Trickster

Author(s): John Roberts

Source: Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1 (1999), pp. 83-101
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Trickster

John Roberts

Since 1991 Rod Dickinsonhas been involvedin makingcrop-circleswithother

artists and friends. Underthe cover of darkness, armed with string, simple
woodenplanksand an outlineof theirdesign, the groupenterthe fieldalongthe
seed lines, takingcare to avoid any crop damage. Once in position- far away
from potential surveillancefrom the edge of the field - they work fast by
moonlight,workingto a prearrangedpattern,completingthe design by sunrise.'
Overthe years these designs have become morecomplex,puttingenormous
strainon the groupto finishthe circles underdarkness.Thisis risky,forthere is
nowa 'price'on the heads of crop-circlemakers.Pressureis beingexertedbythe
NationalFarmersUnionon localfarmingcommunitiesto preventwhatis seen as
a majorirritantduringthe summer,althoughfarmersthemselves are nottoo keen
to get involveddirectlyas there are largeamountsof moneyto be made opening
up theirfields to payingtourists. Moreover,there is some supportfromthe UFO
and crop-circleresearch, or Cerealogy,communityitself for the 'hoaxers'to be
exposed. (As yet no one in Britainhas been caught, no one arrested.)Forwhat
dividesthe crop-circlewatchingcommunitymorethananythingelse is the division
betweenthe 'hoaxes' and the so-calledauthenticcircles, those circles that are
claimedbyCerealogiststo be made withouthumanintervention.These designs,
accordingto 'expert'scientificopinion,are those whichcould not possiblyhave
been completed underdarkness withina few hours. In Britainthese complex
designs are invariablyproducedby Dickinsonand his helpers:the 'DNADouble
Helix',the 'Kochsnowflake'andthe 'Julia-setfractal'amongstmanyrecentones.
Inthe Cerealogistliteratureany suggestion that these designs were made by
humansis met withincredulity and passionate denunciation.Infact a greatdeal
of scientific evidence is marshalled to prove non-humanintervention,for
instance:changes in the cell structuresof flattenedstalks; consistent absence
of entrancemarksto the fields; alleged malfunctioning of electronicequipment
in or nearthe circles;migratingbirdsswervingawayfromfields; observationand
photographingof unexplainedlights over the circles; registrationof strange
noises in electronicequipmentin or near the circles; positive or deleterious
changes to people's metabolismor state of being inside or nearthe circle.2This
list is not exhaustive,but it gives a clear sense of what is of centralimportance
forthe Cerealogists:crop-circlesare evidenceof inexplicableforces whichsignal
the widerimpactof extra-terrestrial communicationsor paranormalintrusionin
life on earth.
WhenDickinsonbegan makingcircles he was enteringa traditionthat was at
least fifteenyears old. InBritainthe firstcircleswere made byDaveChorley(who
died in 199.7) and Doug Bower in the early 1970s. Begun initiallyas an
enthusiasticreponseto the earlyconflationbetween NewAgeenvironmentalism
and Ufology,their productionsoon became locked into outwittingthe 'true
believers'themselves. Ineffect Chorleyand Bowerinitiateda new folktradition
of temporal'artevents', whichdrewon countryloreand metaphysicalsymbols,
to create the rawmaterialsfor a new paranormalmythology.Itwas the obvious
success of this process of mythologizing whichattractedDickinson.Withlittle
physicaleffortand littlefinancialoutlay,Chorleyand Bowerwere able to findan
audience, and eventuallya criticalpublic,fortheircircles. Butin a sense this is

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 81-101 ? OXFORD UNIVERSITYPRESS

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 Trickster

to make Dickinson'sdebt to theirworkoverlyformal.ForDickinson'sinterest in

the modernmythologyof the crop-circlewas preciselythat of someone - unlike
Chorleyand Bower- who saw its implicationsfromthe positionof a professional
artist. In short, Dickinsoncame to the crop-circlesarmedwith post-Situationist
theories of art and social intervention,modern media theory and a post-
conceptualistcritiqueof the art institution,and not just a love of the English
countrysideandfolkartand a passion fora 'goodjoke'. Yet,despite this, it is the
veryanonymousstatus of Chorley'sand Bower's,and all othercrop-circlework,
that providedthe scope for Dickinson'sart:to rethinkcrop-circlemakingas the
basis for an enquiryinto the conditionsof modernmythology.
The anonymityof crop-circlemaking provides a perfect metonymfor the
critiqueof artistic authorshipand artisticvalue, but in a social setting which
remainsoutside of the art institution.Henceas a crop-circlemakerDickinsonis
able to operatewithoutanyof the constraintsof appearingnotto be an artist,for
the circles are first and foremost being made for a non-artpublicmade up of
Ufologists,Cerealogists,NewAgers,etc. Thereis no question thereforeof the
circles being seen as a 'second-order'artistic activitybefore their primary
validationas 'unexplainedphenomena'.Thatis,.Dickinsonproducescrop-circles
withinan amateurtraditionwhichmakes no substantiveclaims for the artistic
self-consciousness of its activities.Infact amongstamateurartpractionerssuch
as Chorleyand Bower,the most importantthingworthattendingto was whether
the circles had been notedand categorizedbythe Cerealogists.Inthis Dickinson
stepped intoa richtraditionof amateurart,whichhad the power,as withearlier
forms of folk art, to secure intellectualand aesthetic investment from an
enthusiastic non-specialistpublic.
But,if all Dickinsonwantedto do was makea newfolkart,ifall he wantedto do
was leavethe artinstitutionbehindinthe name of some spuriouspopulism,then
his activitieswouldrightlybe dismissed as opportunistandcrass. Rather,whatis
significantabout the crop-circlesphenomenonis, paradoxically, their invisibility
as amateurart or otherwisewithinthe paranormalliterature.Forwiththe failure
of the crop-circlewritersto attendto the realitiesof humanagencythe notionof
the crop-circleas amateurart or 'conceptualart' becomes the absent cause of
theirarguments.Thisproducesa cleavagewhichis obviouslyhighlysuggestive in
the discussion of ideologyand modernculturaldivision.Whatis laid claim to
amongst its practionersas a formof folkart is unableto be recognizedas such
because of the overwhelmingneed on the partof 'true believers'to affirmthe
extra-humanat the expense of the human.Hence what is importantabout the
crop-circlephemomenonfor Dickinsonis not just its status as a modernfolk
practice,but its culturalreceptionand misperception.ThatCerealogistwriters
are preparedto argueforeitherthe extra-terrestrial or paranormal creationof the
circles is not simplyperverse, but culturallysignificant,pointingto needs and
desires whichmodernforms of rationalismcannot meet.
Crop-circlewriterscan loosely be dividedinto two main camps: those who
believethat the circles are producedbyan extra-terrestial forces, and those who
believe they are producedby paranormalforces. The latteralso includethose
who believe the circles are the result of 'energypoints' on the earth's surface.
Whatboth camps share, though, is a belief in the spiritualimportanceof the
manifestations.This is reinforcedbythe fact that all the majorcrop-circles- on
the whole those made by Dickinson,such as the 'DNADoubleHelix','Julia-set
fractal'and 'Kochsnowflake'- were made in Wiltshire,the metaphysicalhome

Fig. 1. Cropformation:Stonehenge,Wiltshire,wheat,approx385 ft across, 7 July1996.

(Photograph: Steve Alexander.)

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 85

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John Roberts

Fig. 2. Cropformation:Stonehenge,Wiltshire,wheat,approx385 ft across, 7 July1996. (Photograph:

Steve Alexander.)

of English paganism and New Age mythology. Covered in barrows, standing

stones, tumili and other earthworks (such as Silbury Hill), and numerous
pathways, the area is claimed to be connected by an ancient network sight lines.
Moreover it is home to a number of famous chalk symbols, such as the Alton
Barnes White Horse, etched into the county's hillsides. Wiltshire in these terms
is a rich palimpsest of ancient myth and historical record, a place literallypitted
with arcane signs and significant remains. Crop-circles and ancient standing
stones and tumuli form a 'metaphysical continuum'. This melange of paganism
and the occult is a product largelyof the 1970s, when AlfredWatkins' analysis of
ancient ley lines (Anglo-Saxonfor cleared strips of land) in The OldStraight Track
(1925)3 was rediscovered and became mixed in with the counter-culturalrevival
of Celtic fairy lore (fairy paths) and an interest in the new earth sciences, to
create a cult of the landscape as criss-crossed with 'energy centres' (places of
magnetic force). Wiltshire seemed to have more than most making it the
favoured place of occult lore, and one of the favoured areas for UFO'sightings'.
As one theory of the UFO phenomenon puts it: spacecraft were attracted to
places such as Wiltshire because of the predominance of its magnetic pathways,
which they used for navigation!
It is no surprise that Dickinson and his colleagues chose to work here, for the
location allows the crop circles to enter a pre-existing mythological system of
'earth mysteries'. Thus when Dickinson produced the enormously complicated
'fractal' or 'Julia-set' design in a field adjacent to Stonehenge, the literature was
quick to assume, given the occult importance of Stonehenge, that some extra-

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 Trickster

terresterialintelligencewas tryingto establish a significantconnectionbetween

the phenomena.This assumption is echoed in the way the literatureanalyses
the crop-circledesigns, claimingthat ancient site lines and standingstones and
crop-circlesnot only share 'unexplained'energy levels, but also a sacred
geometry.4Morever,in some instances whereobvious icons of modernscience
are concerned, such as the 'Julia-set',this 'sacred geometry'is stretched to
includethe non-lineartheories of natureof the NewPhysics, as if the earthwas
producingits own computerprintout.
Whatis remarkablyabsent in this literatureis any awareness that the crop-
circle makers are mirroringback to the 'true believers'their own mythologies,
knowledges and histories. Dickinson is as well versed in the geography,
historical lore and occult of the Cerealogists and Ufologists as the writers
themselves. Thismakes his interventionsextremelycontext-sensitive,insofaras
the crop-circlesare made withthe desires, fantasies and occult knowledgesof
the 'true-believers'in mind.Theyare not ironic.Thus if the complexityof the
recent designs is partlya response to Dickinson'sown technicaland aesthetic
ambitions,it is also a way of uppingthe ante in response to the Cerealogists
theories. This play-offbetween producerand consumer, mythologizerand
believer,is at one level verysimilarto the practicesand rhetoricsof art and its
theory. Thus in a strange mutationof classic avant-gardepractice, Dickinson
seeks to outmaneovre,or undermine,the claims and expectations of those
theories that would seek to explain or predict the crop-circledesigns.
Concomitantly,there is also a sense in which the anti-materialismof the

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Steve Alexander.)
Fig. 3. Cropformation:AltonBarnes,Wiltshire,wheat, 648 ft long, 17 June1996. (Photograph:

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 87

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John Roberts

Fig. 4. Crop formation: WindmillHill, Avebury,Wiltshire, wheat, approx 500 ft across, 29 July 1996. (Photograph: Steve Alexander.)

Cerealogist theories is ventriloquizingthe idealism and special pleading of much

art criticism - a set of practices which are notoriously malleable ideologically in
the face of economic pressure and personal flattery. But if this is something to
be borne in mind when reading the crop-circle literature this is not what is
primarily interesting about the play-off, or co-presence, of mythologizer and
Cerealogist. For Dickinson's crop-circles enact one of the most widespread
psychological conditions in contemporary late capitalist culture, iatrogenesis, or
co-dependence.
In the therapy-situation between doctor and patient it is common to witness a
process of narrativesuggestiveness on the part of the doctor come to shape and
define the patient's illness in concordance with the social expectations of the
illness itself. Thus the symptoms of the hysteric or neurotic can easily be
produced out of the therapy situation - as Freudrecognized balefully towards the
end of his life. There is strong evidence of this occuring in the current widespread
outbreak of hysterical epidemics and imaginary illnesses (chronic fatigue
syndrome, multiple personality disorder, recovered memory of sexual abuse).
Multiple personality disorder is particularlysignificant in this respect. Between
1922 and 1972 there were less than 50 cases documented in the medical
literature.5 Today, particularlyin the US, there are thousands, due largely to the
popularization of an alternative therapy culture in conjunction with a
professionally aggressive psychoanalysis. What this new therapy culture has
created, some would argue, is a form of widespread permission-giving allowing
individuals to narrativize their own unhappiness and disappointments in

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 Trickster

unprecedentedways.Theissue is notthatthis unhappinessand disappointment

is imaginary- far from it - but that its symptoms are either medicalizedor
projected onto an external agency, placing more and more individualsin
positions of victims and accusers. Consequently,as therapyculturewidens,
iatrogenesis becomes more and more symbioticwith other agendas (such as
formsof radicalfeminism,conspiracytheories and religiousbeliefs), as patients
become moresusceptible in therapyto the narrativesuggestions of the analyst.
Ineffect, the patientlearnsto tell his or her storyfromthe narrativespublically
dessiminated by the therapists, which is then extended and reinforcedin the
therapysession itself. This is, no more nor less, the mediatizationof illnesses,
producingan unprededentedclosed loop of believers learningto be believers
(fromreal sufferers)whichin turn produces more believers.This phenomenon
mightalso be extendedto the huge increase in numberof alien abductees in the
US,who shape theirneuroses and fantasies inthe formof narrativeslearntfrom
fictionalabductionsand the abductionstories of others.
The overallresult of this is an extraordinary diffusionand disseminationand
mongrelization of therapy stories, as patients liveout the confusions,paranoias,
orthreats of the moment.Inthis waythe exponentialrise of these symptomscan
be seen less as a dysfunctionalepidemic, or evidence of a widespread
but,as inthe post-Freudian
irrationality, definitionof hysteria,as an obliqueform
of communication,and therefore,as ElaineShowalterhas argued,as a 'cultural
symptom of anxiety and stress'.6 Hystericalsyndromes, therefore, are not
marginaland proneto appearin the weak and feeble, but are a partof everyday

Fig. 5. Detailof Cropformation:Windmill

Hill,Avebury, JohnMacNish.)
Wiltshire,wheat, approx500 ft across, 29 July1996. (Photograph:

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 89

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John Roberts

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6 Crop formation Milk Hill Aton Barnes Wiltshire wheat 278 ft across, 8 August 1997. (Photograph: Steve Alexander.

experience, whose increase gives a indication of levels of internalized fear and

crisis. Accordingly, hysteria is a mimetic disorder, in which the individual
ventriloquizes cultural acceptable expressions of distress. This is why patients
increasingly present their symptoms in the way therapists define them because
this allows the patient to give a legitimate voice to their feelings of anxiety. This
process of iatrogenesis, though, is rarely seen as a crucible of story-making by
the new therapy culture, because the issue of hysteria as a cultural phenomenon
is invariablysubsumed under the therapeutic dictates of 'self-help' and personal
redemption. This leaves these new symptoms of hysteria severed from any
examination of the wider social forces that shape and sustain their rise and
diversification.
The issue of iatrogenesis, then, is a suggestive way of looking at one of the
ways in which narrativizationof anxiety in our culture is produced. As such it
allows us to see the production and reception of Dickinson's crop-circles as
being closely modelled on this process of co-dependence. As with the
relationship between the hysteric and analyst, the condition (the phenomenon)
is created out of the interaction between the doctor (artist) and the patient
(believer). The artist recruits the 'true-believer'by providinga setting in which pre-
existing expectations can be confirmed. These expectations then take the form
of speculations s which thenn produce the need for the crop-circles
themselves. If this process, as I have said, is not ironic, neither is it cynical.
Dickinson is not interested in how easily people are duped, but in how far the
irrationalis embedded in modernityand, therefore, in how normativethese

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 J w - e * w

Trickster

processes are in a culturewhose claimsto reason and enlightenmentare heldto

be self-evident.
Thisplaces Dickinson'sworkself-consciouslywithina particularpost-Freudian
traditionof engagementwiththe irrationaland ideology.UntilGramsciand later
Adornoand Horkheimer,Marxistdebates on ideology- derivedlargelyfrom a
very partialreadingof Marx'sand Engels' The GermanIdeology- equated the
irrationalwith 'false consciousness', with ideas that were insensible and
opposed to the long-terminterests of the subject. But by the 1930s, with
developments in psychoanalysis and a greater social understandingof
consciousness as conflictualand divided,the idea of ideologyas an opaque
veil increasinglybecame subjectto critique.Menand womenare not subjectto a
life of illusionthroughdominantideologicalforces butfightthem out inthe realm
of ideas and representations.Thisis commonlyreferedto as the 'livedrelations'
orculturalmodelof ideologyinwhichideologyis equatedwiththe productionand
reproductionof everydaypractices,formsand ideas. Largelysilent on questions
of epistemology,it takes as axiomaticFreud'shypothesisthat consciousness is
opaque to its own workingsand social effects, arguingthat the ideological
productionand reproduction of everydaypractices,formsand ideas is subjectto
a fundamentalprocess of misrecognition.It is this 'open' approachto ideology
that is found both in Althusser'sreworkingof Freudin the 1960s and Adorno's
reworking of Freudin the 1940s and 1950s. Theworkingsof ideologyshouldnot
be understood in terms of falsification, but in terms of the encoding of
suppressed needs, wants and desires. Inthis respect there is a significantshift

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Fig. 7. Cropformation:BishopsSutton,NewAlresford,Hampshire,July1995, wheat,approx.200 ft across, 20 June1998. (Photograph:

Steve Alexander.)

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 91

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John Roberts

in the understanding of the relationship between reason and rationality;although

ideologies may contain or promote falsehoods, this is not not necessarily an
irrationalprocess. Such ideologies may express real needs and desires, and as
such create and promote legitimate pleasures. It is this model that has now
come to dominate current debates on ideology and the irrational, particularlyin
the work of Slavoj Zizek, where there is a conscious closing down of the gap
between the ideological and reality itself.7 That is, if ideology is not an illusion,
neither is it simply the place where ideas get fought out, but a phantasmorgoric
support for reality itself. Ideology is co-extensive and co-present with the
operations of fantasy. In effect this is Althusser driven into the arms of what
Zizek calls the surplus of enjoyment played out in ideological investments
(nationalism being the main empirical concern in Zizek's later writings).
Without doubt there are substantive problems with the 'open' model. By
diminishing the idea of false consciousness and the demands of epistemology
we would not recognize the 'enjoyments' of ideology in the first place -
nevertheless the 'open' model of ideology allows us to think the irrational
rationalistically. That is it allows us to move - as Showalter does in her analysis
of modern hysteria, and as Adorno does, in his discussion of astrology in the
1950s - to a position where the discussion of the irrationalis immanent to the
everyday, ratherthan its aberrant other. As Adornosays in his analysis of the Los
Angeles Times astrology column 'The Stars Down to Earth' (1952-3), irrational
beliefs may 'result from the processes of rational self-preservation'.8 Thus
astrology, for Adorno, contains a pseudo-rational advocacy of human agency,
despite its overarching subsumption of human behaviour under the benign
influence of the planets. Indeed, this is the very success of astrology, for without
this minimal 'encouragement of people to take decisions'9 for themselves, the
readers would derive little narcissistic gratification from its entreaties. Hence,
under conditions of mass representative democracy, people may feel that they
have little power, but they certainly do not want to be told so. Cannily, then,
astrology invokes the Fates whilst stepping back from a crude fatalism. This core
of the 'rational' is, of course, the work of the astrologist, who carefullyappeals to
the problems and disappointments of its readers, without demeaning them as
victims. In this, Adorno argues, there is a deeper set of instincts at play, which
focus on how and why the irrational remains functional under modernity. The
irrational is what Freud calls a residue of pre-historical animalistic practices,
which, in a culture where such gratifications are held in check by the powerful
social reinforcement of ego controls, release a host of repressed affective and
emotional needs. But this dependency is never strictly what it seems, because it
can only enact its disavowals of reason, science and materialism via an
acknowledgement of the benefits (of at least some) of science's secular
developments. The result is what Adorno describes as a form of bi-phasic
dissonance, in which the believer is forced to sustain a kind of intellectual
retrogression which, before the rise of modern science and capitalism, was not
required of the mystical and deeply religious. As such, it is possible to
distinguish modern forms of irrationalism as performative contradictions, in
which the subject believes something in spite of overwhelming counter-evidence
because there is good reason to believe it - because 'it is good for me'. Indeed,
it is possible to go one step further and note the development of what Peter
Sloterdijk calls 'enlightened false consciousness', openly cynical defences of
contradiction.10 'I may accept the advances of science, but I defend astrology,
because it's a laugh.' Adorno himself barely considers this as a possibility in his
analysis of the LATimes readership. This certainly has something to do with the
limitations of his method - he assumes a homoegeneity of response to the LA

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 Trickster

Timescolumn- but it also reflects the limitedself-consciousexpressionof this

cynicismduringthe periodhe was writing.Today'enlightenedfalse conscious-
ness' - afterthe defeats of the left and the commodificationof 1960s counter-
culture- is the dominantideologyof the new middle-class,Blairismincarnate.'I
may believe in free educationfor all, but I willsend mychildrento publicschool
anyway.'
Dickinson's crop-circlesare a productof and response to these modern
ideologicalconditions, and, as such, throughthe operations of iatrogenesis
stage theirprimaryforms of dependency.His work,therefore,goes to the heart
of the bi-phasictension betweenthe irrationaland rationalwithinmodernity.For
whathis workis also concernedto drawout is the huge intellectualand affective
investmentmade on the partof the crop-circlewritersinthe loreand mythologies
of the crop-circlesthroughthe workof science itself. Forall the implausibityof
theirhypothoses,the Cerealogistsuse the proceduresof scientificfield-work and
to
analysis verify their findings. The truth of the circles may, ultimately,be
inexplicable to human reason, but nonetheless it is reason whichwillprovethis.
Inthis respect the full implicationof Dickinson'sworkis revealedonlywiththe
presentationof the literatureand photo-documentation of the crop-circlesin the
gallery- articlesare taken directlyfrom the crop-circle occultmagazinesand
and
exhibitedon notice boards along with photographsbought from professional
crop-circlephotographers.As a result the sheer profusionof this material
providesan immediatevisual fix on how extensive is the networkof scientific
analysts and helpers. Professional scientists and amateurs rub shoulders

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Fig. 8. Cropformation:Avebury,Wiltshire,wheat,328 ft across, 10 August1994. (Photograph:

Steve Patterson.)

OXFORD ART JOURNAL 22.1 1999 93

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John Roberts

. .
, ...... .. . .

- .
?:I 1 rr I I

Fig. 9. Details of crop formation: Longwood Warren, Hampshire, Wheat, 260 ft across, 25 June 1995. (Photograph: Steve Alexander.)

together. This activity may be pseudo-science, or 'semi-erudition' as Adorno

might put it,11 but the extent to which it produces a culture of believers, is, as
with the effects of astrology, evidence of that surplus of enjoyment which the
mechanisms of ideology enact. Itwould at the same time be foolish, therefore, to
assume that Dickinson does not recognize the attractions of this enjoyment, for
in producing the crop-circles he also recognizes his own pleasure in the
production of the enjoyment of others. With this Dickinson is not out to shame
his interlocutors - even if this might seem the inevitable outcome - but to show
how the pleasures of the irrational produce their effects culturally, for
Dickinson's work reveals a complicity with the irrational as the means by
which its power can be made manifest.
In these terms his work is distinguished by its extension and reworkingof a
much older tradition of artistic engagment with the irrational and rational: the
late-nineteenth-century practice of fake paranormal manifestations and photo-
graphy. In fact, if Dickinson's crop-circles openly identify with their hidden
amateur status, his general subterfuge and game-playing, identifies his art as
part of wider amateur tradition of artist-tricksters working on the edges of
science. This is the artist as illusionist and mountebank, who - in applying new
technologies and optics via popular forms of entertainment, such as in magic
theatre or vaudeville - is able to produce complex illusions in the interests of a
'science' of the paranormal. Indeed, with the advent by the end of the nineteenth
century of the telegraph, the telephone and photography - technologies
characterized by their embodiment of the invisible - it was believed that the
'spirit world' existed in a parallel universe. Moreover, it was believed that with

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 Trickster

the right equipment and through the hyper-sensitive senses of a gifted medium,
communication channels could be opened up with that world. As the new
techologies became the harbingers of the 'spiritual life' for believers, the
technologies in turn were employed by illusionists to create a worldthat was said
to exist just beyond the everyday senses.12
This scientific faking of the 'spirit world' was particularlysuccessful in the area
of photography. From the 1860s in Europe and the US there emerged a
professional photography of staged apparitions, in which the photographer, the
scientist and the female medium - who acted as the embodiment of the spirits -
colluded in the production of photographic documetation of things and persons
from 'beyond the grave'.13 Developing out of the Spiritualist movement of the
1840s, photographers employed the positivistic 'truth claims' of the new
photography to announce the inexplicable power of photography to render the
invisible visible. Ghostly after-images, ectoplasm and other manifestations
became the stock-in-trade of this staged photography. This generated not only a
sizeable following of 'true-believers' but a learned Spiritualist literature in which
the tricks employed by the photographers (double exposures mainly)were taken
at face value. As with contemporary crop-circle literature, a similar picture
emerges of the irrational 'reasoned'.
But if this history allows Dickinson to treat his own moves as belonging to a
popular tradition of illusionism, it also allows us to connect this image of the
trickster to its artistic role in modernism.l4 That is, the trickster-as-illusionist
takes on a broader critical function once it is attached to the modern critique of
authorship and artistic identity. This is why this tradition is not as marginal as it

Fig. 10. Cropformation:LongwoodWarren,Hampshire,260 ft across, 25 June 1995. (Photograph:

Steve Alexander.)

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John Roberts

Fig. 11 InstallationHalf-Lit
World,Camerawork
.~~~~~~~~~~~acntdb
1998. (Photograph:
Gallery,February
_h _rcse
Hugh
maietainasdi auoai *[Ling
~~~~~~~~~unosciu
Brenham.)
_eas .: _it dsaLizto
BuifDcis _I _rtisi dniy e

.~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~~~~o
.neetdi

first appears, for the illusionism of spiritualist manifestations and photography

luins samasofacs oteucncos ra

outwitting
of his audience. the real and
fed directly into early modernism's obsession with the negation ofpost-freudian~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
way Consequently this is where his

~
:....... ~ ~ the rejection of the confusion between the sincerity and the subjectivity of the
tikse et tedmnsofps~netulatpacie iknsnsfkn

~~ ~ ~ ~ ~~o
:...~ :. aaomlietfe hstiktrntjs s nilsoitbta

*~~ ~ ~ ~~~~~crutn --,-nc .::npexitn

artist and truth in art. Both Marcel Duchamp and Andr6 Breton were fascinated auesses

by spiritualist activities and fake spiritual photography, and what this implied for
the creation of the 'critical illusion' and the dissolution the artist as expressive
subject.15 For Breton the seance allowed for the production of the same kind of
unconscious manifestations as did automatic writing. But if Dickinson is
fascinated by the trickster because of its destablization of artistic identity, he is
not interested in illusionism as a means of access to the unconscious, or as a
way of outwitting his audience. Consequently this is where his post-Freudian
trickster meets the demands of post-conceptual art practice. Dickinson's faking
of the paranormal identifies his trickster not just as an illusionist but as a
corruptingpresence within preexisting value systems.
In this respect, the idea of the post-conceptual trickster as a corrupting
presence is not strictly the same as Duchamp's ironist or Breton's lover of
dissemblance, although both artists use surrogate forms of production (the
found object) to corruptthe idea that the artist is self-identical with his or her art.
The post-conceptual trickster, however, is far closer to the surrogate artist Hank
Herron,the imaginary FrankStella-like artist immortalized in GregoryBattcock's
Idea Art in 1973.16 For after conceptual art, one of the critical functions of the
artist is the self-conscious dramatization of his or her own commodification and
social marginality, turning the modernist confrontation with the administrative
power of the modern art institution and culture industry into a simulation and

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 Trickster

staging of their processes and effects. As such Herron's author provides an

interesting corollary for the ambitions of Dickinson's trickster, even if there are
obvious differences.
Hank Herronwas a fake, but through the anonymously authored article in Idea
Art his work entered the public discourse of post-minimalism, and therefore took
on a discursive life, fuelling the rumour that Herron was actually based on a
living artist. Thus, despite the anonymous authorship, Herron's 'virtual work'
and 'virtual biography' continue as historical events. As an extant text the
'virtuality' of Herron's authorship is transformed into a first-order theoretical
practice which is able to generate further theoretical work. In this sense, where
does the identity of the anonymous author and Hank Herron's 'authorship' begin
and end? Herron's work may be invented by a pseudonymous writer (or two
writers writing under one name as it happens), but discursively it continues to
have effects in the world as Hank Herron's art. Dickinson's art is obviously not
faked in this sense, he is not trying to disguise his authorship behind a
pseudonym. We know Dickinson to exist as the maker of crop-circles. But like
the producer of Herron's imaginary paintings his clandestine authorship
nevertheless establishes an ambiguous relationship between the art, the
name and origins of its author and the work's reception. In Dickinson's work,
authorship of the crop-circles is clearly evident to those who read the crop-
circles as art. The majorityof his non-art world audience, however, who do not
read the work as art, openly dispute his authorship. This leaves the reception of
the work - as I explain below - in a critically unstable position between two
publics. Dickinson's trickster is corrupting, then, precisely because his

$$`

Fig. 12. InstallationHalf-Lit

World,Camerawork 1998. (Photograph:
Gallery,February HughBrenham.)

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John Roberts

ambiguous identity as an artist, stemming from the production of the crop-

circles, allows him to penetrate the processes of modern mythology 'under
cover', so to speak. The clandestine authorship is transformed into an
objective, disruptive force outside its initial conditions of production, which
means utlimately outside his artistic control.
In this way Dickinson's crop-circles and fake UFO photographs function
essentially as a kind of virus within the belief systems of the Cerealogists. By
dint of their extraordinarysuccess as icons for believers, the revealed 'uncertainty'
of their origins remains a troublesome anomaly, reflected in the literature's
constant return to the threat of the 'hoax'. And, in turn, this is where the post-
Freudiantrickster meets up with a situational aesthetic. Whatis of primaryconcern
for Dickinson is how the productionof the crop-circles, and their representation in
the cereaologist literature and media, provides us with a knowledge of the
irrationalimmanent in everyday life through a participation in its processes.
Situational aesthetics can broadly be defined as those practices which
exclude the authorial presence of the artist from the exhibition space, or
question its autonomy. Derived from both Situationism and Conceptualism's
context theories of art, it views the artworkas a disruption in a pre-existing field
or framework of meanings. In this way, we might describe Michael Asher's and
Hans Haacke's museum installations of the 1970s and 1980s as situational:
above all else they promote the idea of the artist as a monteur of preexisting
elements derived from various social contexts.17 Dickinson's demotion of his
own authorship and adoption of a form of spatial montage recognizes the force of
these legacies. Thus in a period when, for younger artists, the museum has
become normalized again, his work draws attention to the social and cultural
divisions between the art institution and its public, and highlightingthe value of
'acting otherwise' outside the conventional channels of exhibition and reception.
One of the necessary requirements of a situational aesthetics is the emphasis
on reading interrelationallyfrom one element to another, from one context to
another and so on. The modes of attention it employs are inevitably discursive
and interrogative ones. In this respect, Dickinson's sequential presentation of
his photo-documentation and crop-circle literature, along with video material of
the crop-circles, drawings and web-sites, is the standard cognitive model. By
montaging predetermined, non-authored elements together, 'author's meaning'
is subordinate to social meaning. The demands of reading (and listening) take
precedence over matters of aesthetic discrimination. But what makes this
process in Dickinson's work particularly disruptive of the museum-oriented
version of this paradigm is the voice of the artist-trickster itself, which becomes
the hidden mover of his system. That is, Dickinson's trickster provides a set of
motivations and cultural references for a discussion of cultural division,
commodification and ideology which are rarely encountered in the 'critically-
transparent' museum interventions of 1980s post-conceptualism.
In these terms, as an artist who is interested in far more than the critique of
the conventional 'exhibition code', Dickinson's use of the trickster-illusionist
presents a picture of someone trying to work through some of the problems of
1980s museum-based situational aesthetics. For the situational aesthetics of
museum-artists, such as Asher and Haacke, have not escaped the idealist
legacy of conceptualism's anti-institutional critique: the conflation of social
transformation with the transformation of modes of exhibition and spectatorship.
In the 1980s such strategies achieved a certain amount of critical prominence,
as the art institution again came under attack, this time from critical postmodern
theory. The outcome, however, has been the incorporation of these anti-
aesthetic modes of exhibition display into the postmodern transformation of the

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 .

Trickster

?.x.S*/ f r/..-' -1 . .... i f.."'*'- .. *.:' - . ...- . *' l

P,~~~
'I~~~~~~~~~~~~~

..: . ..."
. .

, ~., , ..
'I

.... i:' IS .... 's ...

?i|?': |" ? ...;.
,,

...~__
.__ '.........
__

I_ ,- --
-
liIi^
S
-,

. .

Fig. 13. 4 x 4 ft noticeboardwithdiagrams,photographsand press cuttingstakenfromcrop-circleresearchersand enthusiasts' magazines.

(Photograph: DaveThan.)
Dickinson's in centre,
of the
Including,
adoption cropformation:Windmill
trickster-illusionist is notHill,
a Avebury,
'solution' Wheat,Approx500ft across, 29 July1996.
to these
Wiltshire,
(Photograph: Steve Alexander.)

museum itself. In short, such efforts at 'internalcritique'have easily been

brought into line with the new managerial radicalism of the 1980s and 1990s.
Situational aesthetics, or site-specific practice, has become the house style of
the new porno museum For a new generation of artists, therefore, who compare
the corresponding critical claims of the work with its academic success, the
critical value and aesthetic goals of situational strategies have appeared
disappointing and problematic. Indeed critiquingthe 'exhibition code' from within
the museum itself, has seemed limplyvirtuous, part of a cultural politics that has
become bureaucratically
self-administering.

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John Roberts

problems. But by adopting the role of the trickster as critical illusionist Dickinson
is able to performthe effects of culturaldivision and modern myth from withinthe
confines of popular culture and popular 'science' itself, rather than simply
announce the consequence of their effects for a museum - or gallery - going
audience. If this in turn produces an interesting set of problems for the true-
believer visitor to the crop circles and the reader of paranormal literature, it also
sets up an interesting viewing relationship for the sceptic and true-believer alike
in the gallery and museum; the gallery viewers are presented with a complex
arrayof documentary and scientific materials which have already been mediated
culturallyas 'the paranormal'. In other words, before the crop-circles enter the
gallery as art their value has already been established by the media as
'inexplicable phenomena'. The result is that the acceptance or rejection of the
mythological content of the materials is dependent on a primary process of
mediation before their mediation as art. The spectator's relationship to the
phenomenon is already sensitized, therefore, to the power of the media in this
mythological process, insofar as the mainstream press and TV conspires with
'true believer' culture in the interests of ratings and popular appeal. Byfaking the
paranormal, Dickinson appropriates this power, thereby producing the viewing
conditions for a knowledge of the irrationalin the everyday out of the work's own
necessary collusion with the media.
To simulate the effects of the modern media in the work of art is, of course,
nothing novel for art of the 1980s and 1990s. But in Dickinson's work we are
given a complex twist, insofar as his practice successfully insinuates itself into
the populist agendas of the media as part of a pre-existing non-artworldculture.
This allows him to montage the voices of the irrational in the rational and the
irrational 'reasoned' within the wider ideological setting of mass culture. In the
gallery the performative contradictions of modern forms of ideology are
themselves performed.
Rod Dickinson's most recent one person show 'HalfLitWorld'was at Camerawork,
London, 25 February-8 April1998.

team changes on a regularbasis; however,since 1994 Dickinson

1. The personnelof the crop-circle
withthe artistand web-sitedesignerJohnLundberg.
has workedin close collaboration
2. See forexample,NancyTalbot,'CropFormations: no.
The BiophysicalPerspective',TheCircular,
27, Winter1996/7.
3. AlfredWatkins,TheOldStraightTrack:Its Mounds,Beacons,Moats,Sites and MarkStones
(Abacus:London,1974).
4. See for exampleJimLyons,'Gravitationplus Cavitation= Salvation?',TheCircular,
no. 27, Winter
1996/7.
HystericalEpidemicsand Moder Culture(ColumbiaUniversity
5. See ElaineShowalter,Hystories:
Press: NewYork,1997), p. 161.
6. Showalter,Hystories,p. 9.
7. SlavojZizek,TheSublimeObjectIdeology(Verso:London,1989).
8. TheodorAdorno,'TheStars DownTo Earth:TheLosAngelesTimesAstrologyColumn',in Theodor
Adornoed. StephenCrook,TheStarsDownto Earthand OtherEssayson the Irrational in Culture
(Routledge:London,1994), p. 34. Inthe 1950s CarlJungalso became interestedin modern
manfestationsof the paranormal.See FlyingSaucers:A ModernMythof ThingsSeen in the Sky
(1959) (Ark:London,1977). Jung'sdescriptionof UFOssightingsas 'visionaryrumours'is builton a
conservativetheoryof the psycheas the repressionof a mythicunconscious.Thesightingsbecome
a compensatoryprojectionsof 'spiritualwholeness'.
9. Adorno,'TheStars DownTo Earth',p. 44.
of CynicalReason(Verso:London,1988).
10. PeterSloterdijk,Critique
11. Adorno,'TheStars DownTo Earth',p. 119.

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 Trickster

12. For a discussion of the telephone and Spritualism see Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book:
Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 1989).
13. See Tom Gunning, 'Phantom Images and Mode', in Patrice Petro (ed.), Fugitive Images: From
Photography to Video (Indiana University Press, 1995). For a discussion of Spiritualism and the early
working-class movement, see Logie Barrow, The Independent Spirits: Spiritualismand English
Plebeians 1850-1910, History WorkshopJournal (Routledge: Henley-on-Thames, 1986).
14. For a brief discussion of the trickster as artist, see Rod Dickinson, 'It's Artfor Folk's Sake',
Fortean Times, January 1998.
15. For an interesting anecdotal discussion of these connections see, MarkPolizzotti, Revolution of
the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton (Bloomsbury: London, 1995).
16. Cheryl Bernstein 'The Fake as More' in GregoryBattcock (ed.), Idea Art (Dutton: New York,
1973).
17. In the case of Asher this takes the form of the serialized presentation of items taken from the
museum itself, as for example in his 1991 Pompidou show where he removed all the page markers
from books in the psychology section of the museum's Bibliotheque Publique into the contemporary
galleries. After the exhibition the elements are dispersed or destroyed, preventing the installation
from yielding any exchange value. In Haacke's work the serialized presentation of photographs and
texts on subjects bear directly on the corporate interests of the institution in which the work is being
shown. These function dissonantly as a reminder of the speciousness of the art institution's claims
to autonomy and as a would-be challenge to the 'comforts' of aesthetic contemplation, as in the
Shapolsky real estate series (1971). In Haacke's case, however, the sequence of photographs and
texts exist as discrete works for further exhibition and sale. See Michael Asher, Writings1973-1983
on Works1969-1979, Benjamin H. Buchloh (ed.) (NSCADPress: Halifax, 1983), and Hans Haacke:
Unfinished Business (New Museum of ContemporaryArt:New York, 1986). For a discussion of their
work see Claude Gintz, 'Michael Asher and the Transformation of "Situational Aesthetics"', October
no. 66, Fall 1993.

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