Jose Luis Brea on Thu, 11 May 2000 01:34:59 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Online critique |
Online critique. Transformations of art.criticism in contemporary societies We live in a time of profound transformations, which radically affect the way in which we tend to articulate our relationship with the world around us: transformations which affect the general framework of our comprehension of the world, of what it means to inhabit it, of what we can expect of our existence and of what it means to share that existence with our fellow beings. The old "grand recits" that articulated that comprension have collapsed, and although forceful ideas -such as freedom, brotherhood and justice- continue to orient our practices, the models of response that they support are no longer rigid, stable and univocal. We thus find ourselves facing the need to reformulate the horizons, the mediations: we need new maps for understanding our times, new visions that will help us articulate our relationship with the world and all that it means to "be human" within it. Regarding the practices of symbolic production in the ambit of visual things, I believe that those transformations have two principle signs. - First, the appearance and already accomplished settling of a time-image, of a moving image, in the ambit of the technical image. It is true that this appearance of a moving image already has a century long history with filmmaking. Nevertheless, that could not affect the practices of visual production in such a decisive way. Not until the general conditions of expectation, of contemplation, varied enough so that the time-image was converted into the dominant form of experience of the image -something which has already begun to occur-, permitting for the first time in the history of humanity that representation be made ponderable in itself as an event, as a "happening", not as something definitively given and forever identical to itself. That implies great transformations not only in the general symbolic ordering that mediatizes our whole relationship with representation, yet also and consequently in the totality of the social devices of production, transmission and experience of the image and visual things in contemporary societies. It is therefore inevitable to assume that those great transformations have affected not only artistic practices but also the modes in which the practice of art criticism can be developed with them. - The second of the great signs of which I am considering refers to the current proliferation of the mediums through which their social and public distribution are verified. If the mechanisms of collectivization of experience of visual practices in modern societies were formerly conditioned by the requirement of presence, and they were therefore mechanisms of a spatialized nature (such as museums, galleries, urban spaces, specific locations, citizen's spaces or even alternative spaces), the current proliferation of mediums and new mediums profiles a much broader, swarming and lively panorama of devices. A panorama that, above all, is no longer conditioned by the obligatory resolution of the presentations in terms of presence or specific location, spatialization. It seems to me evident that from there follows an almost immeasurable challenge for the creative practices, and by extension a peremptory transformation of the space for art criticism (which will soon find itself facing the possibility of utilizing a multiplicity of channels, mechanisms and forms for which it was not conceived). I would not like to omit pointing out that there is a third sign of even greater importance, if indeed possible, that also conditions the modes of experience of that visual communicative practices in contemporary societies, which is the very emergence of a paradigm of diversity in the cultural organization of experience, submitted to a bursting process of geopolitical globalization which ought to be administered cautiously within a postcolonial paradigm. Let us say that this new paradigm profoundly affects all the processes of the construction of subjectivity and therefore of the circulation of whichever modules of social "communitary" identification, through the imaginary visuals. In any case, and since this refers more directly to the questions of content which are the specific responsibility of the creators and cultural producers, and since many of my colleagues have also alluded to them, I will leave that question aside, yet not without first confirming my conviction that, for however much we situate the "structural" problems, in other words, those that refer to the social mechanisms of production and social distribution of artistic knowledge, these questions of content will always prevail as the truely principle ones. From now on I will try to be precise and specific, and I apologize if, due to this, I fall into a simplifying schematism. Below, I will enumerate, in a very synthetic manner and parting from these considerations, what I believe to be the 5 principle challenges imposed on the practices of art criticism by this transformations. 1. The expansion of the entertainment industries, which follows the consecration of the spectacle in contemporary societies, absorbs the practices of production of sense into its territory, converting the critic into an integrated manager under the figure of curator, who is virtually a negotiator of cultural offer. It is the task of the critic to resist the trivialization of his work by opposing the aim which precedes the demand -the increase in audience- an aim in keeping with the increase in the ammount of sense in circulation. If this compels him to organize fewer exhibitions or to tailor them toward more specialized audiences or those more willing to make an effort to participate in the processes of construction and distribution of sense, she or he should not falter. The current inflation of curatorial work hardly disguises the need for the contemporary cultural industry to supply itself with products that demonstrate meaningful elements of novelty or content. It is the work of the committed critic to demand that those contents do not merely "appear", demonstrating the deceitful brilliance pertaining to phantasmagoria, but that they can truely be inscribed and partaken in with the maximum intensity and ponderable critical elucidation. 2. The transformation of the economies of visuality through the emergence and settling of a time-image presses against the spatialized devices of the exhibition of the practices of visual creation. The critic ought to join that pressure, favouring the rapid transformation of the old devices so as to make them capable and adequate, as soon as possible, for the presentation of the new forms of a time-based-art emerged on the impulse of the settling of such a time-image (even there where this pressure can make the disappearance of such devices ponderable). I wish to say that this does not only mean working on a transformation of the exhibition form which requires the museum, the gallery or the "independent space" to find formulas for presenting within its territory "non spatialized" forms of immaterial work in the production of time-images. But that it can even mean making ponderable modes of social distribution and collective appropriation of these new artistic forms and practices that do not cross the required rituality of its presentation within spaces. 3. It is highly likely that, as within the arena of criticism, what is taking place is that we are witnessing a transformation of the function of those devices of public presentation and social appropriation of the aesthetic experience, of artistic value. If it becomes clear that to a large extent that change of function claims for a task of dynamization of the processes of reception -of activization of the instruments of enrichment of the participative or interpretive character of expectation- perhaps it also ought to become clear that there exists a need to adapt those public devices into effective instruments of support for the very processes of production. The contemporary cultural producer feels liberated from the "compulsion of the object" that pressured him from a spatialized conception of artistic practices, and that leads to a limitlessness of the forms in which it is ponderable to resolve and develop his immaterial work (of sense production). Since this ought not to be conditioned anymore by a necessarily material resolution of one or another object, inscribable in the market or presentable under a stabilized appearance in the institutionalized space, the institutions must assume a new role of aiding the production of these new practices. If that compels the museum to begin taking on a new responsibility related to the production -almost in the filmmaking sense- of the new expressive practices, it seems evident that it is the critic who should take on this work together with the creator, conceiving of his role as a cultural producer, and at the same time mediating with the institution so as to achieve an evolution therein and a newborn receptiveness of this new system of production necessities. 4. However it comes about, it is necessary to restore, reestablish and reinforce the terrain of writing as a fundamental domain of the work of the critic. This implies in any case a withdrawal from the journalistic space, in which criticism succumbs to the demands (always trivialized) of information and the advertising interests of the cultural industries in its systematic search for a spectacular projection -supported by the media. The domain in which that recuperation is ponderable cannot be any other than the essay space -meant also as a space open to experimentation, to the attempt, to the test. The critic must be, first and foremost, an essay writer, even more an essayer* than an essayist.... and 5. This essay writing -which appears not only as the domain of judgement or valoration, but also and especially as a territory or machine for the proliferation of the interpretations and the multiplication of the senses- must dare to expose itself to the challenge of interaction, of being online, of constrasting itself in the real time made possible by the new communication technologies. If the power of writing as a critical device charged with a specific ontological potential resides in its being structurally projected toward its posterity, toward the other time in which it will be read, it is possible to imagine that the challenge of a rewriting and rereading online (in the resulting approximation of the acts of writing and reading) supposes an imponderable margin of risk and at the same time a strengthening, that must be investigated. The participative act of a critical essay, at all times objectionable, open to dissent, in which any enunciation is not exercised in any way other than one among many possibilities, profiles a map of a breakdown of the hierarchy of interpretive judgement and value, which is expanded in the style of a time that knows that only in the multiplicity of interpretations and their interweaving, in the diversity of the paradigms and their contrast, can any remaining effect of truth repose. Submitted to that tension, critical writing does not only become accomplice to an unrenounceable project of compromise with the radicalization of democratic forms, but it is itself submitted to its demands. I trust that it is understood, in any case, that with these brief notes I do not intend to define answers or definitive orientations, but merely to point out some of the milestones and challenges that, in my opinion, defy and interpellate the practice of art criticism in our days. José Luis Brea ----------------- I read this paper at a panel discussion about "The art critic in the culture of today" organized by de Appel, Amsterdam, apr2000 [Translated from Spanish by Dena Ellen Cowan] *. Essayer is Ensayador in Spanish and in that language can also mean rehearser. 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