My thoughts on, The Society of the
Spectacle by Guy Debord:
Brazen Bull: Traps and Veils, September 16th, 2011 performance exhibition,
Sierra Arts Gallery, Reno, Nevada
Capitalist Industrial society must sustain on spectacle
because all reality has been equivocated for the purpose of seamless exchange.
There is no real except for the framework of the spectacle. Something real must
hold the spectacle on display but that real is there to sustain the
spectacle within its frame.
I suppose Debord attributes some of this idea
of spectacle coming as a result of our becoming unmoored due to the
parcelization of human’s gestures. By this I believe he means that
specialization and professionalism has severed our links to one another. We
live within the parcels of our given specialty. The foundations of authentic existence our built upon our
intrinsic links to each other. This for me is the central aim of my community
service project “Drawn Together”. Linking humans in a direct way.
Specialization and professionalism has taken this relatively simple way of
living away. DeBord suggests it takes radical actions to break the grip of the
spectacle. I am not sure that is the only way. Maybe Drawn together may appear
radical because the practice of art is not part of most human’s lives. It is
because of the institutional components of the “art world” and possibly the “aura” attached to
great art that has rendered art inaccessible. Why bother when there are people
who can makes things far superior to the masses (layman). This is part of the reason earlier in this semester I suggested
destroying art. Part of me was very serious. The hierarchical aspect of art
should be removed thereby allowing art to be absorbed into the "machinations" of
societal discourses. Debord says
we have been reunited AS separate. To me, this only burnishes a separateness in
existence. Our real becomes this abstraction. When our actions to the benefit
of production are so specialized they become abstract. This is exactly what I
FELT while making my book, Make time for Tom. My book of surreal corporate
existence was about the idea that it really did not make any difference what we
did. I was expressing the absurdity of our actions because they were only
connected in this psychotic, hardened capitalist machine. Virtually a complete
unmooring from actual human life. Its like if when driving a car a human is
assigned to only pressing on the gas pedal when told, another is assigned the
task of breaking when indicated, another turns the steering wheel when
designated. When all these actions are parcelized they become these abstract
actions. They are maybe reunited in a singular action but the they are reunited
AS separate thereby rendering the actual experience ABSURD! This made my
drawing in Make Time For Tom, representationally accurate in so far as actual
metaphysical experience goes. Humans are reduced to little more than these
meaningless vessels in perpetual service of liquefied equivocated capital. Humans feel extreme forms of
anomy when our only connection to the other is little more than two gears
grinding away in synchrony. Sure they're connected but in service of a thing totally
separated from their need to have authentic discourse.
DeBord says that Labor becomes more
contemplative less active. This is directly relative to my performance boxing
match, Brazen Bull. My intent was to put what was for me my most authentic
experience in life into the machinations of spectacle/simulation. This may be the kind of “radical”
action Debord refers to when he writes of remedies. Radical situations which force a confrontation within the
trajectory of global industrial capitalism. Something that allows an interruption
of capitalism’s hardened psychosis. I never intended to shock. However, it may
shock only because it is an action forced from its package. It is an action
forced from its expected trajectory.
The documentary film, as I am beginning to realize, will never elicit
the effects necessary to thaw the frozen souls. The documentary renders the
radical situation metaphysical, thereby only supporting the society spectacle.
This was a ritual of exorcism that had no simulative benefit. Brazen Bull had
to be experience first hand and only once. My fight was a tribute to the time
when we lived not just for economic growth but for survival!! Debord refers to alienated consumption
negating life. He suggests radical actions such as the Brazen Bull to end the
collective coma. I sometimes live
in fear that to resist what seems to be the inevitability of the spectacle will
have the effect of putting a gun to my head.
“Red Car Crash”
(1963) is an acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen work that was just one part of
Warhol’s 1962-63 “Death and Disaster Series.”
Warhol had the intent to reflect how all
meaning has been subsumed into spectacle when he repeated images of car accidents
as one would a stop sign or Nike logo. I can’t help but believe this is not
enough. What he did was point out a problem. I suppose I’d like to think I may
making work that proposes or highlights a solution. Or at least an approach
and/or beginning to a solution. However, I guess the “situationists” did not
succeed. So do artists in the 21st century have a chance?
This I guess brings me to Rock n Roll . Rock and
Roll represented an affront to the society of spectacle but as most know so
well; rock and roll was subsumed
by the capitalist machine and became an even more pronounced version of
its opposite. Rock n Rolled created a stronger beast against which to resist!
The Rock Star represents what amounts to
rendering the values of the spectacle sacred as Debord articulates so well.
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