Video Poetics Ingles

8/4/2019 Video Poetics Ingles

1/13

DIMITRIS ELEFTHERIOTIS

For a comprehensive discussionof technological determinism andsymptomatic technology, seeRaymond William s TelevisionTechnology and Cultural Form(London Fontan a, 1974) For agood example of ideologicaldeterminism, see Noel Burch,'Charles Baudelaire v OrFrankenstein', Afterimagenos 8/9(19811Martin Heidegger, The questionconcerning technology in Th eQuestion Concerning Technology(New York Harper and Row,1977)Heidegger, 'The age of the worldpicture' in Th e QuestionConcerning TechnologyHeidegger, 'The questionconerning technology'See Jean-Francois LyotardPresenting the unpresentable

the sublime Artforum Apri l1982, The sublime and the avantgarde Artforum April 1984,'Philosophy and painting in theage of experimentationcontribution to an idea ofpostmodernity' Camera Obscurano 12(1984)Lyotard Acmema', Wide Anglevol 2 no 3(1978)

Technology remains a prominent yet troublesome category in thecritical and theoretical discourse around video. This article proposes aconceptual framework for the theonzation of new audiovisualtechnologies which escapes the intellectual 'traps' of technologicaldeterminism, symptomatic technology and ideological determinism, 1and establishes strong conceptual links between technology, aestheticsand politics. Martin Heidegger's theorization of 'technology as a formof rev ealin g' is the pivotal point of my analysis He idegg er identifiesas the essence of modern technology an 'ordering revealing' (theproduction of orderly and ordered representations) closely related to anunderstanding of the world both as a 'standing-reserve' 2 (resources tobe exploited) and as a 'picture'3 (the objectification of the worldthrough perspectival systems of representation).

The relationship between technology and power is also central inthe work of Michel Foucault: modern 'technologies of vision' (such asthe panopticon) are analysed as structures of power 'coupled' withforms of 'visibility' that produce the 'norm al' and the 'orderly ' Thelink between video and technologies of power is more than evident inthe ever-increasing use of electronic surveillance as a technology ofsocial regulation. Going against the normalizing, regulating,objectifying essence of modern technology (Ge-stell or Enframing)Heidegger proposes and describes a 'Poetic' technology;4 Jean-Franc,ois Lyotard's appropriation of the Kantian 'Sublime'5 and morespecifically his work on 'acinema' 6 can be seen as contemporary, morepoliticized versions of 'Poesis'

In what follows I will explore and evaluate some of the issues,

1 0 0 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitns Elefthenotis Video poetics technology aesthetics and polit ics

byguestonFebruary15,20

11

screen.oxfordjournals.org

Down

loadedfrom
http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/


2/13

7 Heidegger's theory is used todiscuss television in Tony Fry(ed) RUA/TW Heidegger and t lteTelevisual (Sydney PowerPublications, 1993) Toesis'.nevertheless is discussed only inpassing

8 'Ma n (as opposed to humanbeing or man/woman) is used todesignate the subject ofpredominantly (if not exclusively)male discourses and practicesMan seems to me to be theappropriate term for the subjectof discourses and practicesconcerned with dominancemastery and control

9 Heidegger Th e questionconcerning technology' pp 25 -7

arguments and contradictions around the Poetic potential of videotechnology.7

Heidegger: technology as a 'form of revealing'In his 19545 essay/lecture 'The question concerning technology'('Die Frage nach der Technik') Heidegger questions the 'essence' oftechnology. Essence (Wesen) in the Heideggerian sense is not anessentialist category - on the contrary it implies an exploration of howa term like technology 'endures', how it 'pursues its course' throughhistory; in more contemporary (and perhaps more accurate)terminology, the essence of technology (by no means unique, unifiedor ahistorical) is to be discovered in the particular way in which theterm 'technology' is located within discursive formations and, morespecifically, in relation to the crucial discursive categories of nature,art and subject-object articulations.Heidegger's conclusion is that the essence of technology is not itselftechnological but rather it is a 'mode of revealing': the technicalapparatus is a mere cause that 'brings forth' objects, that makesobjects 'present themselves', that 'reveals' objects to subjects. Theparticular way in which subject and object are related through and intechnology is the essence of technology.

Heidegger identifies two antagonistic forms that this mode ofrevealing takes: Enframing (Ge-stell) and Poesis (from the Greeknoii]


3/13

10 Heidegger, The age of the worldpicture', pp 131-2

production of the 'world picture' presupposes a position for man asthe 'visual orderer' of the world - through Renaissance perspectivalsystem s, nature and the wo rld are techno-scientifically calculated,ordered and represented; simultaneously man is produced in/by thescene of what he produces as representation:

Here to represent means to bring what is present at hand beforeoneself as something standing over against, to relate it to oneself, tothe one representing it and to force it back into this relationship tooneself as the normative realm [my emphasis] Wherever thishappens, man 'gets into the picture' in precedence over what is. Butin that man puts himself into the picture in this way, he puts himselfinto the scene 1 e. into the open sphere of that which is generallyand publicly represented.10

The important characteristic of the subject/object relationship thatprevails in modern technology and representation is a dual quality ofthe ordering revealing, the simultaneous positioning of man as the onewho produces the world in order and the one who is produced inorder; the mas tery/orderin g of the world orders and mas ters man Thisis a recurring theme and a central concern in the works of MichelFoucault in his analysis of modernity and its forms of political andsocial organization, representation and technology - man is at one andthe same time subject and subjected, unifying and unified, revealingand revealed.

11 Mich el Foucault. Discipline andPunish (London A llen Lane,1977) especially part 3 ch 3,Panopticism The Birth of theClinic (London Tavistock, 1973)

espec ially ch 7 , 'Seeing andknowing

12 See Gilles Deleuze Foucault(London Athlone Press, 1389)p 58

Foucault and the technologies of visionIn The Archaeology of Know ledge, Foucault clearly refers to andanalyses the close relationship that exists between the discursive andthe non-discursive, between forms of knowledge and social practices.In Discipline and Punish an d The Birth of the Clinic he specificallyaddresses the complex relationship between technologies of power andregimes of visibility.11 The case of the panopticon is of a particularinterest as it directly connects discourses of power/knowledge tospecific forms of visibility; the panopticon is a technology of visionpar excellence based on 'forms of luminosity'12 which produce orderlydistributions of bodies and objects in time and space. Modern powerrelations (of which the perfect model and metaphor is precisely thepanopticon) operate in terms of regimes of visibility that produce thenormal and the orderly.

This form of visibility is comparable to the ordering revealingproduced by Enframing as the dominant essence of moderntechnologies of vision (photography, cinema, television, video, and soon) The 'surve ying ga ze' of the panopticon is in many ways sim ilarto the 'ordering view' of the camera and the 'penetrating look' of thescientist.

1 0 2 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology ae sthetics and polit ics


011

screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Down

loadedfrom


4/13

13 Michel Foucault, The Order ofThings. (London Tavistock, 19701,p 3-16

14 Ibid , pp 303-1 3

The peculiarity of modern representation/visibility in comparison tothat of the Renaissance (as discussed by Foucault in relation to La sMemnas)n lies in the interchangeability of the triple subject position(painter, viewer, king) for every member of the community (in thepanopticon the central position in the tower is not reserved forsomeone special, it can be occupied by anybody or even nobody - thatis , by the society collectively). The privileged position in the space ofrepresentation is not reserved for the King/God but for every citizen(which on the level of visibility/representation signifies the death ofGod and the birth of Man)."

The representational space of modernity is not different from that ofthe Renaissance in its geometrical construction; the principle ofperspective is not abandoned. What, however, changes is themultiplication of subject positions (available in/through the industrialprocesses of the modern audiovisual technologies) and the creation ofa social unity and a community which is not organized by the eye ofthe King but through its own rational decisions and normalizingprocesses.

15 See Stephen Heath, Questions ofCinema ILondon Macmillan.19811, Teresa de Lauretis andStephen Heath (edsl, Th eCinematic Apparatus ILondonMacm illan 1980), and Jean-LouisBaudry, 'Ideological effects ofthe basic cinematic apparatusFilm Quarterly vol 28 no 2(1974-751

16 See articles by Metz Heath E llisand others

17 Stephen Heath, Questions ofCinema pp 11-12

Enframing, film aesthetics and Lyotard's acinemaThis brief reminder of certain Foucauldian and Heideggenan conceptshad as its sole purpose to define Ge-stell as not only the dominantessence of modern technology but also as a historically specific formof production of interrelated and interdependent forms of visibility,modes of subjectivity and structures of social order.

Enframing, thus understood, bears important similarities with thecategory of the 'cinematic apparatus' extensively analysed by filmtheorists in the 1970s15 and theorizations of the construction andorganization of cinematic space (a recurring theme in Screen duringthe 1970s).16 More specifically, Stephen Heath's discussion of thefunction of the frame is extremely interesting for its etymological, butalso conceptual, affinity with Enframing:

In frame the place of image and subject, view (in early Frenchcatalogues a film is called a vue) and viewer; frame, framing, moralattitude, the correct position . . the frame is the reconstitution ofthe scene of the sigmfier, of the symbolic, into that of the signified,the passage through the image from other scene to seen; it enduresdistance as correct position, the summit of the eye, representation."The particular mode of 'putting-in-frame' or 'putting-in-scene'

(mise-en-scene) that characterizes mainstream cinema is a form ofordering revealing, of organizing and ordering the cinematic signifiers,which contributes to the production of a coherent and meaningfulentity which is the film Enframing as the essence of cin em atictechnology is nothing else but the movement of framing and

1 1 0 3 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology aesthetics and politics


screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Downloadedfrom


5/13

18 Heidegger, Th e questionconcerning technology pp 25 -8

19 Another of the recurring themesin Screen during the 1970s

20 Lyotard, 'Acinema', p 53

reframing, from frame to frame, and from shot to shot; it accomplishes(in a way that is simultaneously technological and aesthetic) thespatio-temporal continuity of the film which, along with theprogression of a coherent and closed narrative, produces the spectatoras a unifying and unified subject. Furthermore, as Heidegger argues,Enframing not only produ ces whatev er is revealed in-frame/in-order,but it also 'conceals revealing itself',18 it conceals its own presence asa form of ordering revea ling, as the essence of a technolog y whichorders vision and masters the world. This concealment is clearlysimilar to mainstream cinema's mystification of its means ofrepresentation (and especially its technical apparatus) that facilitatesthe production of the 'illusion of reality' effect and of film as atransparent 'world picture'.19

Enframing, understood in this way, establishes an importanthomology between mainstream cinema (as a technology of vision thatorders the world and unifies the subject), normalizing processes (astechnologies of power that produce social order and unity) andtechnology (in which Enframing produces the ordered and the unified).Jean-Francois Lyotard's article 'Acinema' offers an understanding ofcinema and more generally audiovisual technologies, which on the onehand associates them with Enframing, but on the other points towardsan alternative similar to that of Poesis.

Lyotard notes that cinematography, etymologically but also inpractice, is 'writing with movements'. He defines mainstream cinema,thus, as a selection or ordering of movements in a way that results inthe production of a meaningful, coherent and unified whole: themovement of the lens, the lights, the colours, the cuts (and the'action-matches'), continuity and narrative transitivity are allcomponents, constitutive elements of a coherent whole; mainstreamcinema is characterized by 'an incessant organizing of movementsfollowing the rules of representation for spatial localization, those ofnarration for the instantiation of lang uage and those of the form "filmmusic" for the soundtrack'.20

Mainstream cinema, according to Lyotard, is the process ofselection and elimination of movements: movements which contributeto the production of a meaningful whole ( 'productive movements') areincluded, whereas movements considered 'useless' for the whole,which do not contribute to the progress of the narrative, which do notconform with the principles of the composition of the frame or thelogic of the sequence ('sterile m ov em en ts') are excluded It is theprocess of putting in the frame, in the scene, in the film, only what is,in one way or another, productive, useful for the whole, it is, in otherwords, a process of ordering revealing Enframing. The usefulness ofLyotard's formulation lies in the assertion that the unity of the film isachieved through a process of exclusion it is at the expense of sterileand 'disorderly' movements that the text obtains its meanings and thesubject's unity is produced, it is at the expense of the aberrant

1 0 4 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Oimitris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology aesthetics Bnd polit ics


11


Down

loadedfrom


6/13

21 The D igital Image Stabiliser' is apopular feature of many of thenew camcorders - it operatesthrough a digital analysis of eachframe which detects andeliminates 'abnormal'movements In a similar fashionvisual surveillance technologydepends upon the identificationof abnormal' or 'irregular'movements which disrupt thenormal flow of people in a

street a shopping centre orsupermarket - research currentlyundertaken looks for ways inwhich the detection of abnormalmovement can become anautomation built into the system

22 Lyotard, 'Acinema , p 57

23 Lyotard The PostmodernCondition (ManchesterManchester University Press.19841

24 Ibid and see also Lyotard TheInhuman (Oxford Polity Press,1991)

movements (in all senses of the word) that the norm is established andmaintained n

Film, according to Lyotard, must be understood as 'a politicaleconomy of movement' , as a process of normalization which

consists of the exclusion from the scene of whatever cannot befolded back upon the body of the film, and outside the scene, uponthe social body. The film, strange formation reputed to be normal, isno more normal than the society or the organism. All of these socalled objects are the result of the imposition and hope for anaccomplished totality. They are supposed to realize the reasonablegoal par excellence, the subordination of all partial drives, all sterileand divergent movements to the unity of the organic body. The filmis the organic body of cinematographic movements. It is the ecclesiaof image s just as politics is that of the partial social organs . This iswhy direction, a technique of exclusions and effacements, a politicalactivity par excellence, and political activity, which is direction parexcellence, are the religion of the modern irreligion, the ecclesiasticof the secular. The central problem for both is not therepresentational arrangement and its accompanying question, that ofknowing how and what to represent and the definition of good ortrue representation; the fundamental problem is the exclusion andforclusion of all that is judge d un represe ntable becaus enon-recurrent.22

This politicization of the aesthetic makes more sense in the broadercontext of Lyotardian postmodern cultural politics:

- In art: through the mob ilization of the Kantian aesth etic categoryof the Sublime which valorizes experimentation in a pursuit of theunpresentable, the non-systematic and the non-recurrent, perceives ofthe subject as being in a perpetual state of turmoil and conflict andantagonizes the 'common ground' or shared taste of a (supposedly)unified social body (wherein the aesthetic of the Beautiful operates).

- In the field of know ledge : paralogy, in its search forindeterminacies, paradoxes, new rules and new games is in directopposition to performativity which subordinates the production of theunknown to capitalist ends.23

- In politics: the suggested heterogeneity and incommensurability ofvarious (and antagonistic) language games aims at the rejection oftotalizing projects or the subordination of the partial and the differentto the whole and the same.24

Video poetics I: definitionsHaving established the conceptual links between Enframing (as theessence of modern audiovisual technology), regimes of visibility and

1 0 5 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology, aesthetics and polit ics


011

screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Down

loadedfrom


7/13

pow er structures, I will now explore the 'Po eti c' poss ibilities of videotechnology and define some of its political and aesthetic parameters.

We must seek the Poetic, we are told by Heidegger, in 'what comesto presence in technology, instead of merely staring at thetechnological. So long as we represent technology as an instrument,

25 Heidegger, The question w e remain he ld fas t i n the wi l l t o mas t e r i t . ' 2 5concemmg technology p 32 Jh e Enframing/Poesis coupling must be understood in terms ofwhat 'presences it self in the new audiovisual technologies. Poesis,

according to Heidegger, is a non-challenging form of revealing inwhich objects 'look upon man' rather than being produced by him inan ordered form of visibility. It is similar to the Sublime (as theorizedby Lyotard) as it seeks the unpresentable, that which remains outside asystem or does not belong to a 'whole', to a totality that subordinatesand orders its parts W e must discover the Poetic in precisely w hatresists and rejects Enframing. The 'video poetics', that I amsuggesting, depends heavily on the conceptual richness of the term'Poesis', on its ability to bring into play interrelated ideas. The use of'Poesis' represents a tactical move in a number of ways:

- A discursive space is opened up for technology which isdrastically different from that of instrumentality, efficiency,performativity, control and mastery; we move in this sense towards adiscourse that is closer to the Poetic essence of video technology.

- A methodological approach is suggested as technology is studiedin terms of the visibilities that it reveals: the Poetics of technology asa form of revealing.

- As visibilities structure and are structured by power relations, thetechnological games pertaining to them constitute important politicalarenas: Poetics as the politics of Poesis

It is clear then, that the poetics of video technology is based on twointerrelated comp one nts' politics and aesthetics I will divorcemomentarily, and for the convenience of argumentation, these twootherwise inseparable categories, and seek the Poetic in each one ofthem.1. Political PoesisPoesis is evident in the ever increasing number of audiovisual worksproduced by various, heterogeneous and often antagonistic groups orindividuals who are systematically mis- or unrepresented by/in theprevailing representational regimes and practices

The works produced by various video workshops, collectives, unitsor independent artists resist unification, fragment representation andreassert heterogeneity. The different antagonistic audiovisual worksand practices shatter the unity of the social body They represent onlythemselves as 'movements' (in the political and aesthetic sense asanalysed by Lyotard) which are partial and resist the order of thewh ole 'that there be order in the mo vem ents, that the movem ents be

1 0 6 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology aesthetics and politics


011


Down

loadedfrom


8/13

26 Lyotard Acmema p 53 m a d e in order , that they make order ' . 2 6 They are , in th is sense , 's t er i lem o v e m e n t s ' m a d e w i th t h e sole purpose o f asserting their partialex is tence , of express ing the i r o w n localized interests a n d aes the t icv i e ws - they d o n o t con t r ibu te t o the produc t ion o f a coheren t ,unifying a n d unified social a n d representat ional whole . This pract icedoes n o t b e lo n g to an order ing revea l ing , a n Enframing that orderssocial l i fe in /with representat ion; it is Poet ic as it p r o d u c e s t h eun-presen ted a n d t h e un-represen ted , t h e different a n d t h enon-recur ren t .2. Aesthetic PoesisPoesis is also evident in the production of audiovisual works ofexperimental character which is governed not by the desire to mastertechnology (and produce the recognizable 'good' forms and theordered reality that Enframing guarantees), but by an opening up towhat technology can reveal (the non-recurrent, non-recognizable,non-determinate, non-expected or non-mastered/ordered). Poesis asexperimentation is not determined by the drive to improve anddevelop the forms and techniques which are established in theprevailing representational practices but, on the contrary, it seeks andproduces the 'sterile, aberrant movements' which, as Lyotard argues,are excluded from the organic whole, the unity of a mainstream film.

Hence Lyotard's definition of 'acinema' (a cinema of jouissance anddisorderly movement) as that which is 'situated at the two poles ofcinema taken as a writing of movements: thus extreme immobilization

2 7 i b i d p 5 7 and extreme mobilization' .27 These two tendencies can, indeed, beseen as characterizing many of the formal qualities of audiovisualworks produced by various experimental, 'underground' oravant-garde film and video makers and performers. To reduce Poesis,nevertheless, to these two tendencies as the cornerstones of artisticexperimentation is to deprive the term of its conceptual richness. Wemust understand Poesis in a wider context and not limited in thedeconstruction of a political economy of movement that operates incinema.Gilles Deleuze in his work on Foucault describes a postmodernvisibility that has something of the poetic: in the 'superfold', the'unlimited but finite' sets of possibilities and combinations opened up

28 Deieuze F m c a u i i . appendix On (by c o n t e m p o r a r y t e c h n o - s c i e n c e ) 2 8 f o r o b j e c t s , w e w i t n e s s t h eth e d e a * of n and su perm a n ' e m e r g e n c e o f s u r p r i s i n g n e w r e l a t i o n s h i p s w h i c h a r e m u l t i p l e a n d

irregular, catastrophic and chaotic. On the computer monitor or thevideo screen, unexpected, unpredictable and indeterminate forms andimages (the products of artistic or scientific experimentation) maketheir appearance.

The experimental artist 'apprehends' (rather than reveals in order),objects, forms and relations. He/she is open to what Lyotard calls a

1 0 / Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitris Eleftheriotis Video poetics technology, aesthetics an d politics


011

screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Down

loadedfrom


9/13

29 Heidegger The age of the worldpicture p 131

simple event, a 'raw state ' , 'an occurrence' (ein Ereignis - a termborrowed from Heidegger). Like the subject of Poesis (the GreekimoKiHVov - a subject which has nothing in common with themodern subject of Enframing) he/she must 'gather and save, catch upand preserve what opens itself in its openness, and must remainexposed to all its sundering confusions'.29

Video poetics II: contradictions, arguments and propositionsWithin this area, in which video technology politically and/oraesthetically reclaims and recaptures its Poetic essence we mustidentify a number of important and interrelated issues which are notonly central to critical and aesthetic concerns and debates, but theyalso determine different political positions, practices and strategies

30 Ma rita Sturken Paradox in theevolution of an art form greatexpectations and the making of ahistory' in Doug Hall and SallyJo Fifer (eds) I lluminating V ideoan Essential Guide to Video An(New York Aperture/Bay AreaVideo Coalition 1990) pp 10124

1. FundingSomething similar to Enframing, operating within Arts institutions,threatens Poesis. The need and the competition for funds, sponsoring,and access to equipment and information provided by public or privatebodies and institutions, reintroduces Enframing in the most indirect yetblatant way. In these processes, the criteria applied and the judgementsconcerning 'results' (finished or unfinished works) threaten toreintegrate the various 'sterile movements' into the social whole bydirectly or indirectly imposing values of 'good forms', 'socialresponsibility, relevance or usefulness' , 'proper' or ' innovative' or'interesting' use of technology, and so on, thus transforming thosemovements into productive ones, components of a new (possiblyexpanded) consensus

The aesthetic category/audiovisual genre 'video art' is particularlycrucial from this perspec tive Marita Sturken in her analysis of certain'paradoxes in the evolution' of video concentrates on the institutionalpnontization (by important US funding bodies such as the New YorkState Council on the Arts [NYSCA] and the Rockefeller Foundation,and by major museums of modern art such as the Museum of ModernArt [MO MA ]) of 'video art ' over the more 'docum entary ' type ofvideo works produced by various collectives x Most importantly, forthe purposes of this paper, Sturken notes.

The Rockefeller Foundation's decision to explore artists' televisionand to fund postproduction centers, and the fact that NYSCA can,by law, only fund organizations and not individuals were majorfactors in shaping the video community as it evolved. From thebeginning, public television and art institutions became the primaryarbiters of taste, deciding what was worth producing and worthwa tching Thro ugho ut the 1970s, this kind of funding structure notonly served to influence what kind of tapes were made, it also

1 0 8 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology aesthetics and polit ics


screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Downloadedfrom


10/13

31 Ibid . p 112

32 Gayatri Chakravorly Spivak'Questions of multi-culturalism' inSarah Harasym fed ) ThePost-Colonial Critic Interviews.Strategies, Dialogues (New YorkRoutledge 1991)

33 Ibid , p 60

served to establish the increased demand for production valu es. O neof video's early attractions as a medium was its low cost, which fitperfectly with the idea of everyone being (and being able to affordto be) a producer. The role of funders and museums has also servedto emphasize production values, and many artists, unhappy with lifeon the fringes of these institutions, wanted access to commercialtechniques. The prohibitive cost of making videotapes with currentproduction values has in turn served to strengthen the influence offunders and exhibiting institutions.. .. The role played byinstitutions has also been a central factor in the dichotomy of artand social issues in video. Many of video's funding institutions,such as the New York State Council on the Arts, began to veeraway from financing community-based, information-oriented worksto funding 'video art' by the mid-1970s. 31

Furthermore, the centrality of 'production values' , ' technologicalinnovation', 'exploration of the specificities (and technicalpossibilities) of the medium' in institutional discourses and practices isclosely connected with establishing hierarchical structures which havebeen repeatedly criticized for excluding marginalized groups.

On the other hand, the funding of artists or groups who belong tomisrepresented or unrepresented groups is not without problems: SnejaGunew in her discussion with Gayatri Spivak32 concerning culturalpolitics in Australia, notes:

what seems to happen in very crude ways, within the context ofmulticulturalism, is that certain people are elevated very quickly tothose who speak for al l immigrants: in terms of funding, and interms of the dissemination of their work, etc. As a result, you don'thear about the rest, because 'we have covered that', and those fewtoken figures function as a very secure alibi. If you look at theproportion of, for example, multicultural, non-Anglo-Celtic artistswho get funded by the Australian Council, they are a very smallpercentage, and often the same ones every year.33

'Tokenism' is, indeed, very common and very powerful, not onlywithin Arts institutions but also within the academy and the criticaldiscourse around audiovisual technologies.

2. TheoryW e discover in this form of Poesis (representations of/by 'mo vem ents 'that are 'sterile' in the sense that cannot be folded back upon thesocial body) a disturbing contradiction, an alarming conflict betweenspheres: what belongs to the Poetic in terms of its un-representednessin the social ordering (the social sphere) - in other words, theaudiovisual works of misrepresented or unrepresented groups - cansimultaneously belong to Enframing in terms of the use ofrepresentational forms and conventions (the aesthetic sphere) for

1 0 9 Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Oimitris Eleftheriotis Video poetics technology, aesthetics and polit ics


011

screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Down

loadedfrom


11/13

34 Especially associated with theFrankfurt School and Ne wGerman Crit ique

35 Charlotte Brunsdon Problemswith quality' Screen vol 31no 1 (19901, pp 67-90

example, the frequent use of realist forms by video makers whosemain aim is to give representation to their misrepresented orunrepresented realities.

I am clearly unable to resolve this contradiction (which is indeedcentral in such concepts as 'the autonomy of art ' , ' the reintegration ofart in the praxis of everyday life', 'the role of the avant garde', and soon .3 41 believe, nevertheless, that it is worth expressing some tentativethoughts, at this point.

The contradictory (in the sense discussed above) character of Poesisis theoretically useful: it articulates the social and the aesthetic inconflict and necessarily points towards the potentialincommensurability of the two spheres. The understanding of thesocial as a multitude of conflicting, heterogeneous language gamesbecomes crucial; aesthetic and social values must be seen as operatingin strictly localized, rigorously contextualized frames of reference. Thelatter points towards a double shortcoming of the film theory of the1970s:- the totalizing, universalizing nature of the 'mainstream cinema vsmodernism' dualism that dominates theory leaves untheorized andmarginalized 'other' cinemas and unproblematically identifies realismas an ideological weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie;

- the absence of a serious engagement with questions of value,leaves without critical opposition values already in operation (in theform of professional or production values, in the form of romanticaesthetic categories, in the form of pragmatic criteria such aspopularity or marketability). Some of the political consequences ofthis critical lacuna have been identified and analysed by CharlotteBrunsdon in her article 'Problems with quality'. 35

Tw o propositions can be formulated firstly, a negative one , inrelation to Lyo tard's 'languag e gam es' A genuine com mitmen t toheterogeneity necessarily leads to the abandonment of aestheticcategories as universalizing as the Sublime. Even if the Sublime isthought of as being pertinent to a very specific language game (that is,the avant garde), it inevitably reintroduces (in its opposition to theBeautiful [everything else 9]) a clearly totalizing and unproductiveopposition between high and low culture. Secondly, a positive one,suggesting that video criticism should pay particular attention to thecontext in which video works are produced, distributed and received.Critical analysis must locate individual works within their specific,local context and understand them as 'moves' within a complex (butalways local and knowable in its locality) network of power relations,aesthetic categories and values, institutional practices, modes andconditions of production and consumption, and so on.3. Experimentation and innovationWe need to be aware of the danger that the search for theunpresentable (in the form of unexplored technological possibilities)

Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitns E lefthenotis Video poetics technology, aesthetics and polit ics


011

screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Downloadedfrom


12/13

38 Lyotard. Acmema', p 53

37 Ibid , pp 53- 4

38 See Sturken Paradox in theevolution of an art form'pp 115-19

can easily become a process of fetishization of an expanded, butnevertheless limited and controlled, array of techniques and effects.The notion of the 'effect' (or 'special effect') is crucial: what ispoetically revealed in/through experim entation beco mes just anotherfeature in a vast repertoire of technological capacities; what 'presencesitself as 'aberrant' , 'sterile ' or ' irregular' movement can become the'standing-reserve' , a 'productive' movement in an expanded form ofEnframing. Mastering and repeating the 'effect' are not onlyfundamental in terms of 'production values' as discussed above, theyare also important prerequisites in a quest for technological'excellence'. In this sense the 'effect' belongs to the stability of adominant paradigm under which a technological idea is successfullyand repetitively exploited and developed.

Experimentation must be contrasted to innovation. Poesis belongs tothe catastrophic, the chaotic and the unpredictable and stands inopposition to the evolutionary; innovation, on the other hand, seeks toimpro ve established forms and develo p new, mo re 'efficient'techniques The fetishization of effects by the artists (which can beexplained perhaps by the special fascination that the new technologiesexert) is wholeheartedly endorsed by the industry effects are highlymarketable and profitable. The spectacle of technological possibilitiesattracts equally artists and audiences and yields profit to the industry.Experimentation compromised by innovation leads to an inevitableexchange of the aesthetic for the economic.4. PleasureLyotard closely relates his acinema to a form of jouissance which heassociates with the production of sterile movements. Under the title'Pyrotechnics' he distinguishes between a productive (or proper) useof a match which belongs to the cycle of capital ('to light the gas thatheats water for the coffee which keeps you alert on your way towork ' ) 3 8 and a sterile use of it, by a child, for instance, who 'strikesthe match-head to see what happens - just for the fun of it - he enjoysthe movement itself, the changing colours, the light flashing at theheight of the blaze, the death of the tiny piece of wood, the hissing ofthe tiny flame. He enjoys these sterile differences leading nowhere,these uncompensated losses. '37

While I feel that this is indeed an accurate way of describing thepleasures involved in an experimental encounter with the use of newtechnologies (video is usually described as a postmodern medium inits 'depthlessness' , in its 'enjoyment' of ' techniques' for their ownsake, in its use of effects not for what they 'mean' but for what they' do ' ) ,3 8 I also strongly believe that this is only a part of the story.There are powerful forces of discrimination and structures ofinequality and exploitation in operation in society which drasticallylimit the chances of significant segments of the population even beingtempted to 'strike the match-head' of technology 'just for the fun of

U H Tl Screen 36 2 Summer 1995 Dimitns Eleftheriotis Video poetics technology ae sthetics and polit ics


011

screen.oxfordjourna

ls.org

Down

loadedfrom


13/13

it' - not only in terms of economic possibilities but also becausetechnology is closely associated with masculine fantasies of power,mastery, control, superiority, domination. This association of thePoetic with jouissance is another facet of the contradiction in Poesisthat I discussed earlier in terms of the experimental/realist opposition.Jouissance as a purely aesthetic experience is prioritized over differentforms of pleasure that can be of a more social or political nature andderive from the challenge to dominant representations or regimes oftruth.

1 1 2 Screen 36 2 Summer ! 995 Dmi t ris Elefthenotis Video poetics technology a esthetics and politics


11


Downloadedfrom

Documents

Video Poetics Ingles