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Timotheus Vermeulen

The NewÒDepthinessÓ

Just because itÕs fake doesnÕt mean I donÕtfeel it.

Ð Girls, Season 3, Episode 3

Fredric Jameson once noted that superficialitywas the Òsupreme formal featureÓ of late

twentieth century culture.1

Whether it was in thephilosophy of Foucault or historicistarchitecture, in the photography of Warhol or thenostalgia film, he suggested, an Òexhilaration ofÉ surfacesÓ had cut short the Òhermeneuticgesture,Ó the reading of a physical or dramaticexpression as a Òclue or a symptom for É reality,Óor as the Òoutward manifestation of an inwardfeeling.Ó2 Indeed, at the time, JamesonÕssuspicions of this Ònew depthlessness,Ó as hecalled the development, were confirmedeverywhere: Derrida discussed the withdrawal of

the referent, Baudrillard lamented the waning ofthe real, while Deleuze celebrated thesimulacrum. In art, too, superficiality andevidence of the Ònew depthlessnessÓ abounded.Indeed, art critic Beral Madra even called thisdepthless abundance an ÒobsessionÓ: theWachowski brothersÕ The Matrix and WeirÕs TheTruman Show plotted simulations, the photos ofThomas Demand and Jeff Wall portrayedhyperreal scenarios where representation andreality were indistinguishable (that is to say,where they took place on the same ontologicalplane), while novelists Brett Easton Ellis andMichel Houellebecq described the shallownessof the human subject.3 Like the Histories ofideology and the social before it, the History ofdepth, of the behind or beyond, too, it seemed,had come to an end Ð or at least was cut short. Writing a decade into the twenty-firstcentury, this History appears to have returned. Inphilosophy and art alike, notions of the behindand the beyond, the beneath and the inside, havereemerged. The speculative realists, forinstance, think beyond the surface of theepistemological, while artists like Mark Leckey,

Ed Atkins, and Ian Cheng make discoverieswithin the simulacral, uncovering unintendedglitches or unexpected traces of other(hyper)realities: hereditary deficiencies in digitalDNA, intertextual features that come to lightthrough another focus, immaterial realities asblueprints for material possibilities. Others, suchas the artists-cum-activists Hans Kalliwoda andJonas Staal, or novelists Adam Thirlwell andMiranda July, study the simulation not as amodel of/for reality but as a diagram ofpossibilities, creating self-enclosed scenarios

informed by reality but enacted in isolation fromit, whose conclusions offer radical alternatives.

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Night paddle boarders illuminate the shoreline in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Photo: Julia Cumes.

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Can the snorkeler serve as a metaphor for a modality of new artistic imagination?

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Importantly, these philosophers, artists, andwriters, each in their own distinct way, do notresuscitate depth as much as they resurrect itsspirit. They understand that the depth Jamesonreferred to Ð dialectics, psychoanalysis,existentialism Ð has been flattened, or hollowedout. What they create instead are personal,alternative visions of depth, visions they invite usto share. Just as the Renaissance painters

developed depth-models that differed fromthose structuring twelfth-century painting,replacing the metaphorical beyond with theperspectival behind, many artists today conceiveof depth in another sense than their twentiethcentury predecessors. Many contemporarythinkers and artists leave the dead corpus ofdepth untouched, whilst trying to reanimate itsghost.

The New Depthlessness

Over the years, Fredric JamesonÕs notion of the

new depthlessness has occasionally beenunderstood to refer to a focus on, or proliferationof, surfaces. As far as I can tell, however,JamesonÕs depthlessness denoted less aquantitative development than a qualitative one.His point was not necessarily that there wasmore interest in surfaces in the 1980s Ð than in,say, the 1920s, or the mid-eighteenth century, orthe Renaissance period, though there may wellhave been. JamesonÕs contribution to the historyof surface attention was rather that by 1991, forinstance, the interest was in the surface itselfrather than the substance behind or below it Ðfascination and practice hyperfocused on theglass more than the display, the giftwrappingmore than the present. Indeed, what Jamesonobserved, and what disturbed him, was that thevery idea that there was a behind, a present, hadseemingly been abandoned. In Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, he theorized the newdepthlessness as the repudiation Ð sometimescalled Òdiscourse,Ó sometimes the Òdeath of theauthor,Ó often Òpoststructuralism,Ó now voiced byFoucault then by Derrida, then Baudrillard Ð of

five distinct yet related models of signification:the dialectical model of appearance andessence, in which each material appearance istaken to be the manifestation of a providence,will, or an ideal essence; the existentialist modelof inauthenticity and authenticity, in whichbehavior mirrors a self; the hermeneutic modelof outside and inside, in which physicalexpressions are perceived as the manifestationsof inward feelings; the psychoanalytic model ofmanifest and latent, in which bodily gestures arethe symptoms of psychological states; and

finally the semiotic model of signifier andsignified, in which a sign is read as a signification

of a mental concept. Other flattenings pertainedto affect, through desubjectivization, and history,through pastiche. In other words, when Jamesonspoke about depthlessness, what he was talkingabout was not simply wrapping paper but amissing present; not a container withoutcontents but a can of yogurt past its expirationdate: whatever was once inside, it was no longeringestible.4 The new depthlessness denoted not

a coincidence but a consequence, the effect ofyears of Ð depending on the discipline Ðobstructing, flattening, cutting off, or hollowingout. For Jameson the history of art wasexemplary of this development. Whereas modernart communicated a reality behind it,postmodern art reflected no such externality; orif it did reflect anything, it was only the reality infront of it, the reality of the frame, the whitecube, and the spectator. Vincent van GoghÕs APair of Boots (1887), Jameson wrote, expressed

both, through its ÒhallucinatoryÓ use of color, theartistÕs Òrealm of the sensesÓ and, through itsuse of Òraw materials,Ó a world Òof agriculturalmisery, of stark rural poverty, É backbreakingpeasant toil, a world reduced to its most brutaland menaced, primitive marginalized state.Ó5 Thepainting, in other words,conveyed individualideas, sensibilities, and social realities whichcontinued beyond its borders. In contrast, AndyWarholÕs Diamond Dust Shoes (1980)communicated neither an authorial voice, nor apersonal attitude or affect, nor a sense of theworld it supposedly represented. The black-and-white photograph, with its shiny, isolatedaesthetic, Jameson suggested, could allude toglamour magazines just as well as to a memoryof the artistÕs mother, to shoes left over fromAuschwitz or the remains of a dance hall fire. IfVan GoghÕs painting of peasant shoes pulled theviewer into another world of poverty and misery,WarholÕs photo of pumps pushed the spectatorout back into his own.6 As Warhol himself isalleged to have said: ÒIf you want to know allabout Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: ofmy paintings and films and me, and there I am.

ThereÕs nothing behind it.Ó7

Jameson, through his discussion of Warholbut also in other case studies concerned withcinema, literature, philosophy, and architecture,introduced the notion of a new depthlessness asan exemplary characteristic of late twentiethcentury culture, not as an exhaustive criterion(presumably in line with his understanding ofpostmodernism as a structure of feeling allowingfor the coexistence of contradictory registers andstyles as opposed to a paradigm or regime). Henever suggested that depthlessness was, or

would be, a feature of all art of the eighties andnineties. It is certainly true, however, that

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Monika Stricker, Untitled, 2013.Installation view, ArtistÕs former

studio, WIELS, Brussels.Courtesy: the artist.

A deep-sea scuba-diver explores the depths of the ocean at night.

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depthlessness was the Òsupreme formalfeature,Ó as Jameson put it, in that it was asignifier of a sensibility that was more manifestthan others. Just think back to the hit music ofthe time, to the hedonism of the Venga Boys orthe desperation of Nirvana; to the bestsellingbooks, like Brett Easton EllisÕs American Psycho(1991), with its simulacral protagonist PatrickBateman, Òan idea, É some kind of abstraction

but É no real [person],Ó in whose eyes the readercould gaze, whose hands could be shaken, andwhose flesh could be felt, but who was Òsimply Énot thereÓ8; or the popularity of artists like theYBAs and Jeff Koons, whose (in)famous Rabbitfrom 1986 reflected no reality except the one itwas in. Recall, also, the ongoing discussionsoriginating at the time about the End of History,proclaiming the decline of viable alternatives ingeneral. Depthlessness may not have beeneveryoneÕs cup of tea, but, sadly, it was definitelythe best-selling beverage at Starbucks.

The New Depthiness

In his slim volume of essays The Barbarians, theItalian novelist Alessandro Baricco distinguishesbetween two experiential registers that in manysenses mirror, and make manifest, JamesonÕsdiscussion of depth and depthlessness: divingand surfing. The diver, Baricco suggests, looksfor meaning in the depths of the ocean. Hedelves into the water, sinking deeper and deeperin search of a particular coral, fish, or seamonster. This is the person, writes Baricco, whoreads, who perseveres reading Proust or Joyce Ðthat is to say, modernists, to use the vocabularyof Jameson. The surfer, Òthe horizontal man,Ó9 onthe contrary, looks for meaning on the surface,more precisely in the series of waves that formthe surface Ð one after the other after the other,now left, now right, higher and lower. As Bariccoputs it:

If you believe that meaning comes insequences and takes the form of atrajectory through a number of differentpoints, then what you really care about is

movement: the real possibility to movefrom one point to another fast enough toprevent the overall shape from vanishing.Now what is the source of this movement,and what keeps it going? Your curiosity, ofcourse, and your desire for experience. Butthese arenÕt enough, believe me. Thismovement is also propelled by the pointsthrough which it passes É [The surfer] hasa chance to build real sequences ofexperience only if at each stop along his

journey he gets another push. Still, theyÕre

not really stops, but systems of passagethat generate acceleration.10

Unsurprisingly, if the diver is the person whoreads Proust, Baricco writes, the surfer is theperson browsing the internet. The reason I introduce BariccoÕs metaphorshere, kitschy as they are, is twofold.11 The first isthat these metaphors concretize JamesonÕsabstract notions of depth, especiallydepthlessness, giving hands and feet to these

amorphous bodies of thought. To say thatsomething is depthless, after all, is not the sameas suggesting that something is superficial. Thefirst term acknowledges the possibility of depthwhilst negating its actuality, whereas the seconddisavows it: though the make-up of the wordÒsurfaceÓ suggests layers Ð the Òsur-Ó and theÒfaceÓ Ð it does not necessarily imply distance.By invoking the figure of the surfer, someonewhose concern is not only to stand on the waterbut to avoid falling into it, going under, thisduality is made manifest: to speak about

depthlessness is to speak about the extinction ofdepth, not its nonexistence. More importantly, by introducing the figureof the surfer, Baricco develops JamesonÕs notionof depthlessness from an experiential register toa modality of engagement. In order to stay abovewater, after all, the surfer needs to develop theskills that keep him on his board. One of theseskills, one similar to Deleuze and GuattariÕsconcept of the rhizome, is to perceive the oceanas a ÒtrajectoryÓ rather than either a territory(implying a mapping) or a telos (suggestingdirection). (Indeed, Deleuze himself introducesthe figure of the surfer in his ÒPostscript on theSocieties of Control.Ó) Here the surfer stays onhis board by choosing one wave after the other,regardless of the corals he scratches with the tipof his board or the direction the waves take himin. He literally lets the waves carry him Ð heÒlives in the moment.Ó The second skill is theability to constantly keep moving. If the surferslows down or is momentarily stopped Òby thetemptation to analyze,Ó as Baricco puts it, hesinks. He must progress, advance, experiencingeach wave not on its own terms but as the

medium, the catalyst for the next encounter,which is to say that each experience isexperienced not in and of itself but inanticipation of the next experience, the nextwave. What Baricco suggests, thus, is that theexperiential registers of depth anddepthlessness prescribe different modes ofengagement: in the former you focus on onepoint in particular whilst in the latter you let youreyes scan over the surface; in the first you lookfor the special, in the second for the spectacular:the next wave, the next thrill. Though BariccoÕs

metaphor of the surfer is both limiting andreductive and certainly does not define all art

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Aleksandra Domanovi!, installation view, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow International, 2014. Photo: Alan McAteer. Courtesy the Artist andGlasgow International.

Ane Mette Hol, installation view, Kadel Willborn, DŸsseldorf, Germany, 2013.

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from the eighties and nineties, it manages to putinto words a sentiment often shared betweencertain artistic traditions and their audiences:the act of looking for a hint, not of what liesbeneath, but rather of what lies ahead of us Ðthe spectacle, the thrill, the controversy, the nextwave we can ride and then the next, and thenext.To return to JamesonÕs case studies, VanGoghÕs A Pair of Boots implies another mode of

engagement than WarholÕs Diamond Dust Shoes:in the former we are invited to look for traces ofan experience; in the latter what we are left tosee are points for discussion. While cognizant of the limitations of thismetaphorical vernacular, I would nonethelesslike to propose that in the past decade, a thirdmodality has taken hold of the artisticimagination: that of the snorkeler. Bear with me.Whereas the diver moves towards a shipwreck ora coral reef in the depths of the ocean, and thesurfer moves with the flow of the waves, the

snorkeler swims toward a school of fish whilstdrifting with the surface currents. Importantly,the snorkeler imagines depth withoutexperiencing it. ÒWhere might that fish beswimming to?Ó he wonders. Or perhaps hethinks, ÒWhat might be below that rock?Ó He mayfollow the fishÕs direction, left, then right, thenleft again. But he will not, and often cannot, divedownwards; or if he does, then it is only for aslong as his lungs allow. This is to say: for thesnorkeler, depth both exists, positively, in theory,and does not exist, in practice, since he does not,and cannot, reach it. When I refer to the Ònew depthiness,Ó I amthinking of a snorkeler intuiting depth, imaginingit Ð perceiving it without encountering it. IfJamesonÕs term Ònew depthlessnessÓ points tothe logical and/or empirical repudiation ofideological, historical, hermeneutic,existentialist, psychoanalytic, affective, andsemiotic depth, then the phrase ÒnewdepthinessÓ indicates the performativereappraisal of these depths. I use the termÒperformativeÓ here above all in Judith ButlerÕssense of the word. Just as Butler writes that the

soul is not what produces our behavior but is, onthe contrary, what is produced by our behavior Ðin other words,not inside the body but on andaround it,a surface effect Ð depth is notexcavated but applied, not discovered butdelivered.12 Indeed, if the Ògendered body has noontological status apart from the various actswhich constitute its reality,Ó depth, too, existsexclusively in its enactment.13 Depth, at leastpost-Jameson, will always be a ÒdepthingÓ Ð amaking, actual or virtual, of depth. In this sense,depthiness combines the epistemological reality

of depthlessness with the performativepossibility of depth.

The term ÒdepthinessÓ is a reference toboth, as will be clear by now, JamesonÕs notion ofdepthlessness and Stephen ColbertÕs joke aboutÒtruthiness.Ó The comedian invented the term tocriticize politiciansÕ tendency to bend the facts tofit their program. As he explained during hiscontroversial speech at the White HouseCorrespondentsÕ Dinner in 2006, where he tookaim at then president George W. Bush:

Do you know that you have more nerveendings in your gut than you have in yourhead? You can look it up. And now some ofyou are going to say: I did look it up andthatÕs not true. ThatÕs because you looked itup in a book. Next time look it up in yourgut. My gut tells me thatÕs how our nervoussystem works É I give people the truthunfiltered by rational arguments.14

Colbert defines truthiness as the truth of the gut,

unperturbed by empirical research or rationalthought. It is a truth that feels true to me, or toyou, but whose validity is not necessarilyconfirmed by science. The similarity between ColbertÕs concept oftruthiness and the notion of depthinessproposed here is that both describe acontradictio in terminis, or rather, perhaps, arecontextualization of terms. ÒTruthinessÓexpresses the production of a ÒtruthÓ accordingto emotion instead of empiricism; ÒdepthinessÓarticulates the creation of ÒdepthÓ as aperformative act as opposed to anepistemological quality. The difference betweenthe two terms, however, is that whereas theformer takes the affirmative category of truth asits reference, which suggests that there is a trutheven if the suffix ÒÐnessÓ implies that it may notapply to what is denoted; the latter adapts thenegative label Òdepthlessness,Ó which bycontrast suggests that there is no depth, thoughhere the suffix intimates that it may beperceived. Indeed, in this sense, it would havebeen more accurate to contrast truthiness withthe equivalent of ÒtruthlessinessÓ:

Òdepthlessiness.Ó Truthiness puts the truth intoquestion; depthiness raises doubts aboutdepthlessness. Truthiness abandons the realityof truth as a legitimate register of signification;depthiness restores the possibility of depth as aviable modality for making meaning.

ÒJust because itÕs fake doesnÕt mean I donÕt

feel itÓ

The premise of this essay is that over the courseof the past ten years or so, the (sur)face of arthas changed to resemble not the white caps of

the surfer but the air pipe, or the bubbles, of thesnorkeler. In stark contrast with the surface of

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Visualizations of data from 3D plotting technology take shape in the music video for RadioheadÕs 2008 ÒHouse of Cards.Ó

WarholÕs Diamond Dust Shoes, which articulatedno clues about the affections, localities, orhistories behind it,the surfaces of photographs,sculptures, and drawings by a youngergeneration of artists once again hint at depth. AsI suggested above, this is not the empirical orlogical depth of the behind, but a performativedepth of what one may call, in the absence of amore appropriate terminology, the Òwithout.Ó The

without is an approximation of depth whichacknowledges that the surface may well bedepthless,while simultaneously suggesting anoutside of it nonetheless. Van GoghÕs surfaceswere marked with traces of a behind. The surfaceof Warhol covered these traces up.Contemporary surfaces, I would say, havenÕtuncovered them, exactly, but instead simulatethem. To be sure, simulation is by no means anovel concept. Quite the contrary. Ifdepthlessness was the Òsupreme formal featureÓ

of late twentieth century art and culture, then itis safe to say that simulation, the copy withoutan original, was its theoretical equivalent.15

Throughout the eighties and nineties especially,simulation was a recurrent trope in exhibitions,films, and philosophical seminars alike. One canthink here indeed of the proliferation of Warhol,

or of a blockbuster show like Endgame:Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting andSculpture at the ICA in Boston in 1986, but alsoof RuffÕs early Portraits (1981Ð85), thephotographs of Demand, the paintings of SherrieLevine, the videos of Sturtevant, or KoonsÕsRabbit, many of which developed scenarioswhose veracity and origins were indiscernible.Even a mass-market film like The Truman Show

(1999), which portrayed a man who unknowinglyperforms a part in a reality show, followed andexpanded the simulation trend. Around this time,the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard ever morepopularly convinced us that the real was aneffect of the code. The Gulf War, he wrote tomuch controversy, did not happen. Baudrillarddid not mean to say that there werenÕt twoparties warring, at the price of internationalstability, the environment, and human suffering.His argument was that each of these costs Ðfinancial, political, public relational, human, and

ecological (presumably in that order) Ð had beencalculated beforehand by computers, throughinsurance software and virtual game plays. Whenthe war took place, therefore, it played out, bothin reality and in its representation in the media, ascript that had already been written. The point,for many of these artists, filmmakers, and

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thinkers, was to demonstrate that there was noreality, no truth, no authenticity outside of theimage or the model Ð and no humanity inside it.To emphasize this, many works at the time Ðperhaps most memorably the film The Matrix (1999) Ð visually equated simulation withcomputers and algorithms and especially withdigital codes Ð with ones and zeros, languagesthemselves no longer referring to any realities

outside of them, the final stage in a history ofdepthlessness. Many contemporary artists, however, re-territorialize these languages of simulation tosuggest not the final stage in a history ofdepthlessness but the first one in anotherchronicle of depthiness. They jump from theirsurfboards into the water, a snorkeling mask inhand. They cannot swim deep, but they canperceive depth. Take the Irish artist Kate Holton.Holton draws out the surprising and oftenunexplained similarities between the aesthetics

of our networked (digital) civilization and nature.Her Constellations series resembles starscapes:bright white dots, in patterns pursuing a logic oftheir own, illuminate the black space aroundthem.16 In reality, however, the paint drawingsdepict satellite images of earth Ð the AmericanMidwest and northern Germany. In anotherseries of drawings, mold resembles road mapswith long thin lines traveling decisively from spotto spot. In one sense, HoltonÕs images aresimulations: they are copies of photographswhich only by extension refer to a reality outsideof them. Yet by drawing out the lines and dots onthese photos, tracing by hand the patterns thatculture and nature share, feeling out thecognitively inexplicable mathematical codes thatthey have in common, she integrates them intoher own human experience. If WarholÕs aim wasto demonstrate that there was no reality outsideof the image and no humanity inside of it, Holtonshows that it may be precisely by forcefullyreinserting humanity inside of the image (aframe, a point of view, a bodily gesture) that thepossibility of an outside is restored.

There are several other artists whose worksÐ drawings, sculptures, drawn sculptures, andotherwise Ð meticulously infuse humanity intothe simulation, and as a consequencereintroduce the possibility of an outside. Forexample, Ane Mette Hol handcrafts three-dimensional simulations of everyday objects.Oftentimes the Norwegian artist simulatesobjects that people overlook, ignore, or discard,like cardboard wrappings, printing paper, anddust. In one particularly poignant piece calledUntitled (Artificial Light) (2013), she uses a pencil

to meticulously copy the automatized, mass-printed lettering that marks the cardboard

wrapping of a TL light Ð the brand, the type, thevoltage, and so forth. To spend such time andeffort on something as insignificant as a copy ofthe wrapping of a TL light spells out an act ofimmense empathy. In these works, much unlikethe sculptures of Koons, simulation is not whatpreempts history, locality, or personal affect, butprecisely what returns it. I am also reminded here of recent

minimalist sculptures by Monika Stricker, whosmears buttermilk on modes of display rangingfrom spick-and-span glass vitrines and windowsto shiny car hoods and rims. The act of applyingbuttermilk to these screens has the effect ofmattening, of hiding them and making what theycommunicate Ð artworks, vases, the specificidentity of a car Ð less visible. At the same time,this action is precisely what renders thesematerials themselves more visible. By spraying acar bonnet, Stricker defunctionalizes it Ð it nolonger communicates that the car it was a part of

is fast, safe, and sexy. But it also opens it up forother, yet-to-be-determined uses, many of whichwill be uninteresting to us humans. Stricker herevisualizes optical noise, makes visible thecacophony of images we normally sound out,creating the potential of depth in all directions.She sees not just the waves but also the coralreefs that may have precipitated the waves, orthe reefs that are scratched by the surfboard.Indeed, Stricker does not stand on the board asmuch as she floats just beneath it, taking in awhole ecology of twenty-first century civilization. Holten, Hol, and Stricker pull down to ahuman, bodily level the abstract, oftenimmaterialized processes behind themathematical codes and algorithms thatcalculate the constellations of stars, that shapemass-produced objects lacking in exchangevalue, that determine invisible modes of display.Their drawings and sculptures are depthless inthat they do not refer to a reality behind them;but they do intimate a reality of affection before,or without, them, even if, as is the case withStrickerÕs buttermilked bonnets, this is a realityof disaffection. In the traces of the chalk dots,

the lines of the pencil lettering, and the sprayedmilk, a reality of empathy, of caring for andparticipating in, becomes visible and sensible.These artists are snorkeling, feeling the wind ontheir backs while their eyes are pointeddownwards. Indeed, what they make us see mostof all, perhaps, is their backs, suggesting thatthough the surface itself may seem depthless,their efforts into it are not, indicating anotherrealm of signification without. In the sculptures and installations ofSerbian artist Aleksandra Domanovi!, this depth

of a without is restored in another fashion.Usually associated with the post-internet art

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movement, Domanovi!Õs work is often discussed

in terms of recontextualization: of, forexample,the relocation of the virtual to thephysical, the Communist to the capitalist, Eastto West, the mechanical to the human, and soforth. Her recent exhibition Things to Come at theGallery of Modern Art in Glasgow (2014) can beseen in this light, though it will not be the one Iwill shine on it. Domanovi! created a series of

seven large-scale sculptural prints ontransparent foil, depicting objects from sciencefiction films like Blade Runner (1982), Gravity (2013), and Alien (1979). The prints were modeledafter 3-D models of objects used in the films; thetransparent foil was intended to invoke celluloid.The artist installed the printed foils one after theother in straight rows so that visitors had nochoice but to walk alongside each slide beforeturning to walk back along the next. Walking theentire length of the space in this way, viewersalways saw the backs of the previous slide while

seeing the next one set against the backgroundof all the future slides. The point of the show was to reflect uponthe history of science fiction film, foregroundingthe limited role women have thus far beenallowed to play in the genre Ð mothers, loveinterests, but rarely warriors or time travelers.Domanovi! drew attention, through the foils, to

the unequal history of animation: women werecolored into the celluloid but were not allowed todraw the lines. Her prints were in many respectsreminiscent of ShermanÕs photographs, exceptfor one detail: organized in rows that bothdiscouraged physical progress while stimulatingvisual passage, designating a path but allowingone to stray, Domanovi!Õs prints pulled visitors

into the peepshow, requiring them to physicallyexperience the history of women in sci-fi;ShermanÕs photos, by contrast, push viewersaway, berating them for still looking. Thedistinction I intend here does not concern whichstrategy is better, or which aesthetic principle isworse. Both these strategies and principles areamong the most powerful I have seen. What setsthem apart, however, is their understanding of

the relationship between the image and theoutside: the first creates a depth within thesimulation that points us to an outside, while thesecond does the opposite. If Holten, Hol, andStricker show us their backs, in Domanovi!Õsperformance of depth we see bubbles Ð bubblesin whose images a depth without is mirrored. Sheasks us not to look at her looking at the surface,or even at her back; she asks us to look with her,to join her in her virtual swim just below thesurface. These artists are not the only Òsnorkelers,Ó

of course. For further instances of performativedepth Ð indeed, of depthiness Ð see Mark

LeckeyÕs solo exhibition at Wiels in Brussels, orPierre HuygheÕs retrospective at Palais de Tokyoin Paris, or Andy HoldenÕs show MI!MS at theZabludowicz in London, or Ed Atkins at theStoschek Collection in Dusseldorf, or the oeuvreof Ian Cheng, or Ralf Bršg, or Oscar Santillan, orAnne Pšhlmann, or Jonas Staal, or HansKalliwoda, or Paula Doepfner, and so on and soforth. The list is long, much longer than I could

possibly outline here. When I was growing up, in the mid-ninetiesand the early 2000s, I listened to Radiohead. OnÒThere, There,Ó they sang, ÒJust because you feelit, doesn't mean itÕs there.Ó A year or so ago, while watching thetelevision show Girls (episode 3 from the thirdseason), I was struck by a sentence that was atonce reminiscent and completely different fromthat line from the early 2000s. ÒJust because itÕsfake, doesnÕt mean I donÕt feel it.Ó The line fromthe Radiohead song that described our world as

a hall of mirrors calls to mind JamesonÕsunderstanding of depthlessness as the laststage in a particular history of a particularflattening. But what the line from Girls hints at isthat, just maybe, we are seeing the first stage inanother history of another kind of deepening, onewhose empirical reality lies above the surfaceeven if its performative register floats just belowit: depthiness. !

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7/25/2019 article_8993628


Timotheus Vermeulen is assistant professor inCultural Theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen,where he also co-directs the Centre for NewAesthetics. He is co-founding editor of Notes onMetamodernism.

1Frederic Jameson,Postmodernism, or, the CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism(Durham: Duke University Press,1992), 9.

2Ibid., 33, 8, 12.

3Beral Madra, ÒDark rooms andnational pavilions,Ó ThirdText vol. 15, no. 57 (2001): 102.

4Jameson, Postmodernism, 12.

5Ibid, 7.

6Ibid, 8.

7Quoted in Robert Williams, ArtTheory: A Historical Introduction,2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 241.

8Bret Easton Ellis, AmericanPsycho (New York: Vintage,

1991), 376Ð77.

9Alessandro Barrico, TheBarbarians: An Essay on theMutation of Culture, trans.Stephen Sartarelli (New York:Rizzoli InternationalPublications, 2014), 111.

10Ibid, 118.

11A value judgment with which Iimagine the author, judging fromhis self-depreciatingintroduction, would be the firstto agree.

12Judith Butler, Gender Trouble:Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge,1990), 135. I use the termÒperformativeÓ here also with anod to Raoul EshelmanÕscanonical conceptualization ofÒperformatism.Ó One of the firstthinkers to develop a cohesivecritical vocabulary for talkingabout post-postmodernism,Eshelman intends performatismto refer to the creation of aframe (of mind, of painting, oftheater) within which somethingcan be true, wholesome,

irreducible, and impervious todeconstruction, while outside ofthat frame, this something isnÕt,or cannot be, true, wholesome,or irreducible, let aloneimpervious to deconstruction.Another phrase he uses todescribe this is Òwillful self-deceitÓ: for a moment, you cheatyourself into believing in a realitythat you know does not exist.Though I am not sure whetherthe below artists perform depththrough such a dualism of insideand outside (or whether theirstrategies should be seen interms of a Kantian as-if, aRomantic oscillation,WittgensteinÕs duck-rabbit, or

SloterdijkÕs sweet-and-soursauce, in which opposites are

present simultaneously),EshelmanÕs notion ofperformatism may provide aninteresting point of departure fora more sustained analysis. SeeRaoul Eshelman, Performatism,or the End of Postmodernism(Aurora: The Davies Group,2008).

13Ibid, 136.

14

See"

15Williams, Art Theory , 239.

16Katie Holton, Constellation(Earth at Night: The Midwest)(2013) and Constellation (Earthat Night: Germany) (2013). Chalkand acrylic paint drawings onblack canvas.

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