May 31, 2002
net art and the practice of transgression
by sabater
culturekitchen.com © 2002, Liza Sabater
(This article first appeared in furtherfield.org)
Mythologies, in the form of religions, may not be as affective in our society as they are in other countries, but mythologies, albeit secular ones, rule our lives. As Roland Barthes said, "everything can be a myth, provided it is conveyed by a discourse." In other words, there are myths anywhere there is representation. Or put another way, anywhere there is representation, there is a taboo, a law, a commandment, waiting to be broken and transgressed.
Whenever I think about transgressive art, I think about Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa Bernini was commissioned to depict the saint in one of the most sacred moments of Catholic life æ Saint Teresa's transverberation; of one of the early moments in her long journey to being one with God. With the voluptuousness of the statue's lips, the intricacy of the robe, even the Cupid-like qualities of the angel piercing the saint's heart as she swoons, Bernini seems to give more importance to the carnality and sensuality of the mystic experience than to its sacredness. The mystic experience becomes polluted with the language of voluptuousness and sensuality chiseled into the curves and folds of the statue. The statue becomes in itself a rendition of the equivocal representation of rapture.
What makes Bernini's work all the more interesting is the fact that the saint's life was as convoluted as the folds he chiseled on the statue's robe. Saint Teresa was always crossing a line --transgressing-- with her writings and her life and that is why she was both feared and revered. It was for her actions that she was recognized not for something innate in her. As far as I remember, she was actually born of Jewish convertos (as well as San Juan de la Cruz --a coincidence that does not escape a lot of scholars who believe their mysticism owes more to Jewish than Catholic traditions). She spent her life trying to prove how little she knew about things, like canon law or philosophy. All the while, she became one of the most powerful Abbesses in Spain and one of the most influential writers of her time. Actually, for one who spoke little of herself, she was and still is one of the most powerful influences in the culture and history of Spain and of all Christendom.
This takes me to what seems to escape many when speaking about transgression: Transgressors need to know how to speak the structures that they set to transgress. Saint Teresa was very aware of the danger she was in for her mystic raptures. On the one hand she describes in her poems the kind of personal relationship that goes counter to the mediated God of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, she was an example of what the Reformist movement deemed as heretic, given the eroticism in mystic rapture. Either way, she was viewed as a threat. Nevertheless, she managed to propagate her version of Catholicism through one of the most intense monastic and missionary campaigns of the Counterreformation. That she managed to do this from within the confines of the Spanish Inquisition proves that the most effective transgressions are so profound that, unless there is a discursive or representational crisis, they hardly go noticed.
In his book On Erotism, Georges Bataille talks about this element in transgression:
Compared to work, transgression is a game.
In the world of play, philosophy disintegrates.
If transgression became the foundation-stone of philosophy ? silent contemplation would have to be substituted with language. This is the contemplation of being at the pinnacle of being.
If myth is representation (an idea-in-form), then transgression is a game of representation (an idea transformed); but not one in which the act is described. A transgression occurs when the myth is usurped and its connection to both its signifier (meaning) and signified (content) is broken.
That is why, for art to be transgressive, it has to have a certain degree of openness to allow for actions and interpretations that cross the line, reversing not only the order of things but reversing the order of power as well. And to reverse the order of things and power, the transgressor really has to be in touch with that power structure.
One great example is the recent CalTrans road-sign dupe created by artist Richard Ankrom (ankrom.org). Actually, it is not a dupe in the sense of creating confusion, it is a dupe because he set out to correct a confusion on his own accord and not by waiting for Caltrans to take action. This "guerilla public service", as Ankrom calls it, is a way to spread "the benefits of the artistic endeavor in everyday life, what we see, don't see and take for granted".
Ankrom could have protested the lack of signage or even defaced or further confused what CalTrans already has there as an act of subversion or even revolt. But what he did was even sneakier: He took matters into his own hands and did what the system would not do at all æcreate a road sign to easily explain the exit at an intersection.
What I love about this guerrilla public service project is that Ankrom learned exactly how to make and install his road signs so that the project would be seamless with the official signage. From experimenting with Pantone colors, to measuring the site and even going so far as to dress up like a CalTrans worker in order to walk over the sign expanse; every single step of the way was a necessary learning experience. Ankrom was successful because he learned how to sign and speak fluent "Caltrans-ese" through his road paintings and installations. He found and opening, a gap in the system and proceeded to bring attention to the gap by becoming an agent of the system he wanted to change. His sign was so perfect that neither the motorists, not the agency in charge of signage, really saw the "error" until it was pointed to them.
Are there any instances of transgressive works in the NetArt world? What is an artist to use in order to transgress the "order, law and commandments" of the Internet?
Marc Anderssen created with Netscape a way to naturalize the Internet by providing a structure, what Barthes would call "a second-order semiological system" that could create the semblance of order out of the chaos of the Internet. Netscape and all the subsequent browsers became the gateway to the myth of the World Wide Web: The text, images and sounds that you can read, see and hear become tangible objects through the browser. It delivers the web as a space, a place, a domain, a community. It creates an articulated representation of the Internet, making it natural, even common place. Almost as if to presage browsers, Barthes wrote:
Myth is a pure ideographic system, where the forms are still motivated by the concept which they represent while not yet, by a long way, covering the sum of its possibilities for representation.
Some of the NetArt that I find most interesting is the one that can use the system --the data streams, the network, the technology, the language-- to reveal a whole new way of looking and interacting within the structures of the Internet. The early browser art of JODI and Mark Napier are examples of works that sought to destroy the semblance of order that the browsers gave to the Internet.
As a space for myth the browser becomes the first place for transgressing all the laws and commandments of the Web and Internet. Still, it does not mean that a web transgression needs a high level of programming. One of the biggest mythical structures of the Internet is the myth of WYSIWYG æwhat you see (truth) is (true) what you get (and therefore truthful).
The myth of WYSIWYG has not been better exploited by any other group than ®?ark. They have set out to mimic perfectly the WTOs web site to the point that WTO supporters do not recognize the difference. They've usurped a domain, infringed on copyright and even sent their YesMen "representatives" to events in order to speak about global trading issues. ®?ark is one of the most powerful and successful examples of how conceptual art can transcend the representation of the concept to become the concept itself. In other words, ®?ark biggest transgression is that it does not only comprehend the myth and sets out to trangress it, ®?ark has become a myth.
A smaller myth-making project is the Google Adwords Happening. I particularly like this project because it was so obvious, that nobody had tried it before. Adwords have been around for a while in Yahoo! and Amazon but, because they are there all the time, nobody pays attention to them. They are the " what-goes-without-saying" of the Internet. Seemingly less important than a banner ad, they purport to be gateways to information that, in this case, a googler might be seeking æthat is, until Christophe Bruno started meddling with them. He showed how easy it is to turn the Google site into raw material for his poetic pursuits. By playing with these forms of representation with no code, no software, just words and a few bucks he showed how the myth of WYSIWYG can be turned into art.
Every system of power has its own mythology æits own way of expressing power. Power is a form of speech, a discourse, a representation. To counter power, own needs to transgress its system of representation by revealing its myth-making structures. In a subversion, or protest a subject pits itself in a duality against the 'offending' power. In other words, it is a defensive mode. In a transgression, the is no defense --only broken laws, commandments, taboos. The subject crosses the boundaries set forth by the myth, and in the process, both become polluted. In a transgression there are no winners, no losers just maculated myths.
Posted by Liza in Activism, Art, Article, Web
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