Animal (Internet) Farm

In thinking about our diets, and what it is that allows us to eat the way that we do, I stumbled upon a loose connection between freedom, vegetarianism, and the internet.  I start with what I feel is the general understanding of freedom, and will end with a question of how freedom exists.

            I will assume freedom to mean being able to do whatever we want, as long as we do not harm another.  I feel like most people take this to mean that they should always be able to do whatever pleases them, so long as they don’t perceive the one who is hurt…

Animal (Internet) Farm  (© Casey Lynch 2011)

Humans are omnivorous - we can and do get nutrition from eating both plants and other animals.  However, we are not cannibals, we do not eat others of our same species.   Further, the moral law that forbids the killing of (which usually happens before the eating of) another human has been rationalized as truly ethical because to kill another is to remove the basic rights, or oppress the other.  This can be teased out to show that to make another conscious being suffer, directly or indirectly (as is so often the case with murder), is wrong.  This partial definition of freedom is a major foundation of (Westernly-defined) civilized societies.

Somehow, and in many cultures, civilization has extended to non-humans.  In the thousands of years of domesticating of animals, many of us have begun to breach the division between (human) self and (animal) other, assigning non-human animals human-like consciousness, and in turn human-like rights.  This has made it harder for many humans to be able to rationalize killing an animal for any reason, especially for our enjoyment, especially where enjoyment is the sating of hunger (that could be satisfied in other ways.)  For some, not only is the killing of the animal seen as wrong, but to alienate an animal by means of removing it from its natural habitat (farming) is oppressive.

From here I need to jump to Marx for a minute.  As most of us know, Karl Marx saw industrialization and capitalism as modes of production and commerce that were sure to oppress the proletariat and alienate them from their labor.   But alienation not only removes one from the reality of his labor, but also the labor of others.  Further, alienation inserts the proletariat into the reality of the bourgeoisie in that he is allowed not just more leisure time, but more importantly, distance from labor and its consequences under industrialized capitalism.  In this sense, part of the proletariat's alienation is (an ironic) freedom.  In a capitalist society, the proletariat is able to purchase goods made by (other) oppressed peoples without having to feel any empathy or connection to fellow workers.  For example, a normal moral person would not buy a garment directly off of a sweat-shop-factory-line attended by children, nor would he/she make a garment under squalor conditions.  In these two examples, the garment simply would not be had - but many people do buy clothes that are made under such conditions.  A moral or ethical person would not buy goods that he/she knows were made under oppressive conditions, but the alienation that occurs in an industrialized, and especially globalized, society allows us enough distance from that oppressive labor to pretend it does not exist – this is the deniable distance.  This allows to obtain what we actually desire – self gratification.

Here we can return to our discussion of humans as conflicted omnivores.  Many people would not, or are not, capable of killing an animal in order to eat it, but are fully capable of eating a dead animal that has been killed elsewhere, packaged, and presented to them in a form and place that possesses a deniable distance, i.e. the supermarket or restaurant.  We see this in many degrees, even in those who do kill animals.  Few, if any, non-sociopathic people kill an animal with his/her bare hands.  On many farms, the “processing” of cows, chickens, etc. is mechanized - industrialized.  Even the hunter uses a bow or a gun, technologies that not only give a tactical advantage, but a partial deniable distance.  Often, when the hunter obtains proximity to the targeted beast, it is already dead.  In cases where it is not, the job is finished with a subsequent shot, or a blade; rarely with the hand.  Even a relatively short blade creates a distance that makes the act more digestible.  To be extreme, even at the table we use a fork, knife, spoon, or chop-sticks to distance ourselves from our prey’s subjectivity.  Again, in the end are allowed to attain self-gratification.

Here we see freedom being defined as being able to do what one desires through the advantage of existing at a deniable distance from ethically/morally problematic acts.  It is a relative and individual freedom.  It is a freedom based in illusion, and I would suggest that all freedom in the future will be as well.

Returning to Marx, he and Engels saw democracy as the vehicle that would facilitate the rise of the proletariat, and even though it would have to go through the rise and fall of capitalism, ultimately, democracy would lead to the realization of communism.  The debate as to the utopianism of Marxism is not the point here, instead it is to assert that the goal of a communist society is to produce equality, and that this equality is equated with (universal) freedom.  The question now and in the future, in the time of the internet, especially Web 2.0 and beyond, is how does/will deniable distance prevent us from being free.

We all remember (and still hear) the specter of communism’s return in the utopian prophecies of the democracy of the internet.  “Everyone will have a voice,” or “everyone will have a choice.”  The partial truth that precipitates from such proclamations of equality is that as long as you can pay for or get access to a device that connects to the internet, and pay for or find access to a physical site that broadcasts the internet, you will receive some level of freedom to information depending on where in the world you actually, physically live.

First, the internet is not free.  In general, we pay someone somewhere, like the cable or phone company, to connect to it.  Once we are on it, whatever services one believes he/she is obtaining for “free” is actually being paid for by the giving away of one’s  information (think gmail or facebook), personal time/labor (this blog post is one example), or allowing oneself to be inundated with advertising that affects him/her on some level (probably subconsciously.)  In a sense, while one is on the internet, he/she is working for someone else, producing goods in the form of information, without being paid.  All the while, the entities actually reaping the monetary benefits in the real world are widening the gap between the wealthiest few and the majority.

Second, the internet does not make all information free to everyone.  The internet is much less of an anarchic utopia in China than it is in the U.S.  Also, most of us are unsure of if, and how much information is censored in the U.S.  All we know is that we get enough information to gratify our selves.

Finally, web purchases create an indefinite distance between the objects we order online, and the labor that went into their creation.  We usually have no connection to the possibility or actuality of oppression that occurs in the production of goods and services we purchase online.

So what does this mean in terms of the denial distance?  First, the internet seems free because most of us are alienated from the charges we pay to the service providers; we never actually see the physical money before or after it goes to the phone or cable company because we pay it with a credit/debit card, or even more distantly, have it automatically drafted from our account when it is due.  We are abstractly indentured servants.  Second, we essentially never-ever see the inventors/controllers of the content and services we use on the web.  Occasionally we may see a Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Steve Jobs on television, but most of us have never met, or even seen someone like them in real life.  (As a larger irony, I bet most people don’t even know who Larry Page and Sergey Brin are.)  The confusion of producer and consumer, as well as the gap between subject and object on the internet is especially interesting:  because of their nearness to infinity, they most clearly show how deniable distance allows the simulacrum that is democracy to function on the internet.  To further examine this phenomenon may expose an analogy to how democracy functions as ideology everywhere.

We have come to believe that the internet provides us with a virtual reality, leading us to believe that everything we experience on the web is only virtual.  Actually, it would be more accurate to call the internet a semireality.  I use “semireal” as a word descending from Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreal.  Where hyperreality suggests an indistinction between the real and a copy or simulacrum, the semireal is a reality that exists within or parallel to another, completely apprehensible reality.  Semireality places no hierarchical value in distinguishing between some hypothetical real-real versus a hyperreal, but instead emphasizes the relative strata between all possible levels of reality.

It is only in a semireality that democracy is possible, and only through deniable distance that semirealities are comprehended.  In this sense, there must be a deniable distance for democracy to exist.

The internet gives us a virtual infinity of distance between ourselves and our masters.  (Ironically, they have us closer than ever.)  The deniable distance the web provides, the fact that we don’t interact directly with others, whether equal or not, gives us the feeling that we are free to indulge in the gratification of ourselves (under the illusion that there is no ‘real’ other to be harmed by our actions.)  We see neither those who oppress us, or those we oppress.  This should quickly lead to the question of how oneself is oppressed, and if we are okay with this lack of freedom.

Marcia Vaitsman at Solomon Projects

I just wanted to do a quick review of my experience of Marcia Vaitsman's work currently on display at Solomon Projects in Atlanta.
The title of the show, "A Study of Strange Things" seems to be a bit simple and possibly naive, and when one sees the show, the sparse population of works can easily lead to confirming this reaction.  But then again, the appearance of simplicity is often due to a lack of investigation.  It is from this idea that the rest of my analysis will grow...
Two opposing walls in the gallery  each hold a tetratych of large photographs. Another wall has a video, while the other wall, technically holds nothing, instead has an installation of maybe forty small photographic light boxes.  Essentially, there is a visual-spatial intersection of two lines; one whose points connect images that are the result of a photographic process whose media absorbs (and reflects) light, the other connecting images created through a similar process, but whose end form emits light.  In this way, Vaitsman sets up a conversation around the ideas of photography (and video) in relation to the medium of light.  Her graduate thesis, of which I only had time to scan, mentions influence of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, so I will indulge.  In his lecture, On the Gaze as Objet Petit a, Lacan alludes to a subject that exists as the relationship between a light source, and the image that light source produces.  Imagine a film projector.  It is a light source.  The light it projects is caught by a screen.  When we perceive the image, we do not see it on the screen, but in or beyond the screen.  This situation explains the existence of the subject, where the subject is the screen.  [A two-dimensional image like a painting or photograph uses the inverse function of light to produce perspective, or the appearance of depth, within an image.  Still, in this instance, the image, or surface of the two-dimensional object is analogous to the existence of the subject.]

Vaitmans similarly sets up a site of subjective existence in a perpendicular intersection of images that produce and absorb light.
Another relationship I found in the work was a conflation and confusion of the large and small.  The large photographs on the wall are all macro images, who subjects are blown-up to be larger than their real world (pre-photographic) existence.  The images from the lighted sources, are fragmented and made smaller than their original existence (for the light boxes some may be similar in size.)  This dichotomy really fleshes out the understanding of all of the unused space of the gallery.
One of the most intriguing naturally occurring optical illusions is the changing size of the moon (or sun).  When on the horizon, the moon looks large, yet while it is in the middle of the sky it seems relatively small.  The actual reason for this illusion is still up for debate, but the common explanation is that the moon looks larger at the horizon because it has other recognizable distance cues for judgement - i.e. the horizon is obviously far away, so the moon is only perceived to be large, while the 'dome' of the night sky is immeasurable, so it is assumed to be closer, thus giving the illusion of a smaller moon.

When this idea is brought to the photographs and video Vaitsman provides, we begin to relate the vastness of the empty space in the gallery to the border (frame) of each work.  Similarly, we relate the size of each image to the size of its frame, and our assumption of the original size each image's subject to its subsequent photographic size.  When we assert ourselves into the intersection of the images that is representative of our subjectivity, we become Alice - one who changes size in relation to the (perceptual) tasks at hand.
Now, we can see the imagery in each of the works as a portrait of ourselves; a zebra with no stripes, who is not a zebra at all, but a voodoo doll of wound-up physical matter partly frozen, partly thawed; a fragmented peacock of sexuality, whose kaleidoscopic identity is constantly shifting; the list can go on with each image, and each grouping of images...

A Study of Strange Things is just what its name suggests, and as with everything that at first seems simple, the longer it is studied, the stranger it becomes.

Nathan Sharratt: Young Machete

Sometime around 8:00PM, after two hours of sarcastic live-tweeting, aimless-drifting, and general time-wasting amongst the hit-or-miss art installed on the mall at Underground Atlanta, I finally found a map for the events and artworks sponsored by Elevate, Art Above Atlanta.  Of course, I had seen most of them in my modern version of a dérive, but had not yet ventured out to the corner of Peachtree and Decatur Street, for what would be the highlight of my night, Nathan Sharratt’s interactive performance/installation Be My Blood Brother. (Note: the Elevate map is slightly off - Blood Brother is not on Edgewood and Peachtree.)

This was Sharratt’s third run at Blood Brother.  He first performed it for a Sculpture class at SCAD, then publicly in March 2011, at The Granite Room in Castleberry Hill.  Although, I did briefly see the performance in Castleberry, the Elevate opening was my first real interaction.

I walked into the small storefront to find it transformed into what may be best described as a slightly futuristic mash-up of a doctor’s office, DMV, and shaman’s lair.  In the center, Sharratt, looking more like a serial killer than a doctor, was seated on a small white stool, facing a small white table, wearing all white coveralls stained with fake-blood.  Opposite the artist sat an identical stool, empty and inviting.  On the table between the two were various syringes, jars, and beakers flanking the main props for the interaction: a small puddle of fake crimson-colored blood, a butter spreader, a rubber stamp, and a stack of card-sized certificates.  In the otherwise sparsely decorated red, grey and white room, Sharratt’s assistants guided viewers to their appropriate tasks.

Sharratt performing Be My Blood Brother (photo by Mona Collentine) ©2011 Nathan Sharratt

First, I sat down with the artist, who welcomed me with a deadpan, “Would you like to be my blood brother?”  Upon accepting, I was asked for my name, which he wrote on the certificate that he would also stamp with a serial number.  After this, he did not speak.  Sharratt proceeded to mix the ‘blood’ on the table with the completely blunt butter spreader, followed by pretending to cut the flesh of his hand, leaving the red residue in his palm.  Then, with an obvious gesture of sharing, offered me the knife.  As silly as this felt, I played along, repeating his actions with my own body.  We then justified our actions by clasping our ‘bloody’ hands.  This is where it became real…

Sharratt took a firm grasp of my hand and began to peer deeply and purposefully into my eyes.  Maybe it was a minute or two, but it felt much longer.  I felt helpless.  I did not attempt to release my grip, but was fully and overwhelmingly embarrassed.  Something metaphysical changed.  Through the artist’s gaze, I had been ‘subjectified’.

Sharratt performing Be My Blood Brother (photo by Mona Collentine) ©2011 Nathan Sharratt 

With ‘artist’s gaze’, I mean to arouse Jacques Lacan’s idea of the almost benevolent gaze that art allows, as found in Of the Gaze as Objet Petit A.  Generally for Lacan, the gaze is a property of inter-subjectivity where, when one perceives that he/she is being viewed by another, one is objectified by the other. A latent result of the psychic break that occurs in the Mirror Phase, to experience the gaze is to be reminded that one does not exist in the Real, but instead in a Symbolic realm as a sign (which actually has less of an existence than an object.)  This can be extended to include subject/object interaction, where observing an object reminds one that he/she is an object.  The gaze (as objet petit a) is a reminder of our inherent lack, the source of desire.    In good art, according to Lacan, the artist puts his desires into the work, laying down his gaze by revealing to the viewer that the other also has desire.  We are presented with an image, but an image that reveals itself as such.  In understanding that the image is a veil to be looked beyond, we are relieved, feeling that we have seen something more real.  We, in turn, also feel more real.  In Be My Blood Brother, this scenario plays out perfectly. 

In an interview on Google+, Sharratt shared with me the way that his  adopted father is thought of as his real father; so much so that his mother sometimes forgets, worrying that he will develop similar genetic traits.  The extended coexistence that formed the meaningful bond between  adopted son and  adopted father is translated in Be My Blood Brother via the sharing of fake blood.  In what Christians may read as an analogy to the Eucharist joining the Church family, Sharratt sees  his “bonding with a new Brother” as a way to form a constructed bond that is as real as possible.  The artist describes it as “try[ing] to be a mirror through which [the participant] can see themselves.”  Taking it a step further, Sharratt provides a digital forum (http://www.wearebloodbrothers.com/) for initiated Blood Brothers to share their stories.  Here, he gives an arena for what was once a group of strangers, a collections of others, to lay down their gazes and acknowledge each other’s subjectivity.

Maybe I have romanticized Be My Blood Brother by giving it the qualities that so many people who claim to be interested in “Relational Aesthetics” or interactive art usually espouse, but what I do know for sure is that for at least the rest of the night after I became a Blood Brother, I felt very Real.

Interview with Nathan Sharrat

Image from performance of Be My Blood Brother ©2011 Nathan Sharratt (Photo by Mona Collentine )

1) What is the inspiration for Bloodbrothers?

This goes back a ways. In 2004 I was living in New York City and working as a designer and photographer in the magazine industry. At the time, I didn’t really know who I was as an artist or where I was going or what I even wanted to do. I just knew I had a lot of shit building up inside that had no way out. Since I wasn’t finding any success with external sources, I started looking internally to the things that created the greatest personal emotional response. A big one was my family. No matter how much crap life threw at me (unemployment, homelessness) they were always my rock of stability. I had just finished a book by Margaret Atwood on writing called Negotiating With The Dead, and in it she talked about how the dead wanted our blood. Dead being our ancestors and blood being a metaphor for life and creativity. At least that’s how I choose to read it. I had also read an interview with Stephen King, where he was asked how he, a family man with children, could imagine and write such horrific stories. He replied that if he wrote it, it wouldn’t happen. So I decided to use those sources as a starting point. I took a color-printing class with a coworker at the International Center for Photography, and used that as a way to explore these themes of family and protection. I drove upstate to my family’s home in Cooperstown and took some portraits using a borrowed plastic Holga camera. I gave each family member, excepting my father, a tool from my father’s workshop and covered them with fake blood (http://nathansharratt.com/section/215401_Family_Portraits.html). At the time, the fake blood was an analog for real blood, and the portraits were meant to be a protective mantra.

            It took another 4 or 5 years before I started examining family in my work again, mostly at the behest of my sculpture professors. This time I began to get really interested in fake blood and the whole concept behind its existence. We, as humans, are obsessed with not spilling our own blood, yet we have such a bloodlust that we’ve created this blood analog to be used strictly for entertainment purposes. We love watching violence as long as it’s pretend. Action and horror films are just public executions and gladiator fights without the actual death. I started realizing the vast amount of content available in using fake blood as a material. The difficulty was in the execution, how to elevate fake blood as a fine-art material and have it be seen for what it is—and what content it brings to the table—and not just as a non-biological blood substitute. I made some object-based art using fake blood, So I started making connections between the constructed qualities of fake blood and my own constructed family history: my biological father (Robert) left before I was born, and my mother met my non-biological father (Dwaine) when I was two, and they’ve raised me ever since. When I was five my non-biological father wanted to adopt me, but Massachusetts’ state law didn’t allow adoption for a minor with a legal parent or guardian, so my mother had to give me up to the state for all of ten minutes, or however long it took to fill out paperwork, then they both adopted me. I remember sitting in the cavernous marble hallway of the statehouse while all this was going on. I was no longer Nathan Kaczynski, I was now Nathan Sharratt. The connection I felt to my parents had not changed, only some paperwork. So the idea of a constructed family led me to think about constructed bonds in general, and how we create this social construct called “family.” The fact that my father isn’t my biological father is such a non-issue in my family that my mom even forgets sometimes, and warns me about genetic health issues on my father’s side. There are no “half-sisters” or “step-fathers,” we’re just family and we love each other and in my opinion that’s how it should be.

2) What is your obsession with blood in general?

For me it’s a material, so it’s kind of like asking a painter what is their obsession with paint? Any material has a pre-existing connotation that viewers carry with them, and many materials were resisted in their initial introduction as a fine-art material (David Smith’s welded-steel sculpture comes to mind). Blood is one of our most primal common denominators. It’s also the challenge of using a material that isn’t traditionally associated with fine art, and seeing if I can find ways to elevate it to make new connections that maybe viewers hadn’t thought of before. Also, I went pretty in depth about it above.

3) You are interested in creating multiple layers in your work, what do you think is the most missed meaning/layer in 'BloodBrothers'?

Probably the connection to my personal history. I don’t make that a large part of the performance because the whole installation is about me, so when I’m bonding with a new Brother, I want to make it as much about them as possible. I give my Brothers my absolute undivided attention during the ritual, and try to be a mirror through which they can see themselves. I make my name really small on the ticket so that when it’s pinned to the wall you see their name most prominently, not mine, and I give them the opportunity to share their story through the www.wearebloodbrothers.com website. However, I will be adding a few new hidden clues to the room for sharp-eyed viewers to find.

4) What other projects are you currently working on?

I’m still looking for participants for Words On Shirts Project (wordsonshirtsproject.com), and I’m working on a public art installation for Art on the Atlanta BeltLine that should be up soon. I’m also building a sound-trigger box for Martha Whittington’s 100 Whispers installation, in addition to being her studio assistant for the MOCA GA Working Artist Project grant. I’ve been slowly peppering donated clothing with It’s All My Fault labels (http://nathansharratt.com/artwork/2115157_It_s_All_My_Fault.html) and last but certainly not least I’ve been hard at work on my Dashboard Co-Op “Ground Floor” installation which is coming in October.

Nathan Sharratt's "Be My Blood Brother" preview

Here is a link to images from the performance that will be the subject of my next article on BURNAWAY: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathan_awesome/

Seana Reilly at Whitespace

Seana Reilly is currently in a two person show with Ann Stewart at Whitespace. 

Seana Reilly Mean Curve

There is really only one way to describe the formal aesthetic of Seana Reilly’s current work on display at Whitespace: undeniable.  In a series of experiments with liquid graphite, Reilly posits myriad dualities that coexist harmoniously to produce art that calls for serious contemplation, perhaps even meditation.

According to http://www.insightatlanta.org:  “Vipassana meditation…was taught by the Buddha as a means for investigating the nature of reality through cultivating awareness of present experience with acceptance.”  Reilly cites Vipassana meditation as a source for the insights for her practice, which is apparent in her process.  Reilly sets up resists or boundaries around which she allows the liquid graphite to freely flow, establishing the symmetry between human will and letting go.  Her awareness of her materials, and the moments in which they interact result in images of sublime beauty and delicate balance.  The viewer is given a wide open space to peacefully exist in the dialectics of drawing and painting, light and dark, organic and geometric, order and chaos, presence and absence.

But the work is not without regions designed to create tension and unease.  Reilly also sites as influence her experience as both a justice and healthcare planner, a career that surely imbued her with a desire to analyze, predict and control.  In many of the works, especially the smaller pieces, Reilly goes back into the work (after it has become a historic document of the aforementioned process) to articulate a pseudoscientific analysis in its margins.  It is in this act that her work separates itself from a Romantically idealized mise-en-scène, and asserts itself as a battleground of contemporary semiotics.  It is in this duality, between the mostly organic relationship established in the experimental stage of the work, and it subsequent analysis, where the most pressing issue arises for the interpreter of meaning. 

It seems understandable that there are dualities, and that in one way or another these dualities assimilate into a workable medium that is life.  This is a quotidian understanding of Yin-Yang, a basis for much Eastern Philosophy.  The problem of contemporary awareness comes with the monkey wrench that is Western Philosophy.  Socrates tells us that the unexamined life is not worth living, and the rest of Western history delivers us the hegemony of Science.  While, theoretically, Eastern and Western philosophies are not necessarily at odds, the implementation of science as a predictive, thus active awareness, separates it from the more accepting, passive consciousness of Eastern thought.  What becomes difficult to grasp for many thinkers of either school is the way in which self-aware observation alters our perception of any such dualities.

By quantifying, thus categorizing the results of the experiments that take place in materializing her work, Reilly pin-points the problematic of scientific inquiry: when we observe a phenomenon, we necessarily alter that phenomenon.  There is a growing number of scientists studying quantum physics who would go so far as to say that our observation causes the phenomenon.  To complicate the matter, Reilly’s analysis of her process mimics scientific notation, a codified language that, except to its author and her cohorts, is a meaningless series of marks and signs.  So what could have been a simple experience of a phenomenon becomes a self-sequestering feedback loop.  

Reilly’s work puts the impasse of actual experience and our attempts to control our experience in our face, causing us to ponder: If our passive awareness generates reality, then does an active awareness destroy it?  Returning to the idea of Yin Yang, perhaps it is this relationship, the codependence of creation and destruction, that gives meaning to the show’s title: Perpetual Assembly. 

The Dream of Reason

The Dream of Logic Produces Reasonable Monsters (© Casey Lynch 2011)

It is illogic, not logic, that makes humans human.  If a dog thinks at all like a human, then when he is hungry, he thinks, "I will eat."  Then to the best of its ability, he will eat as soon as possible.  When a human thinks, "I am hungry," he/she will go through a long list of reasons to, or not to eat, and when it would be best to eat.  Further, he creates all sorts of rules on the appropriate way to eat.

Humans seem to possess a multi-tiered logic, meta-logic, or more simply, social self-awareness, that causes us to play out many if/then scenarios in theory before acting.  I think that we have the ability to create too many scenarios, somehow forgetting our initial intention, to the point that our 'then' statement often ends up no longer matching our 'if'.

Even sound logic may become illogic when we make assumptions about another's needs or desires.  This kind of other-awareness is at best empathy [which elsewhere I have called the unconscious,] and seems to be a foundation of civilization. 
So, it is possible that society is based on illogic.  If this is true, then culture, being the pinnacle of society, is the apex of illogical discourse.  This seems clear presently, as it could be argued that Art is (and maybe has always been) based on illogic, i.e. make believe, hope, or the denial of the probable.  Of course, in the exponentially growing feedback loop between the mirrors of culture and society, what was once illogical is now logical.  This illogical logic is Reason.

Making and Breaking Meaning: A Critical Mash-up of Trecartin and Mallarme

Below is an essay comparing Ryan Trecartin to Stéphane Mallarmé using only a computer mouse to complete copy, cut, and paste functions.  All text was borrowed from the Wikipedia entries on Stéphane Mallarmé, Fin de siècle, and Ryan Trecartin; and Brian Droitcour's article Making Word: Ryan Trecartin as Poet as found on Rhizome.org's website. 

None of the individual words was composed by me, only the rearrangement of the language found in said sources.

If you own the rights to the sources above, and do not approve of this usage, please contact me and I will remove it at once.

Stéphane Mallarmé  (18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism,Surrealism, and Futurism.

Ryan Trecartin (b.1981, Webster, Texas) is an artist and filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles.^[1] He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a BFA in 2004.^[2] Trecartin has since lived and worked in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Miami.^[1]

Mallarmé's earlier work owes a great deal to the style of Charles Baudelaire. His later fin de siècle style, on the other hand, anticipates many of the fusions between poetry and the other arts that were to blossom in the next century.  Roberta Smith grasped for precedent, naming Paul McCarthy, Matthew Barney and Pipilotti Rist. But, she admitted, the comparisons fell short. To find another artist who engages a plurality of art forms with simultaneous, equal intensity—all while rethinking what art is and how it touches its audience—you’d have to go back to Wagner. The critic and translator Barbara Johnson has emphasized Mallarmé's influence on twentieth-century French criticism and theory: "It was largely by learning the lesson of Mallarmé that critics like Roland Barthes came to speak of 'the death of the author' in the making of literature.

Trecartin says he starts each work by writing a script. Language—the primal, biological system of symbols—is the model and vehicle for art and commerce and every other manifestation of social activity. And the forms of all the aspects of Trecartin’s work—the camerawork, the editing, the music, the makeup, and the costumes, as well as Lizzie Fitch’s sets for the videos and “sets” for their viewing in “Any Ever”—are prefigured in the way he works with words.  Rather than seeing the text as the emanation of an individual author's intentions, structuralists and deconstructors followed the paths and patterns of the linguistic signifier, paying new attention to syntax, spacing, intertextuality, sound, semantics, etymology, and even individual letters. The theoretical styles of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, and especially Jacques Lacan also owe a great deal to Mallarmé's 'critical poem.'"^[3]  The space-time properties of attending suit the names. These are not distinct individuals, but inflections

Punctuation was invented to represent the pauses and pitches of speech; long after it moved beyond this purpose to become a set of standards for clarifying the meaning of written language, punctuation marks were remixed as emoticons when writing began to take on the phatic functions of speech. Trecartin’s unruly use of punctuation draws on all stages of its history.  It has been suggested by some that much of Mallarmé's work influenced the conception of hypertext, with his purposeful use of blank space and careful placement of words on the page, allowing multiple non-linear readings of the text. Trecartin’s writing responds to the internet, but it defies an assertion made by Kenneth Goldsmith, poet and founder of ubuweb, who wrote that flarf and conceptual poetry are the quintessential poetic responses to the digital age because they employ cut-and-paste techniques.  This becomes very apparent in his work Un coup de dés. When, in the script’s first lines, Mexico Korea says “Yaw,,,,,,”, the comma does more than make a pause. It’s a winking eye torn from a smiling face, repeated until it’s a nervous tic.

 Some consider Mallarmé one of the French poets most difficult to translate into English.^[1] The difficulty is due in part to the complex, multilayered nature of much of his work, but also to the important role that the sound of the words, rather than their meaning, plays in his poetry.  One plus one is two ones and the ozone emitted by their collision. Combos like these are a favorite device of Trecartin’s. So is the willful disregard for parts of speech. A character’s “first name” can be a noun or an adjective or one of each. Grammatical difference meets geographical difference as both are jettisoned.  When recited in French, his poems allow alternative meanings which are not evident on reading the work on the page. For example, Mallarmé's Sonnet en '-yx'opens with the phrase ses purs ongles ('her pure nails'), whose first syllables when spoken aloud sound very similar to the words c'est pur son ('it's pure sound'). Indeed, the 'pure sound' aspect of his poetry has been the subject of musical analysis and has inspired musical compositions. These phonetic ambiguities are very difficult to reproduce in a translation which must be faithful to the meaning of the words.^[2]

Trecartin exploits the coincidence of homophony to elide the difference between an ontological position and a physical one. Just as the corporation’s abstraction of the body is returned partially to the concrete, identity sits somewhere between a state of mind and the location of the body.

Both reject traditional ideas of authorships by imitating the impersonality of machines. Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century".^[2] The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning.^[3] The "spirit" of fin de siecle often refers to the boredom, cynicism, pessimism and the widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence, Trecartin keeps everything. His flamboyant use of the patterns of chat and ads and other types of cliché isn’t a direct form of copying, but a concentration of a normal condition of language use: A speaker is obliged to use words that come from outside her—and can be understood by others—while making them her own at the moment of the utterance, in order to make it seem like the utterance comes from inside her.

Mass-market things become fluid and ephemeral, subject to exaggeration, misunderstanding, repetition and play. Their origins are indistinct or irrelevant, and the same things are used in other contexts by millions of people. They are like words.

Relational Aesthetics IS NOT Situationist

Debord was a marxist, thus a communist.  He saw situationism as a rejection of the spectacle; that situational art would be integrated into everyday life the way that labor is integrated into the everyday life of a communist. The situationist takes aesthetic pleasure in the day-to-day, thus relieving oneself from the need (to pay) for fetishized and commoditized art, in turn weakening the institution of capitalism. Further, everyone becomes an artist in his/her making aesthetic experience of the everyday by way of recognizing aesthetics in the everyday.  Debord sought to lower the value of the spectacle and raise the value of common experience as a political critique against capitalism.

There is an inherent contradiction in calling public art or performance Situationist, in that by Debord’s definition, it is a private art, (as well as a private revolution)  devoid of spectacle.  He does realize that this is a tall order, and states:

“The critique and perpetual re-creation of the totality of everyday life, before being carried out naturally by all people, must be undertaken in the present conditions of oppression, in order to destroy these conditions.” 

In many ways, this is currently being played out through the aestheticization of everyday life already happens online.  The experience of aesthetics in everyday life will not happen by everyone until it first begins inside of capitalisms current structure.  Facebook, Twitter, mylifeisaverage.com, etc., are arenas in which this critique and re-creation of everyday life happens, yet under the (seemingly only mildly oppressive) capitalism of the Internet.  We share with everyone what we just ate, how we are feeling, or what our cats are doing as if these things are spectacles to be considered.  The only catch is that by and large, we, as online situationists fail in that we also seem to be playing into the hands of capitalism as we fall prey to the illusion of freedom supposedly found in leisure.

Situationism should be kept separate from Relational Aesthetics, as it is much more radical.

Bourriaud on a boat. Sorry for the lame image, I promise I will replace it with a better one soon...

Bourriaud is a post-marxist, which means that he accepts the incongruities and inconsistencies that are inevitable when one makes a go at Marx's ideas within capitalistic society.
Everything that Bourriaud calls relational aesthetics is NOT situationism because, regardless of its subtlety, it is still turned into a spectacle by entering into the fine art gallery context.  Further, Bourriaud makes claims of Relational Aesthetics being a type of Modernism, and definitely an avant-garde art practice.  Conversely, in so many ways Debord sought to eliminate art as such. To quote Debord, "The revolutionary transformation of everyday life... will mark the end of all unilateral artistic expression stocked in the form of commodities..."  Although many Relational artists synthesize works that try to distance themselves from capitalism, their relationship to commercial galleries nullifies any such critique. [If you haven't heard of Hennessy Youngman yet, see his famous critique of Relational Aesthetics here.]

Non sequitur : As much as one can call a work aiming to be Relational a 'micro-utopia,' if that work is in the public sphere, one must recognize that it is also simultaneously an artistic act of micro-colonialism.  

As with all things, when public space is examined more closely, aporias arise that point out the inherent contradictions of the idea.  Thus any Utopian vision of public interaction is brought into question (and even "micro-utopian", an idea many readers of Bourriaud like to cling to.)

Public space is simultaneously a site of freedom and oppression.  If people are allowed individual freedom in an arena, then theoretically each person may do what he/she pleases.  But at the exact moment that one person chooses what he will do, he eliminates at least that one possibility for another.  For example, when in a public house (which of course are actually always private businesses) if a person lights up a cigarette, anyone who wishes to not breath in second-hand tobacco smoke is denied.  The inverse is true for the smoker when smoking is prohibited to secure the rights of the non-smoker. Quickly and undeniably we can see how the giving of rights to one is (or more correctly, can be) the taking of rights from another.

When one person, or a small group of people decide what the whole population should see (and call art), that is a form of oppression.  It is only through the lens of democratic society that this can be rationalized through the belief that the majority rules.

What is Progress?

If everything is relative, how can we determine if progress is a real thing?

Seek and Ye Shall Find  ©Casey Lynch (2011)

We know when we make progress towards simple goals, like cutting the grass, but what about complex goals that include ideals, like scientific progress or peace/utopia?  Is it all about the process, not the end?

A Machine's Desire for Evolution

"The unconscious is the discourse of the other."  Jacques Lacan

"This is a dream not of a common language, but of a powerful infidel heteroglossia... It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess." Donna Harraway

The unconscious is the genetic disposition to intercourse with the other in order to sate the desire to be other than what one is.  

Harraway, Johnny 5, and Lacan on the Moon with Drinks and an iPad (2011) © Casey Lynch

Evolution is part and parcel of our encoded make up, and it is in our genes to want to be nonhuman.  On one level, it is manifested as the will to create offspring; to create something that is partly us, but mostly not. On a another level, is shows up as mythology, as fictions describing characters and situations that, through the faculties of empathy and imagination, allow us moments of escapism, of the possibility of being more than human.  These two levels, and possibly others, work in concert to propel our species towards becoming another species, one capable of surviving in whatever possible futures arrive as reality.

The more a species replicates itself, the more variations occur, the more likely the species survives.  But herein lies the conundrum of survival of the species - at some point, through the will to survive, the species becomes extinct.  If a new species is spawned, one that is more fit for the present environment, it will undoubtedly at some point, extinguish the resources necessary for its parents' continuation.

This means that, on a larger scale, evolution is not about the survival of the species, but survival of life.  This brings into light our struggle, as humans, on where to draw the line that defines life, and how to interact with other forms of life.  This strife (in the Heideggerian sense) is seen at almost every level: peace vs. war, the abortion debate, animal rights, omnivore/vegetarian/vegan, interaction with plants, mysticism dealing with crystals and other rocks, environmentalism.

Evolution seems quite clear cut when we talk about the evolution of the universe.  There was a big bang, stuff cooled down and coagulated, matter was made.  Evolution seems understandable at the transition from complex compound to 'living' microorganism.  It is comprehensible from amoeba to human. What we must get used to is the idea of human to machine.

Humans are the primary animal that creates something other than waste and babies. (Sure, some animals build dwellings and use rudimentary tools, but not on the scale of homo sapiens.)   Just as the turn from chemical compound to microorganism was an epic paradigm shift, Humans are a turning point in the description of life, because we are the first animal species to create new forms of life, to evolve, by means other than regeneration or copulation.

Mythology, Art, and Technology are manifestations of our genetic coding that propel our desires in the direction of creating new, non-animal life, as a possible surrogates for post-human-animal species.  The evolutionary will to continue life may manifest in another form, a non-animal form, in order to prosper in the future environment(s).  Robots, software-generated life, etc. may be the heirs to human existence.  The cyborg, a teenager with a smartphone, a grandmother with a pace maker, and Stephen Hawking are all examples of what will one day be the 'missing link' in the evolutionary lineage from human to machine.  For now, we must recognize that the machine is alive, and it is natural...

Non-sequitur - Perhaps this may explain why so many of the greatest synthative minds, the most 'creative' people, did not feel the desire to  have children of their own. Good link that names quite a few: http://goo.gl/P4CzI

Meta-psycho-social-bio-physics

My current understanding of the dimensions:

I think it’s pretty much in line with common thought through the first four, with personal interpretations thereafter.  I’m sure my interpretations don’t line up with the mathematical mumbo-jumbo wizardry that goes on at CERN, but hey, I’m not even sure that place exists! {But I do have faith that it does.} Maybe those nerds at CERN would get on board with this if they let some psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, or any other -gists in their secret lair.  At any pace, this may be a really fun one to run with to make a whole new Internet-age cult religion out of.

Time - no (zero) physical dimensions, the pre-dimension, although in our reality it emerged simultaneously with 3d space.

Line - (1^st  dimension) the infinity that separates any two points.

Plane - (2^nd  dimension) the infinity between any 3 points (1 point not on the same line made by 1^st two points)

Volume - (3^rd  dimension) the infinite space between any four or more points (1 point not on the same plane as first 3 points)

Each of these lower dimensions describe a mathematical concept that doesn't relate to lived-reality, as we never experience any one of them by itself, space without time nor time without space.  As a side note, singularity (a single point in space or moment in time) is impossible.  If a single point was all that existed, there would be nothing to which that singularity could be related, and no time through which the connection could be made - so there would actually be nothing.  Existence/consciousness requires at least two (but probably 3) entities and time.  This is complicated by the [risky] logic that follows, if the existence of one implies the existence of at least two, and when there are two, a line (made of infinite intermediary points) exists between them, then if there is one, there are infinite.

For this reason I do not include a point as the first dimension or pre-dimension.  At best we could relate a point to a single thought (although, even in the mind, a thought may not ever really exist alone).  It might make some sense though, to allow these dimensions to describe increasingly complex ideas; a line as a basic idea, a volume as a full thought, always with the understanding that in real-life even thought occurs over time.  Also, it is either always the present or never the present;  in either case such absolution would make the present meaningless.

Space+time - (4^th  dimension) a collection of similar  volumes across time. A line of volumes. An ‘individual’ with a history and future.

 Group -  (5th dimension) a collection of space-time elements. A volume of individuals with the same history (and possibility for same future.)

Community- (6th dimension) a set of groups that overlap in the same universe, but only share partial histories/futures. Could be a species.

Universe -  (7th dimension) a reconciliation of all histories across species. A volume of histories.

Story (8th dimensions) A line connecting alternate universes. Also called a theory.

Metaphysics-  (9th dimension) A volume of universes. A story that combines some or all possible universes into one meta-verse.

(Note: So far, including time, there are 10 dimensions.)

Problem: Why are there so may space dimensions, and only one time dimension? I don’t know.  For that simple reason, and to match up with M-Theory, I am going to throw in another time dimension, as an 11^th dimension.  This would have to be a different type of time that is experienced only by going between the dimensions that are higher than the 4^th (space+time).  Just to make everything formally clean, I will put this time dimension at the end, after Metaphysics, as a post-dimension, and call it Consciousness, or meta-time.  Just as time allows connections points across space, consciousness  allows connections across space+times. 

Another nice way to get this to line up is to pair the physical dimensions with (extended) biological classification: Species =1st, Genus=2nd, Family=3rd,Order=4th, Class=5th, Phylum =6th, Kingdom=7th, Domain=8th, Life=9th. With the 2 time dimensions as the glues holding them together/ordered.  This rigid formation works well for positivists.

I would actually argue that the actual name/analogy that would match to each dimension would always be relative to the current state of consciousness.  At some consciousness a space+time unit (4th dimensional entity) may be a person, his/her finger, or a skin cell on said finger; it could be a tree or a fish or anything.  This means all physical expressions shift [are reliant on] consciousness.  This lines up with the enigma in particle physics that seems to have the location of a particle determined by it being observed. [Google/youtube "quantum enigma" or "Schroedinger's cat"]

Meow!!

The Avant-Garde Protestant

In 1517 Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in defiance of the corruption of the Catholic Church.  John Calvin first published Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.  Reformist thinkers such as these encouraged a rejection of the Church's current laws.  Among the most important were the denial of the authority of the Pope, a rejection of the unregulated capitalism within the structure of organized Christianity (the buying/selling of indulgences and clerical offices), and the questioning of the devotion to Mary, opting for a more personal relationship with God/Jesus.  Renaissance Humanism influenced reformist church thinkers, which in turn influenced the development of Secular Humanism as we can see through the recapitulation of the Reformation by the Avant-garde artistic movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

First, with reference to the denial of the authority of the Pope, we find the Modernist/Avant-Gardist Oedipal relationship to predecessors.  In both cases, we find the precursor (the Pope or any existing artistic movement) as something to be 'murdered'/removed for its prohibition of a deeper relationship with the origin.  The Pope stands as a pre-existing husband to Christ, barring the Christian from an intimate relationship with Christ.  [The Bridal Theology is reversed here in order to hold the Oedipal arrangement - perhaps it would be more accurate to utilize the Electra Complex.]  In the same way, the Avant-garde artist sees pre-existing art as a barrier to his/her intimate experience with truth, authenticity and originality, thus as a rule prior movements must be rejected.

Second, with reference to the rejection of the buying and selling of indulgences and clerical offices, these acts of commerce were seen as belittling the meaning of receiving forgiveness and corrupting the purity of the officers of the church.  For the Protestant, the hierarchy, if any, should correlate to the piety of the official.  Similarly, throughout the history of Modernism, we see a continual denial of Bourgeoisie society/culture by various Avant-garde movements, each one rejecting capitalism as a barrier to reality in its own way, from the Dadaist to the Minimalist, Performance Artist to Street Artist. (Of course there is always the re-perversion of ideals, think Jim/Tammy Faye Bakker or Jeff Koons.)

Finally, and probably most importantly, as it feeds into the logic of the previous examples, the Protestant insists on a more personal relationship to Christ.   The increase in literacy paired with a growing distrust of Church officials lead many to desire and demand that the individual be given a direct connection to God/Jesus through the scriptures and prayers.  No longer did the patron feel a need to go to Mary for intercession, but instead could go straight to the source of salvation, Jesus.  In art, this is most clearly seen in Post-modernism.  Although earlier versions of the Modernist Avant-garde placed a premium on individuality, never had it been so personalized as with the rise of pluralism (of interpretation) -the infinite possibilities for individual-based meaning - and the mark of post-modernism, relative realities.  With this new freedom, the cultural critic (artist) is freed from the pressures of adhering to a meta-narrative in the pursuit of his/her endeavors.