Text of
the Multimedia Presentation Performed at Arnes Courtroom, Austin Hall,
Horit
Herman Peled
On
february 25, at dawn Dr. Benjamin Goldstein a medical doctor and captain in the
idf (
Friends
of goldstein living in kyryat arba, a
Jewish settlement located inside the
urban fiber of the Arab city of Hebron or Halil in Arabic testified that he was
a gentile humanist doctor who on
several occasions helped the other the west bank arabs in need.
Baruh
Goldstein was killed. One of the
worshiperes fractured his head
using a piece of an iron metal. He left orphans ,a soft spoken wife and was
buried in Keryat Arba or the city of the
Four.
Upon
his death, Baruch became a martyr by
many right wing Israelis. his burial site was transformed into a holly
grave, a pilgrimage site, a signifier of
a cultural bond between burial locations, history, death , memory and
nationalism. An infrastructure that fires the ideology of the strong and rightful.
An infrastructure cherished and protected with massive idf troops.
Asaf
an art student, returned last week from a 40 days miluim , which is the army
reserve duty and in his very quite fashion told me that he served inside one of
the machpela tomb military check point as a medic. He showed me some colorful
sketches he drew in his notebook of the stained glass inside the tomb,
instantaneously we got into a discussion about
his new project for the semester, he could not verbalized nor discuss
his feelings and emotions concerning the sketches he drew, He could not deal
with the cruel reality at this point in space and time, he has no tools for
that, he withdrawns into himself like many
others in Israel and will not engage,
nor let his human feelings reach beyond and to the other. Thus he
contributes to the objectification of
the other or the Halil arabs.
2
years after the massacre , Avraham Paso a painter from Tel Aviv took a bus from
site opened a black paint bucket and splattered
the marble grave stones. It was documented on video, by a French reporter. Avraham Paso was trailed and sentenced.
It
was a cold rainy day, the day Goldstein murdered the Palestinians worshipers it
was a Jewish holiday, Porium. According to
tradition one has to joy, dance and drink “ad lo yada” or to a point one
doesn’t knows. Hanan Porat was dancing
with other Jewish settlers in Keryat
arba when he heard the news. one must adhere to religious tradition he said and
continued dancing. Hanan Porat was a member of Kneset and now he is the head of
the Judicial comity of the Kneset.
Porim
is a joyful holiday the Israeli Jewish schools are closed, children and adults
disguise themselves in costumes, there are
masquerade parties, the streets
of Tel Aviv are flocked with children and adults from all over the country
celebrating and having a good time.
Baby
Shani a 6 month infant was dressed up in a clown custom when her mother
Yael a young and up coming lawyer took
her that Friday afternoon in 1997 to the apropo cafe. A new yappie Tel Aviv style fashionable cafe
just 200 meters from Rabin's assassination site where his widow and friends met
that Friday afternoon like every other Friday afternoon to chat and sing songs
of
A
spontaneous exhibit was organized in response to the massacre in
The
massacre harbored an intersection of
hate, cruelty, arrogance, a reflection
of an unbearable physical and mental
situation no images photographic or
other means could express
terror. I felt I could use only one
sentence áøåê àúä ä'
àìåäéðå îìê äòåìí ùìà òùðé àéùä A verse taken from the jewish morning prayer excluded and recited only by men. The act of selecting,
uprooting and appropriating the phrase from the prayrer book, from it’s authentic context shattered the
sanctity of the phrase. Placing it in another context or discourse faded the
aura and gave it a different meaning.
This
kind of metamorphose was already
excersized at the beginning of the century by Marcel Duchamp I relate to the phrase as a found object however a
different found object then a machine made object it is rather a canonian
religious verse feeding the
traditional social structure of male
domination.
Using
the computerized means of production and means of presenting . The
electronic sign was an immediate solution.
The phrase looped in the gallery
as a commercial sign on 42 street.
using
industrial means of producing served 3 aims:
1.
collapsing
the exclusive nature of the male prayer
by transporting it from the prayer book
to the electronic sign which functions as a
bulletin board, thus, fragmenting the coherence of the ritual context.
2.
The computer net rhizome technology is a virtual world. placing an intersection
of the net in a physical gallery represented by it’s means of production isolates conceptually the work from the
architectural context of the gallery and
undermines the legetimacy of the gallery as a sole space of representing
art.
3.
the work is not an art object in the
conventional understanding it is rather a work which can not be separated from
its means of production, or the work is within the tools, there is no
separation between process and work. Thus, the art object is a signifier
carrying no value of intrinsic unique exchange.
The
computerized electronic virtual world functions as a refuge, a dynamic open
asylum, a convenient grazing land for the visual artist. A potential perpetual terrene where tools
and paints, are abundant. It is a
creative haven, a huge 2
dimentional studio which occupies a very small space. there is no negotiations
on materials the minute the hardware and software are installed in the
technological apparatus. the entrance to this world is by simple physical
gesture pushing a button. It could be everywhere due to it’s portable
qualities a wonder industrial machine
which could be placed in the corner of
the bedroom and could be seen as any other home furniture. This technology locks the
flow between mind eyes and the
screen. It infringes the
traditional screen viewer relationship
with it’s interactive
broadcasting and transmitting qualities.
Visual
culture is characterized by the presence of
framed flat portable objects containing virtual spaces. The borders of
the objects mark 2 separate coexisting spaces: the physical and the
virtual. The virtual spaces contain
visual signs which are usually viewed from a reasonable distance. We can
label these spaces as screens.
Lev
Manovitz divides the genealogy of the screen
into three: the classic screen, the dynamic screen and the computer
screen. The classic screen is, usually flat, squared and functions as a window
to another representation. Qualified in this category are paintings and
photographs.
The
dynamic screen burst into the world about a decade ago with the technological invention of the moving image. This screen
bears all the qualities of the classic screen,
however, the added value of the dynamic screen is the
capability of representing changing images and thus transform the imaginative space
to a more so-called realistic space. In this category we can recognize
the movie screen and the video
screen.
The
third screen “the computer screen” is
interactive and the imaginative
space
is composed of multi signifiers: functional and representational. in the
computer screen the classical and dynamic screen metamorphose
into a window which is interactive. The signifiers on the screen
are
visual
signs guiding the viewers in the pursuit of their quest.
Osams
Hamad was born in Anapta, a small
village in the west bank. I knew Osama 20 years ago when he was a student at UCLA. Osama
leaves now in
A
military checkpoint is an intersection as well, yet the transactions in the
checkpoint are physical not virtual.
Military checkpoints are netted all over areas A,B,C and D
in the west bank and the gaza strip, No military check point could stop
the Hamas suicide bomber, check points were transparent in the eyes of the
Doctor, while checkpoint are blind to
the Israeli settlers.
During the 25 years occupation of the west bank and Gaza by Israel, the
Palestinians were the majority of the manual laborers depicted as suspicious
other seen/unseen human beings, dressed
up in ragged cloths humiliated gaze. Facades of human beings moving images on TV, no interaction. The apprehensive uneasiness from the Palestinian worker objectified,
dehumanised these people and affirmed
racist assumptions. The fixed visual
image of a Palestinian worker perpetuated the iconic sign of fear and
other.
The
installation, "Stripped Identities/Digital Terror" deals with the
fixed image, with the facade
representation of a Palestinian worker
in and around the Gaza Check Point.
I spent several days and nights in the Gaza
Check Point. Dekel a student joined me once and we drove from Tel Aviv To
the Check Point at
During
Intervals
of long curfews brought families to the brink of hunger. The Oslo peace agreement
between Israel and the Palestinian authority did not better the situation, it
brought the formation of a military web
check points on the eastern, some of the
southern and the northern borders of Israel. However, the people of the west
bank and
This is a proposal for an interactive
installation, the context is digital terror coexisting within
the digital revolution. Terror, a human
activity commonly conceived to be a political act carried out by groups that
aim their illegal activities against an economic and political power, engaging
in violent acts that harm innocent civilians.
But
terror is also a reciprocal activity, a
reaction against legal and institutional oppression perpetrated by economic and
political powers.
The
digital revolution harbors the digital
terror.
The
digit, a human invention, acts as a
dynamic signifier, a host for tangible numbers. It is a transparent concept that contains within
itself the ability to function as a communicative language, and as a tool.
The
digit has served political regimes through the ages. Digits swap subjectivity, strip complex
identities, transform the human spirit into matter signified by numbers.
The
Nazis branded numbers into the arms of
human beings. Branding served
their racist ideology; it mapped and cleared the way for the transition from
subject to object. Thus, the digit provided a major instrument for collapsing
the modernist concept of subject into object by plastering the interiors of the
subject, and packaging it into an object.
The
digital revolution continuously renders into a “spatial unified brain”
orchestrated by a centralized/decentralized mechanism of selective,
hierarchical memory called Cyberspace.
Access to, and decoding signs in the virtual world are restricted to
those who possess the digital means of production. Advantageous inclusion is
granted to some citizens in the first world, at the price of excluding the majority of the world.
Exclusion from the world digital revolution
disadvantages, deepens poverty and creates the conditions for terror.
Furthermore, the ability of the
computerized digit to cache and camouflage individual social information with
bodily physical characteristics, molds it
into a tool of total control, an unseen energy propelling terror against
those in the third world who need to find a living in the first.
This
inclusion/exclusion is emblematized very clearly in the magnetic card.
The
magnetic card stores instructions, is portable, and highly desirable. A key to
a brave new world, to limitless opportunities. It embodies revolutionary
technology. Cutting through geographic, national boundaries, it imprints
subjective traces in consumer computers.
However,
the ones who own the magnetic card live in the first world. Those who live in
the third world do not own the consumer plastic card. They carry a magnetic
card that invokes the computer and classifies the subject carrying the card
only as an object. The revolutionary nature of the magnetic card in the first
world, flips into one function of total
control in the third world. It denies subjectivity and relates to human beings
as objects. Thus technological revolution in one social context becomes terror
in another social context.
This
work is composed partly on a photographic
syntax of appropriating images in
and around Gaza Check Point. A laser or
a metal reconstruction of the long
meshed barrier which leads to the Check Point. A
woolen rug representing computerized
magnetic card produced in a non technological fashion and operates in
the installation as an entrance rug
signifying the terror/surveillance aspects which are manifested in the digital revolution. the entrence to the installation is law and
narrow, the space is in total dark, limited to one viewer. entering the space activate
3 consecutive transparent screens representing moving images captured in
the check point and screened in short intense intervals, fragmented flashes of
painterly and photographic intense
atmosphere images. The viewers
enclosed narrow space simulates the surrondings a
Using
computerize technological tools to create and present the work on one
hand and on the other the vehement intense surrondings within the corridor
where the viewer can wonder and become
the other in a closed and mingle with the projected images on the screen. The
survelliance is activated by the viewer as his body activates the source of
light which I the projected images on the screens. The viewer will sense
and recapture
a
memory of the other , of the one who is stripped of identity by means of digital terror.
What
is the context of making art at the end of the 20th century?
The symbiosis between humans and complicated tools, is the paradigm of the digital revolution, this is called
hybridization, or hich took hybridization a giant step forward, as compared
with the industrial revolution before it.
Digital hybridization has two faces:
(1) Alienation --- the result of the exploitation of workers and
consumers by the
industrial capitalist apparatus.
As Horkheimer and Adorno (1993, p. 121) argued, "a technological
rationale is the rationale of domination itself." The subjugation of
nature means domination of human beings through the use
of technology in
the context of
capitalist culture. The 20th century witnessed the monstrously
destructive force of technology during
World War II, especially in the
Holocaust -- a meticulous factory
apparatus for the mass production of death.
(2) A stream of potential for endless human creativity, that
has become available, in an unprecedented way, to the end users of digital
products.
The dialectic between
human oppression signified by alienation and the liberating promise
signified by technological creativity may open a window for an alternative, oppositional art making. In the Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway sketches the conditions for the potential liberation that could result
from hybridization and views it from the
standpoint of the cyborg:
It [the cyborg] is oppositional, utopian, and completely
without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private,
the cyborg defines a technological polis based partly on a revolution of social
relations in the oikos, the household. Nature and culture are reworked; the one
can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other.
The relationships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity
and hierarchical domination, are at issue in the cyborg world (Haraway 1991,
p.151).
The matrix of cyberspace holds the potential for new dimensions of time and space, where
access is abundant. Consequently, everyone is
welcome to dwell inside, under
the condition of their free choice
to metamorphose into cyborgs.
This optimistic assertion, however, must
be qualified, in view of the fact that the technology that is the
crucial element of the cyborg signifies alienation and exploitation. Moreover, cyberspace is an
exclusive club, open mostly for inhabitants of the first world.
The other element of the cyborg is the human side. The human
embodies prospects for contradicting the technological, alienating
aspect of the cyborg by exposing and negating the oppressive aspect of its existence. Moreover, existing digital
technology can be utilized to draw awareness to the destructive forces
technology produces in capitalist
culture.
Metaphorically speaking, a cyborg existence is equivalent to the
body - mind dichotomy, where mind is the human side of the cyborg and
technology stands for its body. The
human side is the conscience, which can
tame the bodily side and bring it to a more
humanistic comprehension and behavior
by exposing and negating the alienating moment which
technology represents.
Cyberspace hybridization enfolds the behavioral principles of the material world, yet it is
blind to the physical, bodily dimension of human existence. Cyborg identity is made up of sensual and intellectual expressions rendered by means of
pictorial visuals, text and sound , the expressive media of the
artist. A cyber artwork is free of the limiting and defining qualities of time
and space, much more so than the traditional machine-made objects. Thus, a
cyber artwork collapses the standard definition of the artwork: A painting, a
sculpture, a photograph, a video, a movie or even an installation, are intact
objects, whereas artworks in Cyberspace are interactive, streaming, and
constantly metamorphosing. Still, they
do share with traditional art objects a geometric frame that houses
the changeable content.
A cyber artwork that exists on the net is framed with text and
visual signifiers/icons representing the software hosts.
Thus each virtual work is
composed of two layers of signifiers: one representing the tools of production,
and, indeed, their manufacturer; the
other expressing visually the creative impulse of the artist. The second
layer of signifiers corresponds to the
artworks we find in the traditional spaces of the museums and
galleries. The first layer, that bears the imprint of those who made the
artwork physically possible, corresponds to the lists of patrons we find in
museum catalogs and on their administrative rosters. However, while traditional patrons of the art
are acknowledged only outside the frames of the art objects themselves,
representations of the owners of the
digital means of production are etched
onto the artwork in a vivid and clear
way. Moreover, unlike the traditional patrons of the arts, the new patrons are
ignorant of the specific authors and
producers. Their patronage is universal for all who choose, and can
afford, to dwell in Cyberspace. It forms
an inseparable, interdependent context
for the changeable content of the creative work.
2. Globalization
Cyberculture roams on
the elusive space of the digital means
of production: a whole new culture is energized by electricity. The
culture starts with
turning on the switch, and there
is no culture when the switch is
turned off. No doubt a possibility
for a new culture. New social and economic
relationships are awaiting, and we are barely scratching the surface. Yet the
new space is not empty, nor is it a void or a vacuum. With its inauguration,
reproductive behavioral modes entered and filled the endless electronic space.
At the same time the prospects for a new frontier, a promised land, extend
our imagination and our romantic
beliefs in the goodness of humanity. Taking
Cyberspace as a resort
location, humanity can graze in
harmony. Pierre Levy, in his essay,
"Toward Superlanguage," foresees that
cyberculture could lead to collective
intelligence (Levy 1994, p. 16). Roy
Ascott builds a cyberutopia with his
telematics constructs, proposing a model for merging technology and intuition
(Ascott 1997).
These two theoreticians point to a prominent school of thought
in relation to cyberculture (Cubitt 1998, pp. 80, 149). Indeed,
the digital tools
are inspirational and one
has to embrace the capabilities
and potential of digital developments. Moreover, art works promoting the formation
of creative, constructive visions of the
future are inspirational
for change. However, one
must also be aware of
the fact that Cyberspace is still
just one field of human
endeavor, and that it
houses reproductions of
social and cultural behaviors as
much as the other fields.
Cyberspace is a milestone
in Globalization -- the
process of creating a global capitalist market. Globalization relies on
digital technology for its consummation.
Computer companies that
facilitate Cyberspace function
not only as its constructors but also as its
landlords. They are the dynamic
entrepreneurs who set sail for
the horizon of forever expanding globalization.
Globalization is all-inclusive. The cliche, "the world is a global village"
could be perceived and welcomed only by the members who are the masters of that village. Unfortunately, those who
function as the serfs of the village constitute the majority of humankind,
about 4/5 of humanity. Globalization redefines the capitalist mode of
production in such a way that the manual laborers who assemble computer
hardware reside in the third world, "south of the border," while
management resides in the first. The consumers of hardware and software also reside mostly in the first
world. Those users of the
digital media are inducted
into an exclusive,
worldwide fraternity. The interiors of that fraternity are designed, basically, by one
monopolistic conglomerate and the
furniture is supplied by adjunct
producers. Microsoft dictates
to most computer users in the
entire world the styles and ways in which they can function, interact and
produce in Cyberspace. Microsoft creates
an inter-symbiosis with
the computer hardware industry
by forcing Microsoft operational
systems on each and every PC, building an ever-growing web of digital
points or stations between which no border or boundary
prevails. By colonizing each point Microsoft is crowning itself as the
significant sole monopoly in Cyberspace. Microsoft is thus a signifier
for the
new world of the 21st century.
But, as I have
indicated, the digital industry also sustains the potential for the
facilitation of a liberating creative environment. That potential
is limited, however, to a distinguished
group of world-citizens, while there are two other
groups in existence: one that suffers the exploitation and repression of the globalization process and
of the digital revolution, and includes the majority of humanity, and another that must compromise
its own cultural identity in order to participate in the digital revolution,
due to the mere fact that digital
technology operates basically in one language only -- English. Thus,
Anglo-American ethnocentrism functions
as a universal axiom adapted to local arenas.
In spite of all these reservations, digital technology still
has an emancipatory potential with respect to the art world. It functions as a
means of producing, distributing, and viewing cultural codes, while never
turning them into art objects. This
disappearance of the art object emancipates the art producers, their production
and their viewers from the bondage of the mirrored object situated in the
commercial context. Stripping the
artistic codes of their material objectivity
and reaching the possibility of a state of mind detached from
materiality, combined with the digital means of creation, can extricate a stream of free imagination that would melt
into endless web arrangements of distribution.
3. The Responsible Subject
The disappearance or metamorphosing of the art object into electronic virtuality retains the
signifiers of objective materiality, while shifting artistic production to a
new mode, where oppositional work is not restricted by the contemporary narrational code of the art field. Artworks in the net are in
a position to utilize globalization as a contradictory context for negating the
terror aspects inflicted by the digital revolution. Compromising cultural
identity is the price one has to pay for engaging in the process of collapsing
the hegemony of the art object, if one does not happen to belong to the
English-speaking world.
In the digital world the seen is not only a cultural signifier
of abstract ideas, feelings, emotion, etc . It is rather a vast number of
interactions of identities, values, commands, representations, etc., which appear visually on the screen through the
means of changeable light points. The representation is paradoxical,
metamorphic and nomadic. The context for
the art work in the virtual is postmodern, as the same light points, in
different configurations, can embroider an artwork, a commercial visual, an
interactive command as a signifier of a
tool, a monetary transaction, a legal document, etc. A streaming montage where
the visual of an artwork is equal to any other visual, thus shifting the
meaning of the digital artwork to a different paradigm. The digital context makes it possible to cut
out the middleman, the gallerist or
museum curator , and there is a dialog
between authors/producers and viewers. And, of course, the monetary
exchange value of a work of art seen on the electronic screen aspires to
nothing.
All of these factors construct an art field where the merit of art could change from
speculative exchange value to cultural use value. A cultural exchange on a
non-economic basis can point to a different direction in art making. Moreover,
access to a PC enables accessibility to the most advanced technological means
of industrial production. Thus, there is a shift in the traditional
relationship between the art producers and the social means of production. The
artists are no longer only commenting/criticizing or mediating by the
anesthetization of the means of production, from an outside and alienating
position; they are working with the means of production from within. The
artwork no longer represents the social means of production through simulation,
but rather uses them directly.
Paradoxically, the marriage between the economic digital means of production
and the artistic ones produces a
possibility for an art field outside the hegemony of the market. This could
lead to the collapse of prevailing concepts about art.
To sum up, a meaningful art work on the plane of the digital
revolution is a work that points towards the possible fulfillment of the
emancipatory potential inherent in this revolution. It is a work that utilizes
the advances of technology in order to criticize and subvert the socio-economic
and political contexts within which this technology is being created, diffused
and controlled. Since the means of digital artistic production are
predetermined and controlled by profit-making corporations, indeed by one
global conglomerate, to be a responsible citizen of the global village, the
artist must seek to express the voice of those who are terrorized into silence
by the digital revolution.