HOW TO DO THINGS BY THEORY

RE-HALLUCINATING CONTEXTS #4:

report from the session by Bojana Cvejic

Our fourth session began with Grégory and Alice informing us about a two-day event at Tate Modern where “independent artists” were invited to support their own representation in this space as “independent artists”, quite a cynical move of Tate Modern to co-opt even that which not only doesn’t belong to them but that explicitly counters their logic.

My introduction opened with a question: is it a map that we are making?

Preparing for this session, I researched the principles of cartography and artistic procedures of map-making. This was to distinguish and sharpen the direction and purpose of making a map of “relatively autonomous” scenes of Paris and Belgrade – a map we would publish and thereby suggest to be used by others. The decision to publish it begs the question: could our map guide a navigation that would really re-hallucinate the scenes? Especially as we planned the trip of exchange Belgrade-Paris. Could Parisians start with this map and Belgradians use this map instead of Pariscope?

I presented reasons why our quest concerns the making of a diagram rather than a map.

Mapping any territory is a “supertask” – a philosophical notion – since it suffers from infinite regress. Let me explain. In philosophy, a supertask is a quantifiably infinite number of operations that occur sequentially within a finite interval of time. There is a problem infinite regress with truthfulness of representation of a territory and a map. Funny stories that could describe a supertaks: in the first modern novel, Tristram Shandy is writing a fictional diary, so detailed that it takes the author one year to set down the events of a single day – because the map (diary) is more detailed than the territory (life), yet must fit into the territory (diary written in the course of his life), it can never be finished.

Gregory Bateson, the father of cybernetics, wrote: “We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. […] Always, the process of representation will filter it out so that the mental world is only maps of maps, ad infinitum.” At best, a scientific approach assigns the map with a structure analogous, for the purpose at hand, to the territory

So, again, we can ask ourselves: are we making a map, or should it be something else?

A map is a visual representation of a territory, a symbolic translation, where symbols are standardized, conventions for writing and reading maps, and the scale should be uniform. A map is concerned with the accuracy of description; how faithful to the reality its model is.

Maps are made for the purpose of orientation. The etymology of this work – “orientation” – is interesting. It comes from oriri (Latin) = to rise; oriens = East. So, in this sense, our cartopgraphy yields a map of orienation, but is it an orientation in a territory, a place, or in a situation?

Our cartography differs from a map, because it is a

Diagnosis – of the current situation; it bears date of the insight.

It’s also the product of collective brainstorming, where collaboration transforms our individual entries. We discussed how we process disagreement, exposing “different partial views”. Our map will be partial, but consisting of many “parts”, partial views. The goal isn’t to reach a common version as a kind of consensus.

Our map still bears a relationship to a place, but not looking for an ideal approximation of generalities, but accounting for particularities. On the same level we can find items conforming to general laws and functions, as well as items as details. The extent of detail – the grain of this picture – isn’t predetermined or standardized. In that sense, it is a topography in the older sense – the study of a place – special focus on the features and shape of the surface, and an unlimited extent of detail.

I remarked that I thought it interesting that we never mentioned three common organization modes in our field:

Networks – which are based on common interest

Discursive communities – based on sharing the same discourse and its assumptions, its “normal language”

Families – relations based on family resemblances, “familiarities” arising from taste or other more subjective or psychological affiliations

Our map – as we discussed – should include the temporality of a situation, the dynamic of a process that might use the map to extend into future. We speculate or project, we make a prognosis of a possible future of the situation. What if those items we uncover would gain in importance in future?

Is it more appropriate to regard it a diagram?

A diagram is defined as a two-dimensional symbolic representation of informationaccording to some visualization technique; stressing the symbolic. “Mindmaps” are diagrams.

Sergej, our guest, drew the map of Napoleon’s attempt of invading Russia.

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/minardmap.jpg

and we could clearly discern characteristics of a diagram disguised into a map.

To consider our project in relation to diagrams, I consulted Gilles Deleuze, first in his book on Foucault, from whom he draws the more political and sociologival notion of diagram (as a mental representation of a dispositif), and then in his book on Francis Bacon,  and I drew the following features:

1)    A diagram creates another reality, instead of representing the actual one

“ne fonctionne jamais pour représenter un monde objectivé; au contraire, il organise un nouveau type de réalité”

2) the first meaning he adopts from Foucault’s Panopticum: “Panoptise est le diagramme d’un mécanisme de pouvoir ramené à sa forme idéale”, close to Foucault’s dispositif

“la machine abstrate coextensive au champ social” – The diagram is the abstract machine co-extensive with the social field

3) the diagram doesn’t convey only the points that are connected, but also those points which are free or disconnected

Its vitalist power (pouvoir de vie) lies not only in the singularities of power: we will always find singularities of resistance.

4) aesthetic notion of diagram:

“on part d’une forme figurative, un diagramme intervient pour la brouiller, et il doit en sortir une forme d’une toute autre nature, nommé Figure”

from a figurative form as a given representation of the object of reference, the diagram disfigures it (in the act of painting it is the force of chaos or catastrophe), for a form of an entirely other nature to arise, the Figure (the givens brushed, covered over or wiped out)

Deleuze’s diagram doesn’t reflect or represent, but it expresses or creates a new situation, because it makes those things which weren’t previously visible appear somehow anew.

How does a diagram enable such emergences? By not predetermining the kinds of items and their relations, but by combining items of a varying complexity or degree of interpretation. A diagram combines materials and functions. It doesn’t interpret, but it experiments with the known towards the emergence of the unknown (the unknown is never entirely unknown, it’s always composed of some elements known…) Sergej described the procedure of diagram on the performanceMemories are made of this by BADco, the company that he is a member and co-founder of. The performance grew out overlaying maps of various parameters:

- Scott Fitzgerald’s notes

- map of imaginary institutions in Zagreb they proposed (it turned out that the institutions outgrew the scale of the city and its population)

- the architecture of Parc La Villette

- the dance language transposed from La Villette

- Solaris

etc.

In the overlaying of these maps new rhythms and new intensities emerged. What’s important for diagram is that it doesn’t predict an outcome, picture, it’s not a plan for the realization of a certain effect.

Virginie mentioned the procedure of “document poétique” by Franck Leibovici, where he translates a highly complicated and encumbered with facts report that Collin Powell presented to the UN. Sergej added a related term, about turning from “matters of fact” to “matters of concern” by Bruno Latour.

I described one of John Cage’s procedures of indeterminacy in Atlas eclipticalis(1962), where he overlays the musical sheets (staves) with the maps of stars to “find” the notes for a composition for an orchestra,

So, we took the decision to create a diagram of maps, where we would overlay maps of:

- places/institutions

- people and organizations

- concepts and problems

In the end we would discover where the items coagulate.

One decision we didn’t bring yet: should we have a common parameter for all maps? Territories of Paris/Belgrade seemed inappropriate. How else should we do it?

In the last part of the session we continued placing new items on our already existing map, but in a game that Yves proposed. After preparing five items on our own, we sat around the table and “played cards”. Each entered a card explaining it briefly and indicating a relation to other items. The order was determined by the need.

We also took a look at the World Government map by Bureau d’Etudes, and concluded that their ideology doesn’t suit us. They are constructing a power network on the premise of disclosing a conspiracy, secret connections underlying governmental agencies, banks, and other institutions involved in the global decision-making in economy and politics.

We have two more sessions to complete the map:

I would like to ask you to revisit the old items, and give a brief explanation in English or French (we will translate in both cases) of what the item stands for.

I’m doing it now for the 5 items I placed this Saturday:
Misko Suvakovic – a former conceptual artist, theoretician and aesthetician, a “father-figure” in the positive sense of introducing contemporary theories into art schools, and influence with the stance that all changes today go through institutions, their transformation by intervention.

Ideology: historicize or else! – Having “ideology” in the West is considered pejorative, limiting etc. In Belgrade, we are used to reading ideology in anything, our own work and everything else, no offense possible. It’s about trying to recognize values behind perspective which aren’t just individual, subjective, product of free will/choice, but are conditioning our social imaginary.

Structural/contextal/problematizing approach: the default approach in the East is rarely individualist, it departs from and aims for a structure, a set of givens of a context, and the problems that this context bears or begs to be posed. We are not accustomed at isolating an object (of creation or analysis) and observing it “in itself”.

Lacks/empty places/discontinuities; The art and cultural context of Belgrade is marked by lacks and deficiencies – at least how it perceives itself. Some places are empty, either because they were emptied out, voided by past regimes, or because they are freed and hence, vacant. Our history is marked by discontinuities, breaks where tendencies were erratic, fragmented, they rarely could flourish in a project with goal and its fulfilment.

Heterodoxy – follows from the previous concept. It means that there is no any major native tradition by which everything else is measured. To all traditions – in theory and in art – we have an external relationship, as they weren’t born in our language, but were translated and imported. In the 1960s and 1970s books were smuggled, nowadays it’s people that are smuggled as guest-lecturers or performances etc. when compared with the French or German who were educated and raised in a language-continuum to their own culture. Heterodoxy makes us omnivores – and approach theory in operation, without being anxious at not keeping with the values; we’re not in the position to add values to a tradition that belongs to us. This also can explain inconsistency.