Daniel Ryser, (2013) Assange's Room, [1:1 Installation] FACT, Liverpool.
HOW MUCH OF THIS IS FICTION. Presents an exhibition of politically
inspired media art employing détournement at every turn, hacking the reality to present
urgent post-truth politics.
With Guy Debord’s
text The Society of the Spectacle in mind it seems possible to interpret the
current state of the media and politics in relation to the Spectacle:
8
The spectacle
cannot be set in abstract opposition to concrete social activity, for the
dichotomy between reality and image will survive on either side of any such
distinction. Thus the spectacle, though it turns reality on its head, is itself
a product of real activity. Likewise, lived reality suffers the material
assaults of the spectacle's mechanisms of contemplation, incorporating the
spectacular order and lending that order positive support. Each side therefore
has its share of objective reality. And every concept, as it takes its place on
one side or the other, has no foundation apart from its transformation into its
opposite: reality erupts within the spectacle, and the spectacle is real. This
reciprocal alienation is the essence and underpinning of society as it exists.
(Debord, 1994,
p.5)
The first
visible consequences of a widespread use of détournement, apart from its
intrinsic propaganda powers, will be the revival of a multitude of bad books,
and thus the extensive (unintended) participation of their unknown authors; an
increasingly extensive transformation of phrases or plastic works that happen
to be in fashion; and above all an ease of production far surpassing in
quantity, variety and quality the automatic writing that has bored us for so
long.
Détournement
not only leads to the discovery of new aspects of talent; in addition, clashing
head-on with all social and legal conventions, it cannot fail to be a powerful
cultural weapon in the service of a real class struggle. The cheapness of its
products is the heavy artillery that breaks through all the Chinese walls of
understanding. It is a real means of proletarian artistic education, the first
step toward a literary communism.
Debord defines
détournement in three stages:
Minor détournement
is the détournement of an element which has no importance in itself and which
thus draws all its meaning from the new context in which it has been placed.
For example, a press clipping, a neutral phrase, a commonplace photograph.
Deceptive
détournement, also termed premonitory-proposition détournement, is in contrast
the détournement of an intrinsically significant element, which derives a
different scope from the new context.
Extensive
detourned works will thus usually be composed of one or more series of
deceptive and minor détournements.
As the spectator
moves around the exhibition space of FACT these levels of detournement are
explored at different rates in different works. The spectator is virtually détourned
or hi-jacked as artist Adam Harvey in the digital work Skylift (VO.2) uses a geolocation spoofing device to virtually
relocate the spectator’s smart phone to the location of Assange’s residence at
the Ecuadorian Embassy.
It could be perceived
that the spectator is then physically détourned when in front of Assange’s Room a 1:1 reproduction of
Assange’s office at the Ecuadourian embassy, it is from my perspective
detourned rather than just merely produced due to one key element, the room is
meticulously constructed entirely from memory. This is due to no photography being
allowed in the embassy, so after several visits artist Daniel Ryder has hijacked
reality to take the embassy from its original location and into the location of
the gallery space. We trust Ryder’s work to be an accurate representation of
Assange’s room however ultimately the work is a minor détournement, we without
Assange’s presence in the Embassy have little interest in the actual embassy or
this 1:1 installation.
Both Ryder and
Harvey act as despots, they try to relocate us or deteritorialise us – we are
displaced from our actual location of the gallery and are taken virtually and
physically the Ecuadorian Embassy. This diaspora reterritorializes us into the
forced displacement of Assange. We are all detourned. For the Situationists[1] detournement was like a
game, humans being its player to ignite the world into gamespace. This gamespace
is referred to by academic Sher Duff:
“The
globalisation of gamespace by a runaway capitalism exudes a comparison to the societal
paradigms of discipline and control advanced by Foucault and Deleuze
respectively.”
(Duff, 2006, p.3)
Through
globalisation our gamespace has become what theorist Marshall McLuhan refers to
as the Global Village (1962). Although restricted to the Ecuadorian embassy’s
walls Assange takes full advantage of our Global Village and harnesses our
gamespace aka the media to detourn sensitive or confidential documents through
Wikileaks to liberate them from their capitalist confines.
Adam Harvey, (2013) Skylift (VO.2), [Digital artwork] FACT, Liverpool.
We all need to
become the aimless wanderer at some point in our
lives, we all need to be liberated from our systematic lifestyles and addiction
to our smartphones which drip feed us detourned information from media
conglomerates, we trust the devil we trust the machine – we must liberate the
derive from the urban praxis it exists in according to the Situationists and
allow ourselves to drift further, go beyond the walls of the city and escape to
breathe in the landscape of the enlightenment to return to a pastoral golden
age. We trust the city and its machine, it’s time to take a chance on nature
and allow ourselves to get truly lost in order to discover who we really
are.
Bibliography:
Duff, S. (2006)
From Psychogeography to Cybertoplogy: Situating “Place” in the Disorientated Dérive
http://www.academia.edu/3596185/From_Psychogeography_to_Cybertopology_Situating_Place_in_the_Disoriented_Dérive
McLuhan, M.
(1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. University of
Toronto Press: Canada.
[1] Revolutionary
alliance of European avant-garde artists, writers and poets formed at a
conference in Italy in 1957 (as Internationale Situationiste or IS). The IS
developed a critique of capitalism based on a mixture of Marxism and
surrealism. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/situationist-international
Accessed: May 21, 2017
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