Serge Daney: "Photography is an immobile image, whereas the cinematic
image has movement, different kinds of movements. In general,
photography is contrasted to cinema as immobility to movement. True
enough. But what's forgotten is that the movement of images in cinema
could only be perceived because the people--the public--were immobile
before those images. It's because people were put into theaters, locked
into place before the screen and held in a situation of "blocked vision"
that they were able to *see* all kinds of movement: the
(technologically-fabricated) illusion of movement and a still more
complicated movement, which, if you insist, can be called the "language"
of cinema, though it is much more a grammar: the movement consisting of
everything that filmmakers from Lumiere to our day have proposed in
order to make the jump from one element to the next."
So here is the situation: the body is held rigid before the computer
monitor, immobilized save for small wrist and eye movements, its vision
"blocked" in order that a new "movement" can be perceived within the
frame. The artists here are concerned with this "channelling" into the
space of the net, and while the net always intersects with situated
realities, this net space is the real "installation space"--not the
space of the documenta-Halle in Kassel. To look into the frame of the
video monitor or the cinematic screen requires simply a technological
apparatus, a comfortable chair, and informational framing required in
order to help contextualize the experience. Would these concerns raised
here be raised if we were talking about the showing of films? Why is
this different? What has been provided at dX are the necessities for
access, a flat surface (desk) with a working computer; a chair; a roof;
lighting; a door to come in and out of; a map to locate these access
points and to situate the project within the dX parcours, and a
theoretical construct in which they function--a construct in which they
have been presented on par with every artwork, not marginalized or
lumped together as "net projects" (Simon recognized the importance of
this positioning, and he worked very hard to achieve it). We have also
been given a context to consider the networked image in relation to the
recent history of the image, from photography through cinema to
contemporary commercially-fueled programming, and a challenge to
articulate the language relationality of the web. Much more exciting
than discussing the presentation space of Kassel, then, is discussing
how online imaging functions in relation to this larger landscape,
including its modes of visualization, signification, access, navigation,
and subjectivity-production. This is our "space", not the bank of
monitors sitting downstairs at the Halle in Kassel. If anything is to
be referenced there, the placeless, generic "office environment" is a
very valid connotation, because it prompts us to look at the Kassel
space as something other than as exhibition space for web projects, but
as a reference to contemporary conditions of information work.
The situation would be different if the projects were specifically
concerned with the physical conditions of the documenta-Halle site, or
the physical conditions of the accessor sitting at the monitor there.
They are not: they don't place any demands on the viewer to move
through the Kassel space; they don't demand any physical activity other
than clicking and eye-scanning. This is not a criticism. This
restriction-situation opens up an enormous space within the net, a space
has much more potential for access than does the documenta-Halle in
Kassel, many potential embodiments and many access points to address,
spread out across vast geographies, and many forms of movement and
orientation that do not necessarily mobilize the situated body "parked"
at the monitor. If the Kassel space is to be analyzed, a far more vital
approach would be a consideration of forms of restriction, of channeling
attention, in relation to other public or private spaces of immobile
image-access. Also what could be addressed are problematics of
exclusion and the relentless pursuit of software innovation at the
expense of strategies for easily accessible public netspace. My
criticism would be that the two artists who made interventions, Franz
West and Heimo Zobernig, had no position vis-à-vis these and other
pressing issues--their work having no currency with conditions of the
network. But these interventions are minor within the scheme of things.
PS to jodi: it could have been worse: it could have looked like the
Workspace at Orangerie.