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THE ELECTRONIC DISTURBANCE
Critical Art Ensemble
Part 4 of 7
Published by Autonomedia
ISBN 1-57027-006-6
New theater should tell the viewer how to resist authority,
regardless of its source along the political continuum. If
we seek liberation through the control of our own images,
performance should illustrate resistant processes and
explicitly show how to achieve autonomy, however temporary
it might be. Self-presentation revealed in the performance
must not be perceived by the audience as a self image that
should necessarily be copied, as this will end merely as a
shift in coding regimes. Rather, one should seek an
aesthetics of confusion that reveals potential choices, thus
collapsing the bourgeois aesthetic of efficiency.
Already here and yet always one step ahead: It seems that
virtual reality is always about to arrive with the next
technological breakthrough. On the other hand, that curious
feeling--that we are %currently% in a real environment--
leads to the conclusion that virtual reality is located in
the near future, in science fiction, or in an as-yet
undeveloped technology. Perhaps the fact that we are
already enveloped by the virtual is what makes it so
unrecognizable. Perhaps it is because a promise has been
issued by technologues, that the boundary between everyday
life and virtual life will soon congeal, forming completely
separate theaters. These promises are what keep the virtual
forever invisible. The virtual theater promised by the
technologues, like everyday life, will have an enveloping
effect. it will be the first engine of the virtual where
people will be able to physically interact and have a degree
of control over their identities, narrative trajectories,
and the objects of interaction. Unlike painting, theater,
film or television, the new virtual theater will make
screenal mediation transparent and offer the appearance of
unframed experience. This is the idea of virtual reality
proper, in its technical sense. However, this technology
does not really exist, except in the crudest of forms, and
functions primarily as a game. For this reason, the virtual
%stage% seems to be nothing worth noting, but as suggested
herein, it is already interlocked with everyday life, and
already controls the performances of this theater. Should
virtual reality proper make its appearance in culture, it
must not be confused with virtual power. At present,
virtual reality and its promise act as deflectors to turn
vision away from the electronic source of domination and
authority. The promise of a cybernetic performative matrix
serves to alienate us further from our electronic
counterparts, falsely leading us to continue believing that
electronic bodies do not really exist, let alone that they
are signs of authoritarian power. A theater of resistance
can be established only if we understand that the virtual
world is in the here and now.
The Situationists were correct in their claim that power resides
in the spectacle; however, this claim was truer in the past-
-when the opening shots were fired in the revolution of the
economy of desire over the economy of production.
Information technology quickly divorced power from the
spectacle, and power now wanders invisibly in a cybernetic
realm outside of everyday life. Spectacle has become the
site of mediation, not so much between social relationships
proper, but between the concrete and the virtual worlds, the
sedentary and the nomadic, the organic and the electronic,
and the present and the absent. To this extent, performance
cannot concentrate solely on the virtual. The electronic
elements of spectacle are also of great importance and
require further investigation, especially since this is the
side of the spectacle that mutates at a velocity that
parallels consumption. (Architecture and other
subelectronic visual markers of the spectacle are not as
significant. These forms change too slowly and access to
them is limited by geography.) In the electronic image one
can detect the clearest traces of the cyberelite, but more
importantly, this image is also the source which
redistributes identities and lifestyles suitable for
excessive consumption. This new social relationship between
the electronic body (the body without organs) and the
organic body is one of the best resources for performance
material. Performance resources must go beyond the organic
body, which at present acts as the master link in
performative models of representation. In the age of
electronic media, it is inappropriate to argue that
performance exhausts itself under the sign of the organic.
After all, the electronic body is always performing, even if
%in absentia% on every stage.
There is every reason to desire the electronic body, and every
reason to despise it. This pathological struggle occurs
when one views the electronic body, and feelings of sympathy
(Husserl) and envy (Benjamin) implode in a schizophrenic
moment. As Baudrillard states: "In spite of himself the
schizophrenic is open to everything and lives in the most
extreme confusion. The schizophrenic is not, as generally
claimed, characterized by his loss of touch with reality,
but by the absolute proximity to and total instantaneousness
with things, this overexposure to the transparency of the
world." In the debris of intersubjectivity, the organic and
the electronic face each other. The electronic body looks
so real. It moves around, it gazes back, it communicates.
Its appearance is our appearance. Identity manifests and is
reinforced, as subjectivity is extracted/imposed by the
electronic other. How can such a perception not conjure a
sympathetic response? Yet in that same instant of unity
comes the burning feeling of separation born of envy. The
identity of the electronic body is not our own. We must
eternally consume something to make our appearance more like
its appearance. The desire for greater access to the signs
of beauty, health, and intelligence, through the unceasing
accumulation of cultural artifacts, brutally reminds us that
the perfect excess of the electronic body is not our own.
The limitations of the organic abound, and what is achieved
becomes vulgar and unnecessary at the point of achievement.
All the remains is the unbearable moment of enriched
privation. Sympathy and envy are forever spliced together
in the form of a hideous Siamese twin. This is the
performance of everyday life, so near, so instantaneous,
eternally recurring.
Artaud's only misjudgment was his belief that the body without
organs had yet to be created. The electronic body is the
body without organs. It already dominates performance, and
has recentered the theater around empty identity and empty
desire. The body without organs is the perfect body--
forever reproducible. No reduction to biology now. Two
hundred Elvis clones appear on screen. Separate them: Turn
the channel; play the tape. Each performance is on an
eternal loop. These clones were not made in a test tube;
they reproduce of their own accord, each as precise and as
perfect as the last. No fluids, no plagues, no
interruptions. The orifices of the body without organs are
sewn tightly shut. No consumption, no excretion, no
interruptions. Such freedom: Safely screened off from the
virtual catastrophes of war, capital, gender, or any other
manifestation teetering at the brink of a crash, the body
without organs is free to drift in the electronic rhizome.
The theater of the street and its associated cultural debris
collapses. Civilization has been washed clean--progress is
complete--dirt, trash, rot, and rubble have been screened
off and erased from the perfect world of the electronic
body. The electronic body, free of the flesh, free of the
economy of desire, has escaped the pain of becoming.
What is the fate of the organic body, caught between sympathy and
envy, forever following in the shadow of the body without
organs? Very simply, the flesh is sacrificed--carved into
layers that better serve various economies. This is not the
Cartesian dualism valued by the cyberpunk ("Hence, at least
through the instrumentality of the Virtual power, mind can
exist apart from body, and body apart from mind"), in which
the body is no more than a slab of meat. It is not simply a
matter of downloading the mind and trashing the body.
Rather, the body is divided between surface and depth,
between dry and wet. Since spectacle is a dry surface
image, the body must reflect that image. The body becomes
its mirror, or perhaps more accurately, its xerox. It is
paper onto which designer gender, ethnicity, and lifestyle
are inscribed. As with any surface of inscription, it must
be dry if it is to run through the sight machine. It must
also be flat and void of depth (desire). The only
acceptable desire is the desire to consume the spectacle's
texts. As image cascades down through various classes of
consumption, the resolution of the original decays, until
nothing is left but the body as receptacle of water. This
is the body sacrificed to the anti-economy. It is the
abject body, left to wander the street in misery ("What is
sacred undoubtedly corresponds to the object of horror I
have spoken of, a fetid, sticky object without boundaries,
which teems with life and yet is the sign of death").
The body which signifies the absence of rationalized
economic desire is that which we are taught to fear. It is
the sign of the organic itself; it is the primordial soup,
the placenta-filled womb to which there can be no return.
To mention the scared, or worse, to display signs of the
organic, the code of death, is to reject economic
inscription. To do so is to become one of the abject, and
to suffer great punishment. Many performers have tried to
reinstate the organic within the network of value, but they
are unable to overcome the power of the body without organs
(BwO). The BwO is always there with them, on the stage and
in the audience. The best result produced from such work is
a cheer for deviance, but the sign of deviance is forever
broken. Simply putting on a counterspectacle within the
theater of the abject is not enough. It only servers to
confirm what is already known: do not mention the organic
and its untamed desire, or its yearning for death. Such
spectacle is quickly reduced to an aberration, or a peculiar
idiosyncrasy. The organic and the electronic must
explicitly clash in an attempt to open the rigid
hierarchical closure that is presented every day by the
engines of the spectacle. To take the most obvious example,
this closure is crucial to the success of any horror movie.
In every case, horror films express the BwO overcoming the
sign of the organic. Spilled guts, sticky goo, splitting
skin, erupting pus, uncontrolled excrement, all incite
horror in the viewer. It reminds h/er of the organic, that
uncontrolled watery excess simply waiting to burst through
the seamless xerox surface. The horror movie makes the
organic--as well as the means by which it must be punished
for its appearance--visible. There are two fundamental
rules for simulating horror in spectacular society: The
innocent (BwO) must suffer (eat the sacrifice), and the
guilty (subelectronic desire) must be punished. The
replaying of these two fundamental myths in spectacular
endeavors keeps people buying. It makes known that all must
aspire to be the innocent and virginal BwO, and that all
must block the organic with accumulated piles of
manufactured excess. This is the performance that must be
disturbed, but it must be disturbed electronically.
If the BwO is conceived of as appearance of self contained in
screenal space, it is nearly supernatural to think that the
BwO can possess flesh and walk the earth. It is during the
time of possession that the BwO is the most vulnerable to
the appearance of organic deficiencies, and yet, this is
also the time when the BwO can present itself as an entity
separate from spectacle, thus reinforcing its ideal image as
existing in the realm of real achievement. The phenomenon
of flesh possession by the BwO is commonly referred to as a
celebrity. The celebrity acts as empirical proof positive
that electronic appearance is still dependent on the
organic. In this form the BwO is not just a mediated
screenal vision, but can also be touched, so that it
deflects thought away from the categories of the
recombinant, and toward the nostalgia of essentialism. Is
it any wonder that celebrities are hounded for autographs or
any other artifact that can act as a trace of comfort to
those desiring the assurances of the pre-electronic order?
The construction of the electronic theater has been completed by
nomadic power. The Situationists alarmed us to its
construction when they presented their critique of the
spectacle. Indeed, the melding of architecture, graphic
design, radio, television and film have come to constitute
the spectacular stage, but its logistical support in
backstage virtual technology had yet to fully appear. The
strategic error came when anachronistic forms of resistance
(occupations, strikes, protests, etc.) were used as a means
to stop construction. One of the many failures of the
revolutionary actions of the late 60s and early 70s is that
they neither attacked the electronic theater nor employed
nomadic oppositional tactics. The theater of operations was
perceived as purely sedentary, without nomadic component,
and was thereby situated in the binary of offense/defense.
Within the electronic theater, strategy consists of pure
offense. Surveillance systems are the only remaining
defensive trace. The trick is never to be caught off guard,
always to track the opposition's movements, thus preventing
the disappearance of the opponents. The other option is to
establish temporary blockage points that allow time to
regroup and begin a counter-offensive. The defensive
posture of fortification is unrealistic. Unfortunately this
has traditionally been the tactic (occupation) chosen by the
resistance. This was a proper means of resistance against
spectacular architecture, but the electronic theater
remained untouched and continued expanding its domain. Once
again, the culture of resistance is working primarily from a
model of critique, and as always, is moving very slowly off
the mark in this endeavor, preferring to continue engaging
cultural and political bunkers. However, all is not lost.
Because of the lack of fortifications in the electronic
theater, there are always windows and gaps ripe for
disturbance. Unfortunately, such resistance can only come
from the technocratic class, and it must occur before
surveillance systems become too well-distributed. The
performance of the politicized hacker should be the ultimate
in performative resistance.
Compared to cyberspace resistance techniques, possible
strategies for the cultural producer are much more modest.
These producers can re-present the electronic theater for
what it is, by creating simulations of performative control
that call attention to the technology and methods of
control. The other strategy is to attempt to reestablish
the organic body in arenas other than the abject and the
deviant; however, this performance has no meaning other than
to replay the past, unless it is contrasted with the mythic
standing of the BwO. To take this approach is not to
uncover the invisible, but to impose the vacuum of
scepticism on the visible. With either option, the
performer must appropriate and occupy the electronic
theater. It is unwise to wait until virtual reality has the
trappings of a classical theater--one into which the
performer and viewer may physically enter and which is
enveloped by artificial (electronic) surroundings. As
stated earlier, resistant performers must establish those
interlocking recombinant stages which oscillate between the
theater of everyday life and the virtual theater. Such
actions will help develop practical performance models--ones
which lend themselves to an autonomous performative matrix,
rather than ones in which the performers are automatons,
replaying the creations of designer culture. Resistant
theater is electronic theater.
=================================================================
%Case 43%
From the notebooks of Jacques Lacan
From the darkness a pre-recorded voice begins to overlap
itself in "commentary" on a certain "Case 43" and discussion
of the "imaginary status of economic consumption." Then Fon
van Voerkom's drawing, "a painful solution," appears on
large screen. A few moments later an eye appears on two TV
monitors, from which a distorted voice begins to answer the
"commentary." The "subject" enters and stands in front of
the screen, then begins to make a series of "statements."
The Subject: Born to consume just for the fun of it. Just
for the fun of it, mass consumption necessitates self
consumption, just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it
auto-cannibalism is the material signifier of excess
consumption, just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it
excess consumption is the logic of economic narcissism, just
for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it mass consumption
equals self-consumption, just for the fun of it. Auto-
cannibalism is the logic of fashion. Deconstruction just
for the fun of it. Auto-cannibalism is the praxis of
everyday life: I chew my nails just for the fun of it; I
eat my hair just for the fun of it; I eat myself just for
the fun of it. Consumption is concerned with the
internalization of objects, just for the fun of it. Just
for the fun of it we consume the objects in order to make
them "real," just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it
I eat myself in order to be "real," just for the fun of it.
Auto-cannibalism is created just for the fun of it; planned,
just for the fun of it; organized through social production,
just for the fun of it. We are dogs in love with our own
vomit. This is not an aesthetic transgression, this is not
a ritual sacrifice, this is not body art, it is only self-
consumption, just for the fun of it... just for the taste of
it.
The "Subject" then takes out a razor blade and cuts the palm
of his hand. As the blood begins to flow, the "Subject"
drinks the blood for a few moments and then walks away. The
"commentary" ends, the large screen image ends, and then the
two TV monitors are turned off.
=================================================================
%Tongue Spasms%
The mouth fragments the body. What remains? A narrow
constipation, a violent meaning that makes vomit reason.
The grotesque colonization of the oral cavity chews on the
silenced body and spits out a bestiality of signs. What
remains? Spasms.
%The screenal tongue floats freely from its pillars. A
sliding surrealistic appendage.%
The eye spasms before the virtual tongue, blinding the
dominant need for appropriation. What remains after the
system digests everything? A nomadic tongue riding the
waves of its digital secretions. A post-biological
cannibalism that reborders the body. What remains?
%The tongue no longer occupies one place.%
The nipple is the matrix of a lost cause, a nostalgia of a
network plurality in which one is too few and two is only
one possibility. What remains? As screenal tongues cleave
and suck the pacifier of unreal ideologies and unreal
referents, the cancer of the techno-democracy reveals
itself. The nipples mandate the electronic passion of
diachronic doubles that blur desire and labor.
%Cyber saliva slides in little jerks, punctuating farts and
knuckle cracks.%
The spasm of digital bytes legitimizes the violence of
information. Both the left and right hand are driven by the
ritual of representation and sacrifice before the keyboard
of dromographic speed. What remains? Hyper-real hands,
sociologically unconscious desiring machines, always already
possessed. What remains?
%The sex speaks of a language based on lubricants, a
different kind of saliva.%
The virtual tongue fuses with the hot and cold units of
pleasure. Unlike things join, tugging sensory hair, and a
cannibalism is turned inward. Diseased rumors float back
and forth between nano peckers and macro cunts. What
remains? A discharge of blind desire moving in and out of
virtually gossiping genitals.
%Would the virtual tongue multiply and separate toes or
simply lick between them?%
The big toe is the horror of a base materialism that spasms
beyond suitable discourse. Toes lead an ignoble life,
seducing the data base with corns, blocking electronic
interface with calluses and resisting the drift of
information with dirty bunions. What remains after the
system digests everything? The ecstatic deformity of pure
labor, laughing before the solar anus, flicking mud at the
virtual body above it. What remains? The brutal seduction
of abandonment more acute in movement.
%The spasm of the digital body breaks open the orifice of
profound physical impulses.%
The anal night calls the virtual tongue to leave the mouth
and enter it, red and obscene. An eruptive force of
luminous thirst that demands indecent rupture and debauched
hacking. What remains? An ontology of farts, of breathless
lacerations that reborder the body and begin to speak. A
revolutionary breakthrough of a post-biological sound. What
remains after the system digests everything? Virtual gas.
=================================================================
%Body without Organs% (first manifestation)
A series of appropriated images appear on 3 TV monitors
which refer to the particular vectors that mark the BwO. As
the images flow across the screens, a silent "body" moves
through the spectators, while 2 voices enunciate the
necessity of bodily aphanisis--BwO.
Voice 1: No more cocks. No more cunts. BwO now. All
extensions must be cut off. All orifices must be sewn up--
plugged up. We must rid ourselves of the biological, empty
ourselves of it. All bio-fascism must be ripped out and
sealed up in the clear jars of the museum, so that we will
never forget the pain of somatic tyranny.
Voice 2: For the biggest lie ever was to frame humans as an
organism of consuming, assimilating, incubating, excreting,
creating a whole hierarchy of latent functions.
Voice 1: So we will never forget the late-capitalist
physiology that bites, sucks, devours--it is driven by the
bio-destiny of the oral hole: consumption, assimilation,
incorporation--the mouth must be suppressed, repressed. BwO
now.
Voice 2: For too long we have been caught in the circle of
the organism, between the goat's anus and the mouth of God,
between the logic of the cock and the cunt, the One and the
Zero, the cause and the effect--let nothing flow--let
nothing pass--BwO now.
Voice 1: The excretion of surplus-value imprisons us in
shit-economics: the bio-machine eats in Africa, digests in
Asia, and dumps its excess in the first world. The anal
force must be eradicated, eliminated. BwO now.
Voice 2: Let us empty the body of its retensions, of its
expulsions, of its paranoid dichotomies, of its compulsive
production, of its hysterical dissemination, of its neurotic
interpretations--let us go further still; we haven't
sufficiently dismantled our selves.
The "body" kneels before a chair and takes out the
"imaginary phallus" and begins to cut it off.
Voice 1: Let us strip ourselves of one part of the body-
despot: an eye, an ear, any piece of epidermis, cut off the
cock, sew up the cunt, plug up the asshole--staple your
mouth shut and remain silent forever. Let us all empty the
body.
Voice 2: Let us all empty the body, that coagulated
nothingness, and flush it down the toilet: no more shit-
economics, no more urinal-politics.
Voice 2: Let us vanish into the post-biological continuum.
The "body" places the "imaginary phallus" in a clear jar and
seals it, then walks away, leaving the monitors behind.
Voice 2: Dialectical evolution is over--BwO now.
Voices 1 & 2: BwO now.