Behind the image. Repetition in audio-visual arts
This book is based on PhD written at the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Warsaw (the Institute of Philosophy at the Department of Aesthetics). It is in the process of issue of Universitas Publishing House, scheduled to be released in December 2015 year.
Résumé:
The demand to rework the “repetitive turn” stems from the belief that the category of repetition plays an especially important role in the contemporary culture. It has been for some time now that we have been able to see a number of strategies and methods utilising a specific power of repetition – beginning with the idea of recycling thoughts or everyday objects, through the fashionability of reusing certain artefacts (second hand) and “assembling” old elements into new forms (found footage), and, in the world of art, up to and including the idea of imposing ready-made models of life, reproduced ad infinitum, on whole societies, including those in the former Soviet bloc. A quote, a pastiche, a patchwork, a remake, a retake, a series, found footage, etc. have become the main strategies of many artists. Treating the famous Alberti’s motto: “picture is a window opening to the world” a bit perversely I intended to expose and analyse certain important changes that the contemporary world is undergoing, and which are especially manifest in the broadly defined audio-visual arts. Apart from the obvious reference to Gilles Deleuze’s repetition theory presented in “Difference and Repetition”, I focused on a search for alternative theoretical solutions, on constructing – in the spirit of the “conceptual empiricism” – of convenient philosophical tools which would rather result from contaminating concepts of various authors, including Deleuze, Nietzsche, Foucault, Barthes, Said, Žižek, Theweleit or Althusser, than be elements of existing, consequent theories of repetition, for instance Derrida’s concept of iteration or Kierkegaard’s theological-existential theory. The method I chose reflected the characteristics of the area under analysis and the aim that I tried to achieve. By using these, and no other, theoretical tools I intended to, first of all, study the role that repetition is currently playing in audio-visual arts and, indirectly and more broadly, in the contemporary culture: in the area of art and media, and in the socio-political sphere as well.
As a result, nine different repetition have been establishes which, grouped in three blocks (in turn defining the framework for the following part of this paper) relate to the classical spheres or topics of philosophy: epistemology, theory of the subject and ontology.
The first three are connected with the area of knowledge production and are based on the leading repetition as auto-reference and relates sequentially to the construction of a scenario, film genre and the history of film.
1) Repetition as a template. Using Freud’s concept of Durcharbeitung – which denotes not so much the reworking of certain knowledge of the past, as it does denote the knowledge of some scheme of activity connected with the concept of re-imagining the postmodernity, inspired by Lyotard’s theory – I tried to define the role of self-reflexivity in the movie Adaptation, which deals with the topic of a movie scenario. The latter one is presented here as the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, whereby being a reference to Lyotard’s idea of postmodernity feeding on itself. Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation” uses auto-reference to analyse the current validity of the movie world and the postmodernity in itself.
2) Repetition bare and disguised Another figure of repetition, which is a reference to Gilles Deleuze’s theory, refers to the construction of a movie genre. The qualitative difference between “bare” and “disguised”repetition allows us to formulate the rules of Lars von Trier’s general technique for constructing movies, basing on a reconstruction of the structures of a given movie genre. This strategy, imperceptible at first, is only made apparent by a detailed analysis of “The Five Obstructions”, drawing from the movie genre of a documentary and at the same time expanding its boundaries and modifying its meaning.
3) Auto-reference as a tool in philosophy of history A theoretical tool created by contaminating Deleuze’s concept of Idea and rhizome and Bergson’s ontology of time and modality allows us to formulate a hypothesis about a new role of auto-reference in Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma. Auto-reference is presented here as a key to understanding the history of cinema (and – to some extent – history tout court). The relation of an image to the process of its own historical development creates a specific kind of philosophy of history. Histoire(s)… is an attempt at discovering the possible history, or rather: history as a kind of a possibility. We can say that Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma tells a story of the cinema as a story of a downfall, but this attempt to settle accounts with the past is supposed to, first of all, enable the things that are à venir to come to pass.
The other leading repetition is a repetition as the duplication of the subject, organises the discussion centred on the problems of ideology, power and history. The main aim of the analysis here is to present the rules governing the process of taming the subject and unmasking hidden mechanisms of ideological classification of the reality.
4) „Double „J”, or the (re)duplication of the subject. This part of the work will analyse movie incarnations of Joan of Arc. The issue of taming the female subjectivity and the issue of the foundation of the subject as a “desire of the Other” become the context here. Althusser’s concept of the subject and Lacan’s theory of the Other and the theory of desire (as interpreted by Slavoj Žižek) serve as analytical tools in this instance. Basing on the images of the iconic Joan we can observe a certain repeatable outline revealing the mechanisms dictating social needs. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of Joan’s images reveals the fact that the ideology itself becomes desired.
5) Repetition as a fusion of comments Starting with the western model of “orders of discourse” described by Foucault and the schemata for the production of truth in the sense of Barhes’s “mythogenesis”, I then concentrate on the image of collective subjectivity created by Bollywood. The Hollywood-Bollywood doppelganger is a point of departure for reflections which focus not really on the aesthetic similarities sensu stricto, but rather on the political dependencies, deeply rooted in the colonial times, founding the economic strategies which shape the cultural image of the orient perceived by the West.
6) The figure of duplication as immanence of the mental image Basing on the Deleuze’s concept of a “mental image”, which chooses “relations” as its subject, a specific figure of duplication, immanent to the film space, is created. This time the analytical tool is contained within the film itself, it is just enough to bring it to light and describe it. What I mean here is the technique of connecting, on the found footage basis, of movie fragments in order to expose the mechanisms of ideological classification of the reality. This act reveals a certain relation, in this case a relation referring to the reality of the Cold War with its culture of fear. In Johan Grimonprez’s “Double Take” mental images formulate thoughts and fulfil as important an analytical role as the word does.
The last part, focused around the notion of relations between the image and the reality, refers to the repetition as a strategy of affirming/negating the image. This time, the main emphasis is placed on an attempt to redefine the meaning of audio-visual arts in the context of selected philosophical theories.
7) The repetition figure as détournement. Starting with an analytical deconstruction of the situationist’s bible – Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle”, I am trying to answer the question of today's role of audio-visual arts. “Today”, i.e. after a disruptive manifestation and proclamation of the end of art, which, in Debord’s theory, is a kind of an alibi for the existing order. The image here is ultimately defined as both an enemy and a tool of criticism, thereby fulfilling a double role. Accumulation of images, while serving as an indirect cause of commodification and maintaining the reproduction of an alienated culture, can also serve as a tool used to fight the system. The strategy of détournement, of intercepting and redefining, i.e. creating new qualities in decoding previously encoded elements allows the image to become a tool of its own criticism.
8) Repetition as a simulation The basic issue raised in connection with Baudrillard’s ontology of the image was the issue of the function that, in the context of his theory, is performed by moving pictures in audio-visual arts. In the article I try to, among other things, reconstruct the positive aspect of Baudrillard’s mainly fatalistic concept by exposing the poorly defined notion of “authentic simulacrum” based on the strategy of irony. In the end I define the role of audio-visual arts, condemned to exemplify the theory of simulacra, or at most situating itself on the level of theory itself and, basing on Baudrillard’s theory, I divide images into simulacra images, map images, pornographic images, historical images, reality show images and auto-reference images.
9) Looping as an ecstasy of repetition. The last chapter is devoted to one of the more prolific activities that can be performed on an image – looping. I selected three types of looping for my analysis: looping based on the renaissance idea of encyclopaedic ordering with a “moving classification”, looping as a rhythmic addition of repetitive elements in accordance with the principle of intensification or concentration, and looping as an abstract form based on a trance. The main characteristic organising a looping strategy, and one that to the greatest extent contributes to the creation of its sense, is the movement. In the first instance, the collection of singular moments creates a series of cinematographic encyclopaedia. Concentration, on the other hand, while referring to Freudian Verdichtung, organises the principle of repetition arising many times in various configuration in movies, e.g. in Pièce Touchée. In trance and abstraction-based looping, the accent is placed on the process. The selectivity contained in the serialised phrases of looping raises the thinking about images into an area of abstract, extra-pictorial forms focused on pulsating sensations, resembling in its structure the Nietzschean circle of Eternal Recurrence.
The demand to rework the “repetitive turn” stems from the belief that the category of repetition plays an especially important role in the contemporary culture. It has been for some time now that we have been able to see a number of strategies and methods utilising a specific power of repetition – beginning with the idea of recycling thoughts or everyday objects, through the fashionability of reusing certain artefacts (second hand) and “assembling” old elements into new forms (found footage), and, in the world of art, up to and including the idea of imposing ready-made models of life, reproduced ad infinitum, on whole societies, including those in the former Soviet bloc. A quote, a pastiche, a patchwork, a remake, a retake, a series, found footage, etc. have become the main strategies of many artists. Treating the famous Alberti’s motto: “picture is a window opening to the world” a bit perversely I intended to expose and analyse certain important changes that the contemporary world is undergoing, and which are especially manifest in the broadly defined audio-visual arts. Apart from the obvious reference to Gilles Deleuze’s repetition theory presented in “Difference and Repetition”, I focused on a search for alternative theoretical solutions, on constructing – in the spirit of the “conceptual empiricism” – of convenient philosophical tools which would rather result from contaminating concepts of various authors, including Deleuze, Nietzsche, Foucault, Barthes, Said, Žižek, Theweleit or Althusser, than be elements of existing, consequent theories of repetition, for instance Derrida’s concept of iteration or Kierkegaard’s theological-existential theory. The method I chose reflected the characteristics of the area under analysis and the aim that I tried to achieve. By using these, and no other, theoretical tools I intended to, first of all, study the role that repetition is currently playing in audio-visual arts and, indirectly and more broadly, in the contemporary culture: in the area of art and media, and in the socio-political sphere as well.
As a result, nine different repetition have been establishes which, grouped in three blocks (in turn defining the framework for the following part of this paper) relate to the classical spheres or topics of philosophy: epistemology, theory of the subject and ontology.
The first three are connected with the area of knowledge production and are based on the leading repetition as auto-reference and relates sequentially to the construction of a scenario, film genre and the history of film.
1) Repetition as a template. Using Freud’s concept of Durcharbeitung – which denotes not so much the reworking of certain knowledge of the past, as it does denote the knowledge of some scheme of activity connected with the concept of re-imagining the postmodernity, inspired by Lyotard’s theory – I tried to define the role of self-reflexivity in the movie Adaptation, which deals with the topic of a movie scenario. The latter one is presented here as the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, whereby being a reference to Lyotard’s idea of postmodernity feeding on itself. Charlie Kaufman’s “Adaptation” uses auto-reference to analyse the current validity of the movie world and the postmodernity in itself.
2) Repetition bare and disguised Another figure of repetition, which is a reference to Gilles Deleuze’s theory, refers to the construction of a movie genre. The qualitative difference between “bare” and “disguised”repetition allows us to formulate the rules of Lars von Trier’s general technique for constructing movies, basing on a reconstruction of the structures of a given movie genre. This strategy, imperceptible at first, is only made apparent by a detailed analysis of “The Five Obstructions”, drawing from the movie genre of a documentary and at the same time expanding its boundaries and modifying its meaning.
3) Auto-reference as a tool in philosophy of history A theoretical tool created by contaminating Deleuze’s concept of Idea and rhizome and Bergson’s ontology of time and modality allows us to formulate a hypothesis about a new role of auto-reference in Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma. Auto-reference is presented here as a key to understanding the history of cinema (and – to some extent – history tout court). The relation of an image to the process of its own historical development creates a specific kind of philosophy of history. Histoire(s)… is an attempt at discovering the possible history, or rather: history as a kind of a possibility. We can say that Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma tells a story of the cinema as a story of a downfall, but this attempt to settle accounts with the past is supposed to, first of all, enable the things that are à venir to come to pass.
The other leading repetition is a repetition as the duplication of the subject, organises the discussion centred on the problems of ideology, power and history. The main aim of the analysis here is to present the rules governing the process of taming the subject and unmasking hidden mechanisms of ideological classification of the reality.
4) „Double „J”, or the (re)duplication of the subject. This part of the work will analyse movie incarnations of Joan of Arc. The issue of taming the female subjectivity and the issue of the foundation of the subject as a “desire of the Other” become the context here. Althusser’s concept of the subject and Lacan’s theory of the Other and the theory of desire (as interpreted by Slavoj Žižek) serve as analytical tools in this instance. Basing on the images of the iconic Joan we can observe a certain repeatable outline revealing the mechanisms dictating social needs. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of Joan’s images reveals the fact that the ideology itself becomes desired.
5) Repetition as a fusion of comments Starting with the western model of “orders of discourse” described by Foucault and the schemata for the production of truth in the sense of Barhes’s “mythogenesis”, I then concentrate on the image of collective subjectivity created by Bollywood. The Hollywood-Bollywood doppelganger is a point of departure for reflections which focus not really on the aesthetic similarities sensu stricto, but rather on the political dependencies, deeply rooted in the colonial times, founding the economic strategies which shape the cultural image of the orient perceived by the West.
6) The figure of duplication as immanence of the mental image Basing on the Deleuze’s concept of a “mental image”, which chooses “relations” as its subject, a specific figure of duplication, immanent to the film space, is created. This time the analytical tool is contained within the film itself, it is just enough to bring it to light and describe it. What I mean here is the technique of connecting, on the found footage basis, of movie fragments in order to expose the mechanisms of ideological classification of the reality. This act reveals a certain relation, in this case a relation referring to the reality of the Cold War with its culture of fear. In Johan Grimonprez’s “Double Take” mental images formulate thoughts and fulfil as important an analytical role as the word does.
The last part, focused around the notion of relations between the image and the reality, refers to the repetition as a strategy of affirming/negating the image. This time, the main emphasis is placed on an attempt to redefine the meaning of audio-visual arts in the context of selected philosophical theories.
7) The repetition figure as détournement. Starting with an analytical deconstruction of the situationist’s bible – Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle”, I am trying to answer the question of today's role of audio-visual arts. “Today”, i.e. after a disruptive manifestation and proclamation of the end of art, which, in Debord’s theory, is a kind of an alibi for the existing order. The image here is ultimately defined as both an enemy and a tool of criticism, thereby fulfilling a double role. Accumulation of images, while serving as an indirect cause of commodification and maintaining the reproduction of an alienated culture, can also serve as a tool used to fight the system. The strategy of détournement, of intercepting and redefining, i.e. creating new qualities in decoding previously encoded elements allows the image to become a tool of its own criticism.
8) Repetition as a simulation The basic issue raised in connection with Baudrillard’s ontology of the image was the issue of the function that, in the context of his theory, is performed by moving pictures in audio-visual arts. In the article I try to, among other things, reconstruct the positive aspect of Baudrillard’s mainly fatalistic concept by exposing the poorly defined notion of “authentic simulacrum” based on the strategy of irony. In the end I define the role of audio-visual arts, condemned to exemplify the theory of simulacra, or at most situating itself on the level of theory itself and, basing on Baudrillard’s theory, I divide images into simulacra images, map images, pornographic images, historical images, reality show images and auto-reference images.
9) Looping as an ecstasy of repetition. The last chapter is devoted to one of the more prolific activities that can be performed on an image – looping. I selected three types of looping for my analysis: looping based on the renaissance idea of encyclopaedic ordering with a “moving classification”, looping as a rhythmic addition of repetitive elements in accordance with the principle of intensification or concentration, and looping as an abstract form based on a trance. The main characteristic organising a looping strategy, and one that to the greatest extent contributes to the creation of its sense, is the movement. In the first instance, the collection of singular moments creates a series of cinematographic encyclopaedia. Concentration, on the other hand, while referring to Freudian Verdichtung, organises the principle of repetition arising many times in various configuration in movies, e.g. in Pièce Touchée. In trance and abstraction-based looping, the accent is placed on the process. The selectivity contained in the serialised phrases of looping raises the thinking about images into an area of abstract, extra-pictorial forms focused on pulsating sensations, resembling in its structure the Nietzschean circle of Eternal Recurrence.