Re: [-empyre-] What is to be done

[Christiane Robbins <cpr@mindspring.com>]

Jackie makes a good point re: the need for us to to acknowledge what  
has been done.  In the context of this list,  it is easy to point to  
Illi Nedkova's post of January 11th and the projects which she so  
cogently delineated as inspired examples of what has been done in the  
recent past.

With that in mind I am taking the liberty of copying below a section  
of an on-line conference which took place in 1994-95 â a period  
representing a dramatic shift in the American cultural landscape.  
This online conference spoke to that specific cultural moment and  
history.   I am hoping that it may place in evidence the struggle  
that experimental media (cinema:  film, video, digital) has been  
wrestling with for some time.  X-factor responded as to what could be  
done.  It was but one of innumerable responses which took place  
during this period which helped to foster the continuance of todayâs  
call â what is to be doneâ. as I donât believe that question  
will ever be irrelevant.

Apologies in advance for not directing you to this website but it has  
been offline for sometime.  When I repost the site, I will send out  
the url .


______________________________

History

X-Factor was founded in 1992, after a meeting with then-director of  
the Independent Television Service John Schott who told a group of  
fifteen assembled artists that experimental media artists "didn't  
have a constituency." Those present at that meeting understood that  
in order to become a viable force in the art and funding worlds,  
experimental media artists needed to make themselves visible as the  
large, active and vital community that they are and to begin doing  
actions.

On a volunteer basis, a group of San Francisco film and video  
artists, curators and art administrators got together to formally  
advocate on behalf of the community, addressing various issues such  
as the abysmal lack of funding, distribution resources, publicity,  
and critical discourse, as well as problems surrounding developing  
audiences and exhibition.

â In 1994, the group received a modest grant from the National  
Association of Media Art Centers to launch an ambitious conference on  
issues surrounding experimental media exhibition. At first the  
conference was to be held on-site in San Francisco, but given the  
impossibility of securing additional funds from foundations and  
government agencies, X-Factor decided to use the NAMAC money to  
create a Virtual Conference. It was thought that a much larger and  
geographically diverse constituency might be reached via the World  
Wide Web, and that an on-line conference could grow and develop over  
a longer period of time.


Organizers:  Craig Baldwin, Kathy Geritz, Linda Gibson, Christine  
Metropoulos, Christiane Robbins, Erin Sax,  Steve Seid, Jeffrey  
Skoller, Valerie Soe, Scott Stark, Jack Walsh.
Papers were submitted by: Thyrza Goodeve, Bill Horrigan Laura Marks,  
Yvonne Rainer, Nino Rodriguez, Keith Sanborn, David Sherman,   
Elisabeth Subrin, Julie Zando.


_____________________________


The End of More Than a Century  â The X-Factor Manifesto

The dismantling of the welfare state has reached into unexpected  
corners that few acknowledge. Take a look at the re-tooled programs  
now funded by significant national foundations and you'll see the  
curious devastation. As if responding to the dimly-flickering call of  
George Bush for "a thousand points of light," private foundations and  
public funding agencies alike have not only come to the aid of a  
stumbling government, they have reconceived of the arts as a new ally  
in the struggle to stave off the disappearance of social services.

The implications of such a rethinking of the arts is alarming,  
wrongheaded and irresponsible, especially when imposing this new  
function on the experimental arts. Experimental film and video have  
been particularly hapless within the current funding climate and for  
several reasons. First, basic funding decisions are informed by  
misconceptions that actually disregard the unique aspects of the  
works themselves. The scenario goes something like this:  
spectatorship, a requisite behavior in contemporary culture, brings  
with it an intuitive grasp of moving images, resulting in the instant  
recognizability of mainstream film and television. Because  
experimental works are committed on the same physical media, they too  
share in this innate familiarity.


DOESN'T FAMILIARITY BREED CONTEMPT? OR AN ALL TOO EASY INDIFFERENCE?
Of course, this flies in the face of media literacy which declares  
that even the most common of visual conveyances, such as television,  
contain messages and ideologies beyond our ken. Nevertheless,  
experimental film and video are enlisted as brethren of mass popular  
media, but with alternative viewpoints. They then have a healing  
social application, as well as the benefit of an entertainment form.


WHERE IS THIS HEALING CONTAINED? WITHIN THE MEDIUM ITSELF? OR AT THE  
CRITICAL MOMENT OF RECEPTION?
To amplify the disservice to the field, funders then valorize use  
value, the haziest of incentives for making art. Works that  
foreground accessibility, works that advance simplified arguments,  
works that turn away from hybridity are championed for their  
functionality. If this funding preference is catered to, the  
experimental media are reduced to the superficiality of mere  
exposition--innovation is scoffed at as gratuitous and complexity of  
argument deemed elitist.

In times of scarcity, funding patterns easily dictate modes of  
expression. Supporting media works that embrace convention in form  
and explication not only discourages creative invention but robs the  
audience of the challenges that foster growth. This same focused  
funding favors works that have a convenient topicality, but slip into  
irrelevance as soon as issues mutate or are resolved. In the parlance  
of the marketplace, they have little or no shelf life.


MUST ART MAKE A CLAIM TO PERPETUITY? ISN'T AN IMMEDIATE, SHORT-TERM  
IMPACT GOOD ENOUGH?
To ignore or devalue the experimental media is nothing new. Certainly  
part of the discipline's history is this legacy of disregard.  
However, we find that the present support climate and its insistence  
on utility is particularly threatening to the welfare of the medium  
and its community of artists. To understand the deleterious  
consequences for the artists, their oeuvre, and the audience, one  
must have some sense of the nature and motive of the concerned works.


WATCH OUT FOR REQUISITE NOTIONS. THEY SMELL LIKE ESSENTIALIST MORALITY.
One vital principal guiding these works is that formal  
experimentation is an expression of resistance--resistance taking  
place within the arena of convention, as well as proactively along  
the peripheries of known practice. Once this primary notion is  
recognized, it becomes clear that the alternative ideas and  
perspectives embedded in these works commingle in a transfiguration  
of the medium.
The transfiguration of the media is necessary, because the  
conventions presently manufactured by mainstream practice vitiate all  
aspects of our spectatorial behavior. To leave expectations intact,  
to regurgitate worn out modes of expression is to service the  
ideology of mass culture. In an attempt to rouse the audience from  
passivity, experimental film and video engages normative form in its  
own destruction. Viewers are challenged to witness the abolition of  
their assumptions, to observe the vulnerability of dominant practice.  
By doing so, viewers can see beyond official thinking and glimpse  
possibilities implied, in part, by new visual vocabularies and visions.


SO WHOSE THINKING IS THIS? THE UNOFFICIAL RISING TO PROMINENCE?  
SECURE YOUR FRANCHISE NOW.
This project of transfiguration can encompass all subject matter.  
Issues of gender, ethnicity, social parity, individuation and  
cultural reclamation can be addressed with forthright lucidity.  
Formal experimentation is not a limiting factor as is often  
announced, but a liberating practice that allows both artist and  
audience to survey critical ideas in unfettered ways.
Experimental media artists are not a cloistered or disengaged few,  
but a considerable community vitally linked to the ongoing welfare of  
society-at-large. It is worth reiterating that the decision to  
abandon conventional form is informed by a politic underlying the  
aesthetic. And again: radical ideas couched inside of traditional  
media modes tacitly inform the audience that social and political  
change is possible only within the dominant structure. Ironically,  
this posits change as an inconspicuous alteration at best, a self- 
negating sham at worst.


WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE OUTSIDE THE SPECTACLE? INDEED, IS  
THERE AN OUTSIDE THERE?
Experimental media demands a total renovation in both perception and  
thinking. By discarding inherited forms (and their ideological cues),  
the ideas forwarded--which can be historical reconnoiterings, or  
urgent topical investigations--implicitly suggest that change be  
considered within a total reconstruction of social assumptions and  
institutions. This is not a utopian project, but a modest proposal  
acknowledging that social reformation cannot be piecemeal; nor can it  
be an entertainment, or a leisure exercise in viewership. The  
discoveries and revelations that lead to change come only after  
exertion, whether it be intellectual, aesthetic, or political.
It is at the juncture of art and use value that experimental media  
parts company with common practice. Under the banner of  
functionality, it is presumed that media aids in a corrective  
understanding of the world and, subsequently, inspires an altered  
response in the audience. Functionality is also related to topicality  
and so mediaworks are called upon for a spontaneous revision of the  
viewers' sense of their own historical moment. Films and tapes serve  
as panaceas, quick-fixes for social wrong or political inequity. What  
this notion over-values is not use, but efficacy. It assumes that  
media has a transformative property. The accessible and deliberate  
delivery of right-minded information will somehow instigate the  
politicization of the viewer--voodoo media.


THERE'S NOTHING MORE CONVINCING THAN A CONVINCING ARGUMENT. AM I RIGHT?
Enlisting the arts in such a venture betrays their basic orientation.  
Taken as just one discipline, the experimental media work through a  
process of slow, if not glacial accretion. A zone of contemplation is  
created in which viewers can deliberate or intuit possibilities  
beyond the mundane. Without this poetic construct, this realm of  
artistic speculation, the spectatorial moment is mired in routine and  
familiar images that confess their allegiance to the status quo.  
Through successive visitations, the viewer subtly assimilates a more  
creative response to the world. This does not mean being moved to  
redress some wrong, or sympathize with some underdog; instead, deep- 
seated alignments are quietly but fundamentally dislodged, promoting  
new categories of informed engagement.

Experimental media is not a prescriptive art with a standard dosage.  
There is no guarantee that proper usage will resolve some dissonance,  
some ambivalence in the viewer. Cultural injustices will not be  
rectified by their visual mediation. However, the enlistment of film  
and video in the expanded realm of social service suggests that the  
myth of curative power is still operative. Based on little more than  
wishful thinking, the fabricated capacity for problem-solving is  
nevertheless trumpeted when evaluating film or tape for their  
expedient impact. This same chasing after curatives has also  
transformed many alternative exhibition venues into pseudo-self help  
centers.


DIDN'T SOMEONE ONCE SAY A SOCIETY WITHOUT THE ARTS IS NOT A SOCIETY  
AT ALL? IS THIS THE GENERAL DRIFT?
Exploiting the media arts for their pragmatic engagement has its  
chilling ramifications. As an adjunct to social service, the act of  
viewing a film or tape becomes a transaction. The expectation is one  
of purposeful outcome--information imparted, a conflict resolved. The  
short-term palliative triumphs over the long term emancipation of the  
viewer. What we are witnessing is the conquest of one more sector of  
experience by the germ of capital.


DO WE NEED AN ANTIDOTE FOR THIS GERM? OR WILL ANOTHER ANECDOTE DO  
JUST AS WELL?

Post a Response to the X-Factor ManifestoThe End of More Than a Century




On Jan 17, 2007, at 2:01 PM, jacky sawatzky wrote:

> hi all,
>
> Sorry, a very short remark.
> The question  What is to be done.... provokes irritation in me.  
> It's in worded in the future tense,  it's a bit patronizing.  
> Ignored in this question is what is done and has been done.  I find  
> the wording of the sentence very indicative of a culture that needs  
> to reinvent the wheel again.
>
> I am rudely trowing this into the discussion. More later..
>
> cheers, Jacky Sawatzky
>
> http://www.jackysawatzky.net
>
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Christiane Robbins

J e t z t z e i t
Los Angeles  l  San Francisco
CA  l USA

... the space between zero and one ...
Walter Benjamin





The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to  
the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in  
these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.

Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872,
German Philosopher