IF SEEING IS

BELIEVING

Fullersta Gård
11.11.17–04.03.18
IF SEEING IS BELIEVING
 IF SEEING IS
BELIEVING
11.11.17–04.03.18

Fullersta Gård
 FOREWORD

Since 2013 the joint effort at Fullersta Gård has been aimed
towards establishing an interesting and qualitative centre for
art south of Stockholm. During these years I have, together
with co-workers and artists, had the great privilege to develop
a program of exhibitions characterized by relevance and high
quality. The urgency in our operations has never been to
follow a clear path. Never an outspoken one. New themes,
new media, new constellations, new...

Fullersta Gård is a public institution, taking into account

that the experience rests with a great variety of visitors. I
can honestly say it is not always an easy task. In the light of
this reality many sharp ideas have been developed and later
dismissed. After yet another while it may arise again and be
reformulated. That is the point when the idea for a new exhibi-
tion sees new light. The important dissolves the doubts.

With If Seeing is Believing Fullersta Gård is fulfilling an exami-

nation of the conditions for the image, in the form of a group
exhibition including seven interesting artists, many inter-
national. We present a number of works resting on various
foundations that addresses issues about the way cultural and
psychological processes are connected to vision, and how
that affects the inner representation. And that is where the
experience takes it’s starting point.

Peter Bergman
Director, Fullersta Gård
 FÖRORD

Alltsedan 2013 har det gemensamma arbetet på Fullersta Gård

varit inriktat på att etablera ett intressant och högkvalitativt
konstcenter söder om Stockholm. Under dessa år har jag till-
sammans med mina medarbetare haft den stora förmånen
att tillsammans med konstnärer skapa ett dynamiskt ut-
ställningsprogram kännetecknat av relevans och höjd. Den
springande punkten i verksamheten har varit att aldrig följa
en entydig linje. Aldrig uttalat. Nya tematiker, nya medium,
nya konstellationer, nya... 
 
Fullersta Gård är en kommunal institution, där hänseende tas
till att upplevelsen vilar hos den stora variationen av besökare
som vi möter. Jag ska ärligt erkänna att det sällan är ett enkelt
uppdrag. Mot ljuset av denna realitet har många spetsiga
idéer formulerats och skrotats. En liten tid senare har idén
återuppstått och omformulerats. Det är vid den tidpunkten
där bilden av en kommande utställning klarnat. Det viktiga
skingrar misstron.
 
Med utställningen If Seeing is Believing fullföljer Fullersta Gård
undersökningen av bildens villkor. Här i form av en grupput-
ställning med sju spännande konstnärskap, varav flera inter-
nationella. Vi presenterar här några verk som utifrån olika
grundvalar gestaltar frågor om hur kulturella och psykolo-
giska processer kopplar till vårt seende och hur det påverkar
vår inre representation. Och det är just det som upplevelsen
vilar i.

Peter Bergman
Chef, Fullersta Gård
CONTENT/
If Seeing is Believing:
On the Art of Seeing 14

INNEHÅLL
Om konsten att se 28
Susanne Ewerlöf

Artworks/konstverk
Lena Bergendahl 42
Petra Cortright 60
Mykola Ridnyi 66
Toril Johannessen 76
Aleksandra Vajd & Hynek Alt 88
Windy Fur Rundgren 98

Downcast Eyes:
Introduction & Conclusion 108
Martin Jay

12 13
ON THE ART OF SEEING SUSANNE EWERLÖF

IF SEEING IS
Contrary to what one might think, vision is no mere act of
passive perception but in fact is a process of active construc-
tion, where previous experiences, cultural identity and per-

BELIEVING:
sonality collectively play a big part. If Seeing is Believing is a
group exhibition that focuses on the biological processes pre-
cipitating sight, how the eye interplays with the brain as well
as how this is intertwined with psychological and cultural
processes. Also, the artists bring up the seemingly unconscio-

ON THE ART
us procedure of making images in our mind, and the mindful
endeavor to create images and further work with optics,
technique and media in order to understand and influence

OF SEEING
reality. The constant development of image making and the
distribution of images through art, advertisement, media,
throughout our visual world has influenced our thinking
about seeing. Maybe even how sight actually functions. What
is certain is that we have access to a far greater visual span
than we did when our own two eyes where the only source
of visual impressions. John Berger (1926-2017), the British
art critic and novelist, emphasized how everything changed
with the advent of the camera in his groundbreaking televi-
sion series Ways of Seeing from the early 1970’s. Images existed
before, but you had to travel or move to experience original
paintings or drawings. As a person walked from one site to
another, his or her visual world followed.1 To be fair, there
were printed images and illustrated books before photograp-
hy started to change our visual world, but Berger had a point.
With photographic images appearances could travel across
the world. And today, with digital technology making still
and moving images covering major and small events over the
world accessible to most, we can even take part of it in real
time.
Vision has been debated and studied for thousands of
years by philosophers and researchers from various fields.
Current thinking about the way we perceive the world
through our eyes is influenced by biologists, physicists, neuro-
scientists, psychologists, anthropologists and many more –

1 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Episode 1, 1972. Accessible on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk

14 15
 ON THE ART OF SEEING
concurrently, all people with functioning eyes have visual
experiences every day and have every reason to contemplate
how they are constructed and what influences what we see.
The Professor of European History at University of Cali-
fornia Berkeley, Martin Jay, has written the book Downcast
Eyes that covers Western history of visuality, with a focus on
French thought during the twentieth century.2 He demon-
strates how there is a prevailing anti-ocularcentric attitude
amongst thinkers throughout modernism and postmoder-
nism, where various aspects of a world dominated by visual
experiences are heavily criticized. We have included his
“Introduction” and “Conclusions” chapters in the exhibi-
tion catalog as they give an excellent overview of previous,
as well as current, discourse concerning eyes, sight, images,
visuality; and how language, culture and knowledge interact
with seeing.
The seven artists featured in this exhibition approach
sight from various angles, with an interest in how sight and/
or images function in the world. How images relate to reality
is a monumental philosophical debate in itself, one that
artists have engaged in by producing works and developing
art throughout the centuries. One of many voices in the dis-
cussion about images and vision is the American philosopher
Marx W. Wartofsky’s (1928–1997) who argued that vision is
altered by images and is an historical and cultural product of
the activity of making pictures and art.3 There are many views
on this matter, and whether vision has actually changed or
not since the world became cluttered with images is hard to
say. What we do know is that the culture a person exists in and
their personal experiences play a big part in how that world is
experienced visually. Toril Johannesen (NO) has focused her
ambitious project Unseeing Optical Illusions on this. She has re-
searched visual perception and come across theories stating
2 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-
Century French Thought, University of California Press, 1994.
3 Marx W Wartofsky, “Picturing and Representing” in Margolis,
Joseph (Ed.) Philosophy Looks at the Arts: Contemporary Readings in
Aesthetics, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987, p. 307
16
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
that people from various parts of the world interpret optical
illusions in different ways, which indicate that vision is cultu-
rally conditioned. The Müller-Lyer illusion, first described by
F. C. Müller-Lyer in 1889, depicts two equally long, parallel
lines with arrows on the ends. One has two pointy ends, and
the other inverted arrowheads pointing inwards, towards
the line. Some people experience that one of the parallel
lines is longer than the other, and research shows that this
susceptibility varies between different cultural groups. One
suggested explanation is that the constructed environment
surrounding people influences their sight. Whether someone
is usually among buildings with straight angles or rounded
corners could affect how they interpret the figure. Scientists
discussed this “carpentered-world hypothesis” during the
first half of the twentieth century until the 1960’s. Groups
living in urban, Western societies were often compared to
people living in rural areas in other parts of the world within
the scope of these research projects.4 Avenues, building
blocks and skyscrapers are the norm today as urbanization
has spread throughout the world, making city living the most
common lifestyle no matter what continent or culture one
lives in. Most people living today have a vision affected by a
surrounding of straight lines and the perspectives created by
such. By suggesting that exhibition visitors contemplate this,
Johannessen opens up for the theoretical possibility that an
alteration in architectonic surroundings could enable one to
be conditioned to see, or not see, the illusion in the figure.
The idea that we could unlearn pre-programmed ways
of seeing is presented in a series of works titled Unlearning
Optical Illusions, of which we present numbers II and III in
the exhibition. The starting point for both of them are textile
designs made by Johannessen with patterns including
selected optical illusions, one of them being the Müller-Lyer
figure. The work entitled II in the series is a number of large
4 One exampel of a study of the “carpentered-world hypothesis”:
Marshall H Segall, Donald T Campbell och Melville J. Herskovits
Cultural Differences in the Perception of Geometric Illusions. Science,
New Series, Vol. 139, No. 3556 (February 22, 1963), pp. 769-771
17
 ON THE ART OF SEEING
photos (170x120 cm) depicting the textiles presented next to a
framed text telling the story of each optical illusion. A viewer
can interact with the work by walking along a line in front
of it with one eye covered. At a certain point the text will be
in the blind spot of the seeing eye and therefore disappear
from view. The viewer is left only with the visual aspects of
the work, as the theoretical and historical background is tem-
porarily invisible, or if you will; unlearned.
Johannessen’s complex work also refers to presump-
tions we often make regarding visual cultural expressions by
using aesthetics resembling “West-African fabrics”, a type
of colorful printed patterns that the Western world often
associates with “African” culture. The origins of the fabrics
referred to in Johannessen's work is linked to both Indone-
sian and European history and are actually called “Hollan-
daise” or “Dutch Wax Print” by the people producing and
wearing them today.5 This reminds us how we tend to hastily
interpret and categorize our visual expressions. A quick
glance at someone is often enough before making assump-
tions about the person’s gender, age, cultural background
and maybe even lifestyle, personality and values. That vision
can lead to discrimination and generalization of our fellow
human beings is a fact. In recent years the organization Black
Lives Matter in the US has drawn attention to a situation
where American police officers have killed a number of
innocent black men, following assumptions made about them
from quick visual impressions. In 2013, there was an intense
debate in Sweden regarding illegal racial profiling made by
the police as they conducted identity controls in subways and
public places, forcing many people with “foreign” appearan-
ces to show proof of identification. A number of authorities
in the Swedish government and the European Union stood
behind this effort to chase down people living in Sweden
without proper documentation or permits in a campaign
called Reva by the Swedish media. The debate concerning
this racial profiling became intense as many people with a
5 Toril Johannessen, ”Unseeing” in Anne Szefer Karlsen (red.)
Dubblett - Toril Johannessen, Hordaland Art Centre, 2014.
18
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
non-European background came forward describing how
they felt discriminated in these situations. The police denied
approaching people demanding to check their identification
following assumptions made about their appearances. They
stated that they only asked people whose behaviour was sus-
picious. Statistic later proved that 91% of the people asked
to show ID were legally living in Sweden, making it hard to
believe that it was their behaviour rather than appearance that
made the police approach them.6 These recent examples as
well as centuries of discrimination towards people of colour
show how sight plays an important part in racism, explicit
as well as implicit. The latter refers to someone’s use of un-
conscious prejudices when making judgments about people
from different racial and ethnic groups and is no less harmful
than the former more conscious and expressive kind. Con-
currently, visual impression is often the main factor behind
other types of discrimination and assumptions being made
by people on a daily basis.
Eyesight, being the most dominant of our senses, plays an
important part when it comes to making sense of the surroun-
ding world, at least in any case where someone has functio-
ning sight. Concurrently, visual experience is closely linked
to language in various ways; Martin Jay goes further into
how language is overflowing with metaphors relating to sight
and images in his text. One interesting aspect is that in many
languages the concept of “seeing” and similar words do not
merely refer to eyesight, but also to internal visual experien-
ces; looking ahead, visualizing ones goals, seeing someone’s in-
tentions and picturing things in our minds. The issue of seeing
and making images in our minds was the starting point for
Fullersta Gård inviting Swedish artist Windy Fur Rundgren
to the exhibition. She was already working with the image of
a twisted, impossible object in her mind, a body of two pianos
merged together. She has made a number of paintings in egg
6 One of many articles and chronicles reporting on and discussing
this matter: Anders Lindberg, S måste stoppa rasprofileringen, Afton-
bladet Åsikt, 2014-10-14. http://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/ledar-
kronika/anderslindberg/article19696194.ab (collected 2017 -09-23)
19
 ON THE ART OF SEEING
tempera on raw canvas representing this object in various
formats. The massive body is twisted in a manner where
volume and lines does not appear to correlate with regula-
tions that govern reality. To the viewer the image is challeng-
ing because the eye cannot rest its gaze in a single perspective.
The front side of the “body” is a surface, which is also painted
in some of the versions – to distort our mind even further it
might be a surface of water, suggesting even more layers of
depth. Her images bring to mind how our brains function and
how eagerly they seem to want to make sense even of impos-
sible impressions. This in turn relates to the ambiguous figure
called the Necker’s cube, a picture of a frontally placed cube
seen a bit from the side, either slightly from below or above.
It has no opaque “walls” and consists only of lines making its
perspective indistinct. It is impossible to see both versions of
the cube at the same time and only possible to lock eyes on
one of the two possible versions. The Necker cube has been
used in several contexts where someone wanted to prove that
human perception works in one way or another. It has been
about the brain’s construction, but also discussions of more
philosophical kind. The naïve realist theory suggests that
the world is as it presents itself to us, something that at first
thought may seem like common sense. However, the idea can
be criticized, for instance by showing that perception varies
between different people. The Necker cube has also been
used to contradict the theory, as the figure may cause discus-
sion about a cube seen either from above or below, when in
fact it is not a cube at all but a two-dimensional image consis-
ting of twelve lines.
The artists’ interest in optical illusions and impossible
figures reminds us about the limitations of the brain when it
comes to managing the tremendous amount of visual data that
is received through the eyes. The artistic duo of Aleksandra
Vajd and Hynek Alt also hints to this with their piece Untitled
(Paint Cans), 2013. It consists of 20 neat piles of stacked pho-
tographs. Each stack compiles 500 identical images, which
are cutout offset posters. The 20 stacks are different from
each other but consist of similar images. Each motif is a top
of an open paint can in a certain color. The pictures have
20
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
the same diameter as a real paint can and the stack the same
height, causing an illusion of this object. If someone were to
enter the space where the piece is on display without giving
it enough attention that person could easily experience wit-
nessing an assembly of opened paint containers. If not called
upon, the brain will constantly make assumptions about what
is in front of us by using memories and previous experiences.
When something threatening or unfamiliar enters the field of
view, more attention will be given to that, but until then the
brain saves its energy.
Sometimes we experience things that are not there. For
instance, we tend to see shapes of faces even in inanimate
objects. This phenomenon is called pareidolia and could be
linked to us humans being pre-programmed to distinguish
faces from birth. Throughout evolution it has become advan-
tageous to quickly distinguish a face among a multitude of
visual impressions.7 So, the eye catches only a selection of
what is actually presented before it; at the same time as it is
able to create impressions of things that does not exist together
with the mind. Even when being completely mentally stable
one can imagine seeing depth in a flat surface, a creature in
a dark corner or something threatening lunging at you in the
corner of your eye. Vision can fool us in many ways.
Vajd and Alt have worked together since 2001 exploring
the photographic medium by producing works using photo-
graphic techniques, space and photographs as objects. They
reference the medium as well as art and photography theories
in innovative ways while reminding us that a printed photo
is matter and light interplays with both space and objects.
This is relevant both in the process of creating and display-
ing a photographic image. Many of the physical actualities
that govern photography also affect the function of the eye
and the way something becomes visible to us. The artist duo
have included a large photo, printed on photographic back-
7 Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon in which the mind
responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by percei-
ving a familiar pattern where none exists. Common examples are
perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations
or the Man in the Moon.
21
 ON THE ART OF SEEING
ground in the exhibition. It depicts the opening of a cave seen
from the inside the dark cavity and is a part of an image series
that the artists have worked on since 2009. One obvious
reference linked to cave openings and perception is Plato’s
Allegory of the Cave in his work The Republic. In the form of
a dialogue, Plato’s brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates
discuss a possible scenario where a group of people have
lived as chained prisoners within a cave all their lives, facing
a blank wall. They see projected shadows on the wall from
objects and people passing in front of a fire behind them, and
perceive these shadows as reality. If someone one day were
to break loose, he would suddenly be confronted with reality
in all its complexity. Having never experienced this before he
cannot make sense of what he is now able to see. An even
harder task would be to explain it to the prisoners who are
still in the cave. The philosopher is like the escaped prisoner,
for he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the
manufactured reality that is the shadows, while most people
cannot free themselves from the phenomenal state. Alt and
Vajd’s photo also alludes to the cave as being a very early
habitat for man and the places where the oldest images still
in existence can be found. It triggers the imagination to cont-
emplate how early man perceived the world and what urges
triggered these primordial images. There might of course
have existed man-made images long before, drawings in sand
or collages made from found objects, but the cave paintings
are still to be seen and communicate through time. Lena Ber-
gendahl speculates that images existed before and indepen-
dent of humans, for instance as reflections on water surfaces
or obsidian glass. The cave opening as well, is it not an image
of sorts, framed by the stone walls? Does an image only exist
if someone looks at it, denoting it as an image? Bergendahls
piece Displacement of the Visible is a complex installation con-
taining many elements alluding to early imagery, art history
and optical techniques while simultaneously telling a story
about Italian natural science and optics researcher Giambat-
tista Della Porta (1535-1615).
Della Porta’s major work, the book Magiae naturalis
(Natural Magic) was published in 1588 and describes his sci-
22
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
entific observations on geology, optics, botany, magnetism,
as well as cosmetics, invisible writing and gunpowder. He
started one of the oldest modern science academies and was
brought to justice for occultism. During the Renaissance,
all types of optical experiments were considered impious if
it had a purpose other than correcting a person’s impaired
vision. Among other things, Della Porta labored to further
develop the Camera Obscura technology that could create
real-time representations of reality in a dark room; it was a
camera without the ability to freeze the image. Della Porta
also had theories about how particular plants, whose flowers
were considered similar to the iris of the eye, could affect the
sight of the person who ate them.
It is said that he invented a secret technique to commu-
nicate with fellow scientists that were imprisoned during the
inquisition. He invented an ink made from plant extracts and
alum that could be used on eggshell, which is semi-porous.
After having written the message he would boil the egg and
the ink on the shell would disappear. When the prisoner
pealed his secret gift the text could be seen on the egg white.
That which cannot be seen is another aspect of the ex-
hibition If Seeing is Believing. Mykola Ridnyi’s work Blind
Spot (2014-2015) is focused around the social blindness he
experienced amongst many people as the war on the east
of Ukraine broke out in 2014. Choosing to divide society
into “us” and “them”, “ours” and “theirs, is a result from
closing one’s eyes to a more complex reality. The work is a
series of photos, all media images from the Donbass region
either before or during the conflict, covered with black ink,
showing only a small portion of the picture. The title refers to
the visual obstruction on the retina known as the blind spot,
present in each eye. Rydnyi reminds us that human sight is
never complete and even when we believe to be experiencing
the full picture, there is always something missing. In juxta-
posing images from both periods the artist brings attention
to the fragility of the line between peace and war. Seeing
pre-war images of Donbass today does not give a peaceful
impression, but rather a sad reminder. Watching images from
the past with contemporary eyes is a complex act where our
23
 ON THE ART OF SEEING
knowledge of historical events cannot be ignored. It is similar
to how we interpret images provided by the media that has
the power to shape not only what new knowledge we acquire,
but also what pre-existing comprehension we bring to the
process. When we watch the news for instance, our inter-
pretation may be influenced by the media channels we have
access to or choose to consume. A media consumer of today
has access to more information than ever before, but requires
certain skills and make an effort to interpret the available
material.
Berger spoke of photography in the 1970’s as a tech-
nology and a media that changed the visual world giving
people access to images. With Internet and mobile phone
cameras there has been yet another revolution in both image
making and image distribution. Anyone can produce images
and disseminate them among family, friends, acquaintan-
ces and strangers through a number of online outlets. This
has affected new reporting as well as the use of images in
social interaction. The image of the self is a common subject
these days both in still imagery and video. Petra Cortright
has made video art using the format of the Youtube video.
She is constantly portraying herself with the use of a web
camera. Her practice is interesting in relation to the tradition
of portraits, images of women in art history and the recent
“selfie”. Within the context of this exhibition, contempla-
ting the concept of seeing, I would also like to reflect on the
perspective of her gaze. Making videos with a web camera
usually allows for the person in front of the camera to see the
imagery in real time and Petra Cortright is the actor, director
and editor simultaneously while making these self-portraits.
She uses a multitude of software that manipulate this type of
web photography instantly on the computer while filming.
This reminds us about the subject of women both in art and
film history where portraits often have objectified a passive
and pleasing woman. Traditionally the artist or director was
a man and the image was made with a male viewer in mind.
Even though Petra Cortright does not speak of her work as
feminist, but it makes me think about how, for instance, artists
like Cindy Sherman has made the art audience rethink under-
24
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
lying traditions in both movies and portraits. She questions
how the mass media image of women limits the possibility for
women to create their own independent self-image. Through
her self-portraits, where she dresses up as female characters
from movies or historical paintings, she points to the depicted
woman being a cliché and a “type” rather than an individual.
Feminist film critics and art historians have also
discussed the tradition of depicting women. One groundbre-
aking concept was Laura Mulvey’s “the Male Gaze” which
she presented in the 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema. It focuses on how movies are made from a masculine
and heterosexual perspective where women are objects of
male pleasure. This Male Gaze exists from three viewpoints:
the male photographer; the male protagonists in the film;
and the male spectator. The unequal distribution of power
between men and women controls cinema to please the male
viewer.8 The language of film is so strong and taught to all
from an early age and female audience members will also
obtain the male gaze thus experiencing classic, main stream
film from the male protagonist’s perspective.
In her videos, Petra Cortright is seen looking back at
the viewer, which is a feminist strategy in itself. The same
view is also controlling the making of the video in real-time,
revealing her position as both director and active subject,
and she destroys all three positions of the male gaze simul-
taneously. Looking closely, one might notice how her eyes
move from being locked on the camera to a viewpoint right
below, most likely the screen where the actual movie image is
displayed to her. For anyone used to common programs for
real time video conversations such as Skype this askew gaze
is quite common. Two people may look at the images of one
another but their eyes never really meet since the camera and
the screen are a few inches apart. In the case with Cortright’s
Youtube videos the gaze reveals her simultaneous position
8 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film
Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and
Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999, pp. 833-44.
25
 ON THE ART OF SEEING SUSANNE EWERLÖF

as both subject and object. In the context of a video conver- I would argue that it has a key function when it comes to ex-
sation the possibility of seeing oneself and the image of the ercising our minds and eyes. This can be applied to all arts.
collocutor may amount to people no longer looking into one We look in a certain way when we enter an art space or come
another’s eyes. It makes me think that something is lost, one across art in public spaces. Art often carries many levels of in-
amazing aspect of the eye is after all its ability to capture in- formation and is a great inspiration for critical thinking: Who
formation and communicate at the same time. When determi- made this and why? Within which context was this image or
ning if someone is truthful or not in what they are describing object made? What visual traditions can this work be linked
you might ask them to look you in the eyes to find certainty in to? Numerous questions could be added to this list of course.
their claim. If there is one thing that is certain it is that there is always
I have chosen to name this exhibition If Seeing is Believing more to see, more ways in which to see them and the future
to put all these reflections about seeing in a context relating to will provide even further reflections on how seeing functions
our times. Sometimes it feels harder than ever to know what and plays into various aspects of art and life.
to trust in a world so jampacked with information. Imagery
and visual impressions are enormous parts of the flow of in-
formation and to me it seems we all need to become more
aware and active when it comes to managing this flow.
Vision is hard to trust but at the same time one of our
primary tools, helping us navigate the world. We must learn
to question the source and the intent behind what we see,
either it is an image from the news or a perfect image of
someone’s life presented through Instagram. Unfortunately
it seems like the some opportunities for this much-needed
knowledge have been lost in Sweden as the government have
cut down on school art education in recent years.9 To me
it seems it is the core understanding of image making one
learns in art education, which also provides the opportunity
to reflect and discuss image consumption and interpretation.
This makes me think that art and art institutions play a crucial
role in our time and has relevance for people far beyond the
active art crowd. Fullersta Gård is a publicly funded institu-
tion and aims to reach a wide audience of people living in
Huddinge, Stockholm and all of Sweden. Contemporary art
plays into so many aspects of human thinking and commu-
nication and it does not always contain visual elements, but

9 In September 2017 the Swedish government proposed a new plan

for the High Schools to the parliament where all students following
a national study plan would have classes in at least one artistic
subject, for instance visual art. If this proposal is approved it will
commence in 2018.

26 27
OM KONSTEN ATT SE SUSANNE EWERLÖF

IF SEEING IS
I motsats till vad man kan tro är seende inte enbart passiv
perception, utan i själva verket en process av aktiv kon-
struktion, där tidigare erfarenheter, kulturell identitet och

BELIEVING:
personlighet kan inverka. If Seeing is Believing är en grupput-
ställning som fokuserar på ögats fysiologi, hjärnans funktion
för seendet liksom hur synen påverkas av psykologiska och
kulturella faktorer. Konstnärerna tar också upp det till synes
omedvetna förfarandet att skapa bilder i vårt inre och den

OM KONSTEN
överlagda processen att göra bilder och arbeta med optik,
teknik och media för att förstå och påverka den yttre verklig-
heten. Den konstanta utvecklingen inom bildproduktion och

ATT SE
-distribution genom konst, reklam och media som genom-
syrar hela vår visuella värld har påverkat tänkandet kring
seendet och kanske även hur den faktiska synen fungerar.
Något som är säkert är att vi har tillgång till en mycket större
visuell värld än vad människor hade när deras egna ögon var
den enda källan till visuella intryck. John Berger (1926-2017),
den brittiska konstkritikern och författaren, betonade hur
allting förändrades med kamerans intåg i sin banbrytande
tv-serie Ways of Seeing från början av 1970-talet. Bilder fanns
även innan fotografiet, men man var tvungen att förflytta sig
för att uppleva originalmålningar eller teckningar. När en
person rörde sig från en plats till en annan följde hans eller
hennes visuella värld med. Med den fotografiska tekniken
hade människor plötsligt visuell tillgång till sådant som inte
utspelade sig framför dem, utan någon helt annanstans.1 För
att vara rättvis ska det nämnas att det fanns tryckta bilder och
illustrerade böcker innan fotografiet förändrade vår visuella
värld, men Bergers poäng kvarstår. Med fotografiska bilder
kan en utblick spridas globalt och med dagens digitala teknik
har nästan alla tillgång till still- och rörliga bilder som skildrar
stora och små händelser från hela världen, vi kan ofta till och
med ta del av dem i realtid.
Synen har studerats och diskuterats i tusentals år av
filosofer och forskare från olika vetenskapliga discipliner.
Dagens tänkande kring hur vi uppfattar världen genom våra

1 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Episode 1, 1972. Finns tillgänglig på

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk.

28 29
 OM KONSTEN ATT SE
ögon påverkas av biologer, fysiker, neuroforskare, psyko-
loger, antropologer och många fler. Samtidigt har alla med
fungerande ögon visuella erfarenheter varje dag och har
all anledning att fundera kring hur de uppstår och vad som
påverkar vad vi ser.
Professorn i europeisk historia vid University of Califor-
nia Berkeley; Martin Jay, har skrivit boken Downcast Eyes som
behandlar visualitet i den västerländska idéhistorien, med
fokus på franska tänkare under 1900-talet.2 Han påvisar att
det finns en ”anti-okulär” attityd bland tänkare under mo-
dernismen och postmodernismen, där olika aspekter av vår
visuellt dominerade värld kritiserats. Vi har inkluderat intro-
duktionskapitlet från boken och hans sammanfattande slut-
satser som en essä i den här utställningskatalogen. Texterna
ger en mycket bra översikt över tidigare såväl som nutida
diskurs kring ögon, syn, bilder och visualitet liksom hur
språk, kultur och kunskap interagerar med seendet.
De sju konstnärerna i utställningen närmar sig seende från
olika håll, med intresse för hur synen eller bilder fungerar i
världen. Hur bilder relaterar till verkligheten är en stor filoso-
fisk fråga i sig och är något som konstnärer har engagerat sig
i genom att skapa konstverk och utveckla konsten under år-
hundraden. En av många röster i diskussionen om bilder och
syn är den amerikanska filosofen Marx W. Wartofsky (1928-
1997) som hävdade att synen förändras av bilder och är en
historisk och kulturell produkt som tillkommit genom aktivi-
teten att göra bilder och konst.3 Det finns många sätt att se på
den här frågan och ifall synen har förändrats eller inte, sedan
världen fylldes med bilder är svårt att säga. Det vi vet är att
den kultur en person existerar i och personliga erfarenheter
påverkar hur världen upplevs visuellt. Toril Johannesen har
fokuserat sitt ambitiösa projekt Unseeing Optical Illusions kring
detta. Hon har fördjupat sig kring visuell perception och stött
2 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes, The Denigration of Vision in Twen-
tieth-Century French Thought, University of California Press, 1994.
3 Marx W Wartofsky, “Picturing and Representing” in Margolis,
Joseph (red.) Philosophy Looks at the Arts: Contemporary Readings in
Aesthetics, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987, s. 307.
30
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
på teorier som säger att människor från olika delar av världen
tolkar optiska illusioner på olika sätt, vilket tyder på att
synen påverkas kulturellt. Müller-Lyer-illusionen, som först
beskrevs av F. C. Müller-Lyer 1889, visar två lika långa paral-
lella linjer med pilar i sina ändar. En av dem har två spetsiga,
utåtriktade ändar medan den andra har omvända pilspetsar
som pekar inåt, mot linjen. Vissa människor upplever att en
av de parallella linjerna är längre än den andra, och forskning
har visat att denna benägenhet varierar mellan olika kulturel-
la grupper. En förklaring som föreslagits är att den byggda
miljön som omger människor påverkar deras syn. Huruvida
någon lever bland byggnader med raka vinklar eller hus med
rundade hörn kan påverka hur de tolkar figuren. Denna så
kallade “carpentered-world hypothesis” diskuterades av flera
forskare under första hälften av 1900-talet fram till 1960-talet
och i studier från den tiden jämfördes ofta grupper som levde
i urbana, västerländska miljöer, med grupper som levde på
landsbygden i andra delar av världen.4 Avenyer, stora bygg-
nadskomplex och skyskrapor är normen idag sedan urba-
nisering har spridit sig över hela världen, vilket innebär att
stadsliv är den vanligaste livsstilen oavsett vilken världsdel
eller kultur man lever i. De flesta som lever idag har därför
en syn som påverkats av en omgivning med raka linjer och de
perspektiv som de skapar.
Genom att föreslå att besökare i utställningen överväger
detta, öppnar Johannessen upp den teoretiska möjligheten att
en förändring av någons arkitektoniska omgivningar skulle
göra det möjligt att avlära sig att se eller inte se illusionen i
figuren.
Tanken att vi skulle kunna ändra vårt inlärda sätt att se
presenteras i en serie verk med titeln Unlearning Optical
Illusions, av vilka Fullersta Gård visar nummer II och III. Ut-
gångspunkten för dem båda är en serie textilier designade av
Johannessen där mönstren innehåller kända optiska illusio-
ner, en av dem är Müller-Lyer-figuren. Del II i serien är ett
4 Ett exempel är: Marshall H Segall, Donald T Campbell och Melville
J. Herskovits Cultural Differences in the Perception of Geometric Illusions.
Science, New Series, Vol. 139, No. 3556 (February, 1963), s. 769-771.
31
 OM KONSTEN ATT SE
antal stora bilder (170x120 cm) av textilierna som presenteras
bredvid en informationsskylt som berättar historien om den
optiska illusionen i vartdera mönstret. En besökare kan inter-
agera med verket genom att gå på en streckad linje framför
det med handen för ett öga. Vid en viss punkt kommer skylten
att hamna i den blinda fläcken hos det enda öppna ögat och
försvinner därmed från synfältet. Betraktaren lämnas att ta
del enbart av verkets visuella aspekter, när den teoretiska och
historiska bakgrunden är tillfälligt osynlig, eller om man så
vill; avlärd.
Johannessens komplexa arbete behandlar också anta-
ganden som ofta görs om visuella kulturella uttryck när hon
använder en estetik som påminner om “västafrikanska tyger”.
Denna typ av tryckta färgstarka mönster associeras ofta med
”afrikansk” kultur av västvärlden. Ursprunget till de tyger
som Johannessens arbete refererar till kan knytas till både
indonesisk och europeisk historia och kallas faktiskt “Hol-
landaise” eller “Dutch Wax Prints” av de människor som
producerar och bär dem idag.5 Detta påminner oss om hur
vi tenderar att tolka och kategorisera våra visuella intryck.
En snabb blick på någon är ofta tillräckligt för att göra an-
taganden om den personens kön, ålder, kulturella bakgrund
och kanske till och med livsstil, personlighet och värderingar.
Att synen kan leda till diskriminering och generalisering av
våra medmänniskor är ett faktum. Under senare år har orga-
nisationer som Black Lives Matter i USA uppmärksammat att
amerikanska poliser har dödat ett antal oskyldiga afroame-
rikanska män, efter att ha gjort antaganden om dem utifrån
snabba visuella intryck. År 2013 pågick en intensiv debatt i
Sverige om polisens olagliga rasprofilering när de utförde
identitetskontroller i tunnelbanor och på offentliga platser.
De tvingade flera personer med “utländska” karaktärsdrag att
visa id-handlingar. Ett antal myndigheter, den svenska reger-
ingen och Europeiska unionen stod bakom denna satsning
att lokalisera människor som bodde i Sverige utan papper
i den här kampanjen som kallades Reva i svenska medier.
5 Toril Johannessen, ”Unseeing” i Anne Szefer Karlsen (red.)
Dubblett - Toril Johannessen, Hordaland Art Centre, 2014.
32
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
Debatten om rasprofilering intensifierades när människor
trädde fram och sa att de kände sig diskriminerade i dessa
situationer. Polisen förnekade att de närmade sig människor
och krävde att se identitetshandlingar utifrån antaganden
gjorda på grund av deras utseende. De uppgav att de enbart
valde personer vars beteende var misstänkt. Statistiken visade
senare att 91% av personerna som ombads att visa id-handlingar
bodde lagligt i Sverige, vilket gjorde det svårt att tro att det
var deras beteende snarare än utseende som fick polisen att
begära bevis från just dem.6 Dessa exempel från senare tid
och århundraden av diskriminering gentemot rasifierade
personer visar hur synintryck ligger bakom rasism, både
den explicita och implicita. Det senare syftar på situationer
där någons omedvetna fördomar påverkar bedömningen av
människor den är inte mindre skadligt än den mer medvetna
och uttrycksfulla typen. På samma sätt är synintryck ofta den
främsta faktorn bakom andra diskrimineringsgrunder och
antaganden som görs människor emellan på vardaglig basis.
Synen är det dominerande av våra sinnen och förutsatt
att vi har fungerande syn så är det vårt främsta verktyg när
vi ska försöka förstå vår omvärld. Visuella erfarenheter är
samtidigt nära kopplade till språket på olika sätt. Martin
Jay går in på hur språket överflödar av metaforer relaterade
till synen och bilder i sin text. Inom många språk hänvisar
begreppet «ser» och liknande ord inte bara till den biologis-
ka synen men även till inre visuella upplevelser. Man kan
titta in i framtiden, visualisera sina mål, se någons intentioner
och föreställa sig saker för sin inre blick. Frågan om att se och
skapa inre bilder var utgångspunkten när Fullersta Gård bjöd
in den svenska konstnären Windy Fur Rundgren att delta i
utställningen. Hon arbetade redan med bilden av ett vridet,
omöjligt föremål i sin tanke, en kropp av två pianon som
slagits samman. Hon har gjort ett antal målningar i äggolje-
tempera på obehandlad duk som skildrar det här föremålet
6 En bland många artiklar och krönikor som diskuterade detta
ämne: Anders Lindberg, S måste stoppa rasprofileringen, Aftonbladet
Åsikt, 2014-10-14. http://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/ledarkronika/
anderslindberg/article19696194.ab (hämtad 2017 -09-23).
33
 OM KONSTEN ATT SE
i olika format. Den massiva kroppen är vriden på ett sätt där
volym och linjer inte samspelar med de regler som styr rums-
lighet. Som betraktare är bilden utmanande, för blicken kan
inte vila i ett bestämt perspektiv. Framsidan av objektet är en
yta som är målad i några av versionerna - för att utmana vårt
seende ytterligare kan det till exempel vara en yta av vatten,
vilket föreslår ännu fler lager av djup. Hon tar i beaktande hur
våra hjärnor fungerar och hur ivrigt de verkar vilja skapa en
tydlig bild, även av en omöjlig figur. Detta påminner om den
tvetydiga Necker-kuben, en bild av en frontalt placerad kub
sedd lite från sidan och antingen något under- eller ovanifrån.
Den har genomskinliga väggar och utgörs enbart av linjer
som ger detta dubbeltydiga perspektiv. Det är omöjligt att se
båda versionerna av kuben samtidigt och det går enbart att
låsa blicken på en av de två möjliga versionerna åt gången.
Neckers kub har figurerat i flera sammanhang där man velat
bevisa att mänsklig perception fungerar på ett eller annat vis.
Det har handlat om hjärnans konstruktion, men också diskus-
sioner av mer filosofiskt slag. Inom naiv realism antar man
att världen är sådan som den presenterar sig för oss, något
som vid första tanken kan te sig förnuftigt. Idén kan dock kri-
tiseras, bland annat genom att påvisa att perception varierar
mellan olika personer. Neckers kub har också används för att
motsäga tesen, figuren bjuder in till en diskussion om en kub
som man kan se antingen ovanifrån eller underifrån, medan
det i själva verket inte är en kub alls utan en tvådimensionell
figur som består av tolv linjer.
Konstnärernas intresse för optiska illusioner och omöjliga
figurer påminner oss om begränsningarna i hjärnan när det
gäller att hantera den enorma mängd visuell data som tas emot
genom ögonen. Konstnärsduon Aleksandra Vajd och Hynek
Alt pekar också på detta genom verket Untitled (Paint Cans),
2013. Det består av 20 travar med prydligt staplade runda fo-
tografier. Varje stapel innehåller 500 likadana bilder vilka är
utskurna offset-tryck. De 20 travarna består av sinsemellan
olika bilder, med snarlika motiv. Bilden i vardera traven fö-
reställer ovansidan av en öppen färgburk i en viss färg. Den
har samma diameter som en verklig burk och stapeln har
samma höjd, vilket skapar illusionen av det föremålet. Om
34
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
någon kliver in i rummet där verket visas utan att ge det till-
räcklig uppmärksamhet kan den personen enkelt anta sig se
en samling öppna färgbehållare. Om hjärnan inte uppmanas,
kommer den ständigt att göra antaganden om vad som finns i
blickfånget genom att använda minnen och tidigare erfaren-
heter. När något hotande eller okänt kommer in i synfältet,
kommer mer uppmärksamhet att ges till det, men till dess
sparar hjärnan sin energi.
Samtidigt upplever vi ibland saker som inte finns där, till
exempel tenderar vi att se formen på ansikten även i livlösa
föremål. Detta fenomen kallas pareidoli och kan kopplas till
att vi människor är förprogrammerade att urskilja ansikten
från födseln. Genom evolutionen har det visat sig vara en
fördel att snabbt uppfatta ett ansikte bland flera visuella
intryck.7 Ögat fångar alltså ett urval av de saker som faktiskt
finns framför det, samtidigt som det tillsammans med hjärnan
kan skapa intryck av något som inte existerar. Även när man
är helt mentalt stabil kan man föreställa sig djup i en plan yta,
en varelse i ett mörkt hörn eller något hotande i ögonvrån. Vi
kan bedras av synen på många olika sätt.
Vajd och Alt har arbetat tillsammans sedan 2001 och
utforskat det fotografiska mediet genom att använda olika
fotografiska tekniker, rumslighet och fotografier som objekt.
Duon refererar till mediet och bild- och fotohistorien genom
sina innovativa metoder. De påminner oss om att ett tryckt
foto är ett fysiskt objekt och att ljus samspelar med rum och
föremål. Det har relevans både när fotografiska bilder skapas,
presenteras och upplevs. Många av de faktorer som styr foto-
grafering spelar också in i ögats funktion och hur något blir
synligt framför oss. Konstnärsduon visar ett stort fotografi,
tryckt på fotobakgrund i utställningen. Det återger öppningen
av en grotta sedd från insidan av det mörka hålrummet och
är en del i en bildserie som konstnärerna arbetat med sedan
2009. En uppenbar referens kopplad till grottöppningar och
7 Pareidoli är ett psykologiskt fenomen där en person anser sig
uppfatta ett fenomen eller föremål utifrån vaga eller slumpmässiga
stimuli. Vanligt förekommande exempel på pareidoli är att en
person ser ansikten i föremål, moln eller andra bilder.
35
 OM KONSTEN ATT SE
perception är Platons grottliknelse. I formen av en dialog
diskuterar Platons bror Glaucon och hans mentor Sokrates
ett föreställt scenario där en grupp människor har levt som
fastkedjade fångar i en grotta hela sina liv, med blickarna
mot en tom vägg. De ser projicerade skuggor på väggen av
föremål och människor som passerar framför en eld bakom
dem. Skuggorna uppfattas som verkligheten av gruppen. Om
någon en dag skulle bryta sig loss och ta sig ut ur grottan så
skulle den personen plötsligt konfronteras med den faktiska
verkligheten i all dess komplexitet. Då hen inte upplevt detta
innan är det svårt att tolka det som nu kan ses, ännu svårare
skulle det vara att förklara för fångarna som är kvar i grottan
att deras upplevda verklighet bara är en vag avbild. Filosofen
är som den förrymda fången, som kan uppfatta den faktiska
verkligheten, idévärlden, medan de flesta andra inte kan befria
sig från sin begränsade världsuppfattning, sinnevärlden.
Alt och Vajds fotografi påminner också om grottan som en
tidig boplats för människan, platser där vi kan hitta de äldsta
bevarade bilderna. Det i sin tur väcker fantasin och tankar
om hur den tidiga människan upplevde världen och vad som
kan ha förmått henne att skapa bilder från första början. Det
kan naturligtvis ha existerat bilder långt tidigare; teckningar i
sanden eller kollage skapade av samlade föremål, men grott-
målningarna är fortfarande kvar och kommunicerar genom
tiden. Lena Bergendahl spekulerar om bilder som fanns före
och oberoende av människor, till exempel reflektioner i vat-
tenytor. Grottöppningar också, är inte de en slags bild i sig,
inramad av de omgivande stenväggarna? Finns en bild bara
om någon ser den och kallar den en bild? Bergendahls verk
Displacement of the Visible (2015) är en komplex videoinstalla-
tion med många delar som reflekterar över tidigare bilder,
konsthistorien och optiska tekniker samtidigt som de berättar
historien om den italienska natur- och optikforskaren Giam-
battista Della Porta (1535-1615).
Della Portas stora arbete, boken Magiae naturalis public-
erades 1588 och redogjorde för hans vetenskapliga obser-
vationer om geologi, optik, botanik, magnetism, kosmetika,
osynligt bläck och krut. Han startade en av de tidigaste
moderna vetenskapsakademierna och blev ställd inför rätta,
36
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
anklagad för ockultism. Under renässansen ansågs alla typer
av optiska experiment vara ogudaktiga om de hade ett annat
syfte än att korrigera någons defekta syn. Della Porta arbetade
bland annat med att vidareutveckla Camera Obscura-tekniken
vilket är en tidig kamera som kunde skapa realtidsavbild-
ningar av verkligheten i ett mörkt rum; utan möjlighet att
frysa bilden. Han hade också teorier om hur särskilda växter,
vars blommor liknade ögonens iris, kunde påverka synen hos
den som åt dem.
Det sägs att Della Porta uppfann en hemlig teknik för att
kommunicera med andra forskare som fängslats under inkvi-
sitionen. Han hade utvecklat ett bläck gjort av växtextrakt och
alun och skrev med detta på äggskal, som är halvporösa. Efter
att han författat sitt meddelande så kokades ägget vilket resul-
terade i att bläcket på skalet försvann. När hans fängslade vän
sedan skalade sin hemliga gåva kunde meddelandet läsas på
äggvitan.
Sådant som man inte kan se är en annan aspekt av utställ-
ningen If Seeing is Believing. Mykola Ridnyis verk Blind Spot
(2014-2015) behandlar den sociala blindhet som han upplevde
hos många människor, när kriget i östra Ukraina bröt ut 2014.
Att välja att dela samhället i “oss” och “dem”, “vår “och” deras
“är ett resultat av att stänga sina ögon för en mer komplex
verklighet. Verket består av en serie fotografier, alla medi-
abilder från Donbass-regionen, antingen före eller under
konflikten, täckta med svart bläck där bara ett fragment av
bilden syns. Rydnyi påminner oss om att människans syn är
ofullständig och även när vi tror oss uppleva en helhetsbild så
finns det alltid blinda fläckar. Genom att ställa bilder från båda
perioderna mot varandra uppmärksammar konstnären den
bräckliga linjen mellan krig och fred. Bilderna från Donbass
från perioden före kriget sedda med dagens ögon ger inte ett
fredligt intryck, utan fungerar snarare som en sorglig påmin-
nelse. Att se bilder från det förflutna med samtida blick är
en komplex handling där man inte kan ignorera sin kunskap
om historiska händelser. Det liknar hur vi tolkar bilder från
media. Om vi tar del av ett nyhetsreportage idag använder vi
inte enbart den nya kunskap som presenteras i det aktuella
inslaget utan även en redan etablerad förförståelse. Hur den i
37
 OM KONSTEN ATT SE
sin tur ser ut är ofta förutbestämt genom de mediekanaler vi
har tillgång till eller väljer att ta del av. Att ta del av bilder och
information blir således en komplex process där bilder vi sett
förut kommer att påverka tolkningen av de nya intrycken. En
mediekonsument av idag har tillgång till mer information än
någonsin och behöver anstränga sig och ha vissa färdigheter
för att kunna tolka det materialet hen ställs inför.
Berger pratade om fotografering på 70-talet som en teknik
och ett medium som förändrade den visuella världen och
gav människor tillgång till bilder. Med internet och kameror
i mobiltelefoner har ännu en revolution ägt rum både vad
gäller bildframställning och distribution. Vem som helst
kan producera bilder och sprida dem bland familj, vänner,
bekanta och främlingar via olika online-kanaler. Det har
inneburit förändringar både för nyhetsrapportering och
hur bilder används i vårt sociala umgänge. Det egna jaget
är ett vanligt motiv idag, både i stillbilder och video. Petra
Cortright har gjort videokonst med utgångspunkt i Youtube-
formatet. Hon avbildar alltid sig själv med en webbkamera
i dessa videor. Hennes praktik är intressant i relation till
porträttraditionen, avbildningar av kvinnor genom konst-
historien och dagens “selfie”. I sammanhanget av den här
utställningen som kretsar kring seende skulle jag vilja reflek-
tera över perspektivet i bilden och hennes blick. Att skapa en
video med en webbkamera möjliggör för personen framför
kameran att se bildmaterialet i realtid och Petra Cortright är
skådespelare, regissör och redaktör simultant när hon gör
dessa självporträtt. Hon har samlat olika programvaror som
manipulerar bilden genom olika effekter och använder dem
direkt i datorn medan videon spelas in. Detta påminner oss
om kvinnan som motiv både i konst- och filmhistorien där
en passiv och tilltalande kvinna gärna skildrats. Traditionellt
var konstnären eller regissören en man och bilden skapades
med en manlig betraktare i åtanke. Petra Cortright talar inte
om sina arbeten som feministiska, men de får mig att tänka
på hur konstnärer som till exempel Cindy Sherman har fått
konstpubliken att tänka om kring traditionerna bakom både
porträttkonsten och filmen. Sherman lyfter hur mediabilden
av kvinnan begränsat möjligheten för kvinnor att skapa sin
38
SUSANNE EWERLÖF
egna frigjorda självbild. Genom sina självporträtt där hon
klär sig som kvinnliga karaktärer från filmer eller historis-
ka målningar pekar hon på att den avbildade kvinnan är en
cliché och en “typ” snarare än en individ.
Feministiska filmkritiker och konsthistoriker har också
diskuterat traditionen att skildra kvinnor. Ett banbrytande
tillägg i denna diskussion var Laura Mulveys koncept “Den
manliga blicken” som hon presenterade 1975 i essän Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.8 Där visar hon hur filmer är
skapade utifrån ett maskulint och heterosexuellt perspektiv
där kvinnor objektifieras för manlig njutning. Den manliga
blicken förekommer i tre positioner; den manliga fotografen,
de manliga karaktärerna i filmen och den manliga åskådaren.
Den ojämna fördelningen av makt mellan män och kvinnor
styr filmmediet till att behaga den manliga publiken. Filmens
språk är så starkt och lärs in vid en så pass tidig ålder att hela
publiken inklusive kvinnor kommer att inneha den manliga
blicken och uppleva klassisk mainstreamfilm ur den manliga
huvudpersonens perspektiv.
I sina filmer ses Petra Cortright titta tillbaka på betrakta-
ren, vilket är en feministisk strategi i sig. Samma blick kontrol-
lerar också hur videon skapats i realtid, vilket avslöjar hennes
ställning som både regissör och aktör, och hon ödelägger
alla tre positionerna av den manliga blicken på en gång. När
man tittar noga kan man se hur hennes ögon rör sig från att
titta in i kameran till punkt strax nedanför, sannolikt skärmen
där bilden visas för henne. För alla som är vana att använda
program för videosamtal i realtid, som till exempel Skype, är
det här troligtvis bekant. Två personer kan titta på bilderna
av varandra, men deras ögon möts aldrig riktigt eftersom
kameran och skärmen är några centimeter ifrån varandra. I
fallet med Cortrights youtube-filmer avslöjar blicken hennes
dubbla position som objekt och subjekt. I sammanhanget av
en videokonversation kan möjligheten att se både sig själv och
bilden av sin samtalspartner på skärmen innebära att vi inte
8 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film
Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Red. Leo Braudy and
Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: s. 833-44.
39
 OM KONSTEN ATT SE SUSANNE EWERLÖF

längre ser varandra i ögonen. Det får mig att tänka att något munikation och innehåller inte alltid visuella element, men
gått förlorat, en fantastisk aspekt av ögat är trots allt dess jag skulle ändå argumentera för att den har en nyckelfunktion
förmåga att samla information och kommunicera samtidigt. när det gäller att utveckla människors tänkande och seende.
Du vet att du har någons koncentration och intresse om du Detta kan även appliceras på andra konstformer. Vi tittar på
möter en fast blick, och du kan läsa av personens känslor via ett visst sätt när vi går in i ett konstrum, liksom i en biosalong
ögonen. I ett klassiskt scenario där det ska avgöras om någon eller på teater. Konst bär ofta många nivåer av information
är sanningsenlig eller inte i något de beskriver, ombeds denne och är en bra inspiration för kritiskt tänkande: Vem gjorde
att se någon i ögonen för att försäkra personen om sannings- detta och varför? I vilket sammanhang har denna bild eller
halten i påståendet. ett objekt gjorts? Vilka visuella traditioner kan detta arbete
Jag har valt att kalla den här utställningen If Seeing is kopplas till? Många andra frågor kan naturligtvis läggas till
Believing och samlar alla dessa reflektioner kring seende i i denna lista. Det finns en sak som är säker; det finns alltid
ett sammanhang som relaterar till vår tid. Ibland känns det finns mer att se, fler sätt att se dem på och framtiden kommer
svårare än någonsin att veta vad man ska tro på i en värld att ge ännu fler reflektioner kring hur man ser och hur det
fullspäckad av information. Bilder och visuella intryck är en spelar in i olika aspekter av konst och liv.
stor del av denna informationsmängd och det verkar som om
att vi alla behöver bli mer medvetna och aktiva när det gäller
att hantera detta flöde.
Seendet är svårt att lita på men samtidigt ett av våra
främsta verktyg när vi ska navigera genom världen. Idag
måste vi lära oss att ifrågasätta källan och avsikten bakom
det vi ser, antingen det är ett inslag från nyheterna eller en
perfekt bild av någons liv som presenteras genom Instagram.
Tyvärr verkar det som att vissa möjligheter till denna välbe-
hövliga kunskap har gått förlorad i Sverige, när regeringen
har dragit ner på bildundervisningen i skolan de senaste
åren.9 För mig tycks det som om det är där en grundförstå-
else för bildskapande lärs ut och där ges också möjligheten
att reflektera och diskutera bildkonsumtion och tolkning.
Detta medför att konst och konstinstitutioner spelar en stor
roll i vår tid och har relevans för människor långt bortom den
aktiva konstpubliken. Fullersta Gård är en offentligt finan-
sierad institution som finns till för en bred publik som bor i
Huddinge, Stockholm eller hela Sverige. Den samtida konsten
kan reflektera olika aspekter av mänskligt tänkande och kom-

9 I september 2017 presenterade den svenska regeringen en ny plan

om gymnasieundervisningen för Riksdagen. Enligt den ska elever
som följer den nationella studieplanen ska få undervisning i minst
ett estetiskt ämne, till exempel bild. Ifall förslaget godkänns imple-
menteras förändringarna 2018.

40 41
 LENA BERGENDAHL LENA BERGENDAHL

DISPLACEMENT
Lena Bergendahl (1982, Sweden) is interested in the meeting
between moving images, rooms and objects in her five-channel
video work. Everything ties together to a complex narrative.

OF THE
For the viewer, it is physically impossible to view all video
stories at the same time, and the work demonstrates the limi-
tation of humans, when it comes to capturing visual expres-

VISIBLE
Still from five-channel video installation, mixed media (2015).
Stillbild från femkanalig videoinstallation, blandat material (2015).
sions. The artist uses several means to manipulate the images
in the physical space, glass may break or mirror light and
objects distort perspectives.
The work revolves around the Italian natural science and
optics researcher Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615) and his
theories. It shows places where he worked, including Naples.
The city has been rebuilt, changed, restored, demolished and
displays layers of both the past and present. Today, optics
and different reproduction techniques are used to experiment
with time or preserve memories of current events.

Lena Bergendahl (1982, Sverige) intresserar sig för mötet

mellan rörliga bilder, rum och objekt i denna femkanaliga
videoinstallation. Allt knyts samman till en komplex berät-
telse. För betraktaren är det fysiskt omöjligt att ta del av alla
videoberättelserna samtidigt och verket visar på människans
begränsning vad det gäller att ta in visuella uttryck. Samtidigt
använder konstnären olika grepp för att manipulera bilderna
i rummet; glas kan bryta eller spegla ljus och föremål kan
förskjuta perspektiven.
Verket kretsar kring den italienska natur- och optikforskaren
Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615) och hans teorier. Det
visar platser där han arbetade, bland annat Neapel. Staden
har byggts om, förändrats, restaurerats, rivits och visar lager
av både dåtid och nutid. Idag är används optik och olika
reproduktionstekniker för att experimentera med tid eller
bevara vår samtid.

42 43
44 45
46 47
48 49
50 51
Five-channel video installation, mixed media. Installation view from Verkstad Konsthall.
Femkanalig videoinstallation, blandat material. Installationsvy från Verkstad Konsthall.

52 53
54 55
56 57
58 59
 PETRA CORTRIGHT PETRA CORTRIGHT

007GOLDENEYE
By creating images in Photoshop and referring to it as pain-
ting, Petra Cortright (1986, Santa Barbara, USA) challenges

.SEXUAL_
an artistic tradition that has been dominant, condemned
and constantly re-actualized throughout art history. The
finished works have often been presented as mounted prints
and they have distinct painterly qualities despite the uncon-

VIDEO- ventional technique. Each painting is printed onto a surface

material that effectively becomes part of the painting itself

CONFERENCING
– aluminium, linen, paper – completing the transition from
digital to material.
Here looped videos are on display, they reveal the process

_CHARACTERS- behind her paintings; the motif builds up slowly but never
lands in a finalized image. Only a patient viewer can dis-
tinguish the small shifts.

CHEATSHARKS Genom att skapa bilder i Photoshop och kalla det för
måleri utmanar Petra Cortright (1986, Santa Barbara, USA)
en tradition som genom konsthistorien varit dominant,
Video, 15:45 min (2016). dödsdömd och ständigt återaktualiserad. De färdiga verken
har hon ofta presenterat som utskrivna bilder, trots den
okonventionella tekniken har de klart måleriska drag. Varje
målning trycks på ett utvalt material vars yta blir en del av
verket, det kan vara aluminium, linneduk eller papper. När
det övergår från digital till materiell form färdigställs verket.
Här visas loopade videor där vi får se processen bakom
hennes målningar och hur motivet sakta byggs upp utan
att det resulterar i en färdig bild. Endast den tålmodige kan
urskilja de små skiftningarna i förloppet.

60 61
 PETRA CORTRIGHT PETRA CORTRIGHT

POLY_CLOTH-
Video, 16:30 min (2017).

ORCHIDS11
62 63
 PETRA CORTRIGHT PETRA CORTRIGHT

I THOT I WUZ
Through the history of art and images, people have been one
of the most dominant motives, and discussions about how
people are depicted can be linked to different social debates.

FREE,
Is someone, for example, a passive object or an active subject?
From whose perspective is the image made?
Today, the selfie is one of the most common forms of

TRUELIFE: portraits and there are endless digital channels where the image
of the self can be distributed. Petra Cortright uses contem-

I’M A SELFIE
porary image conventions when she makes short films for the
Youtube platform.

(FAKE TRUE’S
Genom konst- och bildhistorien har människan varit ett av de
dominerande motiven och diskussioner kring hur personer
avbildas kan knytas till olika samhällsdebatter. Är någon t.ex.

NEGATIVITY
ett passivt objekt eller ett aktivt subjekt? Ur vems perspektiv
är bilden gestaltad?
Idag är selfien en av de vanligaste formerna av porträtt och

REMIX), det finns oändliga digitala kanaler där bilden av en själv kan dis-
tribueras. Petra Cortright använder nutida bildkonventioner
när hon gör korta filmsnuttar för plattformen Youtube.

BUGGIN OUT,
DRK PARA
i thot i wuz free, video, 1:22 min (2016).

Buggin out, video, 2:04 min (2013).

64 65
 MYKOLA RIDNYI
BLIND SPOT
Acrylic spray on c-print, 42 x 59,4 cm each; pen on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm each, installation
view from All the world's futures, Arsenale, 56th Venice biennale for contemporary art,
2015. Photo: Alessandra Chemollo / la Biennale di Venezia.
Sprayfärg på c-print 42x 59,4 cm; bläck på papper, 21 x 29,7 cm, installationsvy från
All the world's futures, Arsenale, 56:e Venedigbiennalen, 2015. Foto: Alessandra Chemollo
/ Venedigbiennalen.
66
MYKOLA RIDNYI
A blind spot is an obscuration of the visual field present in
the retina of each eye. To complement this lack of vision we
rely on visual information from the other eye. Concurrently
we make use of previous knowledge and memory when
constructing reality.
Mykola Ridnyi (1985, Kharkiv, Ukraine) uses the metaphor
of our incomplete vision to criticize the social blindness
imposed by the propaganda of war. The images come from
media reports from the war in eastern Ukraine that he has
covered in spray paint. Choosing to divide society into "us"
and "them", "ours" and "theirs, is a result of being blind to a
more complex reality.
En blind fläck är en begränsning i det visuella fältet och det
finns en sådan plats på näthinnan i vartdera ögat. För att
kompensera denna brist i synfältet förlitar vi oss på visuell
information från det andra ögat. Samtidigt använder vi
tidigare minnen och kunskap när vi konstruerar en bild av
verkligheten.
Mykola Ridnyi (1985, Charkiv, Ukraina) använder meta-
foren av vår bristfälliga syn för att kritisera den sociala
blindheten som uppstår i följderna av krigets propaganda.
Hans bilder kommer från medierapporter från kriget i östra
Ukraina och har täckts med sprayfärg. Att välja att dela
samhället i "oss" och "dem", "vår" och "deras", är ett resultat av
att ha blundat för en mer komplex verklighet.
67
Acrylic spray on c-print, 42 x 59,4 cm.
Sprayfärg på c-print, 42x 59,4 cm.

68 69
70 71
72 73
74 75
TORIL JOHANNESSEN TORIL JOHANNESSEN

UNLEARNING
OPTICAL
ILLUSIONS II&III
The Unlearning Optical Illusions project has preoccupied Toril
Johannessen (1978, Harstad, Norway) for a long time and
resulted in a series of works, two of which appear in the ex-
hibition. She has designed a series of textiles presented in
different ways. They all have an intricately colorful pattern
that contains a famous optical illusion.
From a Western perspective, this type of printed textile
is often linked with African culture. However, in western
Africa, where they are very popular, they are called "Dutch
Wax Print" or "Hollandaise".

Projektet Unlearning Optical Illusions har sysselsatt Toril Jo-

hannessen (1978, Harstad, Norge) under en längre tid och
det har resulterat i en serie verk, varav två visas här i utställ-
ningen. Hon har formgivit en serie textilier som presenteras
på olika sätt. De har alla ett intrikat färgrikt mönster som
innehåller en känd optisk illusion.
I ett västerländskt perspektiv kopplas den här typen av
tryckta textiler ofta samman med afrikansk kultur. I Väst-
afrika, där de är mycket populära kallas de däremot ”Dutch
Wax Print” eller ”Hollandaise”.

Unlearning Optical Illusions (II)

Part of installation, photograph (170x120 cm) depicting textile with
the Hermann optical illusion.
Del av installation, fotografi (170x120 cm) föreställande textil med
den optiska illusionen Hermann.

76 77
Unlearning Optical Illusions (III)
Part of installation, printed textile (wax print on cotton) with the Hering & Wundt optical illusion.
Del av installation, tryckt textil (vaxtryck på bomull) med den optiska illusionen Hering & Wundt.

78 79
Unlearning Optical Illusions (III)
Part of installation, printed textile (wax print on cotton) with the Müller-Lyer optical illusion.
Del av installation, tryckt textil (vaxtryck på bomull) med den optiska illusionen Müller-Lyer.

80 81
Unlearning Optical Illusions (III)
Part of installation, printed textile (wax print on cotton) with the Hermann optical illusion.
Del av installation, tryckt textil (vaxtryck på bomull) med den optiska illusionen Hermann.

82 83
Unlearning Optical Illusions (II & III)
Installation view from ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, photo: Maja Theodoraki.
Installationsvy från ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, foto: Maja Theodoraki.

84 85
Unlearning Optical Illusions (II)
Installation view from ARoS Aarhus Art Museum.
Installationsvy från ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum.

86 87
 ALEKSANDRA VAJD & HYNEK ALT ALEKSANDRA VAJD & HYNEK ALT

UNTITLED
Artist duo Aleksandra Vajd (1971, Maribor, Slovenia) and
Hynek Alt (1976, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic) have worked
together since 2001 and jointly explore the photographic

(PAINT CANS)
medium while challenging its boundaries. They work with
images as objects, use the room and are interested in the ma-
teriality of light.
The piles of printed images showing the tops of opened
paint cans in different colors, may trick the eye. Vision
requires much of our brainpower and in order to handle all
the information, the brain needs to make assumptions, based
on past experiences.

Konstnärsduon Aleksandra Vajd (1971, Maribor, Slovenien)

och Hynek Alt (1976, Kutná Hora, Tjeckien) har arbetat tillsam-
mans sedan 2001 och utgår gemensamt från det fotografiska
mediet och utmanar dess gränser. De arbetar med bilden som
objekt, inkluderar rummet i sina installationer och undersöker
ljusets materialitet.
Travarna med printade bilder föreställande ovansidan
av öppnade färgburkar i olika kulörer kan lura ögat. Seendet
kräver mycket av vår hjärna och för att kunna hantera all
information så gör den hela tiden antaganden, baserade på
tidigare erfarenheter.

20 stacks of 500 cut-out offset posters (2013).

20 staplar med 500 utskurna offsettryck (2013).

88 89
ALEKSANDRA VAJD & HYNEK ALT ALEKSANDRA VAJD & HYNEK ALT

TWO SIDES OF
The two pictures show the side of a pile of photographs and
remind us that a printed photo is not just an image, it also
has materiality and a format. Today, many images are com-

ONE STORY
municated digitally without taking physical form. Two Sides
of One Story also brings to mind the huge amount of images
that exist today, and how small a fraction we are seeing and
experiencing.

De två bilderna visar sidan av travar med fotografier och

påminner oss om att ett printat foto inte bara är en bild utan
att det också har en materialitet och ett format. Idag sprids
många bilder digitalt utan att ta fysisk form. Two Sides of One
Story för också tankarna till det omätliga antalet bilder som
existerar idag, och hur liten bråkdel vi tar del av.

Two photographs, c-print, 50x40 cm (2009).

Två fotografier, c-print, 50x40 cm (2009).

90 91
ALEKSANDRA VAJD & HYNEK ALT ALEKSANDRA VAJD & HYNEK ALT

UNTITLED
(CAVES)
The cave can be associated with early human settlement and
the oldest pictures we know of. Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek
Alt have photographed cave openings as windows to the
world in Slovenia since 2009. The philosopher Plato used the
cave in his metaphor about the world we experience being
just a pale copy of reality, where ideas are more accurate than
the physical world.
In the exhibition we are displaying one photo from the
series printed on photographic background, 270 x 360 cm.

Grottan kan associeras med människans tidiga bosättningar

och de äldsta bilder vi känner till. Aleksandra Vajd och Hynek
Alt har fotograferat grottöppningar som ett fönster mot
världen i Slovenien sedan 2009. Filosofen Platon använde
grottan i sin metafor om sinnevärlden och idévärlden, för att
skildra hur det vi kan uppfatta med våra sinnen bara är en
illusion av den riktiga världen.
I utställningen visas ett fotografi ur serien tryckt på foto-
bakgrund, 270 x 360 cm.

Digital print, various sizes (2009-present).

Digitalt tryck, blandade storlekar (2009-pågående).

92 93
94 95
96 97
 WINDY FUR RUNDGREN WINDY FUR RUNDGREN

BLI TILL VATTEN/

BECOME WATER
Windy Fur Rundgren (1975, Eskilstuna, Sweden) is interested
in metaphysics and explores historical artistic methods, how
color and shape affect the room as well as the eye of the
beholder.
The starting point for her latest work has been a three-
dimensional form, made from two musical instruments
transformed into a two-dimensional image. The motif is
reflected in a variety of paintings of different sizes, painted
with egg tempera on raw canvas. The five elements and their
interactions are included in the process and have been trans-
ferred in interplay with the painting.

Windy Fur Rundgren (1975, Eskilstuna, Sverige) är intresserad

av metafysik och utforskar genom konsthistoriens beprövade
metoder hur färg och form påverkar rummet och betraktarens
seende.
Utgångspunkten för hennes senaste arbete är en tre-
dimensionell form av två musikinstrument som hon överför
till en tvådimensionell bild. Motivet återkommer här i ett
flertal målningar av olika format, målade med äggoljetempera
på obehandlad duk. De fem elementen och dess samspel finns
med i processens gång och har överförts i en växelverkan
med måleriet.

Painting, oil on canvas (2017).

Målning, olja på duk (2017).

98 99
 WINDY FUR RUNDGREN
A Rönisch piano in black ebony, made in 1899, standing back
to back with itself. Like a parallel mirror world, she turns and
twists my seeing. On one side; the philosophy, stretching the
frame, the content of which I can change. On the other side;
the mathematics, cutting through reality based on the given
preferences of what the content might say.
Sketch with photograph of piano body painting in egg
oil tempera on linen, and text scanned from Roger Penrose’s
book “Shadows of the mind – a search for the missing science
of consciousness” 1
Four moons moving across a quadrant, a shadow play
with circles. The black holes lowering themselves down
through the corners of the quadrant. Left standing out of the
tetragon are two piano bodies, which, back to back, become
a soundless “instrument” with 89 keys. In the three-dimensi-
onal revelation of the piano bodies, another form comes into
shape, not spherical but flat. It is a Yantra, a mathematical-
ly-computed form whose irregular polygon is the very heart
of the instrument. Like a quiet room, it is open for anyone
who needs to sit down and play. Amaterasu, Hypatia, Af
Bingen, Kovalevskaya, Af Klint, Toyen, Clausen; one by one
they sit down and tap on the white ivory keys. Creating music
against our backs, which can somehow be “put into words”.
Meditating,,becoming water,,and listening.
"The Sun Goddess Amaterasu (Japanese legend 712 CE) was in a
rage and hid inside Ame-no-Iwato, the heavenly rock cave. Because
of Amaterasu’s disappearance, the world was deprived of all light
and evil spirits roamed freely on earth. The gods tried everything
to get the angry and wounded Amaterasu to leave the cave. At the
advice of Omoikane, the other gods placed roosters outside the
cave, hoping that the crowing would make her believe it was dawn.
Then they placed a Sakaki tree (a dicotyledon) outside the cave, on
which they hung jewels, beautiful fabrics, and a mirror in its centre.
The sensual Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto then began striptease-dan-
cing outside the cave. The commotion from the other gods enticed
the curious but angry Amaterasu to peek out. She was overwhelmed
1 Oxford University Press 1994. Roger Penrose is a British mathe-
matician, theoretical physicist, and Professor Emeritus at Oxford
University.
100
WINDY FUR RUNDGREN
by the dazzling mirror image and was quickly pulled out by the
other gods. At the same time, one of them tied a magic rope in front
of the cave to prevent her from going back there to hide.
From the beginning, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu ruled the sky
together with her brother, Tsukuyomi, the Moon God and ruler of
night. They shared heaven until he killed “The Goddess of Food”,
Uke Mochi, as she was in the process of pulling out food for the
people from her mouth, rectum, and nose. The murder angered
Amaterasu and thus she condemned her brother to be an evil god.
Amaterasu separated herself from Tsukuyomi, separating night
from day."
I am captivated by how seeing is an undefined form and how
the past, like the appealing presence of seeing, creates anew.
Both on a political level and existentially; for the individu-
al. The stretchable of a three-dimensional surface versus a
two-dimensional one (flat and spherical at the same time)
shows an openness to the unknown, where we choose to see,
and see again. A Yantra differs from a Mandala because it is
mobile and can be moved, such as a painting or an object. 2
Like a sunflower, a Yantra consists of Fibonacci numbers,
rising in a microtubule structure. Each “piano body” is pla-
tonically made with the brushstrokes. Hypatia (mathematici-
an and leader of the Neoplatonic School of Alexandria in the
400s) viewed mathematics and astronomy as the pathway to
metaphysical knowledge. According to Plato, mathematical
concepts and mathematical truths consist of an actual world
in itself, which is timeless and without physical space. Plato’s
world is an ideal world with perfect forms, clearly noticeable
in the physical world, but in terms of how the physical world
is perceived. Franciska Clausen (Danish artist 1899-1986) used
the two-dimensional surface to create motion-evoking forms.
Windy Fur Rundgren (2017)
2 Gudrun Buhnemann, Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Tradition,
D. K. Printworld, New Delhi, India 2007. Gudrun Bühnemann is
Professor of Sanskrit and South Asian Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She received her Ph.D. from the Univer-
sity of Vienna in 1980.
101
 WINDY FUR RUNDGREN
Ett Rönischpiano, i svart ebenholt tillverkad 1899, står rygg
mot rygg med sig själv. Likt en parallel spegelvärld; vänder
och vrider hon på mitt seende. På den ena sidan; filosofin,
som tänjer på ramen vars innehåll jag kan förändra, och på
den andra; matematiken, som skär genom verkligheten utifrån
de givna preferenser av vad innehållet kan säga.
Teckning med fotografi av pianokroppmålning i äggolje-
tempera på lin, samt text scannad ur Roger Penrose bok Shadows
of the mind - a search for the missing science of consciousness.1
Fyra månar rör sig över en kvadrat, ett skuggspel med
cirklar. De svarta hålen sänker sig ned genom kvadratens
hörn och kvar ur tetragonen står; Två pianokroppar, som
rygg mot rygg blir ett ljudlöst “instrument” med 89 tangenter.
I pianokropparnas tredimensionella uppenbarelse bildas det
en annan form som inte är sfärisk, utan istället platt. Det är ett
Yantra, en matematiskt uträknad form vars irregulära polygon
är själva hjärtat av instrumentet. Som ett tyst rum står det
öppet för den som behöver slå sig ned och spela. Amaterasu,
Hypatia, Af Bingen, Kovalevskaja, Af Klint, Toyen, Clausen; en
efter en sätter de sig ned och knackar med de vita elfenbens-
tangenterna. Skapar musik mot våra ryggar, som på något vis
går att “sätta ord på”. Mediterar,,blir till vatten,,och lyssnar.
"Solgudinnan Amaterasu (japansk sägen 712 CE) var i vrede och
gömde sig inuti AmanoIwato, himmelska bergsgrottan. Som kon-
sekvens av Amaterasus försvinnade var världen satt i totalt mörker
och onda andar härjade fritt på jorden. Gudarna försökte med alla
medel att få den arga och sårade Amaterasu att lämna grottan. På
inrådan av Omohi-Kane, satte de andra gudarna ut tuppar utanför
grottan för att deras kacklande skulle få henne att tro det var
gryning. Sedan placerade de ett Sakakiträd (tvåhjärtbladig växtart)
utanför grottan där de hängde juveler, vackra tygstycken och en
spegel i dess centrum. Varpå den sensuella Ameno-Uzame-no-Mi-
koto dansade strip-tease utanför grottan. Uppståndelsen från de
andra gudarna lockade, den nyfikna men arga, Amaterasu att kika
ut. Hon blev överrumplad av den bländande spegelbilden och
drogs då snabbt ut av de andra gudarna. Samtidigt knöt en av dem
1 Oxford university press 1994. Roger Penrose är brittisk mate-
matiker, teoretisk fysiker och Professor Emeritus vid Oxfords
Universitet.
102
WINDY FUR RUNDGREN
ett magiskt rep framför grottan, så att hon inte längre skulle kunna
gömma sig igen.
Från början härskade Solgudinnan Amaterasu himlen tillsam-
mans med hennes broder Tsukuyomi, Månguden och härskaren
över natten. De delade på himlen fram till att han dödade ”Gudinnan
av föda” Uke Mochi, under ett moment då hon drog ut mat åt folket
ur sin mun, ändtarm och näsa. Detta mord upprörde Amaterasu och
hon dömde därmed brodern för att vara en ond gud. Amaterasu
delade sig från Tsukuyomi, separerade natt från dag."
Jag fångas av hur seendet är en icke bestämd form och hur det
förflutna liksom skeendets tilltalande närvaro skapar på nytt.
Både på ett politiskt plan och existensiellt; för den enskilda
människan. Det tänjbara av en tredimensionell yta kontra
tvådimensionell (platt och sfärisk på samma gång) påvisar en
öppenhet inför det främmande, där vi väljer att se, och se på
nytt. Ett Yantra skiljer sig från ett Mandala för att den är
mobil och kan förflyttas, så som en målning eller ett objekt. 2
Ett Yantra består liksom solrosen av fibonaccinummer
som reser sig i en mikrotubulis struktur. Varje ”pianokropp”
är i penselföringen platoniskt utförd. Hypatia (matematiker
och ledare för den nyplatonska akademien i Alexandria på
400-talet) såg matematik och astronomi som vägen till me-
tafysisk kunskap. Enligt Platon består matematiska koncept
och matematiska sanningar av en faktisk värld i sig själv, som
är tidlös och utan fysisk plats. Platons värld är en ideal värld
med perfekta former, tydligt märkbar i den fysiska världen,
men i termer av hur den fysiska världen upplevs. Franciska
Clausen, (dansk konstnär 1899-1986) använde sig av den tvådi-
mensionella ytan för att skapa rörelsesuggererande former.
Windy Fur Rundgren (2017)
2 Gudrun Buhnemann, Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Tradition,
D. K. Printworld, New Delhi, India 2007. Gudrun Bühnemann är
Professor i Sanskrit och Sydasiatiska studier vid Wisconsin-Madisons
universitet, USA. Gudrun Bühnemann mottog sin Ph.D. från Uni-
versitetet i Wien 1980.
103
WINDY FUR RUNDGREN WINDY FUR RUNDGREN

104 105
106 107
 DOWNCAST EYES MARTIN JAY

DOWNCAST
Even a rapid glance at the language we commonly use will
demonstrate the ubiquity of visual metaphors. If we actively
focus our attention on them, vigilantly keeping an eye out for

EYES:
those deeply embedded as well as those on the surface, we
can gain an illuminating insight into the complex mirroring
of perception and language. Depending, of course, on one’s
outlook or point of view, the prevalence of such metaphors
will be accounted an obstacle or an aid to our knowledge of

INTRODUCTION
reality. It is, however, no idle speculation or figment of ima-
gination to claim that if blinded to their importance, we will
damage our ability to inspect the world outside and intro-
spect the world within. And our prospects for escaping their
thrall, if indeed that is even a foreseeable goal, will be greatly
dimmed. In lieu of an exhaustive survey of such metaphors,
whose scope is far too broad to allow an easy synopsis,
this opening paragraph shoud suggest how ineluctable the
modality of the visual actually is, at least in our linguistic
practice. I hope by now that you, optique lecteur, can see what
I mean.1
Other Western languages also contain a wealth of
examples to buttress the point. No German, for instance,
can miss the Augen in Augenblick or the Schau in Anschauung,
nor can a Frenchman fail to hear the voir in both savoir and
pouvoir.2 And if this is so with ordinary language, it is no less

1 There are some twenty-one visual metaphors in this paragraph,

The selected texts were originally published as introductory and
concluding chapters in Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration
of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, California University
Press (1993). Reprinted with the authors permission.
many of them embedded in words that no longer seem directly
dependent on them. Thus, for ex­ample, vigilant is derived from the
Latin vigilare, to watch, which in its French form veiller is the root
of surveillance. Demonstrate comes from the Latin momtrare, to show.
Inspect, prospect, introspect (and other words like aspect or circumspect)
all derive from the Latin specere, to look at or observe. Speculate has
the same root. Scope comes from the Larin scopium, a translation of
a Greek word for to look at or examine. Synopsis is from the Greek
word for general view. These are latent or dead metaphors, bur they
still express the sedimented importance of the visual in the English
language. For a discussion of dormant visual metaphors, see Colin
Murray Turbayne, The Myth of Metaphor (Columbia, S.C., 1971).
2 The French etymologies for these words are, to be sure, different:
voir coming from the Latin videre, savoir from saptre, and pouvoir

108 109
 DOWNCAST EYES
the case with the specialized languages intellectuals have
designed to lift us out of the commonsensical understanding
of the world around us. As Ian Hacking and Richard Rorty
have recently emphasized, even Western philosophy at its
most putatively disinterested and neutral can be shown to be
deeply dependent on occluded visual metaphors.3
In addition to the ocular permeation of language, there
exists a wealth of what might be called visually imbued
cultural and social practices, which may vary from culture
to culture and epoch and epoch. Sometimes these can be
construed in grandiose terms, such as a massive shift from an
oral culture to a “chirographic” one based on writing and then
a typographic one in which the visual bias of the intermedia-
te stage is even more firmly entrenched.4 On a more modest
level, enthropologists and sociologists have examined such a
visually fraught phenomena as the widespread belief in the
evil eye, which has given rise to a no less popular series of
countervailing apotropaic remedies.5 Somewhere in between,
from potere. But sometimes imagined etymologies reveal as much
as real ones. For a consideration of this theme, see Derek Anridge,
”Language as History/History as Language: Saussure and the
Romance of Etymology,” in Post-structuralism and the Question of
History, ed. Derek Amidge, Geoff Bennington, and Robert Young
(Cambridge, 1987). That the con­nections were made is shown by
the film theorist Thierry Kuntzel’s essay ”Savoir, pouvoir, voir,” Ca
Cinema, 7-8 (May, 1975).
3 Ian Hacking, Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? (Cambridge,
1975); Rich­ard Rorry, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton,
1979). For a discussion of the link between knowledge and sight in
all lndo-European tongues, see Stephen A. Tyler, ”The Vision Quest
in the West, or What the Mind’s Eye Sees,” Journal of Anthropological
Research, 40, I (Spring, 1984), pp. 23-39. He shows that at least one
other language family, Dravidian, lacks this linkage.
4 For arguments of this kind, see Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the
Word (New Haven, 1967); Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage
Mind (Cambridge, 1977); and Donald M. Lowe, History of Bourgeois
Perception (Chicago, 1982).
5 For recent studies of the evil eye, see Clarence Maloney, ed., The Evil
Eye (New York, 1976); Lawrence Di Stasi, Mal Occhio: The Underside of
110
MARTIN JAY
historians of technology have pondered the implications of
our expanded capacity to see through such devices as the
telescope, microscope, camera, or cinema. What has been
called the expansion of our “exosomatic organs”6 has meant
above all extending the range of our vision, compensating for
its imperfections, or finding substitutes for its limited powers.
These expansions have themselves been linked in complica-
ted ways to the practices of surveillance and spectacle, which
they often abet.
Because of the remarkable range and variability of visual
practices, many commentators have been tempted, in ways
that we will examine shortly, to claim certain cultures or
ages have been “ocularcentric,”7 or “dominated” by vision.
For them, what may seem a function of our physiology or
evolution is best understood in historical terms, with the
obvious conclusion oftend rawn that we can reverse the
effects of that domination. Anthropological evidence of
radical variations in the intersensory mix of different cultures
has been adduced to encourage such an outcome.8
But as in so many other similar debates, the threshold
between what is “natural” and what is “cultural” is by no
Vision (San Francisco, 1981); and Tobin Siebers, The Mirror of Medusa
(Berkeley, 1983). For an account of apotropaic responses to it, see
Albert M. Potts, The World’s Eye (Lexington, Ky., 1982).
6 Robert E. Innis, ”Technics and the Bias of Perception,” Philosop-
hy and Social Criti­cism, 10, 1 (Summer, 1984), p. 67. Although visual
”prostheses’’ appear to be the most significant extension of human
sense organs, such inventions as the telephone, loudspeaker, stet-
hoscope, and sonar demonstrate that hearing has also been exoso­
matically enhanced. The other senses have perhaps not been as
fortunate.
7 As is the case with many neologisms, ”ocularcentric” or ”ocular-
centrism” is some­rimes spelled differently in the literature. Often it
is rendered ”oculocentric,” or less frequently ”ocularocentric.” In
previous publications I have followed the first of these usages and
will remain wirt it here.
8 See, for example the essays in David Howes, ed., The Varieties
of Sensory Experi­ence: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses
(Toronto, 1991).
111
 DOWNCAST EYES
means easy to fix with any certainty. For example, the
psychologists Michael Argyle and Mark Cook have recently
concluded that “the use of the gaze in human social behavior
does not vary much between cultures: it is a cultural univer-
sal.”9 But the implications of the work of another psycho-
logist, James Gibson, suggests otherwise. Gibson contrasts
two basic visual practices, which produce what he calls “the
visual world” and the “visual field.”10 In the former, sight is
ecologically intertwined with the other senses to generate the
experience of “depth shapes,” whereas in the latter, sight is
detached by fixating the eyes to produce “projected shapes”
instead. A plate, for example, will be experienced as round in
the visual world, but as an ellipse in the visua field, where the
rules of perspectival representation prevail. The implication
of Gibson’s argument is that the vision is normally crossed
with the other senses, but it can be artificially separated out.
Thus, cultures might be differentiated according to how
radically they distinguish between the visual field and the
visual world.
But whether we identify the later with the “natural” vision
is not self-evident. In a series of essays, the philosopher Max
Wartofsky has argued for a radically culturalist reading of all
visual experience, including Gibson’s two dominant modes.11
9 Michael Argyle and Mark Cook, Gaze and Mutual Gaze (Cambridge,
1976), p. 169. lt should be noted chat they use the term ”gaze” in a
general sense to mean any kind of visual interaction. Unlike some
of the authors cited later, they do not contrast it with the less
fixating glance.
10 James J. Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World (Boston, 1950);
Senses Consid­ered as Perceptual Systems (Boston, 1966); The Ecological
Approach to Visual Perception (Boston, 1979). For a recent defense of
Gibson, see John Hell, Perception and Cogni­tion (Berkeley, 1983).
11 Marx W. Wartofsky, ”Pictures, Representations and the Under-
standing,” in Logic and Art: Essays in Honor of Nelson Goodman, ed. R.
Rudner and I. Scheffler (India­napolis, 1972); ”Perception, Repre-
sentation and the Forms of Action: Towards an Historical Episte-
mology,” in his Models: Representation and the Scientific Understand­ing
(Boston, 1979); ”Picturing and Representing,” in Perception and
Pictorial Repre­sentation, ed. Calvin F. Nodine and Dennis F. Fisher
112
MARTIN JAY
Alternately talking about “visual postures,” ”visual scenarios,”
“styles of seeing,” or “cultural optics,” he concludes that
“human vision is itself an artifact, produced by other artifacts,
namely pictures.”12 All perception, he contends, is the result
of historical changes in representation. Wartofsky thus
presents an intentionalist account of visuality, which verges
on making it a procuct of collective human will.
Judging from the current state of scientific research on
sight, which helps in conceptualizing the “natural” capaci-
ties and limitations of the eye, Wartofsky’s hostility to any
physiological explanation of human visual experience may,
however, be excessive.13 Certain fairly fundamental characte-
ristics seem to exist, which no amount of cultural mediation
(New York, 1979); ”Visual Scenarios: The Role of Representation in
Visual Perception,” in The Perception of Pictures, ed. M. Hagen, vol.
2 (New York, 1980); ”Cameras Can’t See: Representation, Photo-
graphy and Human Vision.” Afterimage, 7, 9 (1980), pp. 8-9; ”Sight,
Symbol and Society: Toward a History of Visual Perception,”
Philosophic Exchange, 3 (1981), pp. 23-38; ”The Paradox of Painting:
Pictorial Representation and the Di­mensionality of Visual Space,”
Social Research, 51, 4 (Wimer, 1984), pp. 863-883. For a similar
plea for a culturalist position, see Robert D. Romanyshyn, ”The
Des­potic Eye: An lllustration of Metabletic Phenomenology and Its
Implications,” in The Changing Reality of Modern Man, ed. I. Dreyer
Kruger (Cape Town, 1984); and Technology as Symptom and Dream
(London, 1989).
12 Warrofsky, ”Picturing and Representing,” p. 314.
13 For helpful recent summaries of the status of scientific
knowledge about vision, see M. H. Pirenne, Vision and the Eye
(London, 1967); Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle, Deciphering the
Senses: The Expanding World of Human Perception (New York, 1984);
Anthony Smith, The Body (London, 1985); John P. Frisby, Seeing:
Illu­sion, Brain, and Mind (Oxford, 1980); Steven Pinker, ed., Visual
Cognition (Cam­bridge, Mass., 1985); Walter J. Freeman, ”The Phy-
siology of Perception,” Scientific American 264, 2 (February, 1991).
Cognitive faculty psychology influenced by Noam Chomsky has
also attempted to establish a modular concept of the mind in which
visual perception transcends cultural variations. See, for example,
Jerry A. Fodor, The Modularity’ of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology
(Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
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 DOWNCAST EYES
can radically alter. As a diurnal animal standing on its hind
legs, the early human being developed its sensorium in such
a way as to give sight an ability to differentitate as assimila-
te most external stimuli in a way superior to the other four
senses.14 Smell, which is so important for animals on all fours,
was reduced in importance, a fateful transformation that
Freud was to conjecture was the very foundation of human
civilization.15 Vision was the last of the human senses to
develop fully, its very complexity always proving a difficult
case for incremental theories of evolution. It also remains the
last of the senses to develop in the fetus, only in fact gaining
its true importance for the survival of the neonate some time
after birth.16 The infant, it is sometimes argued, experiences
a synesthetic confusion of the senses without vision fully
differentiated from the rest. Smell and touch are apparently
more functionally vital than sight at this very early stage of
development.
The maturation of the child, however, the superior
capacity of the eyes to process certain kinds of data without
is soon established. Having some eighteen times more nerve
14 The anthropologist Edward T. Hall has conjectured that even
before hominids stood on their hind legs, vision was important:
”Originally a ground-dwelling ani­mal, man’s ancestor was forced
by interspecies competition and changes in the envi­ronment to
desert the ground and take to the trees. Arboreal life calls for keen
vision and decreases dependence on smell, which is crucial for
terrestrial organisms. Thus man’s sense of smell ceased to develop
and his powers of sight were greatly enhanced.” See Hall, The
Hidden Dimension (Garden City, N.Y., 1982), p. 39.
15 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. James
Strachey (New York, 1961), pp. 46-47.
16 Rivlin and Gravelle, p. 79. lt might be noted that they posit a
much wider senso­rium than the generally accepted five senses.
Based on experiments with a variety of animals, science has noted
some seventeen different ways in which organisms can respond to
the environment. Some of these may have a residual role in human
behav­ior. Which possibly accounts for the existence of so-called
extrasensory perception. Still, they acknowledge that humans tend
to rely on sight more than any other sense.
114
MARTIN JAY
endings than the cochlear nerve of the ear, its nearest compe-
titor, the optic nerve with its 800,000 fibers is able to transfer
an astonishing amount of information on some five hundred
levels of lightness and darkness, while more than one million
combinations of color. The eye is also able to accomplish its
tasks at a far greater remove than any other sense, hearing
and smell being only a distant second and third.17
Despite the frequent characterization of vision as
atemporal and static, the eye can only do its job by being in
almost constant motion. Either it rapidly jumps from one
briefly fixated point to another through what are known as
saccadic movements (named after the French word for jer,
saccade, by Émile Javal, who discovered them in 1878)18 or
it follows a moving across a visual field. Its so-called vest-
ibulo-ocular reflex makes it turn in the opposite direction
of a rapid head movement to retain a continuity of image
and its “vergence system” constantly fuses short and long-
range focus into one coherent visual experience.19 Even
during sleep, as scientists only learned in the 1960s, rapid eye
movements is the norm. Although it is, of course, possible to
fix the gaze, we cannot really freeze the movement of the eye
for very long without incurring intolerable strain.
Although the optical mechanism of vision has been well
understood since the time of Kepler,20 who established the
17 According to Hall, ”Up to twenty feet the ear is very efficient. At
about one hundred feet, one-way vocal communication is possible,
at a somewhat slower rate than at conversational distances, while
a two-way conversation is very considerably altered. Beyond this
distance, the auditory cues with which man works begin to break
down rapidly. The unaided eye, on the other hand, sweeps up an
extraordinary amount of information within a hundred-yard radius
and is still quite efficient for human interaction at a mile” (The
Hidden Dimension. p. 43).
18 Émile Javal, Annales d’oculistique (Paris. 1878).
19 For a discussion of these systems, see Argyle and Cook, pp. 16-17.
See also Claude Gandelman, ”The ’Scanning’ of Pictures,” Commu-
nication and Cognition, 19, 1 (1986), pp. 3-24.
20 For an excellent history of optics up through Kepler, see David
115
 DOWNCAST EYES
laws of refraction governing the transmission of light rays
through the cornea, viscous humors, and lenses of the eyeball
onto the retinal wall at its rear, the precise manner of its trans-
lation into meaningful images in the mind remains somewhat
clouded. The image recieved reversed and inverted, but the
physiological cum psychological processes which “read”
it correctly are still incompletely known. The binocular or
stereoscopic integration of data from the two eyes into one
image with apparent three-dimensional depth is also not
yet fully understood. Indeed, with all the advances science
has made in explaining human vision, its complexities are
such that many questions remain unanswered. Significant-
ly, attemps to duplicate it through computer simulation have
met so far with only very modest success.21
If the eye’s powers are appreciated by science, so too are
its limitations. Human vision can see light waves that are only
a fraction of the total spectrum—in fact, less than 1 percent
with such phenomena as ultraviolet light, visible to other
species, excluded.22 In addition, the human eye has a blind
spot where the optic nerve connects with the retina. Normally
ignored because the vision of the other eye compensates for
it, the blind spot’s existence nonetheless suggests a metapho-
ric “hole” in vision, which, as we will have ample occasion
to witness, critics of ocularcentrism gleefully exploit. Human
vision is also limited by its capacity to focus on objects only
a certain distance from the eye, a distance that normally
increases with age.
Thus the eye’s superiority at sensing objects from afar is
balanced by its inferiority at seeing those very close. Finally,
we are often fooled by visual experience that turns out to be
illusory, an inclination generated perhaps by our overwhel-
C. Lindberg. Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976).
See also the various histo­ries of Vasco Ronchi, most notably Optics:
The Science of Vision, trans. Edward Rosen (New York, 1957). and The
Nature of Light: An Historical Survey, trans. V. Barocas (London, 1975).
21 See William J. Broad. ”Computer Quest to Match Human Vision
Stymied.” lnternational Herald Tribune (October 4, 1984), p. 7.
22 Rivlin and Gravelle: p. 53.
116
MARTIN JAY
ming, habitual belief in its apparent reliability. Here the com-
pensating sense is usually touch, as we seek confirmation
through direct physical contact.
One final aspect of the contemporary natural scientific
understanding of vision merits comment. Unlike the other
senses of smell, touch, or taste, there seems to be a close, if
complicated, relationship between sight and language, both of
which come into their own approximately the same moment
of maturation. As Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle note, “The
ability to visualize something internally is closely linked with
the ability to describe it verbally. Verbal and written descrip-
tions create highly specific mental images … The link between
vision, visual memory, and verbalization can be quite start-
ling.”23 There is therefore something revealing about the am-
biguities surrounding the word “image,” which can signify
graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, or verbal phenomena.24
The implications of the final point are very significant for
the problem noted earlier: the permeability of the boundary
between the “natural” and the “cultural” component in what
we call vision. Although perception is intimately tied up with
language as a genereic phenomenon, different peoples of
course speak different tongues. As a result, the universality
of visual experience cannot be automatically assumed, if that
experience is in part mediated linguistically. Natural science,
therefore, itself suggests the possibilty of cultural variables, at
least to some degree. It implies, in other words, the inevitable
entanglement of vision and what has been called “visuality”,
the distinct historical manifestations of visual experience in
all its possible modes.25 Observation, to put it another way,
23 Ibid., pp. 88-89. For a discussion of the complex interaction
between vocal-­auditory and gestural-visual channels of communi-
cation, see Argyle and Cook, p.124.
24 For an account of its various meanings, sec W. J. T. Mitchell,
”What is an Image?” in lconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago, 1986).
For a more restrictive notion of the term which attacks its literary
use, see P. N. Furbank. Reflections on the Word ‘Image’ (London, 1970).
25 For a discussion of the difference, see Hal Foster, ed., Vision and
Visuality (Seattle, 1988), especially the editior’s preface.
117
 DOWNCAST EYES
means observing the tacit cultural rules of different scopic
regimes.
The cultural variability of ocular experience will be even
more evident if we consider it, as it were, from a different per-
spective. The eye, it has long been recognized, is more than
the passive receptor of light and color. It is also the most ex-
pressive of the sense organs, with only the competitor being
touch. Although the ancient theory of light rays emanating
from the eye, the theory called extramission, has long been
discredited,26 it expressed a symbolic truth. For the eye—
broadly understood as including the complex of muscles,
flesh, and even hair around the eyeball—can clearly project,
signal, and emit emotions with remarkable power. Common
phrases such as “a piercing or penetrating gaze”, “melting
eyes,” “a come-hither look,” or “casting a cold eye” all capture
this ability with striking vividness. Aided by its capacity to
overflow with the tears necessary to bathe it with constant
moisture, a capacity triggered by a multitude of different
stimuli, some physical, some emotional ( the latter found
only in humans), the eye is not only, as the familiar clichés
would have it a “window on the world,” but also a “mirror of
the soul.”27 Even the dilation of the pupil can unintentionally
betray an inner state, subtly conveying interest or aversion to
the beholder.
There is, moreover, a learned ability to use the eys to
express something deliberately, a skill more sharply honed
than in the case of the other senses. Ranging from the casual
glance to the fixed glare, the eye can obey the conscious will
of the viewer in a way denied the other more passive senses,
26 Perhaps the belief in rays coming from the eye was due to the
phenomenon of light shining off the eyeball through reflection,
which is especially evident in certain animals. Descartes, as late as
La Dioptrique, credited the cat with extramission for this reason. In
1704, however, an experiment showed that if a cat is immersed in
water, the lack of corneal refraction prevents the eye from shining.
See Smith, The Body. p.380.
27 For a discussion of the importance of crying as an ocular expe-
rience, see David Michael Levin, The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and
the Postmodern Situation (New York, 1988), chap. 2.
118
MARTIN JAY
on again the only competitor being touch with its ability to
strangle as well as caress. The phenomenon of the evil eye,
mentioned above, is only one manifestation of this potential
for sending powerful messages. As a result, vision is often
called “the censor of the senses … an arbiter of behavior, an
inhibitor or stimulus thereto,”28 unlike the more accepting
touch. Significantly, of all the animals, only man and the
primates have the ability to use the gaze to send affiliative
as well as threatening signals. Here scientists have conjectu-
red that this ability may be a residue of our visually charged
infant feeding position the the maternal look of love the key
to later behavior.29
Messages are only such, of course, if they are recieved,
and one of the most ectraordinary aspects of vision, most
broadly conceived, is the experience of being the object
of the look. Here the range of possibilities is exceptionally
wide, extending from the paranoid’s fantasy of being under
constant hostile surveillance to the exhibitionist’s narcissistic
thrill at being the cynosure of all eyes. There can also be few
human interactions as subtle as the dialectic of the mutual
gaze, ranging from the contest for domination to the lovers’
complementary adoration. Even not being the object of the
look conveys a powerful message under certain circumstan-
ces, as any underling who has become an “invisible man” will
quickly attest.
Terms such as paranoia, narcissism, and exhibitionsim
suggest how powerfully visual experience, both directed and
recieved, can be tied to our psychological processes. In ways
we will explore later, vision has been frequently linked by
psychologists to the “normal” emotions of desire, curiosity,
28 Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Significance of the Human Skin, 3d
ed. (New York, 1986), p. 269.
29 Argyle and Cook, p. 26. They suggest that because Japanese
mothers tend to carry their infants on their back, their culture is
less dependent on the mutual gaze. As for the contention that only
humans and primates send affilative signals, which is also theirs, it
might be thought that dogs do the same, at least in their interaction
with humans. But do they send each ocher such messages too?
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 DOWNCAST EYES
hostility, and fear. The remarkable ability of images originally
construed as mimetic representations or aesthetic ornaments
to be transformed into totemic obejcts of worship in their
own right also bespeaks vision’s power to evoke hypnotic
fascination.30 And scopophilic and scopophobic inclinations
have also been widely acknowledged as fundamental aspects
of the human psyche.31
With all of these dimensions to the phenomenon we call
vision—and others can doubtless be added—it is no surprise
that our ordinary language, indeed our culture as a whole, is
deeply marked by its importance. An excellent example of
its power can be discerned in no less central a human phe-
nomenon than religion.32 From the primitive importance of
the sacred fire33 to the frequency of sun-worship in more
developed religions—such as Chaldean and Egyptian—and
the sophisticated metaphysics of light in the most advanced
theologies,34 the ocular presence in a wide variety of religous
practices has been striking. Some faiths, like Manichaean
Gnosticism, have fashioned themselves “religions of light”;
others, like the often polytheistic Greek religion, assignes a
special role to the sun gods like Apollo. Unearthly, astral light
surrounding the godhead, the divine illumination sought by
the mystic, the omniscience of a god always watching his
30 The word fascination, it might be noted, has itself an origin in
the Latin for casting a spell, usually by visual means.
31 For a recent account of their implications, see David W. Allen.
The Fear of Look­ing: On Scopophilic-Exhibitionist Conflicts (Charlottes-
ville, Va., 1974).
32 For a recent overview, see David Chidester, Word and Light:
Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse (Champaign, Ill., 1992).
Another obvious area is literature, where visual imagery abounds.
There is an inexhaustible commentary on ”the eye in the text.
33 The classic study of its importance is by Numa-Denys Fustel de
Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of Religion, Laws and Institutions of
Greece and Rome, trans. Willard Small (Boston, 1873).
34 For a survey of religions of light, see Gustav Mensching, ”Die
Lichrsymbolik in der Religionsgeschichce,” Studium Generale, 10
(1957), pp. 422-432.
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MARTIN JAY
flock, the symbolicprimacy of the candle’s flame—all of these
have found their way into countless religious systems. So
too has the remarkable power attributed by mirrors, which
so-called scryers or specularii have claimed a special gift to
read for signs of the divine. At times the insubstantiality of the
mirror’s image has been taken as a token of the purity of the
dematerialized soul. At others, the “spotless mirror” has been
analogized to the immaculate nature of the Virgin Mary.35
No less symptomatic of the power of the optical in religion
is the tendency of the visionary tradition to posit a higher sight
of the seer, who is able to discern a truth denied to normal
vision. Here the so-called third eye of the soul is invoked to
compensate for the imperfections of the two physical eyes.
Often physical blindness is given sacred significance, even if
at times as punishment of transgressions against the gods.36
What Thomas Carlyle once called “spiritual optics”37 has,
of course, continued to have a powerful effect well after its
original religious sources lost much of their legitimacy.
But as might be expected of so deeply affecting a phenome-
non, the ocular presence in religion has also aroused a hostile
reaction. Its privileged role has been challenged, especially
when the gap between spiritual and mundane optics has been
perceived as unbridgeable. In fact, suspicion of the illusory
potential of images has often led to full-fledged iconopho-
bia.38 Monotheistic religions, beginning with Judaism, have
35 For accounts of the religious importance of mirrors, see
Benjamin Goldberg, The Mirror and Man (Charlottesville, Va., 1985);
and Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass: Mirror-Imagery in Titles; and
Texts of the Middle Ages and the English Renaissance, trans. Gordon
Collier (Cambridge, 1982).
36 For a discussion of the religious implications of blindness, see
William R Paulsen, Enlightenment; Romanticism, and the Blind in
France (Princeton, J 987), In­troduction.
37 Thomas Carlyle, ”Spiritual Optics,” in Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1835,
ed. James Anthony Froude, 2 vols. (New York, 1882), 2: 7-12.
38 For a survey of its various manifestations, see Kenneth Clark,
”Iconophobia,” in Moments of Vision and Other Essays (New York,
1981). See also Moshe Barasch, Icon: Studies in the History of an Idea
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 DOWNCAST EYES
been deeply wary of the threat of pagan idolatry. The fictional
character of artificial images, which can only be false simula-
tions of the “truth,” has occasioned distrust among more puri-
tanical critics of representation. St. Paul’s celebrated warning
against the speculum obscurum, the glass (or mirror) through
which we see only darkly, vividly expressed this caution
about terrestrial sight. Religious distrust was also aroused by
the capacity of vision to inspire what Augustine condemned
as concupiscentia ocularum, ocular desire, which diverts our
minds from more spiritual concerns.39 These and like suspici-
ons have at times come to dominate religious movements and
dictate long-standing religious taboos. Moses’s struggle with
Aaron over the Golden Calf, the Islamic rejection of figural
representation, the iconoclastic controversy of the eight-cen-
tury Byzantine church, the Cisterican monasticism of St.
Bernard, the English Lollards, and finally the Protestant Re-
formation all express the antiocular subcurrent of religious
thought. In fact, this hostility remains alive today in the work
of such theologians as Jacques Ellul, whose Humiliation of the
Word, written in 1981, reads like a summa of every imaginable
religious complaint against the domination of sight.40
Ellul’s animus against vision cannot, however, be under-
stood solely in the context of the time-honored tradition of
religious iconophobia, for it draws as well on a much wider
antivisual discourse that extends well beyond the bounda-
ries of religious thought. That discourse, I hope to demon-
strate, is a pervasive but generally ignores phenomenon of
twentieth-century Western thought. Although by no means
confined to one locale, it is most prevalent and multifarious
in a country where it may seem, for reasons we will examine
shortly, highly improbable. That country is France. It will be
the main purpose of this study to demonstrate and explore
what at first glance may seem a surprising proposition: a
(New York, 1992).
39 Saint Augustine, Confessions, chap. 35.
40 Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, trans. Joyce Main
Hanks (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1985).
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MARTIN JAY
great deal of recent French thought in a wide variety of fields
is in one way or another imbued with a profound suspicion of
vision and its hegemonic role in the modern era.41
To establish this argument, I will begin with a general
consideration of the Western attitudes toward sight in its
various guises. After focusing more precisely on the honored
place of the visual in French culture since the time of Louis
XIV and Descartes, I will turn to the indications of its crisis
in the late nineteenth century by examining changes in the
visual arts, literature, and philosophy, most notably the
works of Henri Bergson. I will then explore the more explicit
manifestations of hostility to visual primacy in the work of
artist and critics like George Bataille and André Breton, phi-
losophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and
Emmanuel Levinas, social theorists like Michel Foucault,
Louis Althusser, and Guy DeBord, psychoanalysts like
Jacques Lacan and Luce Irigaray, cultural critics like Roland
Barthes and Christian Metz, and poststructuralist theorists
like Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard. In so doing,
I hope to clarify the implications of the denigration of vision
for the current debate over modernity and postmodernity.
Before beginning so ambitious an undertaking, a few
words of methodological explanation are in order. The focus
on this study is on a discourse rather than on a visual culture
in its entirety. It would, in fact, be very hazardous to charac-
terize French culture as a whole as hostile to the visual. Paris,
“the City of Lights,” remains for many the most dazzling
and brilliant urban setting ever devised by our species. The
fascination of the French with such visually dominated
phenomena as fashion, cinema, or public ceremonial remains
unabated. And as anyone who has spent the month of August
41 Other examples of a similar attitude will no doubt occur co
readers familiar with different national traditions: for example,
American pragmatism with its distrust of speccacorial epistemolo-
gy or German hermeneutics with its general privileging of the ear
over the eye. It would also be possible to pursue the theme in the
work of indi­vidual thinkers outside of the orbit of French thought,
such as Wittgenstein with his subtle ruminations on the distinction
berween ”seeing” and ”seeing-as.”
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 DOWNCAST EYES
on the Côte d’Azur can easily testify, they are scarcely less
fascinated than ancient solar cultists in “worhipping the
sun.”42 Indeed, even their intellectuals tend to be obsesses
with visual phenomena, as the remarkable preoccupation of
so may of them with painting, photography, film, and archi-
tecture demonstrates.
And yet, for many that obsession hast turned in a negative
direction, as an essentially ocularphobic discourse has
seeped into the pores of French intellectual life. By choosing
to call the complex of antivisual attitudes a discourse, I am
fully aware that I am invoking one of the most loosely used
terms of our time. It has been employed in a host of different
contexts, from the communicative rationalism of Jürgen
Habermas to the archaeology of knowledge of a Foucault;
from the computerized Althusserianism of a Michel Pêcheux
to the sociolinguistics of a Malcolm Coulthard; from the
textual analysis of a Zelig Harris to the ethnomethodology of
a Harvey Sacks.43
Despite these contrary and shifting usages, discourse
remains the best term to denote the level on which the objects
of this inquiry is located, that being a corpus of more or less
looselt interwoven arguments, metaphors, assertions, and
prejudices that cohere more associatively than logically in
any strictsense of the term. Discourse in this usage is explicit-
42 See John Weighcman, ”The Solar Revolution: Reflections on a
Theme in French Literature” Encounter, 35, 6 (December, 1970), pp.
9-18, for an account of sun worship and its literary manifestations,
which he dates from Andre Gide.
43 Jurgen Habermas, ”Wahrheitstheorien,” in Wirklichheit und
Reflexion: Walther Schulz zum 60. Geburmag (Pfullingen, 1973), pp.
211-265; Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M.
Sheridan (London, 1972), in which the term ”discursive formation”
is used; Michel Pecheux, Analyse Automatique du Discours (Paris,
1969); Language, Semantics and Ideology (New York, 1982); Malcolm
Coulthard, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (Harlow, Essex,
England, 1977); Zelig S. Harris, ”Discourse Analysis,” Language,
28 (1952), pp. 1-30; Harvey Sacks, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and
Gail Jefferson, ”A Simplest Systematics for the Organiza­tion of
Turn-Taking for Conversations,” Language, 50 (1974), pp. 696-735.
124
MARTIN JAY
ly derived fromt the Latin discurrere, which means a running
around in all directions. The antiocularcentric discourse that
I hope to examine is precisely that: an often unsystematic,
sometimes internally contradictory texture of statements,
associations, and metaphors that never fully cohere in a
rigorous way. No single figure expresses all of its dimensions
and none would be likely to accept them all, even if they were
explicitly posed as positive arguments. Nor has there been
anything like a conscious conspiracy determining its disse-
mination.44 But as a powerful if at times subliminal context,
the discourse we will explore has helped shape the attitudes
of a wide variety of French intellectuals who share little else
in terms of their disciplines, politics, or theoretical self-cons-
ciousness. At times, it provides them with a vocabulary to
discuss other issues, as a powerful metaphoric often does,
lending arguments an emotional tone and critical energy that
would otherwise be inexplicable.
“Discourse analysis,” as James Clifford has noted, “is
always in a sense, unfair to authors. It is interested in not what
they have to say or feel as subjects, but is concerned merely
with statements as related to other statements in a field.”45
Discourse as I am using it thus cuts across the boundaries
of what Freud would have called the conscious, preconsci-
ous, and unconscious. It includes Pêcheux’s “forgetting no.
1,” which the subject cannot fully remember, and his “for-
getting no. 2,” which a certain amount of effort can restore
consciousness.46 That only perhaps an outsider can bring it
more fully to the surface is the justificatory assumption of
this study, which aims not only to reveal the extent of this
hidden discursive continent, but also probe its implications
in a critical way.
44 This disclaimer is necessary to set straight the confusion con-
cerning my inten­tions evident in John Rajchman’s otherwise very
interesting essay, ”Foucault’s Arc of Seeing,” October, 44 (Spring,
1988), p. 90.
45 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Lit­erature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass., l 988), p. 270.
46 Pecheux, Language, Semamics and Ideology, p. l 26.
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In holding on to such a hope, it will be quickly realized
that the author is betraying his sympathy for one of the
targets of the discourse in certain of its bleaker moods. That
is, I remain unrepentantly beholden to the ideal of illumina-
tion that suggests an Enlightenment faith in clarifying indis-
tinct ideas. To make matters worse, I will employ a method
that unapologetically embraces one of the antiocularcentric
discourse’s other major targets, a synoptic survey of an intel-
lectual field at some remove from it. Here I invite the same
reproach made in some of the responses to an earlier work
that dealt with the Western Marxist concept of totality: that
I am tacitly arrogating to myself the very totalizing vantage
point called into serious question by the crisis of holistic
thinking my narrative has reconstructed.47
A fateful, if unanticipated, continuity between the two
books is in fact demonstrated by the opening metaphor of
the direst, which called of “mapping the uncertain terrain” of
Western Marxism, a figure of speech that immediately evokes
the visual distance of a stranger not at home in the landscape
he or she must survey from afar.48 But as any honest geograp-
her will readily admit, mapmaking cannot escape the bias—
both in the literal sense of a slanted perspective and in the
metaphorical one of a cultural prejudice—of the mapmaker.
There is no “view from nowhere” for even the most scrupu-
lously “detached” observer.
These charges let me plead guilty, but with extenuating
circumstances. First, as I’ve tried to argue elsewhere, the
tradition of intellectual historian’s tool of synoptic content
analysis, when complicated by a healthy distrust of reductive
paraphrase, is indispensible in making sense of the past.49 For
47 Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from
Lukacs to Habermas (Berkeley, 1984); the reproach was made in a
thoughtful review essay by Ferenc Feher in Theory and Society),
14, 6 (November, 1985), p. 875.
48 Jay, Marxism and Totality, p. 1. For a critique of mapping meta-
phors, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R.
Nice (Cambridge, 1977), p. 2.
49 Martin Jay, ”Two Cheers for Paraphrase: The Confessions of a
126
MARTIN JAY
it expresses a certain cautious optimism about the potential
for a communicative interaction between the historian and his
subject matter—the fusion, as Hans-Georg Gadamer would
optimistically put it, of their horizons. Horizon is of course
a visual metaphor, if a less totalizing one than synopsis. It
suggests that finite vantage point from which the historian
“sees” the past, an insight hermeneutically minded histori-
ans since the days of J. C. Chladenius in the early eighteenth
century have known well.50 Even when partial horizons are
fused, no absolute God’s-eye view above the fray is possible.
But perhaps some advantage is nonetheless gained from the
attempt to “achieve a perspective,” as we say, on the material,
and then to compare it with those of the participants involved,
as the materials they have left behind allow us to reconstruct
them.
In this particular case, I have been fortunate to be able to
discuss this argument with several of the figures it purports
to explain, thus experiencing a more active fusion—or at least
interaction—of horizons than is given to most historians. In a
striking number of the cases, they were fully sonversant with
the implications of their own work on visual themes, but were
unaware of the larger dimensions of the discourse in which it
was embedded. Although my attempts to convince them of its
extent did not always fully succeed, a kind of fusion seems to
have begun. For my own part, I can verify that my horizon has
been transformed by this opportunity in ways that I hope have
increased the subtlety and plausability of the book’s argument.
Synoptic lntellectual Historian,” Stanford Literature Review, 3, 1
(Spring, 1986), pp. 47-60; reprinted in Fin-de-siécle Socialism and
Other Essays (New York, 1988).
50 For a discussion of Chladenius’s use of ”point of view” in
history, see Michael Ermarth, ”Hermeneutics and History: The
Fork in Hermes’ Path Through the 18th Century,” in Aufklärung und
Geschichte: Studien zur deutschen Geschichtswissenschafti im 18. Jahrhun-
dert, ed. Hans Erich Bödicker et al. (Göttringen, 1987), pp. 217f. See
also the important essay by Reinhart Koselleck, ”Perspective and
Temporality: A Contribution to the Historiographical Exposure of
the Historical World,” in his Fu­tures Past: On the Semantics of Histori-
cal Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, 1985).
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 DOWNCAST EYES
Another warrant for the retention of a synoptic approach
comes from the methodological reflections of the French in-
tellectual who has himself written among the most trenchant
studies of visual themes, Jean Starobinski. In the preface to
his collection of essays, L’oeil vivant, he comments on the value
and the dangers of what he calls “le regard surplombant” (the
look from above):
“Despite our desire to lose ourselves in the living depths of a work,
we are constrained to distance ourselves from it in order to speak of it.
Why then not deliberately establish a distance that will reveal to us,
in a panoramic perspective, the surroundings with which the work
is organically linked? We would try to discern certain significant
correspondences that haven’t been perceived by the writer, to inter-
pret his mobile unconscious, to read the complex relations that unite a
destiny and a work to their historical and social milieu.” 51
After then acknowledging the threats inherent in a one-sided
regard surplombant, most notably the disappearance of the work
itself into its context, Starobinski concludes with a call for a
judicious balance, which this study also hopes to maintain:
“The complete critique is perhaps not one that aims at totality (as
does le regard surplombant) nor that which aims at intimacy (as does
identifying intuition); it is the look that knows how to demand, in their
turn, distance and intimacy, knowing in advance that the truth lies
not in one or the other attempt, but in the movement that passes inde-
fatigably from one to the other. One muset refuse neither the vertigo
of distance nor that of proximity; one must desire that double excess
where the look is always near to loosing all its powers.” 52
It is, let me end these introductory remarks by emphasizing,
such a willingness to risk this loss that ultimately empowers
the intellectual historian to enter the discursive field itself in
a critical way. How succesful the present effort will be in this
regard remains, of course, very much to be seen. [ ... ]
51 Jean Starobinski, L’oeil vivant: Essais (Paris, 1961), p. 26.
52 Ibid.
128
MARTIN JAY
CONCLUSION
It is now time to land our high-flying balloon and consider
what has been gained by its bumpy voyage over the landscape
of recent French thought on vision and visuality. The trip
began by acknowledging how thoroughly infused our
language is by visual metaphors, how ineluctable, to borrow
Joyce’s celebrated phrase, is the modality of the visible, not
merely as perceptual experience, but also as cultural trope.
It thus seemed fruitful to follow the unfolding of a loose
discourse about visuality, rather than try to document actual
transformations in sensual practices.
Inevitably, the interaction of such practices, whether
based on technical enhancements of the ability to see or
on social/political mobilizations of the results-with the
discourse itself has had to be acknowledged. And the no less
significant exchange between developments in the visual arts
and the theoretical discussion surrounding them has had to
be considered as well. For there is no privileged vantage point
outside the hermeneutic circle of sight as perceptual expe-
rience, social practice, and discursive construct.
And yet, by focusing more of our attention on the French
discourse about the visual than on visual practices per se,
certain benefits, I hope, have accrued. First, a welter of over-
lapping attitudes, arguments, and assumptions shared by a
large number of otherwise disparate thinkers has become
apparent as never before. Virtually all the twentieth-century
French intellectuals encountered on this voyage were extra-
ordinarily sensitive to the importance of the visual and no
less suspicious of its implications. Although definitions of
visuality vary from thinker to thinker, it is clear that ocular-
centrism aroused (and continues in many quaners to arouse)
a widely shared distrust. Bergson’s critique of the spatializa-
tion of time, Bataille’s celebration of the blinding sun and the
acephalic body, Breton’s ultimate disenchantment with the
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 DOWNCAST EYES
savage eye, Sanre’s depiction of the sadomasochism of the
“look,” Merleau-Ponty’s diminished faith in a new ontology
of vision, Lacan’s disparagement of the ego produced by the
mirror stage, Althusser’s appropriation of Lacan for a Marxist
theory of ideology, Foucault’s strictures against the medical
gaze and panoptic surveillance, Debord’s critique of the
society of the spectacle, Barthes’s linkage of photography and
death, Men’s excoriation of the scopic regime of the cinema,
Derridas double reading of the specular tradition of philosop-
hy and the white mythology, Irigaray’s outrage at the privi-
leging of the visual in patriarchy, Levinas’s claim that ethics
is thwarted by a visually based ontology, and Lyotard’s iden-
tification of postmodernism with the sublime foreclosure of
the visual-all these evince, to put it mildly, a palpable loss of
confidence in the hitherto “noblest of the senses.”
Antiocularcentrism in several cases turned, in fact, into
hostility to sight in virtually any of its forms. Critiques of
specific historical manifestations of visuality worked cumu-
latively to discredit vision per se, and the effects were evident
not only in France. For in the Anglo-American reception of
French thought beginning in the 1970s, many of the same
complaints were quickly echoed. Pragmatist philosophers
like Richard Rorty, reprising John Dewey’s earlier critique
of the “spectator theory of knowledge,” anthropologists
like Stephen Tyler and David Howe, building on the media
critiques of Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong, film critics
like Laura Mulvey and Mary Ann Doane, yoking together
apparatus theory and the feminist suspicion of the male gaze,
art historians like Rosalind Krauss and Hal Foster, rebelling
against the fetish of opticality in traditional modernist
theory, students of photography like John Tagg and Abigail
Solomon-Godeau, rejecting the formalist defense of pho-
tography’s claim to aesthetic value, were all inspired to one
degree or another by the French antiocularcentric discourse.
By 1990, Fredric Jameson could effortlessly invoke its full
authority in the opening words of Signatures of the Visible:
“The visible is essentially pornographic, which is to say that
it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about
its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to
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MARTIN JAY
betray its object.”1 Such a salutary “betrayal,” it should now be
apparent, had become almost second nature to many French
theorists and those they inspired elsewhere.
Second, the extent to which the critique of ocularcentrism
has helped fuel the concomitant weakening of faith among
French intellectuals—and not them alone—in what can be
broadly called the modern project of enlightenment has also
become manifest. The sole scopic regime of modernity cannot
be identified tout court with Cartesian perspectivalism; and
yet, time and again precisely such a premise underlay many
of the critiques of modernity so powerful among the thinkers
examined in this study. Although it would be a mistake to turn
the interrogation of the eye into nothing but a mere metaphor
for a counter-Enlightenment debunking of rational lucidity—
metaphors of this power are anything but “mere”—there is
evident truth in the claim that they have often been inter-
twined. For when the visual is cast out of the rational psyche,
it can return in the form of hallucinatory simulacra that mock
the link between sense (as meaning) and the sense of sight.
But third, it cannot be denied that for all its hyperbolic
rhetoric, for all its inclination to demonize, the antiocular-
centric discourse has successfully posed substantial and
troubling questions about the status of visuality in the
dominant cultural traditions of the West. It has weakened any
residual belief in the claim that thought can be disentangled
entirely from the sensual mediations through which it passes,
or that language can be shorn entirely of its sensual metapho-
ricality. It has shown the costs of assuming the eye, however
it is understood, is a privileged medium of knowledge or an
innocent instrument in human interaction. It has also high-
lighted the ways in which the concomitant denigration of
other senses brings with it certain cultural losses that warrant
redress. And finally, it has posed the vital question, how open
is our sensual interaction with the world to radical change?
Although an equally ruthless critique of the costs of privile-
ging other senses might result in conclusions no less troubling,
there can be no doubt that the French obsession with vision
1 Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible (London, 1990), p.1.
131
 DOWNCAST EYES
and visuality has proven extraordinarily productive.
A certain caution about the uncritical acceptance of all
the discourse’s implications may, to be sure, seem warranted.
The figures who have contributed to its elaboration might, for
example, be dismissed as mandarin intellectuals distrustful
of the visual pleasures provided my mass culture. As such,
they appear open to the charge of playing the time-honored
role of the privileged literate class disdainful of unlettered,
mere pleasure-seeking hoi polloi. Only those who possess the
power of the word, it might be argued, dread what Jacques
Ellul calls its humiliation; only those who think themsel-
ves above the lust of the eyes, it might be claimed, resist the
delights of the spectacle. For isn’t there a covert asceticism in
the denial of the pleasure of the gaze, even accounting for its
often gendered bias?
But such reproaches, it can be argued in return, fail to do
justice to the complexities of the antiocularcentric discourse,
whose fascination with visual experience often betrays a
keen attraction to its pleasurable side. Breton, Bataille, Mer-
leau-Ponty, Foucault, Barthes, and Lyotard are all thinkers,
after all, who show a keen personal appreciation of the lust of
the eyes; even Metz has to resist a constant temptation to be
seduced by the cinema. And when many of them do criticize
the eye, it is for its supposed disincarnated coldness, which
they contrast to the more proximate pleasures provided by
the other sense organs. As for the alleged elitism in their
critique, there is no necessary connection between privile-
ging language over perception—assuming this is what they in
fact do—and the maintenance of cultural hierarchy. Indeed,
those who control the production and dissemination of
images may be as much of an elite as those who protest the
power of those images over the masses. In short, the antio-
cularcentric discourse cannot be dismissed by turning it
into little more than a weapon in the struggle over cultural
capital.
Nor can it be undone by positing a normative notion of
visuality which it fails to appreciate. If anything, this study
shows the impossibility of assuming such a point d’appui exists.
Although the introduction resisted a completely constructionist
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MARTIN JAY
concept of the visual by citing recent scientific literature about
the functions and limitations of the eye, it would be problem-
atic to assume that the scientific debate over vision has
itself reached a definitive conclusion. As the recent work of
Jonathan Cray so persuasively show,2 it was no long ago that
scientific certainties about visual experience were overturned
in favor of others, which may also one day have their succes-
sors. Although there is much to be learned from experiments
in the mechanics and physiognomics of sight, that complex
mix of natural and cultural phenomena called visuality defies
reduction to any normative model based on scientific data
alone.
Indeed, it is precisely the proliferation of modes of
visuality that the antiocularcentric discourse, for all its fury
against the ones it distrusts, tacitly encourages. Ocular-ec-
centricity rather than blindness, it might be argued, is the
antidote to privileging any one visual order or scopic regime.
What might be called “the dialetics of seeing”3 precludes the
reification of scopic regimes. Rather than calling for the ex-
orbiation or enucleation of “the eye,” it is better to encourage
the multiplication of a thousand eyes, which, like Nietzsche’s
thousand suns, suggests the openness of human possibilities.
Even the putatively voyeuristic “male gaze,” a number of
feminist film critics have come to acknowledge, can be un-
derstood as far more dispersed and plural than might seem at
first glance.
A “woman’s cinema,” the have argued, must do more than
demonize visuality and the “apparatus” of film as necessari-
ly complicitous with patriarchy; a more specifically female
spectatorship should be nurtured as well.4 When “the” story
2 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity
in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
3 Susan Buck-Morss uses this phrase as the title of her arresting
account of Benjamin’s search for “dialectical images” amidst the
debris of bourgeois culture. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin
and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).
4 See, for example, Terese de Lauretis, who writes, “The project
of woman’s cinema, therefore, is no longer that of destroying or
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 DOWNCAST EYES
of the eye is understood as plyphonic—or rather, polys-
copic—narrative, we are in less danger of being trapped in
an evil empire of the gaze, fixated in a single mirror stage of
development, or frozen by the medusan, ontologizing look of
the other. Permanently “downcast eyes” are no solution to
these and other dangers in visual experience.
Among those visually infused practices that deserve a
second look is that of enlightenment itself. Disillusionment
with the project of illumination is now so widespread that
has become the new conventional wisdom. As Peter Slo-
terdijk observes in his magisterial account of the triumph
of cynical over critical reason, “There is, to be concise, not
only a crisis of enlightenment, not only a crisis of enlighte-
ners, but even a crisis in the praxis of enlightenment, in com-
mitment to enlightenment.”5 Even as loyal a defender of the
enlightenment project as Jürgen Habermas feels compelled,
however eluctantly, to call the present era that of “Die neue
Unübersichtlichkeit,” ”the new unsurveyability.”6 This mul-
tilevel crisis has many sources, and certainly the denigration
of ocularcentrism is among them. Although by no means all
of the protagonists in the history reconstructed in this study
lost faith in the efficacy of emancipatory critique, many did
weaken its premises by focusing so insistently on the negative
side of the dialetic of enLIGHTenment.
If, however, the still faintly visible positive side is not
disrupting man-centered vision by representing its blind spots,
its gaps or its repressed. The efort and challenge now are to effect
another vision: to construct other objects and subjects of vision,
and to formulate the conditions of representability of another social
subject” (“Aestheic and Feminist Theory: Rethinking Women’s
Cinema,” New German Critique, 34 (Winter, 1985), p.163).
5 Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. Michel Eldred
(Minneapolis, 1987), p.88.
6 Jürgen Habermas, Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt, 1985).
The English translation of this essay in The New Conservatism:
Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, trans. Shierry Weber
Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass., 1989) translates it as “the new
obscurity,” but “unsurveyability” better captures the sense of a lost
God’s-eye view.
134
MARTIN JAY
forgotten, it may be possible to salvage something from the
debris. It is to that end that this study has risked an Icarian
flight above the terrain of a discourse that knows all too well
the dangers of approaching the sun. Fully aware that his per-
spective is not that of the figures on the ground (if, indeed,
the metaphor of ground is itself still viable in an age when
philosophical foundations are routinely undermined), its
author nonetheless hopes that he has provided some useful
understanding of a discursive network that remains largely
invisible at sea level.
Perhaps, to be sure, postmodern culture has gone beyond
the point where a naive belief in the enlightening power of
such endeavours can still be maintained. Perhaps we no
longer need to worry about the benign effects of the eye, or
even its evil ones. In a parable about the current state of the
human sciences, Michel Serres claims that contemporary
modes of communication, based on codes and computers,
have put an end to the reign of “panoptic theory.” “The in-
formational world takes the place of the observed world,” he
writes, “things known because they are seen cede their place
to an exchange of codes. Everything changes, everything
flows from harmony’s victory over surveillance … Pan kills
Panoptes: the age of the message kills the age of theory.”7 The
eyes of the all-seeing god, he concludes, have been transfer-
red to the plumage of a peacock where “sigh looks blankly
upon a world from which information has already fled. A dis-
appearing species, only ornamental, the peacock asks us to
admire, in the public parks and gardens where the gawkers
gather, the old theory of representation.”8
But judging from the alarm expressed by his compatriots
at the omnipresent power of the visual, Serres’s confidence
in so epochal a shift seems premature. Representation and
theory in their traditional guises may be under assault, sur-
veillance and the spectacle may be widely decried, but the
power of visuality has certainly survived the attack.
7 Michel Serres, “Panoptic Theory,” in Thomas M. Kavanagh, ed.,
The Limits of Theory (Stanford, Calif., 1989), pp.45-46.
8 Ibid., p.47.
135
 DOWNCAST EYES

Panoptes has managed to fend off his total transfigur-

ation into the unseeing “eyes” of a peacock’s tail (just as the
postmodernist foreclosure of the visual into the realm of
meaningless simulacra has been less than complete). The
invisible, hermeneutic harmony of Pan (the son of Hermes)
that Serra claims now reigns in “the age of the message” is
still a long way off. And happily so, I would add, for vision
and visuality in all their rich and contradictory variety can
still provide us mere mortals with insights and perspectives,
speculations and observations, enlightenments and illumina-
tions, that even a god might envy.

136
 COLOPHON KOLOFON

Exhibition Utställning
Director Fullersta Gård: Peter Bergman Chef Fullersta Gård: Peter Bergman
Curator: Susanne Ewerlöf Curator: Susanne Ewerlöf
Education: Nina Kerola Pedagogik: Nina Kerola
Programs: Macarena Olmos Dusant Program: Macarena Olmos Dusant

The exhibition is produced by Fullersta Gård, Huddinge Utställningen är producerad av Fullersta Gård, Huddinge
Art Center, supported by the Czech Center in Stockholm, kommuns konstcentrum med stöd från Tjeckiska centret i
the Czech Embassy in Stockholm and the Curatorial Program Stockholm, Tjeckiska ambassaden i Stockholm och Curatorial
for Research. Program for Research.

Catalog Katalog
Editor and writer: Susanne Ewerlöf Redaktör och skribent: Susanne Ewerlöf
Texts by: Peter Bergman, Windy Fur Rundgren, Martin Jay Texter av: Peter Bergman, Windy Fur Rundgren, Martin Jay
Graphic Design: Erik Månsson Grafisk form: Erik Månsson
Proof reading: David Torell Korrekturläsning: David Torell

The catalog is produced with support from: Katalogen är producerad med stöd från:
Längmanska Kulturfonden Längmanska Kulturfonden

Thanks to Liv Strand, OSL Contemporary, Oslo and Drdova Tack till Liv Strand, OSL Contemporary, Oslo och Drdova
Gallery, Prague. Gallery, Prague.
SUPPORTED BY / MED STÖD FRÅN
Lena Bergendahl
Petra Cortright
Mykola Ridnyi
Toril Johannessen
Aleksandra Vajd
& Hynek Alt
Windy Fur Rundgren