Imogen O’Rorke, Flipping the Script: Mute Magazine, 2008.
Imogen O'Rorke is an artist, writer and new media consultant living in east London. She regularly writes for Mute Magazine and guardian.co.uk on a broad range of topics such as branding, video games and art exhibitions.
O'Rorke suggests that the artists’ attempt to provide a direct, unfiltered experience through re-enactment “in order to understand recent history”[1], but this attempt to steer away from the Media’s strategies of providing information, which have resulted in the desensitisation of the subject, seems to be an ill-considered statement because the experience of recent history that is provided through the work, is extremely filtered. The viewer is aware that the performance is a re-enactment and the re-enactment itself takes place within the walls of a gallery; these two elements alone contradict the initial concept of an unfiltered presentation.
I think Walter Benjamin’s concept of reproduction become relevant when talking about ’providing a direct, unfiltered experience.’ Walter Benjamin argues, “the singular, auratic object is forever haunted by it’s past history and functions, which enshroud it like a veil and render it resistant to use in the present. Reproduction strips away this veil; it removes the object from its ‘Embeddedness’ in tradition”.[2] The notion of striping away a veil of ‘Embeddedness’ caused by reproduction, or in the case of “9 Scripts from a Nation at War”, caused by re-enactment, is responsible for the inability to provide a ‘direct, unfiltered experience’. To achieve what the exhibition attempts to provide, the element of ‘Embeddedness’ or a literally real experience of an artwork, or event, is necessary.
O’Rorke identifies ‘non-didactic’ presentation strategies employed in the exhibition, intended to create a conversation amongst the audience rather than preaching to the audience. “These experiential techniques generate a healthy climate of debate”[3]. The techniques mentioned are strategies of re-enactment and role-play, but other strategies employed by the exhibition are omitted here, such as listening booths, which presented the viewer with a small T.V and headphones that play “a documentation of a five hour public reading of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals”.[4] This mode of presentation acts in a very didactic way; video is a medium that cannot be argued with, a prerecorded video acts as a passive communicational device and consequently is didactic.
[1] “Flipping the Script” Imogen O’Rorke on Andrea Geyer’s “9 Scripts from a Nation At War”. Published by Mute Magazine. pp. 4
[2] “Reproduction/Repetition: Walter Benjamin/Carl Einstein”. Charles W. Haxthausen. pp. 6
[3] “Flipping the Script” Imogen O’Rorke on Andrea Geyer’s “9 Scripts from a Nation At War”. Published by Mute Magazine. pp. 2
[4] “Flipping the Script” Imogen O’Rorke on Andrea Geyer’s “9 Scripts from a Nation At War”. Published by Mute Magazine. pp. 3
I wonder whether this idea of filtering - i.e. providing a direct unfiltered experience of war - is at all possible, and whether the artists represented in this show were concerned with the work being so. I think you are right in suggesting that the re-enactments are unlikely to be successful in this respect (O'Rorke actually sort of acknowledges that, calling the technique 'trendy'). I do however believe the direct testimonies of persons involved in the war have the potential to overcome the techniques employed in their delivery. That is to say that maybe they could come close to offering a direct experience with the viewer.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the use of video within the media has been used as a didactic tool, I believe its use within the 9 Scripts of a Nation at War exhibition worked differently as the media use this tool to show exhaustive imagery and action along the frontline of war whereas within the exhibition the testimonials of the persons involved in the war thereby drew the viewer into the war situation and subconsciously made the viewer aware of their positioning within this war. In this way, I believe the work was successful and that although the use of video may be didactic, it was the act of involving the viewer through the establishment of their positioning of the work that I believe was the intention of the exhibition.
ReplyDeleteRichie, I think Ans's comment about the active positioning of the viewer in the work is indeed correct in terms of the intention of the exhibition.
ReplyDeleteThe question that positionality raises for me is, what would the experience of the exhibition be like for and Iraqi or Afghani person? In turn, what would it be like for a member of the US military that had fought in the War on Terror?
I believe the exhibition is not about the positioning of the viewers as a whole entity (i.e. the US Public) but on a very personal level. This is because at this personal scale people do not identify themselves primarily by belonging to a state but as separate entities. In this sense the exhibition accounts for members of other nations, ethnic groups and positions.
I agree with Ans' comment that the work was successful the video was didactic, it was the act of involving the viewer. By getting viewers involve in the activities, rather than just telling the viewers story by giving them stories on a solid piece of paper - for example, the sound booth. I think by using video and sound there is some kind of relationship forming between the viewer and the person on the screen reading their stories. which I think was powerful than showing 'unfiltered' images or giving viewers written stories.
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