RE: [-empyre-]from Renate on a quiet Ithaca morning

["maurice benayoun" <mb@benayoun.com>]

Hi Renate
You touch here a very sensible topic. 
When the biggest symbols are so quickly relayed by media, overexposed
(Virilio) by TV and news papers, there is form of symbolic action that is
not the privilege of the Prince (Buch...) and in front of witch artists feel
so small. When people start to know the game, the rules and how to play
them, the response can be at the scale of the pain. They are some events
that play this card with a so good understanding of how the emotional
control of mass works that we are still talking about them and the next
generations will mention them overtime. I don't know how Hegel would
classify this category of symbols that affects so deeply our
representations. When the real world (and real life) becomes the material
and the mass media the accommodating medium: the story is well written, the
roles are played than the show should go on. It is difficult to know when
the eager of media, like a starving beast, doesn't get highly satisfied by a
so good scenario written with a so red blood.
Maurice 

-----Message d'origine-----
De : empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] De la part de Renate Terese
Ferro
Envoyé : mardi 18 septembre 2007 19:06
À : soft_skinned_space
Objet : Re: [-empyre-]from Renate on a quiet Ithaca morning



I?ve been reading ?empyre posts furiously these last few weeks between an
intense teaching schedule so I?ve been lurking more than I have been
writing but I wanted to ask Alice and Maurice to respond to a couple of
items in their posts on this unusually quiet morning in Ithaca:

First to Alice: I'm fascinated by the juxtaposition between the reality of
your interventions at Chernobyl, the photographic traces of your work, the
blog entries and then finally the reception of the viewers to all of this.
 The resonance between the reality of the Chernobyl site (both the
presence of the site and its history) and its traces must produce some
degree of "critical fusion" for the viewers to your project. What is the
social/political ?fallout? of your project on actual viewers? Do your
images or blog entries stir up narratives of the event?those narratives if
they exist must contain a blend of fact and fiction given the resonances
of memory.

And to Maurice: Earlier this month we talked about the affects that our
artistic work might have sociologically or politically on the viewer. I
was wondering if you could comment on real life examples (in regards to
your use of ?critical fusion?) for example how our  government or any
other social institution for that matter constructs situations or events
fusing reality and fiction for its own motives. You do the same by
constructing politically charged events within the VR archtiecture.
Is there a reasonance between the two--Reality and VR-- and how so?

I?ve been reading ?empyre posts furiously these last few weeks between a
pretty intense teaching schedule so I?ve been lurking more than I have
been writing but I wanted to ask Alice and Maurice to respond to a couple
of items in their posts on this unusually quiet morning in Ithaca:

First to Alice: I'm fascinated by the juxtaposition between the reality of
your interventions at Chernobyl, the photographic traces of your work, the
blog entries and then finally the reception of the viewers to all of this.
 The resonance between the reality of the Chernobyl site (both the
presence of the site and its history) and its traces must produce some
degree of "critical fusion" for the viewers to your project. What is the
social/political ?fallout? of your project on actual viewers? Do your
images or blog entries stir up narratives of the event?those narratives if
they exist must contain a blend of fact and fiction given the resonances
of memory.

And to Maurice: Earlier this month we talked about the affects that our
artistic work might have sociologically or politically on the viewer. I
was wondering if you could comment on real life examples (in regards to
your use of ?critical fusion?) for example our how a government or any
other institution for that matter constructs situations or events fusing
reality and fiction for its own ulterior motives.

There are so many recent examples but in some of the work I?ve been doing
for my project "Panic Hits Home" I appropriate public service
announcements from government sources that fuse fiction and reality for
ordinary citizens In the case of the Cold War, the US government
contracted major Hollywood studios to produce short films that were
designed to educate and inform a certain demographic of the population. 
One of my favorite examples is a short film designed for businesses
produced in the early 1950's.  The message of the film was that in case of
nuclear war a business could survive by microfiching all of the business
records then storing these records in a safe place away from an urban area
where the likelihood of a nuclear bomb may be less. After the fallout the
business owner and the workers could reenter from their shelter, retrieve
the safe records and reconstruct business again!

Or perhaps I can site another current day example shortly after 9/11 when
the government encouraged citizens to prepare for a possible airborne
infiltration by sealing off a room with duct tape and plastic and using
the website of the Office of Homeland Security to inform citizens on how
to go about doing this.

Thanks so much again to both Alice and Maurice.

Renate
Thanks so much again to both Alice and Maurice.

Renate


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