Dissertation Lecture

Year 2 Essay & Bibliography

Total Word Count 2047.

Task 2 The machanical age of reproduction

Keep Calm and Carry On

'Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space.'

The 'Keep Calm and Carry On' posters were produced by the British Government as a series of propaganda posters distributed throughout the country to try and give the people reassurance. Where as in todays society they have been reproduced with whatever meaning the designer wants to apply to it, these posters have then been reproduced and sold widely with a completely different purpose they were initially intended for. 

'During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes'

This means that in today's modern society there is no need for these posters to give reassurance to people and changing its content completely changes the aura of the work of art into something else with a different meaning. Reproducing the poster in so many different variations also decreases the original value of the poster and this detaches its original meaning into something new and unoriginal. 

'They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery'

Taking the design elements from the original poster and then applying it to pointless british things is not original or creative, to make things worse they have also reproduced it in various media due to new technologies so unlike the original piece, designers are now able to apply the design to even more pointless everyday items like mobile phones covers...

New technologies have allowed these posters to be easily reproduced by most people allowing them to interpret it in anyway they like, which gives people the freedom to apply it across any media and in anyway they want. The problem with this is it looses the posters original value and meaning to the point where they are interpreted completely differently to what the government intended them during the war.

Lecture 9 - Censorship and the Truth

Thursday 2^nd February

Lecture 9: 'Censorship and Truth'

This lecture looks at notions of censorship and truth, photographic manipulation and how much truth we're allowed to see.

Photography has indexical qualities; it represents a scene and something that actually happened. There's cliches like the camera never lies'.

In analogue photography there is an original image which physically exists {in the form of a negative). We like to think that images made like this have more truth to them than digital images.

Ansel Adams work is a good example to show that this is not necessarily the case. Arguably, the 'magic' in Adams' images comes from darkroom manipulation. From one negative he could suggest different times of day / different weather conditions. He deliberately published more than one version of some image from the same negatives to show the manipulation that was being done. The manipulation of photographs isn't something new which has come in with digital photography.

There are images of Stalin from which Yezhov and Trotsky have been edited out when they have fallen out of favour.

A few days after 9/11 a doctored image appeared of someone standing on top of towers posing for a tourist style snap as one of the planes flies towards them.

Kate Winslet's legs were famously lengthened for a GQ magazine cover. This was one of the first cases in which attention had been drawn to image alteration and it caused a scandal

There have also been examples of newspaper images being doctored to give a different appearance to a situation. Altering images like this seems more serious.

There has been much discussion of whether Robert Capa's 'Death of a Loyalist Soldier' is real. It has been decided recently that it was not staged. Is it important to know whether or not it is real? Or is it enough just to know that deaths are happening?

Is the truth that we read in a photograph coloured by the caption that goes with it? A caption can appeal to your emotions to make you think / feel a certain way about an image.

Baudrillard says that simulacra have four stages:

1.    It is the reflection of a basic reality.

2.          It masks and perverts a basic reality.

3.          It masks the absence of a basic reality,

4.          It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is rts own pure simulacrum.'

He wrote quite a lot about the gulf war.

Peter Turnley photographed during the gulf war. He talks about the role of the digital journalist. Images can be shared so quickly that you can cause an immediate response. During the gulf war, images were mediated through newspapers and approved by the American army so that events and situations could be hidden. Turnley feels that you can now make a judgment which isn't imposed by the government.

Baudrillard wrote The Gulf War Did Not Take Place'. What he was getting at with this was that it wasn't like a real war, but something which was mediated through the press. It was a manipulated representation of a war.

Peter Turnley has tried to show that the guff was a reafwar in which people were dying. These types of images weren't shown to the public at the time that the war was on. In Our Time" - a book by Magnum includes equally graphic imagery of war.

children? She has been criticised for photographing her children without their clothes. Can you argue that it is different when it is a mother photographing her own children?

Tierney Gearon s images of her children were bought by Saatchi and exhibited in the 1 Am A Camera exhibition. Gearon has had no formal training but her images could be used to discuss the gaze from a female perspective. There were horrified comments from a paper at the time that the exhibition was on. It was investigated by the police who decided to leave the images up. Gearson insists that the images are completely innocent and not staged.

Nan Goldin's image of her friends children belly dancing was also investigated and taken down. Should the public have the right to go and see this image if they want to?

A famous image of child actress Brooke Shields in which she appears naked was taken by Gary Gross and sanctioned by her mother at the time. It was reproduced by Richard Prince and given the title Spiritual America' which refers to the folly of values in America. The image was later pulled from an exhibition at the Tate.

How much should be believe what we see in the media? Should we be protected from certain things? Where do you draw the line - where does art become obscenity?

Lecture 10 - Deleuze and Guattuvi

Lecture 10: Deleuze and Guattari, and Creativity

Oeleuze and Guattari are two thinkers who collaborated with one another.

You were listening to Richard Pinhas as you came in. He attended lectures by Deleuze and was inspired by him. Patterns of repetition and configuration are central to Deleuze and Guattari's thinking.

Deleuze was a philosopher and Guattari was psychiatrist working in France. They've been very influential in various fields including music and sociology.

The Paris strike in 1968 led to a reassessment of the activist in society. Deleuze and Guattari tried to rethink activism and change. 'A Thousand Plateaus' is worth looking at. This is available in the library.

Deleuze and Guattari identified a tree-like system of thought which was used by traditional thinkers. In this system one idea must lead on to another. They then came up with an alternative system of thought which they called rhizomatic

Deleuze and Guattari's chapters don't build on each other and then come together at the end as you would expect. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that you read their books in the way that you would listen to a record - dipping in and out.

Ideas about rhizo thought are drawn from a natural form called the same thing. The rhizo method of thought offers a different perspective than the tree-like method.

Saussure demonstrated that the concepts we use in thought and speech gain their meaning from repeated pattern of usage.

The rhizo builds relationships between objects / people / places and produces unexpected connections, ft is inherency creative.

An artist who might be considered rhizomatic is Isa Gcnzken The work 'Hospital (Ground Zero)¹ has a sense of manual production and things being held together provisionally. This was one the proposals that the artist put forward for potential architectural forms to be built at ground zero.

Deleuze and Guattari discussed the notion of the assemblage. An example of an assemblage would be a home The home is made up of things which make us feel comfortable. Our sense of home* comes from outside the construct of the house.

When a person graduates from high school there is a supposition of power; one person bestows knowledge upon another.

In Bruce Nauman's 'Good Boy Bad Boy' two figures on two TV screens address the audience. The use of T and 'you¹ and 'we' and 'they' disorientates us and puts us in a role. The use of simple language forces us to recognise power and take responsibility.

How might you or an authority figure judge someone who is wearing a hoodie? People in hoodies gathering outside a shopping centre are judged by people who pass by. You might assume that they are waiting for someone, planning to buy alcohol perhaps planning a crime. These people come together, appropriate a space and change its function. They form an assemblage of bodies

Zaha Hadid is an architect who tries to create assemblages. The National Museum of XXI Century Arts s&ems to flow around the people who move through the space.

Deleuze and Guattari say that our sense of identity is under construction. The word T is empty and can only be appropriated by different individuals. Multiple ideologies circulate within societies at any given time, yet some are able to dominate because they represent class interests. There are relations of dominance between different people.

Consider a working day: you are expected to fulfil different roles. You might be a commuter, then a worker and then you might come home and act out the role of parent and partner. Each individual is buffeted around from context to context.

Schizoanalysis:

Guattari was involved in a radical clinic called La Borde The aim was not to cure the sick but to encourage the individual to take part in their own creation.

To Deleuze and Guattari, Freud is a tree-like thinker. They felt that psychoanalysis was limited. Schizoanalysis re-evaluates the role of the analyst. The patient and analyst relocate from the couch to the kitchen or the park. They both try out roles and try to redefine the person and their sense of who they are.

In terms of traditional psychology, schizophrenia is seen in entirely negative terms. It is a breakdown of the persons sense of self. Deleuze and Guattari see possibilities of change and rethinking of identity in the breakdown which occurs.

The term 'the body without organs' refers to a practical process. It is a radical reduction of bodily awareness. The term initially came from a surrealist play writer In this state there is a loss of linguistics and you're simply engaged with your sensate awareness. There is a loss of your sense of structure and your body should be experienced as a singular.

Deleuze and Guattari consider that nothing is inevitable - everything is subject to change. Think about how connotations of the words 'banker' have changed.

What we think of as real, solid objects are actually subject to change. Everything must be considered a construction. The construction is made up of smaller forms. The molar is what we think of an object as being and the molecular is the forces and components which make up that object.

James Williams is a good writer on Deleuze and Guattari*

Deleuze and Guattari talk about the actual and the virtual The actual refers to bodies and the virtual refers to what they imply and how they came into existence.

Francis Bacon kept images of cefebrifies /animals /diseases in his studio. In his paintings the actual is the sitter (the person before him) and the virtual is all of the emotions and other elements which make up the person before him.

We exist in relation to an ever changing and complicated world.

Lecture 11 - Critique & production of institutions

Thursday 23^rd February

Lecture 11: The Production and Critique of Institutions

Artists like Hans Haacke have been involved with critique of the institution.

Marx argued that under capitalism we must sell our labour as a commodity and therefore feel no connection with the work we're doing. If you're paid by someone else to do your labour you feel disconnected from it and this leads to alienation.

Marx states that ideology explains our own alienation within society. We're not free to think through our own position in the world Our life circumstances are rooted in our material situation. Our beliefs about our situation are social constructs.

Marx felt that social institutions (church / school / press) played an important role in perpetuating ideologies.

In post revolutionary France, new social institutions arose to reflect the new values of France. There was a violent overthrow of French monarchical society.

The Louvre was used to bring individuals together and make them aware that they were part of a new society. Things which had been held apart from the general public were now thrown open for people to see.

The Louvre sought to denigrate the old ways of society and promote the benefits of the new order. It helped to integrate the public into the new social structure.

Peasants were free from absolute poverty under monarchical rule but were subject to the relative poverty of wage labour.

In the book 'Mythologies' Roland Barthes talks about cultural prejudices which occur in things like magazine covers. Two core terms he talks about are nature and history. Certain beliefs seem so natural that they are unquestionable. Some natural

assumptions have been historically constructed. An ideological assumption might be_t for example, that women are caring and men are strong.

Marx and Engels argue that consciousness is a social product We don't freely think or consider our place in the world - our place in th£ world generates our

beliefs.

Tony Bennett reads that the Great Exhibition is all about demonstrating the power and prowess of various countries. Exhibitions like this generate a feeling of public space and public belonging. You behave and you are av/are of your behaviour being monitored. This is one of the core functions of this type df space according to Bennett.

Peter Burger identified that within the art museum, exhibits speak to the individual. The avant-garde seeks to bring together art and life, instead of them being held apart. It contests the status of art.

In Russia art was integrated into society and was connected with social change and usefulness.

For Roger Fry, colour and shape (formal characteristics) started to be seen as a representation of feelings and emotions. Works started 10 be understood as gauges for the artists own emotions. Fry was involved in the canonism of Gaugin's practice.

Clive Bell, a contemporary of Fry, talks about significant form (formal organisation) in order to provoke an emotion in the viewer. There's an attempt to engage with the emotional life of the viewer in the gallery. The works became a vehicle for the viewer's own emotions* Abstract art doesn't reflect social reality - it becomes an opportunity to witness your own intellectual capabilities at play.

The space of the public art gallery became one which was separate from the pressures of everyday life. It is free of any means-ends relationship.

Selling yourself into wage labour was a fundamental part of life in the earty 20^th century. Then we have this space (the gallery) which is free from means-ends pursuit. The sense of freedom is limited to this space, however.

Dada was a form of anti-art It rejected convention and normality. The Dadaists believed that perpetuation of individualism had led to the horrors of World War I The Dada manifesto was made up of rejections of certain concepts.

Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' comments on the way in which an artwork is socially displayed. Even though the work was rejected for exhibition, the discussion of it meant that the readymade became an accepted part of art practice. The fact that it was rejected comments on the denial of function and everyday usefulness from the gaffery space.

There is no inherent 'otherness' which inhabits a work of art - what makes them different is what we do with them. Duchamp is emphasising that art has become removed from practical life.

You must institutionalise art and separate it from everyday life. Brian O'Doherty looks it social function of the gallery in the post war era.

In the 'White Cube' gallery you get a beautiful, clean environment and a highly finished floor, bare white walls, rectangular layout, spotlighting and works hung with a lot of space around them.

Clemet Greenberg was a key figure in the theorisation of abstract art. When looking at works like colour fields you could have your own, individual, visual response. You need the right kind of de-contextualising space in order to enjoy the work.

Haacke developed work in the 1960s to question the status of these de-con textualised spaces which seek to be held apart from everyday life.

Michael Asher's Clare Copley Gallery Installation' took down the partition wall between the managerial office and the space which is usually dedicated to aesthetic

appreciation. The work comments on the status of the gallery in America in the 1970s.

You can see paintings leant up against the back of the room, waiting to be sold. They seem to lose the status that they had when they were hung up for display -they say something different to us. Their commodity status is being emphasised.

The cultural coding of architectural forms and the expectations of the public add to gallery complexes-

Lecture 8 - Post Modernism

Thursday 26^th January

Lecture 8: Jean Baudrillard and Postmodernism

In this lecture we are looking at Baudrillard s particular take on postmodernism. Baudrillard's position emerges out of a Marxist critique of capitalism

Baudrillard wrote 'The System of Objects*. 'The Mirror of Production' and 'Simulacra and Simulation'.

Baudrillard claims that simulacra have no pre-existing relationship with reality- An image can be identified as simulacra.

Examples of films which reflect ideas about simulacra are The Matrix and Blade Runner In The Matrix, reality has been reduced to a blank white space full of constructions. This gives us an idea of what Baudrillard was talking about - we are constantly bombarded by simulacra.

Baudrillard critiqued the rise of promotion and advertising, which have become part of our everyday lives.

Marx investigates how we become alienated and cannot interact directly with the world. Man has gone from making products to making commodities. Each commodity can be weighed against another because they are quantitative rather than qualitative.

Once we start trading one thing for another our relationship with the world becomes indirect.

Labour is a commodity which we must sell to live. Labour has to be exchanged for money. We have to sell ourselves in order to survive.

Objects are not valued in terms of usefulness but in terms of trade value.

One might approach a product in a supermarket thinking not only that it might be good to eat but also thinking of it in relation to its price and against all the other products.

In 1911 Taylor came up with the idea of assembly line production

Henry Ford's production line factories for making cars are a famous precursor to mass production. You don't make the car yourself; you share the production with other people. The workers are given sufficient income and leisure time to then consume the products that they're making.

In the post war period there was an increased power for production and the demand needed to match this. Every advert is saying to us buy more things'.

John Berger writes about advertising in chapter 7 of Ways of Seeing'. This is an easy book to digest.

A car has to communicate that it represents a certain type of person. The car is described as having human characteristics. The product then confirms our status as having these types of characteristics. The car is presented to us as a kind of artwork. It suggests social standing.

A Miller beer advert juxtaposes the beer (in a champagne type glass) with the type of meal that you might have seen in a fancy restaurant at the time. It associates itself with this lifestyle

In the 'Mad Men' clip, the interviewer in the focus group makes an effort to familiarise herself with the group, even going as far as to lie about not having a name badge.

The architecture of the focus group is interesting; the room in which the interviewees sit is made to feel very comfortable so that they will open up, whilst on the other side of the one way glass the/re being observed and their answers are scrutinised.

Advertisers find ways to convince consumers that a certain product will make them happy. Demand needs to be kept consistent - people need to be convinced to keep buying the same things.

Baudrillard s essay Consumer Society' talks about store front displays and interior layout. Through exposure to advertising were all made to desire in the same way.

Saussure examined the status of the sign. Words are only meaningful as part of as wider language. There's no particular reason for any word to mean something, other than the fact that we've all agreed that something means what it means*

Saussure refers to langue as the system of agreement of understanding and 'parole' as the individual speech acts within this system

Berger describes advertising as a system and a language.

Baudrillard says that continual exposure to adverts constructs a system for consumer desire.

Baudrillard discusses Disney World as a simulacrum. Some of the environments in Disney World are shaped by our idea of American history rather than the reality of American history.

Baudrillard talked about the twin towers, saying that they didn't appear to have any relationship to their surroundings except with each other. The terrorist attacks which destroyed the towers showed how media coverage can shape history / create simulacra. Baudrillard notes that the blowing up of the towers mirrored scenes from dramatic Hollywood films such as Die Hard.

Spin doctoring now shapes politics.

Baudrillards vision of hyperreal society shapes what he thinks of a postmodernism. We are in a post history because through the simulacrum of society, material progress has come to an end.

Note the product placement and postmodern artwork in the scene where we are introduced to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is some kind of mask. Every aspect of his life is made up of the products that he consumes. Out of these products he has built up an identity for himself.

Media culture controls culture, social space and even political decision making.