Lola Young, 'Art of Change'
In: Annotations 3: Frequencies: Investigations into culture, history and technology. Edited by Melanie Keen. London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1998,
pp. 10-13.
How can we begin to address the significance and impact of the changes in the applications of technology which have taken place over the last twenty years or so? In what ways is the work of artists and critics grappling with the consequences - some foreseen, others not - of the transformations which seem to be gathering speed and intensity as we approach the millennium?
The diversity of the responses to these questions in both the Frequencies seminars and the papers collected in this publication indicates the complexity and the bewilderment generated by the rapidity of technological change. If we think about, for example, how notions of the self and the ways in which we place our subjective identities in relation to meta-discourses such as 'technological progress', 'art and civilization' and 'democracy and accessibility', are addressed by the contributors to this volume, there is no easily discernible pattern or consistency in content and political analysis.
This observation of what might be perceived as a lack, should not, however, be seen as a derogatory comment: from the outset, it was stressed that it was not the intention to impose a totalising framework within which speakers were to find ways of moulding their work to suit a predetermined aim. On the contrary, the emphasis has been on exploring and examining how people with divergent views, approaches and agendas could extend and deepen current debates about the impact of technology on the everyday, on art, on culture.
Part of the impetus for engaging with this area of debate and activity is provided by the desire to hold on to the gains that have been effected through a widening of access to technological invention. Nonetheless, historically formed analyses and interventions remind us of the extent to which there is a certain continuity in the unequal access to and oppression by technology experienced by the majority of the world's population. What do wondrous developments in information technology mean in relation to countries such as Egypt, Somalia, Ethiopia and Mali whose literacy levels are all below fifty percent? Olu Oguibe and Françoise Vergès, to this volume, refer to the contradictions of an information rich elite, with access to instantaneous forms of communication, surrounded by the mass of people who are dependent on limited sources of information and less sophisticated, slower means of communication. There are those of course, who would rather that we all belonged to the latter group, but often accompanying that lack of communication-based resources are poverty and extreme deprivation, and subjection to oppressive regimes. Therefore, even though we may have 'art' and 'culture' as our primary faci, as we discuss these matters, it is impossible to avoid a consideration of the economic, cultural and political backdrop against which such developments have emerged. Indeed an understanding of the contextual coordinates of these issues is crucial if we are to make sense of, and devise strategies for dealing with the current technological, cultural and political conjuncture. There is often a concern that open-ended discussions with abstract ideas and involving artists and theorists can be obscure and detached from materiality. Analytical, critical and creative work which can address the complexity of the power relations embedded in the design, construction, sales and consumption of these instruments of technology is urgently required.
As well as a recognition of the importance of an historical approach to these contemporary issues, there must be a raising of the level of awareness of the imbalances of power which have resulted in a 'writing out' of the so-called 'Third World' from orthodox historical accounts: we cannot afford to repeat such an erasure in this area of work through a lack of awareness of how processes of globalisation are implicated in these debates. Although not concerned directly with politics and power in his work, Takahiko Iimura touches on the asymmetry of global cultural power. As he notes regarding the idiosyncratic speech of films dubbed into foreign language, he has seen John Wayne 'speak' Japanese more often that he has seen Toshiro Mifune 'speak' English on North American screens.
The contributors to Frequencies have attempted to address some of the contradictions which emerge when addressing the difficult questions outlined at the beginning of this introduction. Contradictions such as those which arise from thinking about, for example 'African art' alongside technological innovation, are thrown into relief by considering how 'Africa' has been constructed as atavistic and as producing 'primitive artefacts' whose proper place of display is in the ethnographic museum in Europe or North America. How then, is the work of an 'African' read in relation to discourses in art, technology and otherness? To complicate the matter further, as Oguibe notes, there are those areas in Europe and North America which are figured as 'third world' or 'ghettos' and which are most often ignored in the context of debates about cyberspace, the Internet and the democratisation of information. Many of the much-vaunted benefits of being able to lose in the sense of embodiment as a black person, a woman, as someone identified by their sexuality or body shape or physical ability, or of the increased access to knowledge and information which aids the democratic process, have passed by the majority of the world's inhabitants. And we should not forget that the same technology which gives some people the pleasure of 'surfing' the Internet is the result of the drive to invent and deploy weapons of mass destruction. For people who have lived through the various regimes of terror inflicted by those who own the means of technological destruction, there is an anxiety about whether or when they will once again become the object of the annihilator's gaze and acts of terrorism. Gustav Metzger's determination to make art and dedicate his energies to eliminating war and to try and combat the use of technology for the purposes of surveillance and control will resonate with many. Metzger pinpoints the deployment of nuclear technology as a defining moment leading inexorably to the eventual obsolescence of the human being, as the body integrates with its 'technoid double'.
Negotiating indistinct borders has been one of the key themes of creative and theoretical work of the last decade and we can now add to the other familiar (de)constructed boundaries - black/white, male/female, homosexual/heterosexual, subject/object - that of virtual/physical. An interesting and provocative series of attempts to muddy the line between sophisticated technology and established, rather more traditional practices, such as handwriting, is described by Marco Susani, who with his design students developed a telephone which instead of requiring the caller to dial a number, worked on hand written instructions. As Susani notes, of course handwriting recognition is only possible with the development of a technology which can deliver high-tech, touch sensitive instruments.
The idea of a linear, relentless technologically driven or determined progress has been critiqued by many of those writing within a post-modern theoretical framework and a cynical observer might note a number of examples of the fallibility of the project of domination and progress through technology. One instance in particular comes to mind. Just before the general election in which his 'New Labour' triumphed at the polls, Tony Blair promised at a conference attended by party educationalists, that every school in the country would be wired for access to the Internet (we heard more of the same rhetoric recently). A teacher asked whether there would also be provision for plastic sheeting to prevent rain dripping in from the leaking roofs in all those schools across the country which bear the marks of years of neglect. There is a real disjuncture, not just between the 'Third' and 'First' worlds but within different worlds, between the wonderful technology which means that it is possible to be in dialogue with someone thousands of miles away instantaneously, and the lack of will to construct a political structure which ensures that every child receives adequate schooling, and every adult a life without fear, intimidation, poverty and disease.
There are some who would argue that capitalism's rampant greed, inequitable conditions of existence and war are the direct result of technological development and thus, seek an end to such things as computers, automobiles and so on. To introduce a more positive note, Theodore Zeldin notes that many of the speakers had been concerned to create artefacts and conditions which allowed for varying degrees of human interaction: I would especially draw attention to Susan Hiller, Anne-mie Van Kerckhoven and Dunne + Raby in this context.
Some of the arguments we are having about new technologies seem to be disconcertingly familiar ones, trapped by the parameters of a utopian/dystopian paradigm. Those who currently bemoan the lack of reading skills amongst the young brought about by the ascendancy of screen-based technologies of pleasure and entertainment, often sound very much like those who considered the introduction of novels in paperback form as the end of civilisation as we know it. It seems to me that the book is likely to be around for some time to come, not least because so many who make creative work in one form or another have been reared to be literate in a particular way. Denise Robinson asks whether we can find fresh ways of approaching the 'new', a methodology not dependent on maintaining the old binary oppositions. Already it is clear that many children and young people have a different relationship to what we insist on referring to as 'new technology' than most people of my generation. It will be interesting to see how the production and content of, and the interaction with creative works on CD-ROM and the Internet develops over the next few decades.