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por Masayuki Kawai
Actually, and naturally, I have almost no relationship with most of the so-called "media art" or "contemporary art" so far. So, here I would like to commence with the agenda of how "media art" should ideally be, or exist.
Media art, in the information society, means an art which takes information itself to be its object as well as its form. Unlike the other arts of which objects and forms are different, media art is intrinsically a self-reference of "information on information". Therefore, it is defined as, in philosophical terms, a self reflection of information. First of all, we need to pay attention to the fact that, media information is not a mere form of art or expression but, like commodities or language, it is a form of value or meaning. So media appears as the very phenomenal form of this world. Today, media means almost the world itself. One could say that most of the world presents itself in the form of electronic information. These days, as the accumulation of commodities and products that surround us consists mainly of electrons and data bits, so do our inner lives. Not to mention that the computer I am facing, but also the pen I am using to write now, most of its process as a commodity from its planning, design, production, distribution and even usage, have characteristics and figures of electronic information, in both its contents and appearances. Even a large part of the processes of language in these words of mine, from its acquisition, thinking, expression, diffusion and even reading by readers, are also electronic information. Just as the concept of capitalism refers to the world's way of being entirely based on exchange value, a media society or information society refers to this situation that is completely based on informational value or meaning. And today, it has covered all of the earth, so it manifests itself as a globalized situation with no exit; i.e. the age of planet. Therefore in this age, media art is the self-consciousness of the media planet.
By the way, how and when did the age of this planet begin? It began when it became possible to intuit, as an image, the presence of the world or the way it presents itself, through the speed of electrons, that is, instantly. And it goes without saying that it emerges in the form of a crisis. The first was the atomic bomb, in the image of a mushroom cloud, which foresaw the future to come. Then it appeared, as an undeniable, evident, and continuous fact, which has been in existence thus far, and exists now, and will exist in the future also, in the picture of the earth shot from a spaceship. This is the image of the earth as a small sphere floating without any support, in the midst of a weird darkness, nothingness or death. Heidegger described it as the moment when the unreliability of the earth was revealed.
* Chronologically, this was almost the same time as the birth of media art, and the consummation of the media society. Therefore, the plunge into the age of the planet means three things; first, the consummation of the media planet as the phenomenal form of the world; second, the appearance of an absolute anxiety or possibility of extinction of the planet; and lastly, the occurrence of an art which is the self-consciousness of the media planet.
Let's turn our views now to the essential way that art and media should be. First, media information is, according to Deleuze, an integration of commands, so it is concisely recognized to have a message which leads its receiver to a certain direction. All information in the present society of consumerism, without a doubt, carries the message of "Be a good consumer". The message which orientates the consumerist order doesn't function in straight ways like prohibition or coercion, but in indirect ways through ideas like permission or encouragement. Here lies the "communication", which encourages the fake subject of the consumer in the absolute limitation of consumption, and then provides false freedom in the form of the various choices of products or information. Thus, via the naming of a fake subject like "individuality" or "life", consumers are enslaved voluntarily, from their inner lives. Diversity of consumerist products is given singularly from the media and market, and the consumers' imagination becomes poorer and poorer in the face of superficial luxury. The consumers, who themselves become a part of information, put their subjects action, and they evangelize and encourage the consumerist to one another. These activities of information, as a whole, are a command for consumers to acquire, submit to, preserve and maintain consumerism. Thus the perfect community of poor communication by consumers is accomplished. Like the former capitalism, the ideology of media consumerism takes the ethical form of religion. Hence it prescribes a good and evil beforehand. Here, of course, the most virtuous action is consumption and truth and beauty must be pursued within it. Media is taken to be the only entrance to salvation, and nothing except consumption is the exercise of free will, and the way to freedom. To challenge consumerism or media itself is considered as the sin of Pride that intrudes the divine realm.
However, art is not communication. It's not a tool for expression, so it has no relationship with the concept of understanding. Art is, rather, a struggle. It is to find others, to struggle with others as others, and to know it. It also takes aim at the artist himself or the world itself. Art has no mercy. It never enlightens ignorance, solves poverty, but always enlarges difficulty and conflict. It has no concern with development, improvement, harmony or coexistence. Art has never directly solved the world's issues. Therefore this makes it possible to struggle with others, beyond any barrier, deception and hypocrisy, about the most fundamental problems. And the discovery of others and the struggle with others are the only ways for human beings to face the world's radical problems.
So it is evident that media art is not a development or extension of communication. What then, to make of the prevailing idiotic discourses on contemporary "media theory"? They claim that media technology brings about "perceptual transformation", "interactivity of the real and virtual", etc, and thus expanding communication and diversity, and hence achieving social progress semi-automatically, leading to emancipation or democracy in the future. There, "artists" are expected only to take on the role to receive and taste the benefits from the media society's development in advance, and then generalize it. These discourses take media and technology to be intrinsically good or neutral merely as a given grace, and accept them as they are, and give up thinking critically or questioning fully about the way in which they exist. Just admitting and admiring the communication and the situation or consciousness as results of this communication, which the media and technology bring, are nothing but an affirmation without criticism on being consumers in the media society. Or even if they have some cynical attitude to it, when the criticism is partial, it only ends up becoming another kind of information, another object to consume, since in the information society, so-called "criticism" is often consumed and generalized as a sort of "spicy" information commodity. It is accepted by the very media, as a part of the diversity which the media and market provide, or as a "communication" which produces another difference or value, then the media will approve it, or will sometimes make a big sales campaign for it. In this situation, the critical question becomes less and less received seriously, and the information society itself becomes affirmed and succeeds without any radical criticism. Therefore, the movement towards diversification and improvement based on consumption and communication, which is promoted today as an ethic, never has the true and thorough questioning and criticism on society. Misidentification of art with communication will result in approving the consumerist and affirming poor imagination and the fake subject. Media information is, like commodities, essentially the most radically egalitarian. It engulfs even "art" or "criticism" into its whirlpool and transforms them into a kind of "entertainment information", and then absorbs them. Thus the media communicates all the world, and equalizes and homogenizes it as the consumerist community.
This situation is just a twilight. Gone were the days when the gods answered the true question and the world was revealed in the light. Night has set and everything is lost. So art, which is a son of the times and bound to carry its burden, has to begin by asking self-referentially its own mission.
Why media artists, in the twilight time?
Media art means, first of all, to use media, which is originally a communication tool not for communication, but for the discovery of and struggle with others. And that is a self-referentially critical action, based on the media itself, to discover the present world, the community of poor communications, which is the media planet, totally as the other. >From the view point of media, it is a rebellion inside the media planet, and from the view point of art, it is a self-denial to criticize the very basis on which media art itself relies upon. This contradiction, could give rise to a genuine media art which criticizes and constructs the situation, and exposes the most profound problems through it.
Art moves along with the present world, and discovers the present world as the other at a point which is history. It is when the world itself is grasped entirely in this history that today's situation is recognized as a collapse. Since every past empire has become ruined, this media empire is also on its way to ruination. And the property of information and consumerist fury are nothing but a celebration of the ruination of this world. When the world is found to be the other, media artists obtain and present an illusion in which the media planet is entirely seen as a ruin, and the being of information as ghosts wandering there. Consumerism is a dream seen by the sinking ghosts in the night of the world. On the other hand, art itself, which presents consumerism as a dream through semi-sober eyes, is also, as a matter of presence, another dream seen by this world. So of course, as long as it intends to exist in the present tense, in this world, it is undeniable that art also has to present itself as an object to consume, as a commodity and a kind of information. But only the integral consciousness to discover the world totally in history will make art possible to intuit the collapse of the world. Then art is to notice the decline of itself in the middle of the world, and to dream of a dream of awakening. It is a self-consciousness of the ghosts, and an overall regret.
But media art has to proceed over there. This means indicating an "actual" possibility to subvert the world, and beyond the nihilism, giving a vision of beings to come. And because in the "night", in the "dream", art could take history in advance. But that ought not to be an easy dream of a utopia outside the world. What, then?
First, it begins with recognizing that this world itself is, with regards to its elements, nearly the world to come. And the struggle with others which art presents is the very way of being to come. Actually it is already here, and it really does exist. Artists have to present the way of being, not as in a trick entirely irrelevant to our daily life, but as a total experience.
For that, the world has to be presented as decisively dissimilated, preserving the world's mechanism as it is. It is done when the system of the present situation of the planet is taken over, made functional as it is, and a few of its elements are converted. This means the creation of a total world inside art as the absolute other, with tools and materials inside the world and in imitation of the system. The vision that appears in this way is, though being presented in a "dream" of art, thoroughly based on and situated inside the world, and not as a fantasy at all. Thus, an actual possibility is manifested.
This vision comes a kind of terror. This terror is thoroughly a reflection of the very world's terror. This terror will be experienced as an all over dissimilation, combining two aspects: shudder and ennui. And with this terror, nihilism is overcome. Here the world as the other will be realized in the dream that bears a full reality. There will exist being-there to come, who lives a life bearing reason as his instinct, logos as his body, thought as his passion, and intellect as his emotion, and feels peace in this contradiction. Several names of those who have created modern art in this way cross my mind: Sade, Dostoevskii and Joyce in literature; Picasso in painting and Eisenstein in cinema. Now media art needs such beings, artists who have the illusions of the real world as the absolute other and create the dream of terror. And only through artists of this kind, can media art bear a central role in history.
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