EN / CN

Avatars of Eidos—— Image, Society and Art【Bao Dong】

The emergence of image is one of the most important process in modern society. From the invention of photograph and movie, to the birth of TV technology, and to the transformation and generation of video brought by digital and internet technologies, we are now exposed to all sorts of videos at different levels. Our world of reality and conception have been both so significantly influenced by videos that we can call the contemporary society the “image society”.
 
However, there is no explicit, internal consistency for the word “image”. It is a mere combination of a series of technologies, media and concepts including Photo, Film, Picture, Video, VR, Vision, Icon and Image. What binds these together is not a common nature they share, but rather a relation of “hybrid” and “heredity”, namely an ever-growing historical context. Only in this historical relation, can we identify a narrative thread between a Daguerreotype photo and an immersive electronic game device, even though there is little traceable “technological blood relation” between the two.
 
Under the context of contemporary art, the concept of “image” mainly include photography which features static image, video art which features moving pictures, and media art which is built on the basis of both but is more inclusive and transcending. Putting these arts of different types under the discussion of “image” is to, on the one hand, distinguish it from visual arts such as painting and sculpture, while on the other hand, is to call for the establishment of a new arena, which we temporarily call it “image”, to enhance new studies and practices. In another word, “image art” should not be perceived as a fixed scope, but rather a dimension which extends continuously. After all, “image” is not an ontological concept but an instrumental one, or just a default entry into the hidden problems.
 
This also means that we must not discuss the nature of video on an ontological basis just like how realism discussed the nature of painting. Perceiving the nature of photograph as light, record and time, perceiving the nature of video as motion or perceiving them as only a paper or a screen, these ontological thinkings are not valueless, but are no longer effective as an internal normative argumentation. In fact, the purpose of ontological questioning towards different arts by realism is not to acquire an ultimate definition, but to invigorate the silent experience such as the border and plane of paintings during the process of questioning.
 
For media, there is no such nature of just “being media”, because it is always connected with a certain media function such as reproduction and aesthetics. In this sense, just as Marshall McLuhan once said, the content of media is always another type of medium. Media are interconnected and thus distinguish themselves from each other. Therefore, the nature of “being media” is just what distinguish this medium from others, while the distinction depends on the ideology and background when the media are being applied. When people discuss a certain medium in the reproduction theory of classic art such as painting, its media nature is the different way of reproduction which distinguishes itself from other media. Therefore in Lessing’s differentiation of poetry and painting, the former tended to reproduce continuous things through temporality, while the latter tended to reproduce parallel things in space. In this context, the spatiality of painting is its key characteristics. However in the aesthetic theory of modernism, the planarity of paintings is emphasized to distinguish itself from the spatiality of sculptures, just like what Greenberg argued. One interesting fact is when Lessing discussed the differences between poetry and painting, the case he put forward was the sculpture work, the Laocoon and His Sons. In another word, in the 18th century, when differentiating poetry (a language art) from painting (a visual art), the internal distinction between different visual arts (for example between painting and sculpture) was not emphasized or not even recognized. Until later Greenberg and his peer artists realized the planarity of painting and its value. It is evidence enough that the nature of a medium is only discovered by users and researchers in the differentiation with other media. Or even, a medium only becomes a medium through its differentiation with other media. For example in sculpture, the concept of different sculpture media only emerged as the social function of sculpture art transformed. Only when the appreciation of beauty became a social function for sculpture, did its differentiation of different materials start to matter. After that, the selection of materials became an item of consideration for artists. Whereas in Renaissance, it was the differentiation between circular carving and relief sculpture mattered more. Because at that time, the primary question for artists was the relation between sculptures and architectural space. Therefore, the so-called “media nature” does not refer to the medium itself, but what differentiates it from another medium under a particular context. That is to say, the “media nature” is its heterogeneity. Although the ontological issue of media is still out there, the focus today is no longer the media nature of art, but its conceptual nature. I do not intend to create antagonism between the two, but to emphasize that the “media nature” is a product of concept. And in different concepts, the perceptions of the media nature are also different. For example, to regard report on social events as the value of photography is one kind of concept. In this concept, the media nature of photography is defined as to record. But this definition does not apply to the dark room experiments in Dadaistic photography. The media nature depends on the way of using the media. The significance of image, or even all other media, lies in its way of use. And this linguistic and philosophical assertion also apply here. For artists, although they will use image in one way or another, but taking a certain way of use as its nature and arguing different ways of use of different media is certainly pointless for them. One may regard recording as the way of use of photography, and shoot social issues which seem meaningful to him. But it simply does not mean that it is valueless for someone to experiment different types of photography techniques and vice versa. Besides, there is an interrelation between the advance of technique and language, and the extension of theme and content. When photography was first invented, it brought about a new visual content. And when it was faced with new shooting objects and targets, a new set of photography language and style was also established. Just like shooting documentaries brought about typological photography.
 
Therefore, as a modern visual technology, image has brought about changes to modern society. These changes themselves are not changeless, just like new knowledge of image will promote new practice. After the birth of photography and film, Walter Benjamin once expounded the series of aesthetic and political impact brought by this new type of art from the perspective of the complexity of technology, for example, the disappearance of authenticity, the vanishing of“ Aura”, the depreciation of aesthetic value and the appearance of exhibition value, etc. His explanation was a revelation and a construction, making people realize the differences between image media and traditional media in a more conscious way, which pushed the practice of image art towards a more concrete dimension.
 
But what’s more important is Benjamin’s attention to the way of production. In his world, photography and film are grasped as productivity factors. Opposite to that was the collective production and acceptance, where replicability was only a symptom but not the whole of such “collectivity”. The fundamental difference between image art and traditional visual art such as painting is that image as a technology, is the product of a systematic social division of labor which requires mass collaboration among all social fabrics, while painting as a technique, can be completed by the painter alone. This difference, according to Benjamin, is the difference between a surgeon and a witch doctor. 
Therefore, today when we talk about image art, it is essential for us to shift focus from the work of art, which is the end of the production chain, to the operation of the whole production-communicationconsumption mechanism and get into the perception and response on this mode of production by artistic practice. This is no negligence on the work of art. In fact, aesthetic studies on video works can go no further without discussions on its mode of production. In a sense, the discussion on Montage language is the discussion on a series of mode of production such as scenes, props, make-up, lighting, sound recording, cameras, shots and editing, or even the whole chain of the production-communication-consumption process.
 
The transformation of such an awareness not only brings about the adjustment of methodology, but more importantly the enlargement of the field of discussion, so that it can eventually face up to the issues of the “image society”. Because the connotation of the “image society” is not only about the number of images produced, but more importantly about how videos are embedded in the social fabric or even determine the social operation mode in terms of organizational mechanism. Therefore, the essence of the “image society” is not about “images in the society” or “images about the society”, but the whole mode relations of production generated by images.
 
Image art practices by artists are also an integral part of the whole image production relations. And the judgment of their values greatly depends on the artist’s self-conscious grasp of such relations of production. Different from theoretical discussions, artists are usually faced with not the general concept of “image”, but specific parts in the complicated dimension of “image”. “Image” is divided and unwinded as a continuity integrating visual devices, venues, concepts and systems. There are a lot of objects in such continuity, including lights, eyes, lens, filters, photometers, flash lights, tripods, stabilizers, shutters, camera obscuras, films, CCDs, darkrooms, developers, printing papers, enlargers, printers, aluminum plates, frames, photo albums, screens, monitors, TV sets, image tapes, editing softwares, photo applications, photo studios, production studios, settings, 3D glasses, billboards, light boxes, projectors...and the most recently developed selfie sticks and social network photo albums. And the practices like watching, focusing, dispatching, shooting, exposing, developing, editing, photoshopping, rendering, printing, mounting, collaging, playing, screen capturing, downloading and uploading, bind all these together. Artistic practices today are to restore images to a lowercase, plural but more perceivable existence under such micro circumstances. Thus images diffused among symbols and materials are endowed with a form of experience.
 
In this sense, “image” should be called “Eidos”. In terms of phenomenology, “Eidos” is both an idea and an existence, the presentation and the nature, the origin and the avatar. It is both intuitive and speculative. Therefore, “Eidos” is no longer a shadow trapped in Plato’s myth of cave. “Eidos” becomes a self-sufficient existence, not necessary to be related to its mock object. Or even we must make fundamental revisions on Plato’s representative theories: images are not shadows of ideas, for ideas themselves are also shadows. In another word, when we talk about the “image society”, we are not talking about the relations between image and the society from a hypothetical, external perspective, but rather images among images. For there is no such a society without the influence of images, nor such images not dealing with the society. And today, art is making a response to this.
 
 
 
Bao Dong
Curator
Theme exhibition of Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017