[-empyre-] More about remediation

[dom/ <qrndnc@yahoo.it>]

Hi all,
I come out the lurker mode to send you some considerations about 
re-enactments in SL, a possible follow-up of Patrick Lichty's Missive on 
Remediation. It's from my blog "Spawn of the Surreal", 
http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/blog/

My bests,
domenico

--

RE-ENACT! (Part 1)

"The difference between what is evoked and what is real can even be 
sensible: I always happen to take no account of it."
André Breton, July 1925

I started thinking to post on reenactment some time ago. That's why when 
I read on -empyre- Patrick Lichty's "missive" on The Issue of 
Remediation, I was happy and disappointed at the same time: disappointed 
because he came first, and happy because he showed the way, giving me 
some points of departure to enter this complicated issue. Let me sum up 
Lichty's points:

- "ironic tension between the physical and the virtual" vs "affective 
connection [of the user] to online identity";
- history and memory vs ephemerality and ahistoricity in virtual worlds;
- reenactment of performance-based works as "a way to preserve their 
degree of affect in space and time" vs reenactment as a way to 
challange/criticize Performance art.

As for the first point, I completely agree with Lichty. The problem is: 
which is the target of this irony? Lichty notes that, in the passage 
from the real to the virtual, an act, for example, of violence, doesn't 
become "wholly symbolic", because "residents in Second Life clearly have 
investiture in the avatar as extensions of themselves." That's right, 
but this observation works only when the victim of violence is your own 
avatar. In other words, in Second Life this affect takes the shape of 
self respect, but doesn't produce solidarity for other virtual 
identities. So, if I'm frightened, worried and even angry when Gazira 
Babeli confines me in a Campbell's soup can, or when she breaks up my 
legs with Code Deforma; I don't feel anything similar to what might have 
felt the audience of Chris Burden's Shoot (1971) when Eva Mattes fires 
Franco Mattes, or when Wirxli Flimflam shoots Great Escape.

In the same time, I believe that these two reenactments of the same 
performance are coming from a very different order of ideas. In his 
Paradise Ahead Series (2006 - 2007), Scott Kildall aka Great Escape 
"captures the anticipation and familiarity of [the] simulated 
environment by restaging iconic art installations, films and 
photographs. Using only primitive graphics of Second Life, the 
documentation of these performances - large-scale prints serves as a 
historical record of the initial launch point into simulated worlds." 
His target is the graphic environment of Second Life; or, better, Second 
Life as an artistic medium. And his message is, I think, that in Second 
Life reality becomes powerless, ineffective, fake. Even the most 
emotional, dramatic event, when re-staged in Second Life, becomes a 
parody of itself. Kildall's prints are more similar to comics than to 
the source images he used for his remediation. In other words, the 
medium is stronger than the reality it tries to emulate.

Coming to Eva and Franco Mattes, in their interviews they are very 
critical about Performance Art: "Eva and me, we hate performance art, we 
never quite got the point. So, we wanted to understand what made it so 
un-interesting to us, and reenacting these performances was the best way 
to figure it out." With their Syntethic Performances, they are 
questioning the works they recreate, reproposing them in the most 
literal way in a context where they appear senseless and paradoxical. 
Their realistic avatar are perfect to this purpose. And in fact, their 
reenactment of Shoot is more similar to the source, and much more 
dramatic than Kildall's one: they are not saying that in a virtual world 
violence is meaningless and reality loses its own drama; they are saying 
that, in a world anaesthetized by media, the original Shoot is almost as 
powerless as their own virtual version. In a world where, in front of a 
car crash, people take pictures with their beautiful smart phones 
instead of trying to help the victims, Shoot can't be anything more than 
an interesting spectacle. Video killed the performance art stars. RIP.

--

Domenico Quaranta

mob. +39 340 2392478
email. qrndnc@yahoo.it
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/