Lee Weng
ChoyÕs critique[1] of new
media art in a Singaporean context that appeared in Mesh 17[2] is an
interesting one, for it is one the few reviews that deals with this interdisciplinary
amalgam that is appearing on our shores. However I am somewhat troubled by
various positions that he has adopted in his reading of examples that have been
cited in his essay.
New media
art is a catchall phrase that aims to depict and describe work relating or
encompassing non-traditional art forms, such as the film, sound, video et
cetera, that are borne out of utilizations of technology. This term is
undoubtedly problematic, for in its ambiguity it fails to accurately describe
what it actually means[3].
Of course,
in a postmodern context I wonder if anything can be described accurately,
however it could be said that the more pertinent question or issue here centers
on the role a critic plays in opening up a work for reading and further interpretation.
That is
perhaps the source of that which troubles, for Lee seems to be approaching the
work from a perspective that favors historicism, does not account for the
multiplicity of meanings and plurality of voices a work can take, nor does he
seem to be taking into account effects of the media on the experiences of
existence and being, and the differences in reading traditional and
non-traditional art forms, contexts that are areas of much intellectual
discourse. This ultimately leads to a reading that negates and dismisses the
work rather than negotiating and opening it up for further discourse.
One of the key reasons why the media is of great importance in our current contexts is its propensity to mediate our perceptions of reality and the truth (if it even exists at all). Many postmodern thinkers and cultural theorists, namely, McLuhan, Debord, and Baudrillard et cetera, have alluded to or discussed this at length, and several had made rather fascinating claims that events did not exist, or that reality is now a simulacrum.
Within
LeeÕs essay, there seems to be a disdain towards certain utilizations of theory
in a work. Indeed, the theorization and its application can seem very divorced
from the workings of life, yet as Bhabha has argued, to view Òtheory as an
elite language of the socially and intellectually privileged is damaging and
self defeatingÓ[4] and the
act of discourse, owing to its metaphoricity and rhetoric, is Òa productive
matrix which defines the ÔsocialÕ and makes it available as an objective of,
and for action[5]Ó.
Similarly,
the denial and refutation of the differences of the cyborg organism is another
problematic point, for since mechanization and the industrial revolution, the
technology have permeated aspects of life and augmented many of our most mudane
activities. However, it is the (often) transparent permeation of technology and
its augmentation of our selves, environment and culture that all the more
designates information technology as, to quote, Òa privileged arena of contestationÓ.
In many ways, the self has been extended beyond its biological origins, and can
be said to be a hybrid organism. The (post)modern human being today with all
his techno-gadgetry has lead several cultural theorists to posit that the
cyborg is the next stage of human evolution, transcending the biological
through the technological. Since McLuhanÕs positioning of media as an extension
of the self, theorists such as Heyrman have gone on to suggest that technology
and media expand our sensorial faculties while simultaneously merging them,
synthesizing the conditions of tele-synaethesia[6],
eventually leading the evolution towards the Òpost-egoÓ, a transcended self
beyond the body[7].
LeeÕs
leaning on Lev ManovichÕs positionings of new media as a continuation of the
past and the reading of Hypersurface as a database seems to miss the mark.
Though it is ostensibly a work rich in imagery and symbolism, its reading can
be daunting owing to its narrative structure, or lack of.
Barthes,
with the death of the author[8],
suggested that it is through viewing a work/text in the absence of any form of
intention that frees the readers to draw their own interpretations. Hence it is
through the death of the author that the reader is given life and autonomy.
In that
sense, Hypersurface could be viewed as an example of a writerly text as opposed
to a readerly one, for its use of a fractured and non-linear narrative
highlights the reader as the site where new texts are generated through
(re)readings, and also challenges the reader form his or her own subjectivity
through rich intertextual play of signifiers.
Yet also,
it is easy to be drawn in by the content of the films. No doubt the reason they
exist in the work is an intention of the artists, yet to interpret this work
requires much more. Though I will acknowledge that LeeÕs reading of this work
as a database to which he compares it to channel surfing, and his subsequent
anger on the decontextualization of images are equally valid, it is however
insufficient to discuss the work only on that level and ignore other aspects of
it.
In fact, on a metacritical level, LeeÕs reading is only one out of the many possible ones that can occur; hence his categorical refusal to take the possibility of the plurality of meanings and polysemic quality of the work into account appears somewhat myopic. Instead, he chooses to base his argument on the shaky ground of ethics, which is even more perplexing.
Ethics,
like many other concepts such as identity, self, other, nation, history and
others ad nauseum can be appreciated to be mere constructs of the human
tendency to make meaning out of its existence. And what are ethics and morals
but set of laws, social dictums or contracts[9],
institutional discourses (and remember that all discourses are non-neutral,
even this one) that seek to enforce their hegemony as a continuing show of
power[10]?
Consider
this, that it is through this very decontextualization that forces some viewers
to locate themselves in this text, and in the process to have insights towards
the effect of media on the self. Those very images, together with a
carnivalesque (and what more is a club other than a carnival?) atmosphere or
setting, lulls certain viewers into its accessing the work through its
aesthetic appearance. At this point, the work would already achieve a
performative aspect, for it is here that we are again reminded that experience
and existence is always contested, edited, mediated and negotiated through our
interactions with the existing modes of systems of information dissemination
within society.
In the
reviewing of any work, it is certain that questions of authorship would be
discussed. Yet, these presumed absences of intention, ownership and
responsibility can also be said to be a measure or mark of the very concepts
themselves, a form of reverse signification, where ÔabsenceÕ is allocated a
priority over ÔpresenceÕ. As Foucault had dealt with, the author could be
appreciated as a site of discursive formations, and what matters is not
authenticity or originality, but the Kantian issues of how these discourses can
be circulated, appropriated and permeated by other discourses[11].
The role
of the critic, which is undoubtedly a position of institutional power, it is
one that is problematic, for on one hand the critic critiques, but is also
responsible for opening works to further readings. To demystify, explain and
interpret any work for cultural consumption, to envision new ways of seeing and
apprehending. Despite a certain irony then, due credit must be awarded to LeeÕs
reading for providing a site for further discourse, regardless of his
intention.
LeeÕs
comparisons between Tan and OngÕs Hypersurface
and HoÕs Utama Ñ Every Name in History is
I appears to offer a pedagogical and didactic critique, entrenched in an
outmoded dualism and implies a ÒrightÓ way of applying theory to practice,
usage of material/medium, methods of presentation et cetera.
As we
reach the end of this essay, perhaps it would be appropriate to ponder this
passage from The Location of Culture,
by Homi Bhabha:
ÒIt is said that the place of the academic critic is inevitably within the Eurocentric archives of an imperialist or neo-colonial West. The Olympian realms of what is mistakenly labeled Ôpure theoryÕ are assumed to be eternally insulated from the historical exigencies and tragedies of the wretched of the earth. Must we always polarize in order to polemicize? Are we trapped in a politics of struggle where the representation of social antagonisms and historical contradictions can take no other form other than a binarism of theory vs politics? Can the aim of freedom of knowledge be the simple inversion of the relation of oppressor and oppressed, centre and periphery, negative image and positive image? Is our only way out of such dualism the espousal of an implacable oppositionality or the invention of an originary counter-myth of radical purity? Must the project of our liberationist aesthetics be forever part of a totalizing Utopian vision of Being and History that seeks to transcend the contradictions and ambivalences that constitute the very structure of human subjectivity and its systems of cultural representation?Ó[12]
Lee, W. C., 5 Entries, Mesh 17: New media art in
Asia and Australia, 2004
Bhabha, H. K., The Location of Culture, New York, 2004
[1994]
Rabinow, P. (ed) The Foucault Reader, New York, 1984
Mills, S. Michel Foucault, London, 2003
Taylor V.E (ed) & Winquist, C.E (ed). Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, London, 2001
McLuhan, M. Understanding Media: The extensions of man,
2003 [2002, 2001, 1964]
Baudrillard, J. Simulation and Simulacra, USA, 1994
[1981]
Allen, G. Intertextuality, London, 2000
Hall, D.E., Subjectivity, New York, UK, 2004.
Rapport N. &
Overing J. Social and Cultural
Anthropology: The key concepts, London, 2000
Edgar, A. (ed) &
Sedgwick, P. (ed), Cultural Theory: The
key concepts, USA, Canada, London, 2004 [2003, 2002, 1999]
[1] Lee Weng Choy,
5 Entries, 2004, online, available
http://www.experimenta.org/mesh/mesh17/choy.htm (2 Oct 2005)
[2] Russel
Smith & Sarah Tutton, Mesh 17: New
media art in Asia and Australia, 2004, online, available
http://www.experimenta.org/mesh/mesh17/index.htm (2 Oct 2005)
[3] ibid
[4]
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture,
New York, 2004[1994], 28.
[5]
ibid
[6] Hugo Heyrman, Tele-synaesthesia; in Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, (ed: Victor E. Taylor and Charles E. Winquist), USA, Canada, 2001, 390 - 391
[7]
Heyrman,
Post Ego; in Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, 2001, 300 - 301
[8] Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, 1977, online, available http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/theory/Barthes.htm (6 Sep 2005)
[9] Wikipedia, Social Contract Ð Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Oct 2005, online, available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract (11 Oct 2005)
[10] Sarah Mills, Michel Foucault, London, USA, Canada, 2004[2003], 69
[11] Michel Foucault, What is an Author; in The Foucault Reader, (ed: Paul Rabinow) USA, 1984 101-120
[12] Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 28-29.