The Multiple eXposure Project is a multimedia, multi/trans/inter-disciplinary artistic practice and research-based initiative that explores the many layers of image-making, participatory photography, visual ethnography, and performative encounter(s) between the image and the spectator; the subject and the viewer. As what the name of the project implies, this endeavor is profoundly interested in the notions of the “multiple” and the “exposure” both in their literal and symbolic sense.
Firstly, The Multiple eXposure Project seeks to examine the multiple potentials of image-making or photography (digital and analogue; still and moving) as a medium, a performance, and an instrument of social engagement and (ex)change, and the overlapping of it with other disciplines. As part of its exploration, this project involves a series of visual, photographic or lens-based workshops in collaboration with non-profit, grassroots volunteer groups. The concept of the multiple is also applied under the framework of collaborative work – of bring together multiple individuals with multiple philosophies into a plurality of shared experiences.
Secondly, The Multiple eXposure Project is equally drawn to the idea of “exposure” (subjection, experience, vulnerability, coverage, documentation, and so on) in the process of socially-engaged image-making that exposes what needs to be exposed; clarifies the obscure; and concerns itself with a gamut of critical questions and discursive issues of representation.
Through image-making, we aim to expose and get exposed.
Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube (December 1-31, 2015)
Public Interrogation:
Outside the White Cube
Organized by The Multiple eXposure Project
www.themultipleexposureproject.co.nr
Location: Public Spaces, Metro Manila, Philippines
Date: December 1-31, 2015
December 1-2 (8pm-10pm): EDSA Avenue cor. Kamuning Rd. Quezon City
December 5 (7pm-9pm): Ayala-Paseo Pedestrian Underpass, Makati City
December 13 (6pm-7pm): Alabang-Montillano Footbridge, Muntinlupa
Public Interrogation:
Outside the White Cube is an alternative, traveling, curatorial project that features image-based works across different disciplines and media by emerging artists whose works discuss the notion of the “public” and its complexities.
What is public? What counts as public? The “public” is a multi-layered concept defined differently depending on how the term is used and framed. It is a notion devoid of singularity and is, grammatically speaking, a terrain of contradictions. As a noun and an adjective, the public constitutes the people, masses or community, and suggests anything that is staged, accessed, or seen out in the “open.” The public can also be used as a verb to describe something one does, as in make public or publicize, suggesting the movement or shift from the inside (private) to the outside (public). Paradoxically, however, the same term also points to the limits of such openness and movement. Given that it simultaneously refers to something “involving and provided by the government”, the public is always at risk of becoming merely an apparatus of the sovereign state and its institutions, thus making the flow of its production, distribution, and consumption partial and counterproductive.
Public Interrogation:
Outside the White Cube seeks to re-frame the practice of curating and spectating images outside the exclusionary, institutional borders of the “white cube” or gallery space. Public spaces are used as an exhibition site to stimulate a mode of spectator experience that revolves around displacement of the passersby (public) from their “habitus” by interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic. We alter a familiar public space and transform it into an unusual, dialogic site for image projection and exhibition, taking advantage of its accessibility and site-specificity in order to redefine the ways the spectators look at and engage with images. Adopting “guerilla urbanism” as a curatorial strategy, we make sense of the immediacy of the “public” and reflect upon its context, meanings, and intersections with representation, place, and discourse. In so doing, we intervene and reformat aspects of the urban landscapes and emphasize the “counter-spectacle” in art viewing and appreciation. This project also underlines the inherent ephemerality of an open-to-the-public display in relation to time and space. As a “traveling” exhibition which heavily depends on projection technology and public space as its “frame” or “canvas", this project celebrates the momentary nature of image-viewing, consumption, and mobility in the metropolis at a time of constant flux and transition.
Video Arts
Borders - Anne Murray (USA)
The Separation Loop - Leyla Rodriguez (Germany)
Gnomonicity - Amitesh Grover (India)
36&71 - Anthony Stephenson (USA)
Sully - Marbella Carlos (Canada)
You See Davis - Rembrandt Quiballo (Philippines, USA)
Untitled (Sleeping People in a Train) - Hannah Reber (Germany)
Into the labyrinth - Geordy Zodidat Alexis (France)
The Safest of Hands - Clint Sleeper (USA)
Hunt/Find - Dani Salvadori (UK)
Leaving My Skin - Ellen Wetmore (UK)
Presence of Absence - Matt Lee (India)
Untitled – Mohammad Namazi (UK, Iran)
Still Images / Photographs
Right Time Right Place - Robert Rutoed (Austria)
Peripheral Strangers - Julie Dawn Dennis (UK)
De Staat (The State) - Maarten Tromp (Netherlands)
Ruinophilia - Anna Garrett (UK)
Circling the Square - Arturo Soto (Mexico)
The Spectator, the Viewer, the Observer and the Perceiver –
Francine LeClercq (USA)
Magic Rooms - Carlos Collado (Spain)
Date of Consumption - Lita Poliakova
Street Photography - John Robert Luna (Philippines)
Walls - Elena Efeoglou (Greece)
Fitting Room – Megan Mace (South Africa)
Street art you can take home (for free) - Lorenzo Bordonaro (Portugal)
Victim – Solomon Eko (Nigeria)
Performance Videos / Public Interventions
Balloon Performance - Louise Winter (UK)
Somarts Mural Dance - Johanna Poethig (USA)
Unpatentable Multitouch Aerobics - Liat Berdugo (USA)
Disclaimer at Manchester Art Gallery - Laura Gower (UK)
Sustaintability – Dani Lamorte and Veronica Bleaus (USA)
Animations / Digital
Job Interview - Dénes Ruzsa and Fruzsina Spitzer (Hungary)
In Between - Sofia Makridou, Theodora Prassa (Greece)
Decadence of Nature - Olga Guse (Russia)
AsianGirl N40°42'54.488" W73°59'30.313" - Victoria Elle, Rocky Li, and Jennifer Mehigan (USA)
Get Featured in our Blog!
We are currently expanding the content of our blog and we would like to feature multidisciplinary/multimedia artists, photographers, image-makers, visual artists, performers, and so on, their portfolio, artistic practice, and research interests. The feature section serves as a virtual, archival gallery and a platform for free promotion. This call is open to all artists – individuals or groups; amateur or professional – anywhere in the world.
If you think your works are relevant to The Multiple eXposure Project, send your artist statement, sample of your portfolio, photos, videos, press releases, and other related materials to themultipleexposureproject@gmail.com.
Moving Still: The Multiple eXposure Project Zine 2.0
The sophomore issue of The Multiple eXposure Project zine has been uploaded! You can read the e-zine at ISSUU or download the PDF version HERE.
New media and video artists included in the publication are as follows:
Jessica Buie /
Liat Berdugo /
Laura Hyunjhee Kim /
Nicola Hands /
Tony Radin Jacobs /
(c) merry /
Talia Link /
Justin Zachary /
Adrian Errico /
Matteo Pasin /
Jean-Michel Rolland /
Manasak Khlongchainan /
Boris Contarin /
Hüseyin Çife /
Suman Kabiraj /
Patrick Moser /
Francesca Fini /
Aaron Oldenburg /
Benjamin Grosser/
You Qi /
Dénes Ruzsa /
Fruzsina Spitzer /
Fran et Jim /
Amelia Johannes /
Heidi C. Neubauer-Winterburn /
Jess, Lau Ching Ma /
Scott F. Hall /
Eleni Manolaraki /
Elise Frost
Harrison Banfield
Jack Rees /
Daehwan Cho /
Wu Siou Ming /
Masako Ono /
Bárbara Oettinger
I
n this sophomore issue of the Multiple eXposure Project zine,“Moving Still”, we feature a heterogeneous breed of new media and video artists whose experimental and provocative works emphasize the potency of “videos” or “moving images” in the exploration and expansion of self-representation in the discursive flow of transmission and mediation – from the screen to the spectator; and the perceptive to the conceptual.
Selected artists here make use of the “screen” as medium and performance space. By displaying, curating, and performing in front of the screen, self-image-formation is enacted while relying on playful encounter with unknown spectators in order to weave different webs of interpretation. In this regard, the screen operates as an intermediary in the artist’s performance that brings connections to identities, personal narratives, history, everyday politics, and imaginaries.
The symbiotic relationship between the screen and the subject cultivates the construction of an image or spectacle that is consumed – temporally and spatially - in a doubling of intermediation. They deflect and reflect a plethora of shifting, hybrid pretexts about ourselves within the digital ecology where the delineating lines between the public and the private; the human and the mechanical; and the material and the virtual boundaries become blurred.
Given their hyperreal structure, these video performances, visual interventions, and recorded choreographies trigger a mode of mediated encounter that heavily manipulates moments of reality – of space and time. Intimacy and presence are concomitantly altered as these pieces can be incessantly scrutinized by the gaze of many anonymous viewers floating in the digital currents, allowing us to re-locate the individual and re-think about the concept of selfhood more fluidly.
Self-as-Subject: The Multiple eXposure Project Zine 1.0
We are pleased to announce that the very first issue of the Multiple eXposure Project zine is now accessible online! You can read the e-zine at ISSUU or download the PDF version HERE. Feel free to share!
Below is the list of contributors (artists and writers) included in the publication:
J.D. Doria /
Dr. Sayfan Giulia Borghini /
Aldobranti /
Olga Sidilkovskaya /
Ana Rita Matias /
Anne Paternotte /
Rudi Rapf /
Leigh Anthony Dehaney /
Laura Knapp /
Jennifer van Exel /
Derya Edem /
Arushee Agrawal /
Utami Dewi Godjali /
Çağlar Uzun /
Mahmoud Khattab /
Noel Villa /
Dawn Woolley /
Teresa Ascencao /
Kalliope Amorphous /
Katrina Stamatopoulos /
Gaspard Noël /
Florian Tenk /
Petra Brnardic /
Sana Ghobbeh /
Alonso Tapia-Benitez /
Libby Kay Hicks /
Agent X /
Rina Dweck /
Yoko Haraoka /
Claire Manning /
Pietro Catarinella /
Anne Beck /
Gabriel Orlowski /
Ralph Klewitz /
Anthony Hall /
Alessandro Martorelli /
Robin Gerris /
Carol Radsprecher /
Veronica Hassell /
Daniela Olejnikov /
Jayson Carter /
Nathaniel St. Amour /
Jonathan Armistead /
Piotr Boćkowski
"Who are you?” “Who am I?” “Who do I think I am?” “What am I made of?” There is nothing simple about such inquiries as they pose a number of phenomenological and ontological issues.
To ask yourself or someone about self-definition is to deal with its vicissitudes and fluidities, oscillating between the ego and the alter ego; the naturalistic (Hume) and the metaphysical (Kant); and the reflexive perception of one’s body and the relational introspection with the “Other.” The self is, arguably and fundamentally, a complicated subject matter. It is an ever-evolving object, a corporeal being, an affective body, a precarious entity, a discursive phenomenon, and so forth.
Divided into three interrelated chapters, this zine features oeuvres by artists and writers from different localities around the world and, as what its theme implies, is an exploration of the “self” and its manifold permutations – its presence, identity, representation, liminality, and (dis)embodiment - in this day and age of digitality, hypermobility, and hyperreality.
In Chapter 1, The Self as I/Other, authors reflect on the dialectics between the ego and the alter ego and the multitude of ways the “self-as-subject” is defined by both internal and external contingencies, or philosophically speaking, by the binaries – “I” vs. “not-I.” Many of these selected pieces are visibly entangled with the act of self-mirroring, which is inherently reflective and performative: it involves the constitution of subjectivities based on visual imaginary reflected on the mirror that does not necessarily resemble the complex structures of the material body. What I highlight here is the notion of self-perception (internal) in relation to one’s experiences and the (external) world. As Anthony Giddens puts it, “A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor - important though this is - in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual's biography…cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing 'story' about the self.” (54).
In Chapter 2, The Fetishized Self, we see interconnected self-representations that examine the convergence of idiosyncratic fantasies with the phantasmagoria as an offshoot of the fetishized commodity. When I refer to the term, phantasmagoria, I emphasize the volatile strings of imaginations through which the public and the private dimension of identity becomes obscured, blurring the demarcating lines between reality and fantasy. This section functions as a provocation of the fetishization of self and the centrality of the individual as authority. Through role-playing, the self, as a fetish object imbued with power and discourse, becomes an agency displaying and interrogating the politics of gender, sexuality, identity, and bodily desire.
Finally, in Chapter 3, The Fragmented Self, the fragmentation of identity framed within the digital, virtual, or hyperreal context is explored. Featured works here represent the various modes the anonymity, simulation, multiplicity, and control in data superhighway allow the transformation of the self into fragmented, hybrid subjects. The concept of “self-fragmentation” also revolves around the nature of post-modernism: the absence of absolute truth and the presence of disembodied self.
Bibliography:
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity, 1991.
A Book Review of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
Translated by Ken Knabb
London, United Kingdom: Rebel Press, 2005.
By Sherwin Altarez Mapanoo
The Society of the Spectacle is a book written by French philosopher and critical theorist Guy Debord. The original text was first published in French in 1967, and since then, has been translated into English by different authors. In particular, I am referencing the most recent “authorised translation”[1] of the book by American translator and writer Ken Knabb.
Written in a manifesto[2] format, The Society of the Spectacle can be marked as a radical text and critique on the modern, consumerist, and capitalist society, and even, I would consider it, as a critical response (and supplement) to Karl Marx’s philosophies in Das Kapital. It is divided into nine chapters and consists of 211 short theses, instead of conventional paragraphs, with each chapter beginning with a quotation and demarcating specific, often overlapping, topics related to the notion of the spectacle, ranging from representation to commodity; time and history to revolution and ideology. Ideas are articulated in passages using a complex language structure, so the text doesn’t necessarily have to be read in a chronological manner.
Debord starts the book with a firm and provocative assertion: “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”[3] This very first thesis, in my opinion, is the key tenet of the entire text. In the book, he outlines the many permutations of the spectacle in society and refers to it as a phenomenon of our conception of reality, participation, and (self)fulfilment, in which “being” has deteriorated into a mere state of “having” or “appearing”. While tracing the impact of a mass mediated image-world on social relations, Debord argues that the capitalist forces of production are manipulating us to take these superficial representations as substitutes for what is real, and that they have shifted the utility of consumption into the spectacle of consumption. As we accept this parody in exchange of reality, the more we, as human beings, experience estrangement from the reality of the world. And as we repeatedly participate in the hegemonic capitalist production and exchange, we also ostracize our own desires, individuality and subjectivity and further alienate ourselves from other people.
Debord’s irrefutable propensities to Hegel and Marx’s teachings (or Hegelian Marxism, to be precise) are evident throughout the text. In fact, he borrows, appropriates, and reinvents a number of theoretical concepts from them, including dialectics, contradictions, detachment and reification, to cite a few. In proceeding to the specific forms of the spectacle, for instance, Debord discusses how the tangible commodity becomes an intangible commodity within the spectacle because the spectacle itself illustrates commodities, clearly echoing Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism. He also postulates that the spectacle functions in a dialectical, paradoxical manner: “the spectacle, like modern society, is at once united and divided.”[4] That is to say, the contradiction emerging within the spectacle is itself being contradicted by it; hence, separation results to unification.
In many instances, Debord’s multi-positionality as an author is visible, and he assumes a plethora of different, oscillating positions – as a Situationist, a philosopher, a critical historian, an agitated revolutionary, a Marxist, a Hegelian, and an ambivalent thinker. In Chapter 4, the longest section of the book, Debord cites concrete historical events and proletarian revolutionary movements in Germany, France and Russia, and provides references to Bernstein, Bakunin, Marx and Hegel, either reverberating or deconstructing their views; and giving approval or criticism. He goes on to criticize the utopian currents of socialism and the individualist forms of anarchism. While juxtaposing the spectacle with the proletarian revolution and historical and socio-political developments of his time, Debord even claims, with a degree of ambivalence, that: “Historical thought can be saved only by becoming practical thought; and the practice of the proletariat as a revolutionary class can be nothing less than historical consciousness operating on the totality of its world.”[5] As a contemporary reader, I feel that this is the most alienating segment of book because it is very dated in time. This feeling of estrangement from the text, though, is not the fault of the author, but rather a reflection of the chapter’s specificity, which then leads to obscurity, if not irrelevance. Understanding the feud between the Marxists and the Bakunists and the ideological debates between Hegel and Marx can be extremely difficult in absence of sufficient knowledge of the milieu and their related works.
Although not an easy text to read, The Society of the Spectacle is an insightful and daring book, so daring that it engenders more research questions and possibilities than answers and finalities. What are, for instance, the aesthetic implications of the spectacle? What should then art (and artist) be within the spectacle? To what extent does the simultaneous occurrence of unification and separation within the spectacle happen? How does detournement or the disruption of the spectacle flow become possible? These are but few relevant questions left unanswered and possible territories that can be mapped out from the text.
Debord’s poetic writing style is worthy of note and I applaud the way he weaves seemingly disparate and complex yet relevant concepts of representation, commodity, mass media, class struggle, capitalism, and the spectacle altogether. However, I dismiss the book for its fragmentation of ideas, convoluted language structure, and lack of bibliography. Debord’s too much reliance on verbosity, paradox, hyperbole, and at times cyclical logic somewhat overshadows the wealth of ideas that he puts forward in the book.
Nevertheless, I still recommend the book to those interested not only in the issues of representation and mediation; visuality and mediality, but also in discourse analysis and critical theory. I will not go as far as hailing the book as the new Das Kapital, but his extrapolations of the spectacle and its contingencies, despite being introduced almost fifty years ago, are still relevant today. Debord hits the nail right on the head with his meticulous scrutiny of the spectacular world of (bureaucratic) capitalism which perfectly captures the conditions and predicaments of individuals, particularly the working class, trapped in commodity/market-driven society.
Amidst the avalanche of spectacles brought about by the advent of the internet, digitalization, globalization, and ubiquitous advertising, The Society of the Spectacle obtains even more relevance at present times beyond Debord’s references fifty years ago.
Endnotes:
[1]The book edition of this translation was published in the U.K. by Rebel Press in 2005. In the Translator’s Note, it is interesting to point out that Knabb claims that his translation, unlike the previous versions by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Fredy Perlman and John Supak, ‘conveys Debord's actual meaning more accurately, as well as more dearly and idiomatically.’
[2] While reading the book, I did some research on the life and works of Debord and his political leanings, and I assume that this particular book is also his own life stance and an elaboration of the manifesto of the Situationist International, “Report on the Construction of Situations,” which he wrote in 1957, the founding year of the revolutionary organization.
The Multiple eXposure Project is run by a small group of image-makers, visual artists, and researchers coming from different backgrounds, with a wide range of interests.
profile
Please be patient, this page is under construction.
The Multiple eXposure Project incorporates theory and practice in image-making and publishes zine and scholarly articles, essays, stories on photography and visual narratives.
Collaboration with individuals and groups coming from different disciplines and backgrounds is of utmost importance at The Multiple eXposure Project especially in the workshops, exhibitions, and other projects. We underscore the potency of shared, ethical, participatory artistic process and accordingly of collaborative authorship by incorporating dialogical, performative interaction into image-making, bridging the gaps between the subject and the medium.
We curate our works in physical and digital configuration, applying methodologies on photo curation (of still and moving images) that are wide-ranging, alternative, experimental, and non-paradigmatic. To be specific, we delve into the concepts of photo curation, not just as praxis of selection or organization of images, or an archival method, but as a social intervention.
One of the crucial components of The Multiple eXposure Project is its practical initiative framed within the context of volunteerism, participation, and engagement. We believe in the collective power and benefits of sharing one’s skills and expertise with those who need them. We provide free photographic workshops, in cooperation with non-profit organizations, which are aimed at empowering marginalized individuals through photography or image-making.
PUBLICATION
The sophomore issue of The Multiple eXposure Project zine has been uploaded! You can read the e-zine at ISSUU or download the PDF version HERE.
Description: In this sophomore issue of the Multiple eXposure Project zine,“Moving Still”, we feature a heterogeneous breed of new media and video artists whose experimental and provocative works emphasize the potency of “videos” or “moving images” in the exploration and expansion of self-representation in the discursive flow of transmission and mediation – from the screen to the spectator; and the perceptive to the conceptual.
New media and video artists included in the publication are as follows:
Jessica Buie /
Liat Berdugo /
Laura Hyunjhee Kim /
Nicola Hands /
Tony Radin Jacobs /
(c) merry /
Talia Link /
Justin Zachary /
Adrian Errico /
Matteo Pasin /
Jean-Michel Rolland /
Manasak Khlongchainan /
Boris Contarin /
Hüseyin Çife /
Suman Kabiraj /
Patrick Moser /
Francesca Fini /
Aaron Oldenburg /
Benjamin Grosser/
You Qi /
Dénes Ruzsa /
Fruzsina Spitzer /
Fran et Jim /
Amelia Johannes /
Heidi C. Neubauer-Winterburn /
Jess, Lau Ching Ma /
Scott F. Hall /
Eleni Manolaraki /
Elise Frost
Harrison Banfield
Jack Rees /
Daehwan Cho /
Wu Siou Ming /
Masako Ono /
Bárbara Oettinger
The first issue of the Multiple eXposure Project zine is now accessible online! You can read the e-zine at ISSUU or download the PDF version HERE. Feel free to share!
Description: Divided into three interrelated chapters, this zine features oeuvres by artists and writers from different localities around the world and, as what its theme implies, is an exploration of the “self” and its manifold permutations – its presence, identity, representation, liminality, and (dis)embodiment - in this day and age of digitality, hypermobility, and hyperreality.
Featured artists and writers in the zine are as follows:
J.D. Doria /
Dr. Sayfan Giulia Borghini /
Aldobranti /
Olga Sidilkovskaya /
Ana Rita Matias /
Anne Paternotte /
Rudi Rapf /
Leigh Anthony Dehaney /
Laura Knapp /
Jennifer van Exel /
Derya Edem /
Arushee Agrawal /
Utami Dewi Godjali /
Çağlar Uzun /
Mahmoud Khattab /
Noel Villa /
Dawn Woolley /
Teresa Ascencao /
Kalliope Amorphous /
Katrina Stamatopoulos /
Gaspard Noël /
Florian Tenk /
Petra Brnardic /
Sana Ghobbeh /
Alonso Tapia-Benitez /
Libby Kay Hicks /
Agent X /
Rina Dweck /
Yoko Haraoka /
Claire Manning /
Pietro Catarinella /
Anne Beck /
Gabriel Orlowski /
Ralph Klewitz /
Anthony Hall /
Alessandro Martorelli /
Robin Gerris /
Carol Radsprecher /
Veronica Hassell /
Daniela Olejnikov /
Jayson Carter /
Nathaniel St. Amour /
Jonathan Armistead /
Piotr Boćkowski
Workshops
Excerpts from digital and analogue photography workshops at Koseli School, a center for slum and street children in Kathmandu, Nepal (January 2015). These participatory workshops incorporated photography with "playing" and performance.
Visual Intervention
Speech Acts and the Politics of Repetition SeriesDescription: This series explores the repetitive nature and patterns of speech acts and ritualized rhetorics of some of the world’s powerful and controversial figures by incorporating twice-recorded video footages with open-source background music.
Through the process of repetition, new meanings of the moving images and spoken texts are simultaneously (re)created. Specific words are on purpose repeated to generate a multitude of views and reviews and to deconstruct the stability of language. As a mode of visual intervention, these absurdly distorted and edited images/videos are also meant to make a dialogue with, distract, entertain, annoy, and disturb the viewers on the other side of the screen, while highlighting the intersections and contradictions between reality and absurdity; speech and power of the speaker.
Feel free to re-play and re-share!
#1 >>> Obama: You Kinda Screwed Up My Ending But That's Okay.
Video, animated gif, and stills created by Sherwin Altarez Mapanoo
Background music courtesy of einzimmersound
DIGITAL ART
Urban DomesticationDescription: An attempt to represent the psychological state of the subject who was performing to exist (and persist) as a corporate animal in the harsh and precarious dog-eat-dog world of the urban jungle.
Note: Point or click on the image to view its original version.
A Book Review of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle
Translated by Ken Knabb
London, United Kingdom: Rebel Press, 2005.
By Sherwin Altarez Mapanoo
The Society of the Spectacle is a book written by French philosopher and critical theorist Guy Debord. The original text was first published in French in 1967, and since then, has been translated into English by different authors. In particular, I am referencing the most recent “authorised translation”[1] of the book by American translator and writer Ken Knabb.
Written in a manifesto[2] format, The Society of the Spectacle can be marked as a radical text and critique on the modern, consumerist, and capitalist society, and even, I would consider it, as a critical response (and supplement) to Karl Marx’s philosophies in Das Kapital. It is divided into nine chapters and consists of 211 short theses, instead of conventional paragraphs, with each chapter beginning with a quotation and demarcating specific, often overlapping, topics related to the notion of the spectacle, ranging from representation to commodity; time and history to revolution and ideology. Ideas are articulated in passages using a complex language structure, so the text doesn’t necessarily have to be read in a chronological manner.
Debord starts the book with a firm and provocative assertion: “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”[3] This very first thesis, in my opinion, is the key tenet of the entire text. In the book, he outlines the many permutations of the spectacle in society and refers to it as a phenomenon of our conception of reality, participation, and (self)fulfilment, in which “being” has deteriorated into a mere state of “having” or “appearing”. While tracing the impact of a mass mediated image-world on social relations, Debord argues that the capitalist forces of production are manipulating us to take these superficial representations as substitutes for what is real, and that they have shifted the utility of consumption into the spectacle of consumption. As we accept this parody in exchange of reality, the more we, as human beings, experience estrangement from the reality of the world. And as we repeatedly participate in the hegemonic capitalist production and exchange, we also ostracize our own desires, individuality and subjectivity and further alienate ourselves from other people.
Debord’s irrefutable propensities to Hegel and Marx’s teachings (or Hegelian Marxism, to be precise) are evident throughout the text. In fact, he borrows, appropriates, and reinvents a number of theoretical concepts from them, including dialectics, contradictions, detachment and reification, to cite a few. In proceeding to the specific forms of the spectacle, for instance, Debord discusses how the tangible commodity becomes an intangible commodity within the spectacle because the spectacle itself illustrates commodities, clearly echoing Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism. He also postulates that the spectacle functions in a dialectical, paradoxical manner: “the spectacle, like modern society, is at once united and divided.”[4] That is to say, the contradiction emerging within the spectacle is itself being contradicted by it; hence, separation results to unification.
In many instances, Debord’s multi-positionality as an author is visible, and he assumes a plethora of different, oscillating positions – as a Situationist, a philosopher, a critical historian, an agitated revolutionary, a Marxist, a Hegelian, and an ambivalent thinker. In Chapter 4, the longest section of the book, Debord cites concrete historical events and proletarian revolutionary movements in Germany, France and Russia, and provides references to Bernstein, Bakunin, Marx and Hegel, either reverberating or deconstructing their views; and giving approval or criticism. He goes on to criticize the utopian currents of socialism and the individualist forms of anarchism. While juxtaposing the spectacle with the proletarian revolution and historical and socio-political developments of his time, Debord even claims, with a degree of ambivalence, that: “Historical thought can be saved only by becoming practical thought; and the practice of the proletariat as a revolutionary class can be nothing less than historical consciousness operating on the totality of its world.”[5] As a contemporary reader, I feel that this is the most alienating segment of book because it is very dated in time. This feeling of estrangement from the text, though, is not the fault of the author, but rather a reflection of the chapter’s specificity, which then leads to obscurity, if not irrelevance. Understanding the feud between the Marxists and the Bakunists and the ideological debates between Hegel and Marx can be extremely difficult in absence of sufficient knowledge of the milieu and their related works.
Although not an easy text to read, The Society of the Spectacle is an insightful and daring book, so daring that it engenders more research questions and possibilities than answers and finalities. What are, for instance, the aesthetic implications of the spectacle? What should then art (and artist) be within the spectacle? To what extent does the simultaneous occurrence of unification and separation within the spectacle happen? How does detournement or the disruption of the spectacle flow become possible? These are but few relevant questions left unanswered and possible territories that can be mapped out from the text.
Debord’s poetic writing style is worthy of note and I applaud the way he weaves seemingly disparate and complex yet relevant concepts of representation, commodity, mass media, class struggle, capitalism, and the spectacle altogether. However, I dismiss the book for its fragmentation of ideas, convoluted language structure, and lack of bibliography. Debord’s too much reliance on verbosity, paradox, hyperbole, and at times cyclical logic somewhat overshadows the wealth of ideas that he puts forward in the book.
Nevertheless, I still recommend the book to those interested not only in the issues of representation and mediation; visuality and mediality, but also in discourse analysis and critical theory. I will not go as far as hailing the book as the new Das Kapital, but his extrapolations of the spectacle and its contingencies, despite being introduced almost fifty years ago, are still relevant today. Debord hits the nail right on the head with his meticulous scrutiny of the spectacular world of (bureaucratic) capitalism which perfectly captures the conditions and predicaments of individuals, particularly the working class, trapped in commodity/market-driven society.
Amidst the avalanche of spectacles brought about by the advent of the internet, digitalization, globalization, and ubiquitous advertising, The Society of the Spectacle obtains even more relevance at present times beyond Debord’s references fifty years ago.
Endnotes:
[1]The book edition of this translation was published in the U.K. by Rebel Press in 2005. In the Translator’s Note, it is interesting to point out that Knabb claims that his translation, unlike the previous versions by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Fredy Perlman and John Supak, ‘conveys Debord's actual meaning more accurately, as well as more dearly and idiomatically.’
[2] While reading the book, I did some research on the life and works of Debord and his political leanings, and I assume that this particular book is also his own life stance and an elaboration of the manifesto of the Situationist International, “Report on the Construction of Situations,” which he wrote in 1957, the founding year of the revolutionary organization.
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