
ron irrevocablemente las cosas. A partir de esta fecha, se abre un los paradigmas vigentes hasta ahora.
periodo definido por una inestabilidad socioeconómica mundial y, Las nuevas teorías filosóficas realistas/materialistas espe-
al mismo tiempo, por un cambio tecnológico rápido y espectacular, culativas, el Manifiesto Aceleracionista y, más allá de aquellas, el
así que, según el mismo autor, grupos de artistas que viven en New contexto más amplio del nuevo materialismo centran su atención en
York, Berlín o Londres intentan describir genuinamente las nuevas los aspectos materiales de la cultura, de la economía y de la política
condiciones de vida: es decir el shock del presente y mostrar su actuales, y reconducen la mirada hacia la producción, el trabajo y las
mirada o perspectiva al futuro. infraestructuras, en una óptica que recuerda a las interpretaciones
Otro dato interesante es el hecho de que muchos de los artistas de la tendencia más economicista del marxismo, centrada más bien
seleccionados para esta exposición conforman lo que Kline define en los medios de producción (las tecnologías de producción) y en los
como multinational natives post inmigration16 de la segunda mitad aspectos productivos (y su papel de mediación entre lo humano y
del siglo xx, es decir, hijos de los emigrantes del siglo pasado pro- la naturaleza). De esta manera, minan la hegemonía y quitan prota-
venientes de países clientes de Estados Unidos, como Corea del gonismo a las cuestiones superestructurales, lingüísticas (crítica de
Sur, Filipinas y Kuwait o desde distintas partes de la extinta Unión la representación) o de producción de subjetividades, tan centrales
Soviética, u otros emigrantes de otros lugares del globo venidos a en la tendencia sociologista del marxismo y en las problemáticas
Occidente para buscar fortuna, que encontraron lo familiar, lo coti- posmodernas.
diano, lo común en los bienes de consumo globales, en las marcas Esta modificación interior a la cultura se podría explicar me-
multinacionales, en la gastronomía internacional, en los servicios diante su relación con el periodo de profunda y prolongada crisis
y en otras cosas que van más allá de las diferencias geográficas y que el capitalismo posfordista está registrando, que ha tenido su
culturales de cada uno. pico máximo en la crisis financiera del 2008, acompañada por la
Y mientras internet contribuye a crear un lenguaje universal, como crisis ecológica, la imposibilidad de que la «política» y los Estados
por ejemplo los hashtags, que ayudan a «unir» comunidades que no nacionales continúen funcionando como instancias reguladoras de la
necesariamente han entrado en contacto en el mundo real o virtual, economía y de la sociedad, y la crisis de la relación entre los sexos.
los programas y los ordenadores devienen instrumentos imprescindi- Y, sobre todo, la principal consecuencia de estas circunstancias –el
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desempleo desbordante– vuelve a poner sobre la mesa problemas HARMAN, G. (2015). Hacia el realismo especulativo. Ensayos y con-
como el trabajo, la organización del trabajo, su relación con los medios ferencias. Buenos Aires: Ed. Caja Negra.
de producción y el consumo. JAPPE, A. (1998). Guy Debord. Barcelona: Ed.Anagrama.
Estas problemáticas han estado latentes, pero han sido sistemáti- KLINE, J. (2017, en prensa). «Sharks and Dolphins». En: Susanne
camente olvidadas en los últimos treinta años por la teoría crítica, que PFEFFER (coord.). Speculations on Anonymous Materials. Londres:
individualizaba el problema central del capitalismo en la manipulación Koenig Books, pág. 137.
de las subjetividades con el fin de crear sujetos dóciles destinados LARIOS, P. (2014). «Speculation on Anonimous Materials». Frize. N.º
al trabajo. En realidad, como ya había intuido Anselm Jappe en las 13, marzo-abril.
conclusiones acerca del pasado y el futuro de la teoría crítica en LIPOVETSKY, G.; SERROY, J. (2015). La estetización del mundo. Vivir
su magistral libro sobre Guy Debord y la Internacional Situacionista en la época del capitalismo artístico. Barcelona: Ed. Anagrama.
(1993): «La verdad es que hoy en día el problema central para el MEILLASSOUX, Q. (2015). Después de la finitud. Ensayo sobre la
capital es que no sabe qué hacer con la inmensa mayoría de la necesidad de la contingencia. Buenos Aires: Ed. Caja Negra.
humanidad a la que no necesita ya como trabajo vivo, dado el grado PASQUINELLI, M. (2014). Algoritmi del capitale. Accelerazionismo,
de automatización de la producción».17 macchine della conoscenza e autonomía comune. Verona: Ed.
Ombre Corte.
PFEFFER, S. (coord) (2013). «Speculation on Anonymous Material».
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PFEFFER, S. (coord.) (2017, en prensa). Speculations on Anonymous
AVANESSIAN, A.; MACKAY, R. (2014). #Accelerate#The acelerationist Materials. Londres: Koenig Books.
reader. Falmouth: Ed. Urbanomic. SMOLIK, N. (2014). «Speculation on Anonimous Materials». Artforum.
BRYANT, L. R. (2011). The Democracy of Objects [en línea]. Mayo.
Ann Arbor: Ed. Michigan Library. <https://doi.org/10.3998/ SRNICEK, N.; WILLIAMS, A. (2013). «Manifiesto for an Accelerationist
ohp.9750134.0001.001> Politics». En: J. JOHNSON (ed.). Dark Trajectories: politics of the
BRYANT, L. R.; SRNICEK, N.; HARMAN, G. (2011). The Speculative Outside. Miami: Ediciones Name,
Turn. Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: Repress. STAKEMEIER, K. (2014). «Prosthetic production. The art of digital bo-
CAMACHO, E.; LIEN, A. (2014). «Speculation on Anonimous Materials». dies. On Speculations on Anonymous Materials at Fridericianum,
Flash Art. N.º 295, marzo-abril. Kassel». Texte Zur Kunst. N.º 93.
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MATELLI, Federica (2017). «“Speculations on Anonymous Materials”: la especulación sobre la
materialidad del capitalismo artístico como respuesta crítica a la estetización de la vida cotidiana».
En: Vanina HOFMAN y Pau ALSINA (coords.). «Futuros especulativos del arte». Artnodes. N.º 19,
págs. 47-56. UOC [Fecha de consulta: dd/mm/aa]
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ARTICLE
NODE: “ART AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES”
Abstract
This paper calls into question the context in which artistic production related to industrial history
may enter art official narratives. Drawing on the examples of the Voltron sculpture series by
David Smith (1962); Yvonne Rainer’s performance Carriage Discreteness (1966) and Stuart
Brisley’s work at the Hille Fellowship Poly Wheel factory (1970), I will propose that observing
the production of artworks within industrial environments implies a twofold commitment for art
history. On the one hand, investigating artworks relying on industrial materials and production
modes calls for the analysis of the “concrete and direct evidence” that materials provide (Didi-
Huberman, 2015; Domínguez Rubio, 2012). On the other, they invite consideration of informal
archives and “suspect evidence” related to the tacit knowledge of production, subjective
self-documentation and oral history (Rosnow and Fine, 1976).
Seen from this perspective, artists’ production in the context of industrial culture and
workers’ practices of self-managed time both contribute another point of view on how the
inscription within the realm of high and low culture is done in art history. At a time when
contemporary artistic and curatorial practices show a renewed interest in “outsiders’” artefacts,
the different work models and modes adopted by the proposed case studies enable a reading of
potential art historical narratives through the lens of working-class studies and the contemporary
material turn.
Keywords
factory culture, pérruques, contemporary art history and the material turn, process-based
production
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Resumen
Este artículo pone en cuestión el contexto en que la producción artística relacionada con la
historia industrial puede entrar a formar parte de las narrativas oficiales del arte. Tomando
como ejemplos la serie escultórica Voltron de David Smith (1962), la performance Carriage
Discreteness (1966) de Yvonne Rainer y el trabajo de Stuart Brisely en la Hille Fellowship Poly
Wheel (1970), propongo que observar la producción de obras de arte en entornos industriales
implica un doble compromiso para la historia del arte. Por un lado, investigar obras de arte
construidas con materiales y modos de producción industriales exige un análisis de los “indicios
concretos y directos” que proporcionan los materiales (Didi-Hubermann, 2015; Domínguez
Rubio, 2012). Por el otro, invitan a la valoración de archivos informales e “indicios dudosos”
relacionados con el conocimiento tácito de la producción, la autodocumentación subjetiva y
la historia oral (Rosnow y Fine, 1976).
Vista desde esta perspectiva, la producción de los artistas en el contexto de la cultura
industrial y las prácticas de autogestión del tiempo de los trabajadores aportan otro punto
de vista acerca de cómo se lleva a cabo la inscripción dentro del ámbito de la alta y la baja
cultura en la historia del arte. En un momento en el que las prácticas artísticas y comisariales
contemporáneas muestran un interés renovado en artefactos “foráneos”, los diferentes modelos
y modos de trabajo adoptados por los casos de estudio propuestos permiten contemplar
narrativas históricas del arte potenciales a través de la lente de los estudios de la clase
trabajadora y el giro material contemporáneo.
Palabras clave
cultura fabril, historia del arte contemporáneo y el giro material, producción basada en procesos
In 1963, Eugenio Battisti wrote about the criticality of the aestheticisation this point, the discontinuity implied by the impermanence of industrial
of factories within the new-born industrial archaeology (Battisti, 2001, production modes and materials, as well as the anticipation of utopian
p. 31-32). The invitation to inscribe industrial sites in the heritage and dystopian claims that artists made around them, had not been
discourse more selectively echoed with his concern for the potentially taken into account in methodological terms. The future point of view
massive museumisation of abandoned production facilities. If industrial that these artistic practices anticipated has consequences not only for
architecture appeared in the 1960s as the very quintessence of the the perception of the artworks in question, but also for the disciplinary
future, their obsolescence and cultural value were still to be assessed. position that art history engenders towards them.
The danger to “flatten and fade things” once the “museum spreads Drawing on the examples of the Voltron sculpture series by David
its surfaces everywhere”, to use Robert Smithson’s words, equally Smith (1962), Yvonne Rainer’s performance Carriage Discreteness
applied to the temporality of a renewed art history that Battisti wanted (1966), the exhibition 9 at Castelli (1968) and Stuart Brisley’s
to see in interaction with contemporary art practices (Smithson and intervention at the Hille Fellowship Poly Wheel Factory (1970), I will
Flam, 1996, p. 42). Along these lines, Battisti suggested that in order propose that observing the production of artworks within industrial
to deal with “new art materials”, art history would have to accept environments implies a twofold commitment for art history. First of
the impossibility of compiling comprehensive chronologies (Battisti, all, the necessity to consider the inadequacy of linear accounts for
2001, p. 19). Secondly, it would need to embrace the necessity to handling the hybrid temporality of “new art materials” that emerged at
“drill” around the subject of research in a non-linear fashion (Ibid.). the crossroads of aesthetic reflections, heterogeneous labour modes
Battisti’s approach pointed to a central challenge in the gesture and materiality. Secondly, the difficult assessment of an art production
of inscribing industry-related artistic practices within art official in which skills and crafts referred to spurious social and cultural
narratives. In the 1960s, industrial archaeology was treating contexts, both in terms of their making and reception. From this
abandoned factories in a similar manner as any other historical perspective, investigating artworks that rely on industrial materials
building, therefore casting them in the eternal past of fine arts. At and production modes calls for the analysis of the “concrete and
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direct evidence” that materials provide (Didi-Huberman, 2015, p. appeared to many as an opportunity to bring art back home (Leider,
42). Furthermore, it unravels the centrality of informal archives and 1968; Zukin, 1989, p. 3-15).
“suspect evidence” related to tacit knowledge and subjective self- Programmatically challenging the exhibition format and space,
documentation in the reconstruction of hybrid artistic works and 9 at Castelli invested the structural and conceptual frame of the site
practices that, at the time when they were produced, prefigured a as a whole. The stress on the production phase and the setting up of
potential “future knowledge” (Domínguez Rubio, 2012; Rosnow and an experimental arena where artistic processes would happen 24/7
Fine, 1976; Schwab et al., 2013, p. 9). That contemporary artistic and largely relied on their being camouflaged with the industrial materials
curatorial practices show a renewed interest in outsiders’ artefacts available on-site and on their impermanent, dynamic form. In this
has enabled the different work modes adopted by art production in regard, Robert Morris had previously commented in his “Notes on
the factory to be read as potential art historical narratives through Sculpture” that the idea of industrial production had not changed until
the lens of working-class studies and the contemporary material turn. quite recently, and that the main breakthrough in this respect would
Moreover, the relationship between artists’ production and industrial be the upcoming “automation of production involving a high degree
culture may be broadened to include other forms of self-managed and of feedback adjustments” (Morris, 1967, p. 24-29). Further, continued
creative time that happen within the factory, while also contributing Morris, as much art labour was taking place outside the studio, the
an alternative vision of how art history deals with the inscription of factory may have provided an alternative production situation for
artefacts in the realm of high and low culture. sculpture in the way that specialised workshops had in the past.
The many differences between art labour and the industrial
assembly line did not prevent 1960s artistic and industrial processes
Factories in exhibition from sharing a common critical vocabulary. In many ways the
recognition of artistic practices as labour is indebted to the social and
Eugenio Battisti’s concern about the critical museumisation of political unrest of the time, leading to a multiplicity of claims around
industrial sites echoed with the use of the symbolised studio space the exhibition being the work and the artist being an art worker (Bryan-
as a source of materials for installation and a curatorial palimpsest Wilson, 2009). In her 1969 Manifesto for Maintenance Art, artist Mierle
for performative exhibition processes. As early as in 1962, David Laderman Ukeles phrases it powerfully in the form of an activity-
Smith had shown how the abandoned Italian Voltri factory could be oriented autobiography, where the notions of work and labour merge
turned into a collective craft workshop and supplier of industrial in the context of art: “I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a
leftovers for his Voltron series (Wisotzki, 2005). In the following mother. (Random order). I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking,
years, the appropriation of former industrial buildings for exhibition- renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also (up to now separately) I
making was, as Julian Myers-Szupinska suggests, a “symptom” ‘do’ Art. Now I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them
of the “developing absence of light-industrial labour from the city up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art” (Laderman Ukeles, 1969).
centre” (Myers-Szupinska, 2013). Motivated by the new model of the As the concluding sentence shows, in Laderman Ukeles’ statement
peripheral industrial park, the displacement of production facilities the broadening of the notion of labour from a gender perspective
outside the city in the 1960s would anticipate the massive crisis of the bears the aesthetic consequence of considering all of her working
manufacturing economy (Molesworth, Darcie and Bryan-Wilson, 2003; activities as art: “My working will be my work”, she further wrote in her
Jones, 1996). In time, this translated into the increasing availability of Manifesto. This claim to wholeness echoed with reflections on labour
abandoned industrial sites. As “raw and industrial materials enter(ed) alienation and with the common refusal, by artists and workers alike,
the studio”, the exhibition space progressively lost its salon-like to be considered in a metonymical fashion as mere hands. What art
refined and decorative atmosphere. An experimental approach was labour was trying to achieve in its own conceptual version of the shift
adopted that, writes Myers-Szupinska, equated art and viewing to from manufacture to service economy was the possibility, says Lucy
labour for both the artists and the audience (Myers-Szupinska, 2013). Lippard, that “the (artist’s) studio is again becoming a study”, both
Evidence of this shift in artistic and curatorial labour modes as a site of conceptualisation and a conceptualised space (Lippard,
surfaced at the 9 at Castelli show in December 1968, where Robert 1968, p. 31-26).
Morris convened a group of process-oriented artists including Giovanni This was acutely related to the fact that art production was
Anselmo, William Bollinger, Eva Hesse, Stephen Kaltenbach, Bruce happening outside the studio, as both Lippard and Morris emphasised,
Nauman, Alan Saret, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, and Gilberto Zorio. while also experimenting with multiplied originals through collective
After more than a decade of loft-living in New York, where artists’ production processes, as in Daniel Spoerri’s Galerie MAT and Andy
studios had been established in industrial districts along with small Warhol’s Factory. However, the focus on the studio somehow
craft workshops, the fact that the exhibition took place in a former overshadowed other ways in which artistic and industrial productions
warehouse at 103 West 108th St., site of Leo Castelli’s new gallery, may have crossed paths, beyond simply spatial cohabitation.
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EAT: trans-disciplinary promises of the future artistic labour and industrial labour that relates to the hierarchy
between the artist who conceives the work and the engineer who
In establishing a parallel between the art strategies and the factory, implements it. This hierarchy, in the case of EAT, descended from
another element to consider is the encounter with the many promises technological limitations, but it was also the expression of a particular
of technologies. How these different forms of labour could play out class articulation and division of labour. Yvonne Rainer had established
when invited to interact with technologies was paradigmatically her performance as a horizontal interaction between performers,
experienced in Yvonne Rainer’s performance Carriage Discreteness, a artists producing the objects and co-authoring the choreography,
performance presented as part of 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering whereas the technological problems in the performance made the
Festival, at the 69th Regiment Armory, New York, in October 1966. artists involved become the “errand girls” of the engineers.
Rainer’s performance was commissioned by Billy Klüver for a
series of events performed in October 1966 that was at the origin of
EAT – Experiments of Art and Technology. Co-founded by engineers The aesthetics of the assembly line
Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg
and Robert Whitman, EAT would pursue the goal of “creating the In the 1950s, Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio and Asger Jorn had argued
social and cultural context for artists and engineers to collaborate, that the assembly line and the artistic process shared a common
as a way to support technological and industrial involvement in the vocabulary through experimenting with “industrial painting” (Bandini
arts” (Klüver, 1994). and Pinot Gallizio, 1974). As early as the 1960s, it was clear that
The commission to Yvonne Rainer was no exception. The making radical differences in procedures made it possible to quote industrial
of Carriage Discreteness was shared with a “technological partner”, processes and materials in the studio, but ended up with considerably
the physicist Per Biorn. The script consisted of a list of tasks, aimed more challenging results when it was the artist entering the factory
at activating the props fabricated by Carl Andre and the technological organisational system.
kinetic stage elements. The choreographic sequence crossed paths One premise is that the shift from manufacture to service economy
with the technological protocol, even though technological problems seemed to bear little aesthetic consequences for the collaborations
led Rainer to improvise. Whereas the improvisation element is included between artists and industrial processes. Besides raising critical
in the documentary account of the performance as a decision made reflections of art labour organisation, it also brought forward the
by the artist, going back to the events in 2006, Yvonne Rainer recalls: subtle distinction between producing art and producing in an artistic
way. This double-take was at the centre of artistic residencies in
[…] For a week before my October 15th performance I became factories emanating from the Artist Placement Group in Great Britain
Per Biorn’s errand girl, going back and forth to Lafayette Street to buy and, in particular, in Stuart Brisley’s experience in a furniture factory,
motors, transistors, circuit boards, and other paraphernalia required for the Hille Fellowship.
the programming of the remote controlled ‘events’ in my piece […] The Hille Fellowship project started for Brisley in 1970, when
On the evening of the performance I sat with my walkie-talkie in the he was selected by the Artist Placement Group (APG) to perform the
remote balcony overlooking the 200 × 200-foot performing area […] The tasks envisioned in their collaboration programme. As we read in the
choice of this imperial position has been a source of much subsequent contract that stipulated the context of the co-working experiment,
embarrassment for me. Why couldn’t I have allowed the performers to the APG developed from the idea to place individuals (artists) in
move the objects in any way they pleased? After all, the piece was about organisations (industry) to “draw attention towards the development
‘the idea of effort and finding precise ways in which effort can be made of creative behaviour within the environment” (APG, 1970). According
evident or not.’ […] The walkie-talkies didn’t function. Nothing seemed to the contract, the artist could be independent “of the commercial
to be happening… Finally all I could do was instruct the performers to motive” and of “the industrial argument”, and be involved in an activity
move the objects at random. (Rainer, 2006) that permits him or her to “‘speak’ to all levels” (APG, 1970).
Where EAT aimed to establish creative collaborations between
The notion of fiasco and failure is often evoked in the memoirs of artistic and technological partners in the experimental context of the
artists entering industrial processes or facing co-production. Not only applied research laboratory, APG positioned artists as “consultants”
may the result be unexpected, due to the need to coordinate different rather than as residents (Schwab et al., 2013, p. 191). In his report
languages and practices, but often, as in the case of EAT, the utopian on the Hille Fellowship project, Brisley summarised this drive in the
expectation for the result of the collaboration overshadows the reality, assumption that “‘creative’ activity, as symbolised by art, the artist,
and technicalities, of the work to be shared. and the process of art, may be thought of collectively as a model for
Furthermore, Yvonne Rainer’s account of her experience societal interaction” (Brisley, 1970b). The goal, we read in Brisley’s
emphasises one aspect often implied by the encounter between notes, was for artists to intervene and “offer ‘potential’ solutions to
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the ‘qualitative’ crisis of human activity in industry — through the suggest, the sculptures were produced in the Voltri Italsider factory, an
introduction of processes of continuous organic change in relation iron mill that had just been closed at the time of the initiative and that
to property oriented cycles” (Brisley, 1970b). was described by Giovanni Carandente as “a sort of large graveyard
In this context, when considering the kind of collaboration he of ferrous scrap destined for demolition” (Carandente, 1962).
wished to establish with the Hille Fellowship Factories, Stuart Brisley The invitation for David Smith to participate in the show came
imagined two possibilities. The first one related to materials and through another artist taking part in the event, Beverly Pepper.
sculptural expertise, and to the idea that the industrial space could Pepper clarified that besides offering a working space in an Italsider
enhance art making through its “work procedures” (Brisley, 1972 ). factory in, among other places, “Genoa, Savona, Naples, Trieste”,
The second option would have been to interact with the “more organic Carandente had agreed with Italsider that they would supply artists
aspect of Hille”, and involve the artist not only in the materials but with “workers and the materials”. Thirty years after the event, in 1992,
also in the philosophy of the place and the people who made it work. Carandente acknowledged that artistic production in factories was
In Brisley’s view, artists and industry had thus far mainly unexceptional at the time of the Sculture nella città exhibition. Among
collaborated “on a practical level at some distance from the the consequences, Carandente included the more “architectural”
industrial conflict” through patronage, financial donation, donation scale of contemporary sculpture, but omitted any change in art labour
of materials, commissions, or the making available of specialist skills organisation. The collaboration between factory workers and artists
and techniques (Brisley, 1970b). Even if with best intentions, this was portrayed in accordance to the Renaissance collective workshop
relationship did not challenge the system within which the factory stereotypes, where a post-Leonard engineer derived “from the fusion
acts. of artist and worker” (Carandente, 1992, p. 143). In this process, the
The point for Brisley would be to work on the organisation of labour artist was the idea-maker and the worker was the “hand” under
and in collaboration with the workers, more than under the tutelage whose purely technical and unconscious expertise the artwork takes
of the management. If he finalised the agreed sculpture during the shape.
residency at Hille, Brisley nonetheless reflected on the forms of When talking about the reasons for inviting David Smith to
collaboration with the workers contributing to the production. He produce sculptures for the Spoleto open-air exhibition, Carandente
verified that they were aware of the kind of chair that they produced; responded in extremely formal terms and connected his curatorial
he took advantage of their skills in stacking chairs for creating his choice to the history of abstract sculpture. If sculpture was typically
sculptures, but he equally offered his craft to change the colours of related to “taking away” matter, in the factory it became an issue of
the machines and improve the working environment. “adding” and “combining” (Carandente, 1992, p. 142). Yet, looking at
the biography of David Smith, we find additional motives. Smith had
been a member of workers’ unions since the 1930s and, like him,
Voltron: Art in the factory as a public situation many other artists were involved in the Federal Art Project. Under these
circumstances, he had consciously identified himself “with working
In Stuart Brisley’s vision, in the 1960s and 1970s artists who worked in men... by craft”, because of his past work as a welder and his artistic
public situations were very likely to come into contact with industries choice of producing sculptures through welding processes (Smith and
(Brisley, 1970b). Moreover, among them, some may “have at the base Gray, 1968, p. 61; Wisotzki, 2005, p. 347). Though acknowledging that
of their work an understanding and intention of the possibilities of his aesthetic approach differed, Smith was further stated to believe
social alternatives which determine the forms, context, and content in “a working man’s society in the future and in that society I hope
of their work” (Brisley, 1970b). to find a place” (Smith and Gray, 1968, p. 61; Wisotzki, 2005, p. 347).
As Brisley suggests, this potentiality could play out in an attempt Frequently comparing his studio to an industrial workplace, Smith
to infiltrate the labour structure that the artist was interacting with, defined it as “a small factory with the same make and quality tools
but also end up in a clear separation of the artistic intervention from used by production factories”, where ‘[s]tocks…are kept stocked
the social conflict engendered by the factory labour organisation. on steel shelving, more or less patterned after a factory stockroom”
The latter is the case of David Smith’s participation in Sculture nella (Smith and Gray, 1968, p. 52; Wisotzki, 2005, p. 359). He also described
città, an open-air sculpture exhibition organised by curator Giovanni his process of making sculpture in ways that echoed the industrial
Carandente in the Umbrian city of Spoleto in 1962 with the intention means of production to which he had been exposed while working at
of bringing modern, mainly abstract, art into the heart of the medieval Studebaker and American Locomotive: “My aim in material function
city. is the same as in locomotive building: to arrive at a given functional
Among artists invited, David Smith participated in Sculture nella form in the most efficient manner” (Smith and Gray, 1968, p. 52).
città with 22 sculptures from the Voltri series that were placed in the The contrast between Smith’s union involvement and the way in
Roman amphitheatre of Spoleto. As the name of Smith’s series would which he described his production process for Sculture nella città is
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quite shocking. In a letter dating from 1964, Smith went back to the of witnesses more than fifty years after the event, make the collection
collaboration at Voltri and connected the exemplarity of his experience of these alternative materials and stories non-linear and incomplete.
in the factory with total freedom and independence: “They gave me Yet, in observing these art historical cold-cases, the materiality of the
everything I asked for: a room at Colombia Excelsior, an interpreter, artworks themselves, and the understanding of their making, may
a driver, six workers”. Besides emphasising the companionship with point to another form of testimony that goes beyond meta-information
the workers, he comments positively on the Italsider management contained in oral history and documents.
policy: “They let me search in all the factories […] work over time
[…] I was never annoyed by bureaucratic and social problems, or
any other question” (Carandente, 1992, pp. 142-43). References
APG. (1970). “Draft contract”. [Accessed: 9 January 2017]<http://
Blue-collar engineers of fantasy www.stuartbrisley.com/pages/29/70s/Text/The_Artist_and_
Artist_Placement_Group___Studio_International/page:16>
The two parallel sides of David Smith’s experience of producing BANDINI, M.; PINOT GALLIZIO, G. (1974). Pinot Gallizio e il laboratorio
sculptures in industrial settings somehow disorients the art historical sperimentale d’Alba del movimento internazionale per una
interpretation and requires the construction of an alternative bauhaus immaginista (1955-57) e dell’internazionale situazionista
conceptual map. Just as with Yvonne Rainer’s counter-narrative on (1957-60). Torino: Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna.
the failure of the collaboration leading to Carriage Discreteness, and BATTISTI, E. (2001). “Storia dell’arte e società” In: Archeologia
Stuart Brisley’s criticism of Artist Placement Group’s approach to the industriale. Architettura, lavoro, tecnologia e la nuova rivoluzione
industrial labour organisation, the assessment of Smith’s experience industriale. Milano: Jaca Book, p.19-30.
with welding in the studio and the factory invites for a change of BRISLEY, S. (1970a). “APG/Hille Report: report by Stuart Brisley on
scenario. In a potentially alter-factual story of the collaborations his visit to Hille factories”. [Accessed: 9 January 2017]. <http://
between workers and artists, the notion of the artist that acts as an www.stuartbrisley.com>
idea manager and delegates the production of his work to craftsmen BRISLEY, S. (1970b). “Factory and artist: the industrial context”.
and workers may be challenged in favour of a more material vision [Accessed: 9 January 2017]. <http://www.stuartbrisley.com>.
of conceptual art. BRISLEY, S. (1972). “The Artist and the Artist Placement Group”.
A second common assumption that may be brought into question [Accessed: 9 January 2017]. <http://www.stuartbrisley.com>
concerns the deskilling of craft within industry and that of aesthetic BRYAN-WILSON, J. (2009). Art workers: radical practice in the Vietnam
production within art. Indeed, Carandente’s “engineer of fantasy” is War era. Berkeley: University of California Press.
a mythical creature born at the juncture between the intellectual and CARANDENTE, G. (1962). Sculture nella città. Civiltà delle macchine.
the blue-collar worker, but where the head at the origin of the cultural Vol. X, no. 4, p. 45-52.
production is very clearly positioned on the artist’s side (Carandente, CARANDENTE, G. (1992). Una città piena di sculture: Spoleto 1962.
1992, p. 145). Perugia: Electa Editori Umbri.
To challenge this predicament, recent curatorial practices have Didi-Huberman, G. (2015). “The Order of Material: Plasticities,
increasingly included an alternative history, coming from other Malaises, Survivals” In: P. LANGE-BERNDT (ed.) Materiality.
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is a hypothesis implied by both the EAT and the APG experiences. Bender and T. Druckrey (eds.) Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of
Most of these histories are based on informal archive materials Technology. Seattle: Bay Press.
in artists’ studios and factories alike, providing documentation on LADERMAN UKELES, M. (1969). Manifesto for Maintenance Art.
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production processes. Their partial nature, due to the increasing lack manifesto-for-maintenance-art-1969>
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LEIDER, P. (1968). “The properties of materials: in the shadow of ROSNOW, R. L.; FINE, G. A. (1976). Rumor and Gossip: The Social
Robert Morris. The New York Times, December 22. Psychology of Hearsay. New York: Elsevier.
LIPPARD, L. (1968). The Dematerialization of the Art. Artforum, n. 6, SCHWAB, M. [et al.] (ed.) (2013). Experimental systems: future
p. 31-36. knowledge in artistic research. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
MOLESWORTH, H. A.; ALEXANDER, M. D.; BRYAN-WILSON, J. (2003). SMITH, D.; GRAY, C. (1968). David Smith. New York: Holt, Rinehart,
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MORRIS, R. (1967). “Notes on Sculpture Part III.” Artforum. vol. 5, SMITHSON, R.; FLAM, J. D. (1996). Robert Smithson, the collected
no. 10, Summer. writings. Berkeley: University of California Press.
MYERS-SZUPINSKA, J. (2013). “In the place of production.” Paper WISOTZKI, P. (2005). “Artist and Worker: The Labour of David Smith.”
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Recommended citation
MARTINI, Federica (2017). “Art history cold cases: artists’ labour in the factory”. In: Vanina HOFMAN
and Pau ALSINA (coords.). “Art and speculative futures”. Artnodes. No. 19, pp. 57-64. UOC
[Accessed: dd/mm/yy].
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CV
Federica Martini
PhD
Head of MAPS – Master of Arts in the Public Sphere
ECAV – École cantonale d’art du Valais/Sierre
federica.martini@ecav.ch
Federica Martini (PhD) is an art historian and curator. She was a member of the Curatorial
Departments of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Musée Jenisch Vevey and
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne.
Since 2009, Martini has been head of the Master’s programme MAPS at the ECAV. In 2015-
16 she was a fellow at the Swiss Institute in Rome. Her publications include: Vedi alla voce:
traversare (in press, 2016); Tourists Like Us: Critical Tourism and Contemporary Art (with V.
Mickelkevicius, 2013); Pavilions/Art in Architecture (with R. Ireland, 2013); Just Another Exhibition:
Stories and Politics of Biennials (with V. Martini, 2011).
artnodes
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ARTICLE
NODE: “ART AND SPECULATIVE FUTURES”
Abstract
A focus on documentation is essential to help better understand art and its information,
particularly in terms of art’s materiality and art information’s materialisation. Documentation
— that is, documents and practices with them, or so-called documentary practices — provides
the material basis for art and, in turn, materialises the information presented, displayed or
intended by the artwork, or piece of art.
Indeed, most kinds of art exist as some kind of document, such as a film, painting or
sculpture. Art’s information, moreover, is materialised, and thereby transformed, into an artwork,
or piece of art, by and through documentation. Documentation is therefore a crucial component
of the field and practice of art because of its important roles in materialising artistic concepts into
particular kinds of documents that are considered, treated, practiced and interacted with as art.
This article presents a conceptual exploration of documentation so as to help illuminate its
importance for art’s materiality and art information’s materialisation. Drawing upon the work
of Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Michael Buckland, Bernd Frohmann, Marc Kosciejew, Niels Lund,
Tim Gorichanaz, and Kiersten Latham, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, this article aims to
introduce and begin to bring together the disciplines and practices of documentation and art by
providing useful conceptual approaches in which to better understand their material realities.
This article also responds to Ann-Sophie Lehmann’s call for more and greater material literacy
of and for the (art) world, by contributing to the start of a conversation about documentation
and materialisation generally and about art and its information specifically.
Keywords
document, documentation, information, materiality, materialism, art
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Resumen
El tratamiento de la documentación es esencial para contribuir a mejorar la comprensión del
arte y su información, especialmente en lo referido a la materialidad del arte y la materialización
de la información artística. La documentación, es decir, los documentos y las prácticas que los
utilizan, también conocidas como prácticas documentales, constituye la base material del arte
y, a su vez, materializa la información presentada, expuesta o pretendida por la obra de arte.
De hecho, casi todo el arte existe bajo la forma de alguna clase de documento, como
una película, una pintura o una escultura. La información artística, además, se materializa,
y por tanto se transforma, en una obra de arte, por mor y a través de la documentación. La
documentación es, por consiguiente, un componente crucial de la teoría y la práctica del arte,
debido a la importante función que desempeña en la materialización de conceptos artísticos
en clases concretas de documentos a los que se considera y se trata, y con los que se practica
e interactúa, como arte.
Este artículo presenta una exploración del concepto de documentación con el propósito
de contribuir a esclarecer su importancia para la materialidad del arte y la materialización de
la información artística. Basándose en la obra de Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Michael Buckland,
Bernd Frohmann, Marc Kosciejew, Niels Lund, Tim Gorichanaz y de Kiersten Latham, Diana
Coole y Samantha Frost, este artículo pretende comenzar a describir y reunir las disciplinas y
prácticas de documentación y arte, exponiendo planteamientos conceptuales útiles con los que
conocer mejor sus realidades materiales. Este artículo responde, asimismo, a la llamada de
Ann-Sophie Lehmann, que reclama una alfabetización artística sobre y para el mundo (del arte)
mayor y más amplia, que sea el punto de partida de una conversación sobre documentación
y materialización en general y sobre el arte y su información en particular.
Palabras clave
documento, documentación, información, materialidad, materialismo, arte
A critical question for artists, art scholars, art practitioners and art and, in turn, materialises the information presented, displayed
other art lovers is about how art is materialised. How are abstract or intended by the art. Or as Marc Kosciejew states, “a document
and artistic concepts materialised and turned into so-called art or allows for the materialization of information, helping transform it from
artwork? Further, how is the information of art — its particular ideas, something that is intangible into something that is tangible that, in
inspirations, and meanings — materialised into something with which turn, can be used by many different actors for various purposes in
one engages in interactions or transactions? In what ways is art diverse settings” (Kosciejew, 2017, p. 98-99).
experienced? How is one able to experience art as art and not only The art field and practice, indeed like much of the world, is
as an artist’s ephemeral, mental construct emanating from some directly concerned with, and immersed in, many different kinds
state of knowing? Documentation is one of the foundational ways in of documentation. As Diana Coole and Samantha Frost note, “we
which art is materialised. inhabit an ineluctably material world. We live our everyday lives
Most kinds of art exist as some kind of document, such as a film, surrounded by, immersed in, matter… At every turn we encounter
painting or sculpture. Art’s information, moreover, is materialised, physical objects fashioned by human design and endure natural forces
and thereby transformed, into an artwork, or piece of art, by and whose imperatives structure our daily routines for survival” (Coole and
through documentation. Documentation is central to the field and Frost, 2010, p. 1). Much of the world is immersed in documents and
practice of art, particularly for materialising art’s information. documentary practices. Documentation, encountered seemingly at
Documentation — that is, documents and practices with them, or every turn, helps determine, discipline and structure many activities,
so-called documentary practices — provides the material basis for expectations, needs, routines and realities.
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This article presents a conceptual exploration of documentation Lehmann states that this separation was “devised to emancipate the
so as to help illuminate its importance for art’s materiality and art visual arts from the realm of craftsmanship, the installment of the
information’s materialisation. This conceptual exploration is intended superiority of idea and disegno came at the cost of hiding material
to help introduce a documentary perspective and approach to the procedures and technical skills from view and, consequently, from
field and practice of art. It is not necessarily concerned with a theoretical reflection” (Lehmann, 2013, p. 10).
critical analysis, review or history of art or artwork per se; instead, This dualist separation consequently constrains the art field and
its approach is situated within documentation studies and its aim is to practice by placing art’s information and its materiality in opposition to
demonstrate and analyse some of the roles played by documentation each other whilst simultaneously elevating the former over the latter.
in art. This conceptual exploration begins with a discussion of some Art’s materiality, and indeed how artistic ideas are materialised into
components and dimensions of documents and their centrality in and artwork, has been relegated to a lesser status seemingly unworthy
to art. It builds upon this discussion to show how documentation is of analysis, reflection or appreciation. It ignores and, at worst, rejects
or can be experienced and, in turn, how it aids in the co-creation and their more symbiotic and enmeshed relationship.
co-experience between an individual and an artwork or art object. This dualist separation therefore often obstructs a fuller
Drawing upon the work of Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Michael Buckland, understanding of artwork and its information. Kiersten Latham argues
Bernd Frohmann, Marc Kosciejew, Niels Lund, Tim Gorichanaz, and that the “physicality of documents is meaningful beyond signification
Kiersten Latham, as well as of Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, this — the tactile, solid, dimensional (material) aspects of documents are
article aims to introduce and begin to bring together the disciplines as meaningful as the signified [information]. Material things elicit
and practices of documentation and art by providing useful conceptual imagined things, trigger the profound, help people make connections”
tools in which to better understand their material realities. Further, (Latham, 2014, p. 558). Thus, a materialist (re)turn can help reveal,
this article responds to Lehmann’s call for more and greater material clarify and open wider approaches and fuller understandings in the art
literacy (Lehmann, 2016a, 2016b), by contributing to the start of field and practice. A focus on documents and practices with them can
a conversation about documentation and materialisation generally further help in this materialist (re)turn — and contribute to Lehmann’s
and about art and its information specifically. Let us begin with an call for more material literacy — by showing the significant ways in
overview of the dualist separation of materiality and art and its parallel which art and its information are materialised into artwork by, with
separation of documentation and information. and through documentation.
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materiality of documentation and the practices, processes, and Art’s Documents, Document Parts,
assemblages involved in the materialization of information” (Kosciejew, and Systems
2017, p. 98). Foregrounding the materiality of documentation helps to
emphasise and show that art and its information are not immaterial But what makes an object like a piece of art a document? Tim
and intangible abstractions but instead material and tangible objects. Gorichanaz and Kiersten Latham ask, “do documents exist? Or,
There are in fact growing calls for better and more nuanced perhaps more to the point: how do documents exist?” (Gorichanaz
understandings of art’s materiality. Lehmann, for example, calls for and Latham 2016, p. 1114). An object is a document when it furnishes
greater material literacy to help strengthen our awareness of and some kind of information or, as Suzanne Briet describes it, evidence.
appreciation for our material surroundings (Lehmann, 2016a, 2016b). Michael Buckland presents Briet’s classic definition of a document
Material literacy involves learning with and through materials, or as being some kind of “evidence in support of a fact” (Buckland,
so-called material learning, in order to help us better understand 1997). A document, according to Briet, is “any physical or symbolic
our surroundings. Lehmann states that “to have material literacy sign, preserved or recorded, intended to represent, to reconstruct,
means to be able to express oneself clearly about materials’ qualities, or to demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon” (Buckland,
1997). The implication is that documentation should not be viewed
histories, and affordances” (Lehmann, 2016b, p. 14). She presents a
as being concerned only with texts but instead with access to
case study of the art history discipline to discuss how to apply and
evidence. Evidence is not only textual but can also be aural/audio,
study material literacy. She states that applying material literacy to
visual, imagery, pictorial, statuary, and so on. Thus, an object is a
art history helps illuminate how art is related to, enmeshed in and a
document if it somehow instructs and/or proves or serves as evidence
reflection of the material world, and vice versa.
of something. A piece of art is indeed a document because it not only
Lehmann presents a framework of material literacy comprising materialises and represents (artistic) ideas, messages or meanings
four main components (Lehmann, 2016b) using the art history — that is, information — but also simultaneously informs and serves
discipline as a backdrop. First, material literacy situates materials at as evidence of that (artistic) information.
the centre of observation, study and analysis of art. Second, material Gorichanaz and Latham provide an illuminating documentary
literacy develops material dialogues about art materials and their framework that helps provide direction for taking and expanding
effects. Third, material literacy uses materiality to more fully illuminate documentary approaches to artwork. This documentary framework
the context in which art features or functions. And, fourth, material comprises three main components, or what they term as frames:
literacy integrates materials into art pedagogy and research. the document, the parts of a document (docemes and docs) and the
Lehmann’s framework for material literacy could usefully be documents as part of systems. Applying this documentary framework
extended to include a component concerning documentation in order could, for example, mean analysing a particular piece of art as an
to help illuminate how information is materialised and transformed individual whole document, or examining the individual docemes
into objects or ‘things’ — documents — that are considered to within it or docs that make it, or looking at it as part of a broader
be art or artwork. As Kosciejew argues “documentation science class, category, genre or wider world of artwork.
complements and supports Lehmann’s call for material literacy This documentary framework’s analytical starting point is the
by drawing attention to documents and our practices with them. It document in its individual entirety. This frame “allows the appreciation
explores how documents relate to the material world and vice versa” of the life history of an object — the object’s lifeworld” (Gorichanaz
and Latham, 2016, p. 1123). Presenting an example of the art history
(Kosciejew, 2017, p. 97-98). Material literacy, in other words, should
field to illustrate this analytical frame, they show that “while art pieces
also involve an examination of documentation and its effects on and
are connected over time and space, they are often singled out for
for the world and, in this case, the art field and practice, and vice versa.
analysis, especially when known artists are involved. In a survey
As Kosciejew explains this examination can be done by placing
course, for instance, single pieces are drawn out and analysed as
a document, or documents, at the centre of observation, study and
singular wholes. ‘Today’, the syllabus might seem to say, ‘we will
analysis in order to help: develop documentary dialogues about discuss Descent from the Cross by van der Weyden, tomorrow The
and for it; use it to better illuminate its particular context and other Birth of Venus by Botticelli, and later Nightwatch by Rembrandt and
contingencies; and integrate it into the pedagogy and research of art Guernica by Picasso’” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, p. 1123).
information (Kosciejew, 2017, p, 98). Thus, a focus on documentation The second frame is a document’s parts, specifically the doceme
in the art field and practice draws attention to documents and our and the doc. The doceme is a part of an individual document.
practices with them and how they help to enable a fuller exploration of Gorichanaz and Latham argue that “it may be critical for a researcher
our surroundings generally and our information, and its materialisation, in some cases to analyse how the individual components of a
specifically. document contribute to the overall document, accounting for each
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of those components as well as the whole” (Gorichanaz and Latham, as a painting, a person could be aware that there are other paintings
2016, p. 1124). It is important to note, however, that the concept of (or even other kinds of artwork) by this particular artist, or more
the doceme was first introduced by Niels Lund. Lund describes a generally that other paintings exist and that this is just one of them,
doceme as “any part of a document, which can be identified and or that this painting belongs to a particular genre or period or place.
analytically isolated, thus being a partial result of the documentation When analysing any document, then, it is important to consider their
process” (Lund, 2004, p. 99), or in other words, “as a part of a certain relationality to and within particular kinds of systems. Arrangement,
document” (Lund, 2007, p. 23). curation, exhibition, organisation, structure, indexing and other kinds
The doceme offers more granular and specific analyses of a of relationships influence and shape shared social, cultural practices
document. Lund presents the example of a photograph, as a doceme, and, thus, intersubjective understandings of a document’s status
within a textual newspaper article, the ‘main’ document; however, it as a document. Buckland, for instance, notes that “Ron Day…has
is the photograph and the text, taken together, that form the whole suggested, very plausibly, that Briet’s use of the word ‘indice’ is
document. He explains that “a certain doceme, like a photograph important, that it is indexicality — the quality of having been placed
in a newspaper, may be a document in itself if it is made outside in an organized, meaningful relationship with other evidence —
the newspaper. At the same time, the newspaper is not the same that gives an object its documentary status” (Buckland, 1997). It is
document if it does not have any photographs as illustrations” (Lund, the indexing, arranging, organising, relating, and so on, with other
2007, p. 23). Gorichanaz and Latham nevertheless note that Lund documents that helps to configure and facilitate the shared social,
acknowledges that many “docemes cannot exist in the same capacity cultural practices involved in the intersubjective understandings of
outside documents as they do within them, just as phonemes can documents (to be discussed below). Frohmann similarly argues that
never exist outside languages” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, “things are documents when located in places where they are readily
p. 1125). available to provide evidentiary support for particular propositions”
The doceme, moreover, need not be restrictive; indeed, it can be (Frohmann, 2009, p. 297). Information emerges and materialises
flexible. As Gorichanaz and Latham argue, “specific docemes can through a document’s particular arrangement with, or relationship
be delineated according to an analyst’s needs and the nature of the to, other things or objects that are considered documents.
document in question” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, p. 1125). The But documents, like different kinds of artwork, are not simply
particular docemes will depend upon the document being analysed, unimportant or disposable conveyors or transmitters of information;
the practices involved with that document, and the various contextual on the contrary, documents, and practices with them, have central
contingencies of and surrounding it. Docemes can be a photograph roles in materialising information. Yet, according to Bernd Frohmann,
in a newspaper article, a chapter in a book, a figure in a report, and information “is so often conceived as an abstract, immaterial, and
so on. Additionally, “other examples of such docemes include the mentalistic substance — Geoffrey Nunberg’s ‘noble substance…
arm of a Greek sculpture or a scene from a film” (Gorichanaz and indifferent to the transformation of its vehicles’, or Katherine Hayles’s
Latham, 2016, p. 1125). ‘disembodied information’ — a conception that privileges research
Docs, meanwhile, “are the physical components that make up often transcending, if not simply by-passing, the social, political,
any document, irrespective of information or meaning” (Gorichanaz scientific, [artistic] and cultural worlds” (Frohmann, 2007, p. 27).
and Latham, 2016, p. 1126). For example, “considering a painting, a Information is not indifferent to its materiality; instead, according to
few of the docs that might be analysed include: the support, the paint Frohmann, information is an effect of documentation. Shifting the
and the size” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, p. 1126). Docs are the focus from information to documentation helps to more fully illuminate
material components of a document (or even a doceme). Gorichanaz the important ways in which documents and practices with them
and Latham explain that “when something is considered as a doc, materialise information and turn it into something that is material,
it is understood as a physical manifestation, disregarding context” tangible, interacted with and used.
(Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, p. 1127). It is purely the material. As Buckland observes “one can discuss a text or a work in an
Unlike a doceme, which is “an aspect of a document that contributes abstract sense but texts and works can exist as documents only in
some meaning to that document” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, some physical manifestation” (Buckland, 2016, p. 1). Documents
p. 1127), a doc is a material component of a document. typically exist in some kind of material form; moreover, their particular
The third frame is documents as parts of a system. All “documents kind of materiality — paper, film, digital, clay, etc. — determines what
function within shared systems (e.g. families, organizations, cultures). kind of practices they afford. As Frohmann observes “since documents
Indeed, a document can be said to exist by virtue of its arrangement exist in some material form, their materiality configures practices with
with other things” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, p. 1127). This them” (Frohmann, 2004, p. 396). Materiality can constrain or expand
frame therefore helps show that all documents are parts of diverse practices, and thus possibilities, with documents. Frohmann states
and larger systems. When analysing or viewing a piece of art, such that “a familiar example of constraints imposed by the materiality of
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documents is the difficulty of coordinating meetings when committee Regarding the social aspects of documents, Buckland notes the
members rely upon their ‘hard copy’ of the same Web document, importance of intersubjectivity for documents. Intersubjectivity occurs
each with unique pagination, thus exposing a minor advantage of when mental, subjective understandings “develop among two or more
typographical fixity” (Frohmann, 2004, p. 396). A digital art exhibition, individuals in a related, dialectic way. These more or less shared
as another example, is created, used, viewed and interacted with — subjective understandings — intersubjective understandings —
and therefore experienced — in very different ways than a physical form the basis of the shared culture of any social group” (Buckland,
art exhibition. 2016, p. 2). Although interacted and experienced in subjective ways,
Buckland notes materiality’s importance for documentation, a document can be objectively perceived as a document through
presenting it as a kind of rule for determining when an object shared social, cultural practices. Recall how documents are part of
becomes or is a document (Buckland, 1997). Additionally, along systems and that their particular role, status or importance often
with materiality, he states that other rules for such a determination derives from their arrangement within a larger system, their placement
include: intentionality, that is, “it is intended that the object be treated in a certain cultural context and their relationship to other documents.
as evidence”; the object must “be processed”, that is, made into a As Gorichanaz and Latham note, “documents can be understood as
document; and “a phenomenological position”, that is, the object parts of systems, the complex networks of relationships that exist
is perceived to be a document (Buckland, 1997). These rules are between documents and people and the societies in which they live
admittedly only some of the “richness of the factors that must be [and function]” (Gorichanaz and Latham, 2016, p. 1130).
taken into account to understand how documents become informing” Frohmann further states that “attention to practices with
(Frohmann, 2004, p. 387). The consideration of such factors should documents reveals how it is that particular documents, at particular
similarly be taken into account in understanding art’s materiality and times and places and in particular areas of the social and cultural
how its information is materialised. [and artistic] terrain, become informative” (Frohmann, 2004, p.
405). Practices with documents — such as creating, inscribing,
writing, drawing, painting, reading, viewing, handling, deploying,
The Physical, Mental, and Social Aspects disseminating, organising, exhibiting, implementing and otherwise
of Art’s Documentation using in diverse ways — are especially necessary in materialising
information which, in turn, helps make a document informing in some
In order for an object to be considered a document, it must be or way. Or, put differently, documentary practices help make a piece of
furnish evidence — or information — of something and thereby art informing as artistic, or as evidence of art, in some way.
inform one about something. Recalling discussions of how something Practices with documents could therefore be seen as a kind of a
can be made art by framing it as art, Buckland asks “did Briet mean process of co-creating information. Gorichanaz similarly argues that
that just as ‘art’ is made art by ‘framing’ (i.e. treating) it as art, so an without practices, or more specifically without any (human) actor, “an
object becomes a ‘document’ when it is treated as a document, i.e. object cannot be observed, consulted or studied, and there is nobody
as a physical or symbolic sign, preserved or recorded, intended to to judge proof, be presented to, reconstitute, handle, transport or
represent, to reconstruct, or to demonstrate a physical or conceptual preserve” (Gorichanaz, 2015, p. 3). An object, in other words, becomes
phenomenon?” (Buckland, 1997). A piece of art is a document that a document, and is made informing, with and through practices with it.
is “regarded by someone as signifying something [some kind of A document’s information does not emerge, let alone fully materialise,
information]. It has to be a physical, material entity” (Buckland, without engaging in practices with it. A document that does not have
2016, p. 1). A piece of art is usually intended to signify some kind anyone engaging in practices with it is, according to Gorichanaz, not
of information. Materiality is necessary in this signification, but it is a document, or at least not a full document; instead, it is only a kind
not entirely sufficient for the artwork to be a document. Mental and of “information object”, which is itself only a “potential document”
social aspects must also be taken into account. (Gorichanaz, 2015, p. 3).
Regarding the mental aspects of documents, Buckland explains Or, put differently, it is a fusion or, as Latham (2014) describes it, a
that “someone must view [the document] as signifying (or potentially transaction, between an object and person, between the material and
signifying) something, even if unsure of what the significance might be” the mental, between the material and the cultural, that determines an
and, further, its “status as a document […] is an individual, personal object’s documentary status, thereby materialising its information. For
mental judgment and, therefore, subjective. Such a perception occurs example, without engaging in practices with it, “a book is nothing more
only in a living mind and, with any living, learning mind, the perception than a weighty collection of inked leaves — it is not a document…[but]
can change as what the individual knows changes” (Buckland, 2016, once a person uses it, a document is created” (Gorichanaz, 2015, p. 3).
p. 2). The document is perceived to be a document; the piece of art is It is important to also note that documentary practices are
perceived to be art with some kind of artistic information or evidence. determined and disciplined by particular, and usually shared, social
artnodes
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and cultural aspects; or, as Buckland would state, the intersubjective Latham, as well as Coole and Frost, this article aimed to bring together
social aspects of documents. Documentary practices, and documents documentation and art in order to show their many enmeshed, shared
themselves, are context-bound. As Gorichanaz explains, “this co- and, in some respects, symbiotic commonalities and relationships.
created understanding of document has an important ramification: A focus on documentation is essential to help better understand
documents do not exist in the physical world, but rather in a both art and its information, at least in terms of materiality and
psycho-physical or socio-physical realm” (Gorichanaz, 2015, p. 4). materialisation. Documentation is indeed a crucial component
Documents are material objects with psycho-social properties and of the field and practice of art because of its important roles in
affordances, especially insofar as practices with them are concerned. materialising artistic concepts into particular kinds of documents
The information of a document, then, is materialised both through its that are considered, treated, practiced and interacted with as art.
actual materiality and shared social, cultural practices — which are
shaped by and, in turn, shape mental interactions — in particular
contexts. Reference
The enmeshed aspects of the physical (material), mental and
social, cultural dimensions of a piece of art as a document therefore BUCKLAND, M. (1997). “What is a Document?” School of Information
must be accounted for in understanding art’s materiality and art Management & Systems, University of California, Berkeley.
information’s materialisation. A piece of art, when approached and <http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/whatdoc.html>
understood as a document, “must have both physical and mental BUCKLAND, M. (2016). “The Physical, Mental and Social Dimensions
properties, but since the mental processes are culturally entangled of Documents”. Proceedings from the Document Academy. Vol.
with the social, the status of being a document also entails a social 3, iss. 1, Article 4.
dimension indirectly through the mental” (Buckland, 2016, p. 3). COOLE, D.; FROST, S. (2010). “Introducing the New Materialisms”.
Furthermore, a document like a piece of art must be placed “in In: D. COOLE and S. FROST (eds.). New Materialisms: Ontology,
evidence, to offer it as evidence by the way it is arranged, indexed Agency, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 1-43.
or presented” (Buckland, 1997). These shared intersubjective <https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392996>
social, cultural practices — which involve a co-creating process, or FROHMANN, B. (2004). “Documentation Redux: Prolegomenon
fusion, between the document and information/the piece of art and to (Another) Philosophy of Information”. Library Trends.
artist and user/the object and actor/the material and the social and Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 387-407. <https://www.ideals.illinois.
cultural — with the document in context-bound systems are crucial edu/bitstream/handle/2142/1683/Frohmann387407.
in materialising art’s information. pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y>
FROHMANN, B. (2007). “Multiplicity, Materiality, and Autonomous
Agency of Documentation”. In: R.SKARE, N. W.LUND and A.
Documenting and Materialising Art VÁRHEIM (eds.). A Document (Re)turn. Frankfurt am Main: Peter
Lang. pp. 27-39.
This article has helped to respond to Lehmann’s call for greater material FROHMANN, B. (2009). “Revisiting ‘what is a document?’” Journal
literacy by introducing a focus on documentation to the art field and of Documentation. Vol. 65, iss 2, pp. 291 – 303. <https://doi.
practice through its conceptual exploration of documentation and its org/10.1108/00220410910937624>
importance for art’s materiality and art information’s materialisation. GORICHANAZ, T.; LATHAM, K. F. (2016), “Document phenomenology:
As Kosciejew argues “documentation helps show information’s a framework for holistic analysis”. Journal of Documentation.
materiality and contextual contingencies that make it informing; Vol. 72, iss. 6, pp. 1114–1133. <https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-
without documents and documentary practices, information is 2016-0007>
dematerialized and thus decontextualized and in some cases rendered GORICHANAZ, T. (2015). “For Every Document, a Person: A Co-Created
meaningless” (Kosciejew 2017, p, 110). Indeed, “documentation is View of Documents”. Proceedings from the Document Academy.
of central importance to information” (Kosciejew 2017, p. 110). Vol. 2, iss. 1, Article 9. <http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/
This article thus explained the dualist separation of information viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=docam>
and materiality in art and showed the important roles played by KOSCIEJEW, M. (2017). “A Material-Documentary Literacy: Documents,
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parts and systems, and their physical, mental and social aspects. By LATHAM, K. F. (2014). “Experiencing documents”. Journal of
applying some of the conceptual perspectives and approaches offered Documentation. Vol. 70, iss. 4, pp. 544-561. <https://doi.
by Lehmann, Kosciejew, Buckland, Frohmann, Lund, Gorichanaz and org/10.1108/JD-01-2013-0013>
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LEHMANN, A. (2013). “How materials make meaning”. In: A. S. Netherlands. pp. 3-17. <http://www.rug.nl/news-and-events/
LEHMANN, F. SCHOLTE and H. P. CHAPMAN (eds.). Meaning in events/inauguration/2016/0412-lehmann-bluhm?lang=en>
Materials, 1400-1800. Leiden: Brill, pp. 6-23. LUND, N.W. (2004). “Documentation in a complementary perspective”.
LEHMANN, A. (2016a, 27 May). “New Materialisms: Reconfiguring the In: R. W. BOYD (ed.). Aware and Responsible: Papers of the Nordic-
Object”. New Materialism Training School: Research Genealogies International Colloquium on Social and Cultural Awareness and
and Material Practices and the Tate Modern display Material Responsibility in Library, Information and Documentation Studies
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whats-on/tate-modern/talks-and-lectures/new-materialisms- LUND, N.W. (2007). “Building a Discipline, Creating a Profession: An
reconfiguring-object> Essay on the Childhood of ‘Dokvit’”. In: R. SKARE, N. W. LUND
LEHMANN, A. (2016b, 12 April). “Cube of Wood. Material Literacy for Art and A. VÁRHEIM (eds.). A Document (Re)turn. Frankfurt am Main:
History”. Inaugural Lecture. University of Groningen, Groningen, Peter Lang. pp. 11-26
Recommended citation
KOSCIEJEW, Marc (2017). “Documenting and Materialising Art: Conceptual approaches of
documentation for the materialisation of art information”. In: Vanina HOFMAN and Pau ALSINA
(coords.). “Art and speculative futures”. Artnodes. No. 19, pp. 65-73. UOC [Accessed: dd/
mm/yy].
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3115>
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CV
Marc Kosciejew
University of Malta
marc.kosciejew@um.edu.mt
artnodes
E-JOURNAL ON ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
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ARTICLE
Abstract
This article introduces electronic literature as a key field of study within digital art, which is
considered part of the artworld as established by scholars on the basis of the Institutional
Theory of Art. This perspective suggests that digital art has its corresponding artworks, publics
and systems, but within the domain of digital technology. Thus, it is argued that electronic
literature both in theory (as key term and through key research) and practice (though selected
artworks) has evolved as a fundamental area of study which connects art and literature through
computer systems. The ultimate aim of this article is not merely to justify the importance of
electronic literature within digital art, but to try to identify the best electronic literature archive
for both librarians and researchers. To that end, a comparative study of key online archives
(Electronic Literature Collection, Gallery 9, Rhizome ArtBase, Turbulence, Whitney Artport) that
satisfy both artworld (institutional galleries and collections) and archival requirements (access
to full artworks, as well as search and retrieval options connected to electronic literature) has
been conducted. The comparison favours the Electronic Literature Collection as a key resource
for its research portal of the same name, although some further reflections are provided on
this area of study in order to encompass transmedia storytelling.
Keywords
artworld, digital art, electronic literature, archive
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Resumen
Este artículo presenta la literatura electrónica como campo de estudio dentro del arte digital,
considerada como parte del mundo del arte conforme a la definición académica de la teoría
institucional del arte. Esta perspectiva sugiere que el arte digital posee sus obras de arte,
públicos y sistemas correspondientes, pero inscrita en el ámbito de la tecnología digital. Se
argumenta, por consiguiente, que la literatura electrónica, tanto en la teoría (como término
clave y a través de importantes estudios) como en la práctica (por medio de obras escogidas)
ha evolucionado hasta convertirse en un área de estudio fundamental que vincula el arte y la
literatura mediante sistemas informáticos. El objetivo último de este estudio no es simplemente
justificar la importancia de la literatura electrónica en el arte digital, sino también intentar
encontrar y presentar el mejor archivo de literatura electrónica para su estudio por parte de
bibliotecarios e investigadores. Con este fin se ha llevado a cabo un estudio comparativo de
archivos en línea relevantes (Electronic Literature Collection, Gallery 9, Rhizome ArtBase,
Turbulence, Whitney Artport) que satisfagan simultáneamente los requisitos del mundo del
arte (galerías y colecciones institucionales) y archivísticos (acceso a obras de arte completas,
así como opciones de búsqueda y recuperación en conexión con la literatura electrónica). La
comparación se decanta por la Electronic Literature Collection como recurso fundamental para
la investigación del mismo nombre, aunque se agregan algunas reflexiones ulteriores a esta
área de estudio para abarcar la narrativa transmedia.
Palabras clave
mundo del arte, arte digital, literatura electrónica, archivo
Digital art understood as a (digital) An artist is a person who participates with understanding in the
making of a work of art.
artworld
A public is a set of persons the members of which are prepared
in some degree to understand an object which is presented to them.
This article first focuses on the consideration of art as part of and
The artworld is the totality of all artworld systems.
creating what we call an artworld. Coined by philosopher Arthur Danto,
An artworld system is a framework for the presentation of a work of
the term artworld was first used in an article of the same name in
art by an artist to an artworld public. (Dickie, 1997, p. 92)
the early 1960s:
Second, we can establish that digital art is a set of artistic
To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry -an
manifestations that has become increasingly mainstream since the
atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an
term net art (or net.art) was coined by artist Vuk Ćosić in the early
artworld. (Danto, 1964, p. 580) 1990s supposedly after having received a truncated email with the
words net.art in it (Weibel and Druckrey, 2001, p. 25), and after artists
The notion of the artworld was later expanded by scholars such as Alexei Shulgin and Natalie Bookchin wrote and published online the
George Dickie (1971), Howard Becker (1982), and Stephen Davies foundational manifesto Introduction to net.art (1994-1999).
(1991). Dickie turned the artworld as presented by Danto into the Thanks to widespread broadband Internet access, particularly in
Institutional Theory of Art, encompassing: Eastern European countries, the term and practice of net art gave way
to an assortment of art forms (computer art, software art, virtual and
A work of art is an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an augmented reality projects, digital games) created with and distributed
artworld public. via networked computers.
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When studied both in art and academic contexts, digital artworks establish the same set of artworld rules, but in different contexts.
have been broadly classified in terms of one of two aspects: the If we look at a (new) media organisation such as Rhizome, which
technical setup and the type of content. was created by artist Mark Tribe in 1999 as a mailing list, we see
It is worth noting that digital art reading lists tend to focus on its it has evolved into an online platform to both host and disseminate
technical setup, as indicated by titles such as Christiane Paul’s Digital digital artworks. Thus, it can be argued that Rhizome as a digital art
Art (2003) or Edward Shanken’s Art and Electronic Media (2009). But the organisation presents the following artworld features (table 1), which
type of content digital art tends to privilege is also significant because not make a strong case for accepting the definition of a (digital) artworld
only are they technological artworks, but also artworks about technology. as a parallel but similar term to that of the artworld.
This is particularly prominent in titles and terms like the following:
Table 1. Understanding the digital art organisation Rhizome as part of the artworld
• Information arts as described by Stephen Wilson (2002); originally described by George Dickie.
• Internet art by Rachel Greene (2004); Artworld features according to Rhizome as a digital art
•M edia art in Oliver Grau (2007) and Hans Ulrich Reck (2007); George Dickie organisation
• New Media Art by Mark Tribe and Rena Jana (2006) or Christiane
A work of art is an artefact of a Rhizome hosts artworks in its
Paul’s own New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial kind created to be presented to ArtBase which can be explored
Models for Digital Art (2008), plus Domenico Quaranta’s Media, an artworld public. by online users.
New Media, Postmedia (2010);
An artist is a person who The artworks at Rhizome ArtBase
• Or virtual art as described by Grau (2003) or Frank Popper participates with understanding are created by professional
(2007). in the making of a work of art. artists.
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The first term, hyperliterature, was more commonly applied to assimilated into electronic literature, which also provides the most
offline pieces created with software like Storyspace, HyperCard or, hits and therefore must be the most relevant term to focus on as the
later, Director. Michael Joyce’s afternoon a story (1987) or Stuart literary segment of digital art (reference works like the Routledge
Moulthrop’s Victory Garden (1992) are two prominent artworks of Encyclopaedia of Narrative Theory, however, suggest digital narrative
this kind. as an umbrella term to encompass reflections on literary computer
Hyperliterature has been historically understood as providing artworks, see 2005, pp. 108-112).
continuity and specificity to the terms hypertext (annotated and To contrast art and literature, if we google digital art (13.9 million
interconnected text) and hypermedia (as a more visual interconnected hits) and electronic art (444,000 hits), the conclusion seems to be
update of hypertexts), as originally defined by researcher Theodore that digital art encompasses all sorts of computer-related creative
Nelson in the 1960s (see Nelson, 2003, 1992). manifestations (either artworks conceived within an artworld context,
The second term, hypertext literature, would go on to become more or as simpler experiments like Photoshop-based collages), while
commonplace once broadband Internet usage became widespread. In electronic art seems to be circumscribed to a particular type of art.
the early 1990s, computer scholars such as Brenda Laurel (1993) and The New Media Art Encyclopaedia created in 1998 by European
Janet H. Murray (1997), and literary scholars such as Marie-Laure Ryan art centres such as Paris-based Centre Georges Pompidou and Centre
(1991, 2003, 2004, 2014, 2015), George Landow (who penned the National des Arts Plastiques starts describing electronic art in historical
Hypertext trilogy in 1992, 1997 and 2006), N. Katherine Hayles (2002, terms as making “use of advanced technologies such as computers,
2008), and Espen Aarseth (1994, 1997) started referring to hypertext lasers, video, holography, and certain means of communication”,
literature or, sometimes, ergodic literature, to study the background where also “the content of the exchange is less important than the
and present expressions and capabilities of hypertextual literature. network used and the operating conditions of the exchange”, which
Through the early 2000s, new terms digital literature and electronic highlights its technological setup and a link to Fred Forest’s theory
literature would also come to operate as literary synonyms. To find out of Aesthetics of Communication (1983).
which of them is more prominent in 2016, all the above-mentioned key If we focus on literature, the results from searching digital
terms were searched on Google, with the following results (table 2). literature (73,440 hits) and electronic literature (176,000 hits) seem
to suggest that the latter is the more prominently used by literary or
Table 2. Simple searches on the most common terms used to describe the art scholars, whereas digital literature represents a much broader
connection between literature and (broadband Internet connected) computer term involving literary digitisations and various digital paratexts such
systems. All searches conducted on 3 September 2016 at 4.00 p.m., using Firefox
browser and Google’s search engine in a signed-in, Barcelona-based profile.
as literary criticism, blogging and other text-based forms.
So, after showing that electronic literature has become the main
TERM OVERALL HITS term for referring to computer-based literature, it is essential to
“hyperliterature” 2,580 narrow it down to a more specific definition. The Electronic Literature
“hypertext literature” 6,770 (top result assimilated with
Organization, a non-profit organisation founded in 1999 by scholar
hypertext fiction in Wikipedia) Scott Rettberg, novelist Robert Coover and businessman Jeff Balowe,
the main goal of which is to “foster and promote the reading, writing,
“ergodic literature” 23,600
teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists
“digital literature” 73,440 (top result assimilated with in a changing digital environment”, provides the following inclusive
electronic literature in Wikipedia)
definition of electronic literature on its website:
“electronic literature” 176,000
Electronic literature, or e-lit, refers to works with important literary
aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided
The lesser hits in connection to the first two terms hyperliterature and by the stand-alone or networked computer. Within the broad category
hypertext literature situate them as historical expressions based on of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, some
1990s theory and practice, wherein hypertext fiction is also relevant. of which are:
But the scope opens up as more synonyms are introduced: ergodic
literature has had its share of followers particularly connected to • Hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web
Marie-Laure Ryan’s and Espen Aarseth’s works and the use of the • Kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms
broader term cybertext, a synonym to hypertext that not only involves • Computer art installations which ask viewers to read them or otherwise
literature but any digital text. have literary aspects
Regarding digital literature, as happens with cybertext, might • Conversational characters, also known as chatterbots
sometimes translate into literary artworks but is most often • Interactive fiction
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Table 3. Comparing five key digital art archives to identify the best one for researching electronic literature artworks.
Conclusions and challenges for the digital seems to indicate that, however minor an area of research, electronic
research of electronic literature literature will be available for any scholar or curator interested in it.
Regarding the centrality of American archives for this type of study,
The acknowledgement of digital art (and electronic literature) within the bias as to what scholars and curators might be missing if an online
the artworld remains a difficult issue which scholars and curators collection is not fully available in English and supported by powerful
might try to address by disseminating (information on) their artworks. institutions in terms of economic and technological resources is an
To that end, several digital art archives have been analysed in order important discussion, but it should be addressed elsewhere.
to locate the best resource on electronic literature as a particular Regarding archival issues, however, it is worth noting that not
field of study. only have web 2.0. technologies increased user intervention during
Research seems to indicate that, so far, the Electronic Literature the past ten years, but so too have their creative expectations. Users
Collection provides the best resources for identifying electronic are accustomed to creating, editing and uploading content through
literature practices within digital art. The fact that this collection is blogs and social media, and those capabilities are non-existent or
online, accessible in English and ongoing both as a collection and still limited in the art archives analysed for this article.
through other, recently created, online platforms (the organisation’s Moreover, another significant, related topic to discuss is the
website, the Electronic Literature Directory and a Facebook group) connection of electronic literature to transmedia storytelling (as originally
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Recommended citation
HERRERA, R. (2017). “Creating the artworld of literature and technology: The Electronic Literature
Collection as a key resource for digital art research”. Artnodes. No. 19, pp. 74-82. UOC
[Accessed: dd/mm/yy].
<http://dx.doi.org/10.7238/a.v0i19.3031>
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artnodes
http://artnodes.uoc.edu Creating the artworld of literature and technology
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Raquel Herrera
Adjunct professor
Communication Department (UOC)
rherreraf@uoc.edu
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