Re: <documenta X><blast> the image/the urban

Brandon Van Every (vanevery@blarg.net)
Sat, 6 Sep 1997 21:04:10 -0700

> From: Jordan Crandall <xaf@interport.net>
>
> This given, Brian calls for a critical tactic akin to walking (in de
> Certeau's sense). Could this critical tactic be located in the
> operational 'ground' of the image? Perhaps, given the discussion in the
> "Rhythms" thread, we might position a kind of rhythmic realm - one of
> routine, frequency, patterned and internalized signal. We can speak of
> this as a mode of in/habiting. And here and's questions come to the
> fore: "where do these images reside? How do we inhabit them?… What
> (different kinds of) movements between evidence, memory, and the
> imagination are provoked within processes of image formation,
> recollection, and response? How to describe - in terms of both subject
> and world - the mutations that arise out of these complex negotiations
> and interplay between 'internal' and 'external'?"
>
> Does the relation between images, imagination-activation, and the urban
> come down to a struggle in the field of *attention*?

So what would be a "new" critical tactic for this commodified world of
Miniatures within Miniatures within Fakes? Developing concrete examples of
critical tactics would probably best elucidate the mechanisms of
attention/distraction that you suggest. I'll take a shot at it.

I already posted about my perception of the Space Needle vs. the Eiffel
Tower. In one sense, they both are often reduced to "postcard
representation," with all ensuing reductions of significance and political
voice. But the major difference between Paris and Seattle is that Paris is
flat and mostly expansive, whereas Seattle is small and quite hilly. The
different terrain levels of Seattle, and the close proximity of the Space
Needle to nearly everything, destroys any unified field of view or
direction of gaze upon the Needle. The Needle becomes fat, thin, tall,
short, near, far, a stick, a saucer, a pursuer, something to pursue, a
mighty icon, a beached whale. All in variance with the current hillcrest,
distance, and intervening obstructions.

Perhaps we can expand the notion of "the walk" as critique, if we insist
upon viewing an object "in the round?" Surely, walking through modern
advertizing spaces in accord with their authorial intents, is not critique.
Whereas any object (or sculpture) viewed "in the round" from arbitrary
angles, will have at least a few completely unflattering vantages.

Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@blarg.net> DEC Commodity Graphics
http://www.blarg.net/~vanevery Windows NT Alpha OpenGL
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