Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Mirzoeff Introduction The - Visual - Culture - Reader

    Uploaded by

    Zsuzsa
    66 views11 pages

    Original Title

    Mirzoeff Introduction The_Visual_Culture_Reader

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    66 views11 pages

    Mirzoeff Introduction The - Visual - Culture - Reader

    Uploaded by

    Zsuzsa

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 11
    Chapter 1 Nicholas Mirzoeff THE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE URING THE FIRST DAYS of the NATO attack on Serba in Apnl 1999, 1 as watchinga CNN live report from Belgrade The pictres showed a burning | building somewhere in Belgrade while the anchor quietly relayed official comme iA ite lag indicate thatthe pictures were coming fom Serbian television. At this potnt, the surreal calm of the broadcast was suddenly disrupted. Serbian {levsion, realng tat CNN were ung thie feed, sliced wo earyng the American images designsted by the CNN logo, Thus CNN viewers were 0% ‘watching Serbian television watch them watching. CNN had cisplyed the Serbian television logo asa warning, indicating to its American audience thatthe pictures were not entirely to be trusted. Well aware that ts own viewers shared thi skep- ticism, Serbian television switched feeds in order to asert to its domestic audience that because they were now watching what CNN viewers were watching, they should in fet trast the pictures, Serbian television used the global television station ‘tw vindicate its local coverage, The now angry anchor intervened and CNN stopped showing the pictures, The lebal corporation ad lost control of the Jogos and hence the image. This then, ara struggle about imager ar well ara tragele over torr “This litle incident expressed the formal condition of contemporary vial ‘culture that cll interysuality, the simaltancous display ad interaction ofa variety ‘of modes ofvsuality. CNN sees itself asthe global surveillance chanel for Western viewers. Like the jiller in the imaginary prison known as the Panopticon (ace P- 397), the CNN camera ic supponed tole invxble ta participants in news event This enables trarsmision from behind enemy lines or at the heart of an ongoing riot. In fact, this viewpoint is highly restricted, creating the opportunity for Serbian television to ply its gem withthe logon, The vic in logue revealed hat, the images wore not pure viability but highly mediated representation. The logo itself is an expression of a chain of images, eiscourses and material reality, tht is to say, an leon, representing both an cer and a newer form of visuality than the 4 NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF ppanopticon ~ older in the Chelstan 4con, newer in the computer software ion, Finally, dhe rapid change of feed from Serbian teleisian to CNN anal back 10 the studio highlighted thst the domain of the contemporary image is literally and metaphorically electric. NATO forces were directing the war ining stele images and photographs as highly accurate guides for missiles. However, the ffctivenest ofthis strategy still depended on accurate interpretation of the image, as was male clear by the unintended bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgiade ~ mistake by US intelligence for a Serbian facility. The pilots who flew the misions were trained in High simulators but were only allowed up in clear weather conditions to that they could accurately survey the terrain below ‘This was a media war in all senses. On April 21, 1999 NATO planes attacked the tclevsion station belonging to Marja Milosevic, daughter of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and in 20 doing abo knocked out two other television satcns transmitting from the same building In the fire 123 episodes of The Snpuon as well as new episodes of Chicago Hope and Friends were destroyed, pitting the American armed forces against their own television networks. In a further twist knowing that the Western media woul erry photos of the damage, the government placed « porter in English directly in Front of the damaged Usce building that housed the television stations. It showed 4 computer generated image of the Eifll Tower in Parts seeming to collapse in flames under miltary attack. The destruction of global tourist symbols that was imagined in the scieace-ction film dependence Day (1996) ‘was now deployed in what one would hesitate te call ‘realty,’ were it not for the alltoo-real contequences of the weapons heing used on both sides, Agence France Presse duly ensured that the image was een around the world (New York Times April 22, 1999: A15). The caption read “Just Imagine! Stop The Bomb.” Ie artfully mixed the Nike ‘Just Do I” mantra with Arjun Appscuai’sobscrvatcn that i globalisa Son, the imagination ie sacal ict (Appadurai: all hold-face references are to pieces inthis Reader). The Serbian government was, of curse, no friend to freedom ‘of expression and closed dawn the independent radio sation 8:92, whose reports were not wholly favorable to the regime. B-92 quickly fourd a ew home an the Dutch website Nettime, It continued te broadcast’ but only to thore with access, [te not ton mich to may that winuality— the intersection of poseer with visual representation - was ltcrally being fought over here, All available media from the pills line of vision wo satelite-directed machine vision, photography, digitally ltsred images andthe global mass mela were arenas of contestation, Vinal culture ie tactic for those who do not control such dominant means of visual production ‘to negotiate the hypervisalty of everyly life in a digitized global ealture (On September 11, 2001, the world became aware of just how dramatic the ‘consequences of the milkariation of the globl imagination could be when hijacked airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center. This moment enacted in ‘wmible reality the destruction of «national symbol that ha heen imagined fs in ‘dema and then by the renegade Serbian state, A fll hitory ofthe visual dimen: ‘sons of the terrorist act would locate it as the mest extreme possible outcome of ‘the strategic manipulation ofthe image that began with the British government's media strategy daring the 1982 Falllands war. It woul then look at the wall orchestrated representatce of the Gulf war of 1991, which the Kosovo war seemed to confirm as the new standard. Jonathan L. Beller desenibes ‘how in tele-visual THE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE 5 ‘igue 1.1 Serbian government poster, fier NATO bombing, Apel 22, 1999 (April 2000 © Agence France Presse) ‘warfare the spectacular intensity of destruction as well a the illusion of ts cole tive sanction creates certain subjective elects — a seane of agency an power which ‘compensates for the generalized lack of thone in duly life" (eller 1998. 55-56). War ig then, the subject ofthese images but it is ako a means of ereatng subjects, ‘isl subjects. Inthe Gull war strategy, the agency belonged to the "West, seen from the peint of view of the weapons themselves. Pictures were transmitted showing ther ‘view’ oftheir targets right up anti the moment of impact This stun entation of war escmed to sigget a now surgical precision of warfare, ‘the endpoint of Walter Benjamin's famousicomparison ofthe surgeon andthe camera ‘operator. On September 11, the Wes discovered what i 1s like to be on the receving end of tlevisual war. As millions watched the destruction of the World ‘Trade Center live on television, it murt be acknowledged tht the renee of empow. cement Beller describes wat felt hy some viewers, most notoriously in Palestine, where there were public celebrations, This isnot to argue thatthe United Sates “deserved the attack or that It wan in any way justicd but. cll attention to the wey in which the Weetern notion of carcflly sontrolle tele-viual war vas appr [prated and enlarged by those wha engnsered the attacks. The glabsliaton of culture tums out to be kes predictable and far more dangerous than had been supposed. Visual events In the first edition of chs Reader, 1 argued that visual culture is concerned with visual event in which the user seks information, meaning or pleasure i an inter face with visual technology. This formula bears re-examination, given the rapid pace 6 NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF ‘of change [continue to think tht visual culture rather than visual studies er other such formulations ~ i the right phrase forthe discursive formation tha this Reader sccks to represent, By retaining the term eature inthe foreground, stitcs and prac titioners alike are reminded of the political stakes inherent in what we do, For otherwise it can and has been argued that there ino. particular need for vewal culture av an academic subfield, Visual culture has come into 2 certain prominence ‘now because many artists rics anal scholars have fel that the new urgency of the ‘sual cannot be fully considered in the established visual disciplincs, One way of connecting thove diferent diiplinary dilemmas — whether in art history, film studies or cultural studies ~ is to emphasize the continuingly dymamic force of Femi hism (taken In the broad sense 10 mcorporate gender and sexuality studies) to chllenge disciplinarity ofall kinds, From these beginnings, vial culture is now an increasingly important mecting place for eric, historians and practitioners in all visual media who are impatient With the tired nostrums of thei “home” deipline or medium. This conergence i hore all enabled and mandated by digtal cechnology (Cartwright). The emer: gence of multi-media has ereted an apparent stat of emergenc Universitce atthe love of eric, pedagogy and institutional practice. Responset include the creation of new centers awl pregrams; the organizing of conferences and symposa; the installation of as-yet-unprofitable on-line courses; and the publication ‘of a seemingly endless stream of papers. Behind all his activity lurks the far of an cimergent contradiction: digital culture promotes a form of empowered en ‘make your own movie, cat your own CD, publish your own website cuts across profesinalization an specialization, the tin justifcaions ofthe liberal ars university. Visual culture is nota traditional discipline, then, because before ‘ery long there may not be anything ike the current atray of dincplinon Rathce it is one among a numberof cially engaged means to work out sthat doing post disciplinary practice might be lik a, farther, to try and ensure tha it isnot simply 2 form of pre-job training. That might mean, for example, trying to find ways to think about what digital culture does and why, rather than simply teaching software, elther as practice or a2 what Lev Mancrich ell ‘voflware tudica? The constituent clement of viual culture's practi isthe visu event. The event isthe effect ofa network in which subjects eperate and which in turn condi tions their freedom of action. What took plice in the battle of logos during the NATO attack was a small example, and September 11 was the apogee of all such events, But as Michel Foucault argued in the 1970, ‘the problem is at once to dlitinguish among exents, to dilerentate the networks and levels to which they belong, and to reconstitute the lines along which they are connected and engender ‘one another’ (Foucault 2000: 116). He sugzested that the study of events ‘works hy constructing around the singular event analyzed as proccss polygon or, rather, “polyhesron’ of intlligblity, the number of whose faces ir not given in advance and never properly be taken 2 finite” (277). That is toy, in what Manuel Castells has called “the neteork society" m which we le, events are not aways flly know able. As the popular version of chacs theory bas it, the butterfly flaps its wings and culminates na hurricane, but such chains of events thet movement of air ht cannot always he tracked, Ins more everyday context, caine and effect continve to work much'as they ever did. But today's global society is literally networked in ¥ TWE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE 7 rays that are far clearer to the 400 milion people worldwide who now have internet { access acconding to journalistic estimates in June 2001 ~ than they were to all but the most actite thinkers of the 1970, with consequences that were not foreseeable at that time. ‘Let's think about how the televiing of the Serbian war might be networked la the dynamically multifaceted way wuggested by Foucault, Ata theoretical level, we iat generation that fr From being an exception war is rather the clearest expression of that normality, whether in of power, Stuart Hall's pos-Gramscian call Fora cultural war of positon, or Michel de Cestons advocacy of guerill-style ‘tactics’ oo mncans of sngiging with everyday lil. Cleary, ax Pal Virlio once ebuerved, “here ‘without representation’ (Virilio 1989: 6), But it is no longer simply the case that var is cinema, as Viilo aserted, sf by cinema we refer £0 the chisic Hollywood narrative ln, The ably of CNN and other news wations to bring war to the Living reom, often an the tame monitor used to play ‘fst person shooter’ video games, tr to watch videctape ar DVD versions of fle, is closely inked t the public sanc- tion of war and its empowenng. if necessarily transitory, sense of a collective and individual agency. The Serbian clsruption of that viewing had 10 be removed from the audience's view te suntan the comforting sion that ‘we’ are in charge and Bat mo rick to any of ‘us (read American) is involved. War i also a gendered activity, rendering the subject masculine al its ebject feminine. When war was jnema and cinema war, it followed that the gaze in that cinema was male. The representation of war kan recently been a central ive for both military strategy tnd film in different but related ways Since the Vietnam war, the US military hase ‘dramatically chinged their representations of thei actions, Fallowing their belief that the war was lost in US public opinion rather than cn the batltield, despite the enormous cfort to anafulate the Vit Cong. Converging with this mitary aced te represent war diferently, Hollywood cinema came to fee itself under threat from digital media, asthe entire apparatus associated with cella film has become tutdated, The Dogma 95 movement in Europe that refutes to ase any form of special eifect hs been nc early response to this ess, which has yet to be played cot in global cinema. ‘Stephen Spielberg's 1998 epic Sovng Prise Ryen addressed both the military and the cinemaiticneed for arenewed mode of representation, The film was endlessly bhyped for its realism, especial n representing the sounds of war. While the rei ‘covery ofthe epic format appeared to reinvigorate the fn tradition, atthe level (of the plot, reais sar hard to find in Saving Prcate Ryan, The dramatic opening segment shossed Clmahs Beach being captured in twenty minutes, an operation that actually took hours to complete and cost aver a thousand American lives in the ‘opening minutes ofthe landing alone. ‘Realism,’ then, was not an accurate epi tlon of the landing but the representation of the death of American soldiers with speaking roles. These deaths of the subsequently hyped “greatest generation’ std in for the now unimaginable death of a contemporary Amencan soldier subject. Recent film scholitship has opened upnew ways of dinking about the Second Werk ‘War and its relationship to cinema. During the war, cinema audiences did not behave like the slent and immobile spectators of classic film theory. William Friedman Fagelson has excavated fascinating accounts of cinema audience behavir in wartime, 8 NICHOLAS WIRZOEFF Films were subject to a “ealland-respanse” audience that Time maguine note: thowled, hissed, and booed at pictures, demanded Westerns, carved the initials fon seats, sometitnesevea fired buckshot atthe screen’ (Fagelson 2001; 94). partic tlaly demanding audience were the troops themaclves, who sew films on ships and in rest areas behind the front lines, at well a¢ at home, Soldiers critiqued the tech lal aspects of the representation of war and indulged in what one reporter called ‘a torrent of verbal reaction that accompanies every foot of the film and alfords a spectacle far exceoding any flm drama in human intcrest and unditilled enjoyment agelson 2001 99). Adclng to thie svudy of reception, John Bednar (2001) argues that film represented Second World War as a ‘people’ war,’ inthe phrase of the ‘ume. The overt content of the fms, although often mocked by the troops sted by Fagelson, created context fn which war goals included expanding democracy and prosperity at home, On the other hand, Saving Pirae Byun secks “wo prescrve the memory of patriotic sacrifice more than it desires to explore the causes of the ‘trauma and violence” (Bodnar 2001: 817), while at the same time forgetting ' fr- schng contest over how to recall and forget the war’ (815) from the ate 1940+ n this emergent view, the classic postwar cinema that generated 9 much of ‘current theerir ofthe gaze and spectatorship was also a diplacement of «certain film practice that was participatory and progressive. ARter the events of September 11 stmight have tobe hzzaned that it now terrorism tht is cinema. The vista Arama of the events in New York played out as ifcinematcally directed, The Ingest posible target as hit with the most explosive force posible to produce the ‘maximum elfect on the viewer. At a symbolic level, the disaster was the rosa of the impact of the two dominant symbols of modernity’ tiamph over the limita tuans of body aed space —the airplane and the skyscraper, The scenario made sense to the viewer precisely because we hall all seen it before. Hollywood! had turned to the terrortt ae a mubstitute for the previously all pervasive communist as its preferred villain from the cllapue of the Soviet system in 1991 right up unt attacks, Many of the eyewitness accounts used the metaphor of cinema to try ‘erhalize the enormity of what bad happened. Unpacking this merapbor is going to bbe an important task that will not be possible until the events in Afghanistan and leewhere sre completed. This complicated, global proliferation of gars and technologies makes it neces- sary t revise my earlier formulation that vital culture necessaily privileges the viewpoint of the consumer in a given visual crent, This assertion was motivated by 1 political setae, leened from fikn theory, socal art history and Beitsh cultaral stds that this viewprint had istercally boon obscured for reasons of race, class and gender. The dlficulty presented by this approach was how to identify ‘the visu consumer, ifone took the approach of Jonathan Crary, one could work with the idcal observer predicated by Western observational sence (Crary 1991), This ttntion tothe vital tracks changer in the understanding aed interpretation of the [processes of sight and secks to map them onto visual representation, However, in 4 given moment of representation, all those historical factors necessiily ele by the formation ofan idealized observer must come into play. Cultural studies work bas been 20 ear of theae problems tht it has tended to work witha given gromp cf chuervers ina method derived from anthropology known ax paripant obser ‘ation, That is to say, the researcher docs not pretend to the impossible positon THE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE 9 of the ideal observer but involves her/his into the group and uses that involve ‘ment asthe basis for interpretation through interviews and other forms of joint participation. A very important variant ofthis approach has been the representation ‘of 4 previously marginalized point of ew by anartst or writer who claims member- ship in dat subaltcn group, Remarkably even these oppositional viewpoints have become to some extent absorbed into the global network. The Serbian billboard cscussed shove attempted to mobilize ibersl ard left-wing opinion in Europe for ite cn ends, even though the Milosevic regime repressed precisely these points of ‘view in Yugoslaria. More generally, marketing in the highly competitive environ iment of Ite capital sceks out any specific group i can and makes we of Formerly resistant techniques to all products. So Volkewagen produced 3 scree of television tvs for cars in the US that were widely understood to feature gay men, erating 2 ‘meta-discussion about the ad and Volkswagen tht benefited the manufacturer enor ously. Meanwhile all kinds of products and services are being promoted ‘below the line’ ~ that i to say, asing hand distributed flyers or posters, of even word cof mouth — techniques that were once reserved For undergroure nightclubs aimed at spectic subcultures, or political organizations. To be consumer oriented is now the mantra of global business, Without losing sight ofthe indvial viewer, visual culture must go back and Forth across the interface that is now much more mult Tceted than the object screen-viewer triptych [At the same time, its becoming clear that what Kobena Mercer as called the “amantra of race, gender and clas asthe three Jenses with which co study culture Is abo in need of revision, This not to say that any of the issucs raised by these analyses have disappeared or are no longer of importance but that the dominant ‘ulture hat found seays to negotiate them. To pat it another way, the deployment ‘of race, gender and clst no longer surprises people, whether they ate supportive ‘or hostile 1 shall ake to examples from the sernoties of advertising ~ 0 forma tive for vial culture from Barthes's Nyeholegie to Berger's Ways of Seing and Willamson’e Decding Adseriomente— local to where Vans writing i Australia. bn these ads, racism and sexism can now be evoke! directly or indirectly in ways that are not secret and therefore resistant to decoding in the classe catural studies fasion, A 2001 a for drinking milk features two building workers, One tells dhe ‘other that he has gone soft when he fails to leer ata passing woman, visually repre sented by the soft man being out of focus. He drinks milk, comes into facts, and then performs an astonishing range of sexist catcall, whistles and ficial contorions to another woman, Ia a discusion in the Sydney Moroing Herold ofthis and similar selversing, [lia Baird concluded that it was so over the top that a vencer of irony protected the ad from a feminist critique (Baird 2001). The 2001 national election campaign in Australia turned on the question of asslum seekers thatthe coalition government of John Howard succesfully portrayed ay ‘legal’ threatcning the ‘Australian way fife. ln widely ace fll page newepaper advertisement, a pictare ‘of Howard taken from below, standing in font of two Australian flgs, with his jae jutting was completed with the quotation “I¥e decide who comes to this country sand under whit drcurmstances.” The photograph was more than faintly ridiculous, reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin in The Great Distetor. But the message of the undo Tined *we' was clear to all: we, the white people, In an eflctive strategy of isavowal, Howard nonetheless repeatedly denied thatthe message was racist and 10 NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF mobile 2 degree of working-class resentment against fmllectual elites for suggesting tht it was, Both these examples suggest that questions of clans geraker, sextalicy and ethnicity are as important ae ever ae meane of creating and contest slentity. Atthe same time by thei careful strategy of at once invoking the forbidden ad disavowing it, they antkipate and an a certain sense welcome thelr critkae. Ambivalence and ambiguity, classic postsructuralst figures, are here invoked by a very conservative administration and an advertisement for mil. in both cases, there was no Irsion of concersaive transgrestion of what have become mainstream norms, the message would not have been so effective. Ironically, then, the opposi- ‘ional methods of cultural analysis and of visual represematan that im many ways led to the emergence of visual culture are nem its objet of ericson. Visual subjects ‘The ‘medi-cnvironment’ for war an its cognates in everyday lif isthe operating arona for a new visual subjectsity. This subjectivity is what ie ultimately at stake foe vial culture, By the sual subject, [mean a person who is both constituted as an agent of sight (regardless of his or her bologial capacity to se) andl asthe effect ‘of a series of categories of visual subjectivity. During the modern pera a two-fold sual subject war predicated by the disciplinary society. That subject added to Descartes’s carly modern definition of self ‘I think therefore | am’ (Descartes) new mantra of vial subjectiity: “Tam seen and I see that Fam eon.” Ti sense of being the subject of survellnce provoked wide-ranging forms of resistance that were nonetheless, as Mickel Foucault has argaed, predicted by the operations ‘of power. In 1786 the British philosopher Jeremy Hentham invented a perfect prison ‘that heclled the panopticon. The panopticcn was an inspection house for therefor. ation of moras, whether of prisoners, workers or prostitutes by means of constant surveillance thatthe inmates could not perecie, a system summed up by Michel Foucault in the aphorism ‘visibility i a trap." In Foucault’ view, the pemopticon wat a model for the disciplinary society a Inge but the practices of visibly were not pat of his inquiry. Rather, he simply assume! with Rentham that a straight sight line equated to visibility. For visual calture,vstbilty isnot so simple. Is object of study is precisely the emiies chat come into being atthe points of intersection of siablty with socal power. “Totake two examples: the Blind hecame an abject f tate concern atthe begin- ning of the panoptic era, leading tothe establishment of state institutions for the bin and Louis Braille’ invention of a ute language in 1826 from within the Pars Institute forthe Bln. Panopticim created the blind ex what has nove become 2 ‘natural’ target of socal and state concer precisely because sesing and being seen was the concern of the disciplinary nation tate. If in this instance panopticim was Ina certain sense empowering, it asin many more controlling or represive. One ‘of the most important examples i ‘race," the visual necwork in Which one person is designated as different from another by reason of plysial or inherited chars teristics. By the beginning of the twentieth century 'W-E,B, Dabels discerned what he famously called “the color line,” an arbitrary division of people into racial types that took en the satus of socal fact Dubois), So powerful was Ths means of seeing THE SUBJECT OF ViSUAL CULTURE 11 that Ralph Elison famously announced to a segregated United States fa. 1952 that the African Amerkan wav an “sible man.” The color line had become impr rmcable,Panopticien, then, was a wild fren ofscing in which the refual to ae ‘eran abject or people was at conatinaive of it acre an the perception of elf dor others, This doubled sensation of sein and being seen was reworked in a pcho- analyle context by Jacques Laan. Lacan intemalzed the process of surellance tinder the command ofa sem of shame i his famous forma ofthe gue a beng {proses n which" eee cael soelng peel” (Lacan), In vo doings fence to Sartre's eing and Nothingnes rade clear, Lacan enviaged the subject monitoring elf for tansgresson. In the passage Lacan des, Sartre desres son as being like the voyeuristic pleasure of looking through a Keyhole that then ‘inapted by the Kling of eing looked at by someone clic, caming » seme of shame. Thi haree dcipines te guae, Lacan fred this ervellante nt 2 sorvellance, making cach vil subject the locus ofa panoptic drama of entity Inadsanced capil societies acros the planc, people are now teaching then- aches to be media. They stock digtal camcorders to thir eyen st any etent of public or private Importance and make endless overlapping recrde of ter memo Fes, which, ike tote of Blade Runrrs replant, ae gwen out in advance. As the Succes of Shrek brought a new wave of hypecteldigtl animated features to North American mubipleacs in the samirer of 2001, 1 sccmed dl Tearing to ee Ike computers, That eC sy, fllsrng Dura Haraorey's feos assertion thit we areal nove cyborgs, we need to know how the computer ses, to learn how to recognize its gaze and then to imitate i. In Fina antsy: The Spe Hud 2001), the beroes bate the aliens for the pomersion of mri forma echoed by Ghaas of Mar (2001). In short, can humane sil be media? As chi sll Hollywood, the anover wax never in doube and audiences tye say [A younger generation takes the digtal give for grace. On the Cartoon Channel, the hugely popular digitally animated figures ofthe Power Pall Girls deal up the ppanihrnent of bad guys once reserved for male sperherocs sone, The Power Pll Girls lick the rpped mercles of carlier Avengers but are draw in the syle of Japanese anine with vast eyes pesched on insigiicant boris, These digital eyes {eit blasts of unspecified energy at thelr enemies, much bike the mutans Cyclops fn Storr the 2000 hi i The X-Wen, based oma ong-tanding Marvel Conn series. The Power Pall Gil ae pitted panopices in which the body ia vehicle for isa surveillance unhindered bya sf oan deny ‘Outs the worl of superheroes and ales, things ae less eetan Jones). “The boundaries ofthe vital subject are under erase from witha apd without. “Today its pone to feck constantly under surveillance and that noone s watching at all aa we move fren the gue of one carers ta the next, Far the era f the visual subject fas een brought into sharp reef under the symibioue mucnces of lobuliaton and dghal culture, In the shor fe of the Information Age, this prthaps the most interesting moment in which te aicmps digtal ctcsm. During {he iteret boor years, cermnt semed slmort beside dhe point at vast ene vere raed! for teas that barely lle a cocktallraphin. tn 1999, Amazon.com ‘eas worth more money than General Moors, according tothe tock market, despite never having earned» penny. During this perid Allaaquere Roseanne Stone argued th there were only two responses tothe queton “what his been changed ts ie vfer n droves 12 NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF Figre 1.3 Dighal ghost ‘Courtesy ofthe International Ghost Hunters Society wo ihs com) by digital culeme?" everything or nothing, On the “everything” side were Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Media Lab, Wired magasine, endless websiter and media ‘commentators, all aiming that life was set to change beyond recognition but otfering only such dreary carrots as smart refrigerators or customized dial news papers. This small heer was eaily deried by the ‘nothing’ cromd of academics and ‘commentators, tho were sko able to point toa variety of technclogles that enti pated some of the features of today's ‘new technology As the dust sets from the crash, may now be posuble to resolve some of these disputes, For example, Sone asserved that everyones ransgenered on-line, an ancient hotly dieputed by those whe pointed fo very traditional sexual tox fol the net. Yet fom the ihre of cateaged cemservatves to drive President Clinton, {om office, tothe success ofthe fil Bys Dont Cy (Halberstam) and the relaxed aiuile of many younger people to experiments with sexual and gender tensity, & change does ecm to have taken place, On the other hand, a several eseys inthis Reailer indicate (Chun, Nakamura, Parks), ‘race! continues to be strongly rmarked in digital cultare. Rather than asking whether digtal culture has changed everything oF not, we can nov ask more specially why lt seems to have enabled ‘or been « part of shit in atades to gender and vexaaity, but has not rented in similar change with regard to ethnicity and “race.” It some that the crisis rep tition of visual selves has led to a greater degree of iniflerence 28 to sexual and THE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE 13 gender identity, while sustaining ‘race’ in difference, The ebb and flow of vial ‘iferentiation scros the boundaries of identity is disorienting (a term that i itself scems to suggest an ethnic diferertaion) apd dizzying, alos of difference that can ened inde leo the self, Parekoical anit may acer, there even a certain wostalgia for the sensation of rurvillance, the odd pleasures of bsing watched. So dhe question beromer: what are che place are mean by which Wentiication snd | it correlatives such a identification, can ind a parchas inthe networked global | culture of the present? The question of digtal identity finds 3 metonym in the | intensely popular webcam format (Campanella) In 1991 4 Cambridge University Taberatory puta realtime photographic image of ite colfee maker om line o that ite staff could know whether ‘oflee was available. Mach to their surprise, thousands of other web surfers came to ook, In the subsequent decade, webcams ~ as they have come w be known have become one of ce “ill apps’ of the net, offcring J sceming infinity of views, Webcama come in two datinct types, First, ssa gize Jout on 2 particular view or geographic location, ranging from dybine views, to wilderness sites and wafic stops, These can be seen, a8 Bolter and Grasin have ‘argued, as a remediation of television (Boulter and Grusin 1999: 208), There is nonethclss a far more personal dimension to such tlemediation of exterior reality than is offered by televiéon, In Dan DeLillo's novel The Body dnie (2001), for example, 3 performance artist finds looking at « quiet stretch of road in Fink an effective balm for the pain of grieving, The choice of location to be viewed seems te be the viewer's wet che network's for, although it ts not posable to direct an jxtcrior comers oncrelf, there are 20 many choices dat no one Fels coratrined, “The second, more poplar variety of webcam turns the gaze incards on isl ‘Where Nicephore Niépce pointed his prototype camera out of his bedroom window in 1823 wo create what fs often celebrated as the first photograph (Batchen), nwchcam users make the bedrooms interior the scene of the action, On popula sites like Jennicam or Anacam, the viewer ses the axteraly private space ofthe photog rapher. The webcam depicts the interior of the closet, the most private domestic space, while cance Is tse tbe Laun word for a room. Queer culture has, of course, theorized the lost as «space im which the queer subject hides his or her ide From the disciplinary gaze. Coming out i then, both a rk and a nocovsary afr Imation of the ef, To stayin the closet i to destroy the self with deception ard gut. Webcam users do not come out ofthe closet but make ther closet vsble to anyone with internet accem. For «fee, viewers are gutranteed constant accey the place ofthe panoptic jailer for $19.95 month. Hore the closet isnot romething to come cut af bat rather the closstcamora serves av device to validate the desire and hence the very existence of the Western visual subject tel, In this evacuated ‘ersion of visual subjectivity, the subject simply says: T want to be seen," using the ilorcted earners to reveal and conceal ot ones. ks not aurpeisng that young, mite ‘women have most quickly adopted the ech format both hecase of the hyper- ‘sibility ofthe female body in consumer culture and because women since Lady Hawarden have quecred photography by not looking out of its closet (Mayor). 14 NICHOLAS MIRZOEFF For Jennifer Ringley of Jennicar, ‘lam doing Jennicam not because | want ‘other people to. watch but because I don’t care if people watch.” What matters, then isthe interiorized sensation of being monitored by a dial oher that enabled by the self) Ana the host of Anacam, offers her artwork ~ made with Paint Shop Pro inher gallery thar declares: ‘Pil be your mother, mirroring back 2 U.’ This apparent parealy of Harhara Kruger's already parcdlic postmedem theorizing of gender and desire creates a digital mirror stage, For this self-survellance and self Alipay leas toa digitizing of desire. Natacha Merri, author of the Digal Dias (2000), « cellcction of images of staged sexual encounters in hotcl rooms, claims that ‘my photo needs and my sexual needs are one and the same’ (Mert 2000), Merrit ases only digital camera in her practice 38 analog film is somehow imap propriate to this exchange of gazes. Digtal dere dissolves the self — the eye 80 ‘often evoked in Uheoretical discourse ~ at the heart of the subject and replaces ie with an crllessly manipuable digital screen. A similar crasure way prodictod by Foucault in the famous conchion this 1967 Onder of Things, where he suggested that the human wat about toe erased like 2 face inthe sand, Sand, bk the digital dup, is made of silicon, It isthe unnerving tak of the present to find out what ‘Lam not here and never have been’ These dramas were remarkably performed in June 2000, when the Royal Court |Jerwood Theatre Uptairn, London, saged Sarah Kane's piece 4.48 Pychass. 448 was a vislized text of extricrdinary power, exploring whether itis possble for the sll to oe itelf when mind and body are not just separated but unrelated, The piece takes it title from the notion that at 4.48 in the moming the hoy i a ite lowest ebb, the most likely time for a person to kill themselves. Ina long media tion on the possibility of sel-kling that is written in difleent voices but not as separately named characters, Kane mixes Artaud and Plto, a mix that can only be ‘alled performed deconstruction. Three actors perform on 4 stage wove emptiness was broken only by a table, The mise-en-eine, created by director James Mctonald and designer Jeremy Herbert, placed a mirror the length ofthe stage at 2 forty-five ‘degree angle lacing the audience. The mirror made it posible for the ators to perform Ising dosen and ail be acen by the audience but at the same time i ‘comerted the entire performance space into a eamera, mirvring the rllex lens Within thie comers qace, a video wae played at frequent intervals, showing the ‘ew from a Londen window, as trafic andl pedestrians passed by. It was in effect, webcam, The webcam was projected onto the table, forming a screen that was sable in the mirror, The speech of the actors was broksn a intervals by the white noite of pixilated screen without a picture, like a television set that hat lst recep tion, In stort, 448 Fgchosn played out inthe contested space ofthe contemporary ‘snl subject represented asa Camera, a dark room in which digtal, performative and photographie renditions of exteriouty were explored, compared and analyeed, Tin one monologue a character describes THE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE 15 e132 Sarah Kane (Courtesy of wo Lanisher.com) slsraction to the point of dike Alslocate dlisembody Aleconstruct. Kane 2000; 20) he vinaal subject ie ne longer at home: Far in Kane's view, Cartesian reason wae berler to understanding existence “And Lam deadlocked by that smooth paychiatrc voice of reason which tels me hore isan objective realty in which my body and mind are one, But Tam 10% here ‘aever have buen" (6)- Kate smaply asert that inthe bypervinl digital word, th single person aplit into tro (mind/body) whose dinolution wat prevented by the watchful guae of the Christian Trinity no longer exits, Orin a Laanian vie, ‘cis as there was no mirror stage for Kane te elentify herself as an image, only ‘he tteferent relletion of the all-encompassing mirvor of the mass meds, The _tag long mirror i visalizaton of both loses of identity, Now body and soul Glo not form a eit or even a-echbaphrenic'netwrarks they cmply do not belong ‘ovpethor: "Do you think t's possible for a person ta be born in the wrong body? {sJece) Do yet think it's possible for a person to be bom in the wrong era” (13). Kane explores how metaphysical reaon, personal love, and pharmacological pyeh ‘try all attompt to close the gap in which the mind isa camera admiting light all hos infsequnally ancl with unevrtaln emule 3) 2 consolated goniciouines ress ta a darkened banqueting ball near the ecting of a mind whose Hloor sits 4 ten thousand cockroachos when 3 shalt of light cntors se all \Boughts unite in an instant of accord body no longer expellent 1 the cockmaches compris 3 truth which no one ser atte 16 NICHOLAS WIRZOEFF ‘The camera of the mini is deserted now, inhabited only by paras Insets, Confronted by the idiflcrent surscillanes of late capitalist society and an abscrt god, the eobject disintegrates. At 448 “sanity visite/for one hour and twelve Tinutes’ and as the performing voices suicide themselves, “itis done.” The piece ‘ends witha final aphorist: his myzelf have never met whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind ‘There isa long pause and then an actor says: “Please open the curtains.’ The three performers silently move to che sie of the apace and pall bak black-psinted shut ters, opening the camera tothe quit Wert London light, Thre eo stage dirsction to indicate this ant-PLatonic gesture which may read om the page ava banal coup de there bat the audience of which I was a part experienced it as shock. In 1839) Hippolyte Bayard performed a mimicry of mines when be photographed his Sef portiit or « Drowaed Man, » knowing play on photography and death, On February 20, 1999 at the age of twenty-eight Sarah Kane had Killed herself in + small room ajc her hospital bedroom, her camera, ber closet, The networked subject everywhere on screen but no one i watching, least of all hers, ‘The transverse glance Some crits might revert that that crisis affecting Kane is that of the white visual ‘ubjectinterpelated by ite male guze that has dorsinated Western thought since Descartes, At the same time, the non-white, qucer, oF otherwise subaltem subject {s familiar with the indifference of disciplinary society. Global capital simply teats the West with the same indiflerence tat it once reserve for its others. Why should the local issues of a British artist concer a globally orkented academy? Globalization cannot mcan that Wester scholars now have the entire globe as their domain as « form of intellectual empire. Ax Peter Hitchcock has argue, itn the tack of African cinema “to represent Africans to Mricane” (Hitceack 2000: 271); or by extension any of the world’s variously ortenalized and sutaltern peoples should represent themelves to themelves, What matters is being constantly amare of the global dimensions tothe work that one doing (Appsdurs) In viusl culture, this means looking with a transverse glance from multiple viewpoints across and against the Jmperial perspective. That implies, for example, calling attention tothe global asi- rations of panopticisn itself. The panepzicon was created when. Bentham copied a system his brother had used in Rusia, in order to persuae the Bekish government toreplace its system of deportation tothe now colony of Australia witha system of moral dicpline derived from the Jest colonies in Paragaay (Foucault), That ic to.4y, panoptic modernity was always a global system that affected eliferent parts of the world unevenly, ‘Thiscurrent momento globalization x especialy enacted em, through nel by the female body. Global capital has changed not jst relations of consumption but rela tions of production, as Gayatri Spivak has argued: “The subalter woman is row tb a rather large extent the support of production,’ trough piece work, sweat hop bor THE SUBJECT OF VISUAL CULTURE 17 and repredactive labor in low-wage cccnomies. This condition is acknowledged in the Westby displacement. That tt sy, atin the examples above from Jennicam to Sarah Kare, globalization within the West is culturally figured 3s feminine, which 1 take wo be ¢ contested cultural category rather than a biological given, At the same time, this gendered representation of contemporary culture, while of Westera origin, bas global effects. The contradiction ofthis moment canbe expressed in many ways but here's one that Ihave used since 2004 that has become very ate since September 11. The iranian video artist Shirin Neshat, working in exile in New York, Isrightly becoming 2 global star for her explorations ofthe gendered divide in lane culture, Neshat's video work is hush cinematic, creating ten-minute

    You might also like