Allegory makes a Comeback in the Early Nineties.

Everyday its like the wild, wild west


Bunch of bad boys from the vista outlawed


The softest of beat, the killa get away


He leave Vegas in the end of the day in a fast car


Driving a fast car,
Are you ready to ride!?¹

• - Wycelf Jean, 2008

Among other things, Studies in Red and White² presents us with some fairly straightforward ideas. One of the most pronounced is the fact that certain elements within very genre specific works (i.e. Westerns) can allude to things outside of that genre. The town-tamer Western provided a field on which metropolitan issues (crime and punishment, division and solidarity, conformity and individualism) could be heroically projected.³

^{Gunfighter Nation is the close of a trilogy of books that was intended to examine the way American culture has been influenced and formed by it's own myths and experiences. It seems apt to note that, on top of his academic writing, Slotkin has also published three historical novels, about Nomads, Cavalry and the Old West.}

This particular work was published in 1991, 46 years after Animal Farm⁴ and 37 years after Lord of the Flies⁵. As a reader who thought I was going to be engaging with an academic text, I felt slightly belittled by the way in which Slotkin outlined all of the possible ways in which allegory could exist within works of fiction, presenting it like some sort of new discovery. I'm aware of the fact that both of the works of fiction I mentioned are of British descent; and that Slotkin is attempting to outline a particularly American condition. I'm just not so sure that American allegory, besides from it's heroic overtones, is different from any other nation's allegory.

Slotkins' use of dates and statistics seems to stage cause and effect relationships, between the popularity of the Western, and various historical moments; Posing the Western as an almost too perfect vehicle for intent. A perfect, stream lined medium (in the modernist Greenbergian sense⁶).This article comes across like a fan trying to justify his obsessions: or maybe give them some critical weight.

Might be time to take another horse for a ride.

____________________

1 Fiasco, Lupe, and Wyclef Jean. “Fast Cars (Remix).” Lupe Fiasco – Return of the Jedi.

Unreleased/Bootleg, 2008.

2 Slotkin, Richard. “Studies in Red and White” Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in 20th Century America. New York: University of Oklahoma.

3 Slotkin, 352.

4 Orwell, George. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. London: Secker and Warburg, 1945.

5 Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, .1954

6Danto, Arthur C. “Embodied Meanings, Isotypes, and Aesthetical Ideas.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 65.1 (2007).

Principals.

Martin Creed’s response to don’t misbehave! coincidentally refers to Christchurch’s status as the Garden City of New Zealand, with a garden of his own.¹

In relation to the first principle² raised in Michel Foucault's Of Other Spaces³: Martin Creed's Work no.215⁴

from the Scape 2006 Biennial ties neatly into some locally specific issues. Our first reading from Theatre Country⁵ introduced me to the notion of the populated landscape, and that it could be regarded as a condition of sorts. Creed's Work no.215, treats native plants in a very particular way, it designates them a place within a space that is both populated and transient. They are in a sense, both framed and isolated within the movement around them.

In the heart of the city, Work no.215 functions much like the eighteenth century cemeteries mentioned by Foucault in the second principle⁶. Lined up in three groupings relating to height: (from a distance) these plants lose their traces of individuality. They serve as a monument for the ground on which the city stands, it's scared and immortal heart⁷.

This combination: of the (usually sterile) median strip and the collection of native plants juxtaposes in a single real space... several spaces...that are in themselves incompatible⁸. It is therefor true to the third principle⁹ laid out by Foucault.

In the outline of his fourth principle¹, Foucault states that the heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time¹¹. One of the things that I've always liked about this work is it's resemblance to a hardware store gardening section. Hardware stores are a special sort of place: a world of possibilities and connections to be made. The sort of place where people go without the intention to achieve or retrieve anything, an intersection in suburban making.

This work looks almost like a mirage. Like most modernist, public works it can be experienced without the viewer exerting any physical wear upon the object. As the fifth principal¹² describes, the visitor...is...absolutely the guest in transit¹³.

According to the sixth principle, for a situation to be a heterotopia, the situation in question must sit between two extreme poles¹⁴. This work is not dystopian: it is not an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad¹⁵. Nor is it Utopian, the polar opposite of Dystopian: where nothing is wrong. This work seemingly highlights problems - At the same time it has an almost grandiose calm about it. We know, that if the trees are not watered and pruned this work will fade away. However it's

something that this viewer is willing to ignore, I don't think about the logistics behind it. The work sits on that patch of grass, almost isolated in space and time – a suitable illustration for something that I can't quite put my finger on.

____________________

1 Scape 2006 Biennial. 2006. Christchurch Art Gallery. 7 June 2009 (http://2006.scapebiennial.org.nz/artists.asp?id=8).

2 Foucault, 3.

3 Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.” Michel Foucault, Info.
[http://www.foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia]

4 Creed, Martin. “Work no.215.” Scape 2006 Biennial: Don't Misbehave. 2006. Christchurch.

5 Park, Geoff. “A Moment for Landscape.” Theatre Country: Essays on Landscape and Whenua. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006. 196-204.

6 Foucault, 3.

7 Foucault, 4.

8 Foucault, 4.

9 Foucoult, 4.

1⁰ Foucault, 4.

1¹Foucoult, 4.

1² Foucoult, 5.

1³ Foucault, 5.

1⁴ "dystopia noun" The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition). Ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Auckland University. 7 June 2009 <http://www.oxfordreference.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/views/ENTRY.html subview=Main&entry=t140.e23522>

1⁵ Foucoault, 5.

New Arrangements, New Arraignments.

One piece of information from this article that really stuck with me was Johnathon Crary's statement: that by the late 1920's, when the first experimental broadcasts occurred, the vast interlocking of corporate, military, and state control of television was being settled. Never before had the institutional regulation of a new technique been planned and divided up so far in advance¹. Perhaps it is because the relationship between television and censorship is a topic that regularly comes up in conversation with my father. “You know that in South Africa,” thats where I was born (and, as a pre-teen, immigrated to New Zealand from), “we didn't get Television until 1976.” Just as a contrast, New Zealand, a far smaller country with a smaller economy, introduced it's public to television in 1960.

Within Spectacle, Attention and Counter-Memory, Crary references a selection of writers that could easily be described as marxists of some description. The ones that I'm referring to are Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillad and Guy Debord.

Without even reading the main body of this text, one could assume, just from looking at it's references, that it had something to do with the politics of distribution.

In his essay, The Hell of the Same, Jean Baudrillad recalls Walter Benjamin's thoughts about what happens when a work (of art) is massively reproduced: that the work's 'aura', its here-and-now quality²

is somehow lost. Crary mentioned that Television, as a new medium, required a new type of attention. It's in-sync combination of sound and film was something that the public had seen before in the cinema,
but in television, something different metabolized. Perhaps in the beginning, in relation to other available means of marketing, television appeared to keep this aura (that Benjamin spoke of) in tact. The sort reproduction that occurs in a television broadcast, is not necessarily the production
line reproduction where the same thing is made over and over again. The electron gun inside the TV is fired by a charge that is prompted by the broadcast signal: Making it a more derivative form of reproduction where the reproduction is always linked back to the original (or the enigma), and is in turn linked to every other reproduction.

Perhaps this is why Television has served as a such a formidable marketing tool?

____________________

1 Crary, Jonathan. “Spectacle, Attention and Counter Memory.”

October 50 (Autumn, 1989): 96-107.

2 Baudrillard, Jean. “The Hell of the Same.” The
Transparency of Evil.
London: Verso, 1993.113-123.

Some Kind of Monster.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a trailer for a low budget children’s film¹; it’s about a ruthless, convertible-driving businessman who dies in a car crash and is subsequently sent back to earth as a dog to right all of his wrongs. A fairly standard The Shaggy Dog² sort of plot: with a low budget finish. The only person who can see the dog as a human is his former P.A. It’s a plot convention that allows for intermittent footage of a man behaving as a dog, under the control of another man. The film’s 'B' grade sheen, gives these shots an almost pornographic quality. Men wearing collars, men submitting to a controller, crouching on their hands and knees; it’s the type of imagery that one could easily dismiss as weird shit³.

It’s unsettling, and that’s why we feel the urge to dismiss it.

In his essay Is Humour Human?⁴, Continental Philosopher, Simon Critchley states: humour explores what it means to be human by moving back and forth across the frontier that separates humanity from animality, thereby making it unstable…⁵

This sort of humor seems to be a familiar trope in children’s films. It’s interesting that in his essay, Critchley speaks of Kafka’s short story Investigations of a Dog⁶. The story is told from a first person perspective, or a first dog perspective. The central character is a dog that throughout the story guides us through what it means to be a dog. There are inherent laws that one must obey in order to be a dog. Even if they are alien in size and shape⁷, dogs are all the same, they all have qualities with which the canine race alone is endowed⁸. This dog even talks of when it was still quite a puppy ⁹and the childhood events that shaped its view of what it means to be a dog.

Along with the aforementioned brand of humor (that explores what it means to be human), children’s films are full of all sorts of other tropes: Tales where morality triumphs and that sort of thing. These tales are no doubt intended to have some sort of conditioning effect.

Perhaps the sort of humour in question can have that affect too?

____________________

1 Quigley. Dir. William Byron Hillman. Perf. Gary Busey. DVD. Quigley Productions, 2003.

2 The Shaggy Dog. Dir. Charles Barton. Perf. Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Tim Considine. 1959. DVD. Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2006.

3 Or something that belongs to a subculture; That you find it hard to relate to.

4 Critchley, Simon. Is Humour Human?.……

5 Critchley, 29.

6 Franz, Kafka. “Investigations of a Dog.” Metamorphosis
& other stories. Great Britain: Minerva,
1992. 83-126.

7 Kafka, 89.

8 Kafka, 88.

9 Kafka, 87.

Social Practice.

One of the most useful things about this article1 is the fact that it describes a way in which cultural production can situate itself within a marxist framework. Its' author Alberto Toscano, is a lecturer in the sociology department at Goldsmiths University in London: An institution whose program only includes courses in the Creative Industries and Liberal Arts. Subsequently, it is of no surprise that the author's approach could be described as creative practitioner friendly. This framework relies on the assumption that any artwork could be considered an object of sorts. Everybody will have their own position on this: depending on how they situate themselves as an artist and as a maker. The way this essay (and inadvertently, Marx) describes it, even an individual's relationships can be considered objects of some description.

Toscano describes private property (an intimate component of capitalism) as the objectified powers of the human essence, in the form of sensuous, alien, useful objects2. On the same page he describes the fact that the distribution of the sensible in turn, functions as the expropriation of man's senses. He goes on to say that these objects, created by the individual, end up participating in the service of his own estrangement.  

It's a simple way to describe the way in which the art market or art production fits into a society of workers and individuals. Works (of Art) could be considered to function in the same manner as objects. If a work is purchased, or if it is cognitively taken on board in some way: then the maker's essence is being objectified (which is not necessarily a bad thing). In the future, the work will go on to have new meanings and associations that the maker never foresaw: this gradual development could be described as a process of estrangement. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it takes awhile. Either way, it seems inevitable.

The above image3, by CK Rajan, is from the same book as Destructive Creation... (I believe it was also featured in Documenta 12). To this reader, it (like many works featuring appropriated imagery) serves as an illustration of this process: the estrangement embodied..

Seen here, are two seemingly unrelated images. They appear to be from different contexts, produced with different aims in mind and (in this reproduction) look like they have been printed using different methods. The fact that the original makers of these two individual images, had different aims is especially poignant. What we see here forms a completely different dialogue, a far cry even, from what the images would have said individually. Like the empty shells ejected from a shotgun, this image is an offshoot from the process of re-evaluating history.

____________________

1  Toscano,  Alberto. “Destuctive Creation or Communism of the Senses.” Make  Everything New: A Project on Communism.  Ed. Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord, and Gavin Everall. London: Book  Works, 2006. 119-128.

2 Toscano,  121.

3  Rajan, CK. “Collages 1992-1995.” Make  Everything New: A Project on Communism.  Ed. Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord, and Gavin Everall. London: Book  Works, 2006. 137-148.
 
  

Fear and the Other.

"What Kierkegaard said about God applies to politics too - Whatever we think, we are in the end bound to be wrong."

- John Reynolds

These words words adorn the poster John Reynolds did
for the show Free New Zealand Art at Artspace a few years ago. It wasn't necessarily my favorite at the time although, interestingly it's the only one that I kept. Adorning my walls with phrases like this reminds that sometimes it's OK to waver about my opinions, that perhaps, taking absolute positions on things
is not always useful.

Jaques Derrida is widely cited as an author who references Soren Kierkegaard quite heavily, and this chapter¹ of The Gift of Death is no exception, where he uses Kierkegaard's work to stage a conversation around the notion of the other. He references a specific, early, period in Kierkegaard's writing in which his first two publications (Either/Or and Fear and Trembling) were published.

Regine Olsen, Kierkegaard's once fiance, is said to have had a major influence on his writing. Kierkegaard broke off his engagement to her after the publication of Fear and Trembling. This break up is said to have changed his work forever². Throughout his life he kept Journals³, that give an incredible insight into his work and mind. In these Journals he continued to profess his undying love for Olsen, even after they parted ways. Many have read Kierkegaard's work as being autobiographical. There is a chapter in Either/Or named The Dairy of a Seducer⁴, which tells the story of a man who endeavors to get a girl to fall in love with him: only so that he can eventually get engaged to, and then break up with her. As the title suggests, this chapter takes a diaristic tone, and it goes into into detailed descriptions of central male character closely examining everything around him. It is almost as if this character is imprinting himself upon all of the objects that he sees, as if they are things not separate from himself: a world a textual unity⁵ (to quote an expert).

It is said that Kierkegaard saw poetry as something that served as a reflection on the artistic process⁶. And, in a truly poetic tradition, his life and writing seem to be hopelessly interconnected. In breaking off the engagement, Kierkegaard tried to create an entity that was not of himself, an entity that would go on living while he devoted his life to writing. Regine was meant to be another existence that wouldn't have to suffer or make sacrifices for it's work. It has been said that he tried to make Olsen believe that he was not the man she thought he was. Kierkegaard knew that if she continued to love him, she would never be able find joy again. Olsen would eventually get remarried, but Kierkegaard never lost contact with her.⁷

Underneath the almost algebraic nature of Derrida's arguments there are some poetic undertones: based in failure and rhetoric. 

____________________

1 Derrida, Jaques. “Tout Autre Est Tout Autre.” The Gift of Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1995).

2 Green, Ronald M. “Deciphering “Fear and Trembling”'s Secret Message.” Religious Studies 22.1 (1986): 95-111.

3 Kierkegaard, Soren. The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard. Ed Alexander Dru. London: Collins, 1958.

4 Kierkegaard, Soren. “The Diary of a Seducer.” Either/OR: Volume 1. New Jersey: Princeton University Press (1971). 297-440.

5 Yang, Chi- Ming. The Pseudonymous Authorship and Kierkegaard's Either/Or: The Anxiety of the Aesthetic. California: Stanford (1998): 36.

6 Yang, 37

7 All the sentiments of the preceding paragraph are echoed in this poem, written by Kierkegaard on the day Regine Olsen married another man:

Kierkegaard, Soren. “Soren Kierkegaard Writes to Regine Olsen on the Day of Her Marriage to Fritz Schegel.” The Kenyon Review, New Series

21.1 (1999): 86-87.