Sunday, April 22, 2007

Paul Valéry « La conquête de l’ubiquité » (1928)

Nos Beaux-Arts ont été institués, et leurs types comme leur usage fixés, dans un temps bien distinct du nôtre, par des hommes dont le pouvoir d’action sur les choses était insignifiant auprès de celui que nous possédons. Mais l’étonnant accroissement de nos moyens, la souplesse et la précision qu’ils atteignent, les idées et les habitudes qu’ils introduisent nous assurent de changements prochains et très profonds dans l’antique industrie du Beau. Il y a dans tous les arts une partie physique qui ne peut plus être regardée ni traitée comme naguère, qui ne peut pas être soustraite aux entreprises de la connaissance et de la puissance modernes. Ni la matière, ni l’espace, ni le temps ne sont depuis vingt ans ce qu’ils étaient depuis toujours. Il faut s’attendre que de si grandes nouveautés transforment toute la technique des arts, agissent par là sur l’invention elle-même, aillent peut-être jusqu’à modifier merveilleusement la notion même de l’art.

Sans doute ce ne seront d’abord que la reproduction et la transmission des oeuvres qui se verront affectées. On saura transporter ou reconstituer en tout lieu le système de sensations, – ou plus exactement, le système d’excitations, – que dispense en un lieu quelconque un objet ou un événement quelconque. Les oeuvres acquerront une sorte d’ubiquité. Leur présence immédiate ou leur restitution à toute époque obéiront à notre appel. Elles ne seront plus seulement dans elles-mêmes, mais toutes où quelqu’un sera, et quelque appareil. Elles ne seront plus que des sortes de sources ou des origines, et leurs bienfaits se trouveront ou se retrouveront entiers où l’on voudra. Comme l’eau, comme le gaz, comme le courant électrique viennent de loin dans nos demeures répondre à nos besoins moyennant un effort quasi nul, ainsi serons-nous alimentés d’images visuelles ou auditives, naissant et s’évanouissant au moindre geste, presque à un signe. Comme nous sommes accoutumés, si ce n’est asservis, à recevoir chez nous l’énergie sous diverses espèces, ainsi trouverons-nous fort simple d’y obtenir ou d’y recevoir ces variations ou

oscillations très rapides dont les organes de nos sens qui les cueillent et qui les intègrent font tout ce que nous savons. Je ne sais si jamais philosophe a rêvé d’une société pour la distribution de Réalité Sensible à domicile.

La Musique, entre tous les arts, est le plus près d’être transposé dans le mode moderne. Sa nature et la place qu’elle tient dans le monde la désignent pour être modifiée la première dans ses formules de distribution, de reproduction et même de production. Elle est de tous les arts le plus demandé, le plus mêlé à l’existence sociale, le plus proche de la vie dont elle anime, accompagne ou imite le fonctionnement organique. Qu’il s’agisse de la marche ou de la parole, de l’attente ou de l’action, du régime ou des surprises de notre durée, elle sait en ravir, en combiner, en transfigurer les allures et les valeurs sensibles. Elle nous tisse un temps de fausse vie en effleurant les touches de la

vraie. On s’accoutume à elle, on s’y adonne aussi délicieusement qu’aux substances justes, puissantes et subtiles que vantait Thomas de Quincey. Comme elle s’en prend directement à la mécanique affective dont elle joue et qu’elle manoeuvre à son gré, elle est universelle par essence ; elle charme, elle fait danser sur toute la terre. Telle que la science, elle devient besoin et denrée internationaux. Cette circonstance, jointe aux récents progrès dans les moyens de transmission, suggérait deux problèmes techniques :

I. – Faire entendre en tout point du globe, dans l’instant même, une oeuvre

musicale exécutée n’importe où.

II. – En tout point du globe, et à tout moment, restituer à volonté une

oeuvre musicale.

Ces problèmes sont résolus. Les solutions se font chaque jour plus parfaites.

Nous sommes encore assez loin d’avoir apprivoisé à ce point les phénomènes

visibles. La couleur et le relief sont encore assez rebelles. Un soleil qui se couche sur le Pacifique, un Titien qui est à Madrid ne viennent pas encore se peindre sur le mur de notre chambre aussi fortement et trompeusement que nous y recevons une symphonie.

Cela se fera. Peut-être fera-t-on mieux encore, et saura-t-on nous faire voir quelque chose de ce qui est au fond de la mer. Mais quant à l’univers de l’ouïe, les sons, les bruits, les voix, les timbres nous appartiennent désormais. Nous les évoquons quand et où il nous plaît. Naguère, nous ne pouvions jouir de la musique à notre heure même, et selon notre humeur. Notre jouissance devait s’accommoder d’une occasion, d’un lieu, d’une date et d’un programme. Que de coïncidences fallait-il ! C’en est fait à présent d’une servitude si contraire au plaisir, et par là si contraire à la plus exquise intelligence

des oeuvres. Pouvoir choisir le moment d’une jouissance, la pouvoir goûter quand elle est non seulement désirable par l’esprit, mais exigée et comme déjà ébauchée par l’âme et par l’être, c’est offrir les plus grandes chances aux intentions du compositeur, car c’est permettre à ses créatures de revivre dans un milieu vivant assez peu différent de celui de leur création. Le travail de l’artiste musicien, auteur ou virtuose, trouve dans la musique enregistrée la condition essentielle du rendement esthétique le plus haut.

Il me souvient ici d’une féerie que j’ai vue enfant dans un théâtre étranger. Ou que je crois d’avoir vue. Dans le palais de l’Enchanteur, les meubles parlaient, chantaient, prenaient à l’action une part poétique et narquoise. Une porte qui s’ouvrait sonnait une grêle ou pompeuse fanfare. On ne s’asseyait sur un pouf, que le pouf accablé ne gémît quelque politesse. Chaque chose effleurée exhalait une mélodie.

J’espère bien que nous n’allons point à cet excès de sonore magie. Déjà l’on ne peut plus manger ni boire dans un café sans être troublés de concerts. Mais il sera merveilleusement doux de pouvoir changer à son gré une heure vide, une éternelle soirée, un dimanche infini, en prestiges, en tendresses, en mouvements spirituels.

Il est de maussades journées ; il est des personnes fort seules, et il n’en manque point que l’âge ou l’infirmité enferment avec elles-mêmes qu’elles ne connaissent que trop. Ces vaines et tristes durées, et ces êtres voués aux bâillements et aux mornes pensées, les voici maintenant en possession d’orner ou de passionner leur vacance.

Tels sont les premiers fruits que nous propose l’intimité nouvelle de la Musique avec la Physique, dont l’alliance immémoriale nous avait déjà tant donné. On en verra bien d’autres.

FIN DU TEXTE

The Selves

If you think a blurred face constitutes an "examination of identity in modernity" then have a look at this Lewis Thomas essay entitled "The Selves":


The Selves

THERE ARE psychiatric patients who are said to be incapacitated by having more than one self. One of these, an attractive, intelligent young woman in distress, turned up on a television talk show awhile back, sponsored to reveal her selves and their disputes. She possessed, she said, or was possessed by, no fewer than eight other separate women, all different, with different names, arguing and elbowing their way into control of the enterprise, causing unending confusion and embarrassment. She (they) wished to be rid of all of them (her), except of course herself (themselves).

People like this are called hysterics by the professionals or maybe schizophrenics, and there is, I am told, nothing much that can be done. Having more than one self is supposed to be deeply pathological in itself, and there is no known way to evict trespassers.

I am not sure that the number of different selves is in itself all that pathological; I hope not. Eight strikes me personally as a reasonably small and easily manageable number. It is the simultaneity of their appearance that is the real problem, and I should think psychiatry would do better by simply persuading them to queue up and wait their turn, as happens in the normal rest of us. Couldn’t they be conditioned some way, by offering rewards or holding out gently threatening sanctions? “How do you do, I’m absolutely delighted to see you here and I have exactly fifty-five minutes, after which I very much regret to say someone else will be dropping in, but could I see you again tomorrow at this same time, do have a chocolate mint and let’s just talk, just the two of us.” That sort of thing might help at least to get them lined up in some kind of order.

Actually, it would embarrass me to be told that more than a single self is a kind of disease. I’ve had, in my time, more than I could possibly count or keep track of. The great difference, which keeps me feeling normal, is that mine (ours) have turned up one after the other, on an orderly schedule. Five years ago I was another person, juvenile, doing and saying things I couldn’t possibly agree with now. Ten years ago I was a stranger. Twenty-forty years ago… I’ve forgotten. The only thing close to what you might call illness, in my experience, was in the gaps in the queue when one had finished and left the place before the next one was ready to start, and there was nobody around at all. Luckily, that has happened only three or four times that I can recall, once when I’d become a very old child and my adolescent hadn’t appeared, and a couple of times later on when there seemed to be some confusion about who was next up. The rest of the time they have waited turns and emerged on cue ready to take over, sometimes breathless and needing last-minute briefing but nonetheless steady enough to go on. The suprising thing has always been how little background information they seemed to need, considering how the times changed. I cannot remember who it was five years ago. He was reading linguistics and had just discovered philology, as I recall, but he left before getting anything much done.

To be truthful there have been a few times when they were all there at once, like those girls on television, clamoring for attention, whole committees of them, a House Committee, a Budget Committee, a Grievance Committee, even a Committee on Membership, although I don’t know how any of them ever got in. No chairman, ever, certainly not me. At the most I’m a sort of administrative assistant. There’s never an agenda. At the end I bring in the refreshments.

What do we meet about? It is hard to say. The door bangs open and in they come, calling for the meeting to start, and then they all talk at once. Odd to say, it is not just a jumble of talk; they tend to space what they’re saying so that words and phrases from one will fit into short spaces left in silence by others. At good times it has the feel of an intensely complicated conversation, but at the others the sounds are more like something overheard in a crowded station. At worse times the silences get out of synchrony, interrupting each other; it is as though all the papers had suddenly blown off the table.

We never get anything settled. In recent years I’ve sensed an increase in their impatience with me, whoever they think I am, and with the fix they’re in. They don’t come right out and say so, but what they are beginning to want more than anything else is a chairmen.

The worst times of all have been when I’ve wanted to be just one. Try walking out on the ocean beach at night, looking at stars, thinking, Be one, be one. Doesn’t work, ever. Just when you feel ascension, turning, wheeling, and that whirring sound like a mantel clock getting ready to strike, the other selves begin talking. Whatever you’re thinking, they say, it’s not like that at all.

The only way to quiet them down, get them to stop, is to play music. That does it. Bach stops them every time, in their tracks, almost as though that’s what they’ve been waiting for.

~ Lewis Thomas from The Medusa and the Snail

The Task of the Translator

An Introduction to Benjamin’s Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens

In the appreciation of a work of art or an art form, consideration of the receiver never proves fruitful. Not only is any reference to a certain public or its representatives misleading, but even the concept of an “ideal” receiver is detrimental in the theoretical consideration of art, since all it posits is the existence and nature of man as such. Art, in the same way, posits man’s physical and spiritual existence, but in one of its works is it concerned with his response. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? This would seem to explain adequately the divergence of their standing in the realm of art. Moreover, it seems to be the only conceivable reason for saying “the same thing” repeatedly. For what does a literary work “say”? What does it communicate? It “tells” very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information. Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information – hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addition to information – as even a poor translator will admit – the unfathomable, the mysterious, the “poetic,” something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet? This, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. This will be true whenever a translation undertakes to serve the reader. However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to apply to the original. If the original does not exist for the reader’s sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?

Translation is a mode. To comprehend it as mode one must go back to the original, for that contains the law governing the translation: its translatability. The question of whether a work is translatable has a dual meaning. Either: Will an adequate translator ever be found among the totality of its readers? Or, more pertinently: Does its nature lend itself to translation and, therefore, in view of the significance of the mode, call for it? In principle, the first question can be decided only contingently; the second, however, apodictically. Only superficial thinking will deny the independent meaning of the latter and declare both questions to be of equal significance… It should be pointed out that certain correlative concepts retain their meaning, and possibly their foremost significance, if they are referred exclusively to man. One might, for example, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it be unforgotten but merely a claim not fulfilled by men, and probably also a reference to a realm in which it is fulfilled: God’s remembrance. Analogously, the translatability of linguistic creations ought to be considered even if men should prove unable to translate them. Given a strict concept of translation, would they not really be translatable to some degree? The question as to whether the translation of certain linguistic creation is called for ought to be posed in this sense. For this thought is valid here: If translation is a mode, translatability must be an essential feature of certain works.

Translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that it is essential that they be translated; it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability. It is plausible that no translation, however good it may be, can have any significance as regards the original. Yet, by virtue of its translatability the original is closely connected with the translation; in fact, this connection is all the closer since it is no longer of importance to the original. We may call this connection a natural one, or, more specifically, a vital connection. Just as the manifestations of life are intimately connected with the phenomenon of life without being of importance to it, a translation issues from the original – not so much from its life as from its afterlife. For a translation comes later than the original, and since the important works of world literature never find their chosen translators at the time of their origin, their translation marks their stage of continued life. The idea of life and afterlife in works of art should be regarded with an entirely unmetaphorical objectivity. Even in times of narrowly prejudiced thought there was an inkling that life was not limited to organic corporeality. But it cannot be a matter of extending its dominion under the feeble scepter of the soul, as Fechner tried to do, or, conversely, of basing its definition on the even less conclusive factors of animality, such as sensation, which characterize life only occasionally. The concept of life is given its due only if everything that has a history of its own, and is not merely the setting for history, is credited with life. In the final analysis, the range of life must be determined by history rather than by nature, least of all by such tenuous factors as sensation and soul. The philosopher’s task consists in comprehending all of natural life through the more encompassing life of history. And indeed, is not the continued life of works of art far easier to recognize than the continual life of animal species? The history of the great works of art tells us about their antecedents, their realization in the age of the artist, their potentially eternal afterlife in succeeding generations. Where this last manifests itself, it is called fame. Translations that are more than transmission of subject matter come into being when in the course of its survival a work has reached the age of its fame. Contrary, therefore, to the claims of bad translators, such translations do not so much serve the work as owe their existence to it. The life of the originals attains in them to its ever-renewed latest and most abundant flowering.

Being a special and high form of life, this flowering is governed by a special, high purposiveness. The relationship between life and purposefulness, seemingly obvious yet almost beyond the grasp of the intellect, reveals itself only if the ultimate purpose toward which all single functions tend is sought not in its own sphere but in a higher one. All purposeful manifestations of life, including their very purposiveness, in the final analysis have their end not in life, but in the expression of its nature, in the representation of its significance. Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages. It cannot possibly reveal or establish this hidden relationship itself; but it can represent it by realizing it in embryonic or intensive form. This representation of hidden significance through an embryonic attempt at making it visible is of so singular a nature that it is rarely met with in the sphere of nonlinguistic life. This, in its analogies and symbols, can draw on other ways of suggesting meaning than intensive – that in, anticipative, intimating – realization. As for the posited central kinship of languages, it is marked by a distinctive convergence. Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express.

With this attempt at an explication our study appears to rejoin, after futile detours, the traditional theory of translation. If the kinship of languages is to be demonstrated by translations, how else can this be done but by conveying the form and meaning of the original as accurately as possible? To be sure, that theory would be hard put to define the nature of this accuracy and therefore could shed no light on what is important in a translation. Actually, however, the kinship of languages is brought out by translation far more profoundly and clearly than in the superficial and indefinable similarity of two works of literature. To grasp the genuine relationship between an original and a translation requires an investigation analogous to the argumentation by which a critique of cognition would have to prove the impossibility of an image theory. There it is a matter of showing that in cognition there could be no objectivity, not even a claim to it, if it dealt with images of reality; here it can be demonstrated that no translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original. For in its afterlife – which could not be called that if it were not a transformation and a renewal of something living – the original undergoes a change. Even words with fixed meaning can undergo a maturing process. The obvious tendency of a writer’s literary style may in time wither away, only to give rise to immanent tendencies in the literary creation. What sounded fresh once may sound hackneyed later; what was once current may someday sound quaint. To seek the essence of such changes, as well as the equally constant changes in meaning, in the subjectivity of posterity rather than in the very life of language and its works, would mean – even allowing for the crudest psychologism – to confuse the root cause of a thing with its essence. More pertinently, it would mean denying, by an impotence of thought, on e of the most powerful and fruitful historical processes. And even if one tried to turn an author’s last stroke of the pen in to the coup de grâce of his work, this still would not save that dead theory of translation. For just as the tenor and the significance of the great works of literature undergo a complete transformation over the centuries, the mother tongue of the translator is transformed as well. While a poet’s words endure in his own language, even the greatest translation is destined to become part of the growth of its won language and eventually to be absorbed by its renewal. Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.

If the kinship of languages manifests itself in translations, this is not accomplished through a vague alikeness between adaptation and original. It stands to reason that kinship does not necessarily involve likeness. The concept of kinship as used here is in accord with its more restricted common usage: in both cases, it cannot be defined adequately by identity of origin, although in defining the more restricted usage the concept of origin remains indispensable. Wherein resides the relatedness of two languages, apart from historical considerations? Certainly not the similarity between works of literature or words. Rather, all suprahistorical kinship of languages rests in the intention underlying each language as a whole – an intention, however, which no single language can attain by itself but which is realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other: pure language. While all individual elements of foreign languages – words, sentences, structure – are mutually exclusive, these languages supplement one another in their intentions. Without distinguishing the intended object from the mode of intention, no firm grasp of this basic law of a philosophy of language can be achieved. The words Brot and pain “intend” the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something different to a German than the word pain to a Frenchman, that these words are not interchangeable for them, that, in fact, they strive to exclude each other. As for the intended object, however, the two words mean the very same thing. While the modes of intention in these two words are in conflict, intention and object of intention complement each of the two languages from which they are derived; there the object is complementary to the intention. In the individual, unsupplemented languages, meaning is never found in relative independence, as in individual words or sentences; rather, it is in a constant state of flux – until it is able to emerge as pure language from the harmony of all various modes of intention. Until then, it remains hidden in the languages. If, however, these languages continue to grow in this manner until the end of their time, it is translation which catches fire on the eternal life of the works and the perpetual renewal of language. Translation keeps putting the hallowed growth of languages to the test: How far removed is their hidden meaning from revelation, how close can it be brought by the knowledge of this remoteness?

This, to be sure, is to admit that all translation is only a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages. An instant and final rather than a temporary and provisional solution of this foreignness remains out of the reach of mankind; at any rate, it eludes any direct attempt. Indirectly, however, the growth of religions ripens the hidden seed into a higher development of language. Although translation, unlike art, cannot claim permanence for its products, its goal is undeniably a final, conclusive, decisive stage of all linguistic creation. In translation the original rises into a higher and purer linguistic air, as it were. It cannot live there permanently, to be sure, and it certainly does not reach it in its entirety. Yet, in a singularly impressive manner, at least it points the way to this region: the predestined, hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages. The transfer can never be total, but what reaches this region is that element in a translation which goes beyond transmittal of subject matter. This nucleus is best defined as the element that does not lend itself to translation. Even when all the surface content has been extracted and transmitted, the primary concern of the genuine translator remains elusive. Unlike the words of the original, it is not translatable, because the relationship between content and language is quite different in the original and the translation. While content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds. For it signifies a more exalted language than its own and thus remains unsuited to its content, over-powering and alien. This disjunction prevents translation and at the same time makes it superfluous. For any translation of a work originating in a specific stage of linguistic history represents, in regard to a specific aspect of its content, translation into all other languages. Thus translation, ironically, transplants the original into a more definitive linguistic realm since it can no longer be displaced by a secondary rendering. The original can only be raised there anew and at other points of time. It is no mere coincidence that the word “ironic” here brings the Romanticists to mind. They, more than any others, were gifted with an insight into the life of literary works which has its highest testimony in translation. To be sure, they hardly recognized translation in this sense, but devoted their entire attention to criticism, another, if a lesser, factor in the continued life of literary works. But even though the Romanticists virtually ignored translation in their theoretical writings, their own great translations testify t their sense of the essential nature and the dignity of this literary mode. There is abundant evidence that this sense is not necessarily most pronounced in a poet; in fact, he may be least open to it. Not even literary history suggests the traditional notion that great poets have been eminent translators and lesser poets have been indifferent translators. A number of the most eminent ones, such as Luther, Voss, and Schlegel, are incomparably more important as translators than as creative writers; some of the great among them, such as Hölderlin and Stefan George, cannot be simply subsumed as poets, and quite particularly not if we consider them as translators. As translation is a mode of its own, the task of the translator, too, may be regarded as distinct and clearly differentiated from the task of the poet.

The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original. This is a feature of translation which basically differentiates it from the poet’s work, because the effort of the latter is never directed at the language as such, at its totality, but solely and immediately at specific linguistic contextual aspects. Unlike a work of literature, translation does not find itself in the center of the language forest but on the outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation fo the work in the alien one. Not only does the aim of translation differ from that of a literary work it intends language as a whole, taking an individual work in an alien language as a point of departure – but it is a different effort altogether. The intention of the poet is spontaneous, primary, graphic; that of the translator is derivative, ultimate, ideational. For the great motif of integrating many tongues into one true language is at work. This language is one in which the independent sentences, works of literature, critical judgments, will never communicate – for they remain dependent on translation; but in it the languages themselves, supplemented and reconciled in their mode of signification, harmonize. If there is such a thing as a language of truth, the tensionless and even silent depository of the ultimate truth which all thought strives for, then this language of truth is – the true language. And this very language, whose divination and description is the only perfection a philosopher can hope for, is concealed in concentrated fashion in translation. But despite the claims of sentimental artists, these two are not banausic. For there is a philosophical genius that is characterized by a yearning for the language which manifests itself in translations. Les langues imparfaites en cela que plusieurs, manque la suprême: penser étant écrire sans accessoires, ni chuchotement mais tacite encore l’immortelle parole, la diversité, sur terre, des idiomes empêche personne de proférer les mots qui, sinon se trouveraient, par un frappe unique, elle-même matériellement la vérité ”*. (“The imperfection of languages consists in their plurality, the supreme one is lacking: thinking is writing without accessories or even whispering, the immortal word still remains silent; the diversity of idioms on earth prevents everybody from uttering the words which otherwise, at one single stroke, would materialize as truth.”)

If what Mallarmé evokes here is fully fathomable to a philosopher, translation, with its rudiments of such a language, is midway between poetry and doctrine. Its products are less sharply defined, but it leaves no less of a mark on history.

If the task of the translator is viewed in this light, the roads toward a solution seem to be all the more obscure and impenetrable. Indeed, the problem of ripening the seed of pure language in a translation seems to be insoluble, determinable in no solution. For is not the ground cut from under such a solution if the reproduction of the sense ceases to be decisive? Viewed negatively, this is actually the meaning of all the foregoing. The traditional

Concepts in any discussion of translations are fidelity and license – the freedom of faithful reproduction and, in its service, fidelity to the word. These ideas seem to be no longer serviceable to a theory that looks for other things in a translation than reproduction of meaning. To be sure, traditional usage makes these terms appear as if in constant conflict with each other. What can fidelity really do for the rendering of meaning? Fidelity in the translation of individual words can almost never fully reproduce the meaning they have in the original. For sense in its poetic significance is not limited to meaning, but derives from the connotations conveyed by the word chosen to express it. We say of words that they have emotional connotations. A literal rendering of the syntax completely demolishes the theory of reproduction of meaning and is a direct threat to comprehensibility. The nineteenth century considered Hölderlin’s translations of Sophocles as monstrous examples of such literalness. Finally, it is self-evident how great fidelity in reproducing the form impedes the rendering of the sense. Thus no case for literalness can be based on a desire to retain the meaning. Meaning is served far better – and literature and language far worse – by the unrestrained license of bad translators. Of necessity, therefore, the demand for literalness, whose justification is obvious, whose legitimate ground is quite obscure, must be understood in a more meaningful context. Fragments of a vessel which are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details, although they need not be like one another. In the same way a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original’s mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel. For this very reason translation must in large measure refrain from wanting to communicate something, from rendering the sense, and in this the original is important to it only insofar as it has already relieved the translator and his translation of the effort of assembling and expressing what is to be conveyed. In the realm of translation, too, the words έν άρχή ήν ό λόγος [in the beginning was the word] apply. On the other hand, as regards the meaning, the language of a translation can – in fact, must – let itself go, so that it gives voice to the intention of the original not as reproduction but as harmony, as a supplement to the language in which it expresses itself, as its own kind of intention. Therefore it is not the highest praise of a translation, particularly in the age of its origin, to say that it reads as if it had originally been written in that language. Rather, the significance of fidelity as ensured by literalness is that the work reflects the great longing for linguistic complementation. A real translation is transparent; it does not cover the original, does not block its light, but allows the pure language, as though reinforced by its own medium, to shine upon the original all the more fully. This may be achieved, above all, by a literal rendering of the syntax which proves words rather than sentences to be the primary element of the translator. For if the sentence is the wall before the language of the original, literalness is the arcade.

Fidelity and freedom in translation have traditionally been regarded as conflicting tendencies. This deeper interpretation of the one apparently does not serve to reconcile the two; in fact, it seems to deny the other all justification. For what is meant by freedom but that the rendering of the sense is no longer to be regarded as all-important? Only if the sense of a linguistic creation may be equated with the information it conveys does some ultimate, decisive element remain beyond all communication – quite close and yet infinitely remote, concealed or distinguishable, fragmented or powerful. In all language and linguistic creations there remains in addition to what can be conveyed something that cannot be communicated; depending on the context in which it appears, it is something that symbolizes or something symbolized. It is the former only in the finite products of language, the latter in the evolving of the languages themselves. And that which seeks to represent, to produce itself in the evolving of languages, is that very nucleus of pure language. Though concealed and fragmentary, it is an active force in life as the symbolized thing itself, whereas it inhabits linguistic creations only in the symbolized form. While that ultimate essence, pure language, in the various tongues is tied only to linguistic elements and their changes, in linguistic creations it is weighted with a heavy, alien meaning. To retrieve it of this, to turn the symbolizing into the symbolized, to regain pure language fully formed in the linguistic flux, is the tremendous and only capacity of translation. In this pure language – which no longer means or expresses anything but is, as expressionless and creative Word, that which is meant in all languages – all information, all sense, and all intention finally encounter a stratum in which they are destined to be extinguished. This very stratum furnishes a new and higher justification for free translation; this justification does not derive from the sense of what is to be conveyed, for the emancipation from this sense is the task of fidelity. Rather, for the sake of pure language, a free translation bases the test on its own language. It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work. For the sake of pure language he breaks through decayed barriers of his own language. Luther, Voss, Hölderlin, and George have extended the boundaries of the German language. – And what of the sense in its importance for the relationship between translation and original? A simile may help here. Just as a tangent touches a circle lightly and at but one point, with this touch rather than with the point setting the law according to which it is to continue on its straight path to infinity, a translation touches the original lightly and only at the indefinitely small point of the sense, thereupon pursuing its own course according to the laws of fidelity in freedom of linguistic flux. Without explicitly naming or substantiating it, Rudolf Pannwitz has characterized the true significance of this freedom. His observations are contained in Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur and rank with Goethe’s Notes to the Westölicher Divan as the best comment on theory of translation that has been published in Germany. Pannwitz writes: “Our translations, even the best ones, proceed from a wrong premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. Our translators have a far greater reverence for the usage of their own language than for the spirit of the foreign works… The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. Particularly when translating from a language very remote from his own he must go back to the primal elements of language itself and penetrate to the point where work, image, and tone converge. He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language. It is not generally realized to what extent this is possible, to what extent any language can be transformed, how language differs from language almost the way dialect differs from dialect; however, this last is true only if one takes language seriously enough, not if one takes it lightly.”

The extent to which a translation manages to be in keeping with the nature of this mode is determined objectively by the translatability of the original. The lower the quality and distinction of its language, the larger the extent to which it is information, the less fertile a field it is for translation, until the utter preponderance of content, far from being the lever for a translation of distinctive mode, renders it impossible. The higher the level of a work, the more does it remain translatable even if its meaning is touched upon fleetingly. This, of course, applies to originals only. Translations, on the other hand, prove to be untranslatable not because of any inherent difficulty, but because of the looseness with which meaning attaches to them. Confirmation of this as well as of every other important aspect is supplied by Hölderlin’s translations, particularly those of the two tragedies by Sophocles. In them the harmony of the languages is so profound that sense is touched by language only the way an Aeolian harp is touched by the wind. Hölderlin’s translations are prototypes of their kind; they are to even the most perfect renderings of their texts as a prototype is to a model. This can be demonstrated by comparing Hölderlin’s and Rudolf Borchardt’s translations of Pindar’s Third Pythian Ode. For this very reason Hölderlin’s translations in particular are subject to the enormous danger inherent in all translations: the gates of a language thus expanded and modified may slam shut and enclose the translator with silence. Hölderlin’s translations from Sophocles were his last work; in them meaning plunges from abyss to abyss until it threatens to become lost in the bottomless depths of language. There is, however, a stop. It is vouchsafed to Holy Writ alone, in which meaning has ceased to be the watershed for the flow of language and the flow of revelation. Where at text is identical with truth or dogma, where it supposed to be “the true language” in all its literalness and without the mediation of meaning, this text is unconditionally translatable. In such case translation are called for only because of the plurality of languages. Just as, in the original, language and revelation are one without any tension, so the translation must be one with the original in the form of the interlinear version, in which literalness and freedom are united. For to some degree all great texts contain their potential translation between the lines; this is true to the highest degree of sacred writings. The interlinear version of the Scriptures is the prototype or ideal of all translation. 

Walter Benjamin

Thursday, April 19, 2007

From Gu Dexin Show

Opening:
Flies:
Some guy spilled his wine on the Art:

The Shanghai Sculpture Space

The Shanghai Sculpture Space is really big and there's a lot of scultures inside and outside of it. It is supposed to be a gallery, but it really works like a museum -- you have to pay about RMB 50 to go inside. Inside, the architecture is fantastic, and I'm sure the sculptures are interesting also -- but its really hard to look at them. They're all crammed in next to eachother with no room to breathe. Its really problematic. There's tons of stuff; I wonder who put all that stuff in there like that.
Here's a picture of two unrelated sculptures crammed in next to eachother under a staircase:Also, there were these people moving stuff around and making a lot of noise and cleaning and building things inside the space -- and that sort of distracted me from the art:Outside was a kind of sculpture park / parking lot. It was stupid because maybe if you were looking at a sculpture you would have to move because some guy needed to park his van. Here's a picture of that:
There was some grass and a hill though, and when I heard that there were some nightclubs down the street I thought that this garden might be a sort of nice place to take a late night stroll after a few drinks, but my tour guide informed me that the place gets locked up in the evening.
http://www.sss570.com/

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Cheap Rent, Inconvenient Dispersal or "Hey It's Better Than Moving the Gallery Underneath the Bridge"

Perhaps paradox really is the uncomfortable reality of day-to-day judgment. My first reaction upon visiting Moganshan Lu was twofold: 1.) wondering how so many galleries could bear to constantly be competing with one another. 2.) wondering how so many artists could bear to constantly be around other artists. To be honest I never realized the appeal of being so closely clustered with everyone else in a creative setting. And I still don't quite understand how being clustered nearby competition (other galleries) can be a positive situation economically speaking...

That said...

After traveling over hill and under water (metaphorically speaking) all the way to the various galleries we went to last week, a 60 watt lightbulb went off in my head and I think I'm starting to understand the wisdom of clustering art production/presentation centers rather than spreading them out. Accessibility truly is a beautiful thing.


And if there were an accessibility award, I would definitely give it to the Shanghai Sculpture Garden out of all the galleries we went to see. They win what I'd call the Miles Davis award - Miles once said something to the extent that "showing up to the gig is half the battle" and I'm badly butchering his words, but I'm sure you follow my idea. The Shanghai Sculpture Garden was the only place that actually had any exhibits! The image to the right can be found here. My foray into the Shanghai sculpture world was a painfully short 10 minutes, but I at least liked what I saw. ~~~


I understand Bridge8 is supposed to be some sort of artist commune, and the outlaying grounds are undeniably a visual feast - but it is so difficult to navigate that most, if any, of my visual impressions were waylayed by the sheer frustration of navigating the area. The original image to the right can also be found here.
We again only spent about 10 minutes at the location, so I'm willing to give Bridge8 another chance (perhaps if I bring my own Sherpa and/or GPS so as to not get lost). As it stands now, I envision Bridge8 as a kind of Bermuda Triangle whose function remains to be seen. If anyone sees Elvis there, let me know.


The last area we went to was the Yangshupu Creative Center...which is still under heavy construction. Needless to say there were no galleries. The original image can be found here. If Bridge8 is the Bermuda Triangle, then Yangshupu is Atlantis - a beautiful ruins whose purpose I can't yet ascertain. I assume after development that it's destined to become another gallery.

There you have it. A battle between three "galleries" of varying operational status, functionality, and purpose with...only 1 definitive winner: The Shanghai Sculpture Gallery. I think at least...Hmm...has anyone else since returned to any of these 3 places on our tour?

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Once hated, now feted - Chinese artists come out from behind the wall

Once hated, now feted - Chinese artists come out from behind the wall

Charles Saatchi joins the swell of collectors beating a path to the east

Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Wednesday April 11, 2007
The Guardian


Zhang Dali's Chinese Offspring
Art world turned upside down ... Charles Saatchi has bought 15 of Zhang Dali's Chinese Offspring. Photograph: courtesy Saatchi Gallery


The naked Chinese migrant workers were dangling on hooks and ropes from a ceiling in north-east Beijing until a few months ago, when they were bundled up in bubble wrap, crammed into a container and shipped off to London.

They are not desperate Chinese peasants seeking illegal entry into the UK. Far from it. Their arrival in Britain is part of a cultural invasion, paid for by the UK's most famous art collector, and signalling a surge of interest in Chinese sculpture, painting and photography.

The life-sized resin figures are the work of Zhang Dali, one of China's leading artists. To highlight the role played by countryside labourers in his country's rapid urbanisation, Zhang took casts of 100 of them, substituted numbers for their names, signed the figures and offered them for sale like pieces of meat hung in a window.

Except, of course, they are a lot more expensive. Thanks to the booming market in Chinese art, the price for a single figure has doubled in the past two years to £10,000. That value is likely to increase further if they are shown at the opening of Charles Saatchi's new gallery in the King's Road this year.

Saatchi snapped up 15 of Zhang's Chinese Offspring in a shopping spree that has also seen him spend more than a million dollars each on two huge paintings by Zhang Xiaogang, the hottest property in the Chinese contemporary art scene, as well as works from at least 18 of his compatriots.

The UK buyer, whose patronage helped to establish the careers of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the 1990s, is now paying increasing attention to the east. This year he launched a Mandarin version of his website, which gets more than 4m hits a day.

"I have been looking at lots of contemporary Chinese art in the past few years and find that a small percentage of it is world class and as good as the best contemporary art anywhere else," he told the Guardian. "There is a huge gulf, though, between the small amount that is world class and the majority, which is derivative and kitsch."

Saatchi is a late but influential arrival. Thanks to a near eightfold increase in the market in only two years, Sotheby's in Hong Kong recorded Chinese contemporary art sales of $21.9m (£11m) in 2006. It is a similar story at auction houses from London to New York, many of which started only recently to offer modern Chinese work but now find it their biggest driver of growth.

It has bordered on a frenzy. During the first auction of Chinese contemporary art in New York last April, so many bidders were calling in that Sotheby's ran out of telephones.

Among the most sought-after works was Lions, the roaring, guffawing multiple self-portrait by Yue Minjun, which eventually sold for more than half a million dollars. Yue's paintings and sculptures of garishly coloured laughing men are seen as symbols of China's consumer culture. This is one of the central themes for contemporary artists, along with reflections on materialism, the loss of traditional values, environmental destruction and the political legacy of Mao Zedong and Tiananmen Square.

Most of the headlines have been made by Zhang Xiaogang, whose giant family portraits and split-focus images from the Cultural Revolution era have generated the biggest interest among buyers. Last April, his Bloodline Series: Comrade No 120 sold for $979,200, almost three times Sotheby's high estimate. It was a record for Chinese contemporary art, but one that lasted only until October, when Saatchi paid £769,600 for another work by Zhang Xiaogang at a London auction.

With auction sales of $23.6m last year, Zhang Xiaogang was narrowly second to Jean-Michel Basquiat in the ArtPrice ranking of the 100 top-selling artists. But he was far from alone on the chart. There were 24 Chinese names last year, up from almost none five years ago.

This represents a huge change in attitudes and lifestyles. Ten years ago, avant-garde artists were on the fringe of Chinese society. Their works were often banned, exhibitions were shut down and, for most, the sales of their work were barely enough to make ends meet. Today, however, a growing number of artists own villas, foreign cars and apartments. "Cynical realist" Fang Lijun is said to own six restaurants in Beijing and a hotel in Yunnan province.

Among the newcomers to the top-seller list is Su Xinping, an artist from Inner Mongolia. Su said the price of his work had tripled in the past three years. "My life has changed a little. I still eat simple food and lead a simple life, but I have a more convenient house and a more convenient car. I have several homes, and I bought a studio in the city last year."

Su is one of many artists who struggled after their participation in the Tiananmen Square protests. But now he sees greater opportunities to do the work he wants to do, and to get paid for what it is worth. He received a call from New York recently to say several of his works had just sold for almost $400,000. "I won't get any of that money," he grinned. "I sold those pieces years ago." But he will benefit from now on. "The price for Chinese art was too low before. Even now some fine pieces have not reached their true value."

Zhang Dali agrees. "I expect the price will keep rising for at least five years because more and more people want to buy Chinese art, but there are not that many Chinese artists. The demand is increasing, but the supply is limited so the price will keep rising."

The reasons for the boom are manifold. The establishment of the Dashanzi art district in Beijing three years ago attracted many foreign buyers, who account for about 80% of sales. A government crackdown on property speculation and unease about stock market prices have also pushed many investors to consider art. But many overseas purchasers are motivated by a desire to grab a piece of history.

"I think the rise of the art market is highly related to the rising interest in China," said Jonathan Wong of Sotheby's in Hong Kong. "We observe money comes from all over the world and new buyers keep emerging in every auction."

Amid concerns about a speculative bubble, insiders say the boom is a mixed blessing. "For big-name artists, the price of works has gone up dramatically - by 10 to 20 times in some cases," said Brian Wallace, whose Red Gate Gallery was the first to show contemporary works in Beijing. "If you were in it for the money 10 years ago, you would be very well off today. But it is not easy. With all the new entrants into the market, more galleries are taking up more artists. So the overall quality is not as high as before. There are many good artists out there, but a lot of them are now painting for the market - even some of the big names."


Thursday, April 12, 2007

On the Edge: New Independent Cinema from China

On the Edge: New Independent Cinema from China



Gu Dexin opening


Don't be a sellout: Be a chicken!

What I write will be partly risky because I'm actually going to praise someone else's art rather than argue for its inferiority as others might. Just as it's far easier to destroy than to create, it is much easier to disavow than to support. And in this case I found most of Yang Zhenzhong's works aesthetically pleasing even if I didn't always quite get the big moral lesson hiding in the background. Which leads me to question if you really need an overarching moral lesson at all - obviously you don't, but only a dedicated hedonist would build an art piece purely for aesthetic purposes.


(original image can be found here).
The picture to the right is a piece by Yang Zhenzhong called "rice corns." The piece is a sort of competition between a cock and a hen both trying to outeat the other. My initial and most strong impression is that this a piece commenting on gender rights disparity. This leads me back to Yang Zhenzhong insofar as a surprising number of his pieces seemed to me to have been touched by the morality fairy. This doesn't necessarily compromise their ability to be beautiful, but it does change the nature of their existence. They can no longer be beautiful for beauty's sake. Take "rice corns" for example. This is undoubtedly an ingenius idea, but the hidden moral/social message embedded in the piece cannot be extracted from it, or should I say that the piece cannot be extracted from the layers of morality and social commentary implied particularly by this kind of piece.

Interestingly enough, the website that I retrieved the image from has another viewer's abstract that has a completely different interpretation from my own. Karen Mundt views this piece in a different way altogether. She felt that: "Yang Zhenzhong enacts what is essentially a trivial situation in the form of a game by subjecting it to a quantified logic of the hen vs. cock competition. The framework of the situation presented by the camera view creates a difference between the "field" and its exterior, thus defining the game as such. However, the two rivals undermine this set-up by leaving the field prematurely – "against the rules" – without having eaten up all the rice grains. The video, however, insists on continuing the given dramaturgy: undeterred, the two off-screen voices carry on counting the remaining grains and adding them to the total score on behalf of the "spoilsports"." (Karen Mundt, available here).

It is surprising that another viewer's interpretation should be so very different from mine, but this does support my idea about particular pieces being permanenetly tied to its embedded moral lessons despite interpretation distinctions. Though Karen's interpretation is certainly interesting in framing the presence of the chickens as being rulebreakers, I interpreted them almost entirely differently. The male/female tension in the piece cannot be ignored and I feel this is far more than a simple competition. Rather, it is an all out of struggle between the sexes for both dominance and acceptance. The gender split in the voice actors cannot be ignored, neither can the fact that the cock consumes almost twice as much grain as the hen. Take away whichever conclusion you like and if anybody reading this had an entirely different interpretation then please leave a comment because I'd love to hear a third opinion.

"Light as Fuck"


The piece that I remember best from Yang Zhenzhong’s presentation was the video "Light as Fuck." In the video, the artist balances Shanghai's Pearl Tower (and the surounding Pudong Landscape) upsidedown on the tip of his finger. Gu Zhenqing refered to the piece as "a playful, humorous, and slightly frivolous visual expression that depicts the anxiety and question of the so-called alternative kind of modern creation." I agree with the first half of that statement.
But not because I think the work as a whole is frivolous. I think the title of the piece refers to both the nature of the new modernization of Shanghai as well as the act of examining that topic. The artmaking is itself light as fuck; the acknowledgement of this, perhaps, indicates an admirable self-awareness on the part of the artist.
Maybe.
I suppose one could also say that what is actually happening in the video points toward the possible (or even impending) collapse of modernization and the artist's controll over that downfall; the skyskraping landscape will topple from the artist's finger -- unless he dexterously maintains his relationship with it. The artist is thus God-like. At the same time, though, God is not being particularly diligent with this grave responsibility and the role of caretaker of one of the largest cities in the world.
There are endless interpretations -- but that's because there is a lot of information. And that, I think, is good.

Here's a link to some writing by Gu Zhenqing about the piece and the phrase "Light as Fuck:" phhttp://www.shanghart.com/texts/yzze2.htm

Monday, April 09, 2007

Light and maybe too easy.

The more I reflect upon the video artwork that I see in Shanghai the less I like video as a medium for art. In museums I am typically drawn to it, if not for the thought process behind the video but for the aesthetic value. When I really examine the works I encounter as I have been doing for this blog, the less I appreciate them. It seems to me that there is something about video that lets artists get away with a bare minimum in content and execution. Maybe there’s something beautiful about simplicity but I often find myself wondering what the big deal is. At least this was the overall impression that I got from Yang ZhenZhong’s collective works when we went to visit his studio on a class field trip last Thursday.

Not to say that the concepts weren’t great because they were truly captivating, it’s just that the execution was lacking. His ongoing piece entitled, “I Will Die,” for example, is an assemblage of video clips of random people all over the world saying, “I Will Die,” in their mother tongue. To be honest, I find it hard to call people talking into a camera art. Then again, who am I to decide what is and isn’t art? Just a person with an opinion, I guess.

Regardless, the responses of the individuals involved in “I Will Die,” are mildly amusing. Upon hearing the words repeated over and over again one quickly loses sight of their true meaning. What’s even more interesting is the way in which each person presents the words without realizing the meaning themselves. This lends the piece some irony, watching people laugh and blush as they tell the camera that they will, in fact, die.

Yang ZhenZhong also curated and participated in an exhibition in 1999 entitled, “Art For Sale.” The exhibition was a commentary on the lag of the Shanghai art in comparison to the upheaval of consumerism and marketing. One of the first avant-garde art exhibitions to be held in a public venue, “Art For Sale,” was held in a mall, ingeniously luring in its audience by displaying and selling miniature souvenirs made by the artists themselves in the fashion of a supermarket. An example of the art for sale being Zhu Yu’s “Basics of Total Knowledge,” or small pieces of human brains in jars. The actual exhibition, displaying the pieces that the supermarket “products” were based off of was held directly behind the supermarket, forcing the audience to pass through sale. Admittedly the premise here is quite imaginative as I’ve sure as hell never heard of or seen anything like it. On the other hand, this particular exhibition leads me to more questions: can a line be drawn between making a statement and making art? Or perhaps the act of making a statement in a creative way can thus be considered an art form? Whatever happened to the idea of a composition? These are questions I am still coming to terms with as I continue to consider Yang ZhenZhong’s work.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Interacting with the Mentally Retarded: When Viewers Approach Interactive Exhibition “Remote/Control,” Shanghai MOCA Spontaneously Fills with Garbage.

Jin Jiang Ho’s interactive tyrannosaurus rex bizarrely titled “Farewell My Concubine” would be a spectacular way to greet patrons entering Shanghai MOCA’s interactive exhibit Remote/Control, were its voice and accompanying gestures not too feeble to achieve its intention of frightening the viewer. In some sense it is clever to use an inanimate object one would normally encounter in a natural history museum and turn it into something interactive, but, ultimately, its lack of effect mortifies one more than the work itself, a somewhat interesting concept undermined by incredibly poor execution.

Altitude Zero by Hu Jie Ming consists of a series of ship parts with porthole shaped flat screens which display a partially submerged view that fills with floating garbage when the viewer approaches. This piece, or better yet, this spectacular piece of shit, worth no more than the floating garbage it displays, could not fail more abysmally to live up to the exhibit’s theme, “an investigation of the presence of technology in contemporary art today, and the fraught encounter between these art objects and today's ‘multi-medial' spectator […] an examination of various perceptual systems, processes, narrative structures, and aesthetic strategies that focus on the question of agency.”

The Doorway to Hell

In Alexander Brandt’s “The Next Second”, a series of flat screen televisions display scenes of domestic violence (entirely in Chinese). Whichever screen the viewers stands before shifts from grey scale and mute to color and full volume. I was neither impressed nor offended by this work -- in fact, it failed to produce any reaction at all.
This was not true of Brandt’s second piece, “Brainwashing Machine,” which consists of four DLP projectors
mounted above a bunt cake shaped structure made of partially transparent plastic inside which resides a single chair resting on a merry-go-round. When the viewer climbs aboard and buckles his safety, the platform begins to spin, an eerie hypnotic humming starts and projectors bombard the capsule with a spectacular barrage of frame-fuck edited image combinations of everything from step aerobic home videos, to J. Pop stars, to staged family photos, wedding photos, news anchors, shirtless greased men, meat products, I Agree signs, religious iconography, street signs, documents, diplomas, excel spread sheets, political rallies, classroom photos, office photos, children being socialized, martial arts spectacles, beauty advertisements, pledges of allegiance, hideous faces, civil service scenes, et cetera. This carousel from hell accelerates, pronounces, and intensifies already occurring phenomena, not unlike what one would experience in our increasing created environment oversaturated with media, and ultimately results in a vertiginous nausea. As long as the viewer struggles to process the images, the piece is extremely jarring to the senses. When the viewer lets go, stops processing, and allows himself become habituated to the bombardment, the experience becomes a sort of intellectual and sensory anesthesia through synesthesia. I couldn't help but think of something Walter Benjamin said in his seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction": "During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity's entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well." Upon exiting, certainly disoriented, one hears a cryptic voice says the ridiculous message, “the program has completed, you are now a good person.” The artists’ inclusion of intention within the experience (and within the title) is as blunt and heavy handed as the images that bombard the viewer. If it were not for the parallel between the artist’s clumsy intentions and those of the people who created the images he displays, that is to say, if it were not for the irony that the piece engages in the kind of brainwashing with its sophomoric message that it criticizes with the very same message, the piece would undoubtedly be a more elegant success, but not the somewhat more interesting failure that it is as a result.

I once listened to an episode of This American Life in which French poet and painter Breyten Breytenbach described his incarceration as a political prisoner of South Africa’s apartheid government and the complete sensory deprivation he experienced in solitary confinement for six years. He faced the same grey wall, day in and day out, he heard the same silence, and when he escaped he was debilitated by the amount of visual and auditory information that bombards one on a daily basis. He commented, voice wavering, that people don’t understand how much they encounter. It was terribly interesting. This piece is the converse of what he described. I imagine his day to day life now as something like being in the brainwashing machine.

Listen here In Act Five. Color Bar.

Antonioni’s 1975 film The Passenger centers around a British born American journalist who while reporting in North Africa assumes a dead acquaintance’s identity only to discover the acquaintance’s part time employment as a gunrunner for a unspecified guerilla movement. In the film’s amazing final long take, he relates a parable about a blind man who regains his sight late in life. At first the man is elated. He can’t contain his joy. Shapes, colors, faces, all amaze him, but slowly, he begins to notice the world is much poorer than he imagined, people much uglier. Three years later he kills himself.

In Iranian director Majid Majidi’s (مجید مجیدی) spectacular film, The Willow Tree, the protagonist, a blind scholar in Tehran, learns by chance that his eyesight can be restored through a corneal transplant. He travels to France for the operation and returns to Tehran with his eyesight. At first he is amazed, but eventually he becomes embittered towards Allah for making him pass his life thus far in darkness. He sinks into a deep depression, burns all of his work written in brail, quits his job, disowns his wife and daughter, and eventually rejects the transplants.

Piacere Fabrica’s piece, a sort of never ending story of an installation, presented an interesting concept; a camera which video taped a three second clip of the viewer as he stood before the piece and then added it to the end of a continuous loop of such clips playing from a DLP projector above. Ultimately I did not enjoy the experience of viewing jackass in a series of three second installments, but the piece nonetheless ultimately problematizes notions of the act of completion in art; the boundary between subject, artist (who I believe is the first clip to play), and audience; and art as intangible experience versus commodity.

Iland6’s playful “Light Activated Faces Interactive Faces Installation” by far entertained the most out of any piece in the exhibition, though it would be easier to engage with if the six people it took to make this piece didn’t use photographs that look like something a fourteen year old Asian tween took in his bathroom mirror with a 1.0 megapixel camera for myspace.

Another piece in the show was the intentionally non-interactive,“Birds & Airplanes” by Belian artist Heidi Voet, which displayed two birds in a cage on a flat screen television against a painted sky backdrop. The piece contained a heavy handed childlike statement which was at total odds with the theme of the exhibit.

Likewise the video installation of the dog licking Chinese characters off of a wall in reverse seemed to have little to do with the exhibit’s theme. Perhaps this is what the brochure meant by “examination of narrative structure.”. I suppose it’s always interesting to consider causality principle being violated.

Upon approaching each piece I was eager to see how it would interact with me. No piece disappointed more in this respect than FCT’s “Send SMS.” It consisted of three or four plexiglass slabs etched with single line drawings of rock associated images (think dayglo colors or the opening credits of Saved by the Bell) which upon being text messaged bounced up and down an inch more or less. That’s all I’m going to say, sometimes stupidity speaks for itself.

I found the two hologram pieces an interesting rethinking of the concept of the exhibition, but of the two only “Anthroposexomorphic” merited viewing (for cosmetic reasons -- “Space in Motion” was too hideous to look at).

What’s new, unusual, or interesting about this exhibit? Let’s revisit the late 1960’s, early 1970s. Robert Rauschenberg creates a series of installations consisting of a successive layering of images screened upon plexi-glass plates mounted in sequence on a base that allows the audience member to rotate each plate in order to create the image he wants, rather than the image Rauschenberg wants him to see. Rauschenberg later creates a maze of sliding plexi-glass doors (like those at the entrance of a convenient store) upon which images are screened. As the viewer walks through the maze, the doors open in response to his action, and it is his actions which ultimately create the combinations of images he sees. With respect to the aforementioned pieces, how does Rauschenberg differ from every single artist displayed in Remote/Control? Rauschenberg differs on three key points, Rauschenberg:

i) is not a hack.

ii) has original concepts.

iii) creates aesthetically sound experiences.

Just because some coked out director at some Podunk museum selects a piece, just because some douche-bag with a lot of money is willing to pay 250,000 RMB for a piece, does not legitimize any of this. When Art calls it hollers. In the case of these works, the cat caught its tongue.

How does that saying go -- working in the contemporary art scene in Shanghai is like running in the special olympics, even if you're at the top of the game, you're still retarded.