if you want to see some spaces and objects where I was involved
if you want to text me
if you want to check some formalities
– tom :)
if you want to see some spaces and objects where I was involved
if you want to text me
if you want to check some formalities
– tom :)
(Re-)Production and its Discontents
Installation / Essay, 2024
During my attempt to assess societal reproduction, the media's regime of repetition, and the subsequent political reproduction in this course, there were crucial situations of inner distancing. This led to the separation of my physical and emotional connection to others in the room and the thematic engagement. However, the journey through the course has thrown me into personal areas of tension. Different stages of connection - belonging, loss, closed-off feelings, and resulting numbness. Those feelings became the process I wanted to reflect on this project.
It started with the interest in the definition of otherness and the creation of social value. How do we judge something? Aesthetically? Economically? The alienation of things and beings became the focus on the term dirt. As “a matter out of place”. (1) The accidential, the unknown. Something that does not belong where it physically is. Between something dirt, metaphorically but also materialized – but always categorized, and not dirt – there is the threshold of inside and outside. Included and excluded. Those interactions reflected why, in whatever sense, do we exclude parts and include others? Practices of purification result as a value-judgement towards a non-resistant and non-diverse society. How does it feel to be alienated from the neo-liberal world? And during this research-process, I quickly realized that my own consciousness turned into something judgmentally. With the work, I am attempting to explain these constraints and reconsider the orientation – starting with myself and how I relate to space where things, people and bodies are valued.
Many texts, many ideals, no ideals, no texts. A lot of anger. The eye and the brain as the connection – or – disconnection of anything searched. Where do I start, if not with myself? Clearly, how contradictory could it be – but what if information, categorization, trust in academia sometimes turns into a reproduction of what happens in our society. While doing so, I am turning into a mechanical working object, the alienation of myself within society. I reduce myself to what I know. (2)
Any other parameters which could come with the emotions, are blocked. Muted. Numbed. The logical as the prevailing passivity. The search for this little nuance in between both states became my object of thought and re-search. Where is my own perspective of my self-determined me and the logical external me?
"I see in them a 2nd person, the real one" (3) – With this quote by Valie Export's film Invisible Adversaries from 1977, my inner compulsiveness is described very clearly. The male psychologist's statement, "You are schizophrenic" serves as a scientific degradation of the entanglement and reproduction of a norm. But isn't it less than the reproduction of precisely these – of myself? What if I cannot escape these reproductions? Can I clearly demonstrate the transition from society (us in the course) to myself (I in the course) and back to society (course) – where does my attempt lie? And what exactly do I want to take away from the course to reflect on something sustainable in the future? How do I recognize the space of coercion? And how can I take control of myself to identify, reflect on, and precisely change that?
According to Walter Ong, a cultural and philosophical professor in the 20th century, it was the transition from an oral to written culture that caused a shift in focus of the image. “In oral cultures today, we still see equal importance given to all senses and a perception of the wholeness of the world proceeding from the body of the universe.”
In a world of constant image production and mass-media, the primary sense of the eye became the trustworthy perspective. What I see is what is real. It becomes much harder to trick yourself with a shift in this mindset. Hilde Bouchez askes: “How can we know whether an object is real if we only study it from one particular viewpoint?” (4)
My numbness, which occurred during the process, was therefore a sign of self-alienation. The moment of realization came as a lead to subvert the invisible, the unawareness.
“One can undergo it without being aware of it, just as one can undergo schizophrenia without being aware of it. But no one in capitalist society can escape this condition (without escaping capitalist society)” (5) So how can a shift of viewpoint bring both together and de-alienate me from society? Where is this point of external control? “Alienation in general, at the most abstract level, can be thought of as a surrender of control through separation from an essential attribute of the self, and, more specifically, separation of an actor or agent from the conditions of meaningful agency.” (6)
This means, the surrender point is included in the theory of alienation. To resist, therefore requires a new viewpoint and action to work against the distancing. A specific self-actionism, a consciousness, which puts me to the table. Marx, from a point of labour-society relation, claimed the status of Selbstentfremdung (engl. self-estrangement), as the feeling and status of being alienated from people and things around oneself. “If someone denies self-estrangement, then they are confirming it as well; by dismissing it, they are acknowledging that it is there.” (7) Marx stated that self-estrangement is a significant factor in alienation.
So, who do I trust? The depth of the topics, the weight of the discourse, the perception of myself – overwhelming. The way out was the repetition of turning off and numbing my own actions. When I realized this, my process became counterproductive, and perhaps different steps were desired. Examining my own emotional connection to the realm of knowledge. Perhaps it is already so deeply trapped within me that direct confrontations would be necessary. Through the work, I have tried to change the perspective to trick my own eye and idea. - myself from behind.
How often does one look at oneself upside down or attempt to photograph oneself from behind? A selfie where I gaze into the darkness to truly see something. While looking into the cardboard darkroom, the body itself becomes dizzy, the perspectives are not working as known. Trying something that is not visible to the naked eye. The work is not intended to be a self-reflection per se but rather a stimulus to flip the perspective as a break-up letter to one’s own vision. While putting my eye into the camera obscura, my consciousness is completely dark, just the projected image is seen. “In order to see, one needs to go into the dark room” (8)
(1) Douglas, Purity & Danger, 1966, p.7
(2) Asher Horowitz, Marx’s Theory of Alienation, 2011
(3) Valie Export, Unsichtbare Gegner, 1977
(4) Hilde Bouchez, A Wild Thing, 2016, p.78
(5) Asher Horowitz, Marx’s Theory of Alienation, 2011
(6) ibid.
(7) Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844
(8) Marwa Arsanios. “A Letter Inside a Letter: How Labor Appears and Disappears”. 10/2023
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Links
https://izk.tugraz.at/semesters/winter-semester-2023-2024/reproduction-and-its-discontents/