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THE ELECTRONIC DISTURBANCE
Critical Art Ensemble
Part 3 of 7
Published by Autonomedia
ISBN 1-57027-006-6
Planning a generic leftist documentary for PBS. Subject: The
guerrilla war in ____________ (choose a third-world nation).
1. Choose a title carefully, since it is one of the primary
framing devices. It should present itself purely as a
description of the images contained in the work, but should
also function as a privileged ideological marker. For
example, "The Struggle for Freedom in ____________."
Remember, do not mention "guerrillas" in the title. Such
words have a connotation of a lost or subversive cause that
could lead to irrational violent action, and that scares
liberals.
2. If you have a large enough budget (and you probably do
if you are making yet another film on political strife),
open with a lyrical aerial shot of the natural surroundings
of the country in question. Usually the countryside is held
by the guerrillas. This is good. You now have the
traditional authority of nature (and the morality of the
town/country distinction) on your side. These are two
foundational codes of didactic western art. They are rarely
questioned, and will create a channel leading the viewer to
the belief that you are filming a populist uprising.
3. Dissolve to the particular band of guerrillas that you
are going to film. Do not show large armies, and show only
small arms, not heavy weaponry. Remember, the guerrillas
must look like real underdogs. Americans love that code.
If you must talk about the size of the rebel army (for
instance, to show the amount of popular support for the
resistance), keep it abstract; give only statistics. Large
military formations have that Nuremberg look to the them.
If at all possible, choose a band comprised of families: It
shows real desperation when an entire extended family is
fighting. Keep in mind that one of your key missions is to
humanize the rebels while making the dominant group an evil
abstraction. Finish this sequence by stylishly introducing
each of the rebels as individuals.
4. For the next sequence, single out a family to represent
the group. Interview each member. Address their
motivations for resistance. Follow them throughout the day.
Capture the hardships of rebel activity. Be sure to show
the sleeping arrangements and the poverty of the food, but
concentrate on what the fight is doing to the family. End
the sequence by showing the family involved in a
recreational activity. This will demonstrate the rebels'
ability to endure, and to be human in the face of
catastrophe. It is also the perfect segue into the next
sequence: "In this moment of play, who could have imagined
the tragedy that would befall them..."
5. Having established the rebels as real, feeling people,
it is time to turn to the enemy, by showing for instance an
atrocity attributed to them. (Never show the enemy
themselves; they must remain an alien abstraction, an
unknown to be feared.) It is preferable if a distant
relative of the focus family is killed or wounded in the
represented enemy action. Document the mourning of the
fellow rebels.
6. With the identities of both the rebels and the enemy
established, you must now show an actual guerrilla action.
It should be read as a defensive maneuver with no
connotation of vengeance. Make sure that it is an evening
or morning raid, to lessen sympathy for the enemy as
individuals. The low light will keep them hidden and allow
the sparks of the return gunfire to represent the enemy as
depersonalized. Do not show guerrillas taking prisoners:
It is difficult to maintain viewers' sympathy for the rebels
if they are seen sticking automatic weapons in the backs of
the enemy and marching them along. Finally, only show the
action if the rebels seem to win the engagement.
7. In the victory sequence it is important to show the tie
between the rebels and the nonmilitary personnel of the
countryside. With the enemy recently beaten, it is safe to
go to town and celebrate with the agrarian class. You can
include speeches and commemorations in this sequence. Show
the peasants giving the rebels food, while the rebels give
the civilians nonmilitary materials captured during the
raid. But most importantly, ensure that the sequence has a
festive spirit. This will add an emotional contrast to the
closing sequence.
8. Final sequence: Focus on the rebel group expressing
their dreams of victory and vowing never to surrender. This
should cap it: You are now guaranteed a sympathetic
response from the audience. The sympathy will override any
critical reflection, making the audience content to ride the
wave of %your% radical subjectivity. Roll credits. Perhaps
add a postscript by the filmmaker on how touched and amazed
s/he was by the experience.
In creating a documentary, one small adjustment could be made
with minimal disturbance to the traditional model--to
announce for a given work that the collection of images
presented have already been fully digested within a
specialized cultural perspective. Make sure the viewers
know that they are watching a %version% of the subject
matter, not the thing in itself. This will not cure the
many ills of documentary film/video, since versions
themselves are prepackaged, having little meaning in
relation to other version; however, it would make the
documentary model a little less repugnant, since this
disclaimer would avoid the assertion that one was showing
the truth of the matter. This would allow the system to
remain closed, but still produce the realization that what
is being documented is not a concrete history, but an
independent semiotic frame through which sensation has been
filtered and interpreted.
Take, for instance, documentaries on a subject regarded
almost universally as pleasant and innocuous, such as
nature. It becomes readily apparent that nature itself is
not the subject, nor could it be. Rather, the simulation of
nature is actually a repository for specialized cultural
perspectives and myths that are antithetical to the sign of
civilization. Consider the following versions:
1. Aestheticized Nature. This is a viewpoint common to
most National Geographic documentaries. In this
formulation, nature is presented as the original source of
beauty, grandeur, and grace. Even the most violent events
become precious aesthetic processes that must be preserved.
This is even true in the presentation of "exotic"
racial/ethnic groups! The world is reduced to an art museum
that testifies to the cosmological and teleological
perfection of nature. Nature's highest function is to exist
for aesthetic appreciation. Both the aesthetics and the
ideology that conjure this beatific version of nature come
from a well-packaged nostalgic romanticism that determines
both the documentary maker's expectations and the method for
filming and editing.
2. Darwinian Nature. This conception of nature is best
represented by the series _The Trials of Life_. In this
treatment the Hobbesian universe comes alive, and the war of
all against all is graphically depicted. This blood-and-
guts version of nature assembles the signage of survivalist
ideology to represent the blind gropings of a cold and
uncaring universe. It is a remembrance of the fatality of
the world prior to the order of civilization. Such work
acts as an ideological bunker defending the luxury of order
produced by the police state.
3. Anthropomorphic Nature. This interpretation revolves
around the question of "How are animals like people?"
Typical of Disney documentaries or television shows such as
_Wild Kingdom_, these films are insufferably cute, and
present the natural order as one of innocence. This is not
surprising, since these presentations are targeted at
children, and so the conflation of human beings
(particularly children) with animals is regarded as a good
rubric for "healthy" socialization. These films concentrate
on animals' nurturing behavior and on their modest
"adventures," interpreting nature as a bourgeois entity.
In all such readings, the viewer is presented with an
artificially constructed pastiche of images that offers only
limited possibilities for the mythic establishment of
nature. Nature exists as merely a semiotic construction
used to justify some ideological structure. Nature as code
is kept fresh by showing animals and panoramic landscapes
that are then overlaid with ideological interpretive
frameworks. Nature films have never documented anything
other than the artificial--that is, institutionally-
constructed value systems. Much the same can be said about
the political documentary, since only the contingent aspects
are different. The filmmaker then shows us people and
cities, rather than animals and landscapes.
The various versions of the present that the documentary imposes
on its viewers are refashioned by the film/video form into
electronic monuments sharing a number of characteristics
with their architectural counterparts. Typically, leftist
documentaries parallel the function of monuments and
participate in the spectacle of obscenity to the following
extent:
1. Monuments function as concrete signs of an imposed
reconstituted memory.
2. Monumentalism is the concrete attempt to halt the
proliferation of meaning in regard to the interpretation of
convulsive events. Monuments are not the signs of freedom
that they appear to be, but the very opposite, signs of
imprisonment, quelling freedom of speech, freedom of
thought, and freedom of remembrance. As overseers in the
panoptic prison of ideology, their demand for submission is
masochistically obeyed by too many.
3. The return of cultural continuity is what exalts the
monument in the eyes of the complicit. In its cloak of
silence, the monument can easily repress contradiction. To
those whose values they represent, monuments offer a
peaceful space through the familiarity of cynical tradition.
At the monument, the complicit are not burdened with
alienation arising from diversity of opinion, nor with the
anxiety of moral contradiction. They are safe from the
disturbance of reflection. Monuments are the ultimate
ideological bunkers--the concrete manifestations of fortress
mentality.
To be sure, there are differences between the architectural
monuments of dominant culture, and the monuments to
resistant culture, such as documentaries; those of resistant
culture do not aspire to maintain the status quo, nor do
they project a false continuity onto the wound of history.
The problem is that many of these monuments do aspire to an
eventual dominance; they aspire to produce an icon that is
above critical examination. Thus far no sacred icons have
been intentionally produced through the production of
documentaries, but some have been accidentally produced
through media spectacle. The most notable examples are the
Hill/Thomas hearings, and the Rodney King beating. Certain
images derived from these tapes have transcended the mundane
to become sacred images for a broad spectrum of society.
Like any sacred image, these icons exhaust themselves on
impact, and anyone who insinuates that meanings other than
the one that immediately presents itself are layered into
the image will be visited with a rain of punishment. These
images are so emotionally charged that they produce a panic,
motivating a blind and vicious attack on any interpretive
heresy. They are to the left very much what the image of
the aborted fetus is to the radical right. If autonomy is
the goal of resistant image production, the monumentality of
the sacred must be eliminated from it.
One practical advantage of reality video (video that appears to
replicate history) must be recognized--its function as a
democratic form of counter-surveillance. No matter how
simple the video technology, it easily becomes seen as a
threat. It is perceived as a receptacle for guilt that can
instantly replay acts of transgression. As the perfect
judicial witness, its objectivity cannot be legally
questioned. Yet as an instrument of intimidation against
the transgressions of power, video functions only within
limited parameters. Its strict rational-legal power
operates only in the context of exhausted meaning. It is a
useful defense in the legal system and in media spectacle,
but it is detrimental to the understanding of media itself,
as it promotes the authoritarian aesthetics of exhaustion.
The supremacy of reality video as the model for resistant
cultural production must be challenged by those who want to
see the medium of video go beyond its traditional function
as propaganda, while still maintaining resistant political
qualities. To eradicate reality video is unnecessary, but
to curb its authority is essential. This goal can be best
accomplished by developing a postmodern conceptual structure
that blends with video's postmodern techno-structure. The
fundamental contradiction of using 18th-century epistemology
with 19th-century production techniques is that this will
never adequately address the contemporary problems of
representation in the society of simulation, just as
medieval theology was incapable of addressing the challenges
of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy.
To resolve this contradiction, one must abandon the
assumption that the image contains and shows fidelity to its
referent. This in turn means that one can no longer use the
code of causality as a means of image continuity.
Preferably, one should use liquid associational structures
that invite various interpretation. To be sure, all imaging
systems are mediated by the viewer: The question is, to
what degree? Few systems invite interpretation, and hence
meaning is imposed more often than it is created. Many
producers, for fear of allowing interpretation to drift out
of control, have shunned the use of associational structures
for politicized electronic imaging. Further, associational
films tend toward the abstract, and therefore become
confusing, making them ineffective among the disinterested.
These problems prompt the eternal return to more
authoritarian models. The answer to such commentary is that
the viewer deserves the right to disinterest, and the
freedom to drift. Confusion should be seen as an acceptable
aesthetic. The moment of confusion is the precondition for
the scepticism necessary for radical thought to emerge. The
goals then of resistant nonfiction video are twofold:
Either to call attention to and document the sign
construction of simulation, or to establish confusion and
scepticism so that simulations cannot function.
The associational video is by its very nature recombinant. It
assembles and reassembles fragmented cultural images,
letting the meanings they generate wander unbounded through
the grid of cultural possibility. It is this nomadic
quality that distinguished them from the rigidly bounded
recombinant films of Hollywood; however, like them, they
rest comfortably in neither the category of fiction nor
nonfiction. For the purposes of resistance, the recombinant
video offers no resolution; rather it acts as a data base
for the viewer to make h/is own inferences. This aspect of
the recombinant film presupposes a desire on the part of the
viewer to take control of the interpretive matrix, and
construct h/is own meanings. Such work is interactive to
the extent that the viewer cannot be a passive participant.
S/he must not be spoonfed a particular point of view for a
pedagogical purpose. This characteristic often works
against popular interaction, since strategies to break the
habitual passive consumption of spectacle have not received
much attention. What is more unfortunate is that such work
is often perceived to be elitist, because its use of the
aesthetics of confusion does not %at present% draw popular
support. It should be noted that such commentary generally
comes from a well-positioned intelligentsia certain of the
correctness of its ideology. Its mission is not to free its
converts, but to keep them locked in and defending the
bunker of solidified ideology. It is disturbance through
liquidation of these structures that resistant nomadic media
attempts to accomplish. This cannot be done by producing
more electronic monuments, but rather, by an imaginative
intervention and critical reflection liberated in an
unresolved and uncertain electronic moment.
Chapter 4 ]]> The Recombinant Theater and the Performative Matrix
In some cultures familiar with only modest imaging technologies,
people believe that one should not allow oneself to be
photographed, as this process steals a part of the soul.
This uncanny intuition perhaps shows an understanding that
as representation of the self expands, the performative
matrix becomes cluttered with simulated persona that can
usurp the role of organic self-presentation. The body as
representation relinquishes its sovereignty, leaving the
image of the body available for appropriation and for
reestablishment in sign networks separate from those of the
given world. From a contemporary point of view, this is not
necessarily negative, since it suggests the possibility that
one can continually reinvent one's character identification
and role to better suit one's desires. In light of the
possibility, we ought to surrender essentialist notions of
self, personality, and body and take up roles within the
dramaturgical grid of everyday life. Yet there is always an
uneasiness that accompanies this utopian possibility. This
anxiety arises less from the curious nonposition of having
no fixed qualities, than it does from the fear that the
power of reinvention lies elsewhere. One senses that
hostile external forces, rather than self-motivated ones,
are constructing us as individuals. This problem becomes
increasingly complex in techno-culture, where people find
themselves in virtual theaters alien to everyday life but
which have a tremendous impact on it. Abstracted
representations of self and body, separate from the
individual, are simultaneously present in numerous
locations, interacting and recombining with others, beyond
the control of the individual and often to h/is detriment.
For the critical performer, exploring and interrogating the
wanderings and manipulations of the numerous electronic
dopplegangers within the many theaters of the virtual should
be of primary significance.
Consider the following scenario: A person (P) walks into a bank
with the idea of securing a loan. According to the
dramaturgical structure of the situation, the person is
required to present h/erself as a responsible and
trustworthy loan applicant. Being a good performer, and
comfortable with this situation, P has costumed h/erself
well by wearing clothing and jewelry that indicate economic
comfort. P follows the application procedures well, and
uses good blocking techniques with appropriate handshakes,
standing and sitting as socially expected, and so on. In
addition, P has prepared and memorized a well-written script
that fully explains h/er need for the loan, as well as h/er
ability to repay it. As careful as P is to conform to the
codes of the situation, it quickly becomes apparent that
h/er performance in itself is not sufficient to secure the
loan. All that P has accomplished by the performance is to
successfully convince the loan officer to interview h/er
electronic double. The loan officer calls up h/er credit
history on the computer. It is this body, a body of data,
that now controls the stage. It is, in fact, the %only%
body which interests the loan officer. P's electronic
double reveals that s/he has been late on credit payments in
the past, and that s/he has been in a credit dispute with
another bank. The loan is denied; end of performance.
This scenario could just as easily have had a happy ending,
but its real importance is to show that the organic
performance was primarily redundant. The reality of the
applicant was suspect; h/er abstracted image as credit data
determined the result of the performance. The engine of the
stage, represented by the architecture of the bank, was
consumed by the virtual theater. The stage of screenal
space, supported by the backstage data bases and internets,
maintains ontological privilege over the theater of everyday
life.
With an understanding of the virtual theater, one can easily see
just how anachronistic most contemporary performance art is.
The endless waves of autoperformance, manifesting themselves
as monologues and character bits, serve primarily as
nostalgic remembrances of the past, when the performative
matrix was centered in everyday life, and focused on organic
players. As a work of cultural resistance, the
autoperformance's subversive intent appears in its futile
attempt to reestablish the subject on the architectural
stage. Like most restorationist theater, its cause is dead
on arrival. The performance grid in this situation is
already overcoded by the extreme duration of its history,
and also suffers from the clutter of codes and simulated
persona imposed by spectacle. The attempt to sidestep these
problems, by bringing the personal into the discourse, does
not have an intersubjective depth of meaning that can
maintain itself without networking with coding systems
independent of the individual performer. Consequently, the
spectacular body and the virtual body consume the personal
by imposing their own predetermined interpretive matrices.
As shocking as it may sound, the personal is %not% the
political in recombinant culture.
Such problems indicate powerfully that the model of
production is thoroughly antiquated for performance (as for
so much contemporary art). Although in ancient times, the
stage was the preeminent platform for the interaction of
mythic codes, and although this status remained unquestioned
until the 19th century, it has now reached a point of
exhaustion. The traditional stage in and of itself is a
hollow bunker divorced from power. As a location for
disturbance, it offers little hope. Rigor mortis has set
in, and what used to be a site for liquid characters, who
appeared simply by grabbing a mask, has now become a place
where only the situations of the past or the simulations of
the present may be replayed.
Attempts to expand the stage have met with interesting
results. The aim of The Living Theater to break the
boundaries of its traditional architecture was successful.
It collapsed the art and life distinction, which has been of
tremendous help by establishing one of the first recombinant
stages. After all, only by examining everyday life through
the frame of a dramaturgical model can one witness the
poverty of this performative matrix. The problem is that
effective resistance will not come from the theater of
everyday life alone. Like the stage, the subelectronic--in
this case the street, in its traditional architectural and
sociological form--will have no effect on the privileged
virtual stage.
Consider the following scenario: A hacker is placed on stage
with a computer and a modem. Working under no fixed time
limit, the hacker breaks into data bases, calls up h/er
files, and proceeds to erase or manipulate them in
accordance with h/er own desires. The performance ends when
the computer is shut down.
This performance, albeit oversimplified, signifies the heart
of the electronic disturbance. Such an action spirals
through the performative network, nomadically interlocking
the theater of everyday life, traditional theater, and
virtual theater. Multiple representations of the performer
all explicitly participate in this scenario to create a new
hierarchy or representation. Within the virtual theater,
the data structures that contain the electronic
representation of the performer are disturbed through their
manipulation or deletion. In order for electronic data to
act as the reality of a person, the data "facts" cannot be
open to democratic manipulation. Data loses privilege once
it is found to be invalid or unreliable. This situation
offers the resistant performer two strategies: One is to
contaminate and call attention to corrupted data, while the
other is to pass counterfeit data. Either way, the
establishment of the utopian goal of personal reinvention
through performative recombination begins to take a form
beyond everyday life. Greater freedom in the theater of
everyday life can be obtained, once the virtual theater is
infiltrated. The liberation gained through the recombinant
body can only exist as long as authoritarian codes do not
disrupt the performance. For this to happen, the individual
must have control of h/er image in all theaters, for only in
this way can everyday life performance be aligned with
personal desire.
To make the above example more concrete, assume that the
hacker is also a female to male cross-dresser. In the
performance she accesses h/er identification files, and
changes the gender data to "male." S/he leaves the stage,
and begins a performance of gender selection on the street.
This begins a performance with desire unchained in the
theater of everyday life. The gender with which s/he
identifies becomes the gender s/he actually is, for no
contradictory data resource exists. This performance is not
limited to a matter of costuming, but can also affect the
flesh. Even biology will begin to collapse. To give an
extreme example: Dressed as a man from the waist down, and
using "masculine" gesture codes, the performer walks down
the street shirtless. S/he is stopped by the police. The
appearance of h/er breasts contradicts the desired gender
role performance. The police access the electronic
information that validates the performer's claim to be a
man. The performer is released, since it is not illegal for
a man to go shirtless. This performance could easily have
gone the other way with the arrest of the performer, but
that is extremely unlikely, because such action would
require perception to override the data facts.
To say the least, a performance like this is extremely
risky. To challenge the codes and unleash desire is
generally illegal, particularly as described here. Hacking
draws the eye of discipline quickly; it is the best way to
destabilize the reality and practical structure of all
theaters. Yet these extreme examples outline the necessary
steps needed for a postmodern theater of resistance.
Effective performance as a site of resistance must utilize
interlocking recombinant stages that oscillate between
virtual life and everyday life. This means that the
performer must cope with h/er electronic images, and with
their techno-matrix. It is time to develop strategies that
strike at virtual authority. As yet, there are none.
Performers have been too mired in the traditional theater
and the theater of everyday life to even realize how the
virtual world acts as the theater of final judgment.