Notes Against The Industrial Sublime

The pedagogical function of the visual and literary arts is of a long and distinguished lineage. This should go, one would think, without saying. What is one to think, then, of the rather disingenuous and obscurantist rhetoric surrounding the work of photographic artist Edward Burtynsky? Certainly, it’s not hard to find: Burtynsky’s own commentary for the recent documentary film concerning his work Manufactured Landscapes involves an inordinate amount of “objective” hedging that flies in the face of the most fundamental and obvious implications of his images themselves; the film also includes an almost painful “bonus” interview with Burtynsky and film director Jennifer Baichwal in which they both tie themselves in knots in the denial of any ideological context in which to locate the film (which is, of course, an ideological context in itself). And the commentary included in Burtynsky’s latest book of photographs (also rather confusingly called Manufactured Landscapes) also includes the sort of elegant and erudite critical mystifications that John Berger, in his landmark Ways of Seeing, identifies as being in the service of the power relationships implicit in the art works themselves. Much of this process of critical deflection concerns the fairly obvious “dilemmas” raised by the fact that the viewer responds to Burtynsky’s artfully shot and framed scenes of environmental exploitation and despoliation as aesthetically beautiful. This frankly banal observation is an apparently insoluble paradox, and is located by critic Mark Haworth-Booth within the context of the industrial sublime tradition of landscape painting and of a lineage of landscape photographers concerned with capturing “man’s interventions in landscape space” (36). Haworth-Booth, however, takes at face value the formulation that scenes of industrial processes and their environmental degradations can indeed invoke the sublime; he accepts without qualification the notion that the sublime, which in Burke’s definition is nothing less than an exalted state of being provoked by our confrontation with the vastness of nature, can indeed be manufactured by scenes of industrial interventions. Surely, this question has been by no means settled. If anything, the sublime involves a perception of scale far beyond that of global capital and its attendant processes; the fact that our existential responses to wilderness and industry as concepts are subject to this sort of categorical error might be more accurately subscribed to that colonization of consciousness characteristic of postmodernism—how else to explain the conflation of the terror roused by the realization of our own mortal insignificance in the face of The Infinite with the pleasure we take in pretty pictures? Who has the most to gain from this conflation/formulation of industrial society with The Infinite, and might not it be in the service of the mystification of the more general sense of powerlessness we intuit as subjects of (post)industrial society? Isn’t this categorical confusion simply another symptom of the ongoing colonization of culture by capital, in which the Wildnerness as that which was catagorically beyond culture is now subsumed within culture? Aren’t our responses to and definitions of beauty simply the byproducts of cultural convention, the result of our own processes of acculturation? Aren’t the ideologies of the dominant culture in fact rendered transparent via the normative function of aesthetic value and its critical enforcers? Shouldn’t one important question concern the ideological processes that have at this historical juncture indoctrinated us to find manufactured landscapes aesthetically pleasing? Is it enough to be vaguely troubled by these images? Why are his director, his critics and Burtynsky himself incapable of articulating the simple call to action implicit in his photographs? Is didacticism the greater crime here? If it’s simply a question of avoiding a sort of crass or vulgar didacticism, one can surely do so without refusing to acknowledge an ideological reading of works which make explicit the exploitive nature of the system of social relations into which we are all born, and in which we shall remain enmeshed until we die, unless some sort of fundamental change is enacted. Because this is what this is all about, isn’t it? All of this liberal/ bourgeois waffling about the creative and interpretive limitations of didactic (i.e. explicitly political) art really is a cover for a very specific set of qualms and equivalences concerning a very particular range of politically-charged discourse and it’s potentially revolutionary implications. (Author Harold Jaffe makes a very similar argument concerning self-censorship in contemporary American letters in his recent essay “The Writer in Wartime” found in his collection Beyond the Techno-Cave.) And I use the term bourgeois specifically to refer to Burtynsky as a member of the newly emergent creative class, as fully invested in the processes, modes of organization and transparent ideologies of global capital as is Rem Koolhaus (though Burtynsky’s instincts, it must be said without qualification, are far more sound.) Finally, and this is a tribute to Burtynsky’s art and to him as an artist, the critical community surrounding his work aside, the implications of his photographs are so direct, so immediate and so profound as to undercut the attempts to mystify the social dimension of his work. The fact that one of his images now graces the dust jacket of George Monbiot’s climate change polemic Heat needs no explication or qualification; it’s a simple acknowledgement that Burtynsky’s images underscore our own growing awareness that we must, on a structural level, change the way we organize our societies; that such change is inevitable to our own survival to that of the myriad other species with which we share this earth, these oceans and skies; and that time is running short.

Exploited

This essay by Joshua Clover in a recent issue of Film Quarterly, is a good example of the sort of thing I feel is important to critical writing--the ability to locate a work (a film, a novel, a record) within a broader context; specifically, the necessity to read a text within a web of definitive social realities. Especially germane here are Clover's comments on Soderberg's The Girlfriend Experience, which move effectively from the purely formal aspects of this film to its (and our) milieu: Sasha’s and Chelsea’s affectless affect, the film’s thin idea—these are matched by the relentless flatness of the film’s style, from the acting to the HD videography, all cool surfaces without heft. It’s like a long YouTube clip. Such banality may itself be rhetorical, a way to try to understand the emotional blankness of the new life made by immaterial labor, the truth of which is not the nifty shit forthcoming in the future, but the missing experience of now. It’s the world that got flat; we’re just working in it. And this may be why the immanent economic catastrophe, rifted with hysteria and panic, is nonetheless the most charismatic figure in the film: a social crisis and vast destruction, at least it’s a kind of change, a kind of awakening from the blankness of sleep, an awakening whose script might elude the ever-hovering technicians . . . the slightest potential for futurity. (article was originally cited at the blog Infinite Thought.)

Under Occupation

This passage, from James Meek's recent LRB review of British novelist David Peace's new novel Occupied City, caught my attention: We’ve become so used to American and Irish novelists polishing their sentences till they glitter with ingenious similes and wise passions that the notion of another kind of poetic prose, one where the poetry is in the larger structure rather than word by word, seems alien now. But that is what Occupied City is, and perhaps the novel as collection-of-poems-and-prose is where a novelist takes shelter during the periods when the prose can’t seem to take the weight of the stories any more. It doesn’t always succeed, and it is not easy to read, but what it is trying to do is ambitious. The rhythms of its framing passages are poets’ rhythms; its repetitions are choruses. Ash for hair, soil for skin, among the flakes and the sod We defy the fire and the rake, the spade and the grave The grave in the earth, the grave in the sky In the abyss of the sky, in the abyss of the earth Your earth, your sky. Not our sky, not our earth not here, not now Now into the heights, we fall, into the depths . . . It seems to me that one reason younger writers might become interested in formal innovation is because often "the prose can’t seem to take the weight of the stories any more." In my case this was, and still is, true.

Walking In A Moving World

ONE HOUR SIXTY MINUTE CIRCLE WALK ON DARTMOOR 1984 English land/conceptual artist/sculpture Richard Long's recent retrospective at the Tate Museum is discussed at Revolutionary Boredom, excerpted here: "In terms of artistic production...more interesting....is how [these works] produce an artwork from such immaterial practices. Not only do they attempt to represent a walk, a fleeting experience in itself, but they represent that walk via experiential factors rather than reference (as in a regular map) to solid and identifiable objects like trees or castles or whatever. Most typical of this category is the ‘textwork’, usually a list of observations, feelings or conditions from a walk. The status of one of Long’s textworks is complicated, as it presumably has some personal meaning to Long himself yet remains only suggestive to the observer. Most of the details – including the date and place included on each work – are irrelevant and unverifiable. What these textworks comment upon is not the walk itself, nor the place walked, but the relationship between experiential moment and material representation." Beyond the originality of Long's art (and its transitory nature), what interests me here is the notion of a text commenting in some unique and immediate way on "the relationship between experiential moment and material representation." This insight can be generalized to a great many modernist and postmodern practices, and relates to many of the narratives/discourses we might consider innovative. In terms of form, Long's "textworks," collected here, can be seen as a form of concrete poetry, (though they also remind one of Francis Ponge's "object" poetry, in their refined consideration for the evocation of specific moment) and could be of considerable interest to students of writing. (Note: Richard Long was one of the many sixties artists surveyed in Suzaan Boettger's comprehensive Earthworks: Art and Landscape of the Sixties.)

Dreams of animals

Very early this morning, my two young sons and I saw six (!) large raccoons in our yard. Our house abuts a greenbelt. We live less than a mile from the ocean; thus, the area is densely populated, but there is some open space, un-terraced hillsides, etc. There is our greenbelt, and racoons would be able to forage water here, which they like and need. It’s just remarkable that, if they do live here, we’ve never seen these animals before. I called my sons to the patio window; we watched as the racoons gathered by the tall Black Pine across the way, conferred briefly, and then hustled in single file across the vast green of the lawn. Spellbound, my sons are young enough to appreciate the racoons in themselves, they haven’t yet lost their inherent fascination with, and love for, animals in their own right. I read recently that up until age six, 80% of the dreams of children concern in some way animals. After age six these dreams decrease rapidly in frequency. I now dream of animals rarely, and when I do, they often assume a totemic cast, signifying, it seems, some area of experience now denied me.

Outside was nothing

"Punk," because it indicated such a wide variety of modes of expression, was always an unstable signifier. Certainly, to my mind, it was always easier to explain what punk was not; "that's not punk" being one of the operative clauses of the period. Moreover, since circa 1990, which marked the period in which punk was appropriated into the official culture as a style stripped of its radical cultural/political implications, "punk" on this level, has ceased to have any intrinsic meaning beyond its historical connotations. So that, given the above, I'd rather focus on whatever it was that punk meant/means to me as an individual. At this point, it would be customary to demonstrate my credentials on the topic: a long, annotated list of shows attended and records purchased; a demonstrable, detailed insider's knowledge of the key players and major events; an easy familiarity with the appropriate slang and jargon (easy answer: there really isn't any); and a strong, succinct opinion, one way or the other, on Lipstick Traces and the use of "London Calling" in a Jaguar commercial. Here I'm half-mocking the insularity of the punks, as well as the ease with which this sort of "street cred" can be faked (all of which was well-spoofed by The Tubes [of all people] in "I was a punk before you were a punk"). But this phenomena, I'm guessing, is characteristic of any underground, marginalized cultural movement. There was a very real sense in that being a punk was all one had, and so this identification was valued seriously and intensely by those that shared in it. Which leads to a consideration of punk as an exclusive (but not, of course, in the sense of catering to the wealthy) social grouping. The nature of this exclusivity might certainly be seen, anthropologically, as universally determinant, to varying degrees, in any social grouping. It is interesting to note that Western societies, at least according to their official cant, now privilege inclusiveness and diversity as being among their celebrated "values." But what is proffered in reality is access to a diffuse, transparent, invasive, superficial and banal cultural milieu that at essence can only muster the anonymous consumer as its primary site of subjective identification. This is your reward for blending in with the melting pot: you get to buy stuff at the mall and be infotained. So there is a very real sense in which the socially exclusive nature of punk can be seen as an oppositional strategy in relationship to the bland material enticements and specious ideology of the official culture. That said, based on my own experiences with the San Diego hardcore punk scene during the 1980's, I can offer the observation that I've never been involved with a more diverse group of people. Not only was the scene itself factionalized; politics, attitudes, aesthetics and behaviors were varied literally beyond belief. Often the only thing anyone seemed to have in common was their shared code of identification. Paradoxically, the uniqueness and fragility of punk as social identity was reinforced by prevailing market forces. Many among the first wave of punk bands in New York and England in the mid-to late 1970's were signed to major record labels in attempt to cash in on the latest "teenaged" music trend. The majority of these bands had relatively small sales and this, combined with their radical form and content (and the band's own irreverent, indeed venomous attitudes towards the labels themselves), led to them being dropped by the majors. The host of younger bands forming in the wake of the first wave were subsequently ignored by the major American labels. So that, for any punk band forming after this period, there was the very real knowledge that prospects for commercial success (or even a living wage) were slim at best. At that point, any band identifying itself as punk did so out of enthusiasm and commitment (and a strong dose of foolhardiness). What arose in reaction agains these restrictions was the formation of an underground network of independent record labels and promotional tools, often formed and managed by the groups themselves, operating at barely self-sustaining profit levels. At that point, to be a punk was to be commercially marginalized and culturally untouchable. This led to a very precise and concrete awareness that the identification as a punk was reinforced by real world conditions: it was not simply another prefabricated lifestyle to be donned and then discarded in a leisure class search for self identity. It was instead an existential choice fraught with some personal peril and invested with tremendous meaning generated by the participants themselves. It was, in a word, freedom. Subjectively, how it all felt, was this: when you became and shared in being a punk, this identity permitted the play of your desires, your politics, your aesthetics and provided a means of locating as a unique individual with in a dynamic, distinct social group. It was a spontaneous, intuitive group exercise in the creation of meaning. And outside of that...was nothing. So to see the whole thing co-opted in the early 1990's, sold out for a song on the strung out byways of yet another Lollapalooza tour, well, that was pretty fucking hard.

Hold everything dear

In writer John Berger's collection, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, nothing is wasted. So when on page 85 Berger directs us to Pasolini’s obscure documentary montage La Rabbia (Rage), we follow… "La Rabbia, I would say, is a film inspired by a fierce sense of endurance, not anger. Pasolini looks at what is happening in the world with unflinching lucidity. (There are angels drawn by Rembrandt who have the same gaze.) And he does so because reality is all we have to love. There’s nothing else. His dismissal of the hypocrisies, half-truths and pretences of the greedy and powerful is total because they breed and foster ignorance, which is a form of blindness towards reality. Also because they shit on memory, including the memory of language itself, which is our first heritage. Yet the reality he loved could not be simply endorsed, for at that moment it represented a too deep historical disappointment. The ancient hopes which flowered and opened out in 1945, after the defeat of Fascism, had been betrayed. The USSR had invaded Hungary. France had begun its cowardly war against Algeria. The coming to independence of the former African colonies was a macabre charade. Lumumba had been liquidated by the puppets of the CIA. Neo-capitalism was already planning its global take-over. Yet despite this, what had been bequeathed was far too precious and too tough to abandon, the ubiquitous demands of reality were impossible to ignore. The demand in the way a shawl was worn. In a young man’s face. In a street full of people demanding less injustice. In the laughter of their expectations and the recklessness of their jokes. From this came his rage of endurance." At time when our media/political establishment is engaged in equivocations regarding the practice of waterboarding, it follows that narratives which mystify the fundamental injustices of the current, global dispensation (which are, as any Palestinian schoolchild can tell us social, political, economic and historical in nature) must be held to account, for we, like Berger, have no time to waste; we have only time for family and friends, for the for the children that suffer in innocence, for the poor, for the dispossessed, for animals harvested for food cruelly and wastefully, and for narratives that, in however small a way, resist the dominant culture. Many might disagree, but my feeling is that cinema (and fiction), at this historical juncture, must count for something. I wonder whether we might still engage the films that matter, films like The Passenger, like La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, like Radio On, like Lombardi’s Ojos Que No Ven, like Chris Marker’s Le Jette, like anything by Bresson, like Roeg’s Walkabout, in terms that abide, rather than mystify.