Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Thoughts on The Society of the Spectacle (blog)


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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